Learning not to be in control – The Reverend Canon Michael Smith (Pastor)
Preacher: The Reverend Canon Michael Smith (Pastor)
Title of sermon: Learning not to be in control…
Date/time/service: Sunday 30th August 2020 Trinity 12 11am Eucharist
Passage of scripture: Matthew 16.21-end
In the gospel last week we saw Peter at his very best. He responds to Jesus’ challenging question, ‘who do you say that I am?’ with the clear, confident answer, ‘You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.’
In the gospel today Peter is not so impressive! Jesus warns him and his fellow disciples that he is to go to Jerusalem and that he will suffer, die and be raised again. Peter’s response seems instinctive and panicky, ‘God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you.’ This provokes Jesus to respond by saying ‘Get behind me Satan’ he reprimands Peter further by telling him is thinking in human ways and not divine ways.
It’s very easy to be critical of Peter here but if someone we loved told us they were going to die we probably wouldn’t respond by simply accepting what they said and trusting in God. More likely, we would question them and look for ways to help and protect them, and that is all that Peter is doing. Looking at it like this, Jesus seems to be a little harsh on Peter, to say the least! But maybe there is quite a lot we can learn from this encounter as we deal with the pressures and fears of this wretched pandemic.
Over the last generation or two we, in the west, seem to have pretty much convinced ourselves that if we are sensible and careful and eat our ‘five a day’ we should be healthy. In addition, the way that we can access and manipulate information through computers and phones has made us believe we are in are in control of our own lives and our own destinies. We have come to believe that we can make ourselves safe from harm, and more importantly, we have come to believe that we have a right to be safe from harm.
For many of us, it is only when a massive storm strikes, a cancer grows, a tree falls as a car approaches or a virus spreads, that we suddenly have to face the reality that we are not, ultimately, in control of our destiny, or of the destiny of the people we love most in the world. We can do everything we can to care for our planet, to live healthy lives, to avoid danger, to avoid spreading disease, to care for each other – but in the end we have to live with the fact that from our first breath to our last, life is risky and however careful we are, there are things in the world we cannot control.
This belief that we have a right to be safe and well and this sense that we are in control is very modern. For all of history, and for billions in the world today, life threatening illness, famine, or other natural disasters were and are a daily reality to be lived with.
In addition to coming to believe that we have a right to be safe we have also made dying and death a taboo subject. It is rare to hear the words ‘dead’ or ‘died’ spoken anymore, now it seems, people ‘pass away’ or simply ‘pass’. Not only do we rarely talk about death we tend to treat it as a failure. We talk about people ‘losing their battle with ….’ If someone dies unexpectedly we tend to always want to find someone to blame. The truth is, of course, that death is inevitable for all of us. Death is actually just a part of life.
I read a fascinating article this week by Rowan Williams, the last Archbishop of Canterbury. In it he explores our attitude to death. He begins by responding to a claim by some extreme Christian group that as Christians they have no fear of death so they see no need to comply with all the rules and regulations surrounding Covid 19. Rowan Williams begins by saying that risking ones own life by not complying with the rules and regulations is one thing, but that not complying actually means that you are risking other people’s lives, and that is wrong.
Rowan Williams agrees that we, as Christians, should not be overly fearful of death. He says that if we are constantly recognising and rejoicing in those we love and acknowledging what we truly value and learn to accept that these people and things are not dependant on me and will not be destroyed by my death – then we can face death with greater equanimity. Take the masons who built this Cathedral for example. The ones who laid the foundation stones at the bottom of these pillars knew they would be dead by the time the last pinnacle was put in place on the tower. But, they must have loved and valued their work, and this place, so much that the fact that they would not see it finished, didn’t matter. And the fact that they probably trained up their sons and daughters in their craft meant that they knew that though they wouldn’t see the building finished their grandchildren would ….. and that was fine. I don’t want to pretend that this made life and death idyllic and easy for our forebears, simply that they must have been much more accepting of the risks involved in living and much more accepting that there comes a time when we all have to move over so that the next generation can take over.
Certainly Jesus’ reprimand to Peter in the gospel today has particular resonance because Jesus knew, and we now know, that his great work meant going to Jerusalem, suffering and dying, so that he could rise again so that we could all become an Easter people, a people of resurrection, afterwards. Of course we want to live, and, like Peter, we want the people we love to live as well. We should do everything we can to care for ourselves and each other, we should do all that we can to preserve life and the quality of life, but I think this story and the gospel in general, calls us never to deny or ignore death, not to see it always as a defeat or a failure or an offence against our human right to well-being and life.
I heard a radio programme this week in which two women from Ireland were talking about the interesting, funny and quirky nature of the culture from which they came. They spoke about the unusual way that some from the Irish culture frame a proposal of marriage. ‘Will you marry me?’ is considered way too banal and simplistic, the question asked, when you want to share the rest of your life with someone else, is ‘Will you be buried with my people?’ Not terribly romantic, but actually really helpful – the question is not just about living together, it is acknowledging at the outset, that living together will inevitably mean dying together. I thought this was rather beautiful and actually is an expression of the profoundly Christian belief, so beautifully and simply articulated by Paul in the middle of his beautiful passage in 1 Corinthians 13, ‘Love never ends’.
Rowan Williams concludes his article about death with these words which emphasise that we should be realistic and honest about death and, if faced in the context of love, value and relationships, and the belief that ‘Love never ends’, dying is not the end of the world!
‘A summons to faith, courage and energy in the face of death isn’t a call to heroics for the ego. It is an invitation to attend, to be absorbed in value, depth and beauty not our own. It is to recognise the gentle insistent pressure of a shared reality which tells us to make room for one another.’
Key to discipleship – The Revd Canon Maggie McLean
As I’ve discovered in recent months, all around York there are images of crossed keys.
This is most common around the Minster and connects with the Cathedral’s dedication.
Looking down on us from the East End is the carved figure of Peter, blessing the city. His symbol the keys which give access to heaven.
All of this is here because of the words heard in our Gospel today.
Jesus gives Peter a special role; the Church came to understand Peter as its first leader; and York’s dedication is seen to be linked to the first church here, founded by Peter’s successor the Pope.
Peter connects York to Rome and Rome is connected to Peter, who takes us to Jesus.
For some Christians the physical links of history matter a lot.
For other Christians this is less significant, and it is the Bible that first and foremost connects us with faith.
Perhaps, when it comes to Jesus, the route we take perhaps doesn’t matter too much, so long as the journey brings us to a living faith.
In the Gospels the disciples don’t all reach the same conclusions at the same time. None of us do.
We aren’t all the same and faith develops at its own pace.
In responding to Jesus’s question it’s Peter who takes the plunge.
He isn’t tentative; hesitant or vague. He makes his declaration without qualification. ‘You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God’.
Perhaps we tend to think about this passage as revealing about Jesus. But of course it’s very revealing about Peter.
We see in this exchange that Peter puts his full commitment behind his faith.
Peter is a rock of conviction; the disciple who commits his life.
