Jesus the man

1^st Sunday of Christmas

Isaiah 63: 7-9

Hebrews 2: 10- 18

Matthew 2: 13-23

I think it the letter to the Hebrews that provides the meat in the sandwich today.

Isaiah talks about the presence of God that saves us, and Matthew’s gospel narrates one of the early examples of terror and jeopardy that marks the life and history of Jesus but it is the letter to the Hebrews that expressly and definitively stresses the full humanity of Jesus.

Just for a bit of historical context the visit of the Magi it is thought happened about two years after the birth of Jesus. The Holy family were by now living in a house as it says in verse 11 and is also the rationale for Herod’s instruction to kill all boys born in that area who were two or under.

Hebrews is emphatic that Jesus shares to the full, the nature of the human family to which he belongs. We are his brothers and sisters who pray to the same heavenly Father.

He shares fully the experience of suffering. death, fear and temptation.

For the body the mind and the emotions can’t be separated. Jesus was not as some early theologians said simply God walking around in a human body who was impassable – not feeling the trauma of what was happening to him.

Jesus would not only die, he will share the fear of death.

He will not only suffer, he will feel suffering as testing or tempting him.

This is true for all humanity. It is not just the physical fact of death that haunts us, it is the fear of it, as an unknown, that end which casts its shadow back into our lives and mocks it as being ephemeral.

It is not suffering alone that is hard to bear; it is the effect of that suffering on our sense of who we are – we can feel diminished as human beings through it.

Suffering and death are felt as a scandal that prompts people to cry out to God for salvation.

Jesus’ total identification with them offers that salvation.

Because Jesus shares our suffering and death and passes into glory he provides the route for all his brothers and sisters to do exactly the same. Because he shares our death we will also share his resurrection.

Salvation also means that evil itself has been overcome by God, providing an endless spring of hope in the human heart for all who believe.

Hebrews also casts Jesus as our great high priest, again because of his full identification with humanity, as the only sacrifice worthy or necessary to forgive all our sins and present us as righteous before God. A once for all sacrifice for the sins of the whole world.

Jesus is our brother, who blazed a trail for us to follow in life and showed us that humanity has a future life lived in glory after this physical life ends.

So even when horrors like the murder of the innocents in Matthew’s gospel occur due to the propensity to evil that exists amongst all people we know from the example of Jesus that this can never be the final word because good triumphs over evil and light casts out darkness and as St. John says, Love casts out fear..

Ultimately the church is a community of hope. 

John the Baptist

Isaiah 35: 1-10. More rousing prophetic writing from Isaiah, predicting a dramatic in-breaking of God into the world with the result that cleansing, refining, completeness and joy will result. The word that encapsulates that state is salvation or peace. In Hebrew and Arabic cultures, Shalom and Salaam are common greetings while in our culture that is now only really heard in liturgical blessings and in the celebration of “the Peace” on Sundays.

James 5: 7-10. For James, patience seems to be synonymous with suffering, and actually patience can be experienced as a kind of internalised suffering when you think about it. Patience doesn’t come easily to many people and is more often imposed rather than sought. James implores his readers to be strong during the time of waiting, assuring them that their final salvation is nearer than they think and not to lose discipline in the meantime,

Matthew 11: 2-11. From the fiery and confident John we heard about last week we now meet John in prison suddenly wracked with doubts. Is Jesus really the Messiah? The reason for his doubts is that he is hearing what Jesus is doing. John was a fierce denouncer of sin, and so surely the primary task of the Messiah should also be “to take an axe to the root of the trees that do not bear fruit”, but he hears that Jesus is reaching out to the poor and marginalised and restoring health to the afflicted so John is a bit confused. Jesus is not turning out to be the kind of Messiah John was expecting!

John the Baptist is a strange idiosyncratic figure. The Bible hints very strongly that he must have been a very uncomfortable figure to be around. His very appearance, clothed in camel’s hair and eating locusts and wild honey and located in the wilderness breathing fire and brimstone against the sins of the people must have been at once a bit frightening but also as is the way of these things, obviously exerted a strange attraction for his perceived integrity and assurance that he was speaking the word of God.

John drew people out into the wilderness to hear what he had to say because people recognised him as a prophet. And prophets can make us feel uncomfortable.

But today we encounter a different John. He is now in prison because he upset Herod by denouncing his affair with his sister-in-law – another example of his fearlessness and puritanical opposition to sin.

Obviously in his mind, he thought that Jesus as the Messiah should be cut from the same cloth as him, only bigger and better.

But we hear in the opening verses of our gospel reading today that John is receiving reports of a different kind of person, and it is because of this that John is confused and it puts doubts in his mind and some of his disciples are sent to ask Jesus

“Are you the one to come, or should we expect another?”.

What prompts this question?

John hears in prison what Jesus is doing, presumably acts of healing and mercy.

Now to John, a fierce denouncer of the sins of the people, surely Jesus must also be a denouncer of the people and his task should be to carry out the final judgement, cutting down the rotten trees that don’t bear fruit.

What he hears is a man who preaches in the synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom and heals every disease and infirmity.

John is confused because Jesus is not what he was expecting.

But his question gives Jesus the opportunity to reply in referencing two texts from Isaiah (35: 5-6, 29: 18-19) and saying to them. See what I’m doing for the blind, lame deaf and poor.

Yes there is judgement but his primary role is the restoration of the needy and the giving of life to the lifeless.

John has to re-assess his expectations of the nature and will of God.

He and we and all believers are invited to come to a new assessment of God and his purposes, one where judgement is a feature but where the primary concern is to save everyone. Jesus hopes that this new understanding doesn’t upset too many people and says “Blessed are those who take no offence at me”.

Unfortunately, there are many today who think that Jesus’ main concern, like John the Baptist thought, should be the condemnation of sinners, rather than offering a helping hand to the lost.

Then the focus changes to Jesus’ assessment of John. Jesus says that he is a prophet, more than a prophet, preparing the way for him, and yet, one who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than John.

Why? Because when you accept the true nature of God, Jesus and the kingdom, knowledge of the surpassing character of the kingdom is greater than John’s misapprehension of the nature of God.   

This isn’t belittling or disparaging John but is an acknowledgement of the surpassing character of the new revelation of the truth about God.

