Author: ROSAMOND MISKIN

Today’s Gospel reading begins with the call of Matthew, as told by St Matthew in his Gospel. Many people think it was a sort of signature.

Years ago, I did a class in the primary school in my previous parish on the call of the disciples, and I rather majored on Matthew’s call.

I made a lot of Matthew being a collector of taxes. I should have realised that 9 year olds (bless them) have not a clue what taxes are.

Anyway, I waxed lyrical about collecting taxes and Matthew at his seat of custom, and then I asked them to do a drawing.

As I went to look round the drawings they were doing, I noticed several of them had a man sitting at a stall with a whole cavalcade of black cabs. I should have realised, as many had fathers who were black cab drivers. The children thought Matthew was a collector of TAXIS!

The call of a tax collector, our Gospel writer, Matthew, for this year focuses our minds on calling, and this is what I would like to dwell on.

Ten days ago the Pope issued a significant teaching document on AI, artificial intelligence. Coincidentally there was a debate in the House of Lords on Friday on it as well, introduced by the Archbishop of Canterbury. You may remember Fr Matt Harbage, when he was here signalled that we needed to on the alert about the significance of what was coming, and now it is with us.

The Pope’s Teaching document Magnifca Humanitas has been recognised to be not just significant but seminal, and sits in a vital tradition, that of Christian Social thought.

Archbishop Sarah’s impressive speech on Friday, drew very much on this tradition too. I am remiss because I have not spoken enough about Christian Social thought, and there is much to mine in it.

Pope Leo’s choice of name is significant.

Leo XIII had the heart of his time as Pope a real interest in late 19^th society, and its best ordering. His Encyclical Rerum Novarum of 1891 changed how Catholicism engaged with the world, economic systems and the workplace.

In the late 19^th c there was a convergence of thought in this area amongst Christians which was ahead of the ecumenical movement. Currents in Anglican Thought aligned naturally with Catholic social teaching. Someone called FD Maurice, Professor at King’s London, and later Charles Gore, Bishop of Oxford, founder of the Community of the Resurrection, were in precisely the same groove. The Roman Church picked up the ball and ran with it in the generation which followed.

Christian Social thought is not to be confused with Christian Socialism.

Christian Social thought centres on a Biblical understanding of humanity’s relationship with God and itself its main strands are:

• Human dignity
• The Common Good
• Solidarity
• Subsidiarity
• The preferential option for the poor – which is rooted in the Magnificat, Mary’s hymn at the start of Luke’s Gospel.
• The dignity of work and workers’ rights
• The care for creation

Magnifica Humanitas starts where Leo XIII started, with a full statement about fundamental human dignity. The human potential for divinity, made clear in the creation story, where we are made in God’s likeness underlines our destiny and beauty, and how nothing else created can take this from us.

Archbishop Sarah quoted a later Anglican Thinker in this field, arguably one of the greatest, William Temple, Archbishop during much of WWII, who :

“described a central occupation of Christian social thought as being ‘man’s dignity, tragedy, and destiny’.”[She continued] ‘I have spoken today of humanity’s inherent dignity, but it is our fallenness, the tragedy, which makes technology’s power so seductive and the risk of its abuse so often our story. In the Christian tradition, there is a call that overrides the lust for power – it is the call to service.

So what are we called to?

Matthew’s story reminds us that the Church exists because Jesus still says, “Follow me” to unlikely people like tax collectors or me and you.

Hosea’s words from the first lesson which Jesus quotes as the rationale for the call of Matthew, remain searching for every generation of Christians. “I desired mercy, and not sacrifice”.

God’s desire for mercy asks whether our worship, leads to compassion and the proclamation of human dignity. Jesus underlines the dignity of the outcast, honours those who are shamed and challenges those divided to cohere.

Perhaps the deepest lesson of these readings, as we contemplate calling, in a world of intricate complexity, is that mercy is not one Christian virtue among others. Mercy is participation in the very life of God. We show mercy because we have received mercy. Matthew could never forget that he sat at the tax booth when Christ called him.

Whether we collect taxes or taxis or the inanities and ephemera of this world, we are called to give them away, to serve others, and in showing mercy to seek to proclaim the one who confers upon each of us a sovereign dignity. He calls us to offer mercy not sacrifice, because his mercy is his sacrifice of himself.

 

 

 

On this day, Trinity Sunday, we rejoice in the Trinity of God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  Three in One and One in Three, holy, blessed, Trinity.

The Trinity is the triumph of light over dark, and good over evil.  In our liturgical cycle it is the culmination of all that went before; that is the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.

Yet the disciples who followed Jesus in his earthly life were not at that stage of rejoicing.  In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus commissions them to ‘go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit’. In this passage there is a reference to the Trinity, but the disciples have a journey ahead of them in spreading the word and, as Matthew’s Gospel presents it to us, not all of them are sure about who Jesus is as he appears to them on the mountain of Galilee.  They doubt his authority and, aware of this doubt, Jesus gives a resounding response that all authority in heaven and earth has been given to him and this authority expresses itself in his commission to the disciples to baptize and teach the baptized to obey everything that he has commanded them.

There is a stern, rather military, quality in the tone of this commission. As such, it stands in contrast to the progression of appearances of Jesus that lead up to this commissioning.  This progression, as David Pawson writes in his Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, is a gentle one of the appearance of Jesus to Mary, then to Peter, then on the road to Emmaus, then to the eleven and finally to every tribe on earth.  The tone is quite severe, perhaps to ensure that the disciples will undertake the mission not just to the Jews but also to the Gentiles. The mood then softens in the assurance he gives them that he is with them always, to the end of the age.  This is the covenant that God will never desert his creation. It is rather like a parent saying to their child that they must do as they are bid, but their command is rooted in love; a love that is there for their child always.

Here we see authority as an expression of love. I believe that this is where things went a bit awry in the ‘be what you want to be, do what you want to do’ philosophy that took flight in the 1960s. There was a good intention behind that philosophy as it wanted to offer freedom of the spirit to everyone.  A freedom that says do not be bound by any rules but choose what you want to do when you want to do it. Yet I believe that this philosophy leads to a void in human affairs because it does not readily accept duty and service to others which can involve a certain self-discipline and working through difficult situations to produce good outcomes. That working through difficult situations involves service to mankind and that service is at the heart of the Christian faith. God served mankind by offering his Son’s death on the Cross for our salvation.  Jesus served mankind in his obedience to God’s will to the point of agonizing death, and we serve each other in our journey through life.  In the Commission, the disciples are told that their service will be, as the Jerome Biblical Commentary gives it, to carry on Jesus’s teaching ministry, lay the foundations for Christian education, theology and intellectual work.  None of this means a fanatical adherence to the rule book but rather a world ruled by love that manifests itself in helping each other along the road.

What authority does is that it allows for you to be challenged.  As Ian Boxall writes in his Commentary on Matthew, ‘Jesus challenges his followers to be in a  constant state of readiness until his coming at the end of time’. They must be alert to God’s will in the onset of the mission to all nations which is a shift from the mission to the Jews towards the time of the church. Boxall writes that this is so that the Gentiles can share with Jesus in the post-Resurrection of the church. He goes on to say that today’s Gospel reading reflects Matthew’s emphasis on the aftermath of the Resurrection in its effect on the disciples and the world.

If we look at this effect beyond the time of the Commission to the life of St Paul, we can read in Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians a similarity with Matthew’s text in Paul’s farewell when he calls upon them to put things in order, listen to what he asks them to do and live in peace. He asks them to ‘love one another and greet one another with a holy kiss’. Here we see a gentler version of the Commission text but there is an instruction given by Paul for the Corinthians to follow. An instruction that is rooted, as the Commission is, in love.