As we go on to see, he is not without moments of doubt and disowning, but he remains fundamentally committed to Jesus – learning from his mistakes as much as his moments of triumph.
We all come to faith in different ways. In Peter we see that discipleship isn’t for the perfect but for the loving and the committed.
The followers of Jesus don’t have to get everything right but we are asked to learn from our mistakes.
Perhaps the pandemic has brought us new questions and maybe even doubts. It can be hard having less contact with our brothers and sisters in faith. We might feel that the way we shared our faith has changed or that in some way we’ve not lived as we hoped we would.
The example of Peter should bring us some comfort.
There will be days when we get it spectacularly right and days when everything seems to go wrong.
Days when we feel close to Christ and days when we wonder where our faith is leading.
Faith finds its own way.
From top disciple to being called Satan;
from unshakable faith to a skulking figure by the fire, denying Jesus time after time.
If Peter can get through so can we.
Let’s not pretend we’re better than we are. It’s Peter’s honesty and open failure that make him dear to Jesus.
In this example of an imperfect person, full of faith – failing, but always coming back to Jesus – we find the key to discipleship.
And in that, we should all feel encouraged to continue in our lives in the company of Jesus.
Chosen People – The Reverend Canon Michael Smith (Pastor)
Preacher: The Reverend Canon Michael Smith (Pastor)
Title of sermon: Chosen People
Date/time/service: Sunday 16th August 2020 Trinity 10 10am Zoom Eucharist
Passage of scripture: Matthew 15.21-28
I wonder how today’s gospel makes you feel? In the light of the present debate about race and racism it is disturbing to be reminded of a story where Jesus actively ignores a woman from a race that is not his own and then refers to her as a dog! You can guarantee that today’s ‘Woke’ fundamentalists would ‘cancel’ and ‘no platform’ Jesus, and demand that his Twitter account be suspended. I would not be surprised if they wouldn’t also demand that the Pope or the Archbishop of Canterbury make a heartfelt apology on behalf of Jesus for his appalling disrespect, rudeness and lack of political correctness over 2,000 years ago.
So why did Jesus initially respond in this dismissive way to this poor woman?
In order to make any sense of this we have to look back at Genesis 12.1-3
“Now the Lord said to Abram, ‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.’”
This marks the beginning of the concept of the descendants of Abraham being God’s Chosen People. This was refined more when, in the next chapter of Genesis, we are told that Abraham’s nephew, Lot, took his side of the family in a different direction becoming a separate nation. Of course Abraham’s offspring end up, after a few generations, being slaves in Egypt until the time that Moses leads them from slavery towards the Promised Land where they would be free. It could be said that the Old Testament is the story of God’s Chosen People as they succeed and fail, as they are obedient and disobedient, as they sometimes listen to God and sometimes ignore God.
We know the stories of God’s Chosen People well, but what we usually fail to acknowledge is that if a specific nation, or group of tribes, are God’s Chosen People, then all the other nations, all the other tribes, are not God’s Chosen People …….. in the context of Old Testament times that is just tough. In the context of today it looks a little like racism. The ‘Woke’ fundamentalists would call this ‘Chosen People supremacy’ or ‘Chosen People privilege’.
When Jesus says in the gospel today ‘I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.’ He is referring to this history. From a Christian point of view, the life, death and resurrection of Jesus is a point in history which changes everything, not least, what it means to be one of God’s Chosen People. The whole reason why this story is told by Matthew is not that it reinforces the old ways and old thinking about God’s Chosen People, but that it introduces the new ways, the new thinking about God’s Chosen People … The point of the story is that Jesus does respond to the woman and, despite the fact that she is not one of God’s Chosen People, he heals her daughter. The significance of this should not be underestimated. In fact, it could be said that this story is one of the seeds sown by Jesus that takes root and begins to grow noticeably when Paul says, in Galatians 3
‘There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.’
This equality of all people under God is fundamental to Christianity and has become embedded in our understanding of the value and dignity of every human being and the establishment of the idea of human rights. Many would argue that humanity would always have evolved the idea of human rights but I think that there is a strong argument for saying that because Jesus broke the conventions of his day, spoke with foreigners, healed their children and made a hero of a Samaritan in one of his most famous stories – that the equality of all people today framed in law in many countries around the world, has it’s foundations in Christianity and, in particular, in events like the healing of the Canaanite woman’s daughter recorded in today’s gospel reading.
Of course, our idea of what it means to be one of God’s Chosen people has also evolved. As we heard earlier, God chose an individual, Abram as his chosen person and then all his descendants as the Chosen People. In John 15 Jesus says to his disciples ‘You did not choose me but I chose you.’ God still chooses individuals, but now there are no limits …. your family, nationality, tribe, ethnic background, gender, colour, sexual orientation ….. are all irrelevant. God is not in the business of creating an exclusive elite. God is in the business of creating an inclusive community of disciples who love their neighbours (and their enemies) and who love God. We know this to be true because of what Jesus did and what Jesus taught and in the way Paul understood and examined all that Jesus said and did in his writings. It is certainly true that the Church does not have a brilliant record of living up to this teaching over history and it is right that the Church is being questioned robustly about actually how inclusive it is even today …..
The important thing is that we are not trying to do anything new, all we are trying to do is to live the life Jesus called us to live and to develop the relationships with each other that Jesus calls us to develop.
As part of my reading for this sermon I discovered that in the summer of 2018 Our Lady’s Church in Acomb, here in York, made history by becoming the first Roman Catholic parish in Britain to sign up to an organisation called ‘Inclusive Church’. We know Fr Tony, the parish priest, here at the Minster, in fact he came to Canon Chris’ final Evening Service. On their website they include the Inclusive Church statement of belief,
“We believe in inclusive Church – church which does not discriminate, on any level, on grounds of economic power, gender, mental health, physical ability, race or sexuality. We believe in Church which welcomes and serves all people in the name of Jesus Christ; which is scripturally faithful; which seeks to proclaim the Gospel afresh for each generation; and which, in the power of the Holy Spirit, allows all people to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Jesus Christ.”
Despite its uncomfortable beginning, there is a direct link between today’s gospel and this impressive statement of belief – thanks be to God.
The Casual belittling of others – The Reverend Canon Maggie McLean
Recently I’ve been wading through the final book in Hilary Mantel’s series about Thomas Cromwell. If you’ve seen it, or read it, you’ll know why ‘wading’ might seem an appropriate word. It’s a big book.
But its size seems right for the magnitude of the topic. Thomas Cromwell was a man who rose from nothing to become second only to the King.
In Mantel’s imaginative portrayal that story of rags to riches is never far from the King’s mind.
Mantel imagines that the King would have found a friendly way to keep Thomas in his place; to remind him from where he’d come. So there’s a nickname linked to Cromwell’s surname.
The King calls him ‘crumb’.
I hope that isn’t a spoiler if you’ve not read it.
Every day we can choose words to build up or put down. We can honour others or diminish them; we can choose words of respect or words that emphasise our difference, our disparity.
We can all get it wrong – I know I do.
