Category: Sermons

Friends,

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

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

First, myth 1.

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

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

But that is based on Myth 2,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Please come and try.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘For the love of God is broader

than the measures of man’s mind,

and the heart of the Eternal

is most wonderfully kind’.

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

 

AMEN

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

AMEN

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

AMEN

 

 

 

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

AMEN

 

 

 

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

AMEN

 

AMEN

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

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

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

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

be set apart meant to undergo a test of faith.

 

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

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

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

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

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

no faith.  They have failed the test.

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jesus he will carry you through every danger.

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

reminder of Jesus carrying us through danger.

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

of those individuals who have stood out against corrupt regimes and

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

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

 

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

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

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

natural emotion of fear.

 

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

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

everyday life’.

 

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

respond to this call, all will be well.

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We are invited to ascend into this way of living.

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

 

 

 

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

Despite all the horrors of our world, with its wars, malpractice, and onslaught on the climate, I believe that when we look at the manifestations of nature that surround us, such as the spring flowers or a glorious sunrise, we can still say that creation is God’s ‘Yes’.  I would describe today’s battle to preserve and improve the climate as a battle to preserve God’s ‘Yes’.

That being so, what is the ‘No’?  The ‘No’ is the Devil’s attempt to destroy our planet and with it will come the downfall of humanity.  When you consider the beauty of nature and the miracle of new life born into the world that is a terrible prospect.  So we continue to strive for peace and to swim against the tide of adverse climate change.

What can give us the will to carry on in our pushback against the ‘No’?  To attempt to answer that question I will look at what the ‘No’ leaves us with and how that may be overcome.

What it leaves us with is nothingness.  Nothingness is a void in which nothing exists.  It is emptiness.  We can describe it as darkness in contrast to the light of God’s presence.  It is, to put it bluntly, where the Devil wants us to be.  We know, though, from the story of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ that ultimately the light overcomes the darkness, and there our hope lies.

To see why this should be so, let us in the light of today’s Gospel reading, look at that story.  At the beginning of Luke’s narrative, he writes that Jesus’s disciples are talking about what has just occurred.  What has occurred is that the body of Jesus had been taken by the good and righteous man, Joseph of Arimathea, wrapped in a linen cloth and ‘laid in a rock-hewn tomb where no-one had ever been laid’.  On the first day of the week, at early dawn, the women who had come with Jesus from Galilee arrived at the tomb with spices and ointments that they had prepared and they were perplexed to find that the tomb was empty.

At this point, emptiness has been defeated twice over.  The body of Jesus, that was emptied of life on the Cross was then laid in a tomb which is then emptied by the Resurrection.  Jesus then appears to his disciples as they walk to the village of Emmaus, although they do not recognise him until he blesses the bread at supper with them.  Jesus then vanishes from their sight, but the empty space left by his disappearance is again filled when he reappears to his disciples in the opening passage of today’s Gospel reading.  Another triumph of presence over absence and light over darkness as the life of Jesus is, and the opening passage of the Gospel of John gives this to us, the light of all people.

The disciples, though, take some persuading of this triumph, even when Jesus has shown them his hands and feet, inviting them to touch them.  In spite of this reassurance, they are still in a mixture of joy and disbelief and so, perhaps to again reassure them of his presence, he asks them to feed him which they duly do, offering him a piece of boiled fish.  Sensing this continuing uncertainty Jesus reminds them of the Scriptures where it is written that the Messiah is to suffer and rise from the dead on the third day and that repentance and forgiveness of sins are to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.  We know that what will follow on from this will be the Ascension of Jesus to heaven and that the disciples will return to Jerusalem in great joy, continually in the Temple, blessing God.

Here, in the Ascension, is the final resounding triumph over the ‘No’ so beloved by the Devil.

We, like the disciples, are called upon to open our minds to this promise of Scripture.  If we do this, then our attempts to protect and preserve our world and encourage the prosperity of all, are given the hope they need because we have the vision of the glory to come which cannot be eradicated by destructive forces dragging us down into a dark void where nothing dwells.  On the contrary, we can joyfully affirm that ‘hope springs eternal’.

 

AMEN

 

 

When I was growing up, Reverend Rankin’s sermons featured on high days and holy days, when he would tackle mysterious or difficult Bible passages by swerving disputatious detail in favour of the main message. “The main thing is the plain thing”,he was fond of saying, “It will also get us home in good time for dinner.” Here is a fine grasp of how Christianity is grounded in and speaks to both physical life and spiritual hunger. No wonder we are moved on this momentous day when we approach his cross in veneration.

