A simple service for Lent 4 - Mothering Sunday

You may wish to light a candle at the start of this time of worship.

Through the prophet Isaiah, God says,  'As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you.'  May the peace of the Lord be with us always.

Theme Prayer

Lord, on this Mothering Sunday we think of mothers and of all who care and nurture others - their skill, their patience, their kindness and compassion. We especially thank you for all who are looking out for others and finding ways to help during this time of stress and anxiety with Coronavirus.

Praise God who loves us and cares.

And we thank you, Lord, for those who care quietly, selflessly and without thinking of themselves.  Please hold all mothers and carers in the light of your presence. Bless and encourage them in all that they do. 

Praise God who loves us and cares. Amen.

Confession

Loving Father, we are sorry for the times when we fail to care as we should, or are thoughtless or unkind;  teach us to care as you do, forgive our mistakes, and restore us to friendship and peace with you, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Give thanks to the God of love. Today he is calling us back to himself: today he washes away our sin and shame, and he grants us forgiveness in his redeeming love, revealed in Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

God’s Word - Paul’s Letter to the Colossians, chapter 3, verses 12 to 17 :-

Put on garments that suit God’s chosen and beloved people: compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience. Be tolerant with one another and forgiving, if any of you has cause for complaint: you must forgive as the Lord forgave you. Finally, to bind everything together and complete the whole, there must be love. Let Christ’s peace be arbiter in your decisions, the peace to which you were called as members of a single body. Always be thankful.  Let the gospel of Christ dwell among you in all its richness; teach and instruct one another with all the wisdom it gives you. With psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, sing from the heart in gratitude to God. Let every word and action, everything you do, be in the name of the Lord Jesus, and give thanks through him to God the Father.

Thanks be to God, for this his holy word. Amen.

A Reflection on the Reading

In this excerpt from his letter, Paul wants to make very clear to the Colossian Christians that following Jesus requires of the believer a radical transformation.  Their old way of life is put to death, nailed to the cross of Christ, and they have entered the new life of their risen Lord.  “Put on garments,” writes Paul - but in reality he is talking about something that is much more, and much deeper than any superficial change or fashion accessory. This isn’t just about looking different, it’s about being different.

The present situation has seen some of the bad and uncaring traits in human life make headlines: empty shelves, the refusal to share even with those who are obviously in need. But it’s also seen huge numbers of people offering just to be there to help when vulnerable people self-isolate, quite apart from the sheer selflessness of health workers doing extra shifts and accepting an element of risk because there’s a job to be done.

So if sin is naturally part of what it is to be human, so too are the “garments” of which Paul writes. This isn’t something foreign to ourselves, this is how we were made to be, how God wants us to be. Care and compassion for others, humility that puts others first, and forbearance that sorts things out when there’s an argument - and love that holds all of this in place. These are the things that prove Christ’s Lordship of our lives.

For Paul, everything always depends on Christ: his example inspires us to forgive, his peace helps us resolve our conflicts, his word is there to guide our thinking and inspire our joy, and his name makes us and all we do holy.  And this is all good practical stuff: Paul’s writing about the serious business of living together. These garments aren’t best clothes,  they are our workwear.

Statement of Faith

We believe in God the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named.          

We believe in God the Son, who lives in our hearts through faith, and fills us with his love. 

We believe in God the Holy Spirit, who strengthens us with power from on high.  

We believe in one God; Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Anthem 

   

Response [R]:  Gather your little ones to you, O God,
as a hen gathers her brood to protect them.

Jesus, like a mother you gather your people to you;
you are gentle with us as a mother with her children.

Often you weep over our sins and our pride,
tenderly you draw us from hatred and judgement. [R]

You comfort us in sorrow and bind up our wounds,
in sickness you nurse us, and with pure milk you feed us.

Jesus, by your dying we are born to new life;
by your anguish and labour we come forth in joy. [R]

Despair turns to hope through your sweet goodness;
through your gentleness we find comfort in fear.

Your warmth gives life to the dead,
your touch makes sinners righteous. [R]

Lord Jesus, in your mercy heal us;
in your love and tenderness remake us.

In your compassion bring grace and forgiveness,
for the beauty of heaven may your love prepare us. [R]    

Prayers

Pray for the needs of the world: for all in places of leadership and authority, that they may love justice, act with mercy and strive for peace. Pray for those with difficult economic and social decisions to make, in these uncertain and unsettled times.

Pray for the Church of God: for its witness and mission to be marked by compassion and love, and for gentleness and courage as we live and share the Gospel message. Pray for Bishop Richard as he begins his work in our diocese, and for his wife Deborah as they settle in among us.

Pray for those in need today: for those who are sad and grieving, for those who are worried and anxious, and for those who are alone or afraid. Pray for all who are ill, and especially for those who have been infected by Covid-19. Give thanks for all who tend them and care for them, and that they may kept free from harm and infection themselves.

Pray for the community around us: for mothers and for all who care for children, and for our own families and those who live around us. Pray too for those who jobs, homes and settled lives are put at risk by the Coronavirus outbreak and the shutdown of so much of our community life.

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name; thy kingdom come; thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory for ever and ever.  Amen.

A Prayer for Mothers

Praise God who loves us:                 Praise God who cares.

For the care of mothers:                 Thanks be to God.

For their patience when tested: Thanks be to God.

For their love when tired:                 Thanks be to God.

For their hope when despairing: Thanks be to God.

For their service without limit:         Thanks be to God. Amen.

May God the Father, who gave birth to all creation, bless us. 

May God the Son, who became incarnate by an earthly mother, bless us. 

May God the Holy Spirit, who broods as a mother over her children, bless us. 

May almighty God bless us, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, now and for ever.   Amen.

Nicodemus

A sermon on the "first service" readings for Lent 2, 8th March :-

John, chapter 3, verse 16, from our Gospel today: “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” We hear these words a lot, and very often they are the first words spoken by the minister as he or she leads a funeral procession into the Church. They’re words we’ll often see on church notice boards, bookmarks, badges, bumper stickers. Martin Luther called this verse “the Gospel in a nutshell” - and he was right, I think.

It’s such a well-known quote that maybe we forget the story that surrounds it, and that those words were spoken in the course of a conversation, to a particular person, Nicodemus. It’s worth reflecting for a moment on who Nicodemus was, and why he and Jesus were speaking together.

Nicodemus was a leading scholar within the Jewish hierarchy of his day. In public, he was a loyal member of the Jewish establishment, who looked with suspicion and concern on the ministry of Jesus, which seemed to challenge much of what they stood for. In private, though, it would seem that Nicodemus had his doubts. He needed to speak to Jesus, but he didn’t dare to do so until after dark.

And right at the beginning of his visit to Jesus, we see the dilemma that faced Nicodemus. Those around him were condemning Jesus as a disruptive influence, but Nicodemus realises, as he says to Jesus, “We know that no-one could do what you are doing unless God were with him.” I imagine, by the way, that Nicodemus was therefore coming on behalf of maybe a small group within the Pharisees who just wanted to know more about Jesus, and were impressed by what he was doing. That “we” surely can’t be all the Pharisees - many of them were appalled by Jesus - but it suggests that there were others who shared a more positive approach.

