Paul and Silas in Prison (a sermon for Easter 7)

I love the account of Paul and Silas in prison, because it’s such a great story to use in Messy Church or school assembly - how can you go wrong with a tale that involves prison cells, an earthquake, and a jailer armed with a sword, with which he’s about to kill himself? It’s full of excitement and danger, but with a message of liberation and a happy ending.

So I’ve used it a lot over the years, as you can imagine. Paul and Silas are the victims of spite, trumped up charges, a bit of mob rule and some inept decisions by those in authority. The magistrates had had them flogged, not realising that both Paul and Silas had the status of Roman citizens, which should have protected them from treatment like that.

Later they had to make a grovelling apology. Next morning, the magistrates sent a message to the jailer telling him to let Paul and Silas go. But the two apostles refused to go; they stayed put in prison, and sent a message back saying, “You gave us a public flogging and threw us into prison without a trial. If you want us to go, come and escort us out yourselves, rather than sneaking us out via the back door. And by the way, an apology would be nice, since we are both Roman citizens.”

But that comes after the reading we’ve heard this morning. To begin with, there they are in prison, whiling away the time by singing hymns. It’s late at night by then, but they’re singing and praying, and the other prisoners are listening, one hopes gladly. Then all of a sudden there’s an earthquake. That part of the Mediterranean was and is prone to earthquakes, and this one certainly shook things up. Their chains fell off - their arms and legs would have been shackled, and maybe their necks as well. The cell doors swung open. Meanwhile the jailer had probably been knocked unconscious. When he came to and saw all the doors open, and all his prisoners presumably gone, he drew his sword to end his own life. But just in time, Paul shouts, “Don’t do it! We’re all still here!” It’s all so dramatic!

The reality is that those were cruel and brutal days. A jailer whose prisoners escaped would face the same punishment as them or worse. It surprises me that Paul and Silas were able to persuade the other prisoners to stay, since we’re told that the earthquake had released every one of them; but somehow he got them to see their escape could only be at the cost of their jailer’s life.

And so they all stayed. And the jailer was so amazed and overcome by that selfless act that he fell at Paul’s feet, and that night he and all his household were baptized. Liberation had come to the man responsible for their imprisonment. And even before he was baptized, the jailer treated and cleaned the wounds Paul and Silas had from their flogging, while later he invited them to eat in his own house - a kindness that proved the genuineness of his new faith. “I turn to Christ,” people say at a baptism service. Truly turning to Christ means also turning to kindness, compassion, fellow feeling and mutual service.

But wasn’t that was what got Paul and Silas into prison in the first place? They’d been exasperated by the shouting of a girl whose gifts of prophecy brought big profits to her owners. But they must also have been exasperated by her situation - being a good earner for people who owned her, while having no life of her own. What they did released her, gave her a life again. You could say it was an act of liberation that imprisoned Paul and Silas.

Those who seek to build a better world will always be met by vested interests who don’t want things to change - particularly when it hits them in the pocket, or they think it might. Think of eco campaigners today. The world is drowning in single use plastic - but how able are we to do anything much about it? There are so many vested interests, from the companies that make big profits out of plastic, via the supermarkets for whom products packaged in plastic are easier to move and display and sell, and therefore more profitable, to you and me who find it so easy to use something once then throw it away.

Liberation isn’t always easy. Not everyone who’s offered it wants it - it can be more comfortable in a cage. Our pet rabbit escaped when I was little. We thought it was gone for good, but next day there it was back in its run. It felt safer there. But though a cage can be gilded and given every mod com, it’s still a cage.

Our story shows us two forms of justice. The first is the justice meted out by the magistrates, justice meted out by those in power: in this case misused and distorted, kowtowing to the loudest voices and those with vested interests. Like too much of the justice we find in worldly places. But then we see the justice God desires, modelled by Paul and Silas both before and during their time in prison. God’s justice honours the other person, desires their freedom, and is motivated by kindness, compassion and love. This is the justice that rolls down like waters, that lifts every valley and levels out every hill; the justice of the Magnificat, that lifts up the lowly: justice that makes a positive difference. This justice is always linked with those other two important Bible words, righteousness and mercy. And this is the justice of the Kingdom of God.

Paul and Silas were locked up because the girl’s owners, and the mob, and the magistrates, labelled them as dangerous. And so they were - to those who dealt unfairly, to those who acted unjustly, to those who imprisoned others. Jesus came to make changes to that, to set people free, to set free both the oppressed and the oppressor. Liberation is one word for that: his Gospel changes people and transforms situations. It casts down the mighty from their thrones, to quote again from the Magnificat. But maybe that’s us - comparatively powerful and fairly comfortable, at any rate. And then it won’t always feel like change for the better. The owners of the slave girl were set free by Paul from their unfair exploitation of her, but I don’t imagine they saw it in terms of liberation. It’ll have felt unfair, unlawful even, because of the way it damaged their interests.

We rightly identify them as being among the baddies in this story - but don’t we sometimes do the same? Thy kingdom come, we pray, so long as it doesn’t interfere too much with the smooth running of our lives. As long as it doesn’t cost too much, or take up too much space in my diary.

This is the penultimate Sunday of Easter, and the last Sunday to bear the name of Easter. The great fifty days of Easter end next Sunday on the birth day of the Church, Pentecost. For forty days the disciples struggled to understand not just that Jesus had risen, but what it actually was he’d done for them and for the world on the Cross: to see the Cross as a place of triumph, not of defeat. Then for ten days they prayed, as we’re praying now, between Ascension and Pentecost.

We have proclaimed the Resurrection, and we’ve sung the hymns, heard the stories, repeated the alleluias. But next Sunday Pentecost will challenge us: “Are we living the Resurrection?” Last week, Jesus asked a crippled man lying by the pool of Bethesda, “Do you want to be healed?” Today the question is, “Do you want to be free?” The liberation of Jesus Christ breaks open all kinds of chains, just as that earthquake did. It takes away in the end the labels of oppressed and oppressor that are part of how the world’s systems imprison us. If we’re truly God’s people, if we’ve found in him the healing and forgiveness and freedom we need, then we’ll be known by a new name, a name that’s made visible in how we live: in fellowship and community and service.

Let me close with the last verse of one of our hymns :-

Thy nature, gracious Lord, impart,
come quickly from above;
write thy new name upon my heart,
thy new best name of Love.  Amen.

Politics . . .

A past chaplain to the United States Senate was once asked, “I suppose you take account of the state of the country, and pray for our senators?” “No,” he replied, “most times I take account of the state of our senators, and pray for the country!”

I’d be interested to hear the views of the present chaplain to the House of Commons. We’re told that (quote) “religion and politics don’t mix” - or at least, we’re encouraged to think they shouldn’t. In much of the world religion and politics are very closely mixed, but ours is a secular state, and none of our major parties has a specifically religious base. And I’m sure that’s as it should be; while my faith encourages me to take an interest in the themes, campaigns and programmes of our political life, I don’t think it instructs me to vote in any particular way.

And the Church of England won’t come out in support of any one political party. That doesn’t mean the Church shouldn’t take part in political debate, though. The Christian faith may well have useful and perceptive things to contribute, and political statements, decisions or ideas that lack consistency, humanity or charity deserve to be challenged. Anyway, politics with a small p is the preserve of everyone - politics just means “how we live together”, and that’s something often far too important to be left to those we happen to have elected.

I’ve met and worked with quite a lot of career politicians over the years, and got to know some of them quite well. While I’ve not always agreed with them, and some at least would never get my vote, it’s only fair to say that nearly all the politicians I’ve met clearly came into it wanting to make things better and to do some good, and with hopeful and positive intent. I’m sure there are politicians who’re there for what they can get out of it, or to promote their own divisive and extremist opinions, but they are the minority, I think. We may disagree about what’s best for the nation, and on how to get it, but most people who are active in politics are there in search of a better world.

There is a link, I think, between my opening thoughts and today’s readings. In the Acts of the Apostles we have the record of Paul’s first missionary journey across to Europe. While there was probably already a Christian community in Rome, Paul’s journey to Macedonia is the first actual record we have of the Gospel coming to Europe. Paul came in response to a dream or vision, and the message that people here needed his help. Politics at its best is also about hearing and responding to people’s calls for help.

There were lots of people needing help in Jerusalem. A man who was crippled or disabled was worthless, not only unable to earn a living, but implicitly blamed for his own misfortune by those who saw it as God’s punishment either for his own sins or maybe those of his father. That belief also allowed them not to feel they had to respond to his disability, other than maybe by throwing a few coins into a begging bowl.

When the waters moved in the pool, the first person into the water would be healed. So they believed, anyway, if only in their desperation. We don’t know how many of this man’s thirty eight years of disability had been spent lying by the pool - but his hope of being healed must have been dashed again and again.