Since love is the motivator for authority let us rejoice in that love that is the Trinity of God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

 

AMEN

 

 

 

 

 

 

On Thursday, Ascension Day, I invited as our preacher the new vicar of St Saviour’s. Reflecting on the mystery of the Resurrection and the Ascension, he naughtily observed “It is little wonder that some clergy mysteriously arrange guest preachers around this time of year!” He was gracious enough to say that in his previous parish, he had done the same.

Philip looked at the Ascension as a letting go, the means by which the disciples – the Church – could allow the Jesus they had known to vanish from their sight, so they might keep him in their hearts, and so that the limitations of time and space might give way to the infinity of eternity.

At the risk of plagiarising his best lines, he quoted a poem I didn’t know, by C Day Lewis, Walking Away, as he contemplates his son Sean stepping into independence, remembering past partings:

I have had worse partings, but none that so
Gnaws at my mind still. Perhaps it is roughly
Saying what God alone could perfectly show –
How selfhood begins with a walking away,
And love is proved in the letting go.

I would like to reflect on two slightly different thoughts relating to the Ascension. The first is betweenness and the second is doubt.

Let’s start with doubt. I am never quite sure what the definition of faith is, but I am pretty sure it’s not certainty, and I am sure too it’s not knowledge. St Paul is suspicious of knowledge “knowledge puffeth up”.

The Ascension, particularly in the space age – we’ve had men and a woman heading to the moon recently, there is a sputnik in the Benedicte window – is confounding if it actually means that Jesus went up to heaven.

Stupid thoughts crowd my unscientific mind: when did he stop going up, what happened behind the clouds, when they shrouded the mystery of his disappearance. It’s clear this is mystery talk, but it’s not made easier by today’s two readings.

Attentive readers of might have spotted immediately the puzzle. At the end of Gospel of Luke, the Ascension happens on Easter Day itself: Jesus leads his disciples out, blesses them, and is carried up into heaven. It is swift, seamless, immediate. But when we open the Acts of the Apostles, written by the same author, we are told that Jesus appears to the disciples over forty days, before ascending. The same event, the same author—yet told and even dated differently.

What are we to make of this?

Does it increase our faith? It certainly irritates mine – why can’t the Bible say what it means?

Doubt, scepticism, puzzling, being confounded – they are all alright.

The nature of the stories that are told in it, by different authors, with different backgrounds and audiences and purposes is to cajole, intrigue and puzzle, not only to provide pat-answers and satisfying solutions. The Resurrection stories are all a part of this. Not to tease or upset us, but to avoid proposition and over-simplicity. Life isn’t simple and we all know that – so faith – the most important part of life shouldn’t be simple either.

Scholars suggest that Luke is not contradicting himself but shaping the story for a reason. At the end of the Gospel, Luke compresses events—he “telescopes” resurrection, ascension, and worship into one radiant conclusion.

In Acts, he stretches the same reality out, giving us forty days of appearances, teaching, and preparation.

One is a liturgical ending, the other a missionary beginning.

In other words, the Ascension is told twice because it does two things. It is both an ending and a beginning.

The Sunday after Ascension has a particular place in the Church’s year. Christ has ascended; the Spirit has not yet been given at Pentecost.

The Gospel reading from Gospel of John gives us Jesus’ great prayer in chapter 17. He does not ask that they be taken out of the world, but that they be kept within it. They are to remain in that place of tension: between heaven and earth, between promise and fulfilment, between what has been accomplished and what is yet to come.

And so much of life feels like that, does it not? Waiting for a diagnosis, or waiting for healing. Living between grief and acceptance (I have been working with a family in exactly that situation). Holding together hope and fear.

Luke shows us that even the Ascension itself must be lived twice: once as fulfilment, once as waiting.

Jesus prays not for our escape, but for our perseverance. He promises the gift of the Spirit and although we celebrate Pentecost next week  we don’t have to wait until then to know its abiding presence with us. Week by week as we come together to receive the Eucharist, so the Spirit is outpoured on us in renewal of our Baptism and assurance of the presence of the Spirit with us.

So we are one with Christ “For they are thine, and all mine are thine, I come to thee Holy Father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we are.

 

 

 

Laudabo Nomen Domini

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The Parting of Friends

The season between Easter and Pentecost can be a dangerous time for preachers. Throughout most of the year we can manage with stories, parables, miracles, perhaps the occasional sheep. But suddenly, in these few weeks, we are expected to explain the Ascension, the Holy Spirit, and then, just when confidence is beginning to fail entirely, the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. It is little wonder that some clergy mysteriously arrange guest preachers around this time of year!

The trouble is that people often want diagrams. They want the mechanics of it all explained. What exactly happened on Ascension Day? Did Jesus literally rise upwards into the clouds? Where is heaven? How can God be Three and One? There is always a temptation to turn Christianity into a kind of theological engineering project, as though salvation depended upon getting the diagrams correct.

But the heart of the matter, the heart of our faith, is not a set of theological diagrams. We are not called simply to agree with statements about God, as one might assent to a proposition.  We are called to live within the reality those words are trying to express—to discover, from the inside, the transforming love of God in Christ. Faith is not standing outside the language and examining it; it is living within it, breathing it, allowing it to reshape us.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer once warned against turning Christianity into a religion of the letter, as though discipleship were merely a matter of rule-keeping. The life of faith is something deeper, more demanding, and more alive than that.

So on this day, we do not need to imagine the Ascension as though it were a kind of celestial launch—Christ rising like a rocket into the upper atmosphere. That picture, vivid though it may be, misses the point. The question is not how it happened in a physical sense, but what it meant—what it meant for those first disciples, and what it means for us.

St Luke is the only Evangelist who gives us a full account. In his Gospel, he tells us that Jesus led his disciples out as far as Bethany, lifted his hands in blessing, and, in the very act of blessing, parted from them. And he continues in the Acts of the Apostles, writing that as they watched, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight.

It is a strangely gentle ending. No thunder, no trumpets, no drama—just a blessing, and then absence.

In St Luke’s narrative the Ascension brings to a close that series of resurrection appearances which we have been reflecting on through these days of Easter: moments of sudden recognition and swift disappearance. Mary in the garden. The disciples on the road to Emmaus. Thomas in the upper room. Breakfast by the lakeshore. Again and again, Christ is present—and then he is gone.

These were not random encounters. They were a preparation. They were teaching the disciples how to discover a new kind of presence, a presence no longer bound by sight or touch.

Christ speaks to them not as distant followers, but as those he loves. There is, in this moment, something of the pain that we know and recognise in every deep farewell.

He knows what it is to part, to leave behind the companionship of shared meals and familiar voices. It is, at its heart, a parting of friends.

And yet, this is not an ending. It is a widening.

Until now, the disciples have known Christ in the flesh, in a particular place and time. Now they must learn to know him differently—to see him with a deeper sight. The relationship is not ended; it is transformed.

St Augustine put it with characteristic simplicity: he vanished from their sight so that they might keep him in their hearts.

But this transformation requires something costly. It requires letting go. The disciples must release the Christ they can see and hold, in order to receive the Christ who will be present everywhere. They must lose, in order to find. And that is never easy.

It is a lesson we recognise, if we are honest. Much of life is shaped by such moments—times when we are asked to let go of what is familiar, what is dear, what has sustained us, so that something new may be given. The child walking into school for the first time. The friend, moving away. The closing of one chapter, before the next is clear.

C Day Lewis captures it beautifully in his poem Walking Away, as he watches his son Sean step into independence:

I have had worse partings, but none that so
Gnaws at my mind still. Perhaps it is roughly
Saying what God alone could perfectly show –
How selfhood begins with a walking away,
And love is proved in the letting go.

