Good Friday Meditations: The Last Word Series – The Very Revd Dominic Barrington, Dean of York
Title: Mark’s Last Word, Matthew’s Last Word, Luke’s Last Word
Preacher: The Very Revd Dominic Barrington, Dean of York
Date: 7 April 2023 12pm – 1.30pm
Mark’s last word
When it was noon, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon. At three o’clock Jesus cried out with a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” When one of the bystanders heard it, they said, “Listen, he is calling for Elijah.” And someone ran, filled a sponge with sour wine, put it on a stick, and gave it to him to drink, saying, “Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to take him down.” Then Jesus gave a loud cry and breathed his last.
One of the big questions raised by the events of Good Friday is a question which sounds very, very simple – but is, in fact, rather complicated. The big question of today is, at its simplest, one of identity: who is it that dies today?
We can, I think, all agree – and by ‘all’, I don’t just mean you and me here in this cathedral this afternoon. By all, I mean the voice of history, tradition and reason that has been the backbone of Christianity for 2000 years. We can agree that a man from Nazareth by the name of Jesus dies today. But that is about as much as it is possible to say without raising some fairly big questions.
For people were executed all the time by the Roman authorities in first-century Palestine. The bad and the ugly, and quite possible a number of the good as well. The rule of the occupiers’ law was hard and fast, and all the more effective for that.
But the question remains, albeit in slightly nuanced form – who, or perhaps what, is it that dies today?
When you embark on the study of theology, one of the disciplines you rapidly encounter is called Christology. Christology is about working out what on earth we actually mean when we talk about the Christ. Or, in other words, just exactly what do we think Jesus whom we call Christ actually was – or, indeed, still is? And the nub of this debate – the key to this question – is all about whether Jesus, whom we call the Christ, is properly human, and/or is properly divine, and/or is both.
This was a big, big question during the first four hundred years of Christianity, and different theologians and bishops had very differing answers. There were those who said it was impossible to hold that God was one, and that Jesus could be divine. There were others who said that, in essence, if Jesus wasn’t divine, all this was a load of fuss about nothing, and of no value to folk like you and me.
And there were arguments about how it might be he could manage to be both. Arguments that sometimes verged on him only appearing to be human, or only appearing to be God – all of which were expressed in philosophical terms that would make any normal person’s head spin in this day and age.
Needless to say, this kind of stuff was, and continues to be really quite hard for most theological students to follow. It feels, in its way, only one small step away from debating how many angels can be found on the head of a pin. But I was blessed with a lucid and clear-minded teacher who said that, to preserve what you and I might think of as a conventional, orthodox Christian faith, there were three simple rules that had to be upheld. And the rules were easy to remember, as they all sounded the same – at least at first.
All you needed to remember, so this wise and learned man said, was
It must be God who becomes human.
And then he repeated this maxim two more times.
It must be God who becomes human.
It must be God who becomes human.
Our teacher could see that we were still scratching our head, so he clarified it for us – and showed us why he repeated his saying three times. For, he said:
It must be God who becomes human.
It must be God who becomes human.
It must be God who becomes human.
Or, to be slightly more serious and easy to explain – it must be God, and no lesser being, that becomes human – if the Christ is only a watered-down form of God, that’s no use to anyone, least of all you and me.
And God truly must become human. It can’t be play-acting or make-believe. God really has to do this living as a human experience. The act of becoming has to be genuine, and not a charade.
And, finally, and for St Mark, most importantly, it must be proper humanity that God embraces. In other words, he mustn’t just look like it – he can’t just pop down from heaven in a kind of spacesuit with a human face painted on it. God in Christ really must become just like us.
And that’s a big order – but it is, for St Mark, the last word on the subject. And much of Mark’s gospel, and much of Mark’s passion story is shot through with hints that, in the eyes of this gospel writer, Jesus is gut-wrenchingly human. Indeed, one of Mark’s favourite turns of phrase, often translated in rather genteel terms as indicating that Jesus was deeply moved is really about a visceral response to injustice that gets Jesus knotted up in his bowels or stomach, he is so upset.
And Mark gives us a hint of all this, literally, in the last words he reports from the lips of Jesus. Words which have made generations of clergy stumble to ensure they are pronouncing them correctly: Eloi, Eloi, lema sabacthani – words which, translated, we recognize as the opening words of Psalm 22 – My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
We know the translation well. Psalm 22 is one of the great psalms of despair, at least in its beginning. But the question Mark raises for us is what language are the words which Jesus utters? And a secondary question, for those who know the New Testament well, might be whether those words are the same words we find in Matthew’s account of the last words – for Matthew recounts Jesus as crying out Eli, Eli, lema sabacthani. Matthew takes out one letter ‘o’, and Eloi become Eli.
Why, you might ask? Or even more crisply and relevantly – why does this even matter?
I want to suggest to you it’s just a little, very Marcan clue or reminder that this is an utterly human Jesus we see dying on the cross. But you would have to go to a small village about an hour outside Damascus in Syria, really to understand this today. For in the village of Maaloula, which is a tiny little place, the inhabitants of the village are about the only community left in the world who still speak Aramaic as their native language. And Aramaic was the language which Jesus spoke on a day to day basis as his mother tongue.
It’s not a biblical language. You won’t need me to remind you that the Old Testament was written almost entirely in Hebrew, and that the New Testament was written in Greek. And when St Matthew quotes Jesus’ last, despairing cry, he does so in Hebrew – the ‘real’ language of the Jews, and certainly a language Jesus would have known well….but not his native tongue. Mark, however, gives Jesus his last words in his own, real vernacular Aramaic. And the only difference in those four words is that letter ‘o’ – Eloi not Eli.
That may sound to you a trivial, semantic difference. But Mark, like all the evangelists, was concerned with the detail as well as the big storyline. And for Mark it was not enough simply to have that all too human cry of utter despair. For Mark it was not enough to portray a Jesus showing full, vivid human emotions of anger, terror and despair. For Mark it was not enough to have Jesus die this most abject death, broken, vulnerable, and so utterly alone that he felt even God had deserted him. Mark had to underscore that point, for those who were ready to listen to or read his gospel with care. Mark had to have Jesus speaking his ‘real’ language. Even by the simple, almost throw-away use of one single vowel, Mark is using his last word to say to us, this God has become utterly, completely, fully human.
And if that isn’t Good News, I don’t know what is.
Matthew’s last word
Then two bandits were crucified with him, one on his right and one on his left. Those who passed by derided him, shaking their heads and saying, “Ò You who would destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself! If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross.” In the same way the chief priests also, along with the scribes and elders, were mocking him, saying, “He saved others; he cannot save himself. He is the King of Israel; let him come down from the cross now, and we will believe in him. He trusts in God; let God deliver him now, if he wants to; for he said, ‘I am God’s Son.’ ”
Do you remember what you were doing 45 days ago? Ordinarily, that would be an absurd and impossible question to answer. Today, however, you might just have a clue that six Sundays and forty other days make up the season of Lent, and thus the penny might just drop that 45 days ago you were gathered once again in church, to mark out the beginning of Lent.
I don’t know about you, but to me, it feels like a long time ago, and it has certainly been a long journey, as we have inched closer and closer towards the foot of the Cross. And it feels a long time ago that we confronted our own mortality in the simple, chilling formula that accompanies the imposition of ashes – Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return. Lent opens with a stark reminder of the profoundly ordinary quality of us and our flesh, and the heavy dose of realism that we are no more than dust, and dust will be our final state.
And from those chilling, profound words, we have had a holy season with which to grapple with sin, and with the cause of sin, which we call temptation. And four days on from Ash Wednesday, on the first Sunday of this great season, we are always confronted by the story of Jesus being tempted. Tempted for forty days in the desert, battling with the shadowy figure we call the devil.
It feels a long time ago, but the memory of it, I am sure, lurks in your minds, for it is a well known gospel story. A ravenous, probably despairing Jesus, after forty days of fasting, is rounded on by the devil. And they speak of stones and bread, and pinnacles and dashed feet, and kingdoms and worship. And, each time as the devil goads Jesus, he challenges him by saying If you are the Son of God…
If you are the Son of God… turn stones to bread
If you are the Son of God…throw yourself down
If you are the Son of God…worship me
If, if, if…. could you bear it? Could you bear it if you knew it all to be true??
The Temptation story is a profoundly uncomfortable story precisely because we know, and Jesus knows, that the devil is right. All that goading, all that taunting… You say you are the Son of God… prove it…
His Majesty’s diplomats – consuls, ambassadors, and other senior figures – are customarily rewarded for good service by being appointed as members of the Order of St Michael and St George, and thus, depending on their status, get allowed to put after their names CMG, KCMG, or GCMG, designating them as being Companions, Knights or Grand Knights of this strange order.
It may be that being an ambassador requires one to put on airs, but the rest of the Civil Service likes to joke that these three sets of letters actually stand for Call me God, Kindly call me God, and, at the most senior, God calls me God.
And here is the devil, doing exactly this with Jesus. He is making him the most truthful member of the diplomatic honors system – he calls him what he is. God – or at least, the Son of God. If you are the Son of God…
And when Matthew tells the story, he deliberately brings it to a climax on a very high mountain, from which Jesus can see all the kingdoms of the world, where the devil attempts to demand that Jesus worship him. Jesus, of course, as you will remember, has no truck with this, and sends the devil packing, and angels take his place, to wait on Jesus.
But now the angels have gone. We have leapt to the end of our six-week journey, and temptation and testing have been replaced by desertion and despair. We come, today, to the last scene of the life of Jesus of Nazareth, to find him arms outstretched on a cross, nailed there like a common criminal. And it is time for us to look at St Matthew’s account of this dreadful scene, and see if we can work out what Matthew’s last word is on this extraordinary death.
I spoke just now about the three simple rules of Christology that I was once taught. That God really must become fully human, that it must, genuinely, be God who becomes human, and that God must really become human.
