Author: ROSAMOND MISKIN

rogationsunday

Here at St Mark’s we have had the pleasure of hosting walking groups who come here to refresh themselves either during or at the end of their journey and this to my mind is a demonstration of Rogation practice.  Next month we will host groups walking for charity which brings giving into this picture of activity within the church and without.

 

A walk may also be a journey in the mind rather than a bodily experience either by the use of the imagination or in your dreams.  Whichever way it goes, I believe that a walk that includes prayer and praise to God gives us a strong continuum with Biblical activity.  When we read the Bible we know that walking is a major feature from the very beginning.  In the first chapter of Genesis, Adam and Eve ‘heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden’ and from then on there are numerous references to walking both in the Old Testament and the New.  From the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt through the ministry of Jesus to the journeys of Paul in Acts, the Bible gives us

 

people passing through waters, going up and down mountains, walking through the countryside and by the sea, and finally the back breaking walk of Jesus carrying the Cross to Golgotha.

 

After the death of Jesus, the disciples encounter him during their walk to Emmaus and he has supper with them.  If we turn to the penultimate chapter of Revelation we learn that the nations will ‘walk by the light of the holy city of Jerusalem’.

 

What we can see from this reference to walking beyond the Crucifixion is that the death of Jesus on the Cross was not a triumph of evil over good but a staging post pointing the way to the glory of the kingdom to come.  As given in the book of Revelation, the city of Jerusalem ‘has the glory of God and a radiance like a very rare jewel, like jasper, clear as crystal’. It also shows us, I believe, that walking is ultimately a spiritual exercise because it is present in the things to come.

 

With the promise of Revelation in mind, no wonder that Jesus, in today’s Gospel reading, is able to assure his disciples that his imminent death will not mean fear and trembling for them but peace and rejoicing that he is going to the Father.  These passages are thus referred to as ‘the farewell discourse’ meaning a temporary absence of Jesus from his followers rather than a final goodbye.  In

 

the preceding narrative of John 14, Jesus has already said to them: ‘I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you’.  He then goes on to say that he will live on in them though they will not see him.  As we learn from today’s Gospel reading, this is on the understanding that they ‘love him and keep his word’.  If they do so God and Jesus will love them and ‘make their home with them’.  Conversely, those who do not love him ‘do not keep his word’.

 

Jesus then goes on to say that the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in his name will teach them everything and remind them of everything he has said to them.  As given also in John 15 and Revelation 3 the Spirit will empower the individual and the Christian community to abide fruitfully in Christ when journeying on in the light as the children of God.  As William Neil expresses it in his Bible commentary, God will ‘keep tryst’ with his people through his Spirit beyond the grave.

 

Jesus teaches his disciples in advance so that they may believe.  He tells his disciples that the relationship between God and himself will be repeated in a relationship that will exist between the Father and the Holy Spirit.  In this teaching there is an intimacy between the believer and Jesus; it is an intimate personal relationship as Jesus and the believer abide in each other.  The farewell discourse is directed towards an internal relationship between the disciples,

 

 

Jesus, the Father and the Holy Spirit.  The use by Jesus of the word ‘Father’ for God encourages this intimacy as ‘Father’ implies family.

 

John’s theology is Christological; that is to say the chief figure is Jesus himself.  Jesus as coming from God and returning to him thereby offering to humanity a way to the Father.

 

Yet in spite of this looking ahead, John’s Gospel is the most orientated of the Gospels in the present.  The Gospel begins with the sending of the Incarnate Word.  Believers who received him had ‘the power to become children of God’.  Here again John differs from Matthew, Mark and Luke in that he begins his Gospel not with a birth narrative but with Christ as the power behind the universe.  Jesus is divine, pre-existent and identified with the one God.  John differs also from the other Gospel writers in that he teaches in long, subtle discourses rather than the short utterances found in Matthew, Mark and Luke.

 

Today’s Gospel reading is one such discourse which forms part of what is known as ‘the Book of Glory’ which begins with chapter 13 and ends at chapter 20.  This prepares us for the narrative of the Passion, death and Resurrection.  The Gospel focus is on the ‘hour of glorification’ when Jesus returns to the Father at the Crucifixion’.  It is the glorification of the Word for the world.

