Comments (0)

By padre.will, 8 April 2012 21:04

Acts 10.34-43;  Psalm 118.1-2, 14-24;  1 Corinthians 15.1-11;  John 20.1-18 or Mark 16.1-8.

I expect most of my parishioners will be well aware already — as you will be now — that my custom at the Easter Vigil Mass is to read the Easter Sermon of the great preacher of the ancient Church, St. John Chrysostom.  Sometimes I feel brave enough to add a few words after.  Sometimes I just let the words stand on their own.  St. John lived in the latter half of the 4th century in Greece — born in the Ancient Christian seat of Antioch — the home of one of the first seven Churches — and he rose to become Patriarch of Constantinople before he was deposed and exiled as the result of a rather nasty power struggle in the early 5th century.  (I guess some things never change.)  Chrysostom means Golden Tongue in Greek—and I believe that his words at Easter provide a sterling example of why this was.  So, without further ado, I give you …

The Easter Sermon of St. John Chrysostom

Is there any who is a devout lover of God?  Let him enjoy this beautiful bright festival!

Is there anyone who is a grateful servant?  Let her rejoice and enter into the joy of her Lord!

Are there any weary from fasting?  Let them now receive their wages!

If any have toiled from the first hour, let them receive their due reward;

If any have come after the third hour, let them with gratitude join in the feast!

Those that arrived after the sixth hour, let them not doubt; for they too shall sustain no loss.

If any tarried until the ninth hour, let her not hesitate; but let her come too.

And he who arrived only at the eleventh hour, let him not be afraid by reason of his delay.

For the Lord is gracious and receives the last even as the first.

He gives rest to them that come at the eleventh hour, as well as to them that toiled from the first.

To this one He gives, and upon another He bestows.

He accepts the works as He greets the endeavour.

The deed He honours and the intention He commends.

Let us all enter into the joy of the Lord!

First and last alike receive your reward; rich and poor, rejoice together!

Sober and slothful, celebrate the day!

You that have kept the fast, and·· you that have not,·· rejoice today for the table is richly laden!

Feast royally on it; the calf is fatted.  Let no one go away hungry.

Partake, all, of the cup of faith.  Enjoy, all, the riches of His goodness!

Let no one grieve at her poverty, for the universal kingdom has been revealed.

Let no one mourn that he has fallen again and again, for forgiveness has risen from the grave.

Let no one fear death, for the death of our Saviour has set us free.

He has vanquished death by enduring it.

He destroyed Hades when he descended into it.

He put it into an uproar even as it tasted of His flesh.

Isaiah foretold this when he said, “You, O Hell, have been troubled by encountering Him below.”

It is in an uproar, for it is destroyed.  It is in an uproar, for it is abolished.

It is in an uproar, for it is now made captive.

Hell took a body — and discovered God.  It seized earth — and encountered Heaven.

It took what it saw — and was overcome by what· it· did· not· see.

O death, where is thy sting?  O Hades, where is thy victory?

Christ is risen, and you, O death, are annihilated!   Christ is risen, and the demons are cast down!

Christ is Risen, and the angels rejoice!  Christ is Risen, and life is liberated!

Christ is Risen, and the tomb is emptied of its dead;

for Christ having risen from the dead, is become the first-fruits of those who have fallen asleep.

To him be glory and power forever and ever.  Amen!

Comments (0)

By padre.will, 6 April 2012 11:30

Isaiah 52.13-53.12;  Psalm 22;  Hebrews 10.16-25 (or 4.14-16, 5.7-9);  John 18.1-19.42.

Y’all—I want to spend a moment in simple reflection as we consider what exactly happened for us—and, for that matter, for God himself—on Good Friday.  I come before you not as someone who claims great insight into the holy mysteries of God, but rather as a fellow pilgrim towards God—trying, like you, to make sense of it all.  So.  If what I’ve been churning over in my mind makes sense to you today, well fine.  And, if not, that’s o.k., too—just as long as I encourage you to think and engage with the real meat of Good Friday, somehow, between you and God, in your own way with God.  That will be enough.  And, with that in mind, my own thoughts are these.

You know what I think that death is?  I mean real death—death apart from the eternal salvation we’re promised in God?  I think it’s nothing.  Literally.  Not in the sense of that poem that we pull out at funerals so often:  “death is nothing at all; I’ve just gone into the next room.”  But what I mean is that I believe that, left to its own devices, death … is nothing.  It’s oblivion.  The Bible teaches us that we were formed from the dust, and unto dust we shall return.  It’s the one line that every person in the entire United Kingdom knows from funerals they’ve attended:  “earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”  I know, of course, that the Biblical teaching is actually a bit more nuanced than that.  But, as best I can make out, from scripture and tradition, what I hold personally is that God created us from nothing—God, the source of all that is—and, therefore, without him sustaining us in some form of life—in some form of being—then there’s nothing else for us to go to, but back to that oblivion from where we came.

Now, to me:  this is what’s so mind-numbingly shocking about Good Friday.  Because what I’ve just told you I think about death:  that is what I hear when you say to me that Christ died on the Cross for our sins.  See, here’s the thing:  it’s not, in and of itself, shocking that a man could die; that’s something that happens every day.  But what is shocking about Christ’s death is that Jesus of Nazareth, so we teach, was not just man; he also was God.  What’s shocking is that God could die—that God could—and, for our sake, would—choose to seal himself to that fate:  the exact opposite of what it means to be God.  Because, if I’m right about what death is—and maybe I’m not; who knows?—but if I’m right, what it means is that, for those three days, even the Trinity ceased to exist.  That’s how much he poured himself out for our sake.

Friends, that’s overwhelming.  Christians have spent centuries—millenia—disagreeing on various points of faith and doctrine; and the one constant that we do have is that we all believe in God:  Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—one in essence, and indivisible.  And yet, for three days—whilst Christ the Son laid in the grave—as best as I can make sense of it—it means that everything that God is … was thrown into chaos.  When we talk of Christ’s sacrifice on this cross, when we talk of Christ pouring himself out for our sake, what we’re saying is that God—the God that we unfailingly define as the very essence of peace and love and joy—that same God—Son and Father and Spirit—gave himself over to agony and pain and suffering right to the very core of his being.  For three days, there was only Father and Spirit, because the Son took upon himself the death that he did not wish for us to suffer.

We know, of course, how the story ends:  on Easter Sunday, Mary Magdalene will show up at the tomb, only to find that the Father and Spirit could not let that stand.  On the Great Feast of Easter, Christendom shall come together as one to proclaim the same great truth that the angel proclaimed to Mary and that we have proclaimed these two thousand years:  that he is not in the grave—that he is risen, just as he said he would.  And, what’s more, when Christ arose—not just Christ the God, but Christ the man—it became for us our great sign that we, too, will rise with him.  It is the glorious sign that God did not create humanity to die—that God created humanity to live—that, in Christ, we never have to taste the oblivion of death—because he has tasted it for us, and in the power of God’s Spirit, he has won the victory over it for us.

But, for today—for Good Friday—as we gaze on the wood of the cross—whatever we may think death is—and there may be as many opinions on that as there are people—the point is that Christ wasn’t just away on holiday somewhere.  He was dead.  It was through his death that we need never taste our own.  God sacrificed himself that we might live.  So do let us ever be mindful.  And ever be thankful.

Amen and amen.

Comments (0)

By padre.will, 5 April 2012 17:22

Exodus 12.1-14;  Psalm 116.1-2, 12-19;  1 Corinthians 11.23-26;  John 13.1-17, 31b-35;  Matthew 26.36-56. 

Friends, make no mistake:  this night is serious business.  It is filled with the language of sacrifice.  Christ knows the gig is up.  Less than 24 hours from now, he’ll be dead.  Whether he knows this by divine intuition, or whether he knows this simply by observing the storm gathering rapidly around him, the Gospel does not quite say.  And I suppose it doesn’t really matter, in the end.  We know—because the Bible tells us—we know how it all will come to pass.  The Last Supper—“this is my body, this is my blood”—followed by a terrified trek out into the Garden of Gethsemane to pray, indeed, to beg that, if it’s at all possible, this fate might bypass him—and finally betrayal by one of his inner circle.  All of that happens this night, before the authorities come to drag him off for trial.   Christ’s disciples have been following him around Palestine for three years—as, for that matter, have we for so much of our lives—followed him on his journey and mission, week by week, as the words of scripture and the story’s pattern are brought to us afresh year after year.  We have witnessed great miracles:  the feeding of 5000, the healing of the blind and the lepers, the turning of water into wine.  We have heard the great teaching:  “how blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”  We have seen—we have been amazed—by how confidently and swiftly he has despatched the Pharisees who would test his orthodoxy.  “Show me a coin; whose head is this?  Caesar’s?  Well, then, give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and give to God what is God’s.”  On occasion we’ve even seen him cross, or exhausted, or weeping.  But what we have never seen—what truly should shock us to our core—is a Christ laid so low as he is this night.  Frightened.  Grieved.  Despondent.  Cold.  Lonely.  And this, the Son of God.  If we ever needed proof that he was truly human—and subject to all that human beings experience and feel—perhaps there is none better than the events of this night.

