Thank you mum.

Once upon a time there were two festivals. One was called mothering Sunday and the other more modern one was called mothers day. Although the surface reason for both of them was different – the original one was about going to visit your mother church, and the later one was to celebrate motherhood – the underlying reason was exactly the same – and that was gratitude.

Nowadays the two festivals have merged into one and it is the second reason that we are all here today.

This celebration gives us all the opportunity to express grateful thanks to our mothers. Not all women become mothers,  that is perfectly true, but we all of us, both men and women had or have a mother, and in our formative years especially it was the closest relationship we had with any other human being.

This is as it should be. We were all attached physically to our mothers. They carried us for the first nine months of our lives and then gave birth to us into the world. They fed us, nurtured us and in the majority of cases brought us up.

So common and normal is this closeness that we can actually take this love and care for granted.

How many people take the time or if your mum has passed away, how many times did we take the opportunity to simply say thank you.

Thank you for being my mum. Thank you for giving me life, for loving me, for standing by me through thick and thin, for sacrificing yourself for me. Thank you for being there for me.

Today is such a time for saying thank you to our mothers. And if your mother is no longer with us, today is still an opportunity to say thank you to your mother in prayer.  Perhaps to light a candle for her. To acknowledge the debt of gratitude we all owe, yet was probably seldom expressed.

Your prayer is valid and true because it was prayed our of a sense of  Love.

 Romans 8:38-39

New International Version (NIV)

³⁸ For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons,^[a] neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, ³⁹ neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

In Spirit we are joined with all that is so your prayer, prayed out of love and gratitude will be heard.

So to all mothers, our mothers, to mothers here in this church we say Thank you.

Take up your cross and follow me.

The difficulty with a gospel passage so rich in different themes and meaning is that it is hard to know where to start. It is about growth in faith, mission, worship, and the very nature of God, all encompassed in a beautifully crafted story.

So what I did is read it through slowly, decide which bit hit me the most and pray that what I come up with would resonate with the people here in Evenwood. You can let me know afterwards if any of that worked...but do it gently.

As I wrote in my weekly email, the verse that leaps of the page for me are the words placed into the mouth of Jesus “God is Spirit and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth”.

 Jesus worshipped God the Spirit, a Spirit he called “Father” because God the Father is the sourceless source of all things. The Father is the source of all creation which includes you and me. We are a part of the whole. It follows then that we are all related which leads to Christians calling ourselves brothers and sisters.

Jesus, our friend and brother invites us to join with him and pray with him to “Our Father who art in heaven.”   So, as Jesus taught, all Christian worship is directed to God the Father. Our Eucharistic prayer is a prayer to the Father, in union with Christ, in the power of the Spirit. All authentic Christian worship is directed towards the Father who is Spirit.

Jesus our friend and brother, as the person in whom all the wisdom of God was pleased to dwell, and in whom the Father chose to work and reveal and reconcile, shows us the way to God the Father.

Jesus shows us the way, in his words, actions and manner of life. The way leads us to God who is Spirit.

Now here is a surprising thing for many Christians. Nowhere in the New Testament does Jesus ask anyone to worship him but In countless examples he asks us to follow him. In following Jesus we arrive at God because God the Father is both our source and our destination. This is why the early church, before the word “Christian” was coined was known simply as the way. It is a way of life, a way of living and behaving and being that leads us into the arms of God the Father. Following Jesus is the truest worship we can offer.

It is much harder to actually live out what he tells us than it is to worship him. But following him on the path is exactly what Jesus wants . I am certain that Jesus would trade all our worship for simply getting up and following in his footsteps.

It is by being led by Jesus we come to God.

What does such a life look like? It is one marked by self-sacrifice and undergirded by love.  It is a life marked by quality relationships based on that primary relationship of love between ourselves and God. It is a life where the fruit of the Spirit is actively growing. They are also lives marked by tragedies transformed.

There is not a single person here today who has not suffered, who doesn’t live with a host of regrets and disappointments, large and small. The Christian life is one where those tragedies do not have the final word. The central motif of Jesus’ life, is death and resurrection and it is this central motif that marks out the Christian life in our response to the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune”

We believe that dark will never have the last word. That even in the midst of the ultimate tragedy, the murder of an innocent man by being nailed to a cross the seeds of renewal, light and new life were there waiting to be revealed.   That is the message of Easter which we are preparing for.