 

 

How, though, do we locate the glory in our everyday human experience?  In his book entitled ‘Understanding Doctrine’ Alister McGrath refers to a sermon entitled ‘the Weight of Glory’ preached at Oxford in 1941 by C. S. Lewis.  In this sermon, Lewis spoke of ‘a desire which no natural happiness will satisfy’.  Lewis argued that this sense of longing points to its origin and its fulfilment in God himself.  As Augustine of Hippo had written centuries earlier: ‘You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you’.  I take this to mean that only when we have found our rest in God can we experience the full glory of God.  In the meantime we can glimpse at this glory in God’s creation all around us and in the love of one another.

 

So let us walk on together until we find our rest in God.  As it is Rogation Sunday, and mindful of the warnings of Climate Extinction Rebellion, let us while we walk on ask God to bless the fruits of the earth and keep us from destroying them.

Lent I sermon

Why, then, in Luke’s narrative, is Jesus able to resist the temptation made to him by the devil to ‘have authority over all the kingdoms of the world’.  As I understand it, as the Word made flesh he is exposed to all that humanity is exposed to in good times and in bad.  That is to say that he is the Son of God but in his earthly existence he is subject to both praise and, as Shakespeare expressed it ‘the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune’. Yet unlike the rest of us he does not give in to temptation.  To attempt to find out why let us turn to the Book of Genesis when Eve is tempted by the devil in the form of a serpent to eat the fruit of the Tree of Paradise and then tempts Adam to eat it also. This eating of fruit from the Tree of Paradise, which had been forbidden to Adam and Eve by God, leads to God’s punishment: they must fall from the Garden of Eden and in their fallen state must endure pain, enmity, hard labour and the final chilling sentence from God on high: ‘you are dust, and to dust you shall return’. Adam and Eve have foregone their harmony with God and have been left in a state of original sin foisted on them by the devil.  This state of original sin has left us all vulnerable to temptation. All is not lost though when later in the Genesis narrative God saves Noah and his family from the flood he has created to destroy mankind.  He does so because Noah has pleased him as a

 

 

righteous man ‘who walked with God’. Here we see the first manifestation of God’s salvific purpose for humanity.

 

The books of the Old Testament continue with many trials and tribulations for humanity but the birth of Jesus in the New Testament heralds a great leap forward in the salvation story. It does so because Jesus as the Son of God is unique in being without sin and he can therefore resist temptation. He is then, as given in today’s Gospel reading, the perfect model of resistance.  His resistance is inspired by the Holy Spirit which had descended upon him in his baptism.  In the opening sentence of today’s Gospel, Luke writes that Jesus has returned from the Jordan ‘full of the Holy Spirit’.  It is the Holy Spirit that leads him in the wilderness so here we have the enabling power of the Holy Spirit moving Jesus in accordance with the will of God.  In the Lord’s Prayer we say ‘lead us not into temptation’ expressing the hope that the Holy Spirit will lead us too away from temptation.

 

In the Lord’s Prayer, in our petition to God to overcome temptation we are then hoping to emulate Jesus in his resistance to its allurements because unlike Jesus we need God’s help to do so.

 

We continue the Lord’s Prayer by asking God to deliver us from evil. In today’s Gospel reading good and evil are brought face to face in an all out confrontation between Jesus and the devil.  If we look at the nature of evil we can say it is of three kinds: physical, such as bodily injury and starvation; moral, being the actions taken which deviate from the moral order and metaphysical being limitation by one another of various component parts of the natural world.  That is to say that which is prevented by physical condition or sudden catastrophe.  These three aspects of evil show us that evil is essentially negative.  In the

confrontation between Jesus and the devil it appears as though the devil is making a positive offer of all the kingdoms of the world.  In real terms it is negative because were Jesus to accept his offer it would bring to an end God’s salvific purpose for mankind.  It would do so because Jesus would acquire the glory of ‘the kingdoms of the world’ and would no longer be the suffering servant who was to die upon the Cross to save mankind and ultimately bring about the kingdom of God.  It would also negate salvation by calling upon Jesus to worship the devil rather than God, hence his firm Biblical response: ‘worship the Lord your God and serve only him’.

 

There is much evil of the physical kind in Luke’s narrative.  The devil assumes that if Jesus is alone in the desert, outside the bounds of society and famished after 40 days of fasting he will readily want to prove himself to be the Son of God by commanding a stone to become a loaf of bread.  In the Lord’s Prayer we ask God to ‘give us this day our daily bread’ but Jesus takes this further with again a Biblical response: ‘One does not live by bread alone’.  In Matthew’s Gospel we are given a fuller picture here when Jesus adds to the sentence ‘but by every word that comes from the mouth of God’.  Here Jesus’ faith in the Word of God is a sure weapon in times of conflict.  We find this faith manifest in Paul’s letter to the Ephesians when he writes: ’Take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God’. Jesus trusts in God to sustain him.