The sinfulness of mankind is a given, and a cornerstone of Christian doctrine about the truth about humanity, but the hallmark of the kingdom of God is repentance and forgiveness, grace and mercy. God came into the world to save sinners (1 Timothy 1:15).

Prophecy

Isaiah 11: 1-10. Jesse was the father of King David, and this prophesy foretells a perfect future king of the Davidic line which Christians have always naturally attributed to Jesus Christ. Matthew’s gospel opens with a grand genealogy charting the line of succession from Abraham, through Jesse, through David, ending with Jesus in chapter one of his gospel via the male line. Although Joseph it is claimed elsewhere by Matthew and Luke, was not the biological father Jesus was nevertheless “of the house of David”.

Romans 15: 4-13. This is affirmed by St. Paul quoting verses in Isaiah 11, and also Deuteronomy, 2 Samuel and psalm 117, with special reference to Jesus’ universal significance (to the gentiles). Paul’s prayer is that we be a people defined by hope, by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Matthew 3: 1-12. Matthew also quotes a prophesy of Isaiah and applies it to John the Baptist. John the Baptist was a “link” between the prophets of old and the coming of Jesus. He was a wild and woolly character and his ministry occurred in the wilderness. This was all meant to evoke the prophets of old and the message was clear. This Jesus may be something “new”, but he is foretold and in the direct path of all that went before in Israel’s history.

A prophecy is either a prediction of the future or a divinely inspired utterance speaking into any given situation and it has a long and important history in the Judeo-Christian tradition.

Isaiah is probably the best loved and most deeply mined oracle and in our readings today you have Paul quoting multiple prophetic sources to support his argument and in the gospel reading you have John the Baptist who is presented as an answer to prophesy and one who makes prophetic utterances of his own.

Prophets have had a problematic history of course for no-one can say for sure if a prophesy is true or not. The only sure way of knowing is if the prophecy comes true and when the time gap can be hundreds of years or even thousands of years in the case of end-time prophesy that is not so simple. Tales of false prophets, just saying things they thought people wanted to hear are legion in the old testament as well as people being paid to say certain things.

This is why authority and trust are so important. If we are to trust the prophesies of the Old and New Testaments, we need to trust that the people who have canonised these texts have the authority to do so.

The only thing that all Christians have in common is the Bible. But the reason the Bible consists of the books it does – we trust the authority of the undivided catholic church – which decreed that these books would form our New Testaments and no other readings. They had lots of choice – there were/are hundreds of other documents that could have been chosen.

The Bible didn’t fall from heaven – it is a product of the church and all the prophesies within it carry the seal of approval of the whole undivided church.

That could never happen again, because the universal church is so divided, we long since have been unable to speak with a united voice.

The prophesy that is most important to us during Advent is that all the promises fulfilled in the birth of Jesus will be further fulfilled at the end of time in the final consummation, the final reckoning, the final judgement.

We are promised that one day every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord (Philippians 2: 10-11).

The divine utterance of Paul inspired by Isaiah, canonised by the authority of the universal undivided church, through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit of God is the substance of the hope that inspires every Christian.

This prophecy of a blessed, redeemed, glorified future without pain or suffering, where death is no more in a new heaven and a new earth is the vision of the future that sustains Christians and inspires our present.

And as it says in proverbs “Without a vision, the people perish” (29:18)

Advent Sunday

Advent Sunday

Isaiah 2: 1-5. In this well-known piece Isaiah look forward to a future time when people will recognise the Lordship of the one true God, follow his ways and peace will reign in the whole world.

Romans 13: 11-14. Paul says that as time goes on we obviously are nearer the time Isaiah is looking forward to, so as the first-fruits of the new Christian revelation of the truth of God it is incumbent on Christians to embody the ways and morals of God to become signs of this coming Kingdom. The way of God is revealed and modelled of course on the life and way of Jesus Christ

Matthew 24: 36-44. When that final consummation happens no one knows – not even Jesus – only the Father in heaven. But make no mistake when it does happen it will probably take us all by surprise. Jesus counsels us to stay spiritually alert and active in God’s service until that day comes and not get weary of following the way of Jesus in-between times.

Advent is a period of watching and waiting in anticipation of something wonderful that is going to happen.

But watching and waiting for what? The birth of Jesus? Eagerly watching and waiting for something that already happened 2019 years ago surely can’t be the whole story can it?

The content of Advent is certainly linked to the first Advent of Jesus in Bethlehem two Millenia ago but as our Advent readings make clear today, what the church has been looking forward to ever since has been the final wonderful consummation of all things.

What Christians are looking forward to is summed up in our best known and widely used prayer. In the Lord’s prayer we pray;

“Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven”.

That is the primary Christian content of Advent, allied to and dependent on the first Christmas certainly, but deals with the end-game, the wonderful climax to the chain of events that started with the incarnation of Jesus Christ in Bethlehem all those years ago.

Obviously, this makes little commercial sense so in our secularised world Advent has been conflated to simply looking forward to the commercial celebration of Jesus’ birth, so it is our duty in the churches to re-kindle the sense of expectation and longing for the time when the Father’s kingdom has come, is established, and all sin and twistedness, corruption, graft and injustice, are dealt with and consigned to the dustbin.

This heightened sense of longing also induces feelings of sorrow for the state of the world as it actually is now, when we consider what we are looking forward to.

That is why the liturgical colour of Advent is purple, signifying penitence. In looking forward to and craving the glorious promises of God to be fulfilled we can’t escape the reality of how things are in the world at the present time.

The dominant motif of Advent is light shining in the darkness. This is also a Christmas motif of course. What we are waiting, hoping and praying for is the fulfilment of what started in Bethlehem.

The light shining in the darkness from the crib in Bethlehem we want to see suffusing the entire world, bringing righteousness, judgement, peace and salvation to all things.

“Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven”

Paul is clear in Romans that he wants the future to inspire our present.

“NOW is the moment for us to awake from sleep” he writes.

Be the change we want to see in the world by emulating Christ in our lives. “Put on Christ” is how he phrases it.  

Not through fear of what might happen to us if we don’t, but because we cannot help but be formed, and our characters moulded by that future promise.

And what we pray for is also a promise.

But here’s the thing. No-one has any idea when that promise will be fulfilled. Not even Jesus himself knows as he states plainly in Matthew’s gospel today. The only one who knows is our Father in heaven.