Jesus responds to that with a very challenging statement: “You cannot see the kingdom of God without being born again.” Or you could translate it as born anew, or as the Greek words “genethe anothen” literally mean, “born from above”.

I say that because the phrase “born again” has a particular resonance these days, and comes across as the possession of a particular part of the Christian Church, whereas a phrase like “born anew” or “born from above” perhaps get closer to what Jesus was actually saying to Nicodemus, which is essentially this - that believing certain things or worshipping in a particular way, even being zealous and careful in your keeping of God’s Law: these aren’t enough on their own - to be part of God’s kingdom requires a movement of the soul, such a complete change or heart and mindset that it’s like completely starting over.

Now John’s Gospel is full of instances where Jesus says something spiritually challenging, which is then misunderstood by the person he’s speaking to. And so it is here. Nicodemus isn’t thinking in spiritual terms at all when he says, “How can someone be born after they’ve grown old? Can they enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?”

That’s the cue for Jesus to tell Nicodemus, and to tell us too, that this isn’t about literally being born again, it’s about a change of heart and a fresh start, as God’s person. Elsewhere Paul talks about our being adopted as God’s children. To comprehend the kingdom of God, we have to be part of his family, giving our whole selves over to an entirely different way of being. To be “born from above” means to be in a new relationship with the God we can dare to call “Our Father”.

We don’t exactly learn how Nicodemus responded to all this. “How can this be?” he says again. But Jesus is saying there can be no half measures where the kingdom is concerned. Those born from above must begin a new life, a new way of being. But we like there to be limits. We don’t want to have to help and serve everyone, just those we feel deserve it, or might be properly grateful. We don’t want to have to forgive everyone, only those we believe to be properly sorry. We don’t want to have to give everything, just a measured amount that leaves us in control of the rest of it.

I suppose, though, that Jesus is saying: to be in the kingdom, you must strive to be as I am. Just as elsewhere he says to the disciples, “You must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” - I guess he means by that, don’t set your sights anywhere less than that. And of course, he also says “The greatest among you must be the servant of all.”

Maybe it’s no surprise that Nicodemus returns to his position within the Jewish establishment. We don’t hear much more of him. In John chapter 7, he briefly intervenes to defend Jesus at a meeting of the Pharisees, but he’s quickly talked down. “Prophets don’t come from Galilee,” he’s told. But had something taken root in him, even if it was slow growing? In John’s account of the crucifixion Nicodemus appears again, helping Joseph of Arimathea to claim the body of Jesus, and prepare it to be laid in the tomb. He may still not have been convinced, especially now Jesus had died, but he could still see that this was a good and godly man.

Jesus said, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” I wonder how Nicodemus considered those words as he left the company of Jesus? I wonder how those words resonated in him as he stood - we may assume - somewhere near the cross and watched this man die? Some among his fellows were jeering at Jesus and making fun of him; but I imagine Nicodemus standing silently and sadly; he may even have been wondering whether his own lack of involvement had contributed to the tragedy of a good man who spoke the words of God hanging there to die.

The last verse of our Gospel has Jesus saying, “God sent his Son into the world not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.” And maybe Nicodemus was thinking, “How can that happen now?” as he watched Jesus die. It’s frustrating not to know the end of the story. There’s no mention of Nicodemus in the accounts of Easter and of the beginnings of the Church. Was he part of it? Or did he never break away from his past?

My hope is that somewhere within him the forever change Jesus had wanted for him had happened, that change we may call being born again, born anew, born from above. By which I mean, I hope that little by little his heart was broken open, and a new light came to his eyes, so that he could begin to find his way through the doubt and the darkness to the cross, to see it not as a sign of defeat and death but the triumphant throne of love, the place where all that separates us from God is cast aside. For, as Jesus went on to say to Nicodemus when he came to him by night, “the one who does what is true will come to the light.”

Lift high the cross

A sermon on the "second service" readings for Sunday 8th March, Lent 2

Numbers 21.4-9 -

From Mount Hor they left by way of the Red Sea to march round the flank of Edom. But on the way the people grew impatient  and spoke against God and Moses. ‘Why have you brought us up from Egypt’, they said, ‘to die in the desert where there is neither food nor water? We are heartily sick of this miserable fare.’ Then the LORD sent venomous snakes among them, and they bit the Israelites so that many of them died. The people came to Moses and said, ‘We sinned when we spoke against the LORD and you. Plead with the LORD to rid us of the snakes.’ Moses interceded for the people,  and the LORD told him to make a serpent and erect it as a standard, so that anyone who had been bitten could look at it and recover. So Moses made a bronze serpent and erected it as a standard, in order that anyone bitten by a snake could look at the bronze serpent and recover.

Luke 14.27-33 -

Jesus said, ‘No one who does not carry his cross and come with me can be a disciple of mine. Would any of you think of building a tower without first sitting down and calculating the cost, to see whether he could afford to finish it? Otherwise, if he has laid its foundation and then is unable to complete it, everyone who sees it will laugh at him. “There goes the man”, they will say, “who started to build and could not finish.” Or what king will march to battle against another king, without first sitting down to consider whether with ten thousand men he can face an enemy coming to meet him with twenty thousand? If he cannot, then, long before the enemy approaches, he sends envoys and asks for terms. So also, if you are not prepared to leave all your possessions behind, you cannot be my disciples.’

Our first reading tonight - from the Book of Numbers - gives us one possible origin of the snake around a staff symbol you often see at pharmacies, although the snake as a sign of healing also has an origin within the pagan religion of the Greeks. You may think it strange that a snake should be a symbol of healing, when you consider that in Genesis chapter 3 the snake is declared to be humankind’s mortal enemy. Anyway, in the Book of Numbers God sends snakes to punish the people for their rebellious moaning; and then he relents, and the snake becomes a symbol that ensures their recovery from the venomous bites they’ve received.

Now if I’m honest, I don’t very often read the Book of Numbers. In fact, one of my bibles has most of this book printed in very small type, almost as if the editors expected it wouldn’t be much used. But tonight’s little reading, and the idea that something as harmful as a snake should become instead a symbol of hope and healing and recovery - well, this does connect I think with the New Testament reading that came next.

And so it should, since these are set readings for today in the Common Lectionary. You see, the cross was also a fearful sign, a disgraceful sign, people shrank away from the very idea of the cross; and now Jesus in Luke chapter 14 is telling us we must accept the cross and take it up if we’re to follow him.

The very earliest Christian meeting places didn’t display the cross as a sign. Christians mostly had to meet in secret, as their faith was not one of the permitted religions of the Roman Empire; so they used signs to guide those who could understand them to the place, probably an ordinary house, where the Christian people of a town or city met for worship. The fish was the best known of those signs, not just because of the fishermen that Jesus first called to be his disciples, but because the Greek word for fish, Ichthus, was made up of the initial letters of the words that in Greek spelled out “Jesus Christ Son of God Saviour”.

Most people would walk by a sign like that chalked on a wall as just so much graffiti; but those in the know would recognise it for what it was. Whereas the cross would be too much a mark of disgrace to be used in such a way. Crucifixion was much used by the Romans, a very public and quite horrific form of punishment, and one way of demonstrating to the rebellious element among the people that the might of Rome would always win.