Love is proved in the letting go.

The Ascension is not Christ abandoning his disciples. It is Christ drawing them into maturity. This is the moment when they begin, at last, to stand on their own feet. This is the first time that they truly let him go. And in the letting go, they discover they have not lost him at all.

“Lo, I am with you always, even to the close of the age.”

And this is where the promise of the Holy Spirit comes into view. “When the Spirit of truth comes,” Jesus says, “he will guide you into all truth.”

The Spirit is not an external force, hovering at a distance. The Spirit is the very breath of God, given within us—working not just on the surface of our lives, but there in the depths of our lives. Not confined to the respectable, or well-ordered parts of ourselves, but reaching into all that we are.

The Spirit reconciles what we think we are with what we truly are. The Spirit exposes what fear would keep hidden, and gently draws it into the light. The Spirit liberates us—not into some abstract holiness, but into the glorious freedom of being fully alive before God.

And perhaps that is finally what the Ascension teaches us: that Christ is not absent from the world, only absent in ways we might have expected.

We spend so much of our lives longing for certainty, for visible signs, for God to stand plainly before us and remove the burden of faith. Yet the risen Christ departs from the sight of the disciples not to abandon them, but to deepen their vision. He withdraws from their grasp so that they may discover him everywhere.

Not only in moments of glory or religious intensity, but in bread broken and shared; in acts of mercy; in wounds borne patiently; in love that survives disappointment; in the lonely places where we thought heaven could never reach.

The irascible Welsh priest / poet R S Thomas spoke of God as the great absence in our lives, and yet it is precisely within that seeming absence that the soul learns to attend, to listen, to wait. The silence itself becomes inhabited. The emptiness becomes charged with presence.

The disciples stand gazing upwards into the cloud, but the angels gently turn them back towards the world. There is work to do now. Bread to break. Good news to proclaim. A kingdom to embody. That is where the Ascension leads us. Not away from the earth, but deeper into it. Not out of humanity, but into a fuller humanity.

And they go back to Jerusalem, St Luke tells us, not in despair, but with great joy.

Joy, because they have begun to understand that the love of Christ is no longer confined to one place, one voice, one body that can be lost again to violence and death. It has become vast as heaven itself, moving quietly through the world in the power of the Holy Spirit.

And so we too must learn the strange holiness of letting go. To trust that beyond what can be seen or possessed or controlled, Christ is still drawing near.

Not always in shining clarity. Perhaps more often in silence.

Not always in answers. Perhaps more often in longing.

Not always in certainty. Perhaps more often in trust.

Until, little by little, through prayer, and mercy, and suffering, and hope, the world itself becomes transformed by the presence of God.

 

Amen.

 

 

John 14 Jesus Promises the Holy Spirit

On this Rogation Sunday, it is fitting to hear these words from
Paul to the Athenians, “the God who made the world and
everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth.” (Rogation
comes from the Latin ‘rogare’ – to ask or beseech). If we were
in a more rural parish as I was last weekend, we might be
‘beating the bounds’ – walking the parish boundary – and
praying blessings on God’s creation and the crops that are just
emerging for as Paul goes on to say “he himself (that is God)
gives everyone life and breath and everything else.” What a
reminder of the nature of God with whom we have the privilege
to have a personal relationship; a relationship made possible
through the self sacrifice and resurrection of Christ,
remembered and celebrated at Easter just a few weeks ago.

At this point in Acts, Paul is speaking, having seen the promise
of the Holy Spirit we read about in our Gospel this morning
fulfilled. Jesus at that last supper tells the disciples “I will ask
the Father and he will give you another advocate to help you
and be with you forever – the Spirit of truth.” Paul has first-hand
knowledge of the outpouring of God’s love through the Holy
Spirit after his dramatic encounter with God on the road to
Damascus. He wants to share the joy of knowing God with
those Athenians who he perceived to be searching for a true
God.

People of Athens! I see that in every way you are very
religious.  For as I walked around and looked carefully at your
objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: to
an unknown god. So you are ignorant of the very thing you
worship—and this is what I am going to proclaim to you.”

His words could appear to us to be judgmental and perhaps
arrogant – especially in the context of our current experience of
living in a country where multiple faiths co-exist and intolerance
results in acts of hatred, persecution and even violence towards
the most vulnerable. Paul, we know had a fiery character –
exemplified both before and now after his encounter with God. I
admire his enthusiasm to share his personal experience and
the certainty of his faith even if I find his approach to be less
tolerant or curious than mine would be now.

My reality, which I am sure is not unique, is that I sometimes
feel uncertainty, doubt, and wonder where the Holy Spirit is. All
of these feelings are in tension with my faith in God. But this is
the reality of a living relationship with God.

So I find comfort and a path laid out in our Gospel and other
readings. In the Gospel written by John we are at a point in our
Easter journey, sitting at the last supper, with the early disciples
whose faith is about to go through the most enormous test; the
pretence of a trial and subsequent execution of Jesus which
would surely appear to be the end their transformative journey
which had started just a few years earlier.

And yet in the verses in 1 Peter, probably written almost 30
years after those momentous events of Easter, we see that the
journey before the disciples will forge a faith and trust in God
that they can not possibly imagine in those dark moments… vs
14 – “But even if you should suffer for what is right, you are
blessed. “Do not fear their threats[b]; do not be
frightened.”[c] 15 But in your hearts revere Christ as Lord.” How
different from the uncertainty in those early days following
Jesus death and resurrection.

What a great example we have then of faith in action, God’s
loving support poured out through the Holy Spirit and the
impact these disciples went on to make through their early
tentative steps with Jesus’ guidance, the growing confidence
after Pentecost and the evidence of Christs church on Earth
growing from those first 12 grains.

Where ever we are on that journey of faith, and like them – we
may not know where it will lead – let us remember to make
space to listen and acknowledge the continuing work of the
Holy Spirit through us, others and the whole of Gods creation.
As we go out of here, we may not be Beating the Bounds of the
parish but we can notice the beauty and joy in God’s creation
around us. It may be a bird, a child, an act of kindness, a wise
word – what ever it is that moves you, take a moment to
acknowledge and thank God.

From that point it is a smaller step to listen to those internal
stirrings, the still small voice of God, and to have faith enough
to act on them – an offer of help or support, even a smile can
have an impact that no except the other person and God will
ever know.

Paul points out “he (God) is not served by human hands, as if
he needed anything.” – we are not obliged to DO anything for
his benefit. Coming to church for example is not for his benefit,
but it is a chance for us to be still, listen and experience his
presence. [God takes delight in us spending time with him and
with each other… from Matthew 18, “where 2 or 3 gather in my
name, there I am with them”.] We are exhorted by Peter to
“always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks
you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this
with gentleness and respect, “that is to share generously and
gently our hope, joy and faith with those that are made curious
through our actions – the way we live our lives.
Thanks be to God

One of the features of the early, 1^st century Church we can’t have missed as we’ve heard the readings in our worship over these weeks of Eastertide is uncertainty. The disciples continued to meet together for prayer and fellowship, but firstly, they were chastened by the memory of their Lord’s brutal crucifixion and the experience of having failed him. Secondly, even after ‘the third day’, the gradual awareness that Christ was risen spread… yes, joy, but also startlement. His appearances in their midst wrong-footed them at every turn, and the mixed emotion this drew is summed up well by the Gospel writer St Luke who, after the risen Lord has appeared and shown them – and invited them to touch – his hands and feet, describes the disciples in a telling phrase: ‘And while they yet believed not for joy, and wondered…’ . But it’s the Gospel of Mark – generally thought to be the first to have been written – that seems to reflect this complex picture consistently throughout its pages.

