At the heart of our worship and how we praise God is music. Most churches, indeed most religions set a great deal of store by the importance of music.

We begin our Annual Summer Music Festival today, and in recognition of this celebration of the musical gifts in our midst, it is important to trace some Biblical and Theological themes which underscore the significance of music in our life.

A connection in today’s Gospel reading:

St Mark’s Gospel is underway. We’re in the corn-fields of rural Galilee, and Jesus’s disciples are doing what anyone might do, plucking an ear of corn. Jesus’s detractors, keen to catch this band out, presumably whilst in conversation, or debate, challenge the picking of corn – as an infringement of the Sabbath Laws. A nit-picking way to inflame the discussion. Jesus gives it back with both barrels though.

Jesus compares himself, and his disciples, with King David, and his companions. Out of hunger David and his crew ate what should have remained on the altar as a sacrifice – the Shew Bread in the sanctuary, but they ate it out of need. From this Jesus pronounces very solemnly, and with the sanction of his ancestor David himself – The Sabbath was made for man – not man for the Sabbath.

The passage continues with Jesus defying the Sabbath, or redefining the significance of the Sabbath law, you can argue for either.

Key here for us now is the association of Jesus himself with his ancestor David.

There are perhaps three strands to this bow, or three strings to this lyre.

If we look at King David’s life as whole, what can we tell?

A very large proportion of the Hebrew Bible is associated with David. The best part of 51 Chapters of the History Texts: I Sam, I Kings, I Chronicles. The Psalter is known also the Book of the Psalms of David. There are exactly 150. 73 of these have in the superscription that they are as Psalm of David and other sources suggest at least another two are by him.

The Church has used Psalms since before the NT was written. You might think that is funny thing to say, but we know from most of the records of the Last Supper, that before Jesus and his disciples made their way to the Garden of Gethsemane, they sang a Psalm. Given that Jews to this day sing Pss 114-118 during the Passover meal, it’s probable it was one or all of these and most probably the last.

St Paul, the first writer of the NT speaks of the word of God dwelling in the hearts of the faithful richly and to that end he exhorts the Colossians to “sing Psalms and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts.” The Psalms were Jesus’s own hymn book. He quotes them constantly. Psalm 22 is in a sense the template for Jesus’s passion, whether meditation or prophecy, it shows the way of the suffering servant, that Our Lord’s ministry exemplified.

Scholars have pored over the Psalms for 200 years in a critical way, coming to different conclusions about their origin and authorship. Some are clearly very ancient, others date from the Babylonian exile. At some level, as a collection they are puzzle – certainly in terms of how they are grouped. In his commentary on Psalm 150 Augustine said “The sequence of the Psalms seems to me to contain the secret of a mighty mystery, but its meaning has not been revealed to me.”

They have different styles and purposes, either personal address to God, or a description of suffering. There is some cursing, there is some confessing, there are songs of thanksgiving and songs of the pilgrims going up to Jerusalem, and there are Psalms relating directly to monarchy, and within these latter two at least are tantalising expressions of what worship in Temple.

This poetic outpouring from the pen of the shepherd-boy-turned-renegade-turned-King, has behind it several strings.

David and Saul had a very complicated relationship. Before they even meet, David as a child has been appointed to replace Saul, who had lost God’s favour. He then kills Goliath, and becomes a part of the court. Saul, whose blessing has departed is afflicted by mental frenzy, the only one who can calm him is the lyre playing shepherd boy.

In an age more conscious of the power imbalances between a deranged King and a child-musician in his entourage, it is hard to know if the soothing music of the child is benign, when it seems to be all that protects the boy David from assault.

The love that Saul has for David is questionable. And the friendship between Saul’s son Jonathan with David begs questions. The two friends seem bound together as much by a common fear of Saul as by a bond – “surpassing the love of women”. Inevitably this causes speculation in modern scholarship.

The death of Saul and Jonathan, causes David deep agony, immortalising the words “How are the mighty fallen, and the weapons of war perished.”

David’s excesses do not stop there. In due course he brings the Ark from the coast to his new capital, Jerusalem. Many of the instruments which are listed in Psalm 150, are recounted as having been played. David is captivated by the Spirit of the Lord, and he dances manically before it. David’s wife, Michal, the daughter of Saul, comes to David and berates him for this vulgar and shameless display. He is proud of having danced the Ark. Michal is unimpressed. But David’s being intoxicated in this way stokes Michal’s contempt for her husband. David the hero, who has conquered all before him, is unable to capture the heart of his own wife.

David introduces music, dancing and spiritual intensity into the worship of Israel’s God. His legacy is still known day by day in the worship of the Church. The 150 psalms are said or sung in the course of month. In Lent in the Orthodox Church the whole Psalter is said in the course of 7 days one week! That’s a lot of chanting.

Our own Plain chant which punctuates our service is almost entirely drawn from the Psalter.

David was the bad-boy rock star of the OT, as we get a sense of in today’s Gospel.

Let the last words be his in his final Psalm:

Praise the Lord in his sanctuary, praise him for his excellent greatness…Praise him with the trumpet, praise him with the lute and harp, praise him with the timbrel and dances, praise him with the strings and pipe, praise him with the sounding cymbals, let everything that breathes praise the Lord.

‘The day of the Lord is at hand’, asserted the Old Testament prophet Zephaniah, and if you glance through it, you’ll notice that in the New Testament Epistle offered for today, St. Paul, writing to Thessalonian Christians, holds pretty much the same view: ‘the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night’. We hear quite a lot of this ‘day of the Lord’ in our readings in church at this time of year. Arising, as our faith did, from Judaism, it was natural that the first Christians should take on and adapt their inherited Hebrew ‘eschatology’ – the thinking and writing about ‘the last things’. The Biblical scholar William Barclay wrote that for 1^st century Jews,

‘….all time was divided into two ages. There was the present age, which was wholly and incurably bad. There was the age to come, which would be the golden age of God. In between, there was the day of the Lord, which would be a terrible day. It would be a day in which one world was shattered and another was born….the New Testament writers to all intents and purposes identified the day of the Lord with the day of the second coming of Jesus Christ.’

Persecution and hardships experienced by both overlapping faiths at this time often stimulated some of the most graphic and vengeful apocalyptic texts, right up to the Book of Revelation and beyond. We perhaps get a glimpse of that at the end of our Gospel today, where the ‘unprofitable servant’ is cast into ‘outer darkness’, accompanied by Matthew’s almost trade-mark ‘weeping and gnashing of teeth’! So, what do we make of all this, two thousand years on?