I’m not talking about a serious challenge to those with power, bringing down the mighty, but about the way the lowly are kept low. The casual words we use to patrol the difference between us and ‘them’.
In our Gospel today Jesus knew his mission. He was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel. It’s a wonderfully vivid and startling exchange in the way Matthew writes it. A scene we can all imagine.
We’ve all been in this position.
As a vicar in a parish I would be tempted at times to ask a caller where they lived. ‘Oh no, that’s not in my parish – it’s so-and-so’s parish down the road. Here’s their number….Why don’t you call on them, they’ll be able to help’.
When life is busy it’s always good to find that someone’s needs should be another person’s problem. I’d love to help but I work at the Minster – try St Olave’s!
Jesus was used to people who were persistent. He turned aside to help blind Bartimaeus and discerned the need of the bleeding woman who touched his cloak. Jesus always had time to stop for those in need.
Or did he?
Today’s reading suggests that even a Messiah can get to end of his tether.
A truly human Jesus of Nazareth could be tired, tetchy and beyond himself. The disciples are on his side. ‘Oh, for goodness sake Jesus; just tell her to go away’. Tell her to get lost.
He doesn’t do that – but he states his case about who he’s here to help, and it isn’t this woman. She persists, kneeling before him. His answer is stronger. It isn’t right to take the food meant for the children and give it to dogs. Whatever the woman felt in hearing these words, her love for her daughter makes her go one step further. Even the dogs, if that’s who we are, get to share in the crumbs.
I think, if you was a pre-packaged Messiah – perfect and with all the answers – then this is a difficult reading.
If, on the other hands, you believe in a Jesus who grows and learns and changes, then it offers profound hope. Jesus is with us, even when we aren’t as perfect as we would like to be. When we reduce others to crumbs, or dogs or whatever name we choose to lessen others.
The key, the most important part of this reading, is that Jesus listens. Even tired, at the end of his tether, or exhausted, he is able to hear. And to be changed. To find in the least likely person a moment of God revealed. A moment of breath-taking faith. A moment when the outsider is seen as the apostle, evangelist and the holder of great faith.
In recent days we have all seen the great scramble to return from France to the UK. Ferries packed with cars and lorries ploughing the narrow divide of the Channel. Perhaps you may also have thought about the small boats those greater vessels will pass. The people who try every day to enter our country and share in some of the things meant for us.
I’m not going to get into the politics and ethics of this reality now. What I do know, is that the way in which we speak about people seeking refuge and asylum is something we can all change. We can all think about the language we use and the culture it creates. Words that diminish those who already have so little; words that don’t belong in the Kingdom of God.
At times we’ll get it wrong – we all do – but we need to hear the words of those who challenge our casual belittling. The people who are more than a crumb and deserve greater dignity than to be called a dog.
In today’s reading we find a Jesus who is like us in our weaker moments. Yet also a Jesus who never loses the capacity to hear and the courage to change. A saviour who finds in encounter and conversation a faith beyond the limits of his expectation.
Touching Places – Reverend Canon Maggie McLean
A few year ago on the last day of the year I traveled from Fort William across the Isle of Mull to the Island of Iona. It was one of those beautiful, cloudless winter days, freezing cold but one which brought clarity to everything you looked at. As we travelled across Mull we talked about what it must have been like for those first few Christians on British soil to begin their Christian mission from such an isolated place and how hard it must have been to travel without the luxury of cars (or roads)! On reaching Iona the Abbey stood out in the silence that surrounded it. As we began to walk through the village our own silence enveloped us and we went our separate ways on our own spiritual pilgrimage.
Iona is a rare and special place.
Nobody can imagine that Columba chose Iona for its ease of communication or accessibility. I believe he chose it because there Columba found, as many other Christian have also found, a “touching place” where the beauty of creation can give us a glimpse of God. A place where God’s presence shines out – just as we remember a human being transfigured by God’s glory.
Iona is often described in Celtic Tradition as a Thin Place. Thin places describe the veil being parted between this world and the other world, between heaven and earth, between the divine and the human, between matter and spirit, between the eternal and the temporal. In the thin place the duality of those parings disappears and we now stand in union, wholeness, and ultimately holiness.
But if that were all it was about then life on Iona might appear like an escape from reality. However, the Christian Community which exists there today has used the inspiration of that place elsewhere. If you like Iona is the mountaintop experience but you don’t remain there. It is the revelation which inspires and encourages.
And so
In far different locations the vision of Iona gives an impetus to pray and work creatively where environmental or human ugliness has disfigured the everyday and everywhere beauty which God inspires. In parts of Glasgow the Iona Community works in physical and spiritual ways to enable people to find their own “touching places” of encounter with God. In a song written by the Iona Community we hear the following words:
“To the lost Christ shows his face, to the unloved he gives his embrace, to those who cry in pain or disgrace Christ makes with his friends a touching place.”
We all need our “touching places”. Somewhere to go, and somewhere to be, that reminds us of a vision of God which can often get lost in the preoccupation of the everyday. Yes, God is around and about and beside us everywhere, but we also know that we sometimes need to be reminded of the otherness of God as much as God’s day to day presence.
One aspect of the Christian experience of God, is that God is “above and beyond” as well as at our side and within. In moments when we see and experience the vastness of creation – the uncontrollability of the elements – we can become aware that God is whether of not we are. It reminds us that God is in the present moment and, at the same time, throughout all ages.
It is a humbling experience because it calls to mind the fact that God loves us despite our inconsequence, so succinctly put in the eighth Psalm:
“When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?”
It may be that all of us here today have some “touching place” where we renew our vision of one aspect of our relationship with God. Such places, like Iona, might be far off and only occasionally visited. But it might also be the case that there is a place, some words or a piece of music which enables us to re-vision ourselves more easily. It might even be something that reminds us of that far off place, like a relic which a Medieval pilgrim might brought home and guarded jealously. We turn to these when we are worn-out, deflated and demoralised. We reach out and touch them in the hope that God might touch us and enliven us.
The Celtic vision of Christ and God which Columba and many others shared was a spiritual way of life which knew the need of touching places. Today many people are turning back to that way, welcoming its less cerebral approach to faith. Yes, the Church in Britain gained much from the Roman influences of Christendom, but we also lost a theology of creation which we would do well to recover. The Celtic saints held out a vision of Christianity which emphasized ministry outside the Church; that spoke of a vigour in life; that used the language of taking, binding, bursting, and returning. Their faith was exercised in precarious and dangerous places, where heaven and earth were part of the same journey.
As Christians today we have much to learn from what Columba and others found in ministering the Gospel in the British Isles 1,400 years ago. We need to find and to cultivate our “touching places”.
In those days, in every Church in the land, a fire was kept constantly alight. Not just a tiny flickering candle – but fire. It ought to remind us today that no matter how well organised our Church life; or no matter how considerable our acts of service to others; unless we feed the light of our faith – unless we turn aside to find our “touching place” – than we are in danger of ministering a dry and lifeless Gospel.
We read in the Gospels that Jesus often turned aside into the wilderness – to find his place of prayer.