The starting point of that instruction by Jesus in today’s Gospel from Mark is as he and the disciples are coming out of the Temple in Jerusalem. One disciple remarks on the grandeur of its buildings, leading Jesus to prophecy starkly that those same buildings will all be thrown down and destroyed (as indeed they were, by the Romans in the year 70). Later, when they all ask him when this will come about, and how they will know. Jesus prefaces his explanation by saying, ‘Take heed lest any deceive you’. Though Mark’s account of this prophecy is, as with many others of Jesus’ sayings, virtually duplicated by Matthew and Luke in their own Gospels, this practical realism  – even scepticism – is a characteristic of Jesus throughout Mark’s portrayal of him. In spite of its brevity (or maybe because of it), Mark has traditionally been the least popular of the Gospels because of its comparative terseness – with fewer of the recorded miracles and less of the conventional teaching included within it, its puzzling air of secrecy, and the repeated failure of the disciples to understand Jesus.  Scholars have suggested variously that his Gospel is written for a church which, in the wake of the rapid spread of the faith to the Gentiles recorded in the Acts of the Apostles, had perhaps become too intoxicated by success, and the sensational, and was now baffled again by failures and opposition as it came under persecution. Rowan Williams observes that the Greek word at the very opening of Mark (translated as ‘The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God’) can also carry the meaning of ‘the first principal’, which might imply a stripping-back to the foundations. In a commentary on Mark, Williams suggests that we are meant to identify with the confusion and bafflement of the first disciples – maybe to bring to our reading and hearing of Mark our own dismay at the state of the world around us and the disunity of the church in our own day.

The cross is of course central to all the Gospels, but particularly so in Mark – about one third of his is taken up with the events of the last week of Jesus’ life. Lord Williams invites us to imagine living as Christians in the trouble spots of the world now and what it might be like to read the Gospel of Mark there, and he writes:-

‘These are the sorts of people for whom Mark was writing; writing to reinforce a faith in the God who does not step down from Heaven to solve problems but who is already in the heart of the world, holding the suffering and pain in himself and transforming it by the sheer indestructible energy of his mercy.’

Throughout Mark we are reminded of the complete ‘otherness’ of the Way of Jesus Christ from the ways of the world, and we’re therefore discouraged from ever imagining that we completely ‘get it’. The economy we are invited to live by is not of some plan for growth and prosperity (however necessary such things may be in commerce and government), but simply that of the Spirit of God – the Holy Ghost. As we heard just now, even those about to face persecution were told: ‘take no thought beforehand what ye shall speak, neither do ye premeditate: but whatsoever shall be given you in that hour, that speak ye’. We may well wonder at the abundance of faith that would really take. ‘Premeditation’ may not be the solution, but Jesus made clear by his teaching and his own example that prayer is the currency of the divine economy. In the Gospel’s first chapter he strides into Galilee ‘preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God’, saying that the kingdom ‘is at hand’ and calling people to repentance. Before long he announces to his disciples ‘Unto you it is given to know the mystery of’ that  kingdom – a kingdom which is not of this world, in which repentance completely alters our perspective on living and changes our values. So it is that, when ‘he that shall endure unto the end’ is commended by Jesus at the close of this morning’s Gospel, that ‘enduring’ consists not in grimly bearing all that life deals to us and simply hoping for it to get better, but in praying daily for his kingdom to come and waiting on his Spirit.

 

 

 

This Easter, has its backdrop several unique items of news, on earth a concerning international conflict, closer to home, a new Archbishop of Canterbury, and in space a voyage to the dark side of the moon.

When I was 9 years old, Robert Runcie was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury. I dared to ask my headmaster if I could be let off afternoon lessons to watch it. Disarmed, the Head collected me from double-geography, and joined me for most of it; nerdishly, I commentated, he smiled indulgently.

Fifty years on I watched again before rushing for the 16.30 train from St Pancras to Canterbury West, missing the end, to arrive at Kent University for the evening reception – the ecclesiastical version of the Oscars-after-party!

I was struck by a conversation I had with the cabdriver en route. He’d been watching the service, his enthusiasm obvious. “I used to love history at school” he exclaimed, “today I feel part of history, a woman Archbishop!” He was from Brazil he said. “We love the Archbishops here. They often leave the station and wave at us cabbies, we know them all.”

He was continuing the long tradition of locals honouring their resident Prelate. She is Metropolitan of All England, second in precedence only after the monarch, but his Bishop. It was lovely.

Archbishop Sarah’s inauguration took place in Passiontide, on the Feast of the Annunciation. Adjacent to Holy Week, Theologically Nativity and Passion are never far apart.

The mantle the Archbishop wears is a heavy one indeed. The clasp of the physical cope she had made when she first became a Bishop, is her nurse’s buckle, a reminder of the connection between her vocations.

One more vignette on this year’s journey to Easter. On Wednesday evening, it was a privilege to share the Seder, with Jewish neighbours, who invited us to join their celebration of Pesach. Passover is a lunar Festival. The first New Moon after the Spring equinox. These celebrations are nearly always in synch. Paques in French, Pasca in several languages, underlines that the Church regards this feast as the Christian Passover; something the word Easter does not underline for us in English.

For our Jewish friends and neighbours Passover has constellated to it so many traditions. One which is very poignant and not much discussed is eating fish or chicken, to avoid any associated with the blood libel, a cruel projection onto English Jews in medieval times.

In the Seder, with its foundational connections with the Eucharist, Christians are on familiar ground; the same but, oh so different too, and wonderfully so. The family tells again the ancient story of the Exodus; youngest and oldest have their roles, the generations converge. Time concertinas, past becomes present.

Given the world’s complexity, to be taken back to the foundational story of God’s disruption of tyranny and salvation of His people, and to share, for a moment its origins, was moving beyond words.

The resurrection, for St Matthew, most Jewish of the Gospels, is a moment of earthshattering disruption too. There is an earthquake, as in Matthew’s account of the crucifixion – they spell the same reality. There is a terrifying angel too, on Easter day, not unlike the one who greets Mary in Luke.

In Matthew’s Gospel from Herod at the beginning, to Pilate at the end, and the wilting soldiers at the tomb, Jesus’s life unfolds in the shade of tyrannical powers. Their paranoia leads them to stifle opposition – in Herod’s case, even when it’s just a baby.

The tomb is sealed, not a precaution, but an assertion: this story is over. And Easter is God’s answer: no it is not.

This Easter the Church has a re-set with Archbishop Sarah’s enthronement.

Reflection will chart the road ahead. Recognising the failures to safeguard the vulnerable; revisiting the compromise option for same-sex unions which united all voices in opposition to the proposals; and finding a way to foster a healthy environment for the future, are unenviable tasks.

The women at the tomb that first Easter were not asked to form a committee or refine a vision statement – thank God, we have had enough of those in the last 14 years! The angel gives them a commission.

“And they departed quickly… with fear and great joy.”

It is in going—not in complete understanding—that they become the first witnesses.

The stone is moved by the act of God, Jesus already having risen.

“Do not be afraid.”

Not because there is nothing to fear, we live in a world full of reasons to quake. The women are still afraid. But fear in Matthew no longer has the last word.

And as they depart, uncertain and fearful, on the way they encounter not an idea, not a programme, but a person. The risen Christ.

This Passover, with astronauts heading to the moon to explore its dark-side, while earth has its own that it struggles to bring into the light, let us have eyes to see the Risen Christ. Despite our fears, may we bear witness to him who is our light and our salvation.