Speaking personally, these words stimulate two reactions. The first is a certain embarrassment at the archaic world-view they represent, and an intention not to let their hateful images detract from the revolutionary love and generosity of Jesus himself, and his radical way of being – which even the church has been slow to realise and catch up with. It has always been too easy (and more convenient) for the church at various times to ‘weaponise’ apocalytic texts like these to scare people into dull conformity, rather than facing up to the dynamic implications of the kingdom of God that Jesus actually preached. That is to be no better than the terrorist extremists who use their vengeful religious writings to justify violence and killing. Some so-called Christians manage to sabotage the true Gospel, even to this day. But just look at the main thrust of Jesus’ teaching this morning – from which we realise, by the way, the origin of the sense we often give to the word ‘talent’ now, and in which he illustrates the real call of the kingdom of heaven. Those words, ‘unto everyone that hath shall be given, and ye shall have abundance : but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath’, may sound at first harsh and callous. But they should not be understood as some manifesto for the ‘prosperity Gospel’ blasphemously purveyed by certain mega-church organisations. They are really expressing the simple blessedness and the continuing fertility of maximising our gifts and our abilities in the service of God and of others, and not wasting them only on ourselves.

At the same time, though, my second reaction to Biblical Eschatology is to find in it so much contemporary resonance. So many of the scenes which our news bulletins currently bombard us with – whether of the destruction and killing of war, or the devastation of extreme weather patterns brought on by climate change – are rightly described as nothing short of apocalyptic. They seem to embody Paul’s words: ‘For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them’. We are seeming to find in these biblical scenarios less about future judgement, and more increasingly a description of the horrific lived-reality of numerous peoples in the world here and now. We may well be justified in reinterpreting the ‘day of the Lord’ – as indeed the Jewish prophets did throughout biblical revelation, when in their own changing circumstances they described it variously in terms of comfort and assurance rather than threat.

I acknowledged just now the part that extreme religious writings are playing in world conflicts. But in a recent book, ‘The Imaginations we live by’, James Walters – Professor in Practice at the Department of International Relations at the L.S.E, and an Anglican Priest – makes the point that a variety of imaginative frameworks shape all our thoughts and attitudes. One of these frameworks, he says, can be ‘an over-optimistic imagination of social progress and of the ability of science and technology to eliminate human want and suffering on their own’, whereas religious imagination, properly shaped by scriptural texts, patterns of prayer and collective worship can build up a measured picture of the world and of our place within it. However, he admits that this positive influence of faith is sidelined in ‘the modern Western-European understanding of religion as an essentially private matter – personal rather than social, spiritual rather than political, supplementary rather than fundamental to everyday life’. But, however the world may trivialise the place of faith, we who follow Christ know that his way is concerned with the ultimate, transcendent realities, and gives answer to those who shrug and say indifferently, ‘the Lord will not do good, neither will he do evil’, to quote Zephaniah. His way gives answer to humanity’s persistence in continuing old acquisitive patterns of behaviour, in planning which exploits the earth and fellow humans, when increasingly ‘they shall… build houses, but not inhabit them; and they shall plant vineyards, but not drink the wine thereof’, ‘when neither their silver nor their gold shall be able to deliver them’. Christ’s answer is for us to follow the gentle rule of his Kingdom, expressed by Paul in his encouragement to the Thessalonians:

‘putting on the breastplate of faith and love; and for an helmet, the hope of salvation. For God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ, Who died for us, that, whether we wake or sleep, we should live together with him.’

Today’s Gospel is the immediate continuation of last week’s. There Simon Peter in a moment of extraordinary insight understood, or so we thought, who and what Jesus was – in his words then declares “The Messiah, the Son of the Living God.”

Today, following Mark’s order of things, St Matthew takes the narrative forward. Jesus continues to instruct his disciples and to show them that “he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things… and be killed, and on the third day be raised. And Peter took him and began to rebuke him, saying “God forbid, Lord! This shall never happen to you.” But he turned and said to Peter “Get me behind me Satan!”

It’s quite a dramatic turn around, is it not? Just before this Simon son of John is named formally as the Rock, the foundation of the Church itself, against whom the powers of death will not prevail, and then at the next turn, this rock-solid foundation is being addressed by Jesus as Satan, the accuser, the tempter, the antithesis of God’s plans and directive power.

And then to the punchline perhaps: Jesus makes clear that any who follow HIM, must deny themselves, take up their cross and follow him. To be saved is to lose, to lose is to find true life in Him.

Taking up the cross, each of us having a cross to bear – tend to be slightly pietistic, and possibly rather depressing terms that Christians use. Sometimes one might even say of a difficult friend or relative that they are the cross we might be having to shoulder. It’s not difficult to see how this terminology has become pretty standard. In the United Kingdom at least, persecution is not something most Christians are acquainted with. I am sure when this term was used, almost certainly, by Jesus, and remembered as the Gospels were being written down, persecution was a reality. Peter had been crucified, by tradition upside down, and most of the Apostles, including Paul had died martyrs’ deaths. For most, crucifixion would have been normal, although Nero took mass torture and capital punishment, particularly for Christians, to new depths of awfulness.

At a personal level now, the recognition of our frailty, our inabilities, the difficulties which life has dealt us, all of these, we might characterise as our cross. The human condition, upon which thinkers of all kinds have reflected in so many ways, might itself be a way of describing what Milan Kundera termed The Unbearable Lightness of Being. I am not absolutely sure that Jesus meant that, that life itself was a cross. But for so many, weighed down with the intolerable anxieties of existence, it’s understandable that life itself might be seen as a cross, however tragic that this is the case.

The character of sin, our fallen nature, and living with an acute awareness of human degeneracy, for many towering Christian figures has been of profound importance. Martin Luther’s terror at his own sinfulness, triggered a Reformation, the shock-waves of which we are still feeling. We may ourselves feel burdened by shame, guilts and fears which threaten to overwhelm us. Ministry to those affected by suicide, acquaints us with the after-effects of just such overpowering feelings of despair at human limitation. There are so many in the history of the Church, saints and sinners alike, who have borne the weight of the cross, it takes so many different forms, but let it not leave us in despair.

Without being glib or morose, might we seek from the great treasure-trove of the Church’s medicine chest? Sin’s darkness can overwhelm, that’s its danger if we are not careful, but Jesus’s words to Peter about the gates of hell not prevailing against him, take us towards the Church’s teaching on forgiveness and grace. Repentance, confession together are the sacramental reality which unburdens us the weight of sin. When we confess our sins, however inadequately, the promise of forgiveness outweighs anything lacking. The chance for personal confession is always on offer in the Church of England, with the comforting words that “none must, some should, all may.” The unburdening of the weight of sin in personal confession can be a very wonderful release, the weight of the Cross can be laid down.