It is futile, again as the Bible says, to try and predict or deduce from events how or when the final things will take place.

There have been plenty of millenialists, as they are called, down through history, who have predicted the end of the world. There are some, like the Jehovah’s witnesses who have predicted the end of the world 20 times in the last century. They have something in common with every millenialist who has ever lived. They are have all been proved absolutely wrong.

No-one knows when the end will come, which is true both of our own end and the end of history.

Which is why Jesus instructs us to keep ourselves in a state of spiritual readiness for whenever that time comes. That sets us apart from a society that goes on as if nothing is ever going to happen, and He uses the analogy of Noah, building an ark, something people all around him must have been very amused by, while they went about their business.

“Stay awake and spiritually alert” says Jesus. Keep praying for the promise to became reality and for that promise to be made real in our own lives.

Yes, Advent is a time of waiting and watching and anticipation. For Christmas yes, but far more for what that first Christmas ushered in, the promise of God’s acknowledged rule in and through all things;

“Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

Christ the King

Jeremiah 23: 1-6. Jeremiah prophesies a future King of Israel called "The Lord is our righteousness". Christians (the new Israel) identify this as Jesus Christ of course.

Colossians 1: 11-20. Paul tells us that the Father has "delivered us from darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved son". He then tells us what qualifies Jesus for this role as king of this kingdom that is very close to reading John 1: 1-18. In Jesus all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and all things will be reconciled to Jesus in the end

Luke 23: 33-43. Jesus' kingship is mocked and his reign is misunderstood. He is tempted to avoid the cross (his very mission) and save both himself and his taunters. His kingship (kingdom) is misunderstood as essentially of this world only and with consequences for Palestine alone, rather than being eternal and universal.   

Who do you look to for leadership, moral guidance, direction or inspiration. A political figure (less and less common), a celebrity (very common nowadays), some spiritual guru perhaps?

But for a Christian that question should be absolutely simple.

We look to our king, Jesus. That term might be problematic if you are a republican perhaps but we are not talking about political systems here, we are making clear to whom we owe our loyalty, who we follow and who inspires us so ”King” fits the Bill more than any other description. “Christ the President” doesn’t really cut it and actually the kind of king that the Bible yearned for and often described was more like a shepherd who looked after his sheep.

Jeremiah rails against the imperfect shepherds that had beset Israel and looked forward to a future perfect king of Israel and his name will be “The Lord is our righteousness”.

The Christian church is the new Israel and Jesus is that perfect shepherd, our righteous king. Unlike the failed shepherds, Jesus is also divine and so is perfectly just, perfectly loving and also sees through all our pretence. He can’t be fooled and will also rebuke us when we go astray.

His power though at his crucifixion is mocked and misunderstood. In Luke he is tempted to misuse his power for his own ends, to save himself from the cross, but he refuses. He has bigger fish to fry. His mission is to serve and die for the whole world. He proves his steadfastness and trustworthiness in looking past his own needs and fulfilling God’s will. We have a sacrificial king, the suffering servant prophesied in Isaiah, who was willing to die for us.

In a strange irony, the reason Jesus was killed was nailed to his cross and the charge against him read “The King of the Jews”. But the scope of Jesus’ kingdom had been misjudged. They thought his kingdom was a worldly one and his aim was to simply remove the Romans from power.

In fact his kingdom was universal and everlasting and the kingdoms he challenged went far beyond the Roman empire and included all the temporal powers of this world, past, present and future.  

And although it is only Christians in this world that recognise his divine rule, actually Christ is king over all creation. As Paul writes “for in him all things in heaven and earth were created” We are the lucky ones, we are blessed because we have seen and recognised his rule. One day everyone will bow the knee regardless when the truth is revealed to them. Paul says that one day, everything in all creation will be reconciled to this fact, both on earth and in heaven – so every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord and King.

So we have privileged knowledge. We already have been transferred to the kingdom of God. We are already children of God because we are privy to the truth. We are presented holy and blameless and above reproach to the Father through Jesus.

We need a new boldness and a new confidence in this fact. We need to let that fact empower us.

Our kingdom is forever. Our king is forever.

We have God himself on our side, so we have nothing to fear. In God’s grace we have the ultimate assurance, comfort and safety net. We have a freedom to be bold and try new things. Even if we fail we still have God’s blessing. If we sometimes trip and fall God will still pick us up again.

Our shepherd king will always hold us in his grasp and never let us go. He went so far as to die for us – why do we think he’d let us down now?

Christ is our leader, our moral guide, our inspiration, our servant, brother, shepherd and KING.

 

For all the saints

All Saints Patronal festival

Hebrews 12:18-24. This soaring prose paints a picture of what awaits believers and is reminiscent of the west door of a gothic cathedral, with the angels, saints and prophets welcoming into heaven the church on earth. In the midst is God himself but with Jesus, not Moses as the mediator. A mediator whose blood calls for forgiveness unlike Abel’s blood which called for judgement. Lastly the author uses the phrase “we have come” to indicate that this vision is an experience of the present. 

Matthew 5: 1-12. The beatitudes have two halves; the statement that certain people are blessed, and the promise of their reward. In effect, all the promises are one promise, you receive all these gifts in the Kingdom of God. Likewise, the first halves refer to everyone who is entering the kingdom of God. All of us are poor, meek, mourning for the way things are in the world, longing for God to rule, abandoning status and privilege, peacemakers and inevitably persecuted by those who oppose God’s rule. We can’t choose which ones we accept or reject.  

Hebrews makes a distinction between the God presented to Moses in Exodus 20 as a dangerous, frightening and inaccessible presence with the God revealed in Jesus Christ. The author invites his readers to Mount Zion, the heavenly Jerusalem. For in Christ we now have access to the true God and the great community surrounding Him.

The imagery that the author of Hebrews uses is reminiscent of what greets you at the grand entrance of a Gothic cathedral, a cavalcade of saints and angels and the spirits of the righteous made perfect, with Christ at the centre leading us into the presence of God.

This is not just a vision of a future hope, but Hebrews states that “you have come” to this. This is our present not just the future. This is the reality for all the saints.

And what is a Saint? Well that depends on whether you understand that term in its original Biblical meaning or the meaning it accrued later on when the church needed examples to inspire the faithful.