And yet, in the midst of it all, he remains faithful.  Faithful to the Father who sent him—“yet not my will, but yours,” he said at Gethsemane.  And faithful to us—even faithful to those who within hours would either betray or abandon him.  “This is my body,” he says, “given for you; this is my blood,” he says, “shed for you.  Do this each time you do it, in remembrance of me.”  Knowing full well what is to come, Christ gives them a sign:  a glimmer of hope that his death will not be meaningless like so many other Roman crucifixions; indeed, a glimmer of hope that, before all was said and done, there still would be a body of the faithful actually to take this meal once again as the message of what he has done for our sake.  And so there is, even two thousand years later.  Even here tonight in Monmouthshire.  Then, likewise, he gives them a commandment; that’s the actual meaning of the term Maundy Thursday; it comes from the Latin, mandare:  to command.  “A new commandment I give unto you,” says Christ, “that you should love one another, as I have loved you.”  Y’see, it’s not just a question of having a body of the faithful to celebrate the memorial; the question is what kind of body will we be?  And Christ answers that question, not through words, but through one, pointed action:  the washing of his disciples’ feet.  It was an act of humility, yes; so that’s one way that we’re called to be his community.  And, together with that, it was an act of hospitality; the washing of feet was the way that a host greeted his honoured guests, tired from a trip, into his home.  And tonight, Christ in his Church invites you all forward to have your feet washed.  And I suspect that many of y’all will not find that a comfortable thing:  there aren’t many of us who are proud of our feet.  You’ll be in good company:  St. Peter himself, as we’ve seen, had his own reservations—vocally expressed.  But the point is that we serve one another—it is our calling as Christians—in things both great and small—in things both honoured and humbling.  And this is the sign that Christ himself gave us—a sign that Christians continue each Maundy Thursday, the world over:  from the Pope in St. Peter’s Square; to the Archbishop of Canterbury in his Cathedral; to priests and deacons all over North and South America—and even here to Monmouthshire.  You are Christ’s honoured guests this evening, as we join in the meal that marks his last night before death.  And so I ask the honour of receiving you as Christ would have me do—by washing your feet as a sign of Christ’s great love for you—and in my own faltering way, I hope, as a sign of my own.

Comments (0)

By padre.will, 28 February 2012 08:12

Hi, y’all.  My new status as single parent seems to keep me perpetually behind in updating this blog; but I’m doing my best to keep up and get things a little more orderly as time chugs on.  Bear with me, and we’ll get there together.  Here’s my sermon for last Sunday.  Hope it’s still worth something to y’all.

Genesis 9.8-17;  Psalm 25.1-10;  1 Peter 3.18-22;  Mark 1.9-15.

A few days ago, on Ash Wednesday, many of us gathered to call to mind our sins and our failings—and, you’ll remember, I’m sure, that sin isn’t just the evil that people do that makes the front page of the Sun every day.  (Or, for that matter, the evil that the Sun does to get their front pages!)  Rather, sin is all those things that we all do—imperfect people that we are—to put distance between ourselves and others, to put separation between ourselves and our God.  Sin involves all those things, big and small, that give us pause for remorse:  things that we wish perhaps we hadn’t done or said.  Things that we wish we could take back; but, being merely human, and not time travellers like the Doctor, we cannot.  So we gathered on Wednesday to call these things to mind.  We took the sign of ashes on our foreheads—that ancient sign that goes right the way back some 5000 years through the scriptural story.  Ashes a sign that we are sorry—as I explained to the kids at Caerwent Church’s craft club a couple of days ago—and they looked at me like I was mad.  I could see it in their eyes:  “Ashes and sackcloth? Why would they want to do that?”  All the same, that’s the traditional sign that we wish to turn from what hinders our relationships—and our reconciliation—with one another and with God.

The ashes, we are often told, are the beginning of a Lenten journey—a journey of self-discovery—indeed, a journey of God-discovery—a time when, just like Christ in the desert, we spend 40 days in prayer and fasting—setting aside (at least a little bit) our own desires and wants in order to seek God’s will for our lives and for what we do out in the world.  You might, therefore, expect that today’s lessons—these readings for the first Sunday of Lent—would be about beginnings—about starting off on our way—about turning our faces away from sin and towards God—that they might be about the long road ahead—for, indeed, 40 days is actually a long time to spend looking inside ourselves,· even in the expectation that in so doing, God will form us anew.

But, the funny thing is:  our readings are not about that at all, are they?  Actually, what they’re about—every single one of them—is a journey’s end.  More specifically, they’re about where the journey ends—and that’s in God’s promise of reconciliation to humanity.  In the Old Testament, we pick up the story of Noah—seemingly at random—right as the flood waters have subsided.  We all, of course, know the story of Noah—that God had flooded an earth filled with wicked people, and he chose Noah and his family to survive on board a great ark—to keep alive the hope of life both for humanity and for the animal kingdom.  But today, without the least bit of introduction, we pick up this story right at the end—as God gives Noah the rainbow as a sign that he has reconciled humanity to himself and will never flood the earth again.  The promise of a God who always keeps his promises.  It is set before us as a matter of course.

Likewise, the psalmist recalls the transgressions of his youth—whatever they may be—big or small—and, Lawd-almighty, do I remember my youthful transgressions!  He talks about behaviours of an unthinking past that, with time and maturity, hindsight and reflection, he has sought to put aside.  And he asks God to blot them out:  “do not even remember, O Lord, the sins of my youth,” he says—for I seek now your way, with faith and humility.  And what really matters here is he says this in the absolute confidence that in fact God will do exactly as asked:  he will forget those sins.  Confidence that the same God who sent the rainbow for Noah—God who is bigger than all the world, bigger than any failing that we can throw at him—has already set aside his failings.  The God of the psalmist is a God who, by definition, writes reconciliation at the heart of of his relationship with human beings.  He is a God who “instructs sinners in his way”, who “leads the humble in what is right”—whose paths “are steadfast love and faithfulness.”

And, if that weren’t enough, St. Peter even goes the psalmist one better.  For Peter has seen God in the flesh:  he has walked with Christ—he has sat at his feet and heard his teachings—and, most importantly, he has been—very pointedly—the recipient of Christ’s forgiveness.  Because we all know that this Peter who teaches us today about baptism for the remission of sins—this is precisely the same Peter who, in the depths of fear and misery on Good Friday, publicly denied any knowledge of Christ.  Yet Christ not only forgave him—but he made him the first leader in his Church.  Here is a man who, through God’s forgiveness, became a lion of faith—the rock of faith upon which the church as we know it was founded.  So Peter knows—up close and personal—that when God grants us room for repentance and turning, there cannot fail to be forgiveness awaiting us at the end.  For, in Christ, as he tells us, our sin—our weakness—is set aside already:  in Christ, the righteous who died for the unrighteous—the perfect one who gave his life for the flawed—in Christ, our sins and failings are swept away entirely—not in the sense that a broken thing is repaired—but actually, in the end, they are simply set aside without any further thought whatsoever.  God simply wills that, in Christ, we should no longer dwell in sin, but rather stand before him as perfectly as Christ himself.  This is so, Peter says, precisely because of God’s free and perfect choice to do it this way, just because he can.  Peter’s been through it all himself—and so, when he speaks, he speaks from real knowledge that, for those of us who walk in faith, our journey’s end is guaranteed—and it ends—it must end—in the very heart of God whom the saints and angels adore.

Finally, of course, there is Christ himself, as we hear today from Mark’s Gospel.  For in Christ, we get the fullest story of the journey that or 40 days of Lent are based upon.  Importantly, Mark’s Gospel tells us that Christ did not even set foot in the desert before he was baptised—before God had already declared him the beloved Son, in whom he was well pleased.  That means that, when he returned, he did not preach repentance in the mere hope that we might earn God’s forgiveness. Rather, what Christ preached was repentance for so that we might take up God’s forgiveness.  The Kingdom of God is at hand, he says.  Not far off and risky.  But right here, right now, and tangible.   There is a promise—given—this day:  the Kingdom of God, presented before us, reconciled to us.  We have a choice set before us, too, of course—to turn away from God’s love into that which is truly unknown, or to turn towards God’s love.  But, in the latter case, there can be no question of where that journey will end.

And so in all these things we see that our Lenten journey is not and cannot be aimless—with an undetermined end.  Just like it happens with Google maps and satnavs:  the end of the journey is shown us from the outset.  And, just to be clear:  it’s not my aim to minimise the importance of the journey.  We human beings are created to walk through our lives—to live ever in discovery of who we are and what God means to us.  We may well know that the Kingdom of God is coming—that it is made real in our lives this very day by God’s unchanging declaration that it will be so.  And, yet,· to unravel the mysteries of the Kingdom—even to begin imagining the unimaginable—we must walk with God in his Spirit, just as Christ once walked with us.