Today, amidst the celebration of the Lord’s passion, a precious and intricate act of
remembrance and worship, the epistle from Hebrews provides a summary answer to the main question: Why do we call this Friday ‘Good’?

From Chapter 10 of this mysterious New Testament book by an unknown author: “This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, saith the Lord, I will put my laws into their hearts and in their minds will I write them; And their sins and iniquities will I remember no more.” A dazzling promise: in relationship with God, the heart becomes a thinking organ and the human mind possess perfect memory of how to life righteously whilst God cancels his memory of our failings .

For ‘after those days’, read the Triduum Sacrum – the Sacred Three Days of Paschal Mystery dramatically presented as passion, death, and resurrection. Every year, we are invited to walk with Jesus on the path to the cross, through the cross, and beyond the cross…the path that defines the Christian Way.

Today, we are in the very thick of it. As our transfigured saviour revealed to Moses and Elijah on the Mountain, he will soon achieve perfection of the first exodus from bondage, restoring the relationship of God Almighty with his beloved creation, and healing a fatal estrangement from his love and holiness by their sinful choices. Jesus is fully empowered and committed to God the Father’s plan for redemption, willingly entering history in occupied First Century Israel as fully man AND fully God. In the same way, the story of Good Friday plays out in physical and historical terms whilst it fulfils the highest spiritual function.

On Good Friday, the humanity of the son of Man is nakedly and humbly displayed. On Good Friday, the divinity of the incarnated Christ of God fulfills the Scripture and its Laws. On Good Friday, our Lord’s obedience unto sacrificial death washes away all our sin, once and for all, with his sacred blood.

Sadly, many of the details of the day’s narrative are familiar components of our news cycle – unlawful arrest and imprisonment, kangaroo justice, false witness, brutality and torture, brazen execution in front of a world that doesn’t seem overly troubled.

You don’t need me to tell you that Good Friday does not eliminate this reality. Yet
miraculously, today’s portion of the salvation programme re-opens the borders of
to heaven. From now on, death and misery are not foregone outcomes, thanks to Jesus’ pain and death.

For Christianity is the faith where God suffers to spare us … so we can be liberated into joyful relationship with his person and even with each other. That is why fixation on the gruesome details of death on the cross will yield only fear of a wrathful God and fresh inspiration for all the evil that men can do. For example, the Persians initiated execution by crucifixion, but the Romans perfected it as a humiliating and excruciating capital punishment reserved for slaves and conquered peoples. That is the opposite of the good news of the gospels!

Such a concern may explain why St. John reports Jesus’ execution in such a matter-offact
way:
. 19:1 Pilate took Jesus and scourged him.. 19:2. The soldiers plaited a crown of thorns and put it on his head, and they put on him a purple robe.
. 19:18 They crucified him.

This brevity contrasts with four fulsome chapters of Jesus’ discourse at his last supper among his remaining eleven apostles, a master class in coaching and team building with love, encouragement, and joy at its heart. Betrayal and arrest follow on, then a series of through- the- night- into- dawn trials, religious and political in turn, culminating in a triangulated conflict between Caiaphas the high priest, Pilate the Roman governor, and Jesus their prisoner and Son of God, moving between outside the Praetorium to the Hall of Judgement and finally, Gabbatha. The crowd, uncontrollable in size and roused to hatred, shout ‘Crucify him!’. Jesus is led off without demure; carrying his own cross: stripped, nailed, and lifted between two criminals in place of a notorious thief of civic order, Barabbas. He is a veritable lamb to the slaughter at the time of Passover, the perfect sacrifice who surrenders to the sovereign power of God
the Father and not to those who slay him.

Undoubtedly, the brief report of this extreme and transformative event indicates it came as NO surprise to Jesus. Throughout his ministry on earth, he kept divine time, entering into his return to the Father at exactly the right hour to give himself as sacrifice, but one with absolute agency and authority. Yes, evil men and weak men are overtaken by demonic influence to plot and act against him. They bear responsibility and infamy for their deeds. Yet God can arrange all things to achieve his purpose.