The question Jesus asks him is an interesting one. “Do you want to get well?” Why was he there if he didn’t? I wonder where the stress actually came in those words, as they were spoken. “Do you want to get well?”, perhaps. I’ve got a broken light over my bathroom mirror. I fixed it, which worked for a while, till the bulb fell out and brought the glass shade off, which shattered. Since then I’ve not bothered to fix it: more trouble than it’s worth, I suppose. In all sorts of ways in life, we accommodate ourselves to situations that aren’t ideal, and are sometimes far from it. When we say, “I don’t do politics,” we’re sort of saying “I’d rather just keep things as they are, and not worry about fixing them.” Maybe this crippled man had got used to living as he was; maybe he’d be happier not getting well.

But that wasn’t the case. He wanted release from his condition, it’s just that he wasn’t quick and able enough. And Jesus healed him. Politics at its best, whatever party we’re talking about, is about restoring chance and opportunity to those who lack it; it’s about recognising the spark of initiative in people, and helping them to seize their chances: knowing what people are hoping for and aiming for, and helping them get there.

Different parties and political creeds may have different ideas about how to do that, but in their own ways that I think is what most people in politics come into it to do. To start off with, anyway. Maybe the shine gets rubbed off, maybe it does become just a job, maybe the perks get too tempting. Or the party whips shout louder than the voices you should be hearing.

A higher proportion of MP’s have an active faith than would be true for a typical cross section of the population outside of parliament. So I dare to hope and pray that the example of Jesus and his apostles may inspire jaded MP’s with a Christian faith to recapture some of the zeal, hopefulness and concern that first motivated them to seek office. And to remind them that they’re answerable not only to the whips and their party machine, but also to those who elected them; and to those who voted for the other guy, but who are still their constituents; and to their own consciences; and to God. And maybe at times to reassess, which are the most important voices to hear? Who to follow, who to serve?

But that doesn’t only apply to elected politicians. There’s a message for you and me too. All of us are in some way responsible for the world around us, and for the people around us. Don’t let other things shut out the voice of our neighbours, when they’re saying “Come over and help us!” or, like the man by the Pool of Siloam, “I can’t fix this on my own.” Don’t let our own stuff crowd out the voice of God; take seriously the example of service Jesus sets us, not least in this story. All sorts of people were passing by that pool that day. But Jesus stopped and listened.

Most of the professional politicians I got to know well had at some time picked up a call for help, and decided it wasn’t a job for someone else, but something they should do. For Christians, our neighbour is anyone who needs our help; anyone who, like the guy by the pool, is going to be stuck there if we don’t respond. Someone like that is in my power; I’ve the power to respond or to not respond, to help or to pass by. All politicians want power: “when we’re in power we’ll do all these things to make your lives better” their manifestos assure us. But the wiser ones know that power is worthless until it’s used for good, that power held for its own sake always corrupts, and that for the land to prosper, power and responsibility - and a measure of humility - should always go hand in hand. Not just in the High Court of Parliament, but in every human situation. Not just up there, but down here too.

“Love your neighbour as yourself,” the Bible tells us. “How can someone claim to love God whom he has never seen, if he fails to love his brother whom he sees every day?” asked St John. “I am among you as one who serves,” said Jesus. “Let the greatest among you do the same.”

Lord, teach me to be generous,
to serve you as you deserve,
to give and not to count the cost,
to fight and not to heed the wounds,
to toil and not to seek for rest,
to labour and not to look for any reward,
save that of knowing that I do your will. Amen.

Rogation Sunday

I think my son John must have left the old copy of Scientific American Magazine I came across the other day. It included an article about the planet Saturn and its various moons, with some amazing pictures taken by a recent probe. Saturn is the second largest planet in our solar system, much bigger than the earth. It’s what’s known as a gas giant, made up mostly of hydrogen, so it's big but not all that heavy. And of course it’s surrounded by those amazing rings, that were first observed and recorded many centuries ago by Galileo. No-one really knows what they are; one theory suggests they could be the debris from some kind of giant cosmic accident, perhaps when an asteroid was torn to pieces.

No human being could live on Saturn, nor any life form we could imagine. But scientists have pondered over whether some of its various moons could harbour simple forms of life. The biggest moon - Titan - is more or less planet sized, and it’s been observed to have clouds and atmosphere and even weather - though not the sort of weather we could survive in. That’s a shame, since Titan is rich in mineral ores, and the idea of mining Titan has been a staple theme of many a science fiction novel.

Reading about Saturn as a place not to live started me thinking about where we do live, and about life on earth. Organic life forms are fragile and very varied, and they’re also persistent and determined to thrive. Think of the sheer dogged strength that allows germinating seeds to push their way up through the tarmac and concrete with which we coat our planet; think of those emperor penguins that stand guard over their chicks all winter in the frozen desert of Antarctica. But though life on earth comes in many forms and has made a home in all kinds of environments, the search for signs of life beyond our own planet continues not to find any trace of it. Star Wars may be a hugely successful movie franchise, but so far it seems a long way removed from reality.

Scientists talk about the 'Goldilocks Zone' to mean that part of the space around a star in which life may form. It's a very narrow band, and we're in it. The proper name for it is the CHZ, or Circumstellar Habitable Zone, but Goldilocks is a snappier expression: like the porridge in the story, our band is neither too hot nor too cold, but just right.

Many people think there’s a conflict between religion and science, and I know there are faith leaders who still today totally reject what science has to say. I trained as a scientist, and for me the conflict they speak about isn’t real. For me, science answers the question “how” - how I exist, how all of this works. Religion tackles a trickier question: “why” - why am I here, what am I here for? Some people want to say that the why question doesn’t exist, or if it does, it’s not spurious and doesn’t mean much. Well, it does for me, as I search out the hand of God in this vast and complex universe, and ask what he wants of me - and of us.

In the Book of Genesis, right at the start of our Bibles, we’re told that God made all things, and in our Psalm responses at the start of this service we said that “The earth is the Lord’s”. That I believe, and that belief is at the heart of this Rogation Sunday service. Where I part company with the fundamentalists is that I don’t think the Bible, in Genesis or elsewhere, intends to dictate how God creates. What the Bible does do is to tackle the issue of how we relate to that created order, and to our God. 

With that in mind, we can see in Genesis that we’re made of the same stuff as everything else, made (so chapter 2 of Genesis assures us) of the dust. And that’s really the same as science says. We may have this marvellous ability to discover, think and reflect, to design and create, but we’re still made of the same stuff as frogs and buttercups and jellyfish. But that’s not the whole story, for Genesis chapter 1 tells us that we’re also made in the image of God.

What does that mean, though? The fact that we’re creative is certainly part of it, and the fact that we’re aware. Farmers and gardeners are part of that creativity which is as I see it not only God given but also something that reflects God. A good garden is a place of harmony and peace, in which the earth is made productive and beautiful, and somehow we are too. It’s no surprise that Adam and Eve start their story in a garden, Eden.

Eden is as much about where we choose to travel to as where we’ve fallen from. I love to look round gardens, and they remind me that God wants us and calls us to work in harmony with him, with what he’s made, and with one another. Much of how we use the world is far from harmonious, and that worries many of us I know. Rogation Sunday should address those concerns - plastic and pollution, deforestation and global climate change. The clock is ticking. But we can’t ask God to wave some kind of magic wand, and do nothing ourselves. What we pray for we much also work for.

Places like this were loved by the Celtic saints who first brought the faith to these hills. They discerned and worshipped God in the rhythms of the natural world; and the world of nature was for them something to work with and to be quietly and reverently part of, not a thing to fight or to force into submission. Their worship followed the rhythms of tides and sunsets and seasons, and was founded firmly in prayer: prayer as the foundation of a life of godly service: prayer as a necessary beginning to all our work.  There’s an old saying that to pray is to work, and to work is to pray. Prayer time is never wasted: prayer clears our thoughts and directs them to God, and gives him space to speak to us or to form thoughts in our hearts. And work can be done prayerfully, if how we work and what our work achieves glorifies God as Creator.

That’s our theme this Sunday. Rogation brings together prayer, growth, creation and a spirit of holiness. God the maker of stars and planets is also the giver of life and the inspirer of love.

So let’s thank God for the beauty of the land around us here, and pray we may live here reverently - with a vision of his love, an understanding of his purpose, and a quiet holiness. Here we are, safely in our Goldilocks zone. But how safely, really? We reject at our peril the warnings climate change campaigners give us. More to the point, perhaps, we reject at our peril the way our forbears worked and worshipped at the same time, adapting their lives to the rhythms of creation, and honouring God not just on a Sunday but in all the everyday events and activities of their lives. Pray that we may use the land and all it gives us in a way that gives glory to God; in ways that fulfil his purpose and love, and that reflect the rhythms and harmonies of creation.

Bees

My "Nature Notes" article for local magazines . . .

I was doing a few evening jobs in my garden the other day, close to my rather untidy fruit cage - untidy mostly because raspberries, which often seem to grow better underground than on top of it, seem to push their shoots up everywhere (note: except in the rows where you want them to be). Last year’s new raspberry canes are of course now busy flowering, ready to produce this year’s fruit, and there was a steady hum of bees, as several different sorts prospected the flowers.

Although raspberry flowers have thin white petals that are hardly visible, and clearly don’t use showy colours to attract the bees, they’re obviously popular, and I’m glad they are: no bees would mean no fruit. And that’s true for a huge number of our flowers and fruits, both things we like to see in the hedgerows and commercial crops. Bees are vital, and without them everything else would break down.