 

Stones feature frequently in Luke’s narrative.  Since the fifth century it has been believed that the wilderness was the rocky and uninhabited area between Jerusalem and Jericho.  The devil, who is with him in the wilderness, takes Jesus up ‘to a high place’ to show him the kingdoms.  This place by tradition is the ‘Quarantania’ being a limestone peak on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho.  He then takes Jesus to Jerusalem and places him on the pinnacle of the Temple,

 

 

calling upon him to throw himself off it, trusting that as the Son of God the angels will protect him.  It is not sure what is meant by ‘the pinnacle’ but it might have been a little wing or tower of the Temple.  The devil says that the angels will bear Jesus up so that he will not ‘dash his foot against a stone’.  We can find a similar narrative in the Old Testament in Psalm 91 giving the assurance of God’s protection. There it is written that the angels will guard you and bear you up ‘so that you will not dash your foot against a stone’. Stones are mentioned many times in the Bible as obstacles to Divine purpose.  In Matthew’s parable of the wicked tenants Jesus says: ‘the stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone’. Then there is the stoning of Stephen in the Book of Acts.  Some scholars believe that the actual places described in Luke’s narrative did not exist and they are symbolic not real.  I would argue that even if they did not exist we still have the confrontation between good and evil and the response of Jesus to it which is: ‘do not put the Lord your God to the test’.  That sentence is, forgive the pun, ‘set in stone’.

 

Having received that response the devil departs though Luke writes: ‘until an opportune time’.  Jesus will continue to encounter evil but will overcome the power of evil by obedient faith and, as given in chapter 10 of Acts: ‘he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him’.  We know that the Crucifixion was to follow but we also know that after the Crucifixion came the Resurrection.

 

With this in mind we can say with confidence the closing words of the Lord’s Prayer:

For thine is the kingdom

The power and the glory

For ever and ever

Amen.

Second Sunday before Lent

Can, though, faith stand firm in terrible circumstances such as war and famine?  We find that this is possible if we look at the diary and letters of Etty Hillesum whose life was blighted by the gathering uncertainty, oppression and hardship of the Holocaust and who died in Auschwitz in November 1943.  In spite of her terrible situation Etty stayed with the truth that she had come to and I quote: ‘that life remains rich and beautiful if only you remain open to receive it’.  She wrote: ‘what has to be done must be done and for the rest we must not allow ourselves to become infested with thousands of petty fears and worries, so many motions of no confidence in God’.  It is heart warming to find such faith in someone who was going through such troubled times and was determined not to evade the tempests that life had in store for her.  She said she would follow wherever the hand of God led her, trying not to be afraid.

 

This example of faith in extreme adversity is encouraging yet we can I believe sympathise with the disciples in today’s Gospel reading when they shout to Jesus that they are perishing.  This could be regarded, as Etty expressed it, as ‘a motion of no confidence in God’ but it is understandable that if you are in a boat filling up with water as a gale sweeps down you might well panic. The disciples do at least demonstrate a measure of faith by calling to Jesus to wake up, hoping that he will rescue them.  Nevertheless Jesus rebukes them with the question ‘where is your faith?’.

 

Let us explore this further.  As I understand it, this passage in Luke’s Gospel gives us faith as being formed in stages.  The newly-called disciples are at an early stage of their journey with Jesus.  As such they have been with him long enough to accept his call to them to get into the boat with him to cross to the other side of the lake but their faith has not yet developed enough for them to be calm in the storm and trust in God to see them to their destination.  This early stage of faith is made manifest in their lack of full understanding of who Jesus is and so they say to one another: ‘Who then is this, that he commands even the winds and the water, and they obey him?’ Contrast this narrative with the final two verses of Luke’s Gospel when Jesus has ascended into heaven and the disciples ‘worshipped him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy; and they were continually in the Temple blessing God’.  Their journey with Jesus has been filled with amazement and doubt but these last words show that their faith has grown amongst all the uncertainty, step by step.