Whenever you read the word saint in the New Testament, that means you, any Christian from the first disciple to this present time.

Because a Saint means literally a witness, a witness to the fact that Jesus is the Son of God who died on a cross for our sins and was raised from the dead. This is what a Christian is; a witness to the gospel.

In early Christianity, a saint started to mean someone who died for the faith because the Greek word for saint is Martyrios from where we get the term – a Martyr.

That started a chain of events where saints began to be understood as a breed of super-Christians, a tradition we all recognise when we speak about saint this or saint that, but when you hear of the Saints in the Bible that is every single Christian witness – including every single one of us.

When we sing “For all the saints” or sing about the saints going marching in, we are a part of that crowd of witnesses.

When we accept that God loves us so much He died for us, and was raised for us, we accept the responsibility to change our ways and grow into a more perfect image of our creator. What that looks like is given to us by Jesus in the part of the sermon on the mount we call the beatitudes or the blessings.

Every saint, which is what we are, is characterised by being poor in spirit, meek, mourning for the state of the world, longing for God to rule, abandoning status and privilege and to be peace-makers, for which as a whole we should expect persecution. 

We can’t choose one over another. They are the characteristics of a saint we must strive to nurture.

In a similar fashion, the promises are all one – the promises are all characteristics of the Kingdom of God, or the Kingdom of heaven as Matthew calls it.

God will comfort, fill, be merciful, and declare to us all that we are his children.

The eight main blessings are sandwiched between the same promise delivered twice in verses 3 & 10 – for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

And in this kingdom, God is still judge, but with Jesus, not Moses as the mediator.

Again, contrasting and comparing the old testament with the new covenant,

Hebrews compares the sacrifices of the temple with the blood of Abel, murdered by Cain, the blood that demanded vengeance from God and contrasts that with the shed blood of Jesus which demands forgiveness and mercy.

As in some other parts of the new testament, Christians are seen to stand between the times, already receiving the kingdom, but in expectation of its future revelation.

We stand at the great west door of that awe inspiring gothic cathedral, able to see and touch and marvel at the glory of it and know that we can go inside and one day we will forever.

In God we trust

Jeremiah 14: 7-10, 19-end. Two laments from Jeremiah where the sins of the people are acknowledged but where God is also accused of letting his people down and ignoring them. This feature of Judaism, being ready to criticise God, is largely absent from Christianity. It is an interesting question whether we would benefit either psychologically or spiritually by adopting a more Jewish perspective?

2 Timothy 4: 6-8, 16-18. Scholars tell us that this is not a genuine letter by Paul but that doesn’t diminish its spiritual power. In it, Paul is depicted as remaining steadfast and valiant, sure of Christ’s ultimate victory and his own vindication despite being left to face his struggles alone.  Imagery taken from the games which were a prominent feature of city life in the ancient world has provided hymn writers for generations with attractive imagery.

Luke 18: 9-14. The man who was justified before God was not the proud man sure of himself and his status, but the sinner who was aware of his shortcomings, was ashamed of them and threw himself on God’s mercy. A valuable lesson that it is grace by which we are saved not works.

The themes today are the human condition and our relationship with God.

Jeremiah in his laments admits to the communal wickedness of the people yet still craves the help and support of God.

The end of Jeremiah’s piece today acknowledges the fact that there is no other God from whom they can ask for help so it is in effect a plea for mercy.

In his letter, Paul too is at the end of his tether, left alone by his supporters, but he has an unshakeable faith in the mercy and goodness of God. He is sure that he has followed God’s will and plan and is confident of his prize which he calls the “crown of righteousness”.

He felt God’s closeness and in his weakness that gave him strength.

Acknowledging our weakness and sinfulness before God is exactly the point of the gospel reading today. The proud man, sure of his own righteousness, and looking down on others with disdain is not the man who was justified before God. He doesn’t have a right relationship.

The man who was justified (that is declared righteous in God’s eyes) was the man who fully acknowledged his sins, was sorry for them, and begged God for mercy.

The tax-collector in this parable displays a proper self-knowledge and proper humility before God, whereas the Pharisee seems to think he is God’s equal and is blind to his true status.

Knowing that the line between good and evil cuts through every human heart and realising our need of God’s mercy lies at the heart of the Biblical revelation.

The core Christian understanding of our faith is that we all have sinned and all of us need to rely on God’s mercy.

We are saved by faith in God’s grace.

God’s Grace saves us. Totally free, unmerited saving Love and mercy offered to every single one of us. This is presented as an objective fact – the truth.

How we make that truth effective in our lives is through having faith in God’s Grace.

Putting yourself in God's way.

Sunday 20^th October – Trinity 18 – Proper 24

Genesis 32: 22-31. Jacob wrestles with God and neither prevails. But God blesses Jacob and says that from now on his name is “Israel” which means struggle with God. This enigmatic story has intrigued me from the instant I first heard it and of course theologically means that our relationship with God is characterised more by inward struggle than meek compliance.

2 Timothy 3:14 – 4:5. The phrase “all scripture is inspired by God” has been misunderstood by many to mean that all scripture is dictated by God. Also, in context, when this piece was written what counted as “scripture” was the Old Testament and most of the Apocrypha. The new Testament gospels and letters were not yet counted as such. God breathed yes, but distilled through the culture, passions, personalities, prejudices, and wishful thinking perhaps of the writers and editors of the Bible and manifest in various genres that require different ways of reading and interpreting them. Luke 18: 1-8. The meaning of this parable is NOT that God is an unjust judge but the opposite is being posited. If even an unjust judge will do what is right by this vulnerable woman then how much more will God who IS just answer the prayers of his people.

One of the difficulties in reading and interpreting the Bible is that it is sometimes difficult to project oneself back into the culture and appreciate the context in which it was written. The genre of writing is also important. Whether a book is history, theology, prophesy, Apocalyptic, poetry, or wisdom literature obviously makes a difference to how a book is read and sometimes books are written in multiple genres just to confuse the issue.

There is a way of combining the twin themes of using God-breathed scripture and the practice of prayer together into a pleasing whole.

This method of prayer comes from the Ignatian tradition named after Ignatius Loyola which sidesteps the difficulty of trying to understand what the author or authors was trying to say.