Bees form a large and very variable group of insects, and there are about 270 species of bee found in the UK. Although our first thoughts might be of honey bees, there are in fact just ten species of honey bee worldwide, only one of which is naturally found in the UK, so most bees are not honey bees. And not all bees are social insects in the way that honey bees are - most are either solitary or live in loose colonies.

But all kinds of bees are important pollinators of our flowers, and everything we can do to maintain and improve bee populations is important. In gardens, this can include opting for flowers that are good for bees - some showy blooms don’t produce the nectar and pollen that bees need - using garden chemicals sparingly if at all, and installing a few bug houses or bee hotels, which are readily available not only from wildlife groups but also garden centres and even supermarkets. And then maybe signing up to the Friends of the Earth campaign and their Great British Bee Count.

Currently, several of our roses are beginning have great bites taken out of their leaves - a sign that our local leaf-cutter bees are back in business. They seem to specially like roses. They are dark, hairy little bees, and the female bee cuts the leaves to make cells for her larvae. We also have one particular climbing rose whose clusters of small highly scented flowers attract good numbers of tree bumble bees. This is a species new to the UK, and it’s a bit of a relief to see a species on the increase at a time of anxiety about the declining bee population as a whole.

Tree Bumble Bee on our climbing rose

We need them all, as different bees are around at different times of the year, and may prefer different plant species. I’m always glad when the bamboo tubes in our “bee hotel” get blocked and turned into cells for the grubs that will be the next bee generation. But not all bees are good guys. I saw a very yellow one - almost wasp-like - sneak in the other day: that will have been a cuckoo bee, and its grub won’t just eat the food ball left for the host larva, but probably the larva itself as well.

All You Need Is Love

Jesus said: “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another.” Later, he went on to tell his disciples that “everyone will know you’re my people by the way you love each other.” The Beatles sang, in 1967, “All you need is love.”

To love one another sounds easy enough in theory, but it gets a bit more tricky when you come to actually do it. Where are the limits? Even loving our families, friends and neighbours isn’t always easy. Rifts and arguments can happen in the closest families, and even best friends can fall out; and that’s before we get to the stories of problem neighbours, and shared drives, new extensions, noisy parties or Leylandii hedges.

What Jesus actually said was this: “As I have loved you, you also should love one another.” So we are to love in the way that Jesus loves, to be like him in our loving. Jesus was quite blunt about it. He told the people: “You’ve heard it said that you should love your neighbour and hate your enemy, but what I say to you is this: love your enemy, and do good to those who hate you.”

That widens the boundaries quite a lot. The list of people we should love includes the postman and the dustman and the girl who delivers the paper, the person on the till in Tesco, the guy who just took the parking space you were aiming for, the person who cheated on you or told lies about you, the person whose different language or colour or faith you find uncomfortable or even threatening, and even those who make themselves your enemy by the nasty things they do. It’s not easy, but Jesus loves all these people, so we should too. And we have also to love ourselves. That isn’t always easy, either.

In John chapter 14, Jesus calls himself the way. Thomas had said to him, “We don’t know where you are going, how can we know the way?” and he replied, “I am the way; I am truth and life.” The very first Christians weren’t called Christians; they were called “Followers of the way”.
And to be true to Jesus, the Church isn’t a fixed thing so much as a movement: a movement of people doing their best to continue his work of transforming lives and changing the world for good. Jesus told the people that before anything else they should seek the kingdom of God.

And love is there at the heart of the kingdom. Think of the great chapter 13 of Paul’s First Letter to Corinth, which is all about love. This is what Paul wrote: “Love is patient and kind. “Love envies no-one, is never boastful, never conceited, never rude; love is never selfish, never quick to take offence. Love keeps no score of wrongs, takes no pleasure in the sins of others, but delights in the truth.” If you take the word “love” out of each place in that passage where you read it, and replace it with the name “Jesus”, you realise that Paul isn’t writing about the ideal of love, but the person of Jesus. What you can then do, of course, is to put your own name in, in place of the name of Jesus. That gives us something to aim at!

So maybe a true Christian is the person who dares to give a smile when others are all frowning, or the person who offers a helping hand to the guy everyone else is walking past. Jesus told people they should turn the other cheek, and walk the extra mile. The poet John Donne wrote: “No man is an island.” We human beings live in connection with one another - that’s part of what makes us who we are. And even little choices in life can have a real impact. Think of those grouchy days when everyone seems to be frowning and unhelpful; on days like that it’s hard not to do the same. So if we’re following the Way of Love by smiling we’ll be out of step with the rest of the world, or that’s how it may feel.

But we need to be out of step; that’s the challenge. For if we choose to smile, that starts a ball rolling, and if we join everyone else in frowning, that does too. What we choose to do has an impact beyond ourselves, whether for better or for worse.

Christ’s Way of Love imagines a future in which all have what they need, and commits us to work for it: for every one of our neighbours to have enough to eat, and safe shelter, and good and warm clothes to wear, and something to smile about.

The fact that most people in this country do have these things is testimony to people in past ages who worked to make that happen, many of them because they were following Christ, following Christ’s Way of Love. We have what we have because people before us dared to care beyond themselves. The fact that many in the world still don’t have these things shows there’s still a way to travel.

Last week we asked the question “Where do we go from here?”, and Mark and Lizzie Hackney talked to us about mission. In reply, they didn’t actually say, “All you need is love” - but that’s what they meant. They challenged us to think about how each one of our churches can be a blessing for the communities we serve. If we are blessed (and we are), we should aim to share that blessing, and God’s love, as widely as we can.

That’s what Jesus called his friends to do, when he said, “As I have loved you, you are to love one another.” We could love in a way that excludes others and turns us into a holy huddle, but that’s not how Jesus loved. To love like Jesus is to love without limit and to love without precondition. That’s the mark of the love divine we sing about: it’s love that makes a difference, that lifts up, that opens doors, that heals. And that’s what the apostle John had in mind when he wrote: “God is love, and those who live in love live in God, and God lives in them.” He’s calling the people of Jesus to live and to share the love we find in Jesus, and if we’re doing that, we’re doing mission.

Mary's Gift

A sermon for Passion Sunday morning, based on John 12.1-8 :-

Today begins the season within a season that we call Passiontide - taking us from today, the 5th Sunday in Lent, through Holy Week to the cross and the tomb. Within these fourteen days there are many themes on which to reflect, many emotions with which we come into contact. That’s true even in the two readings we’ve heard this morning. Neither of them actually mentions the cross, but the cross stands at the heart of what each of them has to say. We hear Paul defending his Jewish credentials against those who it seems have been saying he’s a traitor to his Jewish faith. On the contrary, he says, I’ve found the answer to a question my faith as I once knew it could never answer. And that answer is Christ Jesus. We’ll come back to Paul the Pharisee, and what changed him, a bit later.

First let’s think about our Gospel reading, where Jesus is anointed with costly oil, and Judas is mightily offended by it. It’s a story of generous giving, it’s a story about love; and there’s perhaps a hint that those friends of Jesus at Bethany, Mary and Martha and Lazarus, knew more or suspected more about what lay ahead for Jesus than did his disciples.

The giving - and, more to the point, the receiving - of gifts can be a minefield in public service. Take these words from the guidelines regarding the Planning Inspectorate, for example. “It is an overarching principle that individuals working for the Inspectorate must adhere to the highest standards of public service. Dealing with offers of gifts, benefit or hospitality - if ever in doubt a polite but firm refusal is the right action.  The Civil Service Code states that Civil Servants must not accept gifts or hospitality or receive other benefits from anyone which might reasonably be seen to compromise their personal judgement or integrity.” Which might reasonably be seen by whom, I wonder? And when? What might seem an innocent act of friendship now might look very different with hindsight, especially where something goes wrong.

Anyway, the reasoning behind these kind of rules is clearly sensible: an expensive gift could be seen as a bribe even if it was just given out of friendship. And even then it could influence a decision. But suspicion regarding generous giving isn’t restricted to the Civil Service. All of us probably tend to look a bit askance at acts of open extravagance, of money or expensive gifts being thrown around. We might mistrust the impulse behind the gift, or feel at a loss because we’re not in a position to be equally lavish in response: either way it can leave us feeling uncomfortable. So even without John’s rather snide remarks about Judas being a thief, the extravagant giving of Mary, filling the whole house with perfume, might have left us as uncomfortable, were we there, as it did Judas.

Our Gospel story unfolds with a sense of tension in the air. Jerusalem was a dangerous place, and though the disciples were convinced Jesus was going there as Messiah, and therefore bound to win the day, they also knew it was going to be pretty tough.

The previous chapter in John’s Gospel tells the story of Lazarus raised from the dead. That story must have spread widely and quickly, and it won’t always have been heard gladly. There were those who wanted rid of this man before he stirred things up any more. Some among the Pharisees were plotting to have Jesus killed; they believed that if they didn’t stop him the Romans would destroy the nation itself. So maybe Mary knew enough to fear she might be about to lose her dearest friend.