One other sign, though, that’s been found in Roman ruins in several places, including Silchester in Hampshire, is a simple acrostic, of five words each of five letters, which reads ROTAS OPERA TENET AREPO SATOR. It’s quite clever: those five read the same across left to right from the top, or across right to left from the bottom, or down starting at the top left, or up starting at the bottom right. The words themselves don’t mean anything very sensible, but someone discovered that if you unpack the letters and form them instead into a cross, you get A PATERNOSTER O reading across, the arms of the cross, and the same A PATERNOSTER O reading down, the upright of the cross. That’s Alpha and Omega, the first and last letters of the Green alphabet and a symbol of the almighty and eternal God, and “Our Father”, the first words of the Lord’s Prayer.

So that was another secret Christian sign, but this one needed to be turned into a cross in order to be understood; and that was perhaps the first use of the cross as a symbol by the early Christian church.

Paul in several places, for example Philippians chapter 3, writes about the ways in which he is sharing in the sufferings of Jesus. Peter in chapter 4 of his First Letter tells his readers that they should “rejoice in so far as you share in the sufferings of Christ.” And in our reading from Luke 14 Jesus is clearly saying, “There will be a cost, if you’re serious about following me. It won’t be an easy ride.”

There were many people who didn’t get that. The twelve disciples themselves often didn’t get that. Look at that time when James and John pestered Jesus to have the best thrones, one on his right and the other on his left. Victory was assured, they thought. But what was to happen in Jerusalem wasn’t going to look like victory to any of them, not at that time. It would involve a cross - and    no-one could imagine the Messiah hanging and dying on a cross.

Those who follow me must leave all their possessions behind, says Jesus. But how could any of us do that? Well, I suppose some people do, to become monks or nuns. Here’s a story I was told long ago. A thief down on his luck begged a room for the night in a monastery. Snooping round, he found in the cell of one of the monks that man’s only possession, an old and finely bound bible. Hoping to get some money for it, he stole it; and the next day, having made his way to a nearby town, he took it to a buyer of old books to see what he could get. The bookseller examined the book, suggested a figure, but added “Before I pay for it I’ll ask a friend, an expert on books like this, for a second opinion.”

The thief reluctantly left the bible with him, and came back the next day as arranged, to complete the trade. He entered the shop to find to his horror that the expert the bookseller had called in was none other than the monk from which he’d stolen the book. But to his amazement, the monk looked at him and smiled, and assured the bookseller that the bible was worth every penny of the price he’d offered. Stunned and confused, the thief told the bookseller he’d changed his mind, and wasn’t selling after all.

He waited near the shop until the monk came out on the street, then followed him a short way, caught up with him, and tearfully offered him the book. “Keep it, my son,” said the monk. “But don’t sell it, read it.” The thief did so, and in due course entered the same monastery as a brother. Even the one possession the monk had kept he regarded as really not his own, but the Lord’s.

We get weighed down by our possessions. Each one of them has the potential to become a mini-god, an idol that distracts from where we should be. Yet Jesus hasn’t I think called me and you to be monks or nuns; or to leave our homes and our loved ones; or to dispense altogether with our possessions. What he does call us to do is to place all we are and all we have at his disposal. Like the monk with his bible.

That phrase “Take up your cross and follow me,” says to us that our way to life involves complete surrender - all we are, all we have, given to God. Paul writes of himself as a runner or a boxer in strict training, and like him we should be aiming as high as we can. But we’re not doing that to persuade God to favour is, or to earn ourselves a place in heaven: we’re doing it as a thank offering - because Jesus has already done what we never could: he has completely surrendered, laying down even his life itself.

And that’s what turns the cross from being a sign of the ultimate victory of tyranny over freedom, of dark over light, of the forces of this world driving their tanks and war machines over the flowers of peace and hope into what it now is. The cross which spoke only of terror and pain and waste and confusion and the end of all that is good has become instead a signpost to point the way, the throne on which love is acclaimed and honoured, a symbol to treasure as our promise of life.

With typical bluntness, Jesus tells us that it’s not worth our starting the journey unless we’re prepared to go all the way. We may stray, lose the path, get things wrong, mess things up, like the pilgrim in John Bunyan’s great “Pilgrim’s Progress” - but we mustn’t turn back; that’s not an option. The cross is marked on us when we are baptized, but it only becomes visible when we start to live what it stands for. Under the sign of the cross, we share the same Great Commission as the first apostles who met with the risen Christ on a mountain top in Galilee: “Go into all the world, and make disciples of every nation.”

And we do this in both actions and words, and we do it in love, and we do it because we have been claimed by grace, which is the word we use for a saving love that’s simply there for us without preconditions. As Paul wrote in Romans chapter 5 verse 8, “God demonstrates his own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” So the cross, which was such a wretched sign that early Christians kept it hidden, has been turned into a symbol of grace; and, set free ourselves, we must share the good news of our freedom with all the world.

I can see now that the bronze snake made by Moses was also a symbol of grace. For though the people of Israel had deserved all they got from the snakes, God is a forgiving God. Despite their wrong-headed stubbornness, his favour still rested on his people. So grace touched them as well; but now grace is offered to all the world, and the cross is a sign for everyone. No-one is excluded from the love of God, no-one is beyond its reach. And, for those parts of our Christian lives when it’s a struggle, those parts when we do maybe think we’ve taken on more than we can manage, the cross is a sign that the ultimate victory is already won. As a verse in our last hymn tonight reminds us, “Days of darkness still come o’er me; sorrow’s paths I often tread; but the Saviour still is with me, by his hand I’m safely led.” Amen.

St Podwell's

My St Podwell's cartoon for this week . . .

St Podwell's

"So that's what he's giving up for Lent this year!"

Wilderness

A sermon for the First Sunday in Lent . . .

Two sentences to begin with - firstly, the closing sentence from the Gospel reading we’ve just heard: “Angels came and ministered to him.” And secondly, some very familiar words from the Lord’s Prayer: “Lead us not into temptation.”

Temptation is very much our theme this morning. On the first Sunday in Lent, we find Jesus in the wilderness. After his baptism he’s led into the wilderness by the Holy Spirit. The Greek word is a strong one - so you could almost think of Jesus as propelled into the wilderness by the Spirit. He needed this time of testing, he needed the time to face up to the reality of temptation, he needed to know he could deal with the things that might otherwise lead him off course.

Now this only makes sense if Jesus is fully human, tempted in just the same way as us. And in fact the Gospel itself only makes sense if Jesus is fully human - God not just looking like one of us, but truly becoming one of us. And for the ministry of Jesus to be real and for it all to work, there would need to be a wilderness time first. That’s also true for me as a Christian, I find. I may not have to physically go out into the desert like Jesus, but I do need to face up to temptation, and to see myself, my strengths and my weaknesses, in an honest light, if I’m to be any use as a disciple.