For that good reason, the Church sets aside time each year when we can pause and discover what the psalmist calls “the paths of the Lord”.  Whatever discipline we have chosen to undertake for Lent—be it large or small—whether we have chosen to give something up or take something on—the goal is that we do so in prayer—in search for the Lord who guides us to himself.  Even Christ himself, human as he became, he did not come to proclaim the Kingdom without first dwelling in the desert and wrestling with the Spirit as he sought to discover just what kind of Messiah he would be.  Each year, then, in the same way, as we take on board some new way of looking at our lives, of turning from our own weakness and into God’s strength, we find that a new pathway has been discovered—that God has led us a little further—and a little closer to the Kingdom that, as Christ says, has come near.

So let us take this Lent—this journey—quite seriously, this and every year.  But let us do so, not in the mere hope that God will come to guide us—but in the confidence that this journey is like none other on earth—for this is a journey in which God is faithful to the sojourner—not only in the destination that awaits, but all along the way, as well.

Comments (0)

By padre.will, 31 January 2012 09:05

Two days late posting this one.  Sorry about that, y’all.  I did manage to preach it on Sunday, though.

Deuteronomy 18.15-20;  Psalm 111;  Revelation 12.1-5a;  Mark 1.21-28.

Once upon a time, there was a columnist for a major newspaper.  He lived in London and, by virtue of his job, circulated amongst some very important people, both professionally and socially.  He was—in a word—the kind of guy who tended to get invited to all the right kinds of parties—a lifestyle he rather enjoyed, too, I might add—circulating, as he did, amongst the great and the good—more often the great than the good, actually.  Up-and-coming politicos, rising stars in business, hot-shot barristers, TV chefs, etc., etc., etc.  He enjoyed all this.  Or at least he did for a while.  Because that’s the thing about all the right kinds of parties:  after a while, they all sort of become the same.  You see the same sorts of people there; and all they’re talking about is the same sorts of stuff:  who wore what to the last party, who got drunk and embarrassed themselves, what’s the new best stock option, who just bought a brand new Porsche last week and wrapped it round a lamp-post three days later.  It was just interminable, actually.

And, after a while, the journalist finally decided for himself that, amidst it all, nobody was really ever much listening anyway.  To them, too, it was all just an endless stream of babble to keep them occupied for want of anything more productive to do.  So, one day our young man decided to test this theory of his.  He’d make a point of arriving late to parties, for example.  Then, when he got there, he’d apologise profusely: “I’m sooo sorry.  I stopped off just for a few moments down in Soho to murder my mistress.  I’m afraid it took a little longer than I planned on.”  “Oh, well,” the hostess would say—and she wouldn’t blink an eye.  “Never mind.  We’re all frightfully busy these days—don’t you worry about a thing; there’ll be twenty more coming in after you.  So just enjoy yourself.”  And then our boy would mingle a bit—and sooner or later he’d meet someone for the first time, and they’d ask him what he did for a living, and he’d say, “Well, actually, I’m a consultant for the American penal system—I specialise in the science of lethal injections—basically, I’m a glorified executioner.”  And, like clockwork, they’d all reply, well, how terr-ibly interesting.  How’s business looking for you this year?  Is your company listed on the FTSE?”  And so on and so forth it went.  Thus, not long after, our journalist wrote one good long column about his experiences—and then he quit going to all the right kinds of parties.  Because, for all the words, and for all the trendiness, and for all the importance of the people there, in the end—nothing· really·· was being said.··  And, certainly, nothing was being heard.

And yet the story does go to show that, even at their most frivolous, words can be very, very powerful.  In this instance, inasmuch as there was any truth amongst these people—it was, every time, obscured by the words.  Words used as a veil to truth—perhaps even to block out truth—the truth of what those people were feeling—the truth of their relationships with one another—the truth of their lives and their needs—the truth of their joys and their pains—the stream of words hid them all.  And yet the words themselves were obvious; they were simple to decode because of their sheer frivolity—and their sheer volume.

Now, with Christ, as today’s Gospel shows, the use of words and their power works just the opposite way.  See, here in this case, the words Christ uses are few—and, what’s more, they may seem obscure, perhaps even a bit uncomfortable, to those of us who are told, from week to week, how we must go out into the world proclaiming his name.  I mean, think about that:  there are several times in scripture when someone twigs to what Jesus is—that he is the promised messiah, Son of the Most High God—and when they announce it, he quiets them.  It happens once with his disciples:  “Who do you say that I am?”, he asks.  “We say that you’re the Christ,” they reply.  “Well, very good,’ he replies—and then he cautions them not to tell anyone.  Same thing here.  The demon clocks him immediately:  “I know who you are.  Have you come to destroy us?  You’re the Holy One of God!”  And Christ replies:  “Be silent!”··  Understand, therefore:  the language used in the story; he’s not just casting out demons.  He’s shutting down their words, too.  Because he knows that words are important.  And yet, this story—if I’m honest—has always confused me.  I can recall, from the time I was a little boy, looking at this story—and the others like it—and I’d ask myself “why was he keeping quiet on this one?  What did he have to hide?”

Well, the moral of the story—in so far as Mark actually states it—is simple enough.  Christ isn’t just messing about with words.  Those few that he uses—and there were many religious authorities in his day (and in ours, for that matter) who use rather more words than this—but the words that Christ chose to use were words of authority.  For Christ did not teach, Mark says, as the synagogue leaders did before him—this carpenter from the back woods—he did not teach as they did.  Rather, he came off as something quite different:  he came across as one who taught with authority.

But the key, I’m beginning to think—and the point on which Mark doesn’t elaborate quite so much—is in where that authority lies.  And in this case, it lies in the synagogue; that’s where Mark opens the tale.  Not with Jesus out healing and casting out demons, but at the synagogue.  He opens the story not with Christ going about proclaiming his messiahship—in fact, Christ never seems to do much of that—but simply sitting in the synagogue· teaching.  Matter of fact, the demon business seems to be use more as an illustration than anything else.  Because, first, Jesus taught as one with authority; he is sat in the synagogue to begin with, after all.  And only then—as if more proof were needed—does he cast out the demon in Capernaum.

Perhaps that’s where a good chunk of the truth lies.  Because in Jesus’s day—in the political hotbed that Palestine was (and remains)—messiahs were ten-a-penny.  “I know a messiah when I see one,” says John Cleese in The Life of Brian—“‘And I should know.  I’ve followed a few!”  It really was like that.  And y’all know what?  It’s true even today:  there’s always someone perfectly happy to come along claiming to the be the messiah.  Who remembers what happened in Waco with David Koresh?  I do.  In fact, I was living in Waco just then.  He was the messiah  Who remembers Jim Jones down in Guyana?  Jonestown Massacre?  He was the messiah.  Who’s familiar with the Rev’d Sun Myung Moon?  Moonies?  He’s the messiah.  All of these guys were modern-day messiahs—all deliriously happy to shout their credentials from the rooftops—and most of whom came to a bad end.

But Jesus is different.  For Jesus knew that anyone can come along claiming to be a messiah.  For that matter, it’s easy even for a demon to have a go at one.  But Jesus—first— ·· taught·· as one who had authority.  The words proclaiming his messiahship through deed—that is, the words casting out the demon—they paled in comparison to the more basic words he spoke in the usual place of worship—expounding the scriptures in a a place just like our own church, where we gather today.  Mark places Christ’s authority, at root level, not in the casting out of the demons—the demons only shore up the point—but Mark locates Christ’s real authority in his confident, yet humble, discussion of what the scripture means in those places where scripture is discussed.  That’s where the first signs of his authority always were—from the age of twelve.  For, in the end, as Christ well knew, if you have those words on your side—if the words you use, thoughtfully and deliberately, if those words are focussed on God—then in the end you don’t really need to make a big fuss over who you are.  Use the right words and mean them—or even the wrong ones and mean them, for that matter—and who you are—who you are in relation to God—who you are in relation to your fellow human beings—will become self-evident.

As a matter of fact, that story where Jesus asked his disciples who he was—and then cautioned them to keep quiet—they didn’t know that he was the messiah because he told them; rather, they knew because they listened—and they observed—and they saw him as he went about his ministry of love—and then they drew the only conclusion they could.  They saw Christ as the messiah, not because of the volume of the words he chose—and not because of any loudness about who he claimed to be—but rather because those words he used were the right ones.  The American president, Teddy Roosevelt, was famous for saying, in respect of his foreign policy, “Speak softly—and carry a big stick.”  Good turn of phrase.  I’m not going to spend any time debating the merits of that statement as a means of diplomacy.  But the point is:  the words that Christ used had impact.  Because they were words that sought to open doors to God—simply and humbly—first of all.