Mark’s last word which we considered just now, emphasizes very clearly that God, in Jesus, has become completely and totally human. Now, as we look at the same scene through the eyes of St Matthew, I want to suggest that he is helping us understand that, truly, it is God and no substitute or imitation that, in Jesus, has taken flesh.
Because, for Matthew, I think it hangs in the way, in the precise way, in which Jesus is taunted as he dies.
If….If….If…. If you are the Son of God…. come down from the cross.
Because, for Matthew, the mocking of the dying Jesus is, incredibly, another temptation. If… If… If… you are the Son of God – turn stones to bread, throw yourself down into angels’ arms, worship the devil…. If you are the Son of God…come down from the cross.
The Temptation story is not, of course, about If you are the Son of God… The evangelist knows that Jesus is the Son of God. Call me God… Kindly, call me God… yes, even God, calls me God, to use diplomatic language.
The Temptation story if about what it means to be God. The Temptation story is about how God behaves, if you like – it is about how God chooses to show God’s creation the nature of God. It is about how God guarantees God will be, and what God will not do, no matter how much the devil may want it…. no matter how much we may want it.
And for Matthew, his deft telling or re-telling of the crucifixion of Jesus, his unique inclusion in this narrative that has the chief priests, the scribes and the elders taunt Jesus by saying If you are the Son of God… come down from the cross, for Matthew, this is, if you like, a last word on what it truly means to be God.
For God can, indeed, turn stones to bread, and God can, indeed, jump off high places and be guarded by angels. God can utter all sorts of powerful words if God thinks it right to do so. And God could come down from the cross – but then, what kind of god would God be?
The other gods were strong, but thou wast weak.
They rode, but thou didst stumble to a throne.
But to our wounds, only God’s wounds speak.
And no other god has wounds, but thou alone.
(Edward Shillito, Jesus of the Scars)
Matthew gives us his last word in his unique telling of the crucifixion narrative. If you are the Son of God come down from the cross, they cry out.
And because he is the Son of God, he will not.
And if that isn’t Good News, I don’t know what is. Amen.
Luke’s Last Word
Two others also, who were criminals, were led away to be put to death with him. When they came to the place that is called The Skull, they crucified Jesus there with the criminals, one on his right and one on his left. Then Jesus said, “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.” And they cast lots to divide his clothing. And the people stood by, watching; but the leaders scoffed at him, saying, “He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God, his chosen one!” The soldiers also mocked him, coming up and offering him sour wine, and saying, “If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!” There was also an inscription over him, “This is the King of the Jews.” One of the criminals who were hanged there kept deriding him and saying, “Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!” But the other rebuked him, saying, “Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed have been condemned justly, for we are getting what we deserve for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong.” Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” He replied, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”
As we move from hearing Matthew’s last word on the Cross, on the death of the Son of God, to seeing how Luke depicts the final moments of Jesus’ life, things have changed for us, quite dramatically. If you open up the Passion narratives from the four gospels, you will find a great deal in common between Mark and Matthew, but when you come to look at how Luke tells us the details of this ultimate story, somehow the feel is very different.
A few minutes ago, we were considering Matthew’s last word – how Matthew wants us to be clear that it is, indeed, the Son of God who is nailed to the cross. And that last word, as I said, helps us, who are wounded and vulnerable, to know that God has direct and personal experience of brokenness and death.
Luke’s last word, I think, Luke’s last word takes a different tack, but also has something vital to offer us as we contemplate the death of Jesus. The mood that pervades Luke’s account of Jesus’ execution is a very different mood to the other three gospel accounts. It would be going too far to suggest that for Luke this is a happy ending, and not a sad one, but Luke has a last word to offer us that is more overtly Good News, perhaps, than the other gospels. And that, I think, is because Luke wants us to understand that in this death – this very regrettable death – something redemptive is really going on here.
For it is strange, is it not, that this is the day of the year that we call Good? There are so many obvious candidates for the title Good in the Christian calendar, but, if we were starting from scratch, I doubt if you or I would label today, of all days, Good. You might think of putting that label on the Sunday we will reach in two days’ time, when all is joy and excitement – the new life of Easter, surely, is good? Or the day that we celebrate Jesus’ birth in the manger in Bethlehem – surely it is a good day when we celebrate that the Word has become flesh. But this day – this day of all days – this is good?
Well, says Luke, the last words I want to give you are, truly Good News – Good News even in the context of the death of Christ, the death of the Son of God. And for Luke, the news is Good, and the day is Good, because it makes a difference. It makes a difference to you and me. And you can see that it makes a difference.
The nails go in. The Roman soldiers do their job, and nail the Son of God to a cross. And Mark and Matthew and John get on with the action. But not Luke. Luke wants to give us the last word of redemption – Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.
The Centurion stands to watch the proceedings and sees Jesus die. The other evangelists have him tell us that this was the Son of God – to which one might, just perhaps, say, “Whoops”. Bad news. Better not to try and execute a relative of the Almighty. But Luke wants to tell us of redemption: Certainly, says the Centurion, this man was innocent. The executioner is prepared to own up to a big mistake right there and then.
Everyone is being redeemed. Things are unpleasant and unfortunate, but blame is being avoided and people are being forgiven.
And then there is the thief – the so-called penitent thief.
And let’s be honest. Was ever a label so inappropriately given? Even Luke – even the kind-hearted and non-judgmental Luke is clear that Jesus is crucified surrounded by two criminals. And while it is certainly the case that one of them gets into an argument with the other one about the merits or not of crucifying Jesus, there is not a hint – not a jot or tittle – not the tiniest scent of anything approaching penitence with this man at all.
I hope that, on this day of all days, I don’t have to remind any of you that penitence means saying sorry. And there is not a single mention of apology with Luke’s portrayal – which is the only portrayal in the four gospels – the man we call the ‘penitent thief’ is actually, when you look at the facts, impenitent!
He’s argumentative – very happy to argue with the other dying criminal. And he’s cheeky, or possible opportunistic – hey, Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom. (Or perhaps he is plain sarcastic….) But penitent he is not. And it doesn’t matter! That, surely, is Good News. That, surely, is redemption.
This man is a chancer. Perhaps it was being a chancer that got him nailed to the cross for his pains. But he chances it one last time. And he hears the other thief talk up the idea of Jesus being the Messiah. Well, maybe he is, maybe he isn’t. But, like Voltaire, who on his deathbed, when asked to renounce the devil, exclaimed as his last word that it wasn’t the time to be making enemies, in a similar spirit, this thief isn’t going to argue with these Messianic claims.
And so he says, maybe just as an outside chance, Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom. It is, at the very least, a cheeky request, and there is nothing penitential about it at all. And yet, none of that matters. Truly says Jesus, Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.
Earlier, as I was telling you about the three ways that we have to think about who and what Christ is, I explained how I was taught that God really must become fully human – which Mark’s last word emphasizes for us. And I explained that it must, genuinely, be God who becomes human – something which Matthew’s last word underlines for us.
The third piece of that jigsaw to help us understand who and what Christ is – especially who Christ is as he hangs on the cross – is that God really must, properly, have become human. It can’t just be some kind of divine cross-dressing act. God has to have become, and not just seem like one of us. Because only if God has become human can he really do anything to respond to human need. And that’s what Luke’s last word gives us right now, as we look at this extraordinary, cheeky, wonderful encounter with a thief who is a smart lad, but utterly impenitent!
God, who has truly become like one of us, can look at this outrageous character, just as he can look at you and at me, and use last words to say Today you will be with me in paradise.
And if that isn’t Good News, I don’t know what is.
Maundy Thursday: Love’s Last Word – The Very Revd Dean Dominic Barrington, Dean of York
Title: Love’s Last Word
Preacher: The Very Revd Dominic Barrington, Dean of York
Date: Maundy Thursday 6 April 2023 5.30pm
Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.
And so the candles are lit, and the people have gathered. Darkness has fallen, and a community is gathered together; gathered together for a very special occasion – a celebration, indeed. An annual celebration, and one that never fails to have a mixture of joy, sorrow and remembrance. A celebration, but a celebration in the darkness.
Thus thirteen remarkable men gathered in an upper room nearly 2000 years ago – themselves, already, the product of a remarkable faith history coupling joy and sorrow in an extraordinary mixture. And one, at least, of these thirteen already experiencing his own very personal mixture of joy and sorrow, in the realisation that what he had come to understand as the sole purpose and mission of his life had come to its very climax. Such a poignant climax that, as he rightly anticipated, this was to be his last earthly meal. And not just a normal meal – this meal was the Passover meal, redolent with the ancient history of the liberation of his people. A meal, which so he himself says, he had earnestly desired to share with his friends and followers before the end came.
And so the candles are lit, and the people have gathered. Darkness has fallen, and a community is gathered together; gathered together for a very special occasion. An annual celebration, and one that never fails to have a mixture of joy, sorrow and remembrance. A celebration, but a celebration in the darkness.
For thus the community of the New Covenant gathers together. Thus the Church, the Body of Christ gathers together, and as it does its members bring their own mixture of joys and sorrows. Tonight Christians gather together to celebrate the first of the three great darknesses of Holy Week – the joyful and sorrowful darkness of Maundy Thursday, complete with its recollections of feasting and friendship joyfully shared in a moving meal, but recollections also of the scandalous foot-washing, the betrayal by Judas of Jesus, the agony of the Garden, and the arrest, terror and betrayal committed by an entire community of friends. Thus tonight, as every year, faithful Christians come together into the darkness of the night.
But darkness is not easy. Darkness can be overwhelming. Darkness can be scary – for adults, just as much as for children. And darkness can a place of uncertainty and confusion.
After all in this darkness, even Simon Peter was confused. As Jesus is about to wash his feet, Peter remonstrates with him, only to be told You do not know now what I am doing, but later you will understand. In the darkness of this night, Simon Peter was so confused he could not even recognize love that clearly.