So we’re given this purple time in our church calendar, Lent. It’s there so we spend some time in the wilderness. So I can strive to see myself as God sees me. So I can discover more of what he’s wanting me to do. God is calling me to a ministry that’s special to me. Peter writes this: “As living stones, you are being built up as a spiritual temple” If I’m to be part of this temple I need to know which is my particular place in the wall, the place God wants me to hold when I say yes to his call. But I don’t have to say yes. God calls, but I don’t have to follow. God makes himself vulnerable to my no. And if I say no, my place remains unfilled, and some particular loving hope of God for me is dashed.

Angels ministered to Jesus in the wilderness, but only at the end of the story. He was on his own to do the tough stuff first. I’ve been on a few retreats in my time; one I recall came at something of low point, when I felt under pressure and quite unsure about what I should be doing next. What I’d have liked on arrival at the retreat house would have been for the angels to be involved right from the start, so the rocky bits got smoothed out, and the dark and scary bits got brightened up. What I wanted was to feel good again, but that didn’t happen; the road stayed rough and the sky stayed dark. I had quite a tough time on that retreat, and yet it worked: by the end of my time I was in a much better place, and I could see more clearly where to go. Maybe there were angels there after all, they just weren’t going to do the work for me.

The wilderness is where we’re tempted, but temptation can help us to see things more clearly; it can be good for us, if it helps us to see the pitfalls and problems, and know how to deal with them. It was the devil who tempted Jesus, but it had been the Holy Spirit who first put him there to be tempted.
I think most of us are good at resisting the big obviously bad temptations, and most of them are going to be against the law anyway. But a lot of the temptations that come our way are not obviously bad. They can look plausible, they can seem to be a way of making good things happen, and anyway - the voice of temptation tells us - it can’t do any harm, and everyone’s doing it.

Let’s think for a moment about the temptations Jesus faced. He was tempted to turn stones into bread; and to jump from the pinnacle of the temple so the angels could come and bear him up, so they could catch him and save him, rather than staying hidden in the background. And he was tempted to go for earthly power. Or, in other words: Feed yourself - you need it - and you could feed the hungry too; dazzle the crowds, make them believe in you - isn’t that what you want? take power, be a king - think of all the good you could do.

Not one of those temptations was obviously bad in itself. Don’t we often wish that something difficult in our lives could be made more easy, that our work could be completed done more quickly, that our efforts could achieve more certain results?  But in all of them Jesus would have been going his own way and not his Father’s way. Taking a short cut, going for a quick fix, a lesser victory than the one set for him. This kind of short-termism means we put a makeshift idol, a false petty god, where the real God should be in our lives; and there are no short cuts to salvation. So Jesus uses holy scripture each time to reject what the devil has suggested - even when the devil himself has used scripture as part of his spiel.

The temptations Jesus faced would be there throughout his ministry, but his time in the wilderness meant he could know them for what they were. The same sorts of temptations will come our way as we do our best to follow him. Look for a moment at the last one, where the kingdoms of the world are laid out before Jesus. With political power, think how we can change things for the better! But who do we have to square with in order to get that power? No matter how pressing the needs around us may be, or our own concerns and ambitions and responsibilities, we must always be looking for where God is, and asking him where he would have us be. For if we always insist on letting God set our agenda, then the devil won’t get the last word.

So what is God’s agenda? When asked, Jesus quoted the summary of the Law, and we’ve used it already in this service: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength, and love your neighbour as yourself.” So love is at the very heart of all that God wants from us and for us. His love reaches everywhere and touches everyone, even the people who don’t or can’t recognise it, even the people who openly reject it. And Jesus tells us we should love even our enemies, and pray for those who treat us badly.

So though we may pray “Lead us not into temptation”, temptations can in fact work for our good, if we face them in the wilderness, and give ourselves time and space there to deal with them. That’s a process of self awareness that can reveal the desert inside ourselves - the places where we ourselves are dry and barren, and where our love is wearing thin.

Lent as a wilderness time is God’s gift to us. A time God wants us to use to get stronger, to become better disciples, and to draw nearer to him. So we can respond to his great call to us to be the stones from which his temple is built. Note by the way that we’re stones, rather than bricks. Bricks tend to be all one size and shape, they’re interchangeable. We’re stones, each one different, and each with a place we’re designed to fit in the wall.

So make the most of our forty days in the wilderness. We enter it to face reality, to hear God’s call and respond to it, and to identify and turn away from the things we might allow to get in the way of God, and stop us hearing his call as we should. To take Lent seriously won’t be easy and shouldn’t be easy, but it will be worthwhile. It’s about not choosing our own way, but going with God. That’s what Jesus set himself to do . . . “and angels came, and ministered to him.”

Transfiguration

On the last Sunday before Lent, we find ourselves on the Mount of the Transfiguration. We don’t actually know for certain what mountain Jesus ascended that day. The traditional site is Mount Tabor, and that’s where the Church of the Transfiguration can be visited by pilgrims. But some people think it was Mount Hermon, which isn’t far from Caesarea Philippi, where Jesus based his Galilean ministry. One thing we do know is that the Gospel story of this event marks roughly a middle point within the ministry of Jesus; it comes towards the close of his time in Galilee, and at the point at he turns to Judaea and the Holy City of Jerusalem.

Jesus takes with him the “inner three” of his disciples, Peter, James and John. And while they’re on the mountain, these three see Jesus transformed: his face shining, and his clothes a dazzling white. And they see Moses and Elijah suddenly there with him - two great heroes of the Jewish faith, both of which were believed not to have died, but to have been taken bodily into heaven.

People seem always to have ascended mountains to find spiritual refreshment and enlightenment. It’s one of the stock images of the cartoonist, the sage on the mountain top, along with the desert island. On a mountain the air is clearer, and you’re away from it all, lifted above the press and hubbub or ordinary human life. You can see an awful long way. And, as someone once said to me about the holy island of Iona, “the sky seems thinner, and you feel closer to heaven.”

Jesus regularly went to quiet places to pray, and often that meant climbing a hill, usually on his own, but not this time. For Peter and the others, what happens there is not untypical of the kind of spiritual “mountaintop experiences” people seem to have: a sense of something changed and transformed, made brighter and clearer, challenging even, that leaves you with the question, “What does this all mean? What’s it saying to me?” A momentary experience - time may seem to have stopped while it happens, but really it’s hardly more than the blink of an eye.

Peter wanted to know more, and to hang on to the moment, at least for a short while. So he talked some nonsense about building three tents; if they couldn’t stay there forever, he at least wanted to hold on to the moment long enough to grasp what was going on, to try to understand. But mountaintop experiences are just glimpses, nothing more; and just then, maybe they needed the experience itself more than to understand it.

More about that in a moment. But it occurs to me that one of the decisive Easter events Matthew writes about also takes place on a mountaintop in Galilee. Right at the end of his Gospel, Matthew tells how Jesus met with his disciples on a mountain, and from there he sent them out into all the world, to make disciples of every nation. Was it the same mountain, I wonder? And is that when Peter really understood what the Transfiguration had been about?

We use the phrase “Mountaintop Experience” to describe the moments when we feel spiritually lifted or enlightened, or when the penny drops in some new or special way. These don’t always happen on mountaintops, but maybe it always feels a bit like being somewhere high up, somewhere where you see further and more clearly.