Yes, there were still people to be healed; teaching to be done; disciples to encourage. But Jesus did say no; he did choose stillness over action; he didn’t use the worthy excuse of ministry in order to avoid the work of prayer. If we value the faith we have been given let us give it the place it deserves. Let us dare to stay still just long enough to risk encountering the God who is both near and now, and also above and beyond. To see the ordinary transfigured by the God whose light and love creates thin places for us all.
If stars shine then so can we – The Reverend Canon Michael Smith (Pastor)
Preacher: The Reverend Canon Michael Smith (Pastor)
Title of sermon: If stars shine then so can we…
Date/time/service: 9th August 2020 Transfiguration Sunday 11am Eucharist
Passage of scripture: Luke 9.28b-36
In today’s gospel we hear the dramatic story of Jesus climbing a ‘high mountain’ with Peter, James and John, three of his closest friends, and while he was up the mountain his face began to shine like the sun and his clothes became dazzling white.
I have read this story many times and, indeed have been fortunate enough to visit the Mount of the Transfiguration on a few occasions. What struck me about this story this time as I read it, is that it is very matter of fact and physical. Most people believe that Luke wrote the Acts of the Apostles as well as the gospel that bears his name, and when he describes the day of Pentecost in Acts, another dramatic event, he says things like, the sound was ‘like the rush of a violent wind’ and ‘divided tongues as of fire, appeared among them’, making the point that there wasn’t an actual violent wind or actual real fire. The story of the Transfiguration is told in a very different way. According to Luke, Jesus’ physical appearance actually changed. It does not sound like metaphor for an inward spiritual feeling. There is no hint of poetry. It feels like a straight, factual description of what the disciples saw with their own eyes.
So what is an old liberal like me, who likes to try and explain stories like this by seeing them as metaphor, or imaginative descriptions of spiritual experiences, to make of this story?
There is no doubt that Jesus had a physical body like ours. He got hungry, he got tired, when his body was cut, it bled. It’s this physical body, like ours, that is transfigured, that shines with light. We tend to be very dismissive of these bodies of ours. We look after them while we have them, take them to the doctors when they are ill, try to keep them fit and well, but essentially we tend to think of them and use them as vehicles in which our souls are carried, believing that when we have reached the end of our life’s journey, these bodies are no longer required so they are destroyed and our immortal souls go to heaven. That seems to me to be what most people think, but it is profoundly un-Christian and un-biblical. In fact yesterday we celebrated the Feast Day of St Dominic who made his name, in part, by refuting the heresy which says that all that is physical and material is bad and only the Spirit is of God. St Dominic stood for the truth of our faith which is that this physical world, these physical bodies, are created by God and in Genesis we are told that God saw all that he had made and it was very good. Nothing that God makes is bad or sinful or disposable. Perhaps the story of the Transfiguration is reminding us that our bodies, this corporal world, is not merely a temporary vehicle for souls, but is essentially good and is part of God’s great work of creation and salvation?
We all say in the creed week by week that we believe in ‘the resurrection of the body’ but we have all been to burials and cremations and don’t really have any idea what we mean by ‘the resurrection of the body’. Some of us will have seen Stanley Spencer’s great painting set in a churchyard with bodies clambering out of graves, and it is beautiful, interesting and unsettling but ultimately, if pushed, we’d all probably say that it is absurd.
But perhaps it’s not so absurd? Remember the feeding of the five thousand, the gospel last week? Jesus tells the disciples to gather up the scraps of what is left over at the end of the meal and 12 baskets are filled. This tells us something of the abundant generosity of God and it also tells us that nothing that God creates is ever wasted. Nothing that God creates is disposable.
There’s a song by someone called Moby and its title is, ‘We are all made of stars’. If we accept the ‘Big Bang’ theory of creation, then this is certainly true. We are created out of the chemicals and gases which are a part of what I would call God’s Big Bang. We are all made of stars. Is it so ridiculous to consider the possibility that God, in God’s time, can work with this physical stuff we are made of, to make glory shine more intensely in and on creation? I am no astrophysicist but I know that when we look at the stars at night we are seeing light that is hundreds, sometimes thousands, of light years old. Is it really so ridiculous to consider that in the great scheme of God’s creation these physical bodies of ours, made of stars, can and should be shining intensely with God’s light, with God’s glory?
So let’s not dismiss this story as one of those that we consign to being just a about Jesus or just a metaphor for significant spiritual experience. Let us accept this story as Luke tells it and also accept that it is potentially about us as well. What happened to Jesus on the mountain can and should happen to us – these physical bodies, this physical stuff is made by God and is good. Salvation will not come when a mass of holy souls are wafting about piously praising God in some ethereal, purely spiritual heavenly existence. These physical bodies, this physical stuff is made by God and is good and is an essential part of God’s work of salvation. These physical bodies, this physical stuff can and should shine with the light of divine glory.
The process of transformation, the process of transfiguration works from the inside out. The thing about the light of transfiguration is that it is not just a reflection, God’s light reflecting off our lives, no, the light comes from the inside out, we are not simply reflectors of God’s light, we are sources of God’s light and that light begins to glow through small acts of everyday kindness and love and potentially can become brighter and brighter so that eventually the whole of creation shines with goodness and love, shines with God’s glory.
We are all made of stars, and, like them and like Jesus, we should shine!
Nothing is ever wasted – The Reverend Canon Michael Smith (Pastor)
Preacher: The Reverend Canon Michael Smith (Pastor)
Title of sermon: Nothing is ever wasted.
Date/time/service: Sunday 2nd August 2020 8th after Trinity
Passage of scripture: Matthew 14.13-21
A lot goes through your mind when you are training to be a priest. I remember talking with friends at college about how we would cope when we had to take the funeral of a child. The prospect of having to do just that was one of the many things that gave us trainee priests sleepless nights.
When I was ordained and in my first job as a curate, I can remember my boss, the rector of the parish, telling me that a funeral had come in for a family whose baby had died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. He said he would take the funeral but that I should attend, in the congregation. He was well aware that I was nervous about dealing with such a scenario.
I can still remember the full church and the baby’s family huddled together in inconsolable grief. The service began, my boss hitting just the right tone of compassion, humanity and authority. Quite soon we came to the bible reading. I was expecting John 14 – ‘in my father’s house there are many rooms’, or Romans 8 – ‘nothing can separate us from the love of God’ or Matthew 19 – ‘let the children come to me’. But we did not have any of those readings, instead we had Matthew 14 – The Feeding of the 5,000’. To be honest, I thought my boss had gone mad or made a mistake. What had the story of that miracle to do with the gut wrenching agony of the death of a child? I waited anxiously to see what he would make of it. He was a wonderful, holy, faithful and hard-working parish priest but preaching wasn’t his greatest gift. Then he began to speak and I have never forgotten what he said. Referring to the bible story he spoke about the fact that once the people had eaten their fill of the loaves and the fish, the disciples ‘picked up twelve basketfuls of broken pieces’. The important point being that nothing was wasted. Everything was gathered up. He spoke about how the baby’s short life had been lived in love and that that love would never die and just as the baby would never be forgotten by the family, so God would never forget the baby – I remember him saying that, with God, even that tiny little scrap of a life was gathered up.