If that sounds odd, then let me challenge those of you here tonight who have ever been blessed to have a deeply loving relationship. Just think back to the time that you first realised that you seriously and profoundly loved that other person, whoever it may have been. For many of us, that moment of realization is also a moment of anxiety – for it is also the moment when we wake up to the awful question about whether such feelings are reciprocated – about whether our beloved loves us. Sometimes, especially in the darkness, it can be hard to recognize love that clearly.
Now think back to the moment that you realised that the person you loved actually loved you back. To that remarkable moment that can be both inevitable and so deeply nerve-wracking – that moment when, after a split second, that
someone – someone who matters more than anyone else –that someone says I love you too for the first time. That moment can be a bolt of flame that glows out in the darkness with an intensity that is incomparable.
And, for that community of thirteen men who gathered in the upper room before the festival of the Passover, love was in the air – but it was hard for them to understand it, as the candles flickered in the darkness of that night.
It was hard for Peter to make sense of it, for it would be many days yet, well after this darkness had turned to daylight, it would be many days hence, when the world would be a profoundly different place, that Peter would be able to look Jesus in the eye and say, Yes Lord, you know that I love you. For you do not know now what I am doing said Jesus, in the darkness of that night, but later you will understand…
Later, they would understand, that Jesus had done what he had ultimately come to do. Indeed, Jesus had done what it was impossible for him not to do. Jesus had come to act out for them the Last Word of love. For having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end…
Much of the poetry of the Welsh poet-priest, R.S. Thomas demonstrates clearly just how hard it can be to understand love – but it also demonstrates a profound knowledge of what love can do to transfigure people, and thus transfigure the world. In an understated poem simply called The Chapel he wrote
A little aside from the main road,
becalmed in a last-century greyness,
there is the chapel, ugly, without the appeal
to the tourist to stop his car
and visit it. The traffic goes by,
and the river goes by, and quick shadows
of clouds, too, and the chapel settles
a little deeper into the grass.
But here once on an evening like this,
in the darkness that was about
his hearers, a preacher caught fire
and burned steadily before them
with a strange light, so that they saw
the splendour of the barren mountains
about them and sang their amens
fiercely, narrow but saved
in a way that men are not now.
For in the darkness of that poet’s evening, in the darkness of the Upper Room, in the darkness of this very evening, and even deep in the darkness that can sometimes shroud our hearts and lives – in all that darkness there is only one fire that consumes and burns steadily and with a strange light, and that is the fire of God’s love – a love that only comes to us, a love that only comes to you and me, a love that only comes to the world… because Jesus having loved his own who were in the world, loved them to the end.
But what an end. For this is one of those moments when no translation does justice to the subtlety of St John’s language. This end of which John speaks is the highly ambiguous Greek word telos, which means so much more than just the end of something, be it a street, a sausage, or even a life.
John is trying to tell us that Jesus loved his own to completion, that Jesus’ love was a love which loved to an end that is so complete, that it is made perfect. John is trying to tell us that Jesus’ love for his own is the last word on the subject.
And so, in the darkness of this night, as the candles flicker, Jesus gives his disciples – his beloved ones – two very big hints about this perfect love. He acts out for them a love that is rooted in such a shocking act of service it has Simon Peter almost running for the door in disbelief and horror.
And then, reaching for wine and bread sitting on this table of precious food, he catches their attention yet again, by breaking and sharing what he tells them is his body, and his blood. A gift so profound and deep and precious, that it can make those who receive it Christlike, as we, in our turn, become the Body of Christ.
Or, in other words, Christ gives his beloved ones the flame of love. The flame of a love so remarkable that it can endure to the end. The flame of a love so wonderful that it can bring completion. The flame of a love so unique and extraordinary that it is the only thing which can bring perfection into an imperfect world. The flame of a love that can be hard to understand, but which will pierce the darkness with a light that (so this gospel writer told us at the very outset, in his famous prologue) will never be overcome, and will conquer all that tries to extinguish it.
We may not always understand that love, and often we may fail to mirror it in our own lives. But this is the love that created the world, and which, now redeems the world, and it is a love that burns with an inextinguishable flame that can set on fire the poet’s preacher in that gloomy Welsh valley, and which can set us, can set even me and you on fire. For this is the night of love’s last word.
So as we journey on in the darkness of this night, as we journey on through the darkness of betrayal, desertion and denial, as we journey into the darkness of a sky turned black, and of an innocent man’s death, as we journey into the cold darkness of a sealed tomb, let us hold on to Love’s last word.
Because then, and only then, in that final darkness, before the dawn breaks on the third day, will we be able to perceive that flame of complete and perfect love which will never, which can never again be extinguished. Amen.
Judas’ Last Word – The Very Revd Dean Dominic Barrington, Dean of York
Title: Judas’ Last Word
Preacher: The Very Revd Dominic Barrington, Dean of York
Date: 5 April 2023 5.30pm
Let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith…
Throughout the Christian year, as we follow the calendar of the church from Advent onwards through Christmas, into Lent and then Easter, and onwards into the rest of the year, throughout the year we are used to celebrating saints’ days every so often. Today, on the Wednesday of Holy Week, we do the reverse. We remember – we do not celebrate – a non-saint’s day. For today is Judas’ day – and this day is often known as Spy Wednesday, for it was the day on which Judas struck his deal with the Jewish authorities to receive the infamous thirty pieces of silver in return for betraying Jesus.
And I believe that it is impossible for you and I, as Jesus’ disciples, I believe it impossible for us to work out our last word about the cross – our last word about the death of the Son of God – without us considering the actions of Judas Iscariot. Without us hearing his own last word on the subject.
The Judas story is a sad one, and a complicated one. The sadness is obvious enough, I guess – the complexity harder to deal with. For it is not enough to note that Judas betrays Jesus – surely, we have to ask why he does so. And so we move into the realm of speculation. And the most commonly held theory about Judas’ motive in betraying Jesus is that he was frustrated that Jesus was not being militant enough.
Judas is often portrayed as being the one who wanted to see Jesus make overtly political claims of Messiah-ship. Judas is the one who wanted to see some real action that might signal the end of the ungodly and sacrilegious Roman occupation of the Holy Land by the Romans, and bring in a new era with Jesus as a political Messiah. And perhaps Judas thought that by bringing about a great confrontation between Jesus and the High Priest, all this could and would happen. And if that is what he thought, then he was wrong – so very, very wrong.
And he was wrong, fundamentally, because Judas tried to pack God up into a box no bigger than his own intellect and emotions, with a nice clear label, to be placed on a particular shelf in his mental store-cupboard. Judas tried to make God, and God’s Messiah, an extension of his own desires. He tried to turn the teaching and preaching and ministry of Jesus into a tool for his needs and desires – however worthy these might have been – rather than offering himself freely as a disciple who would follow and serve selflessly wherever and however that might take him.
Judas thought that Judas’ agenda was better than God’s agenda – and he paid the most awful price. A price that echoes down through every generation – after all, what insult is more hurtful that calling someone a Judas?
And today, on Spy Wednesday, we hear again the account of Judas’ betrayal. But before we get too comfortable, gazing down our spiritual noses in distaste at what this man did, we need to work out what we make of his last word, and how it might affect our own last word on the subject.
During the two years that the the Irish writer Oscar Wilde spent in gaol for actions that, thank God, we no longer think of as criminal, there was a particularly black day in the prison, when a murderer was executed one morning. It led Wilde to reflect in a famous poem that
Each man kills the thing he loves
By each let this be heard
Some do it with a bitter look
Some with a flattering word
The coward does it with a kiss
The brave man with a sword
The account of the last supper which we have just heard tells us of the dreadful story of Judas…. but it tells us the story of ourselves as well. For when Jesus predicts his imminent betrayal, every single one of the Twelve guiltily look around at each other, uncertain of whom he is speaking. And Mark and Matthew flesh this out, reporting that they all ask, Not I, Lord, surely?
So, if those words were spoken, let us never forget that they were not merely a last word for Judas – they were words found on the lips of all of Jesus’ closest friends and followers, all of whom will desert Jesus and flee in terror only hours later. Indeed, as Jesus explains just a few verses further on, even Peter will deny Jesus, and will do so three times before the second cock crow. And the guilty look of betrayal and the guilty words of potential guilt are ours as well, all too often.
For there are times when we want to make God and to make his Christ instruments of our own will and personality. There are times when we want to parcel God up neatly into a box with a particular label on it, constantly forgetting that God is bigger than anything and anyone we can imagine, and that God’s agenda is broader and more wonderful than anything we can imagine.
And we do the same with Jesus. The gospel stories themselves demonstrate clearly to us that there are those who simply want to make Jesus a magician, or a physician, or a teacher, or a preacher, or a friend, or perhaps even a lover. And Jesus is none of these, just as he is none of the things that we try and make him. Jesus’ agenda was and is a bigger agenda than that of the Dean of York, or of anyone else gathered here.
Judas’ last word, that propels him into the terrible darkness of that Thursday night, is a reminder to us that our own last word needs to be big enough and broad enough to allow God to be God and Christ to be Christ, without making them conform to our own devices and desires. And that means, as the writer to the Hebrews understood, that we must run the race God has set before us with perseverance, and that we must look – and look properly and fully – at Jesus, who is none other than the pioneer and perfecter of our faith.
For even if our gaze does remain fully focused on Jesus, our own sinfulness will still bring those moments when we nervously wonder if we have betrayed him, for such is human nature. But if we show the perseverance of which the writer to the Hebrews speaks so powerfully, then that Not I, Lord need not be our last word, and we may journey through the darkness of the Thursday night into the dazzling brightness of new life on a Sunday morning. Amen.
Paul’s Last Word – The Very Revd Dean Dominic Barrington, Dean of York
Title: Paul’s Last Word
Preacher: The Very Revd Dominic Barrington, Dean of York
Date: 4 April 2023 5.30pm
My daughter has just turned six. Some time over the next year or so, she will discover that her parents are weird. We’re weird because we go to church.