You read a passage of scripture slowly a couple of times and prayerfully and ask God to reveal Himself through the text.

If all scripture is God breathed, the Spirit is there lying behind and circulating through the text. You are asking God to reveal Himself and to speak to you today, with a message or a word or an impulse that stands apart from the surface meaning of the words.

Prayer is after all about communication and God guides, comforts, teaches and admonishes us by his Holy Spirit.

This method of prayer seeks direct communication from His Spirit by using the Bible but isn’t concerned with the author’s stated message as far as we are able to understand it.  

Slowly rolling the words around in your mind, some words may stand out for some reason, some images or impressions may form in your mind. This is God communicating with you bypassing the actual surface meaning of the text.

This is a quiet meditative way of praying which gives greater emphasis to the theology of presence and listening and discerning than we normally engage in via discursive petitionary prayer.

In some parts of the Old Testament it can be hard to see the grace filled loving purposes of God in many pieces but the people who wrote it were inspired by God to do so. God can use any scripture through which to communicate and using this contemplative method it tries to connect God’s Spirit to our Spirit.

Finding the Spiritual meaning in a Bible story as enigmatic as Jacob wrestling with a man who turns out to be God himself is actually one of the more explainable ones.

The giving of a new name signifies a change of status in the Bible and the name is a clear indicator of the nature and identity of the community of Israel.

Human experiences are depicted in terms of a struggle with the divine, an element that is very much played down in the Christian tradition though Jesus struggling with his role in the passion narratives, sweating blood in the garden of Gethsemane is surely some warrant if one were needed that servile unquestioning obedience wasn’t always easy.

As the most complete revelation of the nature of God that we have, it behoves us all to read the Hebrew scriptures through Jesus tinted spectacles. Things like genocides and massacres are directly attributed to God which we now realise, having the revelation of Jesus, God wouldn’t own.

The divine wants to communicate with you, using communication in the widest possible sense. Don’t box yourself in to thinking that God can only reach you in certain prescribed ways. His ways and thoughts are far above our ways and thoughts.

Placing yourself consciously in God’s way aids the communication process and you have to pray as you can, not as you can’t. But knowing of different ways gives you extra opportunity to experiment with prayer to find a style that suits you.

When you are trying to build a relationship - any communication is good no matter what outward form it takes or in whatever location you happen to be.

Your Life Hidden in Christ

Sunday – 17 after Trinity – Proper 23

2 Kings 5: 1-3, 7-15. In this encounter Naaman is too high and mighty to enact a simple remedy, expecting due deference and complicated rituals instead, so it is comforting to note that human nature hasn’t changed much since then. Apparently, leprosy was unknown in these days so although that is how the ailment is translated in our Bibles it is more likely to be eczema of some sort. There are hints of inter-religious dialogue and connection as well as hints relating to the cleansing nature of Baptism.

2 Timothy 2: 8-15. A reminder of the core of the gospel which is “Christ raised from the dead” is the start of our lection today. The template “dying with Christ in order to live with him”, is obviously metaphorical, and entails a dying to self, which entails ego and self-interest, and self-centredness, in order to live for God – that is a God-centred life.

Luke 17: 11-19. Like Naaman in the opening tract from 2 Kings, the object of interest is another foreigner – a Samaritan. This is an exercise in early Christian universalism, reaching out beyond Israel, to the schismatic neighbouring Samaritans. He was the only man healed that returned to give thanks to Jesus (God). People with skin diseases were excluded from religious festivals so their healing brought them back from social and religious exclusion, which may have been the original thrust of Luke’s story, although he is perhaps a bit unrealistic as no Samaritan would surely report to the Jerusalem priesthood to record their healing.

Christ is risen. This is the absolute core of the gospel.

And the fact that Christ is risen is of universal importance and application. Christ being raised is of equal surpassing eternal importance to an Amazonian forest dweller, a Ukrainian tractor driver, a Bombay slum dweller, a millionaire New Yorker, a Slovenian super model, a Chinese factory worker, a Nigerian street pastor or a Budleigh retiree.

It doesn’t matter, who you are or your station in life, or your culture, ethnicity, or stated religion or lack of any religion, because if we believe as we do that the resurrection of Christ is an objective fact, it follows that when Jesus said “I am the truth” that was a truth with universal human application.

Of course, it has a cosmic significance as well, incorporating all created matter, but the human application is where we start.

We get glimpses from the Old Testament, like God saving Nineveh, a pagan city to the astonishment and dismay of Jonah;

We heard this morning of God working to heal another pagan, Naaman through the prophet Elisha.

In Jesus’ own ministry on earth, he often lauded the faith of schismatic Samaritans as we heard this morning, when he indiscriminatory healed some people and only one came back to give thanks – and he was a Samaritan.

Jesus was born in Galilee, known as Galilee of the gentiles and worked in gentile areas, like the Decapolis, which were mixed Greek cities and mixed with the poor, the outcasts, prostitutes, the diseased, the tax collectors.

His message of “Life in all its fulness” was for all people at all times and in all places.

So when the risen Christ gave the great commission, to make disciples of all nations, this is the natural impetus behind all missionary evangelizing.

There are consequences to accepting these truths of course. Accepting Christ is one thing, living as he commands us to live is a much harder task. Being a Christian can hurt, physically, as Paul suffers, or more likely nowadays socially mentally and psychologically, and spiritually.

To love the unlovely is hard. To love your enemies is even harder. And to die to self is possibly the hardest thing of all. We are asked to supplant our will with the will of God in order to act as he would act – as Jesus acted

All other religions have their own way of emphasising this loss of ego and self-interest.   In Islam you submit to the will of Allah – in fact the word Islam means submission. You replace your will with the will of God. In Buddhism, the control of self-serving ego is central to their philosophy but in Christianity it is slightly different.

We don’t stop loving ourselves. We are called to love others as we love ourselves. We have a new dignity and status as “children of God”. We are called to love and serve as God loves. We are called to be imitators of Jesus Christ in our attitudes, our will and our actions. As Christians we are called to become more fully ourselves – the person that God always wanted us to be.

We all have unique personalities and God honours that individuality. He entered this world as an individual human being. He doesn’t want to create a homogeneous, faceless mass of people indistinguishable from each other.