This is the source of Christian hope. Death, suffering and all forms of darkness can never have the final word. We are a people marked by faith hope and love, and as St. Paul famously said, “the greatest of these is love”

In our Sunday worship we are here to be strengthened in order to be the people of God, by worshipping God in Spiirit and truth and learning to walk in the steps of Jesus, by developing our character and nurturing Christian virtues.

We have something valuable to offer a needy people. We have the words of eternal life. We can be confident that what we have is worth having and if it is worth having then it is worth sharing with others in what we say and do.

You the congregation here in Evenwood are the salt and light of God in this place. Worshipping God by following Jesus, the son of God, we become children of God as well.

As Jesus said. I call you servants no longer. I call you my friends if you do what I command you. And he wants us to take up our cross and follow him.

As brothers and sisters and friends of Jesus, we come to worship God in Spirit and truth, in order to be transformed into a people worthy of the name. 

Follow Jesus and you are worshipping God in Spirit and truth.

Be transformed.

If someone were to ask you what the point of being a Christian is, what is our goal, or even the point of the journey we are on, I wonder what you would say?

If asked myself I would have no hesitation in saying that one major point of the journey, is that I myself am changed, that I become a more rounded, more virtuous, more content human being who through my actions people might see God at work.

Being changed, being transformed, in common parlance “becoming a better person” is a part of every  Christian tradition and denomination, but nowhere is it given greater prominence than in the Orthodox churches.

Being changed through knowing the presence of God’s spirit within us and shining with that light is the whole point and goal of the Christian faith which is why the transfiguration of Jesus, the story we heard today, is absolutely pivotal to their self-understanding.

The transfiguration is a symbol, a representation of the goal of every Christian which is to shine with the light of God.

In Peter’s letter in which he talks of seeing the transfiguration on the mountain he says “You do well to be attentive to this as to a lamp shining in a dark place until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts” (v.19)

I think Peter means by this, Gazing with awe on the spectacle of the transfiguration is good but it is not the end, it is the means to an end – the end is when the morning star rises in our hearts.

To be transformed as I have emphasised before was the core message of Jesus. “Metanoia” he said – be transformed because the kingdom of God is at hand.

The motor that drives this process of transformation comes with the realisation that God loves you as a Father loves his child and that this God of love is close to you. This process Jesus calls being “born again”.  Knowing that each of us has another source other than our biological parents – a spiritual Father.

Change is not pain free though. As I wrote this week, all change, no matter how positive  carries with it a sense of loss.  Resistance to change in other parts of our lives, church life included, is a good example of the resistance to change that we have regarding our own hearts and minds and actions.

Overcoming that resistance takes a group effort which is why we meet communally every week. Encouraging and strengthening and yes, challenging each other is also a part of church life. All of Paul’s letters bear witness to that fact.

As we enter the period of Lent, a time where traditionally we set aside time to contemplate and discern our priorities in life and the nature of our faith. Stephen Cherry, whose book “Barefoot prayers” is the chosen book for this year’s Big read calls Lent a journey to resurrection (that ultimate symbol of transformation). And that without our sights set on resurrection Lent would be a sad and sorry time.

The motor of all Christian transformation is love, and Stephen’s prayer for this Sunday before Lent is titled very simply.....

Love.

As I set my sights on your empty tomb,

As I begin to imagine the dangerous route

Of desert and temptation,

Fasting and fear,

Loneliness and crowds,

Silence and noise,

Desertion and betrayal,

Bread and wine,

Cross and nails,

Vinegar and gall,

Water and blood,

Spice and earth,

Cave and rock,

As I imagine and foresee all this,

And stoop not to tie but to unlace my boots,

Take off my shoes,

Slip off my sandals.....

I pray for just one thing:

Your gift of love.  

Salt and Light.

I spoke last week of a qualitative difference between the secular soul of society and the Christian soul of the church.

Jesus expands on this theme in this well known sermon and calls his followers to be the salt of the earth. What does salt do? Well salt both flavours and preserves, so He wants us to alter the flavour of society by our difference. We also know that it doesn’t take too much salt to alter the flavour of something so even as a minority we have the enormous potential to preserve, alter and enhance society together.

To do that we need to be distinctive – we need to have a different flavour to the prevailing culture. If we are not distinctive or as Jesus puts it, if we “have lost our flavour” we are not fit for purpose and need to be thrown out and trampled underfoot. 

It stands to reason that if our values are simply a mirror image of the values of society then we have no capacity to change anything. So even if we are a voice crying in the wilderness, we need to ask for the courage to stand there nevertheless and have the confidence in our beliefs.