We do have a tendency to think that God is really only in good and holy things but we have heard one or two sermons recently which have reminded us that God is at work, should we have the perception and the patience to notice, in the difficult and challenging aspects of life. A few weeks ago, Abi, preached about her calling to be a Deacon and how she understood that as being about discovering God on the fringes of things, in unlikely places and unlikely people, I think the phrase she used was ‘God is in the muck of things’. Then, a couple of weeks ago, Canon Emeritus Chris, on the Sunday he retired, preached about the parable of the wheat and the weeds, reminding us that Jesus taught that in our work for the kingdom we should not pull up and discard what we consider to be weeds in order to try and nurture a pure crop of wheat – it is not for us to judge what are the weeds and what is the wheat in God’s eyes. God can be discovered in the muck, in the weeds and in the scraps.
Winston Churchill said, ‘Never let a good crisis go to waste’. In other words, with some careful thought we can learn something from every crisis that assails us. Reflecting on the last four or five months there has been much that has been very painful and for many there has been, and continues to be, much suffering, but there has also been much to learn about the way we live our lives, much to learn about relationships, the way we work, the way we worship, the way we care for one another.
The more I have thought about this, the more I have come to believe that the gathering up of the scraps in the story of the Feeding of the Five Thousand tells us something that is at the heart of our faith, something that is integral to the very being of God. On the cross, the last vestige of life left Jesus in his agonising last breath and the broken scrap of his body laid and sealed in a tomb, but that was gathered up by God and, in God’s power, in God’s love, new life emerged.
Sometimes it feels as though our lives are overwhelmed with darkness. Illness, death or some other crisis assail us and we feel isolated, alone and God seems to have departed, but what we have to try and remember is that somewhere in the darkness the faint glimmer of God’s light will be shining ….. in time, all will be gathered up. Jesus teaches us in the Feeding of the Five Thousand, and as he walks from the tomb with the wounds of crucifixion still visible in his hands and feet to greet Mary in the garden, that nothing, with God, is ever wasted.
It is easy to say that nothing with God is ever wasted, but when you are in the midst of a crisis or a trauma, it is hard to believe. I never cease to be amazed, however, at the number of people who come to faith, not through wonderful holy experiences, but through painful and difficult experiences. The gathering up of the scraps in the story of the Feeding of the Five Thousand is a source of encouragement and hope to us all – God holds you and me and every tiny scrap of our lives, every tiny scrap of creation in the palm of his hand – and he never let go.
Trinity 8 – The Reverend Canon Michael Smith (Pastor)
Preacher: The Reverend Canon Michael Smith (Pastor)
Title of sermon:
Date/time/service: Sunday 2nd August 2020 Trinity 8 Evening Prayer
Passage of scripture: 1 Kings 10.1-13 & Acts 13.1-13
With all due respect, the Queen of Sheba seems to have a very peculiar idea about what constitutes wisdom. First of all, she came from Sheba to visit the notoriously wise King Sololmon, ‘to test him with hard questions’. And then the passage goes on to say, ‘When the queen of Sheba had observed all the wisdom of Solomon, the house that he had built, the food of his table, the seating of his officials, and the attendance of his servants, their clothing, his valets, and his burnt-offerings that he offered at the house of the Lord, there was no more spirit in her.’ Is wisdom really all about being able to answer hard questions and being really, really rich? Well, I suppose that might have been the understanding of what wisdom is in the Old Testament but I hope we have now moved on a little.
Solomon is famous for making a wise judgement when two women were brought to him who both claimed to be the mother of the same baby. Solomon’s judgement was that the baby should be cut in half so that each woman could have part of the baby. The one who was lying agreed and the one who was the real mother gave up her claim to be the mother to protect the baby. In this way Solomon worked out who the real mother was. This story reveals the wise way Solomon used his understanding of human nature.
So if wisdom is not about hard questions and wealth, what is it about? A dictionary definition is, ‘the quality of having experience, knowledge, and good judgement; the quality of being wise.’
Within a few clicks on Google I came across a ten step plan to help anyone acquire wisdom, it wasn’t bad, it started with ‘Try new things’, then ‘Step out of your comfort zone’, ‘talk to people you don’t know very well’ and ‘Be open minded’.
If these are the steps to wisdom then I think Jesus is the example of a wise person we should emulate. He was constantly doing new and unexpected things, walking on water, talking to outcasts, making a Samaritan, member of a hated race, the hero of a story … the list is endless. It seems that for about 30 years of his life he lived within his comfort zone, presumably in Nazareth working as a carpenter, but then he marched right out of his comfort zone into dangerous places where he regularly spoke to people he didn’t know, in fact he made a point of speaking with the very people everyone else was trying to avoid talking to! And, of course, he was open minded. When he saw a tax collector, or a prostitute or a leper, he never did the lazy thing of characterising and judging them by their outward appearance. He spoke to them politely and respectfully and as a result, many of them found that their lives, once stuck in behaving the way everyone expected them to behave, were transformed by their encounter with Jesus.
Wisdom seems to be in short supply today and the problem, it seems to me, is that gaining wisdom is challenging and quite hard work and most people seem to be lazy. Most people seem to be content to steer well clear of trying new things, never straying far from their comfort zones, ensuring that their friends in real life, and in their online life, are people like themselves, people who broadly share their views, and allow their views and opinions to be shaped by a society that seems to close of debate and discussion.
Eucharist – The Reverend Canon Dr Chris Collingwood
Sunday 19th July 2020 – Eucharist
Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43
What have you been binging on in lockdown, I wonder? Think TV box sets rather than gastronomy! Early on, Sue and I decided we needed a little light relief, so we watched all 20 episodes of the Vicar of Dibley! Now we’re into slightly darker stuff, as we’re gradually working our way through all 12 series of the M15 spy thriller, Spooks. We’ve only just got to series four so far, though!
Between times, we watched the three seasons of Medici on Netflix. Set in 15th century Florence, the story’s based around the rise to power of the influential banking family. Beginning with the murder of Giovanni de Medici in 1429, it concludes at the end of the century with the decline in the Medici fortunes under Giovanni’s great-grandson, Piero, known as the Unfortunate. The broad sweep of the narrative, though, centres on Giovanni’s son, Cosimo, and, after Cosimo’s death, his son, Lorenzo. During this time, the Medici bank became the richest in Europe, its prestige enhanced by being entrusted with the papal finances.
The history of Florence in the 15th century’s heady stuff, in which religion and politics, family feuds and suing for peace, the grasping for power and concern for the poor, the desire to do all for the glory of God alongside the celebration of humanity, all converge and jockey with one another for supremacy. Amidst all this, they were great patrons of the arts. Cosimo put a great deal of effort and money into the completion of the dome of Florence’s cathedral; Lorenzo was instrumental in nurturing the talents of the artists Boticelli, Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci.
