"For all the Saints"

 

Sunday 1^st November – All Saints day

Revelation 7: 9-17. Who are the great multitude John sees in heaven? If the 144,000 just referenced in verses 4-8 are Jewish, the great multitude by contrast would be gentiles. God’s true chosen people are from all the nations on earth and most importantly they are all Martyrs who hold a special significance for the seer. John extends the meaning of the Greek word “Martus” meaning a witness, to mean specifically someone who witnesses through death, who has shared in the suffering of Christ and have won salvation.

1 John 3: 1-3. However fully “realized” the fourth gospel may be, meaning that the presence and salvation of God are fully here now – the first letter of John holds out the vision of a future yet to be revealed. And that future aspect holds out the glorious hope of a spiritual union with the divine (“We will be like him”). This doctrine of growing more God-like ending in unity is known as Divinization or theosis in the East and as Sanctification in the West.

Matthew 5: 1-12. The statements in the first half of the beatitudes refer to everyone who is to enter the coming age, not a set of alternatives – we are all poor, meek, mourning for the way things are in the world, longing for God to rule, abandoning status and privilege, peacemakers and you will be persecuted. Similarly, the reward contained in the promises are in effect all one reward, entry to the kingdom of heaven!

 

 In the Apostles creed we currently recite every Sunday we all affirm that we believe in the “communion of saints” but it is not something we pay too much attention to on a day to day basis.

The communion of saints is the church triumphant – those who have died and the church militant – an old-fashioned way of referring to ourselves, the church still here on earth.

So, it is a communion of the still alive and the faithful departed and no-where is this more true than in the sacrament of Holy Communion – where we enact the mystical union between God and ourselves through Jesus Christ.

This mystical union joins us with God and “us” in this case includes all those who have gone before us in this spiritual union.

This is brought alive to Orthodox Christians every time they step inside a church because the Sacred architecture of an Orthodox church.

Every Orthodox church is a representation of the entire universe, with the Dome representing Heaven usually resplendent with a icon of Christ Pantokrator (meaning almighty or all powerful.)

Then depicted are the saints and Angels cascading down the walls, a riot of colour to enclose the congregation who are joining in with what is happening eternally in heaven here on earth.

You are enclosed, held, safe, in the ever-loving embrace of Christ and it is in this arena that the participants commune with Christ which is a communion with everyone standing around you and everyone symbolically depicted on the walls.

Christian experience of communion is expanded beyond the purely private and personal and becomes corporate and the church becomes what it declares itself to be – the body of Christ.

In the letter to the Hebrews the author describes in chapter 11 all the heroes  of the faith starting with Abraham running through Isaac, Jacob, Joseph through thousands of years of Hebrew history and all the prophets, who despite their faith never saw the true messiah, and in chapter 12 he describes them as a great cloud of witnesses surrounding us.

So who gains access to the kingdom of heaven?

Well in the gospel reading today Jesus gives us the characteristics of a follower of the way of Christ and they share these traits;

The poor in spirit, the meek, those who are constantly mourning for the way things are in the world, those longing for the rule of God, those who don’t depend on status and privilege, those who are peacemakers.

Jesus in the beatitudes is describing the disposition of people who want to follow him on the way that leads to God.

Jesus says himself that it is a narrow way and few find it as he says a little later in chapter 7 of Matthew.

Those that are not sharing those characteristics shown by his followers logically need to “repent” which means we should change our hearts and minds so we too start to become more Christ-like, that is exhibiting the same character that Christ describes in the blessings. But repentance is a process not a once for all event so what helps to encourage that change?

You encourage that process of change by doing what we are all doing here this morning – hearing and responding to the word of God and participating in the life of God through communion and practising the presence of God in our prayer lives.

It is a short step of faith to realise that in Holy Communion we are communing not only with God and your neighbours but everyone that has died and gone before us in a mystical union.