A survey carried out a few years ago across the UK showed that many more people were prepared to admit to having had something that could be described as a religious or mountaintop experience than were prepared to admit to a religious faith. Each such event may be rare and special itself, but they seem to be part of what it is to be human. Maybe they’re something we need; so how was the Transfiguration important to Peter and James and John?

I think it had an immediate importance as an experience of God’s glory, something to lift their spirits, and it would also have a later importance, as they looked back and reflected, and began gradually to understand it. They needed the experience there and then, and they’d need the understanding further along the road.

If we read on from where our Gospel ended this morning, we’ll see that Jesus and his disciples came down from the mountain straight into a very testing experience of human need, and the battle between good and evil: a frantic father and the demonic possession of his young son. And soon after that Jesus made the decision to move on from the familiar home communities of Galilee, into Judaea, and on towards Jerusalem.

And what they’d experienced on the mountain must have given Peter and the others a new strength and resolve, as they returned to the hard grind of discipleship. And that’s something we need as well. Our faith is constantly challenged, and as Christians we can get stretched and confused and worn out. Jesus offered those he first called no less than a share in the cross, and a life on the open road, and even to be hated by those who hated him first. So it’s not going to be easy, especially when he instructs us to love our enemies, to do good to those who persecute us, and to pray for those who mean us harm. For us as for Peter and James and John, the brief glimpses we get of God’s glory are given us to encourage us and to cheer us and to keep us on the road. We should treasure them as gifts, moments when we glimpse the glory that’s always there, but mostly is hidden from us.

In the Greek language of the New Testament there are two words for time, and two concepts of time. Chronos is everyday time, the stuff that’s measured in our calendars and by our clocks and watches; the time that gets used up, the time that can’t wait, the time that we know we have only so much of, the sand falling through the glass. But there’s also kairos, and that’s time of a different sort, not measured, not ticking away. Chronos is our time, kairos is God’s. Kairos is opportune time, the right or critical moment; the still point that is a breaking-in of eternity into the chronological drudge of our daily lives.

For Jesus, and certainly for his disciples on that day, the mountaintop was a place of kairos; a place where time as measured down below just for a brief interval stood still. And Jesus was momentarily revealed to them for what he always is. The experience of that moment of kairos helped nerve them for the road ahead with its challenges and dangers. Later they’d begin to understand the real meaning of what they’d seen that day - but only after they’d travelled through the testing and confusing times of Thursday in the Garden of Gethsemane, and Friday at Calvary, and the empty tomb on Easter morning.

Then, and in the light of Pentecost, they’d understand and take out into the world the good news that what had seemed to them at the time like a disaster, like everything going wrong, darkness victorious over light, had been in truth just what God had always planned, his loving purpose unfolding, and evil finally and decisively beaten back. By then they’d met again with their risen Lord, perhaps on that same mountain top.

Meanwhile our journey through the Christian year continues into Lent. Jesus set his face towards Jerusalem, and so must we. And as we travel with our Lord toward the cross, hold on to whatever glimpses of the divine come your way, and never dismiss the kairos moments, the mountaintop experiences. They’re important and necessary to our journey of faith, but that faith then has to be taken back down the mountain and into the everyday world. Like Peter and the others, we discover that transfiguration is given us not as an alternative to the messy and scruffy realities of life, but to help us to get back into the scruffiness and keep up the work there, for here too is where we shall find our God.

Kingfishers

A "Nature Notes" article . . .

It’s nearly ten years since I last wrote about the kingfisher, so perhaps it’s time to do so again. Just occasionally I’ve been blessed with having a good view of this bird: kingfishers are small, shy, with short wings blurred in rapid flight. So mostly all I see is the briefest glimpse of a brightly jewelled arrow fleeting past. Each time I’ve really been able to watch one, rather than just glimpse it, has been special and stays in my memory - always from hides: at Llyn Coed y Dinas, by Welshpool, where the speeding jewel alighted on a post not far from the hide; Doxey Marshes by Stafford, where I was able to watch a bird perched just feet away for probably as long as ten minutes; Slimbridge in Gloucestershire, where we had taken a party of youngsters - a real red letter day for them; and Rye Meads in the Lea Valley, where there was an excellent view of a very active nest hole, and the parent birds coming and going.

Kingfishers are surprisingly small, so much so that the sturdy dagger-like bill can seem almost half as long as the bird itself (and indeed it is!). The upper parts are blue green, the cheeks and underside a dullish orange. Throat and the back of the cheek are white, with the forward cheek around the eye orange. The upper parts are iridescent, hence that sense of a mobile jewel when the bird flies by you! The bird has a shrill, piping call, which you are likely to hear before you see the bird itself.

Kingfishers are resident in the UK, and are found throughout England and Wales, though absent from part of Scotland, perhaps because they don’t cope well with hard winters. They feed on small fish and tadpoles, etc, spotted from a suitable perch before diving to catch it. If there isn’t a perch to hand the bird may hover before diving. This diet of fish helps give the bird itself an unpleasant taste, so kingfishers are rarely predated.

The nest hole is also rather manky and smelly, due to the accumulation of fish bones, droppings and the like. The birds (both parents work together) can excavate a tunnel as long as three feet into the bank. Five to seven eggs are laid, and both parents are involved with feeding. Kingfishers will always swallow a fish head first; often it will hold a newly caught fish by the tail and beat its head against a branch, before turning the fish round in order to swallow it. Of course, fish presented to the youngsters are also offered head first.

There are ninety or so species of kingfisher around the world: “Our” kingfisher is found widely across Europe and Asia, and into North Africa, and as far as Papua New Guinea. Most kingfisher species live in places warmer than here, but the belted kingfisher I’ve seen in Canada nests up into the Arctic, though flying south for the winter. The ten species of kingfisher found in Australia include the kookaburra, which I think is the largest species of kingfisher - a “tree kingfisher”, whose lifestyle has very little to do with water - it eats insects, small vertebrates, and the occasional snake!

Anxiety and Creation

Anxiety is a constant feature of modern life. Though it always has been, I suppose. Jesus told his disciples not to be anxious, so presumably they were anxious, or at least tempted to be - otherwise why would he say what he did? Mind you, if you were to go back to the King James Bible, instead of “Do not be anxious” as we just heard, Jesus is recorded as saying, “Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on.” The word anxious doesn’t appear.

Any translation will use words appropriate to the day to translate the original Greek. The Greek word translated as “be anxious” is “merimnate” - and though the word anxious didn’t appear in the King James translation, by the time of the Revised Standard Version published in 1952, and presumably therefore the American Standard Version of 1901, “do not be anxious” was the accepted best translation.

In fact, anxiety became a word in English somewhere around the 1520’s, deriving from the Latin root “anxius” meaning “uneasy, or troubled in mind”. I’m not surprised that it should have been too new a word to be used when the King James Bible was produced less than a century later, because it took quite a long time to be used much in every day speech. In fact, it wasn’t much used as a word until the 19th century. But then from about 1904 it acquired a more technical usage: “anxiety” became identified as a condition by psychiatrists. And when I took a few weeks off stress back in 1993 the word actually used on my doctor’s note was “anxiety”.