So it must be with us, too.  Christ’s followers.  On the day of Pentecost, it was words—the words of Christ’s disciples—who brought three-thousand people to know of God’s saving grace.  Words that opened doors to the deepest-seated needs of men and women.  But they were words guided by God’s Holy Spirit.  Likewise we are asked—not least in scripture—to proclaim Christ’s name to a world seeking something more meaningful than the babble of words at the right kinds of parties, something more meaty than the babble of words coming out of the television every night, something more useful than the babble of words issued by the Prime Minister and every other politician every time the news turns sour on them.  But, if—in that case—the sheer volume of words is the problem—for the world always has been, and always will be, full of words—then what we must pray is that our words—like those of Christ our Lord—should be few, but substantial.

Our words can be powerful—but in order to be, they must be backed by scripture, and by a passion for understanding God’s truth.  Our words can heal—but in order to do so, they must be backed by compassion and God’s Spirit.  Our words, like Christ’s, can have authority in a world begging for fulfilment—but in order to have this, they must be—like Christ’s own words—rooted in our own thirst for God’s love and will.

Comments (0)

By padre.will, 22 January 2012 09:14

Jonah 3:1-5, 10;  Psalm 62:5-12; 1 Corinthians 7:29-31;  Mark 1:14-20.

It’s amazing what you can find on the internet.  On the one hand, I don’t know how anybody prepared a sermon before the mid-1990’s.  And, yet, on the other hand, I also have no idea how you determine the truth of anything any more; there’s so much information, misinformation, counter-information, urban mythical information out there.  And you can look it all up on Google with just five spare seconds.  And here’s what I found today.  I found out—I have no idea whether anybody’s confirmed it—but I found out that a long time ago, around the third and fourth centuries, the earliest Germanic Christians—right back when they first got Christianity—and the Roman Empire was starting to crumble—these Germans, before they’d come into a Church, they had a habit of leaving their weapons at the door.  It was a wild place and a wild time, and so they carried weapons as a matter of course—usually clubs—quite crude—but they were pretty good at putting paid to anybody or any animal that came across the wrong end.  So, basically, you’d walk up to any Church in that day and age, and what you’d find was a big pile of wooden clubs right at the back.  Eventually, this pile became, in itself, a sign that the people gathered there were called to leave behind their violence and animosity.  And, of course, the heart of the Christian message is just that:  we come together each week to the Lord’s table to share—just for a moment—God’s perfect peace, promised for his kingdom.  But where it gets interesting is here:  they didn’t just stop there.  Human beings like a bit of ritual and tradition—and where there is none, we often invent some.  And that’s what these guys did with their clubs; eventually, they made a game out of it.  After worship was over, as they were on their way out the door, the tribes would gather, and they’d set their clubs up in piles, and they’d take turns throwing big rocks at them as a sign of rejecting their sins—and when it was all said and done, whoever ended up the day with the most clubs knocked over, well that guy was the one they said had left the most sins behind him at Church.  And that, my friends, is why the internet is worth every penny I’ve ever paid for broadband:  because if it weren’t for the internet, I wouldn’t know that ten-pin bowling is all about Christian repentance!

So there we go:  we get to the point of today’s readings:  repentance.  And y’all have heard me say time and again that I don’t do hellfire and brimstone.  But that isn’t to say that we don’t have plenty of things to set aside.  We all do—and not only individually, but as a society.  And social justice y’all have certainly heard me do!  That’s my call to repentance.  Truth is:  human beings are remarkably imperfect creatures.  The Christian promise is that God is going to build a Kingdom out of his creation—that, the further we come to it, the more Christ-like we can and should seek to become.  And, yet, I look at history—and hear the calls to repentance from prophets and preachers throughout the ages—and it all seems so similar throughout the ages.

Look at the readings for today:  there’s Jonah:  worst prophet ever.  Don’t get me wrong; I love Jonah.  He’s a grumpy old cuss, and that suits me down to the ground.  But a more flawed prophet you just don’t get.  God sends Jonah to call to repentance the great, and decadent, city of Ninevah—capital of the Assyrian Empire.  Jonah doesn’t want to do it—and we all know the story of how he runs off in the opposite direction, ends up getting himself eaten by a great huge God-sent fish, spat back out, and sent back to Ninevah to behave himself and do what he’s told.  Oh, yes, my friends: he preaches the message—and, unlike me, Jonah’s got no problem at all with a bit of brimstone—and, sure enough, the Ninevites turn to God—so says the Bible.  But that doesn’t stop the rest of the world from churning on.  And, for that matter, it doesn’t even stop Jonah from sulking at God.  We hear today how the people of the great city repent.  But the rest of the story is that, after they turn, Jonah goes off and pouts about it.  What he really wanted—for whatever reason—was to see the city destroyed.  And he didn’t get it.  And the book ends with God telling Jonah to wind his neck in.

Then comes the Psalm, likewise ancient—speaking, in great hope, of God’s faithfulness—but also pointing out that, if we’re to be saved, there are things we should be saved from.  “Put no confidence in extortion, and set no vain hopes on robbery; if riches increase, do not set your heart on them.  Once God has spoken; twice have I heard this:  that power belongs to God, and steadfast love belongs to you, O Lord. For you repay to all according to their work.”  There’s no doubt here that God expects a turning away from our wrongdoing and selfishness and a turning towards his great and generous love.  God’s grace is free, said the martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer; but it’s not cheap.  Together with the promise that a Kingdom is coming—that God will build true justice in the world—that he will free the oppressed—that he will right all wrongs—is the call for human beings to turn.  “Put your faith in God,” says the Psalm, “not yourself.  And certainly not your stuff.”

Paul tells us, too, that the ills of the world are passing away—and that God’s Kingdom is at hand.  He speaks more of the expectation than the turning.  But he won’t have missed the context that Christ, too, speaks of how we stand at the cusp of God’s Kingdom coming to be—and that the first step towards that is repentance.  Turn away from these things that pass into nothing:  possessions, riches, selfishness, power, greed, injustice—turn away, turn away—and come to God.  “Follow me,” says Christ, “and I shall make you fishers of humanity”.

And the point is:  we find ourselves in a society that is not perfect.  We debate, time and again, whether our wars are right—for example.  Here’s the thing:  those Germans may have invented ten-pin bowling; but, once it was done, they still took their clubs back away from the Church building and ran off and sacked Rome.  We argue amongst ourselves whether money or healthcare is more important.  We fight tooth and nail over the welfare state, privatisation or nationalisation of banking and industry.  And we all know—do we not—that, whatever side we’re on, sometimes human failings and greed get in the way.  In that sense, we’re no different from Ninevah—as a society.  And—as a matter of fact—it’s not unusual for religious leaders to be a bit like Jonah:  ultimately, he preferred his sense of moral superiority over and above the actual transformation of the world into God’s Kingdom.

And I say all this simply to point out that—what with human nature being what it is—we are looking to God for a miracle, not to ourselves.  As a priest, I get the question all the time from people—both Churchgoers and non-Churchgoers—about whether or not the Church is really making a better world, or whether it’s just full of hypocrites.  That whole thing with St. Paul’s Cathedral and the Occupy Movement is a prime example:  there are many different ways of looking at that problem.  My own sympathy was with the protesters; but—let’s make no mistake—there’s a case to be made that a Church well-placed with the bankers is in a very good position to influence their behaviour—if we’d be prepared to wield that influence.  The point is:  we sound today very much like Ninevah of three thousand years ago—and Jerusalem of two thousand years ago—and Rome and France of one thousand years ago—and London of one hundred and fifty years ago—because we are human beings.  Repentance—a turning from our failings is crucial.  But, even more crucial is that repentance isn’t just about what we’re turning from, but about who we’re turning to:  and I call you—and me—and our nation—today—to be clear that we’re turning to God.

A Kingdom is coming—and it’s not one that, off our own back, we’ve been able to build.  In fact, looking at how similar human nature remains throughout the ages, it can be very hard to see, at times, where it’s being built at all.  But make no mistake:  the Kingdom is coming.  And that, too, is a message that has been proclaimed through the ages:  that’s what God sent Jonah to tell the people of Ninevah:  that his reign is sovereign.  That’s what Isaiah predicts to the people of Israel:  that a Saviour is on his way.  That’s what Christ turns out to be:  “a light,” as old Simeon said in the temple, “to lighten the gentiles, and the glory of his people, Israel.”  And that’s the direction to which Paul turns our faces, as he looks to the future.  He looks in hope—and believes in a miracle.  And calls us to action and faith, like Christ before him.

There may be some preachers who do hellfire pretty well—and I’m not even going to complain about that.  It can be over-done, sure.  But I guess it has its time and place.  What I’m quite sure, though, is that humanity needs God to get it right.  And we are called, first and foremost, to look positively and hopefully to God.  The words of the Psalm today open with hope—and conclude with God’s fulfilment of his promised through his perfect, never-ending, faithful love to his creatures.  And that’s the message I want us to walk away with today:  the message that, whatever are our struggles, God’s love conquers.  We are called—as Christ’s disciples—to call the world and ourselves to repentance.  The active engagement of the world is an activity we’re called to join.  But, most of all, we are called to know that repentance is far less about heaping guilt upon ourselves and our nations—but rather is more fundamentally about looking to the Kingdom and, with God’s involvement, becoming better selves and nations.  Till one day—soon, I hope; as Paul hoped before me—the turning will all be done, and—by our love and communion with God and each other—we will wake up and find that the Kingdom is complete—and, unlike the tribal inventors of bowling, we can leave our clubs and weapons, disused, and laid outside the gates of heaven forever.