The next parable talks of the church being the light of the world. We are used, perhaps too used to calling Jesus the light of the world, but here Jesus calls us the light of the world. It is much easier to see Jesus as the light of the world because that means we don’t have to do anything or change anything, but if we are the light of the world then we have responsibilities and everything becomes a little more uncomfortable.

Jesus tells us that in being different and acting in a different way we will do good works and we should do them openly and unashamedly and let people see that we have done them. Don’t shy away from doing things publically or be too shy to let people know that good works are being done. Not arrogantly or rudely in a condescending way, but in a way nonetheless that allows our light to shine before others, “So they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven. “ The Church of England does so much good work but is almost ashamed to say so or draw attention to the fact.

Lastly in this three part teaching session Jesus gives us today Jesus states that He came not to abolish the law but to fulfil the law. He then says “that not one letter, not one stroke of a letter will pass from the law until all is accomplished”.

This is problematic for us for the very obvious reason that we don’t follow the law and Gentile Christians never have done right from the start. Indeed in Mark’s gospel in direct contrast, Jesus appears to overturn the dietary laws in a stroke by declaring “all foods clean”. St. Paul  is an advocate for gentile converts at the council of Jerusalem when he wins for us an exemption from nearly all laws except that we should eat no meat with blood in it (which we ignore completely) and abstain from sexual immorality.

So what is going on? Christianity from its very early days was a religion of Grace where the Jewish laws no longer apply so why does here Jesus advocate even stricter adherence to the law? 

The clue comes when Jesus says “I have come not to abolish the law but to fulfil the law.”

There are always two parts to religion. The outer shell, the buildings, the bureaucracy, the hierarchy, the Holy books, the rituals, the creeds and dogmas and then we have the inner life of that same religion, the spiritual heart to which the outer shell of our religion all reflect.

Jesus discerned and revealed to us that the outer written laws were all a reflection of the beating heart of the faith which was Love. The fulfilling of the law to which we should adhere to with a righteousness that exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees is this;

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind and with all your strength, and love your neighbour as yourself”.  There is no other commandment greater than these. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

The outer written law in the Bible, like all the outward forms of religion, is an attempt to reflect the inner law, the spiritual law, to which Jesus invites us to give total assent.

The law without the spirit is a dead hand. As Paul himself writes “The letter kills. It is the spirit that gives life” (2 Cor.3:6)

With our lives illumined by the spirit of Love – the source and beating heart of the law we can do good works and be the salt that keeps society fresh and healthy. The heart of the faith is Love and as John writes in 1 John 4:7, God is Love.

 If we lose our flavour and refuse to shine, we may as well be thrown out and trampled underfoot.

Dancing on the edge.

There was the start of a four part investigation in the Church Times this week that seeks to ask difficult questions about our church and our future.

It asked questions about worship, our belief systems, our church structures, our buildings, our morality, and attempted  to open up debate as to what can be done.

We have got used to saying that it is not all about numbers, but as the Church Times pointed out, our 9% decline in the first 10 years of this century at the very least a sign of a body in poor health.

So it was with all these statistics and forecasts of disconnection and doom running around my mind that I sat down to read this gospel text that I am supposed to use as my springboard for today’s sermon. I just couldn’t help thinking “what on earth has any of this to do with our lives”. At least in church we have some reference points but if I were to read that piece of the gospel in the pub or supermarket or anywhere where people are not conversant with church there would just be incomprehension.

This was written in a different culture in a different time about arcane practices that even the Jews no longer remember why they did them and was speaking to people in very different context to ours. In a sense my role is almost that of an interpreter, trying to decipher the heart of what was meant and translate it into something relevant to our community.

Coincidentally I have started to read two books this week that form part of my continuing ministerial development. One of them tries to analyse and provide an insight into the secular soul of this and just about every modern western country, in an effort to understand better what we are dealing with so we may be better able to bridge that gap that exists between us and wider society. As we both have a foot in both camps you’d think it was an easy task but actually it is not and needs spelling out.

It is good to remind ourselves that the goals of secular society for our individual selves and the goals set for us by Christianity are different. What follows is necessarily a caricature, with many caveats and exceptions, but in general I think hold water.

Our society is now basically individualistic and the goal of the individual is to achieve happiness through the acquisition of “things”, of money, status and power. The more we have, the happier we will be, and our whole economy is geared to this consumerist model.  One of my personal pet hates is when all of us are described in the media as “consumers”. That is our role – to consume – dehumanised; we are reduced to an economic unit in a big machine. Over-regard for the self, along with the neglect of any sense of responsibilities to other people can, and I believe has, in many respects  led to an inward looking selfish, dog eat dog society where the vulnerable are left to fend for themselves as best they can.