God doesn’t and won’t overwhelm you. Everything is with consent and done with love and your best interests at heart. That is what we learn from the life of Jesus. That is how He acted.

As Christians, we will share a family likeness because we all on the same path at different stages, but we cannot and will not all be the same. I, though I say so myself am pretty spiritually sensitive to mood and atmosphere and I am sure that the Spirit is flowing more freely through the churches in the R.M.C. than He has done before.

That Spirit is of a risen saviour, who wills that we flourish and become the best versions of ourselves that we can possibly be. Praise be to God.

Come ye thankful people come.

Sunday - Harvest festival 

Deuteronomy 26: 1-11. The true spirit of Harvest is one of Thanksgivng, and Moses commands offerings of Thanksgiving to God for being delivered from slavery in Egypt into the land flowing with Milk and Honey

Philippians 4: 4-9. Paul directs us to offer prayer, supplication (asking earnestly) and thanksgiving to God and in so doing we receive “the peace of God which passes all understanding”. That divine peace being a wholeness and contentment that the Hebrew people call shalom (Salam in Arabic)

John 6: 25-35. The sentence “I am the bread of life”, that which nourishes and sustains and causes all growth, is at once the property of God (Yahweh translates as “I am”) and is placed in the mouth of Jesus as the “image of the invisible God”(Colossians 1:15). The words of Jesus nourish us because they are the words of God.

Last year I gave you the whole story of the Bible in 3 gardens. This year I miss out the garden of Eden and the garden of gethsemane and start straight at the vineyard full of ripe juicy grapes which represents Jesus’ saying;

“I am the true vine” with us being the fruit being fed by his spirit.

Jesus presents us with another “I am” saying this morning;

“I am the bread of life”.

Feed on God; His wisdom and words, and the result will be Peace of mind.

Thankfulness for the nourishing nurturing fruitfulness of God is the primary sentiment that underpin Harvest festival.

Now, In the modern world whenever the planet is being discussed you are most likely to hear horror stories about the environment and climate change than anything else.

And that is important because if those things can threaten the extraordinary fruitfulness of the world, we should obviously seek to limit any damage, but today we concentrate on the extraordinary fruitfulness of this planet.

The current population of the world is 7.7 Billion people.

That means that the world has to produce enough food to feed 7.7 Billion people every day of the year.

If people are lucky enough to eat three meals a day, that means 7.7 billion breakfasts, 7.7 billion lunches and 7.7 billion dinners every single day.

53.9 billion breakfasts a week, about 2800 billion breakfasts lunches and dinners every year.

These are extraordinary amounts, but the most amazing thing is that the world can do that because it is so bountiful and fruitful.

Of course there are parts of the world where people don’t have enough to eat, and closer to home we have people who struggle to afford adequate food but the problem there is not that the food doesn’t exist – that is a problem of unequal distribution and economics and are different problems.

The world produces more than enough food to feed everyone. In fact, apparently a full third of all food produced in the world is wasted every year that is 1.3 billion tonnes of food. And all developed countries have the same problem

Our planet is a marvellous place. The scale and variety of food (and flora and fauna) produced is mind boggling.

Harvest festival is a time to remember just how wonderful it is, and what we need to protect. The world is special. Not barren rock, or huge balls of gas like all the other planets in our solar system. We are very lucky people. Another way of saying we are lucky is that we are blessed. And as a way of acknowledging that we are blessed is to give thanks. We say  “Thank you” But thank you to whom or what? As Christians we give thanks to the creator of this marvellous, fruitful bountiful planet. We thank God.

Entertaining angels

Genesis 28: 10-17. “Jacob’s ladder” is one of those memorable bits of the Bible where the role of Angels is as a precursor to an encounter with the Divine. In both Hebrew and Greek, messenger and Angel are the same word, so the difference between an angelic or human messenger is provide by the context

Hebrews 1: 5-14. The qualitative difference between Angels and Jesus is being expressed here. The redemptive and authoritative person of Jesus as Son of God is being compared to Angels which are “Spirits in the divine service” of mankind

John 1: 47-51. “Angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man” recalls Jacob’s ladder in Genesis and means that these messengers from God will deliver God’s words directly to Jesus. Angels again seen as messengers or intermediaries from God.

Angels in the Judaeo-Christian tradition have always represented a direct link to God.

Jacob’s vision of angels precedes God standing right beside Jacob to assure him that his destiny is secure – that God will uphold his side of the agreement with him and this led Jacob to name the place where it happened Bethel – Beth- el – the house of God.

That leads us naturally to Jesus in the gospel story telling Nathaniel that he will see “Angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of man”, meaning that instead of God being located in a place – Bethel – He is located in the heart of Jesus Himself who mostly referred to himself as the “Son of man” after the prophesy in the book of Daniel.

And in the book of Hebrews it importantly emphasises the surpassing importance of Jesus in the economy of salvation, who although he was in human form, (lower than the angels in Hebrew’s description) in his work and divinity He is higher than the angels.

It is after all Jesus who in his sacrificial death came to redeem and save the world and, in his resurrection, to assure the world of the hope of a bright and blessed future in a new creation.

Significantly, In both Hebrew and Greek, angel and messenger are the same word, so anyone who comes with a message of love or comfort or insight is an angel.

Later in the book of Hebrews it says this (13:2)

“Let brotherly love continue. Do not forget to entertain strangers because in doing so you may be entertaining angels unawares”

Hebrews acknowledges that a human being can be an angel, a messenger from God” because God uses people to communicate his will, comfort and wisdom.

Instead of seeking out heavenly spiritual experiences that simply satisfies our own needs, we can choose to be a messenger of God ourselves.

We can dispense God’s love and grace in a word of love, encouragement, an act of charity or service. Kindness to people is an act of God.

In such cases we can pass over from being a messenger to actually embodying the message.

Every church building embodies a message from God. Their mere existence is a message that God matters, is worthy of respect and worship. Even those who never cross the threshold of a church understand that message.

We, the people of God are messengers of God when we dispense love, mercy and forgiveness, kindness, patience and self-control.

We can be the angel that people encounter unawares.

In the talk on Angels at the literary festival the claim was made that belief in Angels rivals belief in God nowadays. Even 7% of atheists apparently believe in Angels. One reason offered for that is that Angels come bearing nothing but grace and love and protection and make no demands.