This means – well, as she gets older there’ll be voices telling her what it means, getting louder and louder until by the time she’s a teenager they’ll be shouting right in her ear. It means that we believe in a load of bronze-age absurdities. It means that we don’t believe in dinosaurs. It means that we’re dogmatic. That we’re self-righteous. That we fetishize pain and suffering. That we advocate wishy-washy niceness. That we promise the oppressed pie in the sky when they die. That we’re bleeding hearts who don’t understand the wealth-creating powers of the market. That we’re too stupid to understand the irrationality of our creeds. That we build absurdly complex intellectual structures, full of meaningless distinctions, on the marshmallow foundations of a fantasy.
So wrote the novelist Francis Spufford, in a robust apologia for Christianity that was published about ten years ago.
Now, I imagine that you’ll have heard those objections before, or countless others that are similar. But the really hard thing Spufford had to say was:
But hey, that’s not the bad news. Those are the objections of people who care enough about religion to object to it …the really painful message our daughter will receive is that we’re embarrassing.
I wonder if any of that rings true to you this evening – that sense of ‘raised eyebrow’ (at the very least) on the part of ‘normal’ people (ie those people who don’t go to church on Sundays), if you admit to them that you are a real, committed church-goer. That fleeting look of bewilderment or pity – never mind hostility.
The truth of course is that there is nothing new in this. Christianity has often seemed to make no sense to those who spectate it from the outside, and whose heart is too hardened to dare to venture in. And when it has not had to contend with apathy – which is a comparatively new phenomenon in matters of religion – Christ’s church has had to deal, often, with outright contempt and hostility.
A good number of Roman emperors took it on themselves to launch persecutions of the church from the First Century until the end of the Third Century – persecutions which saw mass murder, fear and oppression as a recurring constant for the Body of Christ. And I hope that in the comfort and security of York, we don’t forget for a moment that Christians in some parts of the world face persecution today. Indeed, in this very morning’s Guardian there was a profoundly sad article about the Christian presence on the Mount of Olives being subject to discrimination and the possible confiscation of sites where Jesus was teaching and preaching in this, the last week of his life.
And then there was that extraordinary fellow – the one who changed his name. The one who was a religious nut himself – that tiresome, unstoppable, belligerent, self-opinionated Pharisee – was his name Saul….?
In its way, the story of Saul-who-becomes-Paul (or, at least, becomes known to us as Paul) is one of the most remarkable in the Bible. For he was a man who was convinced by the rightness of his arguments, and would hold his position with energy and vigour, and could clearly argue passionately for hours without ceasing.
The trouble was that Saul’s zealousness and energy was devoted pretty much 100% to persecuting and destroying the very first Christian communities. But rather than invoke a miracle that stops or drains his energy and his abilities, God just turns everything upside down for him, by recommissioning him from persecutor to preacher, and making him a passionate apostle and disciple for Christ.
Paul encounters the risen Christ, and his life is given a new focus. He never loses his fanatical passion for religion – he just comes to understand that his faith, his zealous, pharisaical, Jewish faith, has reached its climax in the person of Jesus, and in the event of the Cross.
One could argue that all of Paul’s writing are one great collective Last Word on the death of Christ. His entire activity from the Damascus Road onwards to his probably martyrdom in Rome is his response to the event of the Cross and its implications. But tonight we hear, I believe, the very essence of his thoughts about the Cross.
Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling-block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are called…Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God…for God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.
So take heart should the world scoff. Take heart if a six year old tells you that you are weird. Take heart if they roll their eyes at you at work or at school or over the dinner table or anywhere else. For Paul’s last word could well have been that The message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. What will your last word be this week?
The Prophet’s Last Word – The Very Revd Dominic Barrington, Dean of York
Title: The Prophet’s Last Word
Preacher: The Very Revd Dominic Barrington, Dean of York
Date: 3 April 2023 5.30pm
Yesterday morning, as we were reminded of the fickle nature of the crowd whose shouts turned from Hosanna to Crucify in just five days, I invited those of you who considered yourselves to be disciples of Jesus to use this Holy Week to try and work out what you consider to be your last word on the subject of the cross. For, in this week of unique significance, day by day in the scriptures we encounter what are, in effect, last words of many of the biblical authors on the subject of Jesus the Christ, and the significance of his death.
This is not remarkable when it comes to the writers of the New Testament. The writers of the four gospels, St Paul, and the other writers whose letters are found near the back of the Bible, all of them are, in effect, reflecting on what they think is the significance of Jesus’ life and death. After all, we know that hindsight is a wonderful thing, and all the New Testament is, in one way or the other, a reflection on the life and death of Jesus and its implication for the world.
But, as the White Queen so wonderfully remarked, “It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backwards”, and tonight I invite you to consider a ‘last word’ about the cross to be found on the lips of a biblical author who was writing around six hundred years before Jesus was born – but who, nevertheless, has something of great import to offer us in this week of weeks.
The longest of all the prophetic books in the Old Testament is that of the prophet Isaiah. A passionate, beautiful and complex work – almost all scholars would claim that it is a compilation of at least three different writers, spanning from the 8th to the late 6th century before Christ. And in the writing of the second of the book’s authors, we find four strange, beautiful, powerful, and also (in the proper sense of the word) pathetic songs – songs of a figure we have come to know as the Suffering Servant. Songs which, in their way, are a last word on God’s Messiah, a last word on the Christ – although written well over 500 years before his birth.
These four songs speak of a shadowy figure identified only as God’s servant – a figure called to bring justice to the earth and light to the nations. A figure who will open eyes and bring prisoners out of darkness. If some of this sounds curiously familiar to you, it should – for there are probably no other sections of the Old Testament that influenced Jesus’ understanding of his own vocation as much as these four ‘songs’. They are, in their way, a chronologically premature last word on the ministry of God’s chosen one. And they tell us of new things.
Of course, we don’t always like new things. Despite the fact that the opposite of change is really death, new things are often things about which we are very wary. As the Minster moved through the pandemic, and worked out how best to approach the new reality of live-streaming, the service times on Sunday morning were adjusted – and it has been made unnecessarily plain to me just how much some people don’t like new ways of doing things, even though the change happened well before I came here as Dean!
And if such unhappiness can be forthcoming within a Christian community about a relatively minor issue, we should not be surprised that the preaching and teaching of Jesus led to such utter hostility as to bring about his death – a fate that he shares with the Suffering Servant, as revealed in the final of the four of these songs, which we will hear read on Good Friday.
And in the song we hear this evening, if we open our ears, we can recognize just how continuously new the servant’s ministry is. For this figure is called to bring justice across the earth. That sounds so good, until we remind ourselves that it was – apparently – for the sake of justice and liberty that President Putin felt it necessary to invade Ukraine. When politicians and world leaders start to invoke this kind of language, it can lead too often to a situation that involves body bags.
But God, so the prophet tells us, God says he will declare new things, and so he does – for this Suffering
Servant is called to bring justice to the nations without so much as lifting up his voice.
The Servant is called not to break a bruised reed; not to quench a dimly burning wick. This is a long way from how you or I might instinctively think about bringing justice, or liberating people from captivity. What has been taking place in Ukraine for over a year has involved a hell of a lot of reed-breaking and wick-quenching – and it is not just governments and armies that do this.
For I recognize that I’m all too good at crying out and lifting up my voice, and I am sorry to say I’ve probably broken a good number of bruised reeds in my time. And if that applies to you as well, then, like me, use this Holy Week to take note that God is declaring new things to us. God is calling us to a better way – a much better way…. But a very costly better way.
Before Jesus was ever born, the Bible’s greatest prophet had already delivered his last word on the ministry of the Messiah. As we journey again through this Great Week, as we evaluate our own last word on the Cross, let us hear again this strange prophetic figure speak to us of the new things that God is declaring, and let’s make sure that when we speak of justice and liberty, we pursue it in a Christlike manner that shows we have heard and acted on the Prophet’s last word. Amen.
Palm Sunday: Vinea Mea Electa – Canon Victoria Johnson, Precentor
Title: Vinea Mea Electa (My chosen Vineyard)
Preacher: Canon Victoria Johnson, Precentor
Date: Palm Sunday 1 April 4.00pm
Readings: Psalm 80, Isaiah 5:1-7, Matthew 21:33-end
‘Beer is made by man’, said Martin Luther, the church reformer.
‘But’, he said, ‘wine is made by God’. I tend to agree.
If God makes the best wine, we might assume that God takes an interest in vineyards as well. Just imagine the vineyards that make the beautiful wine: beautiful vineyards, full of choice vines and gleaming grapes, sun-drenched vineyards which are carefully tended and cultured, the soil rich, the terroir bountiful, the land a treasure passed on from one generation to another, imagine the vineyards which produce the most fruitful wine which is both a gift and a blessing from God.
The symbolism of wine, and the vineyards that produce it, are peppered throughout the scriptures, good wine is often seen as the fulfilment of God’s promises. The prophets look towards the time when the Lord of hosts will prepare a lavish banquet for all peoples on the holy mountain; a banquet of aged wine, choice pieces with marrow, refined mature wine, a gift and blessing from God.
We see that gift and blessing in the story of the wedding at Cana, when Mary pleads with her Son to fix a shortage of wine at a family wedding, and in his first miracle recorded in the Gospel of John, Jesus transforms water into the most beautiful wine, the best wine, which is to be shared as part of a banquet, a celebration, and which becomes a sign not only of Jesus divinity, but of God’s generosity and love.
Jesus also refers to himself as the vine, and his disciples as branches, and time and time again, we, his disciples of today, are encouraged to work at bearing good fruit, seeking life in all of its fullness and abundance, we too are called to be a gift and a blessing and a sign of God’s generosity and love.
On the night before he died, Jesus shared a meal with his friends, he took a cup of wine, and after giving thanks, gave it to them saying, ‘Drink this, all of you; for this is my blood of the new covenant, which is poured out for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins.’ Jesus takes this nectar from the fruits of the earth, and places it at the heart of his church.