 

So faith can grow and even flourish in times of adversity.  It is perhaps the tests that God puts us through that encourage faith in us and Jesus himself is embraced in this process.  This is apparent later in Luke’s Gospel narrative.  In the earlier narrative Jesus falls asleep on the boat and is then able to ‘rebuke the wind and the raging waves’ showing a calm authority and certainty in God’s purpose.  This calm authority continues in his teaching in parables and in chapter 10 of Luke’s Gospel he rejoices in the parables, thanking God for them.  When those around him seek to test him he has ready answers and even Peter’s denial of him does not test him as he knows that this will happen: ‘I tell you, Peter, the cock will not crow this day, until you have denied three times that you know me’.  In the later narrative, though, when he is praying on the Mount of Olives we know that he is being severely tested and it is in this moment that he shows oneness with God.  Thus he says: ‘Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me; yet, not my will but yours be done’. Here Jesus is revealing in a most testing circumstance ultimate faith in the Will of God.

 

Let us return to today’s Gospel reading to see what else this passage reveals to us.  In his rebuking of the wind and the waves and making them cease we find Jesus at one with Creation.  In this narrative he is conquering chaos as God conquered the watery storms in the Old Testament that were the symbols of chaos.  We find this in Psalm 29 in abundance when: ‘the God of glory thunders, the Lord over mighty waters’.  In Psalm 106, God ‘rebuked the Red Sea and it became dry’.

 

So we have God and Jesus talking to nature, showing that they are at one with it but also making it conform to their will.  Talking to nature has gone on across the centuries in song and poetry.  In Shakespeare’s ‘As you like it’ Amien sings: ‘blow, blow thou winter wind, thou art not so unkind as man’s ingratitude’.  In the nineteenth century the poet Shelley talked to the wind: ‘O wild west wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being…’.  These are observations rather than commands but they have an affinity with Bible texts as dialogues with nature.

 

There is a spirituality here which manifests itself strongly when poets use nature to convey relationship to God by way of analogy.   In the seventeenth century in his poem ‘the Flower’ George Herbert, the priest and poet, wrote: How fresh, O Lord, how sweet and clean are thy returns even as the flowers in spring’.  In the nineteenth century the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote: ‘Glory be to God for dappled things, for skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow’.  Hopkins reminds us of poetry as a means of contemplation of God and contemplating him in the ordinary; in all things and in each thing.  As W. H. Davies expressed it: ‘what is this life, if full of care, we have no time to stand and stare’.  Poetry often uses vivid imagery to describe what we see and to help us experience it afresh.  For

 

 

the Christian this leads us to an awareness of the presence of God, since all creation is God’s gift.

 

There is also the tradition that says the perceptions and language we use for God will always be inadequate because we can never reach an end to our knowing.  God will always be beyond our grasp.  Gerard Manley Hopkins saw his task as poet and priest to bring his readers and hearers to a place of silence before mystery.  For him poetry is ‘speech framed for contemplation’.

 

Our faith, then, may be strengthened by contemplation but with God always beyond our grasp it calls upon us to trust in him, even in the darkest hours.  The disciples in today’s reading had not yet reached that stage of faith and it is not easy for any of us.  It can require a ‘letting go’ based upon trust in God’s loving purpose for mankind.  I will conclude by expressing this ‘letting go’ by quoting from the song of the Beatles:

‘When I find myself in times of trouble

Mother Mary comes to me

Speaking words of wisdom

‘Let it be’.

 

AMEN

 

 

Second Sunday before Lent

Can, though, faith stand firm in terrible circumstances such as war and famine?  We find that this is possible if we look at the diary and letters of Etty Hillesum whose life was blighted by the gathering uncertainty, oppression and hardship of the Holocaust and who died in Auschwitz in November 1943.  In spite of her terrible situation Etty stayed with the truth that she had come to and I quote: ‘that life remains rich and beautiful if only you remain open to receive it’.  She wrote: ‘what has to be done must be done and for the rest we must not allow ourselves to become infested with thousands of petty fears and worries, so many motions of no confidence in God’.  It is heart warming to find such faith in someone who was going through such troubled times and was determined not to evade the tempests that life had in store for her.  She said she would follow wherever the hand of God led her, trying not to be afraid.

 

This example of faith in extreme adversity is encouraging yet we can I believe sympathise with the disciples in today’s Gospel reading when they shout to Jesus that they are perishing.  This could be regarded, as Etty expressed it, as ‘a motion of no confidence in God’ but it is understandable that if you are in a boat filling up with water as a gale sweeps down you might well panic. The disciples do at least demonstrate a measure of faith by calling to Jesus to wake up, hoping that he will rescue them.  Nevertheless Jesus rebukes them with the question ‘where is your faith?’.