In 1482, a Dominican friar, Girolamo Savonarola, was sent to the convent San Marco in Florence as the lector or teacher, where, sometime after he arrived, he conceived seven reasons why the Church should be scourged and renewed. A charismatic preacher, Savonarola denounced clerical corruption, despotic rule – particularly, as he saw it, that of the Medici – and the exploitation of the poor. He called for the destruction of secular art and culture and for the establishment of Florence as the New Jerusalem, which he envisioned as becoming the world centre of Christianity, something that wasn’t looked upon kindly by the Papacy in Rome. In his zeal, he instituted a puritanical campaign by enlisting the active help of the Florentine youth. Such was the unrest he stirred up that the Pope banned him from preaching under threat of excommunication, something Savonarola ignored. Inevitably, perhaps, excommunication followed in 1497, and in 1498 he was hanged and burned in the main square of Florence on a charge of heresy.
In the light of today’s gospel reading, this seems to me to be a tale of wheat and weeds. The question is: which is which? The desire to purge of all that’s deemed to be impure exercises a strong hold on a particular type of religious consciousness. It’s as if everything that gets in the way of what’s considered to be purity, the weeds, has to uprooted and exorcised, so that the wheat might grow properly. We see this today in religious extremism, whether of the Islamic or Christian variety. We see it, too, in the vandalism and destruction of the art and architecture of churches in this country and elsewhere during the Reformation, to say nothing of monasteries and the monastic life. Attempts were made to justify this, of course, and there’s no doubt that some good things emerged as a result – the accessibility of the Bible in English, to cite just one – and yet how much was lost.
Nor is this desire for purging confined to the religious imagination alone. Think of the various 20th century revolutions, in Russia and China, for example. There can be little doubt that change was needed in both instances, but just look at the resulting cost of revolution in terms of the oppression, fear, brutality and death that followed.
Similarly, the motivation for the Iraq War in 2003 was to deprive that country of a brutal tyrant, believed to have manufactured weapons of mass destruction, but among the consequences of invasion – unintended and unforseen, of course – were the chaos that ensued, the rise of Islamic terrorism, and the heightening of tension between different cultures and worldviews.
‘Do you want us to go and gather the weeds?’ ask the master’s slaves in Jesus’ parable. ‘No,’ he replies, ‘for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. Let both of them grow together until the harvest.’ The desire to purge and purify always runs the risk of destroying not just the weeds but the wheat as well. And much of the time, it’s not entirely clear which is which anyway. We think we know, of course, but we’re so often proved wrong, which is why Jesus urges caution. Don’t let your zeal blind you to the ecology of the weeds, Jesus seems to say, even to their beauty, for your perspective’s limited.
This is something I’ve learned through the practice of Zen meditation. There’s a popular misconception that the purpose of meditation’s to realise blissful states and be untouched by the rest of life. There’s no doubt that meditation does lead to the experience of deep peace and equanimity. Often, what initiates the practice of meditation is the desire to be relieved of suffering, the sense that there’s more to life, a longing for the fullness of life. At some stage along the path of practice, though, we discover the paradox that the possibility of suffering being relieved is encountered as we begin to accept it, that the fullness of life involves not rejecting those aspects of life we judge to be unacceptable, but embracing them. The fullness of life mysteriously involves holding the wheat and the weeds together.
What I mean by weeds in this context will be familiar to all of us. Things like strong emotions, such as anger, grief and anxiety, unresolved traumatic experiences going back to childhood, disappointments and frustrations in the way life works out, conflicts at work and at home in our relationships with others and, goodness knows, sometimes these test and challenge us almost to the point of breaking. We know the way we deal with such things can be toxic and corrosive, so the temptation to purge them’s overwhelming. If we reject them without investigating what they might have to teach us, though, the possibility of these weeds contributing to the growth of the wheat is lost. For ultimately, the weeds have an important role to play, which is that they enable, if we let them, the growth of love, wisdom and compassion.
Zen meditation requires us to sit with all the gunk of our lives, the pain and discomfort, as well as the joys and delights, without making judgments about how things should be, trusting that everything’s held in a love and compassion that embraces everything. This love and compassion constitutes who we really are, and the practice of meditation is to enable these things to be manifested not only in meditation but in the whole of life. This can only happen, though, if we acknowledge and attend to the weeds as well.
This is why the weeds and wheat of Jesus’ parable is paralleled in the Buddhist symbol of the lotus, which can grow only in mud. As the contemporary Vietnamese Zen Master, Thich Nhat Hanh, says:
‘The lotus is the most beautiful flower, whose petals open one by one. But it will only grow in the mud. In order to grow and gain wisdom, first you must have the mud — the obstacles of life and its suffering. … The mud speaks of the common ground that humans share, no matter what our station in life. … Whether we have it all or we have nothing, we are all faced with the same obstacles: sadness, loss, illness, dying and death. If we are to strive as human beings to gain more wisdom, more kindness and more compassion, we must have the intention to grow as a lotus and open each petal one by one.’
Isn’t this exactly what we see at the very heart of the Christian faith? On the cross, Jesus entered into and embraced the mud of suffering, violence and inhumanity, and allowed them to be the very means by which the reality of divinely-human love and compassion were revealed. We can speculate, of course, as to what might have been without the cross but, in the end, such speculation’s futile. The plain fact of the matter is that the cross did happen. Jesus flinched from it, as we all would. ‘Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me. Yet not what I want but what you want.’ At that point, Jesus accepted the cross and embraced all it would entail as the very means by which the love and compassion of God would be revealed. Without the cross – the weeds, if you like – we simply wouldn’t know the love of God – the wheat – in quite the way we do. The two are intricately bound up with one another.
What’s true of Jesus, though, is true of us, too. He’s blazed the trail we’re invited to follow, so that love and compassion might be realised and manifested in us. It can be hard, often painfully so, but it’s only by attending to the weeds, rather than pulling them up prematurely, that they can be transformed to blossom into wheat. And who knows, come the harvest, it might just all be wheat after all.
Stop, reflect and pray – The Reverend Canon Michael Smith (Pastor)
Preacher: The Reverend Canon Michael Smith (Pastor)
Title of sermon: Stop, reflect and pray.
Date/time/service: 5th Sunday after Trinity Evening Prayer 12th July 2020
Passage of scripture: 2 Samuel 7.18-end & Luke 19.41–20.8
I wonder what the disciples thought when they saw Jesus weeping as he entered Jerusalem? Just before Luke tells us of the events of the first Palm Sunday he has been speaking about the coming of the kingdom, teaching about prayer, and wealth, healing a blind man, transforming the life of Zacchaeus, the tax collector and telling the parable of the Talents. All well known to us ….. Jesus is in command and revealing his power and authority in everything he says and does. Then he enters Jerusalem riding on a donkey and the crowds go wild, welcoming him and proclaiming him a king ….. and then …… and then …… he begins to weep! The bible tells us that Jesus wept three times in all. In John 11 he wept when he saw Mary and Martha weeping after the death of their brother, Lazarus. In Hebrews 5, we are told that he wept in the Garden of Gethsemane. Here, in Luke 19, we are told that he wept as he entered Jerusalem.