However, this is not what we have heard in our readings this evening. The images in our readings are of ruined vineyards, vineyards which have either not produced the expected harvest, or vineyards which become a focus of malicious and selfish gain, through appalling violence.
The parable that Jesus tells us from the Gospel of Matthew, is of a landowner who owns a beautiful vineyard and lets it out to tenants. When he sends his slaves to collect the harvest they are killed. Then the landowner sends his son to collect the harvest, and this time the tenants kill him, in order to gain his inheritance. The vineyard has been ruined, it is no longer a place of plenty, but a place of terror. No good wine can come of this. There is no mention of the grapes, nor of the beautiful harvest, rotting on the vines, languishing in the sun, thereby preventing the production of the most beautiful wine that can be shared at celebrations and family meals for years to come.
The parable is of course figurative, it speaks of humanities reluctance to tend and nurture and grow and our propensity to reject that love which helps us produce the best harvest in our lives. The very gifts that can bring so much joy and that can share so much grace: we diminish, we reject and we destroy. So often the inclination of the human heart seems to be towards greed, hatred, selfishness, violence, when Jesus is always so very clearly calling us towards generosity and love. Christ comes to help us see the Father’s love for us, so why do we as human beings, so often reject it?
Today we begin our journey to the place where we learn what true generosity and true love is. We see God giving us his son, nailed to a cross, as a sign of his boundless love for the world. The cross stands there in the vineyard of our hearts, saying to us, there is another way, there is a beautiful harvest waiting for you, which will produce the very best wine.
It is there on the cross, as he waited to die, that the sour wine given to Jesus is transformed through God’s love into the most beautiful life-giving wine. The blood pouring from his side, becomes for us the new wine of the new Kingdom, shared from a cup at the banquet which celebrates the new creation, where death will lead to life, sins will be forgiven, hope will be restored and our vocation in Christ will be affirmed.
Christ comes to us, only in generosity and love, to invite us to the banquet,
where wine will flow in abundance, the best wine,
wine which is a gift and a blessing from God,
who offers us a cup, and longs for us to take a sip
Palm Sunday: The Crowd’s Last Word – The Very Revd Dominic Barrington, Dean of York
Title: The Crowd’s Last Word
Preacher: The Very Revd Dominic Barrington, Dean of York
Date: Palm Sunday, 2 April 2023 10.30am
Last words are for fools who believe they have not yet said enough, remarked Karl Marx on his own deathbed. You might agree with that, although it feels a slightly aggressive way in which to take leave of this life. I suspect that, when the time comes, my own preference might be closer to that of the economist John Maynard Keynes, who sadly remarked I only wish I had drunk more champagne!
Or it might prove to be the case that we are overwhelmed with regret, and echo a sentiment more in keeping with the last words of Queen Elizabeth I, who is reported, wistfully, to have said All my possessions for a moment of time.
But whatever faces us at the end of our own lives, today, and throughout this week of weeks, we are called by God and by God’s Church to work out what our last word is when faced, as we are right now, by the Cross, and by the death of Jesus. Because it is no use claiming to be a follower or a disciple of Jesus, if you have nothing to say to the world about the Cross – for the Cross stands not just at the heart of our religion. For the Christian, the Cross stands – the Cross must stand – at the heart of the life of the world.
And it is not just Christians who can find themselves confronted with the Cross. In 1972 the American Jewish author and rabbi Chaim Potok wrote a remarkable novel entitled My name is Asher Lev, about a child born into an ultra-Orthodox Jewish family in New York, a family very like his own. And it turns out that this child is blessed with the gift of truly remarkable artistic talent.
But, while you or I might delight to see such talent in one of our own offspring, in the context of a devout, ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, this was very far from welcome, for art, painting and drawing do not sit well in Orthodox Judaism, which takes very seriously the prohibition on making graven images.
But so very talented is this child that, with the eventual encouragement of their rabbi, his parents arrange for their son to have lessons in art from a non-religious Jew who possesses similar talent.
The climax of the story comes when the teacher tells his ever-blossoming pupil that if he wishes to be a truly great artist, he must go down to the Met – the Metropolitan Museum of Art – and gaze at, and study, and sketch, and reproduce all the great paintings of the crucifixion in the museum.
The boy is horrified at the idea that he, an Orthodox Jew, should be encouraged to immerse himself in pictures of the ultimate expression of the Christian faith. But his teacher is clear – no other image in the world, he says, has the significance in the entire history of art as does the crucifixion of Christ. To be a truly great artist, whatever one’s faith or beliefs, one must encounter the cross of Christ.
In other words, this committed, observant Jew is called to find his ‘last word’ on – of all subjects – the Cross.
This morning, as we begin Holy Week, we find ourselves faced with a body of people that the evangelists refer to as the ‘crowd’. And because of the curious, unique nature of today’s liturgy we have had not one but two snapshots of the crowd in this morning’s service – which is both helpful and necessary if we are to understand what being part of a ‘crowd’ can really mean.
Just now, as we gathered outside the Minster, we acted out the crowd’s behaviour as it followed Jesus down the Mount of Olives, celebrating his arrival in a Jerusalem turbo-charged with religious fervour at the celebration of the most significant Jewish festival of the year. And, as the evangelist reminded us, so excited is the crowd, it is shouting Hosanna, and calling Jesus the Son of David , and claiming that he has come ‘in the name of the Lord’.
But crowds are easily swayed, and – as we see all too often in our own volatile political and social climate – people can veer from being superstar to public enemy number one in little more than a heartbeat. When the going gets tough, both 2000 years ago, and all too often today as well, a crowd can change its communal mind and change the chant of Hosanna to the hideous last word that cries out, Let him be crucified.
And so, today, God asks us, God demands of us once again, to work out what the Cross really means to each one of us. God asks us what it is that we might say to the world around us about the Cross and about the death of Jesus. Are we outwardly going to shout Hosanna, but let our inner thoughts and our behaviour call out Crucify? How will we fashion our own response to the Cross?
I want to suggest that if you – or I – properly wish to answer this question, the ultimate question of Holy Week, then you need to walk with Jesus throughout this week through the great liturgies of the Church. For if, after this morning, the next time you set foot in a church is next Sunday morning, I am not sure that you will properly have understood what it is that God in Jesus has done for you, and I am not sure that you will fully understand what it will mean to celebrate resurrection on Easter Sunday. And that is why the Church of God has, for many many centuries, offered unique and powerful liturgies to help us enter into this ultimate, great drama of hope and of salvation.
And so I invite you to join us in the coming days. To join us tomorrow, and Tuesday and Wednesday, as we are reminded of Jesus’ last days of teaching his disciples and friends as the situation around him ineluctably comes to a head.
And then to join us in the solemn darkness of a Thursday night, replete with its bread and wine, and acts of service; to join us in the bitter darkness of a Friday afternoon, complete with an agonizing and undeserved death; to join us in the expectant darkness of a Saturday night, as the light of a single candle will illumine your life more brightly than you could have thought possible.
And if we are faithful to God’s call, and make such a journey, then we will comprehend so much more clearly what God has done for us on the Cross, and then can we frame our own last word to help us speak – as we are called to do – speak to the world of the death of the Son of God.
For now, right now, the crowd chants Crucify…Let him be crucified. Is that going to be your last word?
May the Lord establish his word – The Very Revd Dominic Barrington, Dean of York
Title: May the Lord establish his word
Preacher: The Very Revd Dominic Barrington, Dean of York
Readings: 1 Samuel 1.20–28, Colossians 3.12–17, John 19:25-27
Date: The Fourth Sunday of Lent, Mothering Sunday, 19 March 2023 11.00am
May the Lord establish his word.
Meanwhile, so we are told, ‘Hannah conceived and bore a son’. And so our readings begin on this day when maternity seems to leap to the forefront of our minds. And Hannah’s story isn’t any old story of childbirth – for if you read back a mere fifteen verses, you’ll discover that Samuel’s birth is an extraordinary birth, because in the opening verses of the first book that bears his name, it is explained to use that ‘the Lord had closed [Hannah’s] womb’.
So Hannah isn’t just any old mum – she’s someone who had to work hard to become a mum – and not just the mother of any old child – she becomes the mother of someone after whom not one but two books of the Bible are named. What, you might ask, could be better than that to start our celebration of Mothering Sunday
Well, Hannah is – without any doubt at all – a person of very considerable significance in the story of the people of God, and how that story is narrated in holy Scripture. But her story is, perhaps an odd choice if this morning is meant to be a pastorally effective celebration of maternal values and aspirations. A role model who has had a lucky break from infertility might not be the best example for us to hold up in such a context, let alone in any way endorsing the Biblical understanding that it was God’s purpose and decision to ‘close her womb’ and subject her to such grief.
And, in an era when we take issues such as parenting and safeguarding very seriously, one might have to question whether a narrative that sees this sometime barren Hannah give birth, only to leave her baby abandoned at the Temple as soon as he has been weaned, is quite the most appropriate story for a celebration of maternal spirit.
And if you should read on a little, you will discover that the family with whom the baby Samuel has been left is seriously toxic. Eli, the High Priest, is, shall we say ineffectual. His own adult sons are, so the narrative tells us, ‘scoundrels’ – both stealing from the offerings made in the Temple, and sleeping their way through the female members of the Temple’s equivalent of hosts and stewards. This is a far from ideal adoptive family in which to leave a vulnerable small child.
All of which means that we are going to have to work a little harder if we are going to understand why Hannah’s story was read to us just now as part of our celebration of Mothering Sunday, and while we work it out we should continue to pray: May the Lord establish his word.
Meanwhile, about a thousand years or so after the era of Hannah and Samuel, another servant of the one God, was reminding his community about the importance of love. Now – surely we can talk about love on Mothering Sunday – what could be more appropriate than that?