Comments (0)

By padre.will, 15 January 2012 10:22

1 Samuel 3:1-20; Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18; 1 Corinthians 6:12-20; John 1:43-51.

Right—do you know the origin of name—not how you got your name—but how many of us know what our names actually mean?  I’m sure we know that children are still named David after the great King of Israel three millennia ago.  We know of John the Baptist and John the Beloved Disciple and often name our children after them.  What about less obvious names?  Here are a few from my congregation …

• Rodney = Hroda’s Island; Hroda = old germanic word for fame.  Originally a surname.
• Bridget = from Brighid, pagan Irish goddess of fire, poetry, wisdom.
• Lillian = 16th century origin. Originally a diminutive of Elizabeth; related to Lily.
• Catherine = said to mean “pure” (from Greek); but actually so old that the origin can’t be determined.
• Denise = female form of Denis. St. Denis, 3rd century, credited with converting the Gauls to Christianity.
• Robert = from Hrodebert = “bright fame”.  Therefore, related to Rodney.
• Michael = from ancient Hebrew.  It’s a question:  “who is like God?”
• Christopher = “Christ-bearer”. Medieval legend of St. Christopher tells of a man who took a stranger child across a river, and it turned out to be Christ.  Patron saint of travellers.
• Rosemary = exactly what it sounds like:  a combination of Rose and Mary—and, interestingly, Rose is related to Hroda and Hrodebert, so there’s a third one.  (And apparently the Germanic name came before it was associated with the flower—but don’t quote me on that.)

Finally, William—from the German Wilhelm—means “forceful protector” or some such thing.  And I leave it entirely to y’all, my good friends, to decide whether or not the name fits.

But—now here’s the thing:  get beyond historical meaning; let me put to you a really important question: what do our names mean to us—what do they mean those who love us—and what do names mean that we have given to the people we love?  I want to suggest something very important here:  that our names aren’t just a combination of letters to distinguish us from the other seven billion people on the planet; they’re not just something tied to a national insurance number for the Inland Revenue’s convenience.  I want to suggest that, actually, our names are deeply intimate—a crucial part of our identity—and hugely endowed with meaning.

Take a moment’s pause.  Think.  What does your name mean to you?  No need to share with the rest of us.  But—to take my own as an example—I share my name—in that American sort of way that doesn’t happen much in Britain—with both my father and grandfather.  Some of y’all will know that my daddy died when I was 20 months old—so, for me, having the name William has always meant that, though I missed out on knowing my dad, still I was able to carry something of him with me.  That’s a bond that meant a lot to me down the years—and, indeed, to my granddad, also.  It was a bond that he shared with his son—and, in turn, a particular bond that he shared with me, too—uniquely amongst his grandchildren.  He was proud of that; not, of course, at any of my cousins’ expense; he wasn’t the kind of man to play favourites.  But he was proud of it, all the same.  the thing about Granddad was that, actually, he wasn’t a man given to strong expressions of emotion.  In fact, I can’t recall that he ever said “I love you” to me—not even once.  But y’all know what he did do?  Just before Granddad died at the age of 103, he gathered up every· single· item· in his possession that had his name engraved on it—including the sign from a primary school named after him(!)—so, that, when the moment came, there would be no mistaking who would inherit those particular things.  And, friends—there was a sign of love.  And with that kind of love, no words are even necessary.  I have it all in print.  As long as I live, my Granddad’s name—and, by it, his love—lives in me.  This is what I mean when I say that names are deeply intimate; they’re not just what we’re called.  They are integral to our story—all of our names—inseparable from the depths of who, at heart, we are.  Take time to reflect on that, my friends.

And take time to reflect on the scripture, too.  Because what I want to suggest is that, when we look at the stories from scripture, the names mean something—not for the sake of any definition that we can give to the words Samuel, Philip, Nathaniel—but, rather, because God, in speaking each name—even in sending others to speak and call it—what God is actually doing is opening a door into each of these people; he’s beginning to engage very deeply indeed with what actually makes them tick; and, once that name is called, and once that calling is actually received and understood, then suddenly a life is changed:  the richness and depth of that calling is unmistakable and irresistible.

The child Samuel—given by his parents at a very young age to go live and serve in the temple—the child hears a voice calling his name.  This would not have been unusual; he was servant to Eli, a very old priest, and no doubt he’ll have heard many times a voice calling out in the night, “Oh, Samuel—you wouldn’t mind getting an old man a drink of water would you?” or “Samuel—will you please go check the lamps are still lit before the altar.”  Then, one night, the voice comes; Samuel turns up at his master’s bedside as he has done so often—only this time the old man had not called.  Then a second time, the voice rings through the dark, “Oh, Samuel.  Samuel.”  And, again, the old man has said nothing. “I did not call you, my son; go back to bed.”  A third and a fourth time the voice comes; and this time, Eli himself figures it out:  “it must be the Lord, Samuel; next time, when you hear your name called, tell him ‘Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.’”  So that’s what Samuel did—Samuel whose name itself means God has heard—and we find that God has indeed heard.  God has been watching Samuel, and listening; he has heard who Samuel is.  In speaking the boy’s name, God calls not the ear, but, rather, the spirit.  Samuel went on that night to bring God’s prophecy to Eli—unfortunately a sad one—but nonetheless, from that moment on, Samuel was known as a prophet.  In fact, tt was Samuel who grew up to anoint the King of Israel—first Saul, and then great David himself—whose family line gave us the Messiah.  All because God spoke a name—Samuel—and Samuel heard and and answered God’s will and purpose.

Likewise, too, we find Philip and Nathaniel seeking and searching at the outset of Christ’s ministry.  Suddenly, Christ flags them up by name—and when that happens, we have a life-changing experience.  “Nathaniel!”, cries Philip.  “I have found the Messiah!  Listen, bubba; you’ve gotta see this!”  I love Nathaniel’s response:  “Oh, get real:  can anything good come out of Nazareth?”  You could hear him in South Wales today:  ‘What kind of Messiah d’you reckon’s gonna come out of Newport?”  Turns out, it was the kind of Messiah who, just by speaking a name, could put paid to that petty little act of prejudice in two seconds flat.  In other words:  the kind of Messiah who knew what Nathaniel needed to hear and responded accordingly.  I love Christ’s response; I can just see the sly grin: “Welllll,” he says, “hey, I’m honoured; now here is a true Israelite!  I hardly feel worthy, Nazarene that I am.”  “How did you know who I am?”, says Nathaniel.  Christ responds: “Saw you under the fig tree, my man—I know you, Nathaniel—and if you think that’s a fancy trick, boy, howdy, you ain’t seen nothing yet.”  And, again, we’re talking about a moment when God speaks not just a word; he speaks into a person—he pierces through the window of name to the soul and spirit beneath.  Confronted by that reality, Nathaniel finally had no choice, but to turn from what he’d said before—indeed to blurt out with, apparently, no self-consciousness whatsoever—“Now I have seen you for myself; I have been looking so long for the likes of you; and you are the Son of God.”  The story doesn’t end there, though; as with Samuel, Nathaniel and his eleven friends were all called not just to God’s side, and not even simply into community—but, crucially, they were called to discipleship:  they were called, by name, to take upon themselves faithfully—and deeply—and richly—and visibly—God’s saving presence in the world.  My brothers and sisters:  so, too, are we.

I have a final story about names—and y’all listen up:  there was once a man born in Atlanta, this very day in 1929—a man named Michael King—who, just like me, had a daddy who carried the same name—and, unlike me, was the son of an ordained Christian minister.  When Michael was five, he and his daddy travelled to Germany to see the birthplace of the Protestant Reformation—and, so inspired was Michael Senior by what he found—the honesty and the integrity of the great reformer Martin Luther—his bravery in proclaiming his faith, whatever the cost—that Michael Senior changed not only his own name, but that of his little boy, too, to Martin.  And, as I say, it’s our names, just as much as our eyes that are windows to our soul; how powerful of Martin Luther King, Senior, to take upon himself a name pregnant with such a sense of calling to action, and calling to devotion to making God’s great holiness present in a world so desperate.  It says a lot, too, for what that man wished for his son.  And, of course—as we know—the son rose to the task.  Today is a day that—in Churches all across the United States—men and women, both black and white—will remember the name of the Rev’d Dr. Martin Luther King, Junior, and how, from his deep awareness of God’s justice and God’s utter grace—an awareness shared so fully with his great namesake—Dr. King, Jr., served as a voice for millions and set the United States on a path out of its deep, deep prejudice and hatred to a point where they now have, in Barack Hussein Obama—a Christian man with a Muslim name—as the first black president of the United States.  And at about the timescale that Martin Luther King predicted—without any sign or evidence that it might ever be true.  Thanks be to God.