We could therefore think of anxiety as “being so worried it makes us ill”. But we shouldn’t forget that the word “anxious” doesn’t always have to have a negative meaning. As a host, I might be anxious to ensure my guest has an enjoyable visit, and is fed and watered as he or she should be. That doesn’t have to mean I’m worried about what they might think or say if they’re not - just that I’m looking out for their welfare, and wanting to do my best to make sure they’ve enjoy their visit.

So it occurs to me that Jesus is not saying to his disciples that they should not be anxious, full stop, but that they should be anxious for the right things.

In which case, what are the things in our lives that cause us anxiety? A quick trawl through the magazine that helpfully came through my letter box as I was sitting down to write this suggests that we’re not short of people looking to persuade us into anxiety about the right things to eat and the right things to wear, like in our reading. And we may also be anxious about the right car to drive, the right watch to wear, or the right perfume to splash on ourselves. All in the ads in my magazine: advertising and anxiety are closely connected in today’s society - some of the most effective ads either latch on to our perceived anxieties or even create them. What will people think of us, if we don’t drive this, or wear that, or serve this to our families at tea time? Along with - just at the moment - look at these people enjoying themselves in sunny Tenerife or Bodum or Rhodes: we could be enjoying ourselves too, if we booked with whoever it might be.

But maybe we have some more serious anxieties: what will happen now we’ve left the EU, for example - you don’t have to have been a remainer to worry a bit about what leaving might mean in practice. Or there’s global warming; or hardening attitudes in world politics, radical Islam, increasingly illiberal regimes in (say) Russia or America. What about the perceived threat from immigrants who won’t conform to our ways, or the latest pandemic to emerge in China or Africa? The list is endless, and what’s on it probably depends on what newspaper you read, who you watch on TV, or who you last spoke to down the pub. And then we’ll all have our more local and personal anxieties: Is my job secure? Will I get on with the new people who’ve moved next door? Can I afford to get that gutter fixed? Am I eating too much cake? And so on - some of it trivial stuff, but not all of it; there’ll be individual anxieties that are really important and maybe quite scary.

In other words, anxiety is a fact of life, and we can’t escape it. If it gets out of hand, it disables us, both as individuals and also as communities and societies. Some of the most horrible things that happen in our world - ethnic cleansing in Bosnia or Rwanda, for example, began with a shared anxiety that was then stoked up and allowed to run rampant.

But anxiety can also be a force for good. It can change our lives and our choices in good and healthy ways, too. Greta Thunberg and David Attenborough have in their different ways encouraged not just awareness of global warming and anxiety about it, which is useless if all we do is wring our hands and tear our hair, but practical response - by individuals, by communities, and even by governments: maybe not enough yet, but a move in the right direction, even if some like Mr Trump remain to be persuaded.

So Jesus is telling us to be anxious for the right things, to be anxious in the right direction. And in particular, he says to us, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness” - or, in the version we heard, “Set your minds on God’s kingdom and his justice before everything else.” In other words, instead of being anxious about things that aren’t really all that important, be anxious for the one thing that really is important - that God’s kingdom is proclaimed and built where we are.

And how will that happen? The kingdom of God happens whenever and wherever people are doing God’s will. Martin Luther King said this: “When we see social relationships controlled everywhere by the principles which Jesus illustrated in life - trust, love, mercy, and altruism - then we shall know that the kingdom of God is here.”  And that starts within ourselves. Albert Schweitzer wrote: “There can be no Kingdom of God in the world without the Kingdom of God in our hearts.” So to be anxious for the kingdom of God means to let Jesus into our hearts, and into our lives, and to give ourselves in our living, in our behaving, in the choices we make, to be as like him as we can be.

The theme for today, the Second Sunday before Lent, is not anxiety - although that of course was there in our reading - but  creation. The state of God’s world is a major thing to be anxious about, and an important thing to be anxious for, for all of us.

Paul wrote to the Church in Rome that, as he saw it, “The whole created universe in all its parts groans as if in the pangs of childbirth.” There’s such a lot of anxious groaning around us today, and - to be honest - lots to validly groan about; in fact, we’re surrounded by so many and such huge problems they could just stifle and paralyse us. It’s too much, too big a task!

But Paul is writing not just about the agonies of the world, but also about opportunity. God is bringing something new to birth, he tells his readers in Rome. And Jesus tells his friends, “Be anxious for the kingdom, and God will give you all you need for the task ahead.”

So be anxious for the good things, be anxious in the right way, be anxious for the kingdom of God; and though what I might do, and what you might do, might seem not very much, might seem too small, what we can do together can be (and surely, in the cause of the kingdom, will be) earth changing. So let me end with one of my favourite quotes, from Archbishop Desmond Tutu: “Do your little bit of good where you are; it's those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.”

Some thoughts on law and light

Today’s Gospel reading requires us to think about Law. I have some friends who are well versed in the law, so much so that one of them’s just been made a judge. We expect our judges to be wise and learned people, and so she is, and she’ll need to be, because the law of the land is a complex business. But we’re thinking today not about the law of the land but the Law of God. So I suppose we’ll surely also to be thinking about sin, for sin is the word we use for when we break the Law of God.

Now for Jews the Law of God and the law of the land had been one and the same thing ever since they entered the Promised Land. The Law Moses brought down from the mountain top governed every aspect of their lives. But by the time of Jesus that had ceased to be the case, for now the people had to live their daily lives subject to the laws of Rome. There’ll have been many legal areas in which Rome and Moses were bound to agree - that murdering people is essentially wrong, for example - but even so, the very fact that a law made by an earthly emperor should take precedence over the law given by Moses would have rankled deeply with the faithful.

Most of us aim to be law-abiding, but all of us have times when we skate on some legal thin ice. The speed at which we choose to drive our car, for example, or if we ignore a “No trespassers” sign to take a short cut. Some laws we take more seriously than others. Or we may choose to break the law by, say, sitting down in the street as part of a demonstration against some action we don’t agree with, or by some form of non-violent direct action. And God’s law? How readily do we break that? Too readily, I guess. Maybe out of thoughtlessness, maybe out of self-interest or greed, maybe just because we’re in a hurry: times when perhaps we take more than we should, or don’t notice when someone’s been hurt, or rush past when we could have stopped and helped. It’s sort of hard not to break God’s law. Sometimes we have to choose the lesser of two evils: and whichever alternative we go for, we end up hurting someone or doing something we’re not happy to have done.

And then there are the times when we act with all good intent, and only realise afterwards that what we said or did was wrong. Hindsight can be a marvellous thing! And times when we’ve been wronged, but then what we then do or say makes things worse. And we could even find ourselves using the law itself as a means of wounding, limiting or excluding others.

In today’s gospel reading, Jesus tells his hearers that not a single letter of the law will be taken away by his teaching. Some folk, hearing the freshness of his teaching, had thought he was challenging the Law, rather like a 1960’s hippy in Haight-Ashbury saying, “Hey man, you don’t need all that law stuff any more, let’s all just love one another.” But Jesus tells them he’s come not to do away with the law but to complete it.