Throughout the Passion Gospels, Jesus acts to fulfil God’s original covenant with
Abraham, renewed across the generations with Moses and David. Further, he acts with consummate knowledge of and reverence for The Word of God. Consider that first century Jews and educated Gentiles, whether new Christians or not, could rely only on the Old Testament as codebreaker for the meaning of Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews, reflected in biblical motifs from Genesis through Malachi. Citing these references gives rise to something like 300 concordances between the Passion Gospels and the laws and prophecies given by God to his chosen people. These motifs create a master story framework that points the way to the Cross, achieves deliverance and salvation through the Cross, embeds the living triune God amongst us from the Cross, assures the new covenant of kingdom come under the Cross.

The comfort offered by theology and tradition aside, what breaks our hearts is Jesus’ very human presence throughout the ordeal. John focuses on 3 such expressions, the word of God spoken by a dying man nailed shamefully to a tree at a busy crossroads during the most populous festival of the year.

The first: Jesus looks upon his Mother grieving below with the disciple who expresses his entire identity as one created by and for his Saviour’s love. With some of his last words on earth, he gives Mary and John to each other: “Woman, behold thy son”; to his disciple, “Behold thy mother”. Before the tomb was emptied, before the risen Christ stood in front of Mary Magdalene and appeared to his downcast disciples, before the wind and fire of Pentecost, this gift of love and belonging blesses the church of the family of God in perpetuity. It provides a pattern for material as well as spiritual support that honours our dual needs and his dual perfection.

The second: As the three hours of darkness draw to a close, Jesus summons voice to call out “I thirst”. The divine part of Jesus knew he was fulfilling Psalm 69, a lament at being given ‘gall for meat and vinegar to drink’; in real time, his human body was painfully dehydrated. The executioners soaked a reed of hyssop in sour wine and lifted it to him. In extremity and total commitment to drain the cup of sin, suffering, and spiritual death, he received it. Just as he received beatings about the head with reeds administered by Pilate’s soldiers in cruel mockery of a king’s sceptre, and the blows and abuse by priests and false witnesses in Caiaphas’ palace.

The third: Our incomparable source of living water, with water and blood yet to flow from his side pierced by Roman spear after death, cries out one final time. “It is finished”. Here is a call of triumph and hard-won satisfaction, made in defiance of physical limitations, a final assertion of his god-nature. By this time, a crucified man would suffer asphyxiation as pain and injury slowly shut down his ability to breath. Of course, Jesus is not an ordinary man! Rather, he may lay down his life, then take it up again upon his sovereign wish. By choosing to sacrifice his life, our Lord nailed all sin, our sin, and all evil, our evil, to the cross. This cancelled once and for all our debt and bondage to spiritual death by faith in God the Father through Christ our great high priest. “It is finished” asserts the full satisfaction of Christ’s mission on earth until his second coming, and calls out to God the Father, the heavenly hosts, and all those with hearts open to his word.

On Good Friday, the Son of Man gathers us at the foot of his cross.
On Good Friday, the Son of God enfolds us in God’s family.
On Good Friday, Christ paid for our sins with his blood and overcame spiritual death for all who believe on him. The divine ecosystem that sustains, unites, and blesses us with the love and presence of God is fulfilled. Clearly that is the main reason we call this Friday of all Fridays ‘Good’. What follows is the plain thing: upon solemn contemplation and in the midst of our congregation, PRAISE HIM for the good things he has done. AMEN.

Is this country in decline?  This was a question raised in a Question Time I watched recently on television.  The general view was expressed that it is, and for a variety of reasons.  There has been the effect of the pandemic, some adverse effects on the economy post-Brexit, the war in Ukraine sending prices rocketing and I would add to this the earlier circumstance arising from the financial crash of 2008 from which there was recovery but it did not help to set the stage for future prosperity.

This heady cocktail of troubles has left many people struggling to make ends meet.  Even those who are a bit better off are finding it hard to pay for what they previously took for granted that they could afford and the soaring cost of renting a property has left many people wondering if they can keep a roof over their heads or afford a roof in the first place.

Looking at this unhappy state of affairs I ask myself; what is God doing in all this?  Why is God, who loves us all, allowing such suffering and not intervening to help us get back on the road to life in abundance?

I could sound an optimistic note at this point and say that suffering is not new to humanity but has been part of our existence since time began and that although the tide is right out now in terms of our well-being, it eventually returns.  This may be true if we take the long-term view of the economy but it will not ease the present day anxiety and depression felt by many as they struggle to make ends meet.  You could say that successive governments have taken some wrong turnings over the decades, sometimes with good intentions, and that this has led to a decline in our living standards but I believe that it goes deeper than that.  In my opinion it is in the hidden agenda that we find the cause of our economic malaise and this is where, I believe, we can find out what God is doing.