Our Lenten journey takes us toward Jerusalem, week by week. That’s especially true this year; most of our readings come from Luke’s Gospel, and that journey to Jerusalem is one of Luke’s great themes. We know that Jerusalem will be a place of challenge and pain and ultimately of a terrible and degrading death. And now we’re near the end of the journey. Next week we’ll stand at the foot of the cross to see our Lord breathe his last. But we know how the story ends, so we’re already planning for Easter.

That wasn’t so for the people gathered at Bethany that night. The disciples had dreams of a military victory and thrones from which they would share in the government of Israel. But Mary perhaps could think only of death; and maybe this anointing was her last desperate attempt to hold on to Jesus. Of course we can’t know, and the story doesn’t tell us. But we do know that while Jesus had only a little time left of his earthly journey, and maybe Mary could sense that, what he was going to do in Jerusalem would prove God’s abundant grace and boundless love. This is the God who restores the hopeless, who makes rivers flow in the desert.

And - as Jesus’ response makes clear - Mary’s generous gift is itself a testimony to and a reflection of that wonderful abundant grace, the amazing grace of which John Newton sang. In this Gospel we see two contrasting ways of responding to the problems and challenges of life. Mary, in gratitude for her brother Lazarus’ life, but maybe also aware that Jesus will die in Jerusalem, gives with absurd generosity; and with abandonment too - see how she wipes his feet with her hair. The disciples would have been very disturbed to see such a flagrant declaration of love. It won’t only have been Judas who felt uncomfortable.

And meanwhile, just off the edge of the picture, we have the Pharisees, and others who joined them – and eventually, the Roman authorities too – responding in a way that’s all too familiar. They are privileged people who feel their power base to be under threat. So they do whatever they can to tighten their grip and reassert control. And if that requires a death, then so be it. The end, it seems, will justify any means to hand.

Mary’s way is to give all we’ve got; while the Pharisees and their allies aim to do whatever it takes to keep control. We instinctively label the Pharisees as the baddies, and it’s clear that John had it in for Judas when he set this story down; but, be honest: most of us, in a similar boat, might also opt for their way, and to do what we can to keep control.

We might even find ourselves agreeing with Judas. “It’s such a waste! Think how much good could have been done with all the money that oil cost!” And then of course there was Mary’s sensuous and abandoned behaviour: no respectable woman would wear her hair down in company, let alone use it in such a flagrant fashion.

And, as I’ve said, we may well feel discomforted by acts of excessive generosity. Our culture encourages us to take only measured risks, and of course, in many ways that’s wise. But our God has no use for cost-benefit analysis, he’s profligate in the generosity of his grace; we see his grace in Jesus, who calls us to be like he is and to do as he does: to take the risk: give without counting the cost, love one another as I love you.

And this seems to lead me back to Paul. In his former existence as a sincere and zealous Pharisee, Paul thought he was serving God by doing all he could to keep control, and by persecuting the followers of this dangerous man Jesus of Nazareth. He was getting it badly wrong, but he did what he did because he wanted to do what he thought God wanted. And by keeping control and working to fulfil every point of the Law, he thought he was getting it right.

He had to meet Jesus on the road to Damascus before he could see the truth, that ultimately those who aim to keep control lose it, and lose it for ever. Even the most zealous keeper of the Law will still fall short of the perfection of God; and those who live by the Law can only be judged by the Law.

That’s where Paul was until, as he put it, “Christ took hold of me.” He came to see that what happened on the cross begins a new story: a story of generous love, the love that’s mirrored in that lavish gift of perfumed oil that filled the house with fragrance. God’s love is like that, only much, much more. So may we embrace the impulse we usually deny, to give as abundantly as we can. We know how the story ends: God makes rivers flow in the driest desert. So shouldn’t we be kneeling with Mary in that perfumed room rather than standing with the Pharisees in their quest to keep control?

Entering Passiontide

A sermon for the evening of Passion Sunday, based on Luke 22.1-13 :-

As we enter the story of the Passion in St Luke’s Gospel, the tension is building. A number of factions among the Jews were anxious to silence Jesus, each one of them anxious to defend their rights and privileges, and scared to rock a boat captained by the Romans. The Pharisees with their emphasis on purity under the Law were scandalised that Jesus was happy to meet with people who were obvious sinners, even to party with them on occasion. He was undermining everything they stood for, and cheapening the Law of Moses, that’s how they saw it. The supporters of Herod, the dubiously Jewish tetrarch of Galilee, knew that if the Romans were ever to decide Herod was no longer able to keep order, he’d be out of power straight away. And the chief priests in the Temple needed to protect the fragile status quo of their city so as to make sure the Temple remained intact.

There were enemies on every side, but now also an enemy among Jesus’ own followers. Satan entered Judas Iscariot, John tells us. There are many theories about what motivated Judas. John’s Gospel presents him as a bad sort who stole from the common purse. But in that case why did Jesus tolerate him? Why had he called him in the first place? So had Judas had lost faith in Jesus, having presumed him to be what probably they all expected - a Messiah whose impact on Jerusalem would be political and military: a Messiah to remove the Romans and the Herods too, and restore the Kingdom of David. So why was nothing happening? Did Judas decide it was better to do a deal and then look elsewhere?

Or did he have a slightly different motive? Maybe it wasn’t that he’d lost faith in Jesus, but that he’d decided he needed to do something that would provoke Jesus into action; something to start the ball rolling. What better than to stage an attempt to arrest Jesus? Surely that would force him to fight back. That might explain his suicide. When the fight he’d hoped to provoke didn’t happen, Judas realised, too late, who Jesus really was.

We can’t know, we can only speculate. But when Jesus said of Judas, “It would be better for that man had he never been born” I don’t think he meant that in a condemnatory way; I believe his words were spoken with a huge depth of sadness. Jesus knew that when he came to his senses Judas would be loaded with a greater weight of grief than anyone could ever bear. And so it was.
With or without Judas, the forces of darkness were drawing ever closer. A feature of the Passiontide stories is the sense of arrangements being made in which the disciples themselves have no part. So who was arranging things, then? Who made sure people knew beforehand that a donkey was needed for the journey into the Holy City? Who made sure a room was made ready for the Passover supper to be prepared?

I have a theory. I think it was Mary and Martha. They lived just outside Jerusalem at Bethany and presumably knew people there. The disciples wouldn’t have, being Galileans. Mary and Martha were clearly very close to Jesus, added to which women might well attract less attention than men when arranging these things at a tense and dangerous time.

The story rings very true, anyway. The authorities wanted Jesus in custody, but they knew they’d no chance of making an arrest while Jesus was surrounded by crowds of people in the streets and squares of the city. They needed him to be in some quiet place, where there were as few supporters as possible to cause trouble or raise a hue and cry. Jesus himself chose that place, as we will see as we read the rest of the passion story. But in tonight’s reading Jesus needs a different quiet place, one his enemies won’t find, so that he can do this special thing - eat with his disciples the supper at which he’ll break bread and share wine using special and provocative words. words that join them and us to the cross. The disciples must look for a man carrying a water jar. That’s women’s work, not something you’d find a man doing. But he’s there and they follow him.

And when they enter the house he’s entered, they’re expected. They speak to the householder, who directs them to the room that’s been made ready. We don’t know who any these people were. Not the owners of the Palm Sunday donkey, nor the householder. People like to speculate: was the owner of the house Joseph of Arimathea, for example? But maybe it’s no-one we’ve heard of. What all of this does suggest is that, while most of the followers of Jesus were from Galilee, there was a Jerusalem network too. And surely one vital link was Mary and Martha.

When you read Luke’s account of the passion - or any of the others - what strikes you (what strikes me, anyway) is the amount of careful planning that’s gone into it all, in which Jesus is working closely with some trusted allies. They may not have known quite why they were doing what they did, and the disciples themselves seem almost blissfully unaware until the last moment: but Jesus himself was very deliberately poking a stick into the hornet’s nest of his enemies, forcing their hand almost - backing them into a corner from which they were pretty much bound to take the course of action they eventually did.

This is what he knew he must do, and the timing of it all was all as he arranged it. In other words, this is a deliberate act of sacrifice, not the sabotaging of his plans by others. Jesus knew by now what Judas was going to do, and he knew that the garden was the place where he would be taken. But before that he needed to do this vital and special thing that would connect his disciples in - connect us in too - to that sacrifice. A Passover meal, a celebration of God’s deliverance - at which he will say, “This is my body, do this in remembrance of me.” Only he can do this work, but he chooses to join us to what he alone can do. Soon the disciples will see their master a broken man, hauled away by unbeatable powers. Except that what really happened was the exact opposite of that. What we really see is Jesus choosing to do what he alone can do, while his enemies are mere pawns in that play.

Pollution, Plastic, Litter!

I was doing some litter picking not far from where I live the other day, and I came across this. I cleared what I could, but sadly this stream isn't accessible to the public, so I could only gather what I could reach over the fence . . .