Christianity, by comparison is basically corporate. Sure, we want individuals to flourish, but this flourishing takes place, indeed can only really happen in a Christian worldview in relationship with others. Rather than the attainment of happiness through acquisition of belongings,  Christians  encourage the development of character through the nurture of virtue. Happiness is not a primary Christian goal actually and rather counter culturally we maintain that true happiness is a by product of the giving of oneself.

Our sense of worth is gained not by how big a car we own, or how many bathrooms we have, but is GIVEN by God. We are children of God and this status, very importantly, was NOT EARNED in the slightest. It was given for free. It is a part of being human. This is another place where secularism and Christianity rub up against one another. The concept of everone being a recipient of free grace, through no effort of their own runs completely counter to the norms of society where “you get nothing unless you pay for it”.

It is also important to say that our corporate nature is not collectivist, in the way that Communism was collectivist, a system in which the individual is suppressed and forced into uniformity .  I learned a lot about this subject living in a post communist country like Romania. In this sense Ronald Reagan was absolutely right when he described the Soviet East as the “Evil empire”. We, by contrast value the individual, we ascribe worth to the self, as we were all made in the image of God, but we find fulfilment in community.

The Christian body is Corpus Christi – the body of Christ – a body united in the unity of the Spirit of God the Father.  Jesus is indeed our friend and brother.

Tracts like the gospel reading I read today make a kind of sense in this place in this community but make no sense to any other body in a different place. We have to act as the translators of our understanding of the world to the people beyond these ancient walls just as I try and be a translator of  these readings to the body of Christ.

The way we translate our faith into a life that will speak to others is by building character by nurturing Christian virtues like trust, humility, wisdom, compassion, love, hope, and achieve well being, in which happiness is a by-product through self giving.  

The church is then set apart from the prevailing culture. It is truly counter cultural. Prayer, the act in which humility and grace come together is also a counter cultural act – it has no monetary worth and is an act of humility, another necessary Christian virtue. If we are to speak to people about the Christian faith, we need to understand that our rationale, our understanding of life is different, and if this is not recognised, we flounder at the first hurdle.

Unless we understand where people are, and what their underlying assumptions are about life, we cannot challenge them or offer any alternative. We do offer a powerful alternative to our prevailing culture. Some will be intrigued, some won’t, but we have to give them the chance to make that choice!

Go preach the gospel

In this season of revelation known as Epiphany we have heard of the surpassing nature of the religious experience that propelled Jesus into ministry, and John’s proclamation that Jesus’ life would reveal God’s purpose for humanity, a liberator of the human spirit – the lamb of God – and now we come to the crux of Jesus’ preaching.

If you were alive in 1^st century Palestine and had gone out to hear Jesus preach what would have been the core message?

Well we know pretty well from the gospels that his core message was recorded as this;

“Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand”  That was the “good news” that Jesus had for the world.

As an observant Jew sensitive to Jewish readers Matthew shied away from using the word God – Yah weh – and used the word heaven instead of God but “kingdom of heaven” and “kingdom of God” are interchangeable.   

That phrase is the “Good news”. This is the gospel of the Lord!  This is made more explicit in Mark’s gospel where it is written “that Jesus preached the gospel of God, and saying “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel”.

Indeed, later on in Matthew’s gospel when Jesus sent the twelve disciples out to preach he gave them this instruction “And preach as you go, saying “The kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matt. 10:7). The apostolic message was to be, and still is the same. If we are to remain true to the Jesus revelation we must get to grips with and understand this message that was central to Jesus and to his whole movement.

The main claim then is that the kingdom of God “has come near” (NRSV) or “is at hand”(AV),  or “is close at hand” (New Jerusalem) or “is upon you” (New English).

To discern what all of these things mean we have to use joined up thinking and peruse the whole Biblical record. Of particular interest here is Luke 17: 21 where this exchange of views is recorded.

“Being asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God was coming, he answered them “The kingdom of God is not coming with signs to be observed nor will they say “Lo, here it is” or “there” for behold the kingdom of God is in the midst of you”. Or in other translations “The kingdom of God is within you”.

If you put this together with Jesus’ insistence that you must be born again by the Spirit of God in John 3 where Jesus tells Nicodemus “You cannot see the kingdom of God unless you are born again” which refers back to Jesus’ own revelation at his baptism we edge closer and closer to the core message of Jesus which is this;

God the Father is close, upon you, in you. You are his child. Therefore repent.