So there we go, y’all:  when God calls us by name, it’s a calling that goes to the core of our being:  and today I stand here and proclaim to y’all that, indeed, God himself has spoken our name.  To us.  And we, right now—you and I—are left with only two choices in the end:  flat-out rejection … or else or running headlong into Nathaniel’s and Samuel’s—and Martin Luther King’s—proclamation of faith.  We all have names, my friends, and, make no mistake:  God knows them.  I am not just preaching this morning to a congregation in general—to y’all, the plural you.  Who I’m preaching to is you—and you, John—and you, Cath—and you, Russ—and you, Pat—and in fact, to me, William.  You have been named, not only by your parents—but by God; like he knows Nathaniel, he knows you.  What he may be calling you to, of course, only you and he can say.  But I can say this:  as in the days of Samuel, as in the days of Philip and Nathaniel, as in the days of Martin Luther, as in the days of Martin Luther King, Jr., God will have holiness—he is here—in this place—this morning—and it is we, his Church, whose names he speaks.  And it is we, who must then go on and speak the name of others—those around us—gathering them, and speaking God’s holiness and freedom and grace into their names—so that, one by one, they too may hear the Lord calling their soul.  And it is thus—and it was only ever thus—that the Kingdom of God will be built.

Comments (0)

By padre.will, 8 January 2012 21:40

Genesis 1.1-5;  Psalm 29;  Acts 19.1-7;  Mark 1.4-11. 

It probably won’t come as a surprise to y’all to know that Christians didn’t actually invent baptism.  We have owned it for ourselves, of course.  Baptism is completely central to what we do as a community—and the way we form ourselves as a community.  Christ explicitly despatched his disciples to go baptising in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit—and, thus, for the earliest Christians, from the very first days, baptism in God’s threefold name became the one and only means of proclaiming publicly our affiliation with the Lord.  Consequently, it became the only way of proclaiming publicly our affiliation with his Body, his People, the Church.  So … we baptism our own, with its own unique significance.  But it’s also quite true that ritual washings have played important roles in several religions throughout both history and the world—and, in fact, our own concept of baptism has its roots in a very traditional form of ritual washing in the Jewish faith, a bath called the mikveh which prepared the worshipper to meet God in a clean and pure state.

And so—with all that in mind—on this day on which we commemorate Christ’s Baptism, the question is:  what was it about his baptism—and therefore what is it about ours—that brings something unique to the world?  We say every week in Church that we have Good News to proclaim.  And we claim that the two greatest signs of that Good News are baptism through which we are brought into the Church—and the Lord’s Supper, through which we celebrate God’s grace to his children.  But signs always mean something—that’s the whole point of having a sign.  If I want to go to the King’s Head pub, I look for the one with the little picture of a crown hanging outside.  Or if I want to go to Bristol, I follow the sign that says M4-East.  Otherwise I end up out in Cardiganshire on a one-track road, waiting forty-five minutes for a big herd of sheep to finish crossing in front of me.  (Not that there’s not a place for that; Cardiganshire is fantastic.)  But, just like signs, that’s what baptism does:  it points us somewhere.  And to see where, we’ve got to look at what’s being said—and try to understand it, too.  Because that road sign’s not going to get me down to Bristol if it’s written in Japanese; I can’t read Japanese script.  And that pub sign’s not going to get me to the King’s Head if I just look at a slab of wood and think “pub”—but fail to notice that it’s a got a lamb-and-flag on the picture, not a crown.  I’ve got to look at the sign, and I’ve got to see what’s going on, before I can really hope to learn what that sign-painter wanted me to know.

So there’s baptism.  Christ goes down into the water—then he comes up.  Spirit lands on his head like a dove—and the voice of the Father calls down from heaven:  “This·· is my beloved Son,·· in whom I· am· well· pleased.”··  Something quite unique is happening—something very special is happening for Christ—something that, in the end, is the model for our own baptism.  But, to understand that, it helps to know just how strange it was—and why it was strange—that Jesus came to his cousin, John, for baptism in the first place.

Because John understood:  in Matthew’s Gospel John actually protests when Jesus comes to be baptised.  Because John knows that baptism in the Jewish faith—full immersion in the mikveh—meant actual bathing, bodily and fully, as a way of way of cleansing oneself before God and the community—and this is what John’s baptism was based upon.  How odd it must have seemed to John, then—who knew that a Saviour was to follow him—how strange when that Saviour turned up in his crowd, asking to be baptised.  He didn’t know what to make of it then—and, to be honest, even the best Christian scholars hardly know what to make of it now.  Christ, we teach in the Church which bears his name, was without sin—the Son of God who came to save us from our own selves—why would he want this cleansing?  We just don’t know the answer to that question.  But the fact that he did—and the fact that such an amazing thing happened when he did—that tells us that something quite important—namely, that by taking baptism for himself—by owning baptism before the world—Christ brought about a transformation of what baptism is and does.

And, yes—y’all—let’s be quite clear:  we still teach, in the Church, that human beings are and should be baptised for the repentance of sins: Christ may be sinless; we are not.  We are imperfect and fallible.  So we come for baptism as a sign before God that we are turning from our failures—and the hurt we do to one another—and turning towards him.  We take baptism as a sign that we wish to be made clean before our Father—and one another—and that we wish to make that stick.··

But when Christ was baptised, what we found, even more importantly, was that God was involved.··  Deeply involved.  Right at the core.  Active.  Not just observing what we’re saying through the sign, but—but doing something about it.  John says to Jesus:  “Hey, I don’t need to be baptising you; you ought to be baptising me.”  And Jesus replies:  “Dude.  Listen.  Do it anyway.  This needs to be done to fulfil all righteousness.”  So, when John then took Jesus down into the waters—and when he brought him back up—we suddenly found that the person doing all that fulfilling was God’s Spirit himself.  Now, this was new—very new.  This was different—very different.  Because, whereas beforehand, people came and washed themselves as a way to become clean before facing God and others—as a way to make themselves worthy of facing God—what was actually going on here at this baptism was that the Father himself was already present—making the judgement himself about worthiness.  The Spirit was already present—sustaining Christ in his worthy relationship with the Father.  And the Son—Jesus Christ—well, he was present, to embody that amazing worthiness that God was and is working out in all of humanity—a foretaste of what God has in store for us all.

So this is new:  God himself comes down to proclaim a human being worthy.  What’s happened, as Christ comes out of the water, is that the entire Trinity appear together—and the Spirit, who binds together the Father and Son in love—is visible, tangible—and the voice of the Father is clear and booming—and it declares in words, completely simple and utterly unmistakeable, what Christ’s relationship to the Father actually is.

Meanwhile, for us, what’s newest and best of all is grace—pure grace.  Amazing grace.  Because, just as it is for Christ, so too for us—we who gather as a community in his name.  The Trinity appears—we name them in the very act of baptising—we name the Father, Son, and Spirit.  We enact the baptism that Christ took upon himself—we sign the person with in oil of chrism, as a sign that theSpirit has come upon them and placed them in a kinship with God the Father, just exactly as Christ is.  And, when we do that, it is a sign that—like Christ—we are received.  Baptism is a moment when, having come to the font to “fulfil all righteousness”, God declares that we, too, are his beloved sons—and daughters—in whom he is well pleased.  We are not baptised in order to get right with God before we see him; we are baptised because, in the very act, God himself comes and makes us right—makes us his own—publicly and visibly.  Amazing grace indeed.

Thus, unlike in other faiths, Christians are baptised only once—for, once God has declared us his children—well, then, frankly, what else is there to say?  Baptism in the mikveh is repeated from time to time.  After birth, for example.  Or on the Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.  The Mandaeans—the religious descendants of John the Baptist—baptise themselves weekly as a crucial part of their regular worship.  And, actually, I don’t even think this is a bad thing; it keeps the mind focussed on living in his God’s will.  There is certainly something that we Christians could learn from that—and, in fact, we use holy water in a similar fashion—as a reminder of our constant need to turn to God.  And yet … baptism in the Christian Church, is given only once—and valid forever.  Because in Christian baptism, God declares us his own children—children who stand side by side with Christ himself.  God has acted upon us with his very own grace, declared us whole—belovèd—not for what we have done (or failed to do)—but rather, for who we are—his own creation—and for who he himself will cause us to be one day when his kingdom shall be complete.  You cannot top that—and you cannot make it better, nor more current, nor more perfect—by adding more upon more.  What God has declared once, he has declared forever—and in our baptism—he has declared us his.  The appropriate response, then, is thanksgiving—and love.  Pure and simple.