But this choice is not entirely straight-forward either. For a start, you might want to question the pastoral sensitivity of a passage like this for those who were unfortunate enough to grow up in a context of parental abuse, or who may have found it difficult if not impossible to forgive a mother who may not have been someone that either demonstrated love or was easy to love.
And, again, if we dare to read on a little, in this case only as far as the very next verse of Colossians chapter three, we come across those ever-challenging words, “Wives, be subject to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord.” Well, I’ve been ordained 28 years this summer, and I’ve done a fair few weddings in that time, but I have yet to have a couple ask me if they can include the now infamous word ‘obey’ in a wedding service, which was relegated to being an option 95 years ago.
So, again, we may have to dig a little deeper to work out how this passage – which, despite the claim made at the start of the reading was almost certainly not written by Paul – helps fulfil that brief and simple prayer: May the Lord establish his word.
Meanwhile, three hours ago, I was presiding and preaching at our early service at 8am. Now our custom at the early service – like many churches around the country – is to use the 1662 Prayer Book. So at 8 o’clock, you’d not have heard anything about Hannah, you would not have heard from Colossians, and you would not have joined the Mother of Jesus and the Beloved Disciple at the foot of the cross.
Instead, you would have heard part of the fourth chapter of that genuine Pauline letter which he wrote to the church in Galatia. A rather tortuous and complex passage where Paul is talking about Isaac and Ishamel, the two sons of Abraham, and their respective mothers, which he sees as being allegorical. And thus, three hours ago, you’d have heard Paul speaking (and speaking in Elizabethan English) that Hagar, the mother of Ishmael, ‘is Mount Sinai…and answereth to Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children. But Jerusalem which is above is free; which is the mother of us all.”
Now the tradition of reading that text on the fourth Sunday of Lent goes back well beyond Cranmer’s prayer books, possibly as far back as the Eighth Century. And this curious and oblique remark about the heavenly Jerusalem being the universal mother, and its proclamation for hundreds of years in the middle of Lent – that is what has led to this day being known as Mothering Sunday.
Meanwhile, in 1908 in a small town in what was the coal-mining country of West Virginia, a social activist and devout member of what is known as the Methodist Episcopal Church, inspired by a prayer from her Sunday School days, founded an annual commemoration each May called Mother’s Day. The very next year the idea was picked up in the great metropolis of New York, and by 1914 Woodrow Wilson had issued a proclamation declaring the second Sunday of May to be nationally recognized as Mother’s Day. But all of that, as it so happens, is a completely different story, and not a story that relates to today’s celebration, even though Anna Jarvis, its creator, would, I am quite certain, have been happy to pray May the Lord establish his word.
Meanwhile, on an ugly hill that, in reality, was anything but green, some 2000 years ago, Jesus was busy dying. Except, if you read the Fourth Gospel properly, with your eyes and ears and mind open to exactly what its author is trying to tell us, Jesus is actually busy triumphing. For that is how St John understands what is happening as the Word made flesh is crucified.
And Jesus is about to announce, triumphantly, that everything has been accomplished. Jesus is about demonstrate that Love has fulfilled and completed all that it had set out to do. Only one last task remains, and thus John’s account of the death of Jesus is, as it were, interrupted, as he tells us in the passage chosen for this morning’s gospel reading, that Meanwhile, standing near the cross of Jesus were his mother… and, along with some other women, that curiously hard to identify figure known as ‘the disciple whom Jesus loved’. And the final task that Jesus must accomplish is, indeed, to fulfil the prayer of Elkanah, ‘that the Lord may establish his word’.
For this is the moment when Jesus’ vocation is, truly, perfected. And that is why, on Mothering Sunday, we are called back to witness anew Jesus’ final, decisive action. And it is not an action about a woman called Mary, and possibly a disciple called John – for I am quite certain that the evangelist uses titles and not names, because he knows Jesus is doing something bigger and more important than just making sure his mum has a roof over her head.
For in this final moment, the Fourth Gospel shows us the Word made flesh bringing together the one who bore the Word and the beloved community called to witness to that Word. This, if you like, is Jesus symbolically creating the Church – the beloved community of his followers – and it is with this task achieved that he can cry, victoriously, that all is not merely finished but made complete and perfect.
So let’s get real about Hannah. Let me tell you the truly remarkable thing about her. She is not just the first, but the only figure in the entire Old Testament whom we see indulging in what we now would call intercessory prayer, and getting it answered. She could be the subject of an entire sermon that I don’t now have time to preach, but go read her story properly.
Hannah is not important because she’s a mother. She’s important because she had the insistent vocation to lift up her plight to God by walking into the sanctuary of the Temple, and, in doing so, she makes a difference – a difference not just to her own life, but of her entire community. And through her the Lord established his word.
And that quasi-Pauline figure who wrote to the Colossians. He demanded that the beloved community we call the Church of God functioned as one body – a body bound together in the perfect harmony of love – a body in which, ‘richly’, the word of Christ dwells.
And meanwhile… as the Fourth Gospel shows us Jesus ensuring that the Living Word is established in the community of the Word, right now, on Mothering Sunday, we are called again to remember our vocation as members of God’s beloved community.
We are called, in this our own generation, to ‘establish the Word’ – to witness to the Word, to pray with the Word and through the Word – to pray for the world and to go into the world and make a difference.
Indeed, to pick up the real meaning of the Hebrew translated as ‘establish’, we are called to make the Word ‘rise up’. To make God’s Word rise up by our witness and by our actions. And that, perhaps, is what is means for the Church to recall its vocation to the mother of all people.
Amen.
Being in the love of God – The Very Revd Dominic Barrington, Dean of York
Title: Being in the Love of God
Preacher: The Very Revd Dominic Barrington, Dean of York
Date: The First Sunday of Lent, 26th February 2023 4.00pm
When your children ask you in time to come, ‘What is the meaning of the decrees and the statutes and the ordinances that the Lord our God has commanded you?’
If you happen to listen to the Sunday programme on Radio 4 this morning, you would have heard a fascinating piece this morning about the West African religion Ifá, introduced by the BBC journalist Peter Macjob who has embraced this religion, and left behind the Christianity into which he was born.
He explained that he had been born into a very devout Roman Catholic family, and had been baptized, confirmed, had been an altar server, and had even considered going to seminary, before he got disillusioned. He talked about how his reading of some major moments of church history, such as the councils of Nicaea, Trent, and even the Second Vatican Council, had all just being ‘human beings making decision’.
Leaving Catholicism behind him, he tried a more evangelical form of Christianity, but found that to be ‘guilt-tripping’ and ‘money-grabbing’. He also related his dislike of starting to travel the world, and finding gross commercialism in some of the great centres of Christian faith. His shock at the cost of a Vatican fridge magnet was, he said, ‘not edifying’.
And so, eventually, he told Emily Buchanan, “I just stopped going to church – period.” And, on the basis of a chance encounter, he was introduced to Ifá, in which he now delights as the context in which he finds spiritual fulfilment.
All of which, I rather imagine, must have come as something of a surprise to his devout Roman Catholic parents. It might, perhaps, have been something of a challenge for them to wonder how well they had answered questions about Christianity – questions such as, “What is the meaning of the decrees and the statutes and the ordinances that the Lord our God has commanded you?”
Deuteronomy, along with some other parts of the Hebrew scriptures, puts emphasis on the role of the family in the transmission of faith in the one God from generation to generation. A love of God, and of God’s commandments is – very evidently – both central and vital. Keep these words… recite them to your children… talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. Bind them…on your hand, fix them…on your forehead…write them on the doorposts and…gates.
These instructions are valuable and vital, and they are couched in the religious understanding that was dominant among the Israelites of that era that obedience and what you might call ‘success’ were inextricably linked:
Do what is right and good in the sight of the Lord, so that it may go well with you, and so that you may go in and occupy the good land that the Lord swore…to give you…
It is no wonder, perhaps, that the final verse of our first reading concluded with the sentiment: If we diligently observe this entire commandment before the Lord our God, as he has commanded us, we will be in the right.
Well, it is not my place to intrude in the lives and the faith journeys and experiences of the Macjob family. Nobody present here this evening, I hope, would argue with the statement that God loves those who practice West African religions no more and no less as much as God loves those who practice Christianity.
Nor is it my place to imply, let alone instruct, any or all of you that you should not follow God’s commandments. I simply need to ask the question about what you and I should talk about when we don’t manage to follow the commandments – a question which, thank God, was also a question which mattered to that very devout Jew Jesus.
For Jesus needed no persuading about the call or commandment to love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. Jesus did that with every fibre of his being, and was keen that others should do the same. But Jesus also knew that sometimes, it just doesn’t actually work out like that. Sometimes human fallibility and frailty gets in the way. Which is why Jesus was such a big hit with ‘all the tax-collectors and sinners’ who, so we hear in our second reading, ‘were coming near to listen to him’ – and, to the muttered fury of the more ‘properly’ religious types, were being welcomed by him and were being sat down to share food with him.
Because Jesus knew that it was no bad thing to talk about God’s commandments and to encourage people to keep them… but Jesus also knew that a loving God has to have what you might call a Plan B up that divine sleeve. Jesus knew that you had to be able to talk about what happens when someone goofs up, when someone lets the side down, when someone does or says something that is not in accord with the commandments.
And so, as we partly heard in our second reading, Jesus explains that, in fact, when things go wrong and human fallibility and frailty wreak their usual consequences of alienation and sin, God does not give up on God’s children – even if they are no longer in the right! One sheep out of a hundred must be sought out and found. One coin in ten must be sought out and found. And, had we had time to read the whole of Luke 15 just now, not just the warm up act, we would have been reminded that one son out of two must also be sought out and found – even when that particular child of God has put as much distance as possible between himself and a loving parent as he can possibly manage.