The Problem of Pain

Today’s Gospel reading is quite a difficult read right from the start. What are the events being talked about? It’s hard to be sure, though they’re clearly quite tragic. I’ve read a number of different theories, and the one that makes most sense to me is that both events - the murdered Galileans and the people killed when a tower fell on them - both events are linked to a project initiated by the Roman governor Pontius Pilate that aimed to improve the water supply to Jerusalem. That seems a very worthy initiative, and it was much needed, so you’d think it would have been popular with everyone.

But Pilate had decided to fund his project with money from the Temple treasury. I’m sure that seemed to him a sensible and practical way to do it. Jerusalem needed a water supply, so Jerusalem should pay for it. And since most of the money that came into the holy city ended up in the temple treasury, it surely made sense to use that money for this project.

But the people of the city, along with the many pilgrims who came to the Temple, were appalled at the thought of temple money being taken by the Romans. The Jewish equivalent of les gilets jaunes were soon out on the streets. Pilate’s response was to get his soldiers to mingle with the crowds in the disguise, so they could then deal with the trouble makers by falling on them with cudgels at a given signal. And that’s what they did, but with a vengeful violence that probably exceeded what Pilate had decreed. Still, no matter, order had been restored. And there would certainly have been Galilean pilgrims there. Maybe a group of them joined the protest, or maybe they were just there to make sacrifice, bystanders who got caught up in it all, with fatal consequences.

As for those killed when a tower fell: maybe they were Jews who’d taken Pilate’s penny (in other words, money from the temple) to work on the project. So when the tower fell on them and killed them that could have been seen as a just punishment from God for having received money stolen from his temple.

As people brought this news to Jesus, or asked him about it, were they pondering the question people have always asked, “Why did this tragedy happen to these people?” Did they think they knew the answer? What about the question behind that question: Why is there so much suffering in the world? Is suffering inextricably linked to the way we behave, the way we live our lives? But in that case, why do bad things happen to good people? Is all suffering caused by God? Should we think of suffering as a form of Divine punishment?

In his little book “The Problem of Pain”, one of our set books at college as I recall, C.S. Lewis looks at these questions and is forced to conclude that “The existence of suffering in a world created by a good and almighty God . . . is a fundamental theological dilemma and perhaps the most serious objection to the Christian religion.”  And it is, he’s right.

The people who came to Jesus had already come to a conclusion, I think, about those who died in these two disasters. They’d been punished, so they must have sinned, they must have transgressed. There was an obvious reason for the deaths of the eighteen people killed by the falling tower; and the Galileans? they too must have done something bad.

Many Christian scholars through the ages have tried to find a reasonable and logical answer to the problem of pain. At college, along with C.S. Lewis, we read Irenaeus, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Karl Barth and many besides. Lots of attempts to answer the problem of pain - but every one fell short, or so it seemed. And it’s not just a question for religious people. Everyone faces it, in all walks of life. We all know of good people to whom bad things have happened. Sometimes we can see a cause, sometimes we can identify someone to blame. But not always by any means. Suffering just happens; perhaps I can reduce the risk of suffering happening to me, but nothing I do will make completely immune from it.

We may come up with ideas like “Only the good die young,” even though that too is patently untrue. It’s certainly not a new question, as we see when we read the Old Testament Book of Job, Job’s so-called friends see the string of tragedies that befall Job himself, and all they can say is well-meaning but stupid things like, “You need to call on God, you should be praying harder” or “Things could be worse,” or even “God’s punishment is lighter than you deserve.”

The last seven or eight days have seen terrorist attacks, in New Zealand, in Holland . . . and we’re rightly distressed to read of the victims and their stories. “Why are these terrible thing happening to such innocent people?” we ask.

But when Jesus was asked to comment on the two tragedies in our Gospel this morning, he made it very clear to those who came to him that the people who died were neither better nor worse than other folk. Insofar as we’re all sinners, we all stand in some way under the same sentence of death.
And it isn’t that there’s a direct causal relationship between sin and suffering, that God chooses to zap us in response to our sin. It’s not that simple; and yet there is a link, for all that. Sin causes suffering.

Let Pilate’s actions stand for the injustices perpetrated by those in powerful places. The high-handedness of tyrants and dictators - though even those elected democratically can act in ways that prove unjust, uncaring or just plain foolish, and these things cause hurt. Destructive behaviour, misuse of power, feuding and vengeance seeking - these are things that happen at every level of human life. The greed that grabs and hoards without considering the other; the anger that lashes out before trying to understand: all of these do damage, all have consequences. And as Christian folk we need to be ready to speak out and act against all that causes suffering to others, and also to be aware of these things in ourselves.

And that thought takes me back to the story Jesus went on to tell. What’s the meaning of the parable of the fig tree? Why did Jesus tell that particular parable, and why is it placed here in Luke’s Gospel? Here’s what I think.

Most of us would prize fairness as a vital human value, and it’s the sense of things “not being fair” that underlies our questions and anxieties about the problem of pain. God should play fair, and it feels as though he isn’t. Fairness means we’re rewarded for doing good and punished when we do wrong. Fairness suggests that when we do really well, we might get a special pat on the back, or even a bonus. And those who get things badly wrong should be excluded, or get the sack.

In the story what the landowner says sums up what most of us think of as fairness: “Look! For three years I’ve been coming for fruit from my fig tree, and still there’s none. Get rid of it - why should it go on wasting my soil?”

But the gardener begs him to let it stay another year; he’ll dig round it and add manure. And then if it bears fruit, it can stay; if not, it can be cut down. We may well think of the owner of the vineyard as standing for God; but what if we read this parable with God instead as the gardener? If you do, it becomes the manifesto, if you like, of the God who doesn’t operate according to the standard concepts of fairness that we employ - and if he did any of us might be rooted out as not fruitful enough. Our God is the God of patient and faithful tending, and he looks on us with hopeful expectation.

All we have is the present moment, and tomorrow is never guaranteed; now is the time for us to work at being fruitful, now is the time to oppose what causes hurt and discord. But  there’s a word of good hope for us in the story of the fig tree: a promise that, though tragic things will happen, God is still tending his garden. He still works in and through his people to bring light and life, love and peace to a broken and sinful world. May he work that work in us. Amen.

The Imitation of Christ - a sermon for the Second Sunday of Lent

The two vacant posts in our Deanery have now been advertised. I hear there’s been some interest, so I’m waiting hopefully to see if that translates into actual applications. Candidates would be coming to look round the parishes around the end of this month, I believe. Hearing that reminded of the day when I came to look at the Minsterley Group (with four other candidates) before my appointment there in 1993. I had four interviews. The toughest of those was with the wardens, but the toughest question I think was one asked at my interview with the bishop and the archdeacon of Ludlow, who at that time were still separate people, Ian Griggs and John Saxbee. I think it was Bishop Ian who asked “How will you go about being a wholesome example to your people, as you promised at your ordination?” 

“Goodness, did I promise that?” was my first thought. But of course I had, as part of the liturgy. As I said the words in the service, was I really applying them to me and my family? But they did apply to me and my family, of course. Now my kids are great, but no more so than anyone else’s. Back then they were just as prone as any other kids to have tantrums at just the wrong time. And, for all my saintly persona, after a sleepless night worrying about my tax return or the loss of five people from the electoral roll, followed by twin daughters acting up as I tried to feed them breakfast, I found it hard to be sweetness and light in church on Sunday, or queuing at the bread shop for my Monday loaf.

Maybe if I’d had my fingers crossed behind my back as I made my ordination vows? Well, no: anyway, the fact is that being baptised and confirmed imposes the duty of setting a good example not only on me but on all of us. We should all be living a Christ like life. One of the main reasons given by those who feel they need an excuse not to come to church is that “People in church are no better than the rest of us,” or even, “Church is just full of hypocrites!” My response to that is usually to murmur that no, it’s not full, we can generally fit a few more in.

So - I know I don’t always set the great example of faith and service that I wish I did. If I re-read even my best intentioned sermons I can’t help but find something in them of “Do as I say, not as I do.” So whenever I read this morning’s first reading, from Paul’s letter to the Philippians, I’m a bit shocked by it. I find myself thinking “How dare Paul say that?” How can he say “Join in imitating me”? Was Paul’s ego getting out of hand? Wasn’t he setting himself up for a fall? Life’s full of people set on pedestals and looked up to, imitated, copied, who then turn out to have feet of clay or worse.

So why would Paul say that? Well, here’s a thought. One of my first jobs was sandblasting electronic components in a large factory. We needed to be quick to keep up with the production line, and every component needed to be thoroughly cleaned, so we had to be accurate. I’d been told how to do the job, but when I actually started to do it I was slow and not very accurate. But one of the older hands stepped in and showed me how he did it, and by copying him I became quite good, certainly able to keep up with the pace of the line.

Because the best sort of learning is learning by example; being not told but shown how to do it. And Paul knew this. It was vital that his friends at Philippi, one of the churches he was closest to and fondest of, should have an example to copy and to imitate. It’s never enough just to be told, far better to follow the habits and practices of someone who’s already doing it, someone further down the road of learning than you are. Paul wasn’t perfect, and he never claimed to be, but he’d got some experience of being a disciple. He was already doing his best to follow Jesus, to imitate Jesus. So when he says imitate me, he’s not saying “See how great and wonderful I am”, he’s saying, “Imitate me in imitating Jesus Christ.” Do as I do: be like Jesus.