Well, It is a fact that when one facet of the Christian faith is neglected it pops up somewhere else in a more pronounced form. When the word of God was neglected, for example, that spawned the reformation and later, the evangelical movement within mainstream denominations.

When the Holy Spirit was neglected, that spawned the Pentecostal churches and the charismatic movement.

You could say that when the churches concentrate too much on moral rules and judgement, the response is an increased belief in totally grace filled, protective angelic beings. One remembers Robbie Williams major hit “Angels”

One sermon I made near the start of my ministry here is that fully Christian ministry has to integrate all those parts of the faith that have become almost semi-detached from and within mainstream churches.

We need emphasis on the Bible. We need emphasis on the Spirit. We need emphasis on forgiveness and repentance and morality.   And we also need emphasis on the qualities embodied by the belief in angels. The Grace, unconditional love, and care of angels, but attribute that Grace love and protection to its proper place – God, who is Father, Son and the Holy Spirit.

In the midst of wolves

Sunday 22^nd September – Trinity 14 – Proper 20

Amos 8: 4-7. My favourite prophet. He is direct and brutally frank about how God views people who treat others to whom they feel superior with contempt. He assures them that God sees all and in Christian terms we want them to see the error of their ways and repent. Swearing by the “pride of Jacob” is an unusual phrase but it is probably used to describe the land of Israel.  

1 Timothy 2: 1-7. We should pray for everyone because God desires everyone to be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth. Here we also have a rationale for all civic services, prayers for the Queen etc. that can rankle with both catholic and protestant alike. But as social enfleshed beings we have to live in the societies in which we find ourselves and whatever we feel about the social order of the day or what we might want to defend or change, God requires that we pray for all people, and to live in peace as far as it is anything to do with us.

Luke 16: 1-13. A difficult parable to unpack but one firstly must assume that dishonesty is not being praised, but rather shrewdness or prudence. Jesus noting that in a crisis, worldly people are much shrewder that the children of light. In the “crisis” situation of the inbreaking of the Kingdom of God Christians need to be much shrewder and decisive in making positive decisions and using worldly wealth to further the aims of the Kingdom.

“Behold I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves, therefore be as wise as serpents and as innocent as doves” (Matthew 10:16)

A wonderfully shrewd statement made by Jesus there in Matthew.

And it is Prudence or shrewdness that is being encouraged by Jesus in our gospel reading today and Jesus notes, I think accurately, that the worldly wise are much shrewder than the people who generally follow God. Our judgement can be clouded by being too starry eyed and idealistic.

A common statement about some people is that they are so heavenly focussed that they are no earthly good. They also can have their goodness presumed upon as well and get walked all over. Part of the Christian response is not to become either gullible or a doormat. At the same time, we must guard against becoming overly cynical and suspicious. Somewhere in the middle lies wisdom.

It is always hard to pin down where that wise response lies because every decision we make is dependent on specific circumstances.

Honesty and straight dealing and dealing with others charitably are the bedrock of the Christian way.

This has always been a main part of the Judeo-Christian tradition of course and Amos, writing 750 years before Christ, the very first of the Old Testament prophets, warns all people that treat their fellow men with contempt and cheat them and rob them are being judged by God and their deeds won’t be forgotten.

Christian wisdom must be based in revealed truth of course, and one of the most basic truths that it can sometimes be hard to accept is that God desires the salvation of all people. God came to save the whole world, not little bits of it, or those bits that respond in a certain way.

We heard in a magnificent presentation yesterday at the literary festival that this is one of the main reasons that Christianity spread so quickly. It was universal. Everyone was included. Christianity successfully overturned the general societal assumptions that “might is right” and that some people are intrinsically worth more that other people, laying down the principle that would eventually lead to the notion of universal human rights. King and slave, Jew and gentile, man and woman were all on the same level in God’s eyes.

Repentance, (Greek – Metanoia), is the central demand of the gospel for those that accept the gospel in this life. Consciously turning your life around to face God. Part of that repentance is having the difficult job of praying for those people we don’t like, or don’t like us, and those who do contemptable things in the hope that they see the light and change their ways.

Why? Because Jesus died for them as much as He died for you, that’s why.

In the same way, we pray for the existing social order, no matter what we think about the system or what we’d like to either defend or change.

In practical terms that would mean that even if you were an ardent republican and anti-monarchist, as a Christian you would still be required to pray for the Queen, because she is an individual, for whom Jesus also died, and she holds an important position in the social hierarchy. As I wrote this week, this is also the rationale for civic services where we pray for all local councillors etc.

We have to be wise in how we use our money, gifts and talents in a crisis and the underlying reason behind all this is that the ultimate crisis Jesus is referring to  is the upcoming crucifixion of himself, and the birth of the church, and the Kingdom of God.

“God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself” Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:19. Notice it is the whole world again God was reconciling himself to, not just good people or believers, and by extension we are ministers of that reconciliation.

As ministers of that reconciliation, we pray for the good of all people and situations, that God’s will is done – not our will – because;

“think no man unworthy for whom Christ was content to die”.

The free gift of Grace.

Exodus 32: 7-14. Moses haggling with God, imploring him not to destroy the Jewish people for building and worshipping an idol might lead some people to say that this was God before He became a Christian! Joking aside, at a deeper level, it is a warning against a religion that demands that the divine is always immediate, visible and accessible and one that sets store on a patient waiting on God

1 Timothy 1: 12-17. You can sense the intense gratitude Paul feels, that a sinner as great as himself could be so freely forgiven his past, so his life is set free to do the work God commissions him to do. It is this central fact of forgiveness that is available to all Christians when they fall and fail. To get up, dust yourself off and start all over again on a different path.

Luke 15: 1-10. Paul’s experience is pre-figured here in a couple of parables that tell of the joy God feels in finding something (someone) who is lost. For us as God’s agents on earth, finding such people, you have given them the gift of Life itself and we can share in that joy.

We have a gift for everyone we meet.

A complaint you sometimes hear from people is that the church is always making demands on people whether that be their time or their money.

But actually, we come bearing the greatest gift that anyone could possibly receive – the gift of forgiveness and life in all its fullness.

Paul, who we hear today fair bubbling over with excitement and joy described being joined to Jesus Christ as Freedom to rest in God’s Grace in Galatians 5:1.