The hidden agenda is one of malpractice that can affect people in all walks of life.  If we look at today’s Gospel reading we can see that there is nothing new in this wrong doing.  When Jesus poured out the coins of the moneychangers and overturned their tables in the Temple, it was not so much the business of the day that was the issue, it was the corrupt practice that the moneychangers were engaged in that was impoverishing those who entered the Temple.  In his commentary on the Gospel of John, David Pawson explains this wrongdoing.  He writes that to enter the Temple you had to pay the Temple tax and to do this you needed to go to the money lender to get your Roman money changed into a Jewish shekel.  The half-shekel allowed you to go in and you had to come in with an animal for holy sacrifice.  The priest then inspected the animal to see if it was without spot or blemish.  It is at this point that the malpractice began.  It was easy for the inspectors to say that the animal was no good when it was perfectly alright, which forced people to pay a great deal more, twenty times more, for an animal sold inside the Temple.  This racket was led by the priests, known as the Sadducees who loved money.  The moneychangers took some of it and the priests took the rest.  You had entered the Temple with your half-shekel and your animal, to get close to God and you came out robbed.  This incurs Divine wrath as Jesus makes a whip of cords and drives the moneychangers, and the animals with them, out of the Temple. Enraged, he then pours out the coins of the moneychangers and overturns their tables.

In this instance, through his son Jesus, God has intervened to punish the perpetrators.  Unfortunately, corrupt practice in financial dealings has remained across the centuries, continues today, and it is always the innocent and the well-meaning who suffer the outcome of financial loss.

As this is so, why does God not intervene directly now?  I believe that as the lesson has not been learnt, God is now calling upon us to push back against corruption ourselves to alleviate the suffering of the present moment.  Television is, I believe, playing an important role in this pushback.  Examples are the work of the scam interceptors and the recent detailed exposure of the Post Office scandal.  The hope is that if we fight the good fight against those who put profit before people this should eventually bear fruit in easing the acute financial burden felt at present by so many.

We cannot avoid the ill effects of natural disasters nor can we bring about the immediate cessation of wars.  We can work towards a better climate but we cannot avoid every disease that the body is subject to.  If, though, we make people before profit our creed, which many people already do, then I believe that God will reward us with the life in abundance that he wants for us.  In hard times people help each other out but if we also have the courage to stand up to wrongdoing that damages the prospects of young and old then we are saying to the new generations who, forgive the pun, have been very short changed, that we do not wish to give up when times are hard but strive for a better world for them to inherit.

 

AMEN

 

 

 

The theme of my sermon today is trust. How often have you heard the expression ‘trust me, I am a doctor’.  The doctor is asking you to have faith in her or his ability to heal you by advice and the recommendation of surgery if needed.  It is up to you to determine whether you have sufficient trust in the doctor to agree with the recommendations made.  If, in spite of your trust, there is malpractice, then you will suffer, and the doctor may be struck off the register.

So there is, in human affairs, of which this is one example, an element of risk involved in placing your trust in another.  This is because we are frail humans all, liable to make mistakes and misjudge situations.  In today’s world, with its fake news, fraud, scams and the ability to break into other people’s accounts to name but a few, it does seem that the risk is great and that trust is at a premium.

Was trust at a premium in the New Testament also?  If we look at today’s Gospel reading, when Jesus, in the synagogue at Capernaum, rids a man of an unclean spirit, the authority with which he does this amazes the people and it marks the beginning of the spread of fame for Jesus that, as it is written ‘began to spread throughout the surrounding region of Galilee’.  The people, at this early stage of Mark’s Gospel, are not questioning the role of Jesus as healer.  There is an element of trust here.  So far, all is well but the seed of trouble ahead for Jesus is planted on that day.