None of us lead perfect lives: fact. To do better we need to choose our role models carefully. What, who, are the good examples to aim for? Paul was telling the Philippians that there was no better role model than the one he followed. Jesus Christ. Imitate him - for if the example we follow isn’t worth imitating, we’re losing the game right from the start. 

Understanding that reassures me greatly. Fulfilling my ordination promise isn’t about me being perfect, but it does need me to be serious about what I’m doing. Paul said to the Philippians: “Be like me in following Jesus.” So who can I look to, to help me to follow Jesus, and imitate him? Paul himself is I think a bit remote: there’s lots in his writing I find exciting, lots that challenges me, but his letters are set in a very different world from mine. But you see, that’s why Paul was offering himself as an example then - not because he was doing it so well, though he didn’t do so badly, but because he was there, they could see him, they knew him, and they could understand him. So it was easier for them to relate how Paul did it to their own lives.

So when I need an example of Christian living, I could look to some of the present-day heroes of the faith, people whose courage I’ve admired, albeit from afar. Archbishop Tutu, whom I did once meet. Maybe the German pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was killed by the Nazis towards the end of the Second World War. I’ve admired his courage, and been inspired by his writing. Or maybe people who write honestly today about their discipleship struggles, like Adrian Plass.

But I think Paul also wanted the Philippians (and us) to think about how we ourselves can be examples and teachers, beginning with each other here in church, but also within the witness of our daily lives. People know what we do on a Sunday, so they’re likely to judge us on that, and to expect something from us midweek that testifies to our Sunday faith. And what they get they get, be it for better or for worse.

That can’t help but be a crucial element in my life as a minister. Even without my Sunday robes, my collar identifies me. And without my collar a lot of people still know me. So I’m not just Bill, I’m Bill the Vicar, which makes me Bill who knows and shows what being a person of faith is about. And if in an off duty moment I say something intemperate or do something uncaring, that’s a black mark not only against me but against the Church. And a hindrance to the Church in mission.

Now to a degree that’s true for all of us. It’s not that people expect me, or you, or any church member, to be perfect, but they do expect, or should, these two important things: firstly, that we really are doing our best to be like Jesus. And secondly, that when we don’t get it right we’re aware of that - in other words, we’re penitent.

In fact sometimes the best witness we offer to Christ is what we do when we get it wrong. That even applied to St Paul. When he got things wrong, which he did, he did his best to put them right, and to learn from them. I don’t remember how I answered Bishop Ian’s question, but if it was asked again now I’d want to say something about honesty. People don’t expect perfection from Christians, though they’d be right to expect a certain standard of goodness and kindness. But they do expect honesty.

Isn’t it painful to watch politicians when they get things wrong? They twist and turn on the hook, making this or that excuse. It seems a rule in political life never to admit to a mistake. You never say sorry, unless you’re saying sorry for something you yourself had no part in. When we make mistakes, when we fall short of the example we know Jesus has set us, we should fess up, admit to it, and aim to put things right and put ourselves right too. That’s the kind of honesty that leads to trust and sharing, and that opens our doors to others. It’s the honesty that builds a caring community, and that makes others not only want to imitate us, but also - I think, I hope - to join us.

Temptation - a sermon for the 1st Sunday of Lent

It’s not often I get to quote from  Mae West at the beginning of a sermon, but here’s something she’s supposed to have said: “I was as pure as the driven snow - until I drifted.” Oscar Wilde is also generally good for a quote, and he famously said that he could resist anything except temptation. And also this: “The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it.”

Well, temptation is high on our agenda today, as Lent begins and we consider the specific temptations experienced by our Lord as out in the wilderness he prepared for his ministry. Would Jesus have agreed with Oscar Wilde? Would he have sympathized with Mae West? Now I’m going to say yes he would (even if a qualified yes) in both cases. But let’s first of all look at the temptations he himself faced and indeed resisted.

Luke goes into some detail as he tells the story; and we see that firstly, the devil encourages Jesus to turn the stones of the desert into loaves of bread. Since Jesus had spent forty days not eating, he was pretty hungry. That provided the opening, but this temptation wasn’t just about solving Jesus’ own immediate hunger. Think about how good it would be if you really could turn stones into bread! Think of the suffering you could relieve, the empty stomachs you could fill, wouldn’t that make for a happier and better world? And straight away we see something important about temptation; we’re not often tempted into doing things that are obviously bad. Yes, there are those little insidious temptations that say things like, “Everyone else is doing it,” and “No-one’s going to know,” but on the whole temptation isn’t so much about doing bad things as about doing things for the wrong reason, or allowing the wrong things to take charge of our lives.

Like the second temptation where the devil offers Jesus political power. All this I will give you, he says. Surely me having power is fine if I’m going to do good things with it? Many a dictator has started out that way. Jesus is offered the potential to do good on a huge scale. Who wouldn’t go for that? But Jesus didn’t.

And then lastly the devil prompts Jesus to put God himself to the test. And in the process, I suppose, to dazzle the people into believing in him. If Jesus leapt from the top of the Temple, so that the angels could save him just as promised in Scripture, wouldn’t every religious leader fall in line behind him? 

Not a single one of these temptations was in itself a bad thing. But what every one was really doing was enticing Jesus to take a short cut rather than the path of doing his Father’s will. To set his own agenda, and to go for quick gains rather than what he was truly called to do. The devil basically admits that’s what he’s about when he says, “Just bow down and worship me.” These temptations are about turning aside from the true path, knowing better than God, and letting the devil take charge. If you prefer you can say, instead of “the devil”, expediency, lust for power, worldly ambition - the same thing applies.

Mae West was as pure as the snow until she drifted. I think Jesus would have sympathised with her drifting. That’s what most of us do, drift into sin rather than openly choose to do bad stuff. We get tempted by plausible suggestions. It’s like when a telephone con man reels you gently in, playing with your hopes and fears,  before he tricks you into doing the stupid thing, parting with a shedload of money or handing over the details of your account. You’re knocked off course, and you may hardly realise it’s happened. And that’s what sin is, by the way. The Greek word is hamartia. It doesn’t mean doing bad, naughty things so much as missing the mark, being off course.

Would Jesus have agreed with Oscar Wilde? Not entirely, since he didn’t give in to temptation. But he’d have recognised the truth in Wilde’s point that a temptation resisted doesn’t then go away and leave you alone; it grows more persuasive till the itch to have or do what you’re not allowed is so strong you can think of nothing else. Best to give in, Oscar Wilde said. Better to have a firm and secure answer to it, Jesus would have said, I think.

The temptations of Jesus in the desert were not a one-off thing. Out there Jesus could face up to them, and find the words to answer them (which we’ll come back to in a minute). But not to conquer them completely: they weren’t going to go away. They’d be there all through his ministry. At the end of the story the devil didn’t give up and run off with his tail between his legs. No, he simply held back and kept his silence until an appropriate time.

The temptations would only disappear if he gave in to them. That was Oscar Wilde’s theory, anyway. But Wilde was wrong to think so. Temptation doesn’t disappear if you give in to it. It may seem that way, for a while, but what really happens is that it mutates and grows, it snares more of your life and becomes more deadly. There’s no way to appease temptation.

Finding the words to answer temptation; knowing what the words and the thoughts were that would guide his life; that’s what Jesus was doing in the desert. The devil tries his hardest, his damnedest I guess you’d have to say, but Jesus is always able to put him in his place and silence him. How? By always quoting scripture. It worries me that Christians often don’t know or use the Bible as well as we should. We may have to work at it, but all that we need is there.

And that’s why we always read the story of Jesus’ temptation in the desert on the first Sunday of Lent. He took forty days to prepare himself, to tune himself into his Father’s will, and to use the Scriptures to answer and to shut out the insidious but ultimately discordant voices of temptation. We’re given forty days to do the same; to be aware of those areas of our Christian living where we lack discipline and order and to get ourselves back into gear. And remember how temptation doesn’t go away, and how to exploits every weak point. We should be constantly on our guard, against the forces that seek to jostle or cajole or steer us away from the path of obedience to the Gospel and to our Lord, wanting to take first place in our hearts.

For me that makes Lent a holy and blessed time; in these forty days God gives us time to measure up to temptation, and to renew our awareness of his word, and to restore some discipline in our lives; to take stock, to be clear about where we’re headed, and to be better aware of his call, and ready to serve.

And we need it because we’ll always fail and fall short. But though no-one can earn their way to God, God offers us life as his gift to us. Jesus actually spent a lot of time with the sort of people holy folk turned away from, and he seemed to enjoy and value their company. So maybe Lent needs also to be a time to expand our circles of awareness. What God offers is for everyone, not just a few. There may be only a few here today, but remember that there’s no-one out there that God doesn’t love. And he wants them to know that, and he wants us to part of how they find that out.