On this day, Good Friday, when we remember and reflect upon the death of Jesus on the Cross, I am going to imagine that I am standing near the Cross and gazing in sorrow at the body nailed upon it. A body that is close to death.  It is the body of a man who has been severely flogged and whose head is bleeding from the Crown of Thorns placed upon it.  This tells me all I need to know about the acute suffering of Jesus on the Cross, a suffering that was given to us by God, through his son Jesus, to save us from the power of sin and offer us the promise of eternal life in his Kingdom.

While I stand by the Cross, I have a longing to see the face of Jesus which I cannot see because his head is drooped as life ebbs away from his body.  Such a vision would, I believe, give me a glimpse of the divine.

Emerging from this act of my imagination, I have studied texts written by a PhD student and authors of commentaries which affirm that we cannot in any event say for certain what Jesus looked like, either in face or body. The PhD thesis attempts to explain this absence in a variety of ways and I will mention a few.

One explanation is that Jesus is a boundless character for whom a physical description would not be apropos to his characterisation. Another is that physical descriptions in Jewish scripture are rare. This in contrast to the description given by ancient biographers of the physical appearance of kings, slaves and philosophers in the Graeco-Roman world. The author of the thesis writes that Jesus can be described as a king or a slave but not physically described as such because his kingdom was not of this world, and he is only a slave in the sense of being a slave on the Cross. He shares with philosophers a description of the simple attire that they wore but the ancient biographers were less concerned with the physiognomy of philosophers as the emphasis with them was upon their souls. Nor was the image of Jesus well known in iconographical representations as the evangelists lacked the motivation and capacity to manipulate the distinction of Jesus’ ‘public’ appearance and reality which was one of the main functions of kingly descriptions in ancient literature and, as the thesis gives it to us, a ‘kingly’ appearance might not have been able to convey the kingship of Jesus which was not of this world.

Can we then have any indication of what Jesus looked like?  We could make our starting point using the statement made by Pontius Pilate to the crowds when he presented Jesus, scoured and crowned with thorns.  He said ‘Ecce Homo’ meaning ‘behold the man’. This is a start, but it does not give us any indication of what Jesus looked like beyond the fact that he was a man. We do have a description of Jesus in Isaiah chapter 52 as having a ‘marred appearance’ beyond that of human semblance and his form beyond that of mortals’.  This dramatic description is given for Jesus as ‘the suffering servant’ and was popular amongst the Early Church Fathers but to my mind it sits at odds with the presentation of Jesus to the crowds by Pontius Pilate. How could a ‘form beyond that of mortals’ be presented as ‘the man’. It also sits at odds with the fact that Jesus went unnoticed to the Festival of Booths, as given in the Gospel of John.  How could he have done this if his appearance was out of the ordinary?  The implication here is that Jesus was average looking and I favour that conclusion as I find it hard to believe that the disciples and the people Jesus encountered in his ministry would have done so if his appearance was beyond that of human semblance.

What I do believe is that in an ordinary looking man we are given a glimpse of the divine in his appearance at certain moments in the Bible.  One such is the Transfiguration when the face of Jesus ‘shone like the son and his clothes became dazzling white’. In Revelation, Jesus is described as ‘the Son of Man, whose head and hair were white as white wool, white as the snow; his eyes were like a flame of fire, his feet were like burnished bronze, refined as in a furnace’. It was this divinity that enabled him to perform miracles and to rise from the dead.

We may not have a description of what Jesus looked like, but we could say that the silence about his appearance is there to give us a full understanding of who he was and how we can perceive ourselves in relation to him and to God.  My view is that, as given in the opening sentence of John’s Gospel, ‘in the beginning was the Word’. The Word was with God and the Word was God’.  In Jesus, as the Son of God, the Word became flesh.  It became flesh but the Word came first.  The flesh signifies because it was crucified on the Cross but as the Word came first so the Gospel writers draw our attention to the words of Jesus, and his actions, rather than his appearance. We need primarily to hear his words. For example when says: ‘I am the way, the truth and the life’. This statement reflects his boundless character. Also, we, as Christians, need to see ourselves, as St Paul wrote in his letter to the Romans, not walking according to the flesh but according to the spirit.

Let me finish by returning to the realm of my imagination to hear the words of Jesus saying ‘it is finished’ and watch his body being taken down from the Cross in the sure knowledge that his death is not a defeat but a triumph over the power of death and a prelude to the glory of the Resurrection.

 

AMEN

 

 

 

 

About 20 years ago, the son of a friend of mine had to do a school project on “My Hero.” His father, my friend, also a clergyman was proud but somewhat surprised by his son’s choice of topic, so he asked him “Alex, why did you choose Jesus as My Hero?” “Well Daddy” said Alex “I couldn’t spell Arnold Schwarzenegger.”

The word hero is used rather casually today. Sports people are called heroes if they defeat a better team against the odds. Think how often you heard the word hero at the winter Olympics or in the 6 nations rugby. Popstars are called heroes if they do some physical task and raise money for charity. Much as I like sport and music, I am not sure that I would call sport stars or musicians heroes. In fact I am sure I would not (stand fast Paralympians perhaps).

In my work as a military chaplain, I have however worked with a number of heroes. In the hospital at Camp Bastion in Afghanistan and in the desert of Iraq, there were any number of heroes and heroic events. The fact that such events were conducted in 50 degree heat, in mud-summer, made them even more remarkable. In the 10 degree heat of NW1 in this season of Lent however, what can heroism say to us?

Our gospel story this morning is about Jesus asking the  Samaritan woman for a drink of water. What’s this story about? Well, we could think that it is about sin and repentance and moral purity – except that it’s not. It isn’t a story about morality, sexual or otherwise.

Stories with women at the centre don’t happen very often in our scripture. When they do, they often want us to understand the story as a miniature morality lesson with a woman as the tawdry example. There’s Eve, for example, castigated as the one through whom sin and death entered the world.

And there is Mary Magdalene, friend of Jesus, one of his first disciples. We know her as a harlot, though none of that comes from scripture. What does come from scripture is that she was the first witness to the Resurrection.

Women are not very often at the centre of our scripture stories, and when they are it’s often because they did something important, something worth noting and remembering, something that sets a good example of faith. Women show up so infrequently in our scripture stories, that when they are there, it might be a signal to look closer, dig deeper, wait for the critical message that will be revealed.

If we look in a Bible that names stories – you know the kind that puts story titles on the top of the page, we see that this story from John’s Gospel is often known simply as The Woman at the Well. Sometimes it is known as The Woman of Samaria. Both of these factors are important to the story in identifying who she was.

First, a woman. Second, a Samaritan woman. Third, an immoral Samaritan woman. By anyone’s reckoning, she is a rather poor choice for an illustration of goodness – someone highly incredible as a disciple. In her own time, she was nobody to a Jewish man.

This is the longest conversation recorded in the New Testament between Jesus and anybody. There has to be something in this story more important than how many men she had known.

Consider the story. Jesus asks the woman for a drink of water. She expresses her astonishment that he would talk to her. He says to her that if she only knew who he was, she’d be asking him for a drink – of living water. She says, “Okay. May I have a drink of this water?” He says, “Go. Call your husband!” Now, to this point, she’s talking about plain old well water. And while that’s the drink that Jesus asked from her, it is not the water he offers to her.

After the woman realizes Jesus is the Messiah, after she realises what he’s been talking about as “living water,” she takes her new and tentative and shallow and not-yet-fully-formed faith and tells someone about it.

She went back to the city, the scripture says, and talked to people about her experience. “Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony… And many more believed because of [Jesus’] word. They said to the woman, ‘It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Saviour of the world.’”

That’s the highpoint of the story: the believers. And it all started when she believed, and when she told someone else of her belief.