Rules are of course essential for the proper ordering of things. The Law is there for a good and necessary purpose. My freedom to do what I want has to be limited, so that I’m not damaging your freedom more than I have to. Rules keep a balance. But they also have their limits. You can be really good at keeping to the letter of the law, while still acting in a way that’s immoral or damaging - and you might even use the law itself as a means to do down others and make sure things go your way.

So laws don’t always do the job they’re meant to. To test whether a rule is working properly, we need to look at the effect it has on the person at its receiving end. Maybe a law is fair but the punishment is excessive. Or maybe it’s being applied without compassion or humanity. Bad law and badly applied law causes harm instead of limiting harm. Here’s where those who administer the law, including new judges like my friend, need more than just book wisdom and a detailed knowledge of the mechanism of justice. Paul, writing to the church in Corinth, claims to be speaking with a greater and higher wisdom than the wisdom of the world - for by the Holy Spirit he’s brought into a knowledge of God’s own nature, and that’s what guides his speech and his action.

As Christians, we should allow the Spirit to lead us into a Christ-like way of living. And when it comes to law and sin we do well to be critical of ourselves, and how rules and laws are applied and used. And our clue to what’s expected of us is there at the start of our Gospel. Before he talks about the Law standing unchanged, unaltered, with not one jot taken away, Jesus tells his hearers about what their role should be as his people.

They, and we, are to be salt and light to the world. In other words, making a positive difference, making things better, and affirming people, showing them the way. This is the higher and wiser application of the Law, whose true aim is never to beat people down but always to raise them up. The demanding question Christians need always to ask, especially if we’re tempted into any form of self-righteousness, is this: Am I standing up for righteousness and truth, or am I doing this to make myself feel good and maybe to leave someone else feeling bad?

Throughout what we call the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus encourages those who heard him there to show compassion to those around them, to care for others. His teaching takes nothing from the list of rules and laws that governed people’s lives, but it does turn that law on its head, and change the way it applies to us. All law, religious and secular, aims to order society and keep us safe – if you don’t have rules then you end up with chaos and anarchy. So the law merits our honour and respect.

But when law is used to exclude or to oppress, when law lowers one person’s status so that another’s may be enhanced, or when law boosts one person’s sense of righteousness and labels another person as useless or incapable, or for that matter when law is applied letter by letter but without compassion, then law isn’t doing what God intends it to do. We sin not when we don’t keep the law letter by letter: we sin when we’re not being salt, when we’re hiding our light, when we let God’s love go begging.

And we do these things more often than we recognise; but sin, praise God, has a remedy. When we face up to our failings, and confess our sins and mean it, God promises to forgive us. It’s like we get given instead of our tatty old workbook a brand new diary with no ink blots and no crossings out - a chance to start afresh, to have another go. That amazing forgiveness should itself challenge and change any self-righteous attitude to what law is there to do. How can I not have compassion on my neighbour who makes a mistake, when God has been so compassionate to me? At the heart of all that Jesus says about law and judgement - and he says a lot - is this plain truth: we are all loved, completely and without any question by the one who is the source of all law, and whose nature is all love.

Candlemas

It's time, I think, that I should post my Sunday sermons again! So here is what I hope to preach at our Candlemas services this coming Sunday, at Holy Trinity, Leighton and St Michael's, Chirbury.

It’s more than twenty years since Ann and I were in Jerusalem. We stayed in a Palestinian-run hotel not far from the Damascus Gate, near a busy urban bus station that woke us up each morning. We found Jerusalem to be a busy and bustling and very varied city. Its different communities lived alongside each other, but were also very separate. A short walk one evening took me through the jostling streets of a Palestinian area and then almost immediately into the very different ambience of an Orthodox Jewish district of modern apartment blocks and wide but much quieter streets.

I don’t know how much things have changed by now. There were tensions in the air back then - flags flew to mark the claims and possessions of each different community, and there were places where I didn’t altogether feel at ease, that’s for sure: but there was also the pzazz of city life, where I could be anonymous, and just watch and listen and feel.

I love the anonymity of city life. I like to get away from the tourist trail to places where city life can just swirl around me. I’ve mostly lived in rural places, but there’s a city boy inside me that I can’t deny. City streets are places of hope, intrigue, destiny, and of mystery and revelation. Could I make my home in the city? Probably not - but I love the chances I have to be there. Even the disorientation and dirt and grime, the traffic noises, the tall buildings, the kamikaze pigeons, the purposeful tread of shoppers and commuters - even that I love.

Anyway, today’s Gospel starts on the city streets. Mary and Joseph in a very different time are walking through urban Jerusalem, carrying their first child. Very different streets back then, but still they bustled and were noisy and full of possibility. Back then the temple complex was virtually the same size as the rest of the city all put together. So it would have been the largest building they’d ever seen, by some distance. Unlike my aimless wanderings, Mary and Joseph had a purpose. They had an obligation to fulfil. Their boy child must be presented to the Lord.

In Jewish tradition, the first son belonged to God, and Mary and Joseph needed to do what the Law required, to make the prescribed offering that would ransom back their son. As they weren’t well-off, they’d brought a pair of pigeons. As they entered the temple, they were met by an old man; a man who’d been waiting for this day. I wonder how much Mary and Joseph understood, there and then, of what he said. Cities are hugely disorientating places, at any rate they’re bound to be for those who come in fresh from the country. You never know who you might meet, what might happen, what’s around the corner. They’ll have entered the temple in some trepidation - and now this. What could he mean?

The old man said things about “the one who will be light to the nations, and give glory to Israel.” But then to Mary he said “A sword will also pierce your own soul.” Which, of course, in time it would. Luke tells us the story, and Luke also tells us how Mary stored up in her heart all these things she didn’t really understand. Like that word, for sure. We, knowing what lies ahead, can picture Mary’s anxiety as Jesus leaves the carpenter’s shop to preach in the towns and villages of Galilee and then set his face to the city and the temple where she first heard those words; and her desolation as, on a hill just outside the city walls, she watches her firstborn son die on a cross.

So though today, Candlemas, the Feast of the Presentation is a festival of light to bring a joyful close to the long season of Christmas and Epiphany, it does also have its sombre side. We’re reminded how on our Christian journey light and dark are always intertwined, rejoicing and sadness are never far apart.

The old man, Simeon, and then a little later the widow Anna - for both of them there’s a sense of delight and rejoicing. At last it’s happened. What Malachi the prophet promised has come to pass: “The Lord you seek will suddenly come to his temple.” God has fulfilled his promise to Israel: as we read in Psalm 24, the King of Glory has come in; God’s redemption is at hand.

But there’ll be no redeeming victory without also pain, and the child destined for glory is also bound to suffer. Today Mary’s child is blessed by the temple priests, but one day the priests will conspire to have him put to death.

Of course, as Mary and Joseph stand in the temple, and old Simeon takes their child in his arms, they can’t know anything of what lies ahead for him or for them. It’s just one more moment of disorientation on their visit to the great city, one encounter among many in the shove and bustle of city life.