But—there is yet one more part of this great sign of Christ’s baptism—since I bring up the word response—because an incredibly crucial thing is that this was the act that kicked off our Lord’s public ministry.  The declaration of his identity—the beloved Son of the Heavenly Father—that was, on the one hand, the most crucial thing required for him to exercise his authority.  Throughout his ministry, Christ would be challenged to state where his authority came from—and the answer was always—from my Father in heaven.  This is the moment it was declared.  His authority came from his baptism.  And, on the other hand, baptism was also the moment that Christ’s calling became complete.  Once the declaration was made—well, then, how could he possibly return to anything else?  The Son of God must have the freedom to be the Son of God—to make God’s will known on the earth.  And so, too, must we, who have been declared God’s children in his footsteps.  We too are called—with Christ’s authority—to declare the Gospel of divine grace and the coming of the Kingdom.  We have the obligation to exercise that authority.  Yes, we must go about our daily lives—and yet, by virtue of our baptism, our very lives themselves are never the same again.  As followers of Christ, are called to act that way—to strive every day to live in more perfect love with one another; and to bring that declaration of God’s love, made public in our baptism, to a world that sorely needs it.

Comments (1)

By padre.will, 1 January 2012 10:03

Dear friends and followers:  I cannot say whether y’all have missed my blogging and sermons in the last few weeks and months, but I’ve certainly missed y’all.  Home life issues have kept me further away from the keyboard than I might otherwise have been, and for those who’ve loved me and my family and kept us in your prayers, I am grateful.  God blesses us, first and foremost, through various forms of community, and, in 2011, I have been deeply grateful for mine.  Here’s hoping that 2012 will be bring us all a little closer to his Kingdom.

Love and blessings to you all.

Isaiah 61.10-62.3;  Psalm 148;  Galatians 4.4-7;  Luke 2.22-40. 

So.  How many of y’all have already broken your New Year’s resolutions?  Go on, hands up!  See, I have found an incredibly simple and easy way to deal with the whole New Year’s resolutions thing.  See, what used to happen in my household was that I’d drag my lazy butt out of bed, all bright and perky for New Year’s Day.  And then I’d think about something—like smoking—that my life would probably be a whole lot better without.  Then I’d swear off it for life.  After that I’d go downstairs, eat a big ol’ bowl of Hoppin’ John.  Y’all know what Hoppin’ John is?  It’s food; it’s a New Year’s tradition in the Deep South:  you take a big stock-pot; you throw in a big bunch of black-eyed peas, bunch of rice, bunch of spices—and if you’re me, you throw in a bunch of lovely green chili peppers to round it all out—and when it all cooks up, what you’ve got is Hoppin’ John.  And this is what you must eat every New Year’s Eve at midnight, so you’ll have lots of good luck in the coming twelve months.  I have no idea why eating black-eyed peas should bring you luck.  But it sure is good.  And it’s even better when you eat it next morning for leftovers.  So that was my New Year—wake up, swear off smoking, leftover Hoppin’ John, cup of coffee.  Then, about half an hour later, I’d step outside—without a hint of remorse—for perhaps the finest cigarette I’d ever smoked.  And that was my New Year sorted out till the next time the first day of January rolled around.

But, see, what happens now is that I’ve cut out the middle man.  Gave up smoking two or three years ago—and, may I say, not one single moment before I felt like it.  Took a good long look at my other—many—character flaws and quickly determined that a half-hearted annual swearing-off really wasn’t the right medicine.  So that’s how I finally resolved to give up making resolutions.  It’s the only one I’ve ever in my life managed to keep—that, and giving up Christmas cards for Lent.  But it makes life a whole lot simpler.  ‘Cause now I can just skip all the introspection and self-recrimination and go straight to breakfast instead—and let me assure y’all:  there ain’t nothin’ in the world quite so good for what ails you as a big, hot bowl full of Hoppin’ John.

For all that, though:  the New Year is still a crucial time for Christians to be thinking about new beginnings, because, as we move through the twelve days of Christmas—towards the Epiphany—what is revealed to us, as the story progresses, is the thoroughly amazing tale of a new beginning for all of humanity.  Those beautiful words of Simeon—words spoken each week at evensong—in some places each day—personally, I find these words to be some of the most powerful, most excellent words ever spoken in the English language:  “Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word.  For these eyes of mine have seen· thy· salvation,·· which thou hast prepared before the face of all people—a light to enlighten the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people, Israel.”  They are also some of the most telling words in scripture—for they get right at the heart of just what it is that actually happened just seven days ago on Christmas Day.  And it might not be exactly what you expect.

‘Cause, see, what usually happens on Christmas Day is that we hear all about the birth of the baby Jesus.  We hear how it is that a God who, like that old Southern song says, he holds the whole world in his hands—a God “wthout whom nothing was made that was made”—poured himself out into a human life—not just a human form—not a costume—but true· human life.  And what a miracle(!) that he who created the universe became a baby as weak and as vulnerable as any of our own children or grandchildren were at birth.  What a miracle that God himself had to learn to walk, and talk, and speak.  When you think about it, that really is something to get your head around.  But there’s there’s also more to that miracle.

See, in our culture, in our we think of God as big—that the fact he created the universe and holds it together—continuously—that says something about his size.  I suppose this is exactly why we tend to think of the whole Baby Jesus thing as amazing:  it is incredible to suggest that an infinite God could find it even possible to be so self-limiting.

But—y’all:  listen up, now.  Here’s the wild thing about God.  It isn’t so much that he’s big.  What he is—actually—is beyond measure.  Which is not really the same thing at all.  Here’s what I mean:  an elephant’s big.  I’ve got a cat flap in my back door, because I’ve got a cat.  But she’s not the only cat in the neighbourhood.  So it’s entirely possible—and has happened on occasion— that I could come into my house one day and find a strange cat sitting in my laundry room.  But I’ll never see an elephant sitting there.  He’s just too big.  Wouldn’t fit—see?  Y’all know that old joke about how to get five elephants in a VW Beetle—two in the front, two in the back, and one in the glove box?  In real life, it doesn’t work that way.  And here’s the point:  you can’t change that.  Likewise, my cat—try though she might—she wouldn’t have been nearly so useful to Hannibal’s Army 2500 years ago when they were crossing the Alps into Rome.  They needed elephants for that job.  And, again, it’s not something you can change.

But the fact that God is beyond measure—well, what that means, actually, is that size is simply not a limit in any sense—that when we Christians say, as we often do, that God is present in all things—we really mean that he is present in all things.  It is God, on the one hand, who set in motion the planets ‘round the Sun and sustains them in their courses.  It is equally God who set in motion the electrons ‘round the atoms and sustains them in their courses.  Down to the very last detail, God is present—and loving—his creation.  So, when we talk about the miracle of God making himself so small as to become human—yes, it is in one sense amazing—but in another sense, perhaps not so much—because, in the Baby Jesus, God has taken his presence in creation to a logical extreme; and yet, it is still entirely in character.  Coming to dwell on earth was not some clever plan that he thought up in the middle of the night.  Actually, it was precisely the moment he made creation for.

But the point that we usually miss is the flip-side of that coin.  Because what is absolutely astounding—and I want y’all to think about this, really think about it, for just one second— is that God created our frail human form, and he took it to himself—and what that means is that, and he actually made it capable of housing eternity—humanity housing the divine—humanity housing God, himself.  Utterly astounding, my brothers and sisters:  God took that which he was not—and he made it into himself.  See, what I’m trying to tell y’all is that, when Christ came to earth, God exalted humanity, he exalted the very nature of humanity.  What a glorious paradox:  by his self-limiting act of being born, God actually opened the fabric of humanity out—made it something greater than it ever had been before—and, indeed, through the Spirit’s power, he opened out the possibility of that same greatness for us all.

As a species—we know more about ourselves and our purpose and our nature—simply because, in Jesus Christ, God is born.  Before he ever taught—or even spoke—a word, the Baby Jesus is a “light to enlighten the Gentiles, and the glory of [his] people, Israel”.  For, in him, we understand that our human lives can touch upon the divine in a way that we never knew before.  In him—in Christ, the perfect human being, God of God and flesh of flesh—we suddenly can see what God meant when he created the human race.  The Messiah that Old Simeon had been awaiting—when he finally came, he was not simply a military or a political leader to liberate Judaea from the Romans—but, far greater than that, he was the God who would liberate the whole world from sin and failing and weakness and limitations—and even from death itself.  He was a God who would set in motion the liberation of all his creatures to live with himself—and in himself—eternally.  In old Simeon’s words—the Nunc Dimittis—we hear a powerful prediction of our coming freedom—not freedom from our humanity—but freedom as human beings—freedom to become the perfect creatures that God built us to be, that he wills us to be, and that, in Christ and his Spirit, he has made us capable of becoming—individually, and as a society.