May we return to the cross itself for one moment before concluding. I am very struck by a contemporary writer, who, rather despite himself, has found that from being a popular ancient historian he has become something of a Christian apologist. You may have come across his excellent podcast, recommended to me by a parishioner: The Rest is History. This is Tom Holland, whose book Pax, has been recently published and I have not yet read, but his book Dominion I have, and really enjoyed. It is the cross itself with which he begins in the discussion of what he calls, the making of the Western Mind. Drawing on Horace, Tacitus and Seneca, Holland reminds us who view the cross as a symbol of a faith, and possibly an adornment, that in the 1^st c. it was a brutal instrument of utter humiliation. It existed in a coercive society as the means of suppressing those who underpinned it, slaves. The Romans knew it was abhorrent, they avoided mention of it. “Some deaths were so vile, so squalid that it was best to draw a veil across them entirely.” St Paul of course said it first, “we preach Christ crucified, the cross a stumbling block to Jews and to Greeks (that’s everyone else) foolishness.” When Jesus said “take up your cross” and how necessary it was for the Messiah to die this way, he would have revolted his hearers. This is why Peter is so vehement in his reaction.

Simon Peter had been named the rock, but he wanted to disassociate the Messiahship of Jesus from the Messiah’s need to die. In this the rock became himself a rock of stumbling.

If Peter is in some measure us, let us learn from this, not to make God is our own image. Words from what for many was their confirmation hymn:

O let me see thy footmarks

And in them plant mine own

O guide me, call me draw me

Uphold me to the end

And then in heaven receive me

My saviour and my friend.

Today’s readings present on the one hand in the Book of Exodus the calling of the Children of Israel to be Kingdom and Nation of Priests, and on the other the naming of the 12. The first is in some measure the precursor of the second of course. Just as Moses sets forth before Israel how God had formed them as a nation, so Jesus’s gathering of the 12 is his reconstitution of Israel. In both cases this is born of divine compassion.

Ye have seen what I did unto the Egyptians, and how I bare you on eagles’ wings, and brought you unto myself

But when Jesus saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion on them, because they fainted, and were scattered abroad, as sheep having no shepherd God’s self-identification with his people is from the outset – when they were suffering in Egypt, he bound himself to them. In turn Jesus has compassion on the crowds, and the 12 become the new structure of a divinely ordered nation, once again bound to God in this personal way, which in the New Paschal Mystery, with Jesus’s death as the lamb of God of the renewed Passover.

These great themes of adoption, Passover, divine compassion and feasting, which the Passover meal is par-excellence, are responded to in the motet we shall hear during communion today, Byrd’s incomparable Ave verum corpus.

 HAIL, true Body born of the Virgin Mary, who truly suffered as a sacrifice upon the Cross for man, whose pierced side flowed with water and with blood, be for us a foretaste [of heaven] in the trial of death.  O sweet and holy Jesus, Son of Mary, have mercy on me.

It’s one of the devotional hymns associated with the Feast of Corpus Christi, which we marked just over a week ago, always observed on the Thursday after Trinity Sunday.

As we are having this motet today as part of the wider music festival that shapes the month of June, I wanted to say something about the composer William Byrd born 1540 died in 1623. It is an important anniversary.

It was not without significance that two pieces, two very different pieces of William Byrd’s were sung during the Coronation in May. Something of the contrast between them tells us about the man and the times in which he composed. His place in the firmament of English choral music is so important, and we have been so lucky these last three weeks to hear music by him.

And William Byrd holds a very special place in my musical sensibilities, 30 years ago this Summer we had the Byrd 4 part as the mass setting. In a way the powerful musical impulses of work represents a striving to hold in tension almost irreconcilable dichotomies of faith being battled over in the 16th, which only music can transcend, operating in spheres way beyond words.

Byrd’s life is hard to piece together, not unlike Tallis his teacher before him, there are fragments only about their early lives and there is an element of conjecture. Certainly from 1569 Byrd was a gentleman of the Chapel Royal, a musician at Elizabeth’s court. But there is much evidence to suggest he may have sung there too a boy, and so was in Royal musical circles, if not service, for much of his long 80 year life. In a way as a Catholic, as we shall discover, in the reigns of Elizabeth and James, he hid in plain sight, under their noses. They were cultural connoisseurs, Elizabeth particularly, and for all her independent spirit, was clear that she had no interest in “making windows into men’s souls”. A genius on the scale of Byrd, pupil of his great master Tallis was to be harnessed not fettered. Indeed, Elizabeth gave them the publishing rights for all published music and music paper in her realm from 1575-1595 – although Tallis died in 1585. An important monopoly its publications give us some insight into their remarkable range as composers, and their ability both to accommodate in their lifetimes the ebb and flow of ecclesiastical change.

The first of Byrd’s compositions played in May was his beautiful piece Prevent us O Lord. In the tradition of Tallis’s deliberate clear propositional Protestant style, it sets to music words of a collect in ways which underline meaning. Its elegance is assured, clean, pure and didactic. There is no doubting its intention of the dependence of the faithful upon God in all things. It was composed we think in 1580 – as fevered anti-Catholic feeling was running high, Jesuit missionaries were coming to England, and plots against the Queen were emerging. It is a statement of Court religion, utterly reliant on the the Book of Common Prayer and Elizabeth’s Settlement.

The Gloria from the Mass for Four Voices, the setting we heard two Sundays ago, was sung soon after Prevent us O Lord. Each of them bracketed the swearing of the controversial Coronation Oath. The Gloria came as a Catholic blast just after it in fact. Its origin is very interesting.

It was written about 1593, maybe earlier. For some time by then Byrd had taken something of a back seat at the Chapel Royal. He still composed music of all sorts for use at court, but in his retreat with his many children in Essex, under the patronage of the Petre family at Ingatstone Hall, he wrote music for secret celebrations of the catholic mass, by missionary priests. Not to attend worship locally as an Anglican, which he did not, resulted in heavy fines which he paid, was one thing, to attend secret masses and to write for them was extremely dangerous.

He did this while on the payroll of the Chapel Royal, and still dedicating work to the Queen.

We can only speculate on what drew him from the Established religion and who knew what about his practice of the old faith, that meant he was able to survive with relatively little scrutiny, although there were moments of sanction, and he was not spared considerable fines.

Elizabeth did not cause him to confess, and he leaves us almost no words of his own, but his music tells its own tale.

There are scholars like Diarmaid Muculloch who maintain that the choral tradition, central at the Tudor Court throughout the 16^th c with all its changes, and in the Cathedrals, was the single biggest brake on full reformation in England. I am inclined to agree. Byrd, and Tallis before him, exemplified what the reformers were so keen to underline as essential: musical adornment should merely point the meaning of words of the new liturgy. But behind this clear and deliberate and beautiful music, were men whose entire lives since 1505 in the case of Tallis and 1540 in the case of Byrd, had been shaped by music making in Catholic settings. Tallis as lay singer in a monastery, until it was dissolved in 1540, Waltham Abbey, Byrd, probably as a boy in the chapel royal, during the reign of Catholic Queen Mary (with a choir directed by Tallis). Mary’s heart was buried in St James’s in the chapel itself under the choir-stalls. I like to think it was buried there because her heart was lost in the sublime music-making of Tallis in her reign. Byrd was always loyal and understanding of his Patron Elizabeth, but his heart was lost too, in that ancient inheritance of the Catholic faith, whose residue, despite the convulsions of the age, and because of his quiet persistence, was not lost in Anglicanism.