Her understanding may have been incomplete; “He can’t be the Messiah, can he?” But it was enough to hook people, to make them think, to invite them in. “Many Samaritans in that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony.” This woman, who is often remembered badly in Church history, who would not have been considered a credible witness, was an early disciple.

This woman, whose witness and testimony were only as strong as: “He cannot be the Messiah, can he?” brought many to faith. So think: how will history remember you? Will it be for your behaviour, or for your testimony?

This woman, the Samaritan woman at the well, is an example to us of discipleship. However strong or weak or confused or partial or new or unclear or even certain your faith, it doesn’t matter. What does matter is that you are faithful.

The encouragement to spread the Good News, to talk of faith and the wonders of God, permeates scripture. That’s what this gospel story is about. We may not be called to be heroic, or to be like a figure in an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, but we are called, like to the woman at the well, to be faithful. Don’t strive for heroism, strive to drink from the living water offered by Jesus.

When asked for a drink of water, what will you offer from your own well? Amen.

 

Good morning and welcome to the first Sunday in Lent, as we prepare for
the Eastertide Feast of our resurrected Saviour, shining on a hill some 40
days away. With prayer and offerings on our regular Christian menu, the
speciality Lenten plat du jour is fasting…usually by “giving up” something.
But beware! Temptation lives between desire and denial and solicits both
to deliver its victims into the arms of Sin. It is many-headed in its forms,
seductive in its charms and clever in its approaches; fortunately, it is also
singular in its source and its defeat. Although temptation shapes the arch of
God’s salvation plan from Genesis to Revelation, it is in the desert that its
trajectory is secured by the faithful obedience of the Son of God, fully
human and fully divine.

Let’s dismiss one possible “remedy” for temptation at the outset, and that is
human performance of denial or righteous demeanour. Included in the Ash
Wednesday service was Jesus’ advice to shun the outward appearance of
fasting as a “humble brag” that may impress everyone BUT God. Instead,
prepare to meet our Father in one’s best personal order, befitting the
privileged personal relationship he offers us. God will know if you have
been fasting as a path to spiritual growth and not as an exercise in
personal PR or self-enhancement.

For fasting is more than limiting food intake –it is a liberation from
disordered desire and a positive choice to turn to God. Fasting is stepping
up to our identity as his child and partner in creation, formed in his image,
and a vital support to living with temptation. Not because it builds our will
power, but because it brings us closer to him. At coffee last Sunday, I
spoke with a parishioner who noted that she already missed the beauty and
colour of church decoration denied in Lent. Yet she also noted that its
absence focuses her eyes on the crucifix on the altar as never before. It
appears that any of our God-given senses may provide the insight that selfdenial
can bring, though the eyes might do a lot of the heavy lifting for
temptation and the ears might hear a siren song that goes straight to the
heart.

Though Lenten array is the order of the day, we are scarcely starved of
cinematic colour and theatrical effect in our readings…FIRST we have one
foot… yet… in the Garden of Eden with the serpent and our hapless foreparents,
NEXT we’re in the Desert, watching Jesus experience desire yet
not sinning, being vulnerable to the devil himself yet asserting the word of
God to turn away temptation. Is it too simple to state that Eve and Adam
fail, blighting humankind and all creation, until the Son of God incarnates
and triumphs first in the desert, to suffer and triumph ultimately on the
cross? Please do take away this reassuring message for Lent – that the
living God sustains our salvation through Jesus Christ, the New Adam for a
restored world. What is also evident is the foundational role both Garden
and Desert play in our story and those spiritual landscapes in our psyche,
worship, and cultural expression.

In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve live in unburdened harmony with
heavenly and earthly creatures, greeted by the Almighty in the cool of the
evening. They are God’s apex beings here below, chosen to enhance and
administer the garden that provides effortlessly. Only one commandment
has been given from God directly to Adam: eating the fruit of the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil was forbidden upon pain of death. This tree
growing in the exact centre of this blessed realm must surely have been an
energetic conduit for and physical beacon of God’s overflowing wisdom and
love, encoded with the divine plan, and not to be hacked. Death of
innocence follows, and grievous death of relationship with God and each
other.

Enter the subtle serpent with treacherous intent whilst Eve is on her own.
Here is temptation’s first tactic, to isolate a victim and disrupt relationships.
Next, he employs rhetorical tricks to confuse and generate mistrust,
beginning with a corrupted leading question: “Hasn’t God told you not to
eat from every tree?” Eve must have felt doubt and confusion for the first
time, beginning to worry that all might not be as it appears. What else has
she missed? For indeed the fruit looks good enough to eat and..it is so
very beautiful and desirable that it seems a shame not to possess just
one…Then the snake strikes with an outright contradiction to God’s
message, “You shall not die!” Permission isn’t needed to take matters in
your own hands and be like gods yourselves. Hearing these words, Eve
thinks of how much good the fruit may do for Adam, as well!

The deed is done, Adam and Eve fall and with them all creation, particularly
their tempter, not named in this account, presumed to be the serpent later
known as Satan. Death indeed arrives in endless, painful procession. 1
John chapter 2 best describes the 3-part template for fatality by temptation:
“For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes,
and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the
world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God
abideth for ever.” God did not create anything evil. Including the twolegged
creatures he made with agency, because only free beings can love.
They can also find ways to abuse any of his good gifts.

Cue the arrival of Jesus of Nazareth, whisked into the desert by the Holy
Spirit from the Jordan River of his baptism, with the Father’s spoken
affirmation ringing in his ears. Here, the New Adam and Son of Man begins
a new Exodus as Messianic King entering the Promised Land. That’s a lot
of historical and theological baggage to carry as he begins a solo 40 day
fast in desert wilderness BEFORE he encounters the devil…although I
prefer to envision the Holy Spirit as his implicit companion and support, as
she is for us. He submits his flesh and his spirit to be emptied out. As time
spent in the spiritual dojo, the desert trials inspire Lenten practice to discern
God’s will through discipline and reflection upon his word. The contrast with
the Garden of Eden is stark, where temptation overcomes faith and
obedience to God despite overwhelming provision of his goodness and
love.

Meanwhile in the desert, hunger sets in with a vengeance. The devil
appears at the appointed time with 3 temptations carefully set to increase
Jesus’ spiritual risk, like examination by the pharisees and elders who plot
to kill him later. Staged first in the desert, then on a pinnacle of the temple
in Jerusalem, and finally, upon a towering mountaintop, each temptation
intensifies the appeal of securing legitimate and desirable ends by
illegitimate and self-serving means — manifesting bread to satisfy personal
appetite, enjoying recognition of special spiritual status for personal
advantage, acquiring sovereignty over all peoples without first winning
hearts and minds. The first two are launched with a dishonest question that
attacks Jesus’ very identity and mission “If thou be the Son of God…” The
final one reveals the devil’s real intention of manipulating Jesus to bow
down and worship him.

Each time, Christ replies not with his own words but with a quote from the
Scriptures. Deuteronomy features. The 5th book of the Pentateuch, it
relates a series of covenantal addresses delivered by Moses on the plains
of Moab just before his death and Israel’s entry to the Promised Land. Each
chapter reaffirms fidelity to the Sinai covenant that binds God and his
chosen people with obedience to his commandments and statutes, and is
powered by exclusive, responsive love and loyalty down the ages. At least
from God’s side! How well Jesus knows chapter and verse, so well he can
wield them swiftly as a sword and spot when the devil twists God’s word
against his own. In the phrasing of the second temptation–to cast himself
from the top of the temple with the certainty God will send angels to the
rescue–the devil quotes Psalm 91 accurately, but removes the covenantal
context of God’s protection, there for those who obediently rely upon him
with faith and without demand for proof or guarantee of how such
protection is provided. New Testament scholar Craig Evans writes that the
Qumran community well-known to John the Baptist and to Jesus believed
Psalm 91 to be effective for use in exorcisms of demons, as a “battle
anthem against the devil”. A cheeky choice by Satan.