Why should this be so on that particular day, known as the ‘Eventful Day’?  Well, also present in the synagogue, as they routinely were, were the scribes whose task it was to interpret the Old Testament and teach its laws.  This teaching rested on what they regarded as the authority of the Old Testament and this stood in direct opposition to the authority given to Jesus directly from God to drive out evil spirits.  On this Eventful Day the scribes say nothing but not for long.  If we move on to the second chapter of Mark’s Gospel when Jesus heals the paralytic man by the forgiveness of his sins, we hear the first rumble of thunder from the scribes: ‘why does this fellow speak in this way?  It is blasphemy!  Who can forgive sins but God alone?  On the Eventful Day, Jesus keeps the people on his side as ‘they were amazed and glorified God’ but the antagonism of the scribes towards his authority does not go away; it escalates to the point when he is condemned to death by the Jewish leaders and the people who have now also turned against him.  Their failure to trust him is evident when Jesus returns to his hometown of Nazareth and the response there is who does he think he is, teaching in the synagogue words of wisdom – he is just the carpenter.

A complete breakdown of trust, you might say, in Jesus as the Son of God.  A breakdown because none could see what the demons who possessed the man in Capernaum could see.  They saw Jesus as enemy number one who had the power to destroy them as ‘the Holy One of God’.  They wanted to go on existing by means of power and control over and within people and they knew that Jesus as the Son of God could break the man free of them and thereby rob them of their power and control.

As we know from Bible narratives, the Devil loves power and control.  We have only to think of the temptation of Jesus in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke when the Devil offers Jesus the possession of all the kingdoms of the world, provided he worship him.  The possession of people by demons, that are the Devil’s instruments, that control the speech and thought of the victim, is a recurrent theme of Mark’s Gospel.  There is the man in chains in the tombs who howled and bruised himself until Jesus commanded the unclean spirit to come out of him. There is the healing of the boy with a spirit that makes him unable to speak and dashes him down.

The problem is that in his healing ministry, that was defeating the demonic purpose and offering instead the freedom of the Holy Spirit and the love of God, Jesus antagonized those around him which led to his death. People were not ready to receive this offering because they were steeped in the tradition of their ancestry and rites and rituals of their worship which was rooted in the Old Testament and not being adhered to in full by Jesus, as the parables make clear.  They were suspicious of the new, as we can all be, and it was easy for them to dismiss Jesus as just another charismatic healer.  As Rowan Williams expresses it in his book ‘Meeting God in Mark’ there were many such healers ‘wandering around the ancient Near East’. The Jewish leaders rejected Jesus’s healing ministry as ordained by God because they said that only God can forgive sins.

Thus it was that the miracles he performed, the healings and the forgiveness of sins that were all offerings of Divine love were rejected and nailed with Jesus to the Cross.

That is not, of course, the end of the story as Mark gives us the Good News of ultimate salvation which was the outcome of crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension to heaven, leaving the Disciples to go out and proclaim the Good News everywhere.  If then, in spite of the failures in trust in our world today, we continue to trust in that salvation then there is hope for us all.  If we stay with corrupt practices then trust will continue to be eroded and leave us ruled by fear rather than inhabiting the all-encompassing love of God.

 

AMEN

 

 

 

 

 

 

One great advantage still enjoyed (for now at least) by the Church of England, and which I believe it ignores at its peril, is that it is there for everyone – whether or not they happen to be ‘signed up’ members. We see that in the focus for national celebration and mourning provided by places such as Westminster Abbey and St Paul’s Cathedral, and we had evidence of it right here as recently as Christmas-time. It was, after all, a former Archbishop of Canterbury, William Temple, who once remarked that the church is perhaps the only organisation that doesn’t exist primarily for the benefit of its own membership, and this is surely a principle that the Feast of the Epiphany enshrines.

Sometimes it takes people from outside our own cultural groups and belief systems to reveal to us riches we are taking for granted. To most local people in that village setting of Bethlehem, a birth in a stable would be squalid, and a social disgrace, or at least, ‘unfortunate’. The main reaction might probably be to pass by as quickly as possible, without comment. We should not dismiss the ‘wisdom’ of the Magi, foreigners who had read in the Hebrew Scriptures references that completely passed-by Jerusalem’s own ‘religious experts’, and had looked for the child ‘born King of the Jews’ and recognised his star at its rising. They create a stir with their steady intent on finding this Messiah – scaring Herod (Judah’s official ‘king’), and surely discomfiting the leaders of the Jerusalem Temple, who feared their precarious tolerance by the occupying Roman authorities to be under threat. They are strangers, outsiders, who yet reveal to us all the divinity of Christ and the worship and the offerings he is owed. Closer to our own time, they bring to my mind the remarkable life of Simone Weil, who became a 20^th century mystic. Born a Jew in Paris, and for most of her short life an agnostic, she became consumed by the love of God, and love for God, believing that ‘Christ himself came down and took possession of’ her. She never officially joined the church, and died of tuberculosis in her early 30s whilst serving the French Resistance in London during the 2^nd world war; nevertheless her writings have proved an inspiration to Christians and atheists alike – perhaps an Epiphany in their own right.