It is easy to see why one late-16th-century music collector described Byrd as “a glory to our race, and a nightingale to our people”.

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

In our Order of Service here at St Mark’s we are invited to ‘draw near with faith’.  In faith to put aside our worldly concerns and focus on our relationship with God.

On this Maundy Thursday, when we reflect upon the Last Supper that Jesus shared with his disciples, we learn that they too are invited by Jesus to ‘draw near with faith’.  At that particular moment it meant to gather around Jesus to share his body and blood in the bread and wine. Here, nearness reaches its zenith.

This ultimate nearness is attacked by Satan who imitates God in terrible ways. The aim is to destroy Jesus, who has rejected his offer of power and possessions, and what better way to imitate than entering Judas so that Judas will betray Jesus. This nearness prompts Judas into betrayal but, unlike his disciples, Jesus knows what is going on and knows that it is ‘to fulfil the scripture’.  He knows that his death is coming but ‘the Son of Man has been glorified and God has been glorified in him’.

Satan, then, does not win the day. What prompts his demonic deeds?  Across the centuries scholars and theologians have given a varied response.  My preference is for the view of the 13^th century scholastic theologian, Thomas Aquinas who held that Satan was once probably the very highest angel who, through pride, fell immediately after Creation, seducing people to follow him.  Can you imagine the agony of having been very close to God and then remote from him?  As they disobeyed God, pain and hardship were also the fate of Adam and Eve but we know that God, through his son Jesus, has reconciled this fall from grace which allows us to ‘draw near with faith’.  As the Book of Revelation expresses it: ‘the ancient serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan, has been conquered by the blood of the lamb’.  All is well then.  As St Paul  wrote in his letter to the Ephesians: ‘you who were afar have been brought near by the blood of Christ’.

If the disciples, and we ourselves, wish to stay near to God then it only requires one commandment to be kept.  As John’s Gospel gives it: ‘I give you a new commandment, that you love one another’.  An expression of this love is to welcome all peoples. Welcome unites us and helps us to help each other. This is a strong theme in the Jewish Passover at which there is always a space for the stranger.  Today marks the beginning of the Christian understanding of Passover, which reminds us of the Jewish idea of escape from slavery.  In the current debate on immigration rules, we need to keep this in mind.  Particularly now, on Maundy Thursday, which is also known as ‘the Day of the Reconciliation of the Penitents’ when sinners were welcomed back on this day.

So let us, on this Maundy Thursday, renew our commitment to God by drawing near in faith, being the welcoming presence, and demonstrating love for one another as God loves us.

AMEN

1 Kings 17: v15. “And she went according to the saying of Elijah: and
she, and he, and her house, did eat many days.”
John 2: v5. “His mother saith unto the servants, Whatsoever he saith
unto you, do it.”

Welcome to the Fourth Sunday of Epiphany, when both our readings
remind us of God’s limitless and loving bounty, and how to readily
receive it. The spoiler hides in plain sight as do our exemplars: a widow
of drought-ravaged Zarephath and the mother of Jesus. Little wonder
the message is well camouflaged: the widow shares her miracle with
the prophet Elijah and the mother of Jesus with her divine son as he
transforms water into wine at a wedding in Cana. The widow, her son,
and the prophet had no food; a family wedding had run out of wine with
Jesus on the guest list. So please grab your spiritual sunglasses as we
gaze upon this dazzling surface, perhaps to glimpse the sublime and
ever-present relationship of God to his people.

Today we revisit the third “shewing” or miracle of Epiphany at a
marriage feast in Cana. The arrival of the Magi is the first epiphany,
when the Christ child’s divinity is revealed to gentiles. An essential
start, even if its participants numbered just 3, the setting was humble to
point of impoverishment, and political powers had them in their sights.
The second manifestation occurred in the River Jordan when the holy
spirit descended like a dove at Jesus’ baptism, causing his cousin to
suddenly recognise Jesus as Son and Sacrifice of God. We complete
the trine of manifestations this Sunday, then close the season next
Thursday with celebration of Jesus’ presentation in the Temple, timed
to honour the new infant 33 days post circumcision and his new mother
40 days post-partum.

John raises the curtain on Epiphany 3 in Cana, a small rural village a
few kilometres north of the small town of Nazareth, where Jesus has
lived amongst his relatives and their extended tribe without great
report…though not for much longer. Mother and son once again
appear at an official family occasion we can bracket with the
Presentation, albeit some 30 years later. There are changes:
Mary is now identified as the “Mother of Jesus” and Joseph is no longer
present. As the surviving eldest son, Jesus is head of the family,
though his invitation includes the first disciples he recently called:
Simon Peter and his brother Andrew; John’s older brother James and
perhaps John himself, sons of Zebedee and possibly cousins of Jesus;
Philip and Nathaniel. Drawn from family and close connections, these
recent recruits are at the starting point of a remarkable journey with the
incarnate God, poised to step onto the world stage. The countdown to
calvary has begun: building the faith and resilience of an inner circle is
essential.

John will make the task of building belief in the divine identity of Jesus
the foundation of his gospel, structured by seven statements (“ego
eimi” or I AM that I AM) and seven signs to illustrate the God-character
of Jesus. The signs all point to Christ as the incarnate God; six of them
are found only in John, with turning water into wine at Cana the very
first one. He also reminds us of their symbolic nature, selected from the
near countless acts of healing, manifesting, and commanding the
natural world that made up Christ’s daily life…when simply being in his
presence, touching the hem of his robe, transformed those with faith.
Timing also counts in wedding matters at Cana: John tells us that the
event occurred “on the third day”. The surface starts to shimmer…for
we are 2000 years advanced in time and can hear echoes of Genesis
from the Old Testament, with strongest tones gonging the New
Testament resurrection of the glorified Christ on the third day. I imagine
these would have sounded loudest for the gospel writer and evangelist,
as well.

The third day of the week would be a Tuesday, considered by Jews to
be especially favourable for a wedding – because the account of the
third day of creation features “…And God saw that it was good” twice
in honour of a double dip appearance of dry land, followed by grass,
and self-seeding herbs and fruit trees to grow upon it sustainably. It
certainly turned out to be the under-prepared bridegroom’s lucky day.
There is also narrative reason to mention the third day in context of the
first week of Jesus’ ministry on earth…the week the Son of God creates
an infrastructure to deliver a divine plan to redeem his fallen people
through his ministry, crucifixion, and resurrection. Day 1 takes place by
the Jordan, with John the Baptist, Simon Peter and his brother Andrew.
Day 2 happens somewhere between the Jordan and the hills and
valleys of central Galilee, where Philip of Bethsaida and Nathanael of
Cana are called (the later initially asking the immortal question” Can
there any good thing come out of Nazareth?” – there must have been a
local rivalry).