Grief over the death of a friend and the threat of arrest seem understandable reasons for tears. In Luke 19 his tears seem very strange. It appears that he is being acclaimed by an adoring crowd. In fact the Pharisees order him to calm the crowd down, but Jesus tells them that even if the crowd were silent the stones of the city would cry out. And then, in the midst of all this joyful mayhem, as he actually enters the city, he begins to weep. Through tears he talks to the city and seems to be condemning it, and the people in it, to destruction because they failed to recognize that they had been visited by God. The stones which, a few verses earlier, were going to shout out that the king has come, are now going to be toppled by Jerusalem’s enemies with not one stone remaining on another. So, within a few verses of Luke’s gospel there is a massive mood swing for Jesus from joyous acceptance of the crowd’s acclamation to despairing prophecies of doom and destruction.
And if that were not enough, within three of four more verses Jesus is seized with rage in the temple and rampages around, tipping up the tables of the traders there and saying that the temple was for prayer not for the selfish pursuit of gain.
I wonder how Jesus would have answered if, after all of this, someone asked him, ‘what sort of a day have you had?’
Of course, the important question for us is, what does all this mean and what can we learn from it? I have been thinking about that all week and I am going to highlight two things we learn from all this.
Firstly, it seems that Jesus understands the hypocrisy and inconsistencies that are never far from the surface of all human beings, particularly when they are in crowds. Because we know what happens next in the story of Jesus, we know that the crowd who acclaimed him king one day, were calling for his crucifixion a few days later. Jesus’ tears reveal that he is not taken in by the acclamation of the crowd, he knows it is mainly what we would call today ‘hype’ – not based on any profound commitment. We do not have to look far to see similar behaviour today. Over recent months there have been several media storms, many expressions of public anger and distress, all relating to some important issues and problems, but, rather than thinking carefully, praying faithfully, and acting wisely, many have been hyped up into a frenzy and the general response to the important issues has been a lot of shouting rather than a lot of listening, a lot of gestures rather than a lot of action, a lot of virtue signalling without much real virtue involved. Jesus clearly understood that some of those carpeting his way into the city with palm leaves were genuinely acknowledging their profound faith in him as the Son of God, while others, probably the majority were just joining in the fun, hopping on the latest band-waggon ……
For those of us prone to hypocrisy and inconsistency, in the end, what is important is, what is real? Are our celebrations or protests considered, prayed about and acted on and do they make Jesus smile, or are our celebrations or protests selfish, empty and simply about seeking to be seen to say and do the right thing, and do they make Jesus weep?
The second thing we learn from all this is that, just as we have moods that range from good and happy to bad and sad, and can include anger and distress …… so did Jesus. All of this reveals the humanity of Jesus. Jesus does not only love us when we are in the right mood, feeling good and holy. Jesus also loves us when we are feeling sad, let down and when our only response to a situation or experience is tears. And Jesus loves us when we are angry – he knows all about these moods and feelings because he experienced them too.
Once we know and accept that we can make Jesus weep with our hypocrisy and inconsistencies. Once we know and accept that we experience many different moods, some good and some bad – the only truly Christian response is prayer. We know that Jesus regularly stepped away from the crowds to find peace and quiet, to find space to pray. When issues and problems arise, when media storms are raging, when the latest band-waggon is passing by, we should stop, reflect and pray before speaking, acting or clambering aboard. When our mood is volatile, when we have one of those days in which we experience, joy, despair, anger and exhaustion, we should stop, reflect and pray before speaking or doing anything.
If we don’t stop, reflect and pray often we risk being diverted into working for a world the ‘crowd’ wants, or a world our passing mood wants, all of which are constantly changing, rather than working for the establishment of God’s kingdom ….. the world God wants …… and what God wants never changes.
God of reconciling hope, as you guided your people in the past guide us through the turmoil of the present time and guide us to your kingdom, where our unity can be restored, the common good served and all shall be made well. In the name of Jesus we pray. Amen.
Unwritten rules – The Reverend Canon Michael Smith (Pastor)
Preacher: The Reverend Canon Michael Smith (Pastor)
Title of sermon: Unwritten rules
Date/time/service: Sunday 5th July 2020 4th Sunday after Trinity
Passage of scripture: Deuteronomy 24.10-end & Matthew 11.16-19, 25-end
Professional cycling does not have a good reputation for having a high moral code. Most recently the confessions of Lance Armstrong revealed a huge amount of cheating in the sport by the taking of performance enhancing drugs. However, I learned recently that there are a number of unwritten rules, a kind of polite etiquette, that professional cyclists know and live by. For example, in the most famous cycle race of all, the Tour de France, it is accepted by all riders that if the race leader, the one wearing the yellow jersey, has a mechanical fault to his bike, or has to stop for what is euphemistically known as a ‘comfort break’ – he is not to be overtaken. Everyone slows down, and it is not uncommon to see a huge group of cyclists all taking a ‘comfort break’ at the same time as the race leader. These practices are not written down, professional cyclists just know them and obey them.
I thought of this when I read the passage from Deuteronomy we have heard this morning. The verses we read seem to have a similar feel, unwritten rules to help oil the wheels of society, not in favour of those in the lead, but in favour of the disadvantaged. So, if you loan something to a neighbour and they, as part of the deal, give you a cloak as a pledge or guarantee you must give it back to them at night so they will be warm when they sleep. You should always pay the wages of a poor man at sunset each day so they can get something to eat. You should treat aliens and orphans with justice. You should treat slaves well. Leave the odd sheaf of grain in your field after harvest for the alien, orphan or widow who may be starving.
It is easy for us to read such a passage and take this encouragement to be generous and thoughtful for granted. Behaving in line with these unwritten rules for us seems normal to most of us, but, we have to remember that these unwritten rules emerged maybe six or seven hundred years before Christ at a time when most tribes, nations and empires were fiercely focussed on themselves and their power – the poor, aliens, widows and orphans were of little or no worth. What we have read this morning from Deuteronomy was radical in the extreme. It is in such passages that we see the seeds of a way of living that fully bloomed in the life and teaching of Jesus and the writing of St Paul. In the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5) Jesus teaches, ‘if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well; and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also a second mile’. In Matthew 20 we hear a parable of Jesus where a generous landowner pays all his labourers a full days wage when only a few of them have worked a full day. In Galatians 3.28 St Paul writes ‘There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.’