By the third temptation – delivery of the powers over all the kingdoms all at
once ––our Lord had clearly had enough. He dismisses Satan by name,
with a portion of the Sh’ema passage, the great prayer of fealty to God
resounding in the evil one’s ear. All at once, the angels that ever watch
over him arrive, no doubt with a divine Deliveroo to ease the pangs of his
human flesh. And they ministered to our Lord so he might stay the course
with us and for our sake.

Wishing you a fruitful sojourn in the desert wilderness this Lent, hungry to
hear the word of God, and up for a fight with a personal demon or two.
AMEN.

What is sin? This important question on Ash Wednesday goes to the heart of the matter. Words from the Miserere – Psalm 51, a broken and contrite heart O Lord thou shalt not despise, hint at the anxiety that people of conscience have over the morality of their actions and their relationship with God. We need to begin by recognising that sin is not simply wrongdoing or moral failure. What we acknowledge today is that there is an undeniable fracture in our relationship with God, with one another, and with creation itself, which grieves the heart and impels us to renewal. The message of the Scriptures is that the impulse to renew is actually with God and the task of Lent is align ourselves with that will for connection – atonement.

Sin is the turning away of the heart, its distortion and narrowing, so that we no longer see God’s light clearly. It is, as Rowan Williams once observed, not merely the breaking of a rule but the refusal of communion, the refusal to be who we are in God’s image.

“Turn ye even to me with all your heart,” cries the prophet Joel, “and rend your heart, and not your garments.” True repentance is not external theatre but an inward reorientation. Likewise, Jesus in Matthew’s Gospel warns against fasting “to be seen of men,” teaching us that the

penitential life is one of interior truthfulness before the Father who “seeth in secret.”

In the Christian moral tradition, the Church has spoken of venial and mortal sin—not as legal categories but as ways of discerning the seriousness of our estrangement. Mortal sin represents a deliberate, conscious severing of our relationship with God: the will’s turning away from love. Venial sin, though it wounds, does not destroy that relationship, but reveals how fragile and partial our conversion still is. For some as they prepare to make their confession, or use this season to reflect on mortality this is a vital tool to discern the character of what might be troubling them. Yet the purpose of naming sin is never condemnation. The Church names sin so that it may proclaim the greater word: forgiveness.

Repentance, therefore, is not despair but hope. As St. John Chrysostom said, “Repentance is the medicine of the soul.” It is a turning toward the light, a rediscovery of what it means to live freely and joyfully in God. The Church’s absolution is not a human invention but the living assurance that Christ’s victory over sin and death is effective here and now, even in us. When the priest pronounces forgiveness, it is not a permission to forget our sins but a call to live as those who have been found again.

Why then do we need a penitential season such as Lent? It is not for prolonged wallowing in wretchedness. Rather, it

is a season of truth-telling, a time to acknowledge our frailty and to seek the radiance that follows confession. Lent is “a time when we allow ourselves to be seen for what we are, so that God’s grace can be seen for what it is.” The ashes imposed today are not a mark of defeat but of honesty, dust that carries the promise of resurrection.

Alexander Schmemann, an Orthodox Theologian I return to often, insists that fasting and repentance are not gloomy duties, but acts of joy. The Lenten fast, he says, is the rediscovery of Eden: a return to the simplicity and harmony of life before sin’s distortion. In fasting, we renounce not the world but the corruption of our desires, and we learn again to receive all things as gift. The Orthodox liturgy sings, “Let us begin the fast with joy,” for penitence rightly understood is liberation.

So, this Lent, let us turn again, not to despair, but to delight. We journey not into darkness but toward dawn. The rending of the heart is the opening through which grace enters. The ashes upon our foreheads are the sign not only of our mortality but of our belonging to the One who can raise even dust to glory.

“Rend your heart, and not your garments.” For where the heart turns, there is home, and where there is repentance, there is joy.

What did the caterpillar say to his friend as he saw the passing of an iridescent butterfly? “You’ll not catch me going up in one of those things!” – Metamorphosis.

From: Alice Through the Looking Glass

‘There’s glory for you.’

‘I don’t know what you mean by glory,’ Alice said,

‘I meant “There’s a nice knock-down argument for you.”’

‘But glory doesn’t mean a nice knock-down argument,’ Alice objected

‘When I use a word’, Humpty Dumpty said in a rather scornful tone: ‘it means just what I choose it to mean-neither more nor less.’ Lewis Carroll

Glory is at the heart of this moment, which we know as Transfiguration but in Greek is Metamorphosis.

The word Glory in ancient Greek comes from a word meaning opinion, distinction or fame.

When the Hebrew Scriptures were translated into Greek in about 220 BC something rather remarkable happened. This Greek word got a little hijacked. A word which meant opinion or fame took on greater and deeper meanings.

From of Old, what was known and what dwelt with God’s people was his majesty, presence and abiding, even tenting, was part of the meaning of one of the words. The various different words in Hebrew were translated by the word Doxa in Greek. This filtered through into the New Testament, through the translation of the OT.

The classical Greek word has given way in the Greek of the New Testament to a word which speaks of God’s presence, his weight and his shining. Michael Ramsay summarises an investigation he made of the word Glory thus:

In so far as doxa is the divine splendour, Jesus Christ is that splendour and in so far as the state of light and radiance awaits the Christian, that light and radiance draw their meaning from the presence and person of Christ: such is the place of Jesus Christ in relation to the divine glory that it is possible to speak of the glory of Christ, and by those words to mean no less that the glory of God himself.

 Back to metamorphosis.

Being changed was one of the great issues in ancient Greek thought. Real things in Greek thought did not and could not change. They were constants in the real divine realm. On earth, where everything was a shadow, appearance gave way to its divine image and type; the true soul of human beings was in a sense liberated by death, that was the only change to be contemplated.

Jesus’ metamorphosis (his transfiguration), was the revelation of who and what he was: the true radiance of God’s glory.

Jesus revealed God’s weight, and his very being and essence made clear that heaven and earth had been united; and even, that past, present and future culmination had been anticipated.

The end, the very end, was already here – this is what the narrative of the Transfiguration is telling us.

St Irenaeus said at the end of the 2^nd c. that “the glory of God is a human being fully alive” while “the life of humanity consists in the vision of God.”

Through the eyes of those three, Peter, James and John (they are us, of course), Jesus shows us humanity in all its richness, glory and beauty. It is somehow the end in the middle.

The wonderful poet of our days, Malcolm Guite captures what Peter speaks of:

For that one moment, ‘in and out of time’,
On that one mountain where all moments meet,
The daily veil that covers the sublime
In darkling glass fell dazzled at his feet.
There were no angels full of eyes and wings
Just living glory full of truth and grace.
The Love that dances at the heart of things
Shone out upon us from a human face
And to that light the light in us leaped up,
We felt it quicken somewhere deep within,
A sudden blaze of long-extinguished hope
Trembled and tingled through the tender skin.
Nor can this blackened sky, this darkened scar
Eclipse that glimpse of how things really are.

With the Lenten path before us, with whatever mountains there are to climb or deserts to stumble through, we have this vision to contemplate and take solace from. We may look at the suffering of God in Christ, and remember that we will share in his resurrection glory, then even suffering and death become part of the path to glory.

And here in the Eucharist, as Christ is again transfigured, metamorphosed, in this bread and wine, let us strive and long to see the presence of the Glory of God.