Simone Weil’s life may have been short, but her spiritual journey was long and eventful, not unlike the Magis’, with many twists and turns and increasing intensity. In the wise mens’ gifts there is rich symbolism. The prophecy of Isaiah (as we heard) had foretold the bringing of Gold and Frankincense. For the Magi the Frankincense represented Christ’s divinity, and the Gold his kingship, but to both of these is added the extra gift of Myrrh – representing his destiny of death on a cross. Simone came to see the Passion of Christ as the only answer to the cruel pain and suffering of so many in the world about which she cared so deeply. Having sought for God and finally encountering him in Jesus Christ she, like the Magi, opened up her treasures – in her case, continuing to reject the comfortable middle-class pursuits and ambitions she’d been born to, and embracing yet more self-denial in a close identification with the poor and the afflicted, pursuing truth, love and purity of intention. Remaining un-baptised she could still write – with absolute authenticity – that ‘contact with God is the true sacrament’. Mindful of this we might find our own prayerful response to this Feast day in the conclusion of a poem on the Epiphany penned by the 17^th century English priest-poet whose verse had so influenced her conversion – George Herbert:

O that his light and influence,

Would work effectually in me

Another new Epiphany,

Exhale, and elevate me hence:

 

That, as my calling doth require,

Star-like I may to others shine;

And guide them to that sun divine,

Whose day-light never shall expire.

 

Amen

 

The theme of my last sermon was war.  So, I thought by way of contrast that as we are in the fourth Sunday in Advent, looking towards the imminent birth of Christ, I would preach on the theme of peace.

I found it more challenging to reflect upon peace than to reflect upon war.  This may be because war, however dreadful its consequences may be, is dramatic and dynamic whereas peace is harder to define.  I will though make the attempt and in so doing put Christ center stage.

If we look at the life of Christ, there is a pattern of peace in the silent night, holy night of his birth, then a gradual buildup of conflict ending in his death on the Cross and then peace returns via the Resurrection and Ascension narratives as he then takes his place in heaven at the right hand of God. From this pattern we could say that the life of Christ represents a triumph of peace over conflict.  This peace, that passes all understanding, is a gift to us from God through his son Jesus and as we say in our worship it is there to ‘keep our hearts and minds in the love of God’.

If we look at today’s Gospel reading, the Annunciation, we learn that the Angel Gabriel announces to the Virgin Mary that the Holy Spirit will come upon her and the power of the most High will overshadow her as the child to be born will be holy.  Mary is initially perplexed but then peace reigns once she states her obedience to God’s Word.

When contemplating the Annunciation I looked at the depiction by artists past and present of this narrative, and noticed their use of light to depict holiness and I believe that this light is also the light of peace.  I think here, for example, of the Annunciation painted by Bartolomé Murillo, the seventeenth century artist who places the dove of the Holy Spirit in a pool of light positioned above-center between the Angel Gabriel and the Virgin Mary. I give another example in the painting by the nineteenth century artist Alexander Ivanov who paints Mary standing in front of a huge circle of light. Moving on from the Annunciation to the birth of Christ, the light of God which is brought to us in that birth is beautifully expressed at the beginning of John’s Gospel when he writes that when the Word became flesh what came into being in him was life and the life was ‘the light of all people’. ‘The light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it’. The light, then, represents peace.

Staying with a contemplation of the effect of light, I recently, I read an article in an Art magazine written by Antonia Harrison, curator of an exhibition that investigates the story of glass into the present day. She said that if you observe the light coming through stained glass it has the power to connect you to it.  When I have observed the light coming through the stained glass at St Mark’s I feel that it connects me to the Divine. I believe also that when we light a candle for people in distress or in their memory we are looking for them to be at peace.

Then there is the association of peace with stillness versus the turmoil of war.  Advent is the invitation to us to prepare our hearts for the coming of Jesus and it is also a time of waiting.  How often were you told in childhood to sit still when waiting in excitement for something to happen.  It is not easy but over the years you get to the point of understanding the value of stillness as it is then that you can be ‘still and know that he is God’.  You can listen to the ‘still small voice of calm’ which is offering you peace.