If I were to describe what “Life in all its fullness” consisted of I’d boil it down to these essentials;

Firstly, your life has intrinsic worth, because you are created and loved by God. This means that your worth isn’t dependent on what other people or society itself thinks about you. For tech-savvy people it doesn’t depend on how many “likes” your social media post gets. We have an innate dignity, an innate worth that is independent of how other people rate us.

Secondly, you are a child of God. People have a tendency to think in terms of identity politics nowadays, defining ourselves by race, gender, sexuality, disability, class or social status. But as Christians we have an identity that supersedes and subsumes all those small subdivisions. We are a child of God. That is our identity. We pray to God as our Father, with Jesus as our brother, saviour and friend.

Thirdly, you have the basis of Paul’s gratitude in this extract today. Forgiveness and the ability to make a fresh start in a new direction after we foul up, fall, fail, make bad decisions, do things we are ashamed of. We are forgiven because of what Jesus did for us on the cross.

Lastly, we have the assurance of eternal life, because of the resurrection of Jesus. Death and suffering were borne but overcome. Eternal life, in John’s gospel also translates as a quality of life to be enjoyed now but is synonymous with and based on the vision of a new heaven and a new earth, where all pain, suffering and death are no more.

Innate worth, a child of God, Forgiveness and eternal life. These are the gifts that the Christian faith gives freely to all who accept that Jesus is the true Son of God.

These are the gifts that allow us to flourish in our lives.

These are the gifts that enable you to live life without fear and sets you free to fulfil your potential.

These are the gifts that propelled Paul on his missionary journeys and saw him through thick and thin. These are the gifts that propel every modern-day missionary and evangelist. They form the basis for every loving action and loving word of every Christian.

So you see, we come bearing Gifts. Free gifts.

We need to remember what we offer people as well as the demands we sometimes make. Sacrifices of time and money, and any other sacrifice we have to make are made in gratitude for what we have received, so that the church can continue to tell people what God has done for them in Jesus Christ.

Amen.

What is truth?

Jeremiah 23:23-29. False prophets and their “dreams” are here contrasted with the voices of true prophets. True prophets can be distinguished by the fact that true prophesy is like fire and a hammer – that is, words that unsettle and disturb, rock the established order, and unmask hypocrisy and injustice. True prophets can only really be discerned in hindsight, and in private may be wracked by self-doubt.

Hebrews 11:29 – 12:2. The faith (and the suffering) of all the Old Testament figures is given to encourage the faith of contemporary Christians. They are included and lauded not just as figures from a long dead past but as a present “cloud of witnesses” to whom the current crop of believers owe a debt of responsibility. All of those figures were driven by faith in God despite themselves never seeing the fulfilment of God’s will – Jesus Christ – “the pioneer and perfecter of our faith” (12:1).

Luke 12: 49-56. Jesus describes the reality of the situation that his message of peace will ironically cause division, even amongst families. His “baptism” refers to his crucifixion (and St. Paul also describes Christian baptism as being baptised into Jesus’ death). Fire is also associated with cleansing and more positively with the Holy Spirit. Jesus then derides people for being able to forecast the weather accurately but are blind to the signs of the times.

How do you know that what I, or anyone taking a service is telling you is the true word of God?

One answer to that is that within the structures of the ordination process, the church tries to ensure that within certain parameters like high or low church, or theological emphasis, they have confidence in the person chosen to try and accurately discern, reflect and interpret what the Spirit reveals to them.

In short, the church tries to weed out false prophets. There wasn’t any kind of process in Jeremiah’s time of course. Who was a true prophet and who was a false prophet was a very grey area. Prophesy itself came into huge disrepute so that what turned out to be genuine prophets didn’t actually want to be associated with the title at all.

Amos, one of the most respected prophets tried to distance himself by saying,

“I was not a prophet, nor a prophet’s son but a sheep breeder and a dresser of sycamore trees” (7:14).

One way that Jeremiah offers to discern a true prophet from a false one, is that a true prophet’s words are like a fire and a hammer. That is, the true word of God unsettles, disturbs, shakes the foundations, and confronts hypocrisy and injustice. Today we might say it speaks truth to power.

The honeyed words of the false prophets just say what they think people want to hear. Prophesy not from conviction but by focus group and opinion poll.

A great modern hero of mine was Harry Williams CR, a monk at Mirfield when I was there, since sadly died.

Harry had been a great and highly thought of theologian, preacher and teacher, and had been a fellow, lecturer and Dean of Trinity college Cambridge.

Right up until his nervous breakdown caused by his cognitive dissonance between his life and the gospel he was preaching.

When he had recovered after years of psychotherapy his true ministry really started, when he became concerned by true experience.

He vowed never to ever preach anything ever again which didn’t have its roots in true lived experience and he became a true prophet, rather than just a “dreamer” as Jeremiah calls it.

Words and ideas can purify like fire, and shatter peace like a hammer and this is what Jesus rightly prophesied when he said to his disciples,

“Don’t think my words are going to bring peace, it’ll be more like a sword. I will divide opinion, split families”. His words and actions weren’t designed to do that – they were words of love and peace – but he correctly forecast that discord would be a natural result, because words and actions divide people.

For us it means that as long as we are as certain as we can be that we are speaking truthfully and representing as accurately as possible the nature and purposes of God, we shouldn’t be either surprised or deflated if our words cause division.

One of the most pertinent questions in the whole new testament is posed not by Jesus or an apostle but came out of the mouth of Pontius Pilate, when he asked Jesus “What is truth?” (John 18:38)

This itself was a retort to Jesus saying he was a witness to the truth, and John’s gospel contains the answer to that question when Jesus says “I am the way, the truth and the life.” (John 14:6)

We worship truth, embodied for a while here on earth in Jesus.

The way of Jesus is the way of sacrificial love.

The truth of Jesus is that he is the eternal word made flesh.

And in that truth and love is revealed the true nature of being, of life itself, which is God, which cannot be destroyed.

Whatever else we preach, to be a true prophet of God we have to preach that. Only God can save anyone. If Jesus is the true son of God and God is one, then true Salvation cannot be found anywhere else except in God and the truth of God is made manifest in Jesus. In that way salvation being found no-where else is not a statement that excludes anyone but states a fact about God who is entirely inclusive no matter what religion or none that you follow.