In a city I quite like to find some quiet spot where the bustle can just flow round me while I watch and consider and spend time with my own thoughts. But then perhaps something will jolt me back into a sharper awareness of what’s around me: a sudden noise, an unexpected sight, something overheard, someone approaching me - and I realise that like it or not, I’m connected into it all, part of that larger story that I can’t ever really just observe from outside. For all of us, there’ll be times when a sword will pierce our own souls, too. And maybe the painful moments and encounters are necessary in fact to our awareness of God.

For disciples of Jesus can’t be insulated from the darkness and pain of the world. We’re not disciples so that the world can’t touch us, we’re disciples so that we can touch the world. When we come to church we’re here to be challenged as well as to be joyful or at peace. At Candlemas traditionally we renew our baptismal vows - and the words said when a child is baptized are in fact quite tough - about fighting evil and renouncing sin. We’re to be light to the world in whatever ways we can, because that’s what Jesus was, and those who are baptized belong to him.

It’s surely a bit dangerous, someone said to me, to go out walking on your own the streets of a city you don’t know. Maybe it is, and I don’t necessarily recommend it to you or anyone else. I suppose I have felt vulnerable, though never seriously threatened.

But consider this: when we see the child Jesus brought into the temple and held there in the arms of old Simeon what we see is God making himself vulnerable - we see God’s saving and redeeming love taking its chance with us. Some like Simeon will recognise that love for what it is. But others may turn away and choose their own path, and there’ll be some who’ll actively oppose it. To follow Jesus is to carry a cross; to accept his way is to accept also the sword that can pierce our souls. But baptism commits us to active faith, and to not playing safe. Jesus says, “Go into all the world.” That’s surely the very opposite of playing safe.

And so, on this day, on a feast that contains both joy and pain, and as we picture the temple in which we find both blessing and burden, perhaps we might take to heart these inspiring words of John Wesley about discipleship and baptismal faith: “Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, for as long as ever you can.”

In other words, let’s not play safe. In the name of the one we call the man for others, and for the sake of the God who became small and vulnerable because that’s what it took to save us, may we be ready to offer ourselves, and in the busy cacophony of human life may his light shine in us for the good of his always fragile and often hurting world.

Christ the King

A Sermon for the Sunday before Advent, to be preached at Marton, Leighton, Welshpool Methodist, and Corndon Marsh Chapel.

Next Sunday we start a new church year, as the season of Advent begins. And of course we’ll be looking forward to Christmas, and our celebration of the birth of Jesus. So it may feel a bit odd that our Gospel reading this morning should be something from the other end of that story, part of Luke’s account of the death of Jesus.

But we end our church year by acclaiming Christ the King, and for me this Gospel reading provides an important insight into what his kingship means, and how it’s proclaimed. Our own royal family has been in the news this last week, and not necessarily for good reasons. My paper was headlined “Crisis at the Palace”. I think we all have huge respect for our Queen, and rightly so; she’s served country and commonwealth well, and with a deep sense of duty, both to her people and to God. Nothing can take that away; but respect for the family as a whole has been dented by recent events.

But if we’re looking for leaders, where else do we go? We’re in the midst of a general election campaign that it seems no-one wants, though some may agree that it’s necessary. People I’ve spoken with over the past week or two, whichever way they’ve decided to vote (assuming they’re even going to vote), most of them seem to have the philosophy of voting for the least worst option. “Not one of the lot of them is any good!” I was told yesterday.

It’s no surprise that many people over the past few months have come to see the political establishment as both inept and self-serving. Leading candidates on every side see no need to correct or apologise for false and inaccurate claims or counter claims, and instead simply repeat them. On Christ the King Sunday we’re reminded that whoever we choose for government, Christians have a greater loyalty, to the one ruler who truly is worth our devotion and service.

But I worry about the increasingly tribal nature of our society. New technologies and social media have helped this along I think. And prejudices get formed and reinforced by a sense that we have to stay loyal to our own tribe. We no longer relate to our actual geographic neighbours, just to the tribe to which we’ve decided we belong.

Or so some of the commentators tell us. And while I don’t think they’re completely right, or I hope not anyway, neither are they completely wrong. That’s why our political parties are all over the social media, using Facebook, Twitter and of course emails to an ever greater extent. I had three emails yesterday just from one particular party, including one purporting to come directly from its leader, despite never having been a party member or supporter. As a floating voter, I do try to listen even to those I don’t naturally agree with; but people with a strong tribal loyalty will often want to shut out and stop their ears to opposing ideas or troublesome facts that might challenge where they stand. And social media makes it easier to do that, I think.

Having said that, tribalism itself is nothing new. People have always belonged to tribes. Back in my school days, we were all either Mods or Rockers, and the really keen ones tried to customise their school uniforms accordingly. And tribalism was one of the forces at work two thousand years ago in the events leading up to today’s Gospel reading. Members of the religious elite had manufactured charges against Jesus, and stirred up the crowd, because they saw Jesus as a threat to the security of the realm. Meanwhile, the Roman governor and his forces were happy enough to facilitate this man’s death, if it would keep things quiet.

“The King of the Jews” read the sign above the head of Jesus. He didn’t look much like a king though; in fact, weak, helpless and broken, he was the antithesis of a king. He hung there as the victim of the prejudices and fears shaped by the religious, cultural and political tribes to which those who crucified him subscribed.

But as he hung there, there were two other men hanging with him. on three crosses. One of the men challenged Jesus. “Save yourself and us” he cried, but you get the feeling he didn’t believe for a moment that Jesus could actually do it. This man is obviously not a real Messiah. He’s weak, he’s broken, he’s humiliated. He’s going nowhere.

I feel a bit sorry for that criminal. He taunted Jesus, and couldn’t believe in him, but he was in agony, he was dying. And maybe in all this pain he was also incredibly angry with Jesus for having done nothing to stop the dreadful thing that was happening. If he could stop it, why didn’t he? It’s the other criminal who surprises me. In this most dire situation he still saw the truth of Jesus, the innocence of Jesus. He recognised the goodness of Jesus even as his own world imploded in pain and fear.

It took a criminal, justly facing the punishment his crimes deserved, to see that the most powerful person on that dark hill was the one everyone else thought of as the weakest. And that, as others would come to understand later, what looked like a cross was in fact a royal throne, and what looked like a death was in fact the defeat of death. To him, Jesus replied, “Today you’ll be with me in Paradise”.

Who would look for a king at a place of execution? Or for that matter in a manger in a cow shed? This king defies our natural expectations of kingship. Kings should never be vulnerable, or at the mercy of others. But his way is not the way of the world. A conference I was at some years ago in Brazil had as its motto “Um outre mundo es possivel” (A different world is possible). Christ the King Sunday reminds us that this King, the King who forgives and heals, who loves, who dies even for those who have mocked and denied and abandoned him, this King seeks to lead us to that different world.

I don’t expect this world any time soon to leave behind its tribal insecurities and feuds. And I doubt those who promise that after this election everything will be sunny and wonderful again, once he or she gets the keys to Number Ten. But I do hope we make some progress towards recognition, penitence and healing. We may be tribal, but our shared humanity is worth much more than our tribal fears. And no tribe has all the truth. So let’s not indulge in mockery, prejudice or fear. Let’s continue to stand for goodness and justice and truth. And let’s pray with that criminal at Calvary, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom”.