The Greek word for sin is hamartia, missing the mark, and the Greek word for repentance - in this Lenten season of repentance - is metanoia. Now metanoia means “to change one’s mind or heart,”  or, more precisely, “to go beyond the mind we have now.” Lent is a time for repentance, and so we should think seriously about temptation and sin, but we asked for more than just that. Metanoia is also about seeing things - the world, other people, ourselves - in a new way, seeing beyond what we think we know.

So, as well as countering temptation and adding discipline, Jesus was preparing himself for a ministry that was completely inclusive, that reached out to all. And we too should be using Lent to learn new things, and to grow as God’s people. Thy will be done, we pray, and those four words are a good theme for our keeping of Lent. Thy will be done in me, in us, here in this place, and in the day the Lord is giving us. So may our Lent be a time of change, growth, and of seeing in new ways, and of getting ready to go beyond where we are now.

Transfiguration - a sermon for next Sunday

Jesus went up onto a mountain to pray. I can understand that. Mountains can be very good places on which to pray. We’re not short of high places and superb views round here, and one thing I’m aiming to do this year is to hold some “Forest Church” type worship events where for at least part of the time we’re out in the open air, perhaps walking, even climbing. The midsummer service at Mitchell’s Fold will be one of these, and of course that’s been going now for many years. I’ve often turned the circle of us inside out at that service, so that instead of looking in at each other we’re looking out across the moors and the fields. The wide view you get up there is so full of inspiration.

On this occasion Jesus took Peter and James and John with him, and it’s what they saw there that forms our theme for today - along with, I guess, why they saw it. We sometimes speak of a mountain top experience, meaning those dramatic and special times when we feel specially close to God, and more intensely aware of his presence and power. As someone once said to me, “There are places, special holy places, where the sky just seems thinner.” Such dramatic encounters with God, though, are rare, even I think for very holy people, which I am not.

But the main theme of this story, the Transfiguration, isn’t about us having special mountain top experiences. It shows us Jesus revealed as he fully and truly is. Peter, James and John are witnesses on our behalf to a lifting of the veil, a look behind the curtain that normally remains firmly drawn.

Tired out, they’ve been asleep as Jesus was praying - but as they awake they see his face and his clothes shining with a light so bright they can hardly bear it. All the glory of God is shining in this man, and he’s speaking with two men who can only be the two great heroes of the faith who were believed not to have died but to have been taken up bodily into heaven, Moses and Elijah. They’re speaking about the departure Jesus is to accomplish in Jerusalem. The Greek word translated here as departure is exodos.

The Book of Exodus - same word - describes the departure of the people from Egypt, and their journey across the wilderness to find their promised land. It’s a story of salvation, and of    re-creation, and so is this new exodos. Jesus in Jerusalem will release his people from slavery - will release all people, everyone who turns to him, from our slavery to sin and death.

But as he does this, what the disciples will see is a man broken, lost, degraded, defeated, falling victim to his enemies. And that will test their faith to breaking point and beyond. That’s why Peter and the others are granted this mountain top experience. We call it the Transfiguration because that’s what it seemed like to them. But was it, really? This isn’t Jesus changed so much as their eyes and senses being opened, activated, so they see Jesus as he always is. For everything Jesus is and says and does shines with the glory of his Father.

Peter and James and John couldn’t really understand what they’d seen till Easter; until they finally became convinced that their Lord was risen, that death no longer enslaved him. But they needed to see it now, before everything happened that would need to happen. In a few weeks’ time we shall see these three once again asleep while Jesus is praying - but in the Garden of Gethsemane, where they wake from sleep to see their Master all too human, all too frail, so easily captured and taken.

On the mountain, see how Peter tries to hang on to the moment. He wants to make shelters for Jesus and Moses and Elijah - it’s such a special place, and there needs to be some kind of shrine. But before he can do anything there’s a voice from heaven: “This is my Son, my chosen.” And then everything is as it was before. The mountain was probably Mount Hermon, and today there is a church, and pilgrims stream to it. But the message of the voice to Peter and the others is that it’s not the place that’s special, but the person. Jesus, with whom they’ll travel on to Jerusalem.

Moses and Elijah were, as I’ve said, the two heroes who were supposed not to have died but to have been carried up to heaven. Moses represents the Law, Elijah the prophets, and we’re reminded that Jesus said: “Don’t imagine that I’ve come to abolish the Law and the Prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfil.” What Jesus will go on to do is to complete the work of salvation spoken of in the Law and the prophets. And only he can do this. He is abused and spat upon; he is broken and pierced on the cross at Calvary. And love divine changes our life and destiny for ever.

Before these events, Peter, James and John are given a glimpse of that love divine. They see how - as Paul would later write, “God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself.” Jesus is not just a good teacher, he is God incarnate, God present with us, God not abandoning us to our failure and our sin.

I’ve been trying to remember whether, when Ann and I visited Mount Hermon some years ago, our visit include the Eucharist, the Holy Communion. We celebrated communion at many of the places we visited, but I’m not sure we did there. I do recall thinking that while there’s something special of course about standing in the actual place where Jesus himself might have stood, I might have felt closer to the actual experience of the Transfiguration on some lonely stretch of moorland (which is how I picture it in my head), rather than in a church busily filled with pilgrims who travel up the hill in noisy Mercedes taxis.

But even so, I’d want to say that there is a real connection for me between that single event, the Transfiguration and the Holy Communion we celebrate week by week, connecting us to the Last Supper Jesus ate with his disciples. At Holy Communion we meet together and we meet also with our Lord. As we break bread and share the cup of wine his glory is both hidden and revealed in these two ordinary things. And perhaps, like Peter and James and John, we see just for a moment beyond the veil.

But it’s a moment only, this meal that we share. It’s not a place we can stay. On the mountain top, the voice from heaven spoke, the cloud lifted, the glory was veiled again, and all was as it had been before. And as we read on in chapter 9 of Luke’s Gospel we see how Jesus and his companions went back down the mountain and straight back into the busy hurly-burly of life and ministry, all the time keeping on the road to Jerusalem.

“Go in peace, to love and serve the Lord,” we shall say as this service closes. What we’re given, the glimpses we may have of God’s glory, the sense of his presence and love which perhaps is that bit more intense in one of those places where the sky is thinner, or perhaps the taste of his saving love and the sense of his presence as we kneel to receive communion - these moments are given to inspire and encourage the rest of our living. For us to use and share; to further enable us to tell his story and bear witness to his love. Neither the mountain top nor the altar of our churches are places to stay; they’re places we’re sent out from, with work to do.

So may we shine as his lights, who is the light unconquerable, the love divine and eternal, our Saviour and our Lord. Amen.

Stilling the Storm - a sermon for next Sunday

Based on Luke 8.22-25 :-

The Sea of Galilee is really a lake rather than a sea, but it’s a big lake, and very prone, I’m told, to sudden squalls and storms. The squall that sprang up in the story we’ve just heard must have been pretty bad. There were seasoned sailors in the boat, and they were very alarmed. But Jesus had fallen asleep.

It’s no surprise that Jesus should have been so tired. He’d had a tough couple of days of intensive ministry. But a wooden boat like that would have got pretty noisy as the storm raged, so I’m surprised it didn’t wake him. He must have been really exhausted. So the disciples had to wake him; I’m not sure that they expected him to do anything - I imagine they just wanted him to help them stop the boat from sinking, and to save himself if it did sink.

But what Jesus did do was to rebuke the wind and the sea, and the storm ceased: the air and the water were still. And the disciples are amazed - who wouldn’t be? “Who can this be?” they ask. “What kind of man is this, that he tells the wind and the waves what to do, and they do it?”

They were beginning to realise what the apostle John later wrote, in chapter 1 of his Gospel: that “All things were made through Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made.” The man they already honoured as teacher and leader was more than just that. For he spoke with all the authority of the Creator God.

Jesus responded to the panic of his disciples by asking, “Where is your faith?” In other words, “With me in the boat, how could you think we wouldn’t get through?” Fair enough, but it’s all too easy to panic when things begin to look stormy and rough. Or to get depressed and downhearted: you should hear how we clergy moan when we get together. And yet surely, if we’re with the Lord and he’s with us, if we’re really his folk, we should never allow the world around us to control us, to get us down, make us afraid or leave us feeling that we’re lost. We’re with the Word of God.

This is what Paul wrote to the church in Philippi: “I can do everything through Christ who gives me strength.” Now Paul was in fact no stranger to storms and hardship, and there were certainly times when he was tested so hard he was tempted to give in; but in the end his faith and his sense of Christ’s presence kept him confident and hopeful whatever the storms around him.

When we find ourselves in times of trouble, we probably end up asking, “How could this be happening to me?” - or even, “How could God let this happen to me?” Reading this story we could ask why God allowed a storm to threaten his Messiah and those with him. But nowhere in scripture does it say that God’s servants will have things easy - not all the time, anyway. Scripture’s full of times when folk were on the verge of giving up, because life was getting too tough. Like when the people rebelled against Moses in the wilderness, or like Elijah, ready to accept death out in the desert, or Jeremiah on numerous occasions. And many more besides. There’s a hymn I used to enjoy singing as a child that includes the great lines “Mocked, imprisoned, stoned, tormented, torn asunder, slain with sword” - a setting of the list in Hebrews of those who in times past had been tested for their faith in God.