Amen

Love is a many splendored thing

SUNDAY 25th OCTOBER 

Leviticus 19: 1-2, 15-18. A Dictionary defines Holiness as “perfect in goodness and righteousness” and the attempt to define what this means when it is lived out is spelled out in different parts of the Bible including Leviticus. Verse 18 carries the most important meaning identified by Jesus because he quotes from it in our gospel reading today – Love your neighbour as yourself as the natural corollary to “Love your God”.

1 Thessalonians 2: 1-8. The watchwords that describe what Paul is saying here are courage and integrity. We need the courage of our convictions to “preach the gospel”, a very grand way of saying that we owe it to God to not be cowed or embarrassed when asked what we believe – to be strong . We can “preach the gospel” through our actions as well of course, which requires integrity of thought, word and deed.

Matthew 22: 34-46. The centre of the law – the greatest commandment – is to love God with all your heart, soul and mind (or strength). A Jewish teacher would expand this by saying that to Love God was to obey the law from the heart (i.e. The will), to risk one’s life (or soul) in defence of the faith and to put ones strength (property and resources) at the disposal of Israel. This way love is not an emotion but a programme of action. Thus, love can be commanded. And the second commandment is like it. Love is commanded towards one’s neighbour.   

 

"Love is a many splendored thing" as Nat King Cole sang all those years ago and defies adequate definition because it encompasses so many different things; such as a mother’s love, which is different from the love of a husband or wife which is different from me saying I love wine! The Greeks had five different words for different kinds of love, but in English we only have the one. Consider this statement from the gospel;

"You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul and with all your mind and you shall love your neighbour as yourself.

On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."

To which a modern person brought up in our secularised western culture would have a right to ask.

“Hold on a minute – you can’t command someone to Love – love is an emotion which you have or don’t have for another person”.

They would feel justified in asking the question because in western culture the meaning of love has narrowed to mainly describe the emotion of romantic love, excluding every other meaning. Where it is used in a wider context to describe familial love that would still be seen as an emotion, purely an instinctual one that again, cannot be commanded.

Yet the Bible and more particularly Jesus himself who is the arbiter of Christian belief after all, insists that Love can be commanded.

Which must mean of course that Love is understood in the Bible rather differently to the way we normally understand it.

In the Bible, Love covers the full range of meanings but in the New Testament it is seen more as a “programme of action” than a simple emotion which is how Love can be commanded.

The command to Love one’s neighbour doesn’t mean having a warm fuzzy feeling towards Mr. Bloggs who has just insulted your wife/child/husband. You are justified in disliking him intensely (or disliking his actions more properly) but still commanded to Love him – which means acting justly towards him, helping him if he is in need, being patient and kind towards him, wanting the best for him, treating him as you yourself would wish to be treated – loving him AS yourself.

Love in this light is more an act of the will, than a simple emotion. Incidentally that doesn’t make it any easier, humanly speaking to love one’s enemy so we should ask for God’s help when our resources are exhausted. Consider this seminal verse from John’s gospel;

“God so loved the world that he gave his only son that everyone who believes in him shall not perish but may have eternal life”

Love here is given flesh in an act of sacrifice – an act of the will – and as Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane “Yet not as I will but as you will”

None of this excludes romantic or filial love or seeks to replace one understanding with another. But the Christian understanding of love is an expanded vision of Love that always seeks to embrace a wider understanding that includes a total response of mind body and spirit.

Preaching the gospel – which is simply letting people know that they are loved by God - is an act of service, which is an act of the will.

Pray for the courage to be able to do so and pray also for the gentleness and wisdom to communicate that knowledge in a meaningful and straightforward way which will look different in different contexts and with different personalities.

And all the time remember that the reason we are commanded to love others is that God loved us first. We are simply sharing his love with people who don’t know that they are loved.

Amen

 

St. Luke

 

Sunday 18^th October – St. Luke

 

Isaiah 35: 3-6. If it is true that “without a vision the people perish” (proverbs 29:18) it is essential that God’s messengers make God’s certain salvation the centre of their message. Isaiah writes about a wonderful inspiring vision of salvation, the kind of inspiring vision that Luke emulates centuries later in his gospel.