 

Let us explore this further.  As I understand it, this passage in Luke’s Gospel gives us faith as being formed in stages.  The newly-called disciples are at an early stage of their journey with Jesus.  As such they have been with him long enough to accept his call to them to get into the boat with him to cross to the other side of the lake but their faith has not yet developed enough for them to be calm in the storm and trust in God to see them to their destination.  This early stage of faith is made manifest in their lack of full understanding of who Jesus is and so they say to one another: ‘Who then is this, that he commands even the winds and the water, and they obey him?’ Contrast this narrative with the final two verses of Luke’s Gospel when Jesus has ascended into heaven and the disciples ‘worshipped him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy; and they were continually in the Temple blessing God’.  Their journey with Jesus has been filled with amazement and doubt but these last words show that their faith has grown amongst all the uncertainty, step by step.

 

So faith can grow and even flourish in times of adversity.  It is perhaps the tests that God puts us through that encourage faith in us and Jesus himself is embraced in this process.  This is apparent later in Luke’s Gospel narrative.  In the earlier narrative Jesus falls asleep on the boat and is then able to ‘rebuke the wind and the raging waves’ showing a calm authority and certainty in God’s purpose.  This calm authority continues in his teaching in parables and in chapter 10 of Luke’s Gospel he rejoices in the parables, thanking God for them.  When those around him seek to test him he has ready answers and even Peter’s denial of him does not test him as he knows that this will happen: ‘I tell you, Peter, the cock will not crow this day, until you have denied three times that you know me’.  In the later narrative, though, when he is praying on the Mount of Olives we know that he is being severely tested and it is in this moment that he shows oneness with God.  Thus he says: ‘Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me; yet, not my will but yours be done’. Here Jesus is revealing in a most testing circumstance ultimate faith in the Will of God.

 

Let us return to today’s Gospel reading to see what else this passage reveals to us.  In his rebuking of the wind and the waves and making them cease we find Jesus at one with Creation.  In this narrative he is conquering chaos as God conquered the watery storms in the Old Testament that were the symbols of chaos.  We find this in Psalm 29 in abundance when: ‘the God of glory thunders, the Lord over mighty waters’.  In Psalm 106, God ‘rebuked the Red Sea and it became dry’.

 

So we have God and Jesus talking to nature, showing that they are at one with it but also making it conform to their will.  Talking to nature has gone on across the centuries in song and poetry.  In Shakespeare’s ‘As you like it’ Amien sings: ‘blow, blow thou winter wind, thou art not so unkind as man’s ingratitude’.  In the nineteenth century the poet Shelley talked to the wind: ‘O wild west wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being…’.  These are observations rather than commands but they have an affinity with Bible texts as dialogues with nature.

 

There is a spirituality here which manifests itself strongly when poets use nature to convey relationship to God by way of analogy.   In the seventeenth century in his poem ‘the Flower’ George Herbert, the priest and poet, wrote: How fresh, O Lord, how sweet and clean are thy returns even as the flowers in spring’.  In the nineteenth century the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote: ‘Glory be to God for dappled things, for skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow’.  Hopkins reminds us of poetry as a means of contemplation of God and contemplating him in the ordinary; in all things and in each thing.  As W. H. Davies expressed it: ‘what is this life, if full of care, we have no time to stand and stare’.  Poetry often uses vivid imagery to describe what we see and to help us experience it afresh.  For

 

 

the Christian this leads us to an awareness of the presence of God, since all creation is God’s gift.

 

There is also the tradition that says the perceptions and language we use for God will always be inadequate because we can never reach an end to our knowing.  God will always be beyond our grasp.  Gerard Manley Hopkins saw his task as poet and priest to bring his readers and hearers to a place of silence before mystery.  For him poetry is ‘speech framed for contemplation’.

 

Our faith, then, may be strengthened by contemplation but with God always beyond our grasp it calls upon us to trust in him, even in the darkest hours.  The disciples in today’s reading had not yet reached that stage of faith and it is not easy for any of us.  It can require a ‘letting go’ based upon trust in God’s loving purpose for mankind.  I will conclude by expressing this ‘letting go’ by quoting from the song of the Beatles:

‘When I find myself in times of trouble

Mother Mary comes to me

Speaking words of wisdom

‘Let it be’.

 

AMEN