Silence, whilst having an association with fear, can also be associated with peace. As one Commentary on Luke expresses it; ‘in our troubled times we need to share the silence and faithfulness of Mary’.  I would add that giving space in silence for time to put down the guns of war and to consider the possibility of peace is something which can only be beneficial.

Peace then can be expressed in light, in stillness and in silence.  It need not be dull though.  Advent, in its preparation of the heart for the coming of Jesus, is a time of joyous expectation of his birth.  You can be full of life while at the same time experiencing inner peace. Joy can be found in the Annunciation in the wonderful sentence given to Mary by the Angel Gabriel which reads: ‘nothing is impossible with God’.

Let us hold on to that sentence as we near the end of a very troubled year in the world and look forward in hope to a better situation in the new year.

 

 

AMEN

 

 

Today is the Feast of Christ the King, or – as our Roman Catholic friends call it,
with characteristic flair – the Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the
Universe. It’s the final Sunday of the Church’s year, and the culmination of what
has become known in the last century or so as the Kingdom season, which we
have been observing here at St Mark’s.

There’s a temptation, I think, when we think of the Kingdom, to think about
what happens next—we begin with the feast of All Saints, then the
commemoration of All Souls, and then of course Remembrance Sunday. And the
readings we hear have a distinctly eschatological flavour to them—especially this
year, when our readings come from the Gospel according to St Matthew, whose
account of Christ’s teaching ends with the vivid vision of the Last Judgment we
heard a moment ago.

But if we focus on what happens next, there is a risk that we might forget about
what happens now. Because we are not called simply to wait around until God
brings the Kingdom to us. Rather, we are called to cooperate with God in bringing
the Kingdom closer—day by day, and year by year. After all, Jesus Himself taught
us to pray: “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven”.
That’s an idea that John F Kennedy, who died sixty years ago this week, echoed
at the conclusion of his inaugural address. He said, “let us go forth to lead the
land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth
God’s work must truly be our own”.

Now, by this point you may be wondering why I’m the one standing here in the
pulpit this morning. Well, as many of you will know, I’m one of the
Churchwardens here. And that means that it’s my job – along with Jane, Colin,
and many others – to make sure we can keep doing what we do at St Mark’s.
So, in the next few minutes I’d like to persuade you that one way of working to
bring the Kingdom of Christ closer is to consider providing financial support for
what we do here.

I’m going to start by saying something about what funding parish churches need,
then talking about why what we do here is important, and finally identifying howyou can help, by asking you to do three practical things—perhaps think of it as a New Year’s resolution for the turning of the Church’s year.

What? It might surprise you to know that parish churches receive no central
funding—nothing from the Government, nothing from the Church of England.
In fact, it is parishes who are asked to provide a lot of the central funding for the
church, through contributions to the Common Fund. In 2024, the amount we need to provide is £91,300, which reflects the cost of supporting and housing a parish priest, training the next generation, supporting diocesan schools, and funding the Diocese itself. And the day to day running costs of everything we do here are roughly the same again. Then, of course, there are the one-off, often eyewatering, costs that come with maintaining a historic building.

It is only through the generosity of our congregation, friends and neighbours –
with the help of income-generating activities like the nursery and the café, and
William’s work with the Diocese in Europe – that we have historically been able
to meet those costs.

Why? Now, I hope you will agree with me that what happens here at St Mark’s is
important. You probably think it goes without saying. But sometimes, I think it’s
worth saying these sorts of things out loud.

Our worship here offers a glimpse of the Kingdom of Heaven. Through our
worship, we bear witness that at the very foundation of the universe is a force of
love so generous, so powerful, so abundant, that it overwhelms every human
brokenness, overpowers death, and still continues to flow—as we will sing in a
moment, “sin and death and hell shall never stifle hymns of love”.
And that love is what underpins the ministry we offer. One of the wonderful
things about the Church of England – for all its faults – is that it seeks to be a
Christian presence in every community. St Mark’s is here for the people of
Primrose Hill and the surrounding area. Every so often a survey comes out
showing that regular church attendance is falling—though looking around today,
you wouldn’t know it. But I don’t think that needs to worry us. Because St Mark’s
is here when people need us. It is here at important moments in the life of the
nation, to make space for people’s feelings and to be a focal point for the
community. It is here at important moments in people’s lives – when a baby is
born, when a couple marries, when a loved-one dies – not asking whether they’re
part of the club, but generously offering care, comfort and compassion. And it is
here at other times, too, when we might not even realise it’s needed—a moment
of quiet contemplation when someone is having a difficult time, the unexpected
joy of an inspiring piece of music, or something as simple as a coffee and a pastry
on a cold Sunday morning.