2 Timothy 4: 5-7. A forlorn Paul sounds beleaguered. The one bright spot – humanly speaking – is that Luke has remained faithful and is with him, giving him support. Loyalty is a devotion or faithfulness to a person or concept or entity.  Luke here is showing loyalty to Paul but both Paul and Luke are together loyal to the revelation of God in Jesus Christ.

Luke 10: 1-9. Luke writes of Jesus sending out evangelists to preach that “The Kingdom of God has come near”. In Christian theology the content of the kingdom is co-terminus with Jesus Christ himself. Jesus instructs the missionaries to travel light, accept hospitality when it is offered and demonstrate the difference that the healing power of God can have when his reality is introduced to any situation. Some scholars believe that Luke himself was one of the seventy sent out.

 

St. Luke has a very distinctive contribution to Christianity. He was a friend and pupil of St. Paul and in the material he selected for his gospel he showed that the truths that Paul proclaimed were not novel ideas but rooted in the life and teaching of Jesus himself.

His gospel is good news – not biography. It should be read as a message of what God has done for us in Jesus. So what are the distinguishing characteristics of his gospel that shine through his text.

Perhaps the most marked characteristic of Luke is his emphasis on the universality of the Christian faith. From Simeon’s song about Christ being a light to the gentiles to the end where repentance and forgiveness of sins should be preached to all nations, the central theme is that Jesus is the saviour of the whole world.

Rather than trace Jesus’ ancestry back to Abraham, the ancestor of the Jewish people as Matthew does in his gospel Luke traces his ancestry back to Adam in chapter 3 stressing that he is of significance to anyone ever born. For the same reason Luke gives such a prominent place to the Samaritans in the gospel

Jesus is good news for the whole world.

In that light we see the special emphasis Luke gives to the outcasts of society. in the parable of the female sinner who anoints his feet with ointment, the lost sheep, the lost coin, the pharisee and the publican, the thief on the cross all work together to emphasise that we are not saved by works but by the grace of God.

His gospel gives more emphasis than the other gospels about Jesus’ special compassion for the poor and the danger of riches. It is Luke who puts these words into Mary’s mouth “he has filled the hungry with good things and the rich he has sent empty away”.

So Luke relates Jesus’ teaching to the problem of materialism because  it pushed God from the centre of life.

Another special characteristic of Luke’s gospel is the prominence he gives to women. While the birth narratives in Matthew centre on Joseph, in Luke Mary is at the centre and women feature prominently in the stories, including those about Mary and Martha. We can trace back to Jesus here Paul’s doctrine that in Christ there is neither male nor female.

Finally Luke gives more stress to the Holy Spirit and prayer both in the life of Jesus and in the continuing witness of the church. The Spirit is present with the people who are prophesying both John the Baptist and Jesus and Jesus’ career is started “in the power of the spirit” and he interprets his mission in Isaiah’s words “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me” and of course Pentecost is the important emphasis of the book of Acts but they are prepared for that event in his gospel with the words “stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high”.

Luke connects prayer with Jesus baptism, his calling of the twelve, the great confession, the transfiguration. This links Jesus to Paul’s injunction to “pray at all times” (Ephesians 6)

 Luke never claims to be an actual eyewitness to the risen Christ but his writings became instrumental in binding the young movement of people together who witnessed to the effect that his Spirit had on them.

In modern parlance we might call Luke an influencer and a theological educator.

He helped change hearts and minds, and even if he was one of the seventy sent out in the gospel story, or helped Paul on his missionary journeys, like Paul, he changed many millions more hearts and minds through the written word – many more than anyone could have done in person.

So by emphasising the universality of the gospel, the compassion for the poor and lost, the special emphasis he gave to women and the centrality of the Holy Spirit and prayer, Luke has helped mould the character of Christianity and provides the letters and theology of Paul with the grounding these principles had in the life of Jesus.