So when your children ask you – or me – in times to come what the meaning of our own decrees, statutes and ordinances are, let’s make sure we tell them the whole story. Being in the right (as the author of Deuteronomy put it) isn’t a bad place to be. But being in the love of God is even better – even when you or I are in the wrong. So let’s make sure that when our children or any other of God’s children ask us what our faith actually means – questions which have been asked in every generation, and which always will be – then let’s make sure we speak of the depth of God’s love rather than anything else.
Third Sunday of Advent: If you have any word of exhortation for the people, give it – The Very Revd Dean Dominic Barrington
Title: “If you have any word of exhortation for the people, give it.”
Preacher: Dean Dominic Barrington
Date: Third Sunday of Advent 2022 11.12.22 4.00pm
Help! I need help! The good people are all gone…everyone lies to [their] neighbours; they say one thing and mean another…everyone loves what is wrong.
Pick a headline – any headline – and you will see what I mean. If you have – or if you had – plans to visit family or friends around Christmas by train, you’ll know just what I’m talking about. The government has offered a new deal bringing ‘job security and a fair pay rise’, says its spokesman; but Mr Lynch claims that Downing Street ‘has torpedoed the talks’.
Or take another topic in the news at present… I woke up yesterday morning to find John Kerry on the Today programme talking with what you might call diplomatically measured concern about the British government’s green light for the proposed new mine in Cumbria. A subject around which there was enough equivocation to cause the Speaker of the House of Commons to suspend business earlier this past week.
Clearly, everyone lies to his neighbours.
And there was the interesting question or implicit claim by President Putin, when challenged a few days ago about his policy of attacking Ukraine’s energy structure, to which he said, “Yes, we do that. But who started it?”
Manifestly, everyone loves what is wrong…
Glance at any newspaper or current affairs website, and – no matter what your own political perspective might be – there’s a lot of bad news about. Whether you are pro-government or pro-union in your sympathies, the almost unprecedented level of industrial unrest in this country is not good news.
And world news is not much better. Quite aside of the horrors of what continues to happen in Ukraine, we see disturbing behaviour in Iran and China, and too many other countries.
Frankly, all who are wicked will keep on strutting, while everyone praises their shameless deeds. And all the while it just gets darker. Which might be why the message was sent, “if you have any word of exhortation for the people, give it.”
Well – do we? We are at that time of year when I and my clergy colleagues are standing up, night by night, to greet hundreds of people who flock to this building – which is itself a physical ‘word of exhortation’ – flock here for various carol services. And in two minutes, we have to share good news…
Vicky, or Maggie, or Michael, or Catriona, or I – we have to tell people the good news that this centuries old building does, in fact, possess toilets, and they are in the aisle just over there. We have to tell people the good news that we know how to look after them in the event of a major incident, and that we can evacuate this building safely, efficiently and quickly if we need to do so. We have to tell them the good news that we take the safety and dignity of everyone – and especially of children and vulnerable adults – very seriously, which is why we ask people not to take photos or videos of our services.
But – as we do that – we also have to try and find the briefest way of reminding those who have come through these great doors of even greater Good News, because this building was built to be a reminder in stone and glass of God’s ultimate Good News for a dark world, and if people come here and not notice something, no matter how tangential or small, about this, then we have failed in our mission.
And it’s not always easy – especially when the world feels such a very dark place. It’s not always easy knowing how you can do this, especially when everyone loves what is wrong or when everyone lies to [their] neighbours or when the wicked keep on strutting – which, of course, are phrases from a slightly more modern version of Psalm 12, which we heard sung at the start of this service.
Because there are times – really rather a lot of them at the moment – when we might find ourselves crying out “Help me, Lord, for there is not one godly man [or woman] left…”
So perhaps I should tell you about Paul – Paul, and his friend Barnabas – about whom we heard in the second lesson. They’ve just rocked up in Antioch on quite a challenging mission trip. Scroll up just a few verses to the start of that chapter of Acts, and you’ll find Paul has had to confront someone whom he has called a ‘son of the devil’ and an ‘enemy of all righteousness’. And yet, when asked to give a ‘word of exhortation for the people’, he still remains capable of talking about Good News.
But – actually – this evening I’d rather tell you about someone else – about someone I met yesterday morning here in the centre of York – about someone else who really knows what it means to give a word of exhortation to the people. And, indeed, because York is really quite a small city, I’m sure some of you will know her…
Her name is Laura, and she attends services here at the Minster with some regularity, although it was not at a service that I met her. Laura has studied law, and could be earning an impressive corporate salary as a solicitor – but she isn’t. She’s worked in the charity and safeguarding area, where she most certainly could have continued to have a regular desk job with a predictable salary – but she doesn’t any longer.
You may have come across her in the remarkable deli-cum-restaurant she owns less than five minutes from the west door, The Larder Club . I can tell you first hand that the coffee and chocolate brownies she serves are superb, and the rest of the grub looked pretty good as well. But if I was simply going to plug nice cafés in this lovely city, we all know there’d be a long list.
But the Larder Club reflects not just a passion for great food and coffee. The Larder Club is a remarkable social enterprise supporting the rehabilitation of women offenders who have suffered abuse and/or mental health issues. A social enterprise rooted out of Laura’s experiences in getting to know the inmates and the governor of HMP Askham Grange, and realizing that there was a group of people who had been immersed in bad news, both as victims and perpetrators – a group of people whose lives could most definitely be changed by access to Good News – access to training, placements and possible employment.
Of course, when people like Laura go down a road like this, it is often a vulnerable and unpredictable road that lacks the safety and security that other job possibilities might have offered her. And, as I discovered from the Reverend Richard Coles, who is also a huge fan of Laura and her ministry, rising high street rents mean that the Larder Club may not see the dawn of 2023, which would be a great tragedy not just for its customers but for the vulnerable people whose rehabilitation it has championed.
The risk, of course, makes Laura’s story all the more powerful, and it was hearing that story that made an already excellent brownie and cappuccino taste even better. And it was a reminder to me that one person – just one person – can make a difference and show the world Good News.
Because that’s really what it’s all about. Whoever wrote Psalm 12 could see the bad news all around, but nevertheless remained confident that the Lord ‘will help every one from him that swelleth against him’. But God can’t do it on his own. God calls us to work in partnership – which is why God has gathered us here this evening for Choral Evensong.
And so it is that the question that was put to Paul is now being put to us – “if you have any word of exhortation for the people, give it.” And if you need a bit of time to work out what your ‘word of exhortation might be’, you could do worse than pop into the Larder Club for a coffee, and, like me, be inspired how Laura answered that call, just like Paul, Barnabas, and the rest of the people of God before her. Amen.
Strive first for the Kingdom of God – The Very Revd Dean Dominic Barrington
Sermon Preached on Saturday 12 November 2022 during Evensong and Installation of the Very Reverend Dominic Barrington as 77th Dean of York
Preacher: Very Revd Dean Dominic Barrington
Title: Strive first for the Kingdom of God
Date: 12/11/22 3pm
Five or six years ago, when my elder son Benedict was around nine or ten, and he and his younger brother Linus were too young to walk to school on their own, Alison and I would accompany them on the fifteen-minute journey through our neighbourhood in Chicago. Benedict had realized that polite, intelligent conversation was a sign of maturity and adulthood, something good to which he aspired – but he hadn’t fully learned how to make this happen easily. And so, pretty much every morning, he’d turn to his mother or me as we left the house, and, with youthful eagerness demand, “So, Mum… so Dad, what do you want to talk about?”
Not being a great morning person, and having usually had only the one cup of coffee at that point in the day, it was often quite hard to find an answer that would satisfy him, and my usual response was to turn the question around by 180 degrees, and say, “So, Benedict – what do you want to talk about?” Good conversation is vital to healthy relationships, is vital to a flourishing society, is vital to the life of prayer, and of mission and ministry. But we have to know what we should be talking about.
Benedict would have got on well with the prophet Isaiah, from whom we heard just now. For he knew exactly what he wanted to talk about, and it did not always make for comfortable listening.
The world as he knew it was not in a good place. The neighbouring states were behaving foolishly and making very unwise political and military decisions. The regional super-power of Assyria was growing ever the more threatening and demanding, and the kingdom of Judah, in which Isaiah lived, was led by a king who was both stupid and evil, whose choices were predicated on bad decisions – on godless decisions – which the prophet could see would end in disaster. “So, Isaiah,” said God – “what do you want to talk about?”
And Isaiah’s response was to get people to focus on, to strive, for what Jesus would call the ‘kingdom of God’. The section of prophecy that was our first reading is the culmination of three chapters in which Isaiah is critiquing the fact that King Ahaz would rather trust a foreign king of highly dubious intentions that trust in the one God. And although the prophet could see that eventually all would be put right, he was crystal clear that in the short term, things were going to get worse – seriously worse.
We often read from Isaiah in Advent and Christmas, let alone hear some of these passages set to music by Handel in Messiah. But we should not forget that while Christians hear a great pre-echo of the coming of the Christ in his words, Isaiah’s own vocation was not trying to predict the long-term future. That is not, in this context, what prophetic means at all. Isaiah, and the other Hebrew prophets, their vocation was to talk about the present, and ask – no, demand – that people (and especially those in authority) paid heed to what God was calling God’s people to do in the world.
Of course, the great prophet wasn’t the only person who had something to say just now. “So, Jesus,” says God – “what do you want to talk about?”
And this afternoon, we find Jesus in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount, talking to us about how best we can seek out and serve the kingdom of God. Just as Isaiah was challenging the king, the religious leaders, and the peoples of Judah and Jerusalem – challenging them about their priorities, their choices and their behaviour, so Jesus is challenging the crowds who have begun to follow him – challenging them about just the same issues: priorities, choices, behaviour. Asking the crowds if they know what they should be talking about.
Telling them that it isn’t good enough to be talking about earthly treasures; telling them that talking about self-interest just does not cut it with God. Telling them that the only conversation worth having is talking about – and helping build – God’s kingdom and God’s righteousness.