Day 3 does not begin with Jesus. It begins with an occasion, a location
and one specified person “…there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee
and the mother of Jesus was there.” Then we learn that Jesus and his
disciples were invited to join, and just a bit further along, that the
brothers of Jesus were also present. Clearly this is an important family
event. No sooner had he arrived, dust still on his feet, than Mary
informs him “they have no wine”.

A failure of wine supply was more than a clumsy hint it was time to
collect your coats and leave; it was a serious embarrassment and legal
breach. Provisions relating to all aspects of the bride’s married life were
agreed and warranted in the ketubah or marriage contract, signed at the
time of betrothal and enforceable under Jewish law. The burden was
on the groom’s family to offer mohar (bride price) to her father and
mattan (wedding gifts from the groom) to her. Weddings were major,
lifetime events in this time and culture, shaped as it was by concepts of
law and honour. The entire extended family and surrounding community
were involved. The party spanned days, usually a full week,
proportionate when we remember that betrothals typically lasted at
least a year before the marriage could be celebrated and the couple
begin life under the same roof.

During that time, the bridegroom prepared for his responsibilities –
building and furnishing a home for his bride, most usually as an
extension or annex to his father’s house; putting aside resources for the
wedding; preparing for the future. Only when he was ready did the
bridegroom proceed to the bride’s father’s house to let the family know
it was time at last for the ceremony and feast. If a bridegroom and by
extension, his family, fell at the hurdle of hospitality during the first week
of the marriage when they had convened the gathering, it brought
shame, and would damage the family and relationship for life.

Perhaps you, too, have also known times when it felt as if the wine had
run out just when needed most. Like us, the Mother of Jesus does not
know what to do, but she knows who to ask – Jesus, her son and her
Christ – this she does, immediately, with direct and unshakeable faith.
When he responds to her as the Son of God – “Woman, what have I to
do with thee?” – instead of as a son or family member, she moves on in
faith, instructing the servants to “do it”, whatsoever he says.

Fortunately, it seems Mary is involved in the proceedings and known to
the servants; most significantly, it is Jesus who asks this task of them
as only the son of God could. Still, I am staggered that the servants do
the extra work without protest or delay: six stone vessels to fill with 20
to 30 gallons of water, weighing in at 170 – 250 pounds not including
the jar itself. Not like building the pyramids, but certainly hard work.
Not to mention the obvious: it wasn’t water that was in short supply!
She also gives us a masterclass in communication with the living God
who requires no instruction or commentary from us. We need only
come to him: ask, listen, then do what your saviour says, with the help
of other servants of God. The resulting transformation will be more
astounding that anything we could have imagined…as in Cana, the
miracle happens when the wine runs out and we realise we are
powerless to refill it.

I have come to believe that what Mary hears in Jesus’ reply, often
characterised as harsh or dismissive, is what she knows in her heart.
The sideways look of love and understanding that passes between
Jesus and his Mother in the artwork on the cover of today’s Order of
Service tells this story. And it can be said no better than the words of
her Magnificat “For he has looked with favour on his lowly servant.
From this day all generations will call me blessed: The Almighty has
done great things for me, And holy is his Name.”

Mary may understand that everyone passes through their own time of
birth and death whilst her beloved son is destined for a life like no other.
But did she understand what Jesus meant when he said “my time is not
yet come” on that day in Cana? That the last cup he would fill with wine
and provide to a feast on this earth would represent his spilt blood and
sacrifice? That he himself must drink the cup of judgment and death
that rightfully belongs to us to save us from sin and restore us to the
realms of joy and bliss, abundance and eternal life? We cannot know,
but I do believe she lived and died in acceptance of and gratitude for
her special relationship with God. Also, that she was right to be
confident Jesus would demonstrate his response to the question “what
have I to do with thee?” with his own multiplicity of meaning.

For Jesus does enter the narrative, directing the servants clearly and
without drawing attention to himself, re-purposing water vessels
designed for ritual cleansing; there was a lot of that called for at
mealtimes so they stood at hand. After all 6 are filled to the brim, he
tells the workers to draw out a sample and take it to the head Steward,
who pronounces it an excellent vintage, surprised that the truly good
wine has been kept for last! He was clearly none the wiser about
whence it came, the bridegroom equally bemused. It is a nearly private
miracle, when only Jesus and his mother; the disciples who witnessed
glory and believed; and the servants who did the work; who know the
source of the wine. Job done, and in God’s own time, remarkable when
you think that up to 180 gallons of vintage wine was manifested, surely
enough to cellar and supply the happy couple for all their love feasts
and celebrations.

Jesus’ intervention references the Old Testament scripture tradition,
where the metaphor of a wedding describes the relationship of God and
his people; bound together by covenant but living in permanent danger
of a dry party through the people’s unfaithfulness and disobedience.
Scarcity of wine signifies separation, loss, and withdrawal of blessing.
The only substance water is transformed into is blood, as in the deadly
first Plague upon the Egyptians told in Exodus. Judgment and
separation can be overcome only if his vibrant new wine displaces the
old water of obligation and tears.

Jesus embodies the messianic promise of sweet wine flowing at the
ultimate wedding feast of love and true intimacy; a rich new wine that
cleanses God’s people from the inside, renewing and restoring health
and righteousness in a profound and permanent way, unlike the
external application of water and laws. This wine is given in endless
abundance and joy by the Lord of the Feast, the Bridegroom Jesus
Christ.

I think that is why the bride is not introduced at this wedding; she is a
place holder for each one of us, called and liberated to always be the
bride, never the lesser bridesmaid. As we move along the way of
redemption, we take on more of the image of God in which we were
first created. The wine keeps on pouring, inviting us to take our place
at the table with the God of our joy and gladness, now and always. This
is the everlasting miracle of the wedding in Cana, the first and
fundamental sign in the gospel of John. AMEN

Happy new year and if you are Orthodox, Merry Christmas to you! It is of course the Orthodox Christmas, though William was most disappointed to learn I have never seen the Orthodox practice that we are going to do today actually put into practice, even though I lived in an Orthodox country!

I did however see people cutting holes in the ice, and going for a swim – in Russian it is called being a морж (walrus!). There was a group of crazy English people in Moscow who did indulge in this ice swimming, but even though I was invited I had the good sense to decline!

As William said, we’ve jumped about thirty years in two days: from the Epiphany – the wise men coming to Jesus in his infancy – to today, with the Baptism of Christ.