My favourite concept in the Bible, because the word translated “repent” is that wonderful word “Metanoia”. This word has been called by some theologians the “greatest word or concept in the entire Bible and the essence of Christianity. It has also been called, and I quote “the most extraordinary mistranslation”.

Because repentence, i.e being sorry for our sins” as we understand the word, is absolutely not what Metanoia means. Metanoia means a change of heart, a going beyond your mind and seeing the world through different eyes.

The mistranslation of metanoia as repentance began in the 2nd century when the Greek (metanoeō) was mistakenly translated into the Latin as poenitentiam agite, which does indeed carry the meaning of being sorry for our sins

In biblical Greek,  metanoia expresses that mighty change in mind, heart, and life wrought by the Spirit of God.

Biblical scholars say that, in Metanoia, there is none of the sorrow or regret contained in the English words repentance and repent.  Repentance denotes “sorrow for what one has done or omitted to do; especially, contrition for sin.” Repent primarily means “to review one's actions and feel contrition or regret for something one has done or omitted to do”  In fact Tertullian, the great 2^nd century Father of the church protested the mistranslation stating even then that “In Greek, Metanoia is not a confession of sins but a change of mind”, but the mistranslation persists to this day subtly changing the entire focus of Christianity away from Joy and towards contrition.

This transformation of the heart  is what happened to Jesus at his baptism and that same transformation of the heart is what Jesus wants for us.

To be able to see the divine within life rather than apart from life, to see the world ablaze, glowing with the glory of God, and have our heart turned and perception changed by this revelation of God the Father’s unconditional love and forgiveness. Why?  To exact a change in our quality of life which will bear fruit in our actions. This is the core of Christianity and everything within our religion flows from that core. Know that you are loved forgiven, accepted and safe in this life that is eternal. This is the message of Jesus.

This IS the gospel of the Lord.    

Behold the lamb of God

We are in the season of Epiphany – revelation – and the main revelation of this week’s gospel is this;

John the Baptist is standing with two of his disciples and says “Look, here is the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world”.

There are many different ways to interpret the sacrifice of Jesus and the “the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” is one of the most enduring.  The Agnus Dei is still a part of our modern Eucharistic service.

Identifying Jesus as the Passover lamb that the Jews slaughter at Passover is ancient and made explicit by St. Paul in his letter to the Corinthians where he says “Christ, our Passover lamb has been sacrificed” (1 Cor. 5:7)

It is Important to recognise here that oddly the Passover lamb did not actually take away sin in the Jewish ritual scheme of things. If you remember the story from the Old Testament the significance lay in that the blood was smeared on the doorposts which steered God away from the Jews only killing Egyptians and averting death from the children of Israel that led to their release from captivity. The observance of Passover then is a rite of liberation – it commemorates and remembers the deliverance of the Jewish people from oppression.  

As an annual ritual commemorating liberation then it renews the community freeing them from evil to serve God. This is the background to the phrase “lamb of God”

The most natural way to read John the Baptist’s observation then is not that Jesus’ death was an appeasement for sin to an angry God that demands recompense ( a common enough interpretation) but something much more nuanced and richer. It implies that Jesus’ death , and more importantly the offering of his entire life (his blood) will be a means of liberating the whole world from sin, not just one people – the Jews.

Jesus is not the appeaser of an angry God that saves a few select people through faith. God liberates everyone through the life of Jesus, because that life is a true sacrifice, an offering of love, devotion and obedience. Metaphorically speaking, Jesus’ blood is the blood smeared on every doorpost in the world symbolising the liberation from bondage of the entire human race.

Sacrifice has three main components in the Bible. First they are offerings of love and devotion. Secondly they are a means of celebrating restoration of fellowship with God (atonement) requiring repentance and faith, and thirdly sacrifice is the passover liberation of the world from evil. 

A truly biblical understanding of the sacrifice of Jesus includes all three components. Jesus, as fully transparent to God  becomes a vehicle for revealing God’s will – and God wills the liberation of the whole world from Sin.

Ad what is Sin? Sin is separation from God in its purest sense. Sins in the sense of wrongdoing or evil is what results from separation from God.    

What is revealed  to John the Baptist here is that Jesus is a vehicle that reveals  God’s will for the world and God’s will for the world is that we know that through Jesus we are set free from all that binds us and not separate from God. We are not estranged orphans we are children of a living God. Our Sunday Eucharist is our weekly Passover reminder of these things.