We should never underestimate the influence all of this has had on much of what we take for granted today. Many humanists, atheists and agnostics today would have us believe that we developed the concept of human rights ourselves, but the historian Tom Holland in his recent book ‘Dominion’ argues that concepts like human rights, equality and caring for the weak and vulnerable have only emerged through faith traditions. In the Introduction to his book he says ‘Assumptions that I had grown up with – about how a society should properly be organised, and the principles it should uphold – were not bred of classical antiquity, still less of ‘human nature’ but very distinctively of that civilization’s Christian past. So profound has been the impact of Christianity on the development of Western civilization that it has become hidden from view’ p.xxix
It is important for us to remember this and to rejoice in it, but, of course, it is much more important that we live by the unwritten rules that began to emerge in the earliest pages of our scriptures and, we believe, found their fullest and clearest expression in the life and teaching of Jesus Christ. I would summarise the unwritten rules that should undergird our lives as disciples of Jesus as compassion, generosity and grace. We see these flickering and shimmering in the pages of Deuteronomy and other Old Testament books and we see them flowering in Jesus Christ, we see aspects of them in the best parts of our human society – the question is – as each of us seek to be obedient disciples of Jesus, do we see compassion, generosity and grace also flowering in everything we do and everything we say?
Sermon for the Second Sunday after Trinity – Canon Victoria Johnson
Sermon for the Second Sunday after Trinity
By Canon Victoria Johnson, Precentor
Gospel: Matthew 10:24-39
The composer Beethoven, was apparently, a mercurial and sometimes ill-tempered man. When asked to play piano for polite company, he would begin with some of his slow and gentle melodies, lyrical and easy on the ear, everyone swooned at the music; it was beautiful and inoffensive. But just as the piece came to an end, he would bang down with the length of his arm on the keyboard to disturb his listeners and give them the shock of their lives. Music for Beethoven was a reflection of a world which was full of beauty and tragedy, joy and pain, music sounded the depths of human passion and was not merely the soundtrack to polite conversation. It wasn’t just a hobby – it was life or death. I think Jesus was doing much the same thing in our gospel reading. Metaphorically slamming his hands down on the piano.
As he sent out his disciples into the world he wasn’t inclined to sugar coat his message. He tells his disciples that they will be hated for following him. There was nothing covered up with Jesus that wasn’t going to be uncovered. He wasn’t going to hide the truth or the seriousness of the Gospel message. There were no secrets that wouldn’t become known.
But wait, didn’t Jesus come to bring peace to the world? Don’t we call Jesus the Prince of Peace? Jesus says ‘do you think I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you but a sword’ The division that he brings will divide families, Father against son, daughter in law against mother in law. Finally, Jesus tells those who claim to be his disciples that that they will need to take up their own cross and follow him. They need to lose their life, to gain their life. These were hard words to hear.
From the beginning Jesus never claimed that following him would be comfortable. Throughout the gospels we are presented with an image of Jesus as a man who turns the world upside down and challenges expectations. Sing Mary’s Magnificat and know that this child, hailed as the prince of peace, would also raise up the poor, send the rich away empty handed and bring down the mighty and privileged from their thrones. He was always destined to be dangerous to those who were content with the status quo and turn a blind eye to injustice. His message is one which many through the ages have found unpalatable.
There are still those today who want to silence the message of Jesus, to sweeten it so it doesn’t offend. There are still those who want to make Jesus and his message ‘safe’, by colluding with sin, silencing protest and victimizing those who speak out about racism, injustice, poverty and oppression. There are those who want to maintain that Jesus music was always ‘easy on the ear’. But sometimes the song that Jesus calls us to sing, isn’t easy for the world to listen to, sometimes it isn’t even an easy message for the church to hear, so it’s not surprising that now as then, some would rather the message of Jesus was kept private and personal. Jesus once again challenges this and says ‘what I say to you in the dark, tell in the light, and what you hear whispered, proclaim from the housetops’. That doesn’t sound very private. It sounds gloriously and dangerously public.
Anyone who saw Jesus as representing ‘business as usual’ was misreading the signs just as surely as someone who saw a dark cloud and predicted sunshine. Jesus was a radical reformer and he was never willing to conform or collude with expectations. He brings about a new social order, we call it the Kingdom of God and this Kingdom sometimes clashes with the Kingdoms of this earth and the old order of sin and death; like the encounter between hot and cold air there will be rumbles of thunder along the way.
People thought Jesus was a king and he acted like a servant, he was fully God but fully human, he said he would bring peace and yet he also brought division, he taught in the temple and ate with tax collectors and prostitutes, he would die and then he would rise again and bring us all new life. People have long tried to make Jesus more palatable for polite company. People wanted Jesus to look and behave like them. They wanted to hear the nice kind things he had to say, and leave the difficult bits out.
Jesus is the living God who turns things upside down, and constantly challenges us. He can shock us, and he doesn’t promise us an easy ride. Jesus doesn’t want to move into the house of our hearts just to slap on a few coats of fresh paint and nice new curtains. God’s word is like fire, and he is like a hammer that breaks a rock in pieces.
No, when Jesus moves in to our lives he brings a bulldozer to tear down whole walls, gut the rooms down to the foundations and basically build a whole new house. That’s why the image of rebirth is such a strong one in Christianity. We have to be constantly re-born and re-built. This is why the image of losing life to gain a life is so central to the gospel message. It’s perhaps why Christian’s claim the cross to be theirs: a sign of suffering, a sign of subversion, a sign of resurrection.
These images of re-birth and re-building are ones which we as the church of today might hold on to as we emerge from Lockdown. The last few months have certainly uncovered and exposed the cracks and fractures in our world as well as revealing new futures. What kind of church are we re-building? How have our hearts been re-born? What kind of world do we want to fashion? What kind of Kingdom do we proclaim?
Anyone who follows Jesus, knows that the way of faith is not always smooth. It’s certainly not easy. Remember Paul’s journey in the book of Acts (Acts 27:1-12), as he recounts the dangers and perils he faced as he followed Christ to proclaim the good news. He said, ‘I can see that the voyage will be with danger, and much heavy loss, not only of the cargo and the ship, but also of our lives’…he understood the challenge of the Gospel.
If we sign up to this way of life, we come to expect that we will be metaphorically moving house quite a lot, we will be setting sail sometimes in the midst of a storm. We will have the rug pulled from under our feet fairly frequently. We will be re-born regularly, we will be called to rebuild again, and again and again. We will face change in our own lives, and we will all at some point see the division and discord that following Christ brings and the peace that he promises. Just when we get too comfortable, Jesus wades into our lives stirs things up and slams down his hands on the keyboard.
However, do not be afraid, he says again and again, do not fear. If we persevere, as St Paul did, if we run the race that is set before us as best as we can, if we proclaim the gospel and live it- we will be rewarded, not with an easy plastic-fantastic kind of life which is risk free, or anaesthetized to pain or challenge, but we will be rewarded with a life which exhilarates, and defies our expectations and creates within us the capacity for profound love and the deepest kind of peace and contentment.
Jesus always keeps it real, life is messy, it’s sometimes difficult but through of all this, the God we worship, the Christ we follow, knows every hair of our head. We do not travel on this journey alone. So do not be afraid of following Christ, and proclaiming the Gospel. For the one whom we follow knows life will not be trouble, need or adversity, but the one whom we follow is full of mercy and love beyond our imagining and with him beside us, we will all make a better music. For a new day has dawned, and the way to life stands open.
Amen.