But I can’t read today’s text without one big question striking me: why did Jesus need to be baptised? Let’s think this through:

• John the Baptist explicitly provides a baptism of repentance
• We know Jesus is the one who takes our sins. He doesn’t need to repent
• John recognised the problem: when he saw Jesus approaching, he knew full well who should be baptising whom! It’s like me showing off my football skills, and then Lionel Messi walks onto the pitch. I know I’m in deep trouble!

So let’s be clear: the baptism was a baptism of repentance. But the gospel tells us Jesus was not repenting. Indeed, John is the one who is repenting. And Jesus says “Let it happen. Go with it. This fulfils all righteousness”. Now, whatever this answer means, it satisfied John, it satisfied Matthew and it satisfied the first readers of his gospel, the early Christians.

So, what is going on?

First, Matthew places this baptism at the start of Jesus’ ministry. Baptism is about cleansing and rebirth, so in a sense it is launching the ministry of Jesus. It is a launch.

Secondly, this baptism is taking place in the Jordan River. This is where Elijah handed over his ministry to Elisha. This is where Moses handed over to Joshua. This is where John’s ministry is decreasing, and that of Jesus is coming to the fore. This is the change of old to new.

Thirdly, the Jordan is where God’s people crossed into the promised land. And in that crossing, they emulated the crossing of the Reed Sea as they exited Egypt. This was the escape from slavery and tyranny, and the other was grasping the promises and bringing in a new reality. New identities were beginning: you went in on one side a people in a desert, nomads; you came out the other in your homeland, people on a mission. This is commissioning and the giving of identity.

Fourth, Jesus is Lord. In other words, he is the one who heads his people. This means he embodies the people of God. Just as King Charles III will, on 6^th May 2023, symbolically die to himself and pick up the mantle of representing all of us, embodying us as a nation into one person before God, so too does Jesus. Jesus takes the people of God, leads us into the waters to be washed and reborn fresh and new. Jesus is not repenting personally, but he is taking us, his people, through the waters of repentance with him.

That is why the Bible is adamant that we must be In Jesus, to Dwell In Him. To Abide In Him. If we are ‘in’ him, we go with him through the waters of baptism and find forgiveness In Him. We go into death and then life with Jesus.

Fifthly, Jesus is showing us how to behave. The people reading Matthew’s gospel were Jews who wanted to know “how do we live righteously? How do we fulfil righteousness?” Matthew mentions righteousness seven times – a holy number. We know it was a concern.

And then along comes Jesus to John, and says this is how we “fulfil all righteousness”. Thus doing what God wants, obeying his commands, is how we fulfil righteousness. As such, the baptism of Jesus is a righteous thing – and righteous people will emulate it.

At the end of his gospel, Matthew gives us the great commission with its list of things believers should be doing: “Go into all the world and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey all I have commanded you”. In other words, fulfilling righteousness is obeying the commission to make disciples, baptising them, and teaching them obedience to Jesus.

That’s a lot of theology! Let’s recap:

• we have the launch of Jesus’ ministry;
• the handing over and change from old to new;
• commissioning and new identities;
• the embodiment of his people;
• and a call to obey him if we are to be righteous.

Baptism: it is copying our Lord and saviour. It’s joining with him, following in his footsteps. It is obedience.

I remember the faces of parents who bring their children for baptism, and how they are so shocked when you explain to them that their lovely little baptism for their little baby child is actually that child’s funeral! But that is what baptism is! It is the death of the old, and coming out of the water again as a new person. A new start. Dedicated to live for a new purpose to serve God and be righteous.

And then, as new people, we can hear the voice: “This is my Son, this is my Daughter, in whom I am well pleased”.

And this new life of righteousness begins with baptism, a conscious, public choice to follow Christ.

If you’ve not been baptised and you want to follow Jesus, then speak to me or William and we will help you take this step of obedience and make this sign to the world that a new life is beginning.

If you have been baptised, then remember what it means:

1. the launch a new life,
2. the change from old to new;
3. commissioning a new identity;
4. oneness with the people of God (embodiment),
5. and obeying him to be righteous.

Of course in today’s world, pouring water on someone, or submersing them in public, is a weird thing to do. And so too is what we will be doing today – blessing the canal.

But actually, life is full of outward reflections of inward, spiritual truths: in church, we anoint with oil; many kneel for prayer, and cross ourselves.

But outside of church we also do symbolic thing: we humans leap about to sonic waves, called dancing. We flap our metacarpi together to reward a good performance – we clap!

And we exchange and wear circular chemical elements that are transition metals with a group 11 element and atomic number of 79 in a public forum – we give wedding rings!

These are all symbolic actions, and they have meaning. We are not being superstitious when we do them, we are reminding ourselves that materialism is not everything, and that our outward actions reflect our inward constitution.

If someone is baptised, they are saying to the world “I am changing, metaphorically dying. The old me is dead, and I am now someone new. I want to live differently, to start again. This outward baptism shows an inward change.”

If someone blesses the waters of the canal, we are saying to the world “We Christians are people who live under the authority of Jesus, and he and us want the best for everyone who lives and works on the canal.

We want businesses to flourish. We want health, and safety. And that’s because God wants these things. God wants to restore and reconcile ALL THINGS, all of creation, to himself.”

But like with baptism, restoration of all things happens when the current ways of living are brought to God, made to die in the water, and then brought out the other side, relaunched in new life under His authority.

• So join us today in proclaiming God’s desire to restore all things as we bless the canal
• Reflect on where you are – should you be baptised in obedience to Christ?
• And if you were baptised, ask yourself, are you living faithfully to your new birth, under the Lordship of Jesus?

An old man was sitting in his chair in Bethlehem when a young man walked up to him, with a notebook and pencil in hand. “What are you selling?” cried out the old man. “I’m not selling anything sir”, replied the young man. “I’m taking the census”.

“The what?” said the old man. “The census” the young man shouted back, noting the old man was deaf. “Emperor Augustus has decreed that a census be taken of the whole world, so that we know how many people are in the empire”.

“Well” said the old man, “You are wasting your time with me. I have no idea how many people there are…”

I began the service in Moscow last year with that joke. I swear, one person out of the hundred laughed, most people looked confused, and the chaplain groaned. The similar reaction from you here in London has convinced me that this joke should be retired…!

Well, Merry Christmas! And Christmas is a story about GOOD NEWS and about SALVATION. It leaves us with Mary wondering what is happening, and shepherds marvelling on the hillsides. And as the story progresses, faithful people in the temple are bowled over by the child, God’s salvation! The story asks us to read on, and leaves us wondering what this good news is, what the saviour is going to do… for this baby is not the be-all and end-all – the baby is going to turn to a child and then an adult.