And that same love overflows into the world as we are sent out each week “to live and work to [God’s] praise and glory”. In a moment I’ll come back to how we
do that, because – frankly – that’s way more important than money.

How? But first, I said I would tell you how you can help, and that I’d ask you to
do three practical things as your New Year’s resolution. So here they are.

1. The first practical thing is easy. There are leaflets at the back of Church called
“Leaving a Legacy”.
Pick one up, take it home, and read it. That’s all.

2. The second practical thing asks a little more of you. If you haven’t already set
up a standing order for regular giving, might you consider starting one? You
can find our bank details at the beginning of your service booklet. It’ll take
perhaps five minutes, maybe with an extra minute to email William with your
Gift Aid details. But it will make a real difference. And if you have got a standing order in place, might you consider updating it? You may have set it up several years ago, and in the meantime the cost of everything has gone up—you could even use the Bank of England inflation calculator to work out the new amount, if you want to be scientific about it.

3. The third practical thing is the most demanding, but it also potentially has the
most impact. (This is where I put my barrister hat on.)

Please, if you haven’t already, think about making a Will. It is the only way to
ensure that your wishes are carried out after your death—otherwise, the rules
of intestacy will apply and that will very probably not be what you would have
wanted. It needn’t be expensive, or complicated – and the legacy leaflet has
details of low-cost and free will-writing schemes – but it is vital.

And once you have made provision for your loved ones in your Will – or if
you already have a Will you’re happy with – I’d like you to consider leaving
a legacy to St Mark’s. It’s inheritance-tax-free, and if you leave 10% or more
of your estate to charities – including St Mark’s – the rate of inheritance tax
on the rest of your estate is reduced to 36%. It’s a win-win.

If you do decide to leave a legacy to St Mark’s…

First of all, thank you.

Second, it would be really helpful if you could let William know, in complete
confidence.

And third, please make sure you actually execute it properly! You need to sign
it in the presence of two witnesses who then sign it in your presence, otherwise
it’s not worth the paper it’s written on.

So—three practical things. Read the leaflet, think about your standing order, and
make a Will.

I hope I’ve persuaded you that providing financial support to St Mark’s is one
way you can participate in bringing the Kingdom closer. Colin, our Treasurer,
would probably be happy if I stopped there. The rest of you might, too, since I’ve
probably already gone on longer than I was supposed to.

But I am going to carry on a little longer. Because not everyone has money to
spare at the moment, and many people will have other causes that are near to their hearts, and – anyway – there are far more important things than money.

Turning back to this morning’s readings, we have a blueprint for how we can
bring the Kingdom closer.

In this morning’s Gospel, the ones who inherit the Kingdom are the ones who
have treated others as they would treat Christ himself. St Matthew records the
words of Jesus: “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my
brethren, ye have done it unto me.” And that in turn means asking how Christ
would treat them. It means returning something of the ridiculously generous,
outrageously self-sacrificing, totally revolutionary love of Christ to those in
need—the ones He calls His brethren.

And in the New Testament reading, St Paul writes that the church is Christ’s body.
Combined with the Gospel passage we heard, for me that calls to mind a reflection attributed to St Teresa of Avila, a 16th century Spanish mystic, although it was probably actually written in the late 19th century. It goes like this.

Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which He looks compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which He walks to do good,
Yours are the hands with which He blesses all the world.

Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,
Yours are the eyes, you are his body.
Christ has no body now on earth but yours.

In a few minutes, we will each come forward to receive Christ’s sacramental body. As you do so, I’d like to invite you to join with me in reflecting on how you can answer the call to become Christ’s body on earth.

How will your feet walk to do good?

How will your hands be a blessing?

How will your eyes look compassion on this world?

And then, when we sing our final hymn, I’d like you to pay attention to the words
of the third verse. It asks two more questions, which you might like to think about as you go out into the world this week.

And if your answer to those questions includes giving some money to St Mark’s?
Then thanks be to God.