 

 

 

 

• Thanks to Father William for the invitation to preach, and it is lovely to be here and worship in St. Mark.
• From today’s passage, we see

1. Christ is hurt when the Church is hurt
2. Christ comes down from heaven to meet Saul
3. God does not take away Saul’s passion but transforms it
4. Persecuting the Church

• Christ asked Saul, “Why do you persecute ME?” Christ identifies His Church with Himself, which is true as we call the Church the body of Christ.

1. Christ feels the same pain as the believers on earth feel
2. As individuals, though we are different from each other, like body parts, we make one body. So pain in one part is felt in the whole body.
3. And as Jesus is the head of the Church, He also feels pain if there is pain in any part of the body
4. That gives us a beautiful message, fellow believers, that one person’s pain in the Church must be felt by us all as we are one body
5. Christianity is the most persecuted religion till today since the first century
6. In the early church, the Great Persecution
7. Similarly, in different countries like Nigeria, Sudan, Pakistan, but God has kept His Church as testimony against all these powers, and there is peace for us, as in the Book of Revelation, that one day God will wipe the tears
8. Since we are one body and affect each other, we must be careful that our actions and egos do not cause division in the Church
9. On the other hand, as we pray for the unity of the Church, we must be mindful of our gifts, actions, and words so that they can be used to build the Church, as Saint Paul says in Corinthians
10. God always meets us

• In our passage today, we see Christ coming down and talking to Saul, not the other way around
• The beautiful thing about God is that He always comes to us in our sins and in life away from Him. We are not required to go and find God, but He comes to us.
• We just celebrated Christmas, and in Advent, we always reflect on the Good News that God came down from heaven in flesh and lived among us. God always takes the first step, and our human responsibility is to cooperate with God’s grace and love, which knocks on the doors of our hearts.
• Now you can say, great! Jesus met Saul. Where is God today and now in my suffering, pain, and difficult circumstances? I never met Him!

1. He is here every Sunday when we gather, where 2 or 3 gather in my name, I am among them, and that is why former Archbishop Rowan Williams and traditionally Church has believed that Church (community of believers) is “the meeting of heaven and earth” where Christ is present among us.
2. He is present, in the preaching of the Word, when the Holy Spirit calls to live a life with Jesus and dwell with Him, as last Sunday’s reading from the Gospel of John taught us, when Jesus said to John’s disciples comes dwell with me
3. He is here whenever we celebrate the Eucharist and when we eat the blessed Body and drink the Blood of Christ
4. God transforming emotions and passions

• When God comes near His creations, He does not destroy it but transform it
• As Irenaeus says, “the Glory of God is a human being fully alive.”
• As in Exodus 3:2-5, when God spoke to Moses through a burning bush, but instead of burning down, it radiated. Similarly, Paul, when Christ visited Him did not take his passion away but transformed it, and it was Paul, later with the same passions and zeal, who led the Church, preached the Gospel, got beaten many times, lived in prison, said who can separate us from the love of God, and finally died for Christ.
• When God comes near, He does not consume like a bush or Paul but puts us on fire to proclaim His word.

Connection with the Eucharist:

• So today, as we partake in the Eucharist, as you eat and drink Christ’s Body and Blood,

1. I invite you to respond to God’s love by offering yourselves with your gifts to serve Christ’s Body, His Church, which is serving each other. It was wonderful to see last Sunday people offering themselves for God’s service. Let us continue that!
2. And let God come near you in this year 2026, and let God’s grace transform you like Paul. I assure you that you will see the radiance which will not consume you but will make you more alive!

• May God use us like Paul to proclaim the Gospel that Jesus Christ is Lord!

Gloria:

All Glory be to the Father and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.

 

 

‘I have laboured in vain, I have spent my strength for nought, and in vain ….’ Those strikingly negative words stand out for me from our readings today.  We heard them read as the words of God’s servant in Isaiah’s 49^th chapter, after the Lord’s claim that he formed and shaped him ‘from the womb’, and in response to the Lord’s call to glorify him. They are words that suggest unworthiness, or even despair; I gather that the Hebrew word translated as ‘nought’ can also mean chaos, implying that this individual might feel he has wasted his energies in empty and futile pursuits. That pessimistic outburst makes stark contrast to all the rest of today’s scriptures, whose overwhelming theme (even in Isaiah) is God’s call to us – both to his light, and to bring his light to others. Jesus’ penetrating question to those two disciples of John the Baptist who start following him at a distance – “what seek ye?”, and his tantalising reply when they ask him ‘where dwellest thou?’ -“Come and see”, are brimming with invitation and possibility. His words speak to people’s deepest longing in any age.

It seems that there was much civil unrest – not unlike the unrest seen in so many parts of our contemporary world – during the years of Jesus’s ministry, with many Jewish zealots acting and campaigning against the occupying Romans. The Romans were so unsettled by this that the Jewish historian Josephus recounts that they crushed one violent uprising which started in Galilee with such force that they crucified 2,000 Galileans. In that region, many hopes were being pinned on a future Messiah who would throw out the Romans and restore the dignity of the Hebrew race, and in some popular literature the image of a ‘lamb’, who would come to destroy evil, was prevalent. This may have been what initially came to the minds of John the Baptist’s disciples when he referred to Jesus as ‘the Lamb of God’ as he came towards them. But Christian understanding of this term would of course come to be shaped by a later chapter of Isaiah, which refers to a ‘servant’ who would bear the sins of the people ‘like a lamb to the slaughter’; not a warrior, but a servant Son of God who would take the consequences of human greed and hatred upon himself, to place us in a different relationship with Him and with one another. In his famous writing, ‘The City of God’, this shift of relationship was summed-up by St Augustine in vivid terms which are perhaps controversial and provocative, but seem to speak into the chaos, disorder and anxiety we are seeing just now:-

There exist in this world two cities created by two kinds of love: the earthly city created by self-love reaching the point of contempt for God, and the heavenly city created by the love of God. The earthly city glories in itself, whereas the heavenly city glories only in its Lord. In the former, the lust for power controls its functionaries and determines the fate of the nations it subjugates; in the city of God those in authority and those under them serve one another in love.

If you prefer a slightly more nuanced expression of the Christian response to God’s call now, you only need to look to today’s Collect, which simply acknowledges that ‘in Christ’, Almighty God makes ‘all things new’, and which asks God to ‘transform the poverty of our nature by the riches of [his] grace’. Perhaps Jesus’ question, ‘what seek ye?’, is at heart an invitation to know ourselves. It is God’s grace that gives answer to the despair of imagining that our lives are unworthy and that all our efforts for good are futile. This is what the Collect asks God for: ‘by the renewal of our lives make known thy heavenly glory’. This is what happens in this morning’s Gospel after Andrew and the other disciple ‘come and see’, have their first encounter with Jesus, and then Andrew immediately brings his brother Simon Peter to him. And John the Baptist should not be ignored as one who demonstrates to us this Grace of God as Jesus himself was now emerging to prominence. Here was a man who had disciples of his own, who would dramatically call people to repent, and was used to being at the very centre of all the high theatre of that repentance, with people flocking to him for baptism in the River Jordan. And yet here he is, now ‘reduced’ (in the eyes of the ‘earthly city’) to pointing people onwards to ‘the Lamb of God’ who is, in his words, “a man which is preferred before me”, and who will baptize with the Holy Ghost – stepping aside, to recede into the background. He offers a salutary reflection, not just for those of us in the more obviously self-advertising world of the arts, media and business, but equally for those who exercise office or ministry in the church, whose unity we pray for this week.

God’s servant in Isaiah, having protested ‘I have laboured in vain, I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity….’, then relents: ‘yet surely my cause is with the Lord, and my reward with my God’. John’s cause, his orientation, his reward was similarly ‘with the Lord’. May ours be, also.