Luke’s gospel is good news and is a message of what God has done for us all in Christ. It is a testimony of faith to be interpreted by faith. The good news will only have the power of good news when it becomes good news for us.

 

Walk this Way

 

Sunday 11^th October – Trinity 18 – Proper 23

Isaiah 25: 1-9. A text rich in itself and with strong echoes in the New Testament which speaks of the salvation of God destroying even death itself. Death being the greatest thing that prevents us making sense of the world. Jews knew this day as “The day of the Lord” and is represented in both old (as here) and new testaments as a great feast or wedding banquet as in Jesus’ parables in Matthew and Luke.

Philippians 4: 1-9. Peace is the keynote of this passage and it amounts to the same as the protective shield of salvation. Healing, peace, health, salvation are all synonyms of each other. It includes the famous injunction not to worry but to place all our cares and faith in God. If only we could all take this to heart – me very much included – how different the character of our community would be!

Matthew 22: 1-14. This parable recounts how the Jews (the original guests) rejected the gospel and were destroyed (possibly a reference to the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in AD70) and then the people from the street (good and bad) representing us – the gentiles – were invited. The most perplexing thing is how one guest was upbraided for not having the correct wedding clothes. The generally accepted explanation for this is that the wedding clothes represent “doing” the will of our Father in heaven and not just giving lip service to faith. The point here is that this person was subject to God’s judgement not human judgement here on earth.

 

In the parable there is a man invited to the wedding banquet who is then attacked because he isn’t wearing the right clothes! That’s a bit strong in anyone’s language so what is going on? As ever we have to understand the symbolic language to get what it really means.

A clue comes earlier in Matthew’s gospel Chapter 7 verses 7 to 23 where there is a passage that I think is what the parable means when it says that he wasn’t wearing the right wedding clothes. It goes like this and it has always sent a chill down my spine.

²¹ ‘Not everyone who says to me, “Lord, Lord”, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only one who does the will of my Father in heaven. ²² On that day many will say to me, “Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many deeds of power in your name?” ²³ Then I will declare to them, “I never knew you; go away from me, you evildoers.”

I always automatically think “is that me?” What did that man lack? He seems to be preaching and prophesying in the name of Jesus.

What the man doesn’t have, even while he is doing all those things is the most fundamental Christian attribute of Love. And we know from Paul don’t we that if we have not love then we are just a clanging cymbal.

The parable says that if you talk the talk you must walk the walk. Words and actions have to match which is why when they don’t match the shock is amplified – which is why when Christians go off the rails or are caught out doing something they shouldn’t, it is always big news.

Probably the most shocking and distressing scenario is the story of abuse in the church that raised its ugly head again during this week. All the priests that have ever been caught abusing youngsters, so much in the news again this week were missing that great attribute of real Love. What they had was perverted lust – a very different animal indeed.

Love doesn’t and wouldn’t force, coerce, trap, demean, abuse or exploit for personal gain.

One of my duties in Romania was visiting British prisoners in Jail. Paedophiles were well represented because of the poverty and neediness in Romania at that time and it was cheap to get to and corruption was endemic. One of them was a priest. A truly pitiful case because he couldn’t discern the difference between real Love and sexual lust. Or perhaps he deliberately blurred the difference in his mind to try and convince himself that he really wasn’t doing anything wrong.

But his words of love were clothed in sin, and abuse. He wasn’t wearing the right wedding clothes, to use the symbolism of the parable

Now admittedly that is an extreme example I have used to make the more generally applicable point that our words proclaiming love of God and neighbour must be given substance if they are to have any reality to them.

1 Corinthians 13 is read at weddings and many other occasions and I think because of that we have become immune to its hard edge.

Read it again. It doesn’t matter what else I do, or achieve, without love I am nothing and I gain nothing.

When someone dies, the only reality we have left is the love that existed between us. That can never be taken away and besmirched or belittled.  

Love is the binding force of the universe and as John says in his first letter this is because quite simply – God is Love.