Faith provides a rock on which to stand, in which our faltering faith is built into the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is, as Paul and Peter both tell us, the chief corner stone. Our faith will be tested through the trials of life, but as Peter wrote, our faith is tested by fire so that God may be glorified. And he was writing to people who knew direct and outright persecution.

“Why me?” we ask when things go wrong. But do we also ask “Why me?” when things go well. Why have I received this blessing? How can I use it and share it? How can God use me? Whatever faces us in our lives, good or bad, if our eyes and hearts are fixed on God we can make use of what we have, and can continue in faith and hope. We may be earthbound, but Christ makes us citizens of heaven.

And faith isn’t static, it’s not an intellectual belief in God. In scripture faith always leads to action, faith causes things to happen. Jesus said, “Where is your faith?” to his disciples. That’s not just whether they believe enough - it’s are they committed to him, to service and action and witness and work in his name.

Do you remember the man who asked Jesus to heal his son? His disciples had had a go at doing it, but without success, while Jesus was away praying on the mountain. “Do you believe?” Jesus asked the man when he took over. In some translations he says, “Do you have faith?” “Lord, I believe; help thou my unbelief!” replies the man, in the King James version. A more modern translation has him saying “I have faith; help me where faith falls short.” That’s a prayer we all can and should be praying.

And there’s a message for us in the fact that the disciples, full of panic as they were, came and woke Jesus. They at least had enough faith to do that. Jesus rebuked them for the weakness of their faith, but nonetheless he stilled the storm. We don’t have to be superheroes of the faith in order to pray and know our prayers will be heard. We just have to do it. We don’t need special words, probably we don’t need much in the way of words at all, just to honestly present ourselves to the Lord. My faith may be something of a flickering candle, but when I come to God in prayer the bit of faith I have still finds a faithful response in him.

I say that with some feeling, because many of us as Christians feel vulnerable today. Our churches are small, much smaller than they used to be. Most of us are getting on a bit. It can maybe feel a bit too much like that boat, as the disciples desperately tried to bail the water out, only to find it flooding in faster than they could get rid of it. “Help us, Lord, we’re sinking!” we might well find ourselves praying. It’s easier to have a confident faith when we’re surrounded by people who think the same way; but it’s a lot harder when we’re only a few.

But if we’re in a position of trials and testing, it isn’t anywhere the Church hasn’t been before. We should neither panic or despair. What matters is not the strength of the storm around us, but the presence of our Lord with us. However small we are, however weak we may feel, have faith: the man whose teachings we follow is not just one teacher among many. He is the Word by whom all things were made. He stilled the storm on that lake, and he’ll see us through the storms of life. And though we will be tested and it will from time to time be tough, every time of testing is an opportunity to proclaim our faith and to bring glory to God’s name.

When our strength is weak and our nerve falters, help us, Lord, not to be controlled by the worldly forces around us but to have faith in you. Receive us and bless us, call us again to your service, and may we know the peace and calm of your unfailing love. Amen.

On Being Blessed - a sermon for next Sunday.

(Luke 6.17-26)

The word “bless” is one we use a fair bit. “Bless you!” we say when someone sneezes. “Ah, bless!” we might say if we see something or someone cute, maybe if we see a little toddler taking his or her first steps. “Well, bless me!” we may say as a slightly old-fashioned expression of surprise. But what does it actually mean to be “blessed”?

In our Gospel reading this morning we heard Luke’s version of what in Matthew we call the Sermon on the Mount. The version in Luke’s Gospel is sometimes called the Sermon on the Plain. We could discuss whether we have two accounts of the same event, or whether Jesus spoke on two occasions in similar vein. But in both accounts Jesus talks about the people who are blessed by God. In the version in Luke we heard today Jesus also mentions the people who are not blessed by God, and we’ll come to that later. But first, let’s think about what it means to be blessed.

The Greek word in the beatitudes that’s translated in English as blessed is Makarios. You may well recognise that word, if only because of Archbishop Makarios and Cypriot independence. His name meant “blessed”, even if our government didn’t think so at the time. Some modern translations translate makarios as “happy”, and that’s a reasonable translation of the Greek word, but I don’t think it goes far enough in this setting. Jesus is surely speaking about more than mere happiness - something about receiving God’s favour, being brought into his presence, knowing that we are accepted and have our place with him.

Mary, when in the Magnificat she says “all generations will call me blessed” uses the verb makarizo, which derives from makarios: all generations will recognize God’s presence with her, his choice of her, because of the child she bears. And God’s choice of her is because of the choice she has made. Mary said yes to what the angel asked of her. So we’re blessed when God recognises and affirms the godward choice we’ve made.

In our Gospel, those who are blessed have all made a choice for God; they’ve sacrificed material things or worldly status or happiness in order to serve him. That’s one reason why I’d want to say that makarios needs to mean more than just happy. We can be happy, for a while at least, with what we own or with our status or popularity. But those who are blessed have given up that kind of transient happiness for something more.

Or at any rate it’s not what they seek or value most, and mere happiness won’t replace the way of God and the worship of God in their lives. We can be happy whether or not we believe in God, and I guess most of us are, a lot of the time. But being blessed isn’t the same as being happy. Jesus never promised his disciples they’d be happy all the time. In fact he told them they’d need to take up their cross in order to follow him. But he did promise they’d be blessed by his Father.

Here’s what Paul writes in chapter 1 verse 3 of the Letter to the Ephesians: ‘Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with all spiritual blessings in the heavenly places.’ That suggests that being blessed means we’re in some way participating in the divine nature. Elsewhere, Paul writes (Galatians chapter 3 verse 26): ‘in Christ Jesus you are all children of God, through faith.’ Jesus on Easter morning (John chapter 20 verse 17) sends Mary of Magdala to tell the disciples that he is ascending to ‘my Father and your Father.’ We’re blessed as brothers and sisters of Christ, our blessing makes us children of God. Whatever the world may throw at us, we can be sure of his accepting and redeeming love.

The quote from Ephesians used a different Greek word - not makarios, but eulogeo. Eulogeo is I think used more in scripture than makarios, in fact. Both words translate as the English word “blessed”, but there are different shades to their meaning. The tribute at a funeral service is sometimes called a eulogy, and this is the Greek word that eulogy comes from.

Of course, you don’t actually have to have died in order for someone to give a eulogy - a eulogy is in fact any speech of praise; and I might just mention that it’s a shame if we wait till they’re gone before we start praising people. It’s good that people know when they’re doing well; it’s good that people know when they are appreciated by others. Being British, we tend not to be too demonstrative; but sometimes we’re better at picking up on mistakes or sending letters of complaint than we are at praising or commending. Yet most of the time we’re treated well and there’s more good stuff than bad stuff in the world around us.

Anyway, to get back to my theme, eulogeo means blessed in the sense of being well spoken of, being recognised and affirmed by others. Another word for that might be worthy, like in the prayer that says: Lord, you are worthy to receive our praise and thanksgiving. And we know that our sin makes us unworthy, but we are made worthy by God’s grace and blessing.

Most services close with a benediction or blessing, and in many of our prayers we ask God to bless us. When we say “Bless me Lord” we’re asking God to speak well of us. If that sounds like a prayer for special treatment, look again at our Gospel reading. The people listed as blessed have all set aside earthly things and placed themselves in God’s hands. When we ask God’s blessing, that’s a purposeful thing: we’re only really ask God’s blessing when at the same time we’re offering ourselves to him. And his blessing is granted in our doing of his will, in our being light and hope and mercy for others, in our being channels in his name of love and peace.

After all, when God speaks his words are words of creation. Think of Genesis chapter 1: when God speaks, things come into being, creation happens, the world is made. To say “Bless me Lord,” is to ask for his word of re-creation in our lives, and for him to breathe his good purposes into us.

Matthew chapter 5 and Luke chapter 6 both list those who are blessed. But only Luke lists those who are not. Alas for you who are rich, he says. Alas for you who laugh. Now Jesus isn’t in fact condemning riches and happiness so much as short termism and short sightedness. It’s the people who don’t see beyond those transitory things who’ve put themselves outside God’s blessing. For God’s deep desire is to bless every single one of us. It was his word of blessing that brought all things into being. We push his blessing aside when we put our faith in transitory things, in the stuff that rots and rusts and gets moth eaten, and doesn’t pass the test of time.

To have those things may look good and feel good for a while, but in the end it’s a waste of our lives. I suppose the ultimate question at the heart of it all is: “Are we made for just this, the however many moments of our earthly lives, or are we made for more than this? Do we have the seeds of eternity within us?” You see, I think the people who are blessed are those who discern within themselves the seeds of eternity. They discover how God enriches us in blessing with a depth of joy - makarios - and speaks his affirming word into our hearts - eulogeo. To be blessed doesn’t mean we’re perfect, or that we get everything we want; it doesn’t mean we’re free of pain, or the life doesn’t continue to have it’s worries and troubles and struggles. Life goes on with all its messiness and uncertainty, but we are seeing beyond that. God’s blessing upon us requires that we first turn to him; but that blessing upon and within us makes us already citizens of heaven.