The baby is thus a metaphor for our own lives and faiths. Christmas is nice – babies are great, but they don’t stay that way. The child must grow, so too must we. As we all grow, we realise that life is complicated and hard, and that we are in warfare, and we need to be saved. Christmas is the good news that salvation is here.

We all know we as humans have problems. Our pride, ambition and selfishness causes pain and brokenness all the time. But we also have structural problems: we continue to take flights, drive cars, and buy products that are worsening the environment, knowing that Christians in Africa and Asia are paying the price. We continue to do this, despite knowing it’s making the world worse. We, and all humans, are, quite simply, hopelessly selfish. We need saving from ourselves. You need saving from you.

So God came in a man – Jesus Christ – showing another way. God could have come like a Hollywood superhero, but instead he washed feet, wept with grieving people, touched sick people, and protected children. He showed us a new way of living. He embraced those parts of life we run from. He calls the people who follow him to love and serve one another. In serving each other, the world will know God.

This is good news: if I decide to follow Jesus, and change how I live, then I am rescued from my slavery to sin, I am forgiven, and I am saved to live a different life! And so as I know more about Jesus, as I worship and read the bible and let him minister to me in prayer, I become more like Jesus. And I become more aware of others, more caring and compassionate, less bothered about the clothes I wear, and more bothered about clothing other people.

You can’t say that a world full of people acting like Jesus would be worse than this one. It would be an amazing place to live!

And it all began in a baby in Bethlehem, announced to the world as good news. That’s the good news the church should be proclaiming at Christmas! The gift of a baby, a life full of potential that was fulfilled.

Many of you will know of John Newton. He was in the 1700s a slave trader for many years, but when he discovered Jesus, his life changed. He matured, and followed his Lord on a new path, leading him to actively campaign against slavery. As he grew up further, he used his money to support liberation, and he ended up being vicar of St Mary Woolnoth, near the Bank of England, and writing hymns. He encouraged William Wilberforce when William was questioning the effectiveness of his campaigning work. And so John Newton’s legacy still echoes down the centuries. That’s the difference following Jesus can make!

Today, the birth of the child reminds us of potential. If or when you decide to follow Jesus, you begin life again like a child. The Christ child walks ahead, and if you follow him, who knows where you might end up.

You might end up like John Newton (and me! – poor you!) in church ministry. Or you might end up delivering aid to people in distress.

Or you might do something less exotic but no less important, bringing friends and family together more often, deepening precious relationships and healing old wounds.

But whatever it is, this Christmas, do decide to follow the one who is good news and who is our saviour. Welcome the baby, but also embrace the potential that he calls you to grow into. As the baby becomes an adult, follow him into spiritual adulthood, and see where he might lead you.

“The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and there shall no torment touch them.” The requiem’s prayers encompass emotions around death: fear, separation, love, memory, hope, thankfulness. This prayer for the dead calls the faithful to face mortality and finitude and situate them within the loving purposes of God, whose justice is true and who longs to forgive. We pray for eternal rest for the souls of the righteous, in the hand of God, beyond the torments of Hades, awaiting the final resurrection and joyful consummation of all things.

How very good to welcome Fr William Whitcombe, who serves in the Chapel Royal. Normally he and his colleagues would be keeping vigil with the body of Prince Philip before the His Royal Highness’s final obsequies. Thank you, William for being with us. We feel a very personal and particular connection with Prince Philip here, through our beloved Anne Griffiths, who worked with Prince Philip (albeit with a break) from 1952, dying in office. It was not insignificant that 48 hours after Anne’s memorial service, in May 2017, which Prince Philip attended, that he announced his retirement. Amongst Royal representatives and many guests and from the Household were members of the wider Mountbatten family, attending in their own right, in recognition of Anne’s encyclopaedic grasp of their history.

In speaking now, I am mindful of the Prince’s well reported comment that “the brain cannot absorb what the posterior cannot endure…”

Much has been said already, in moving tributes, especially by the Duke’s close family. I wish only to make a few points, beyond underlining what Joanna said on Sunday about Prince Philip’s vision in founding St George’s House in Windsor: a place of high level discussion, before the term networking was even coined.

On Sunday, Simone Chambers kindly sang the Kontakion for the Dead. This was in memory not only of Prince Philip, but her own 97 year old mother-in-law, Joan, who also died last week and whom we remembered on Tuesday. Our thoughts remain with Mike and family.

The Kontakion is a funeral text from the Eastern Orthodoxy, which in the last 100 years or so the Church of England has borrowed. In 1863 William, Prince of Denmark became King George I of Greece. His marriage to Olga of Russia, assured the Greek Church that the Danish prince’s Lutheranism, would be replaced in subsequent Royal generations by indigenous Orthodoxy. Prince Philip’s Lutheran mother, Princess Alice of Battenburg, converted to Orthodoxy in 1928. This was of her own accord some years after her marriage to Prince Philip’s father, Andrew of Greece. I will return to her story shortly, which itself is very moving, but I would make one point about Orthodoxy in relation to Prince Philip’s heritage. I know Orthodoxy well, having shared my last church with an Orthodox congregation. There are many ways to differentiate Orthodox and Western Christianity. The simplest is a visual distinction in their respective architecture.

St Mark’s own high pointed arches, and great spire point us to heaven – typical of the Western idea of striving upwards. Eastern churches are known by their domes. Orthodox thereby presents a vision of heaven descending to earth. There are big implications of this for how each views creation. There is nothing wrong with reaching towards the heavens, but the vision of heaven stooping to earth is a reassuring one. And one which reminds us that the stuff of creation, and we ourselves, are heavenly creatures, in our essence, and the world around us charged with divine potential. It’s no surprise there is no worked out doctrine of the Fall in Orthodoxy. But there is a very developed Theology of creation. We can see in Prince Philip’s love of nature and grasp how concern for the deep interconnectedness of all life, ran through his thinking.

He was no “bunny hugger” (not a turn of phrase to be used after a glass of wine). But he understood the delicate ecological balance of the environment. It should be added, remembering Anne’s work in his library, that there were nearly as many works of Theology as conservation on its shelves.

It may just be that the combination of both disciplines holds the solution to the aversion of climate catastrophe. And if that is true, Prince Philip will have been one of those who paved that path.

There may be a key to understanding Prince Philip’s motivation and faith in exploring his mother’s continuation of the mission of her Aunt Ella; Elizabeth of Russia. Did you hear Prince Charles’s story, when his grandmother announced her hope to be buried on the Mt of Olives near Grand Duchess Ella, at the monastery of St Mary Magdalene? The family exclaimed some concern about not being able to visit her grave. She replied confoundingly (whilst in Buckingham Palace at the time, 1967) “Nonsense there’s a bus which runs from Athens once a day.” Whilst working amongst the most deprived, during the privations of war, unbeknownst to anyone, she gave refuge to a Jewish family. Without her they would have been deported and murdered. Alice is commemorated at Yad Vashem as Righteous Amongst the Gentiles. There could be no more fitting resting place for her than the Mt of Olives overlooking the ancient site of the Jerusalem Temple. The place three world religions believe the Messiah will reclaim at his final Advent. It was to this otherwise tranquil place that Anne took us in 2015. In the tomb’s alcove were many laminated photographs and family trees, which Anne had sent years before. Digress: “You are family.”