At this relatively early point in Matthew’s gospel, Jesus’ audience is a local, rural audience from the communities dotted around the Sea of Galilee. But, as the gospel narrative makes plain, striving for the kingdom of God would lead Jesus into conflict with religious and secular leadership, until, on an ugly hillside outside a city wall, he ends up arms outstretched, dying on a wooden cross.
Dying, because he would not compromise in proclaiming the Good News of a love uniquely strong and uniquely universal. Dying, because he would not – could not – stop striving for the kingdom of God.
And here we are, 2000 years later, sitting in this breathtaking building, enjoying the pomp and circumstance, the tradition, the history, the legality which is deemed necessary to make a new dean. But I hope, in amongst all this ‘stuff’ – I hope that none of this is distracting us from the fact that God is saying to you and to me this afternoon just what God said to Isaiah and to Jesus: “So – what do you want to talk about?”
Because there’s just as much to talk about as there was when Isaiah and when Jesus were preaching. In the country from which I have just returned from living for seven years, many worry that democracy itself is under genuine threat, and that violence is becoming the normative way to engage in political debate. For most of this year, Ukraine has been despoiled by an evil and senseless war. The imminent World Cup is set to take place in a gulf state mired in human rights abuses. Israel has just returned to power the scandal-ridden Netanyahu whose re-election has only been made possible by an alliance with a party of unashamed racist and supremacist values.
In our own country, we have just lived through a period of unique political instability set in the context of significant inflation, a recession which might be the most severe on record, and rampant industrial unrest, even in sectors not normally given to strikes and the like. And even here, in this very country of North Yorkshire, food banks have, apparently, seen a 58% rise in demand this year, and nearly 16,000 children are thought to be living in poverty as we approach Christmas.
All of which suggests to me – and, I hope, to you – all of which suggests that there’s quite a bit more striving still to do if we are going to get anywhere near the Kingdom of God.
But, as Isaiah and as Jesus both knew very clearly, ultimately the news is Good News, because, ultimately, God has no other kind of news to offer the world. And that’s because the God whom we are gathered here to worship is not a God who wants to offer a superficial ‘quick fix’ to the challenges and problems which confront us, and which confronted Isaiah and which confronted Jesus.
As Sam Wells said in a recent Thought for the Day, “The God Christians see in Jesus is not a simplistic fixer but one who deeply shares our human predicament…”
Or, as Bill Vanstone said in the greatest hymn to be written last century, this is the God whose love is revealed in ‘nails and thorns’ – the God, ‘whose arms of love aching, spent, the world sustain’.
The great joy of becoming the 77th Dean of York is that I – and you – all of us – we have this great building on our side. York Minster has already been talking to the world about this God for hundreds of years and it will continue to do so for many hundreds more. This building is probably more eloquent than you or I can ever be about the God in whose honour and to whose praise it was built. But it needs us – it needs you and me – to work in partnership with it, if it is to talk properly and fully about the Kingdom of God to the many overlapping communities that it and that we are called to serve.
They tell me that now I’ve arrived – now – incredibly – that I am your Dean, they tell me that many people will want to come and talk to me about all sorts of things. About money, about buildings, about tourism, about church politics, about the service times on a Sunday morning, and doubtless about a whole host of other things that I am yet to discover.
And I guess that we can talk about all that. But let’s make sure – let’s make really really sure – that none of that gets in the way of what God is hoping that we will talk about. So, let’s strive first for the kingdom of God. And then – and actually, it will only be then – that all these other things will be given to us as well. Amen.
Lost Causes? – The Reverend Canon Peter Moger (Precentor)
The Reverend Canon Peter Moger (Precentor/Acting Dean)
Sunday 28 October 2018 10am Sung Eucharist
(St Jude) [458]
In the name of the living God who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
A few years ago, Heather and I were taking a short break on the island of Iona off the West Coast of Scotland. It’s a favourite place of ours, as those who came on the pilgrimage earlier this year will know. On this occasion we were walking to the south of the island along one of the beaches. It was a windy day and the wind was blowing sand into our faces. Heather got some sand in her eye and took out her contact lens to clean it. Along came another gust of wind and – you’ve guessed it – the lens was gone. There we were, miles from anywhere with no replacement lens, and no glasses either! And so we started to search.
I don’t know whether you’ve ever tried looking for a contact lens on a beach – don’t! It’s one of the most frustrating things imaginable. 45 minutes later, we were still looking. It seemed a totally lost cause. And so we prayed to St Jude, who is the patron saint of lost causes. And in a few minutes, we found the missing lens, sitting innocently on the sand.
Today is the feast of St Simon and St Jude. They were among the 12 Apostles called by Jesus and are named in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke. Simon was known as Simon the Zealot – presumably because he belonged to a resistance movement of the time which opposed the Roman occupying forces. Jude (or Judas) is described by Luke as ‘son of James’ – though the Letter of Jude calls him the ‘brother of James’. It’s likely that Jude is the same person as Thaddaeus. Simon and Jude are celebrated together, on the same day, because there’s a tradition that they both evangelised in Mesopotamia.
Because Jude’s name is similar to that of Judas Iscariot – who betrayed Jesus – Christians tended not to pray through him. It seems likely that he then became a sort of ‘last resort’ when all else had failed. Hence, Jude became known as the patron saint of lost causes.
Well, it certainly worked for us in the case of the contact lens. But is there really such a thing as a lost cause?
Some Christians have a tendency to say – if something doesn’t quite work out the way we thought it should – ‘ah, it’s all part of God’s plan.’ I often feel this is one of the worst of religious platitudes. Most of us will have had situations in our lives when things haven’t necessarily gone the way we were hoping (or expecting), and on looking back, we can sometimes see how, over time, something else happened which in the end proved to be a better option. Hindsight is a great thing. But did God really plan it like that? Are our lives mapped out to the nth degree, and is our job as faithful Christians really to try and stick absolutely to God’s plan – whatever that might be – making sure we don’t put a foot wrong?
I recently watched again the film About Time in which Tim, a young man, learns that he has the ability to travel back in time, and therefore to re-live episodes in his life – changing his past so as to improve his own future and that of others. The plot centres around his relationship with Mary, and by continually re-visiting encounters from the past, he is able to engineer events so that they end up together. It’s great entertainment – but it does beg a number of questions:
‘Is there really a single right path?’
‘If we ‘go wrong’ – can we put things right, or are we a lost cause?
And what, if anything, does God have to do with it?
If we look at the Bible, we see two strands of thinking there. On the one hand is the omniscience of God. God is presented as all-seeing and all-knowing. The writer of Psalm 139 muses:
O Lord, you have searched me out and known me;
you know my sitting down and my rising up;
you discern my thoughts from afar.
You mark out my journeys and my resting place
and are acquainted with all my ways.
For there is not a word on my tongue,
but you, O Lord, know it altogether. (Ps 139.1-3)
Jeremiah speaks of God’s plans to those who had been taken into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon:
Surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope. (Jeremiah 29.11)
On the other hand, is the metaphor of walking with God. This uses imagery such as paths and ways. The Psalmist prays:
Make me to know your ways, O Lord,
and teach me your paths. (Ps 25.3)
The early Christians spoke of their new-found faith as ‘the Way’. When Paul (or Saul) was still a persecutor of Christians, he
went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any who belonged to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem. (Acts 9.2)
Later in Acts, Luke records that the Roman governor Felix was ‘rather well informed about the Way’ (24.22). This resonates well with the Hebrew Scriptures. Isaiah reassures the people of God by saying:
When you turn to the right or when you turn to the left, your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, ‘This is the way; walk in it.’ (30.21)
So, on the one hand, an all-knowing God with a plan; and on the other a God with whom we walk in a personal relationship.
So does God have a plan for you and for me? The danger of swallowing this wholesale is that we can easily be convinced that if we depart from it, everything becomes a lost cause, and ultimately we become a lost cause. And so we can be driven either to excessive caution or bleak despair; or we simply adopt an attitude of resignation in which everything must happen because it’s God’s will.
One of the central beliefs of Christian faith is that God has given human beings free will. That sometimes means that while we might know exactly what we ought to do – how we ought to behave – we don’t. Hence the heartfelt cry of the BCP confession:
We have left undone those things which we ought to have done; and we have done those things which we ought not to have done; and there is no health in us.
But our free will is a gift from God – it is what distinguishes us as human beings, and is one of the marks of humanity that derives from the fact that we bear the image of God. God expects us to use our free will: to think about our actions, but above all, to continue walking with God. God has, not a plan for us, but a purpose – and that purpose is that we keep on walking in the Way. As we walk, we hope and we pray that we will stick close to God, as in Psalm 119:
Blessed are those that are undefiled in the way :
and walk in the law of the Lord. (Ps 119.1)
Some of the time, we’re good at this. We keep in step with God; we’re aware of his being with us at all times. At other times we’re not: we’re more like the proverbial sheep who have gone astray – each to our own way (Isa 53.6).
But when we go our own way, and stray from the Way, all is not lost – we are never a lost cause. God is still there, because Jesus – through whom we know God – is himself the Way.
The final chapters of the Gospel of John include some of the profoundest teaching about the closeness of this relationship. Jesus talks to the disciples about being the vine, and them the branches, with God the Father as the vine-dresser ensuring that there is good fruit. These are reassuring words for all of us. They speak of us being ‘rooted, grafted and built’ into the vine. We are to ‘abide in him’ as he abides in us.
St Jude himself asked Jesus a question:
‘Lord, how is it that you will reveal yourself to us….,?’ Jesus answered him, ‘Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them. (John 14.22-23)
Earlier I quoted from Psalm 139. The Roman Catholic priest and hymnwriter Brian Foley re-worked that Psalm as a hymn. I leave us with his words:
There is no moment of my life,
No place where I may go,
No action which God does not see,
No thought he does not know.
Before I speak, my words are known,
And all that I decide,
To come or go: God knows my choice,
And makes himself my guide.