When Prince Philip retired, he gave an, a rebarbative encounter. Prince Philip was asked whether the things he had done, not least the scheme which bears his name, and the countless other causes he had supported, was all about leaving a legacy. His response, disarmingly sincere and utterly Christian, to my ears chimed in with the selflessness and perhaps even eccentricity of his mother. Doing what he did, he explained, was about doing what needed to be done, not considering what would be left in his memory. Jesus’s injunction about our treasure, holds true here. Our treasure should not to be earthbound, but heavenward – where your treasure is there will your heart be also. This is about the renunciation of earthly glory and vanity. It concerns striving, with all pureness of heart, for the kingdom to come.

Prince Philip served as liege-man of life and limb his and our Queen & Governor. Throughout their remarkable marriage, they have demonstrated through service to the Crown, that this kingdom must bow the knee to the one to come.

Earth’s proud empires do and must pass away. They are of this world.

The Kingdom we serve is not of earthly legacies and glories. The Christian task now and at the hour of death is to pray with the Saints is to pray: Our Father which art in heaven, thy kingdom come, thy will be done… For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, for ever and ever. Amen.

by Ros Miskin, Reader

Readings:

In today’s Gospel reading we learn of a man in the country of the Gerasenes who is trapped by demons within himself that cause him to live outside the city in the tombs. The demons have left him as an outcast without even the capacity to wear clothes. Attempts have been made to imprison him in shackles but his inner demons drive him so distracted that he breaks free and goes into the wilds.

So there he is, naked and beyond the pale.  In Mark’s Gospel narrative he even bruises himself as he has been robbed of his self-esteem.  He is an outcast whose identity has been eroded by demons to such an extent that he has even lost his real name.  It has been superseded by the name ‘Legion’ which is the name Luke gives us for the many demons who have taken over the man’s existence.

In spite of all this torment and isolation we know from his encounter with Jesus, as given in today’s Gospel reading, that this man is a good man.  We know this because he falls down before Jesus and calls him ‘Son of the Most High God’.  The demons have not robbed him of this recognition of the Son of God though his spirit has been so crushed that he assumes that Jesus will only torment him as a damaged lowly being.

What I believe we can perceive at this stage of the Gospel narrative is that the aim of the Devil is to create division as division is contrary to the unifying purpose of God for humanity to become as one.  The words ‘divide and rule’ come to mind here.  To create barriers between people the Devil occupies a person’s inner being and this drives them away from the centre of human affairs.  That is one method.  The other is to create a dispute of such magnitude that it results in humiliation and death away from the centre of human affairs.  This method can be seen in the rejection of Jesus as the Son of God followed by his imprisonment, then his naked body left to die on the Cross, pierced by the Crown of Thorns.  Here Jesus is the ultimate outcast left to die, as we sing in the Easter hymn on ‘a green hill far away’.

In today’s world we can see attempts to counteract this divisionism in a variety of ways.  For the believer and non-believer alike there is an emphasis on people working together in teams and groups to mutually support each other and solve problems if need be.  There is the desire to include people with special needs in all activities, to welcome diversity and to host refugees.  As a Christian I see this as a step towards the ultimate reconciliation of God with humanity when all will become as one.

Let us now return to Jesus on the Cross.  The moment that Jesus is nailed to the Cross he is trapped.  Being trapped is very much a theme of today’s Gospel reading.  It is the hunter and the hunted.  The man is trapped by demons and the demons are trapped in the man’s body, begging Jesus to set them free by releasing them from the man’s body and allowing them to enter the swine.  Jesus permits this to happen and the demons are destroyed by the rush of the herd down the steep bank into the lake where they are drowned.  This sets the man free at last to ‘sit at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind’.

So what does this narrative of being trapped and set free tell us?  What I believe it tells us is that in spite of the constant attempts of the Devil to confine us all in mind, body and spirit, God has the final say in terms of our freedom.  We may all from time to time feel trapped, either by external circumstances or by internal mental conflict but as Christians we have the assurance given to us in the Bible that it is God who commands the process of being confined and set free, even though the Devil can temporarily hold sway.  Thus Jesus frees the man and he himself is set free from the power of death by his Resurrection. We, as Christians, are also offered the freedom of the Holy Spirit to guide us through times of fearful confinement and peril.

This commanding position from on high is not readily perceived by those who witnessed Jesus healing the man and those who were informed by them of what had happened.  They know that Jesus has demonstrated his power to heal by freeing the man from the demonic trap he is in, but it leaves them fearful.

Seized with this fear they ask Jesus to leave them and he does so but this is not the end of the story.  The healed man begs Jesus to go with him but Jesus orders him to return to his home and ‘declare how much God has done for you’.  Out of the fearful reaction of the people is emerging a mission to the Gentiles by one man who is told to return to his home to declare God’s power to heal and restore.  Out of the fearful episodes that have occurred both for the man and the people is going to come a spreading of the Word of God which trumps the Devil’s card.  God is the fountain of sending love and this is the deepest source of mission so we can say that ‘hearts are trumps’!

We may ask, though, in the light of today’s Gospel, how should we view the treatment of the swine?  They have done no harm and yet are destroyed by demonic possession which sends them rushing to the lake.  This is a complex situation.  Are we to infer from Luke’s Gospel, as both Augustine and Thomas Aquinas did centuries ago, that this killing of the swine was ‘for the good of men’s souls’?  This, I believe, is rather a harsh judgement on the animal kingdom.  In the Book of Genesis, God does give Adam and Eve dominion over

living creatures, inviting them to name them.  Here we have dominion but no evidence of condemnation of the animal kingdom.  On the contrary, as Adam and Eve have disobeyed God in eating the forbidden fruit it is they who are brought down to ‘move upon their belly’ and ‘eat dust all the days of their life’.

They are the ones who are ‘cursed among all animals and among all wild creatures’ which gives animals the greater good.

Could it be, then, that the swine are symbolic?  The might of Rome at the time was symbolized by a white sow and the word ‘Legion’ in the context of ancient Rome meant a large unit of the Roman army.  Although pigs were sacrificial in Greek and Roman worship, we might say that the fate of the swine was not so much a rejection of the animal kingdom but a rejection of Roman rule.

Hopefully then by looking back into earlier Bible texts and considering symbolism we can avoid an attack in today’s reading on the animal kingdom.

We can instead focus on the power of God to heal us and consider how that first missionary push that was given to one man to achieve has spread throughout the world.