My brothers and sisters, we are called to witness this miracle of Chirst’s birth—and his presentation in the temple—and, as we take it in—as we begin to understand what that means for us, both collectively and uniquely, God asks us to seek his Holy Spirit—to ask for his presence—that he may work his perfection and calling out in us—that we, too, may shine before our fellow human beings as beacons of hope—and, more than that, as beacons of God’s promise that his own, eternal life is not so far from us as we might think.  We are called to live the Gospel in the world—in our lives.  Like Anna, who at first merely stood nearby as Simeon held the baby Jesus—like her, we are asked to take on board what has been offered, and then in our own right—each of us in our own unique way—to proclaim the Gospel in our words and deeds towards those around us.  So we begin by praising God, together with Anna, in our worship for today—as we break bread together at the Lord’s table, and we taste for ourselves the miracle that he set in motion so many centuries ago.  So, friends, let us pray that, like Anna, we too may come to rejoice in the magnificent meaning of this holy child’s birth—that we may truly hold that miracle in our hearts till, one day, like Simeon, we too are called home.

Comments (1)

By padre.will, 16 October 2011 22:04

Isaiah 45.1-7;  Psalm 96.1-13;  1 Thessalonians 1.1-10;  Matthew 22.15-22.

One of the little treasures I found when I moved into the Caerwent Vicarage was a pair of little metal boxes that my predecessor’s widow had left behind in my office amongst the various papers and bits of Hugh’s that she thought I might need or find useful.  There several years old, these boxes—well, several decades, actually:  the one probably dates back to the 1970s, maybe the 1980’s; it used to contain communion wafers.  The other goes easily back to the 1930’s, possibly a lot further back, and it had Player’s Navy Cut rolling tobacco in it when it was bought.  Now, when I opened them up, what I found was that they were both filled with old Roman coins that had been dug up during various digs in Caerwent—starting, as best I can tell, in about 1912; that’s when the south aisle extension happened in Caerwent Church.  None of this is too surprising to the people of Caerwent; see, they all grew up with a Roman-built wall surrounding their village.  Roman coins—shards of pottery—things like that are pretty commonplace around here; people dig them up in their gardens and regard it as a nuisance.  But for a New World boy like me—well, it was all pretty cool.  So—anyway—a lot of history in those two little boxes—both Roman and recent—because, as best as I can guess, it looks to me if my predecessor himself probably inherited these coins down the line of previous vicars.  But, in any case, as I say—this was certainly a treasure for me to find—history buff that I am—and, given today’s Gospel reading, quite timely.  More on that in a minute.

First, it’s probably worth giving you a little background info—I don’t want to bore you with a history lecture—I know perfectly well that the best way to turn off a congregation is to start a sentence with “in the original Greek it says …”.  All the same, though:  it’s worth knowing that the Pharisees and the Herodians made very strange bedfellows.  What you have to remember that, when Jesus walked the earth—the people of Israel had lived, with only one brief exception, consistently under the rule of other peoples—in varying degrees of freedom and oppression—never in charge of their own destiny—in fact, not really in charge of it till 1948, and even then always at the centre of controversy—and, unsurpisingly, living like this caused them to chafe—and the Pharisees most of all.  See, the Pharisees worked very hard—at following God’s law—the Law of Moses—and really when you get right down to it, they believed that accommodating these Gentile Romans was more or less blasphemy.  To the Pharisees, God had established a law already; he called the children of Israel to live under that law as his own people.  By comparison, the Roman occupiers were pagans—they demanded other, rather different allegiances of their subjects—including certain token religious requirements.  And the Pharisees had to draw a line there.  They simply were not prepared to give this kind of allegiance.  By contrast, the Herodians, as the name implies, were loyal to the House of Herod—the Kings who ruled Judaea during Jesus’s time and served at the Romans’ pleasure.   Put bluntly:  they were collaborators—so … politically and monetarily quite well off, but hated in equal measure by their countrymen.  Back to the point: strange alliance here when they approach Christ.  But what they had in common was this:  they both feared him—they both had good reason.  Christ’s teachings did not cast either group in a particularly good light—and he was popular with the crowds.  Therefore he was a threat.  And then, one day, between them, the Pharisees and the Herodians finally hit on a challenge that, they reckoned, he couldn’t win if they put it to them.  So they came to Jesus; they said:  “O, great teacher—we know you’re a man of truth; and we know you’ll speak God’s word to us without fear—so speak to us:  do, pray tell, advise us:  is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar?”  Problem is:  if Jesus says, “yes”, then the Pharisees can have him up for blasphemy.  And if he says “no”, the Herodians can nail him for civil unrest.

But Jesus knows better than to play this game; so he says:  “Lads … gimme a coin.”  And they hand him one over.  Probably looks rather a lot like this one:  I have here, from my little stash, a Roman denarius—about a day’s wage for a field-hand in those days.  Look how small it is.  This is probably not an especially fine example; but neither is it in bad condition: you can see quite clearly that it bears the face of the Emperor Theodosius.  Put yourself in the scene.  So Christ holds a coin just like this in his hand, and he says to his challengers, “Look; whose face is on this coin?”  And they say “Caesar’s, of course.”  And Christ says, “Well … that’s simple, then, isn’t it?  Give unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, and give unto God what is God’s.”  And they all went away shame-faced.

Y’all—that’s a wonderful story—I always love it when Jesus outfoxes his enemies—because there’s usually such a great simplicity to it.  It’s always so obvious—the solution—obvious in such a blatant way that his enemies, for all their scheming, just completely overlook it.  Of course:  if it’s got Caesar’s face on it, then it belongs to Caesar.  And—y’all—seriously—what would God—he who made the world from scratch—what would he need with a few badly-minted coins, anyway?  What good would they do him?  Brilliant answer.  But … in some ways, not as simple as you’d think.  Christ certainly made quick work of those who wanted to show him up in front of his followers.  But, actually, the words do leave us with rather a lot to ponder.  Here’s why:  it’s because it raises the question:  what exactly does belong to Caesar, and what exactly does belong to God—and, more to the point:  what is the Christian’s obligation in the midst of it all?  Simple enough to answer when you’ve got a coin in front of you with the King’s head on it—or the Queen’s, in our case.  But not so easy in all instances.

There are certainly those who take away from this story the notion that God’s children live a split existence under split authority:  the earthly world and the world of worship—and that if we just attend to the worship properly, there’s no skin off our nose if give the government only that which is required to keep it off our backs.  We may support what goes on in London—or Brussels—or Washington—or we may have our problems with the civil authorities.  But, either way, as long as we pay our taxes and keep politics out of the pulpit, we’re good.  Even Jesus says to Pilate just before his crucifixion:  my Kingdom is not of this world. Therefore—so it is said—as long as we, personally, are faithful and of good, upstanding morals, then that’s quite enough.  In fact, some would go so far to say that it’s quite unseemly to talk politics from the pulpit—our eyes are supposed to be on holier things.

I have to admit, though, that I do not share this particular mindset.  Quite the opposite, in fact.  I mean, on the one hand, I don’t think that the Church should be about stumping for any one given political party—God is for the whole of his creation and the whole of the political spectrum; and we are called as Christians to bring them all in.  But … on the other hand, when Jesus begins to talk about ‘whose image is stamped on this coin?’ the question of where God’s image is stamped—give to God what is God’s—that can hardly be avoided.  So, yes, the image stamped on the coin—the coin that we all have held today—is certainly the image of Caesar and, yes, by all means give to him what came from his own store.  So, too, with our own Queen and the money that she has stamped with her likeness.  But Jesus knew—and the Pharisees knew—and, no doubt the Herodians, too, for that matter—that the Book of Genesis teaches that we all were made in God’s image.  Where God has stamped his image … is in us.  So, yes, render to Caesar what is Caesar’s—but, in the end, we dare not render unto Caesar that which belongs to God alone.  Truth is:  human beings weren’t built to live a double-life between this world and God’s Kingdom; we were built to be whole—with God’s breath of life within us.  What’s more:  we live in a world that God the Father has created—that, in Jesus Christ, he chose to become a part of.  We live in a world that, through his Holy Spirit, God plans to redeem—to transform, eternally.  Acting on his own, and acting in us, God will transform this world into his Kingdom; this we are promised:  a new heaven and a new earth.  Eternal life doesn’t just start when we die:  it starts now and continues when we die.  And what that means—I think—is that God means for us to be involved.  Certainly, we’re allowed—indeed encouraged—to discern which political matters do no harm to the Kingdom and not to waste our time.  But giving to God what is God’s—ultimately, that’s a lot bigger share than Caesar ever had.  And sometimes that will, indeed, involve resistance to what Caesar demands.

It is down to God’s children to protest exploitative foreign policies—from Labour and Tory and Lib Dem governments alike.  It is down to God’s children to question our health policies when people are going sick and unnecessarily so.  It’s down to God’s children to ask whether huge supermarket chains like Tesco are using their weight and might and power to abuse small farmers—at home and abroad.  It’s down to us to question racist immigration policy.  Pay attention to what is God’s—and we can make a difference—as God demands.  Three years ago, for example—200 years after the end of the British slave trade, 150 years after slavery ended in North America, the United States finally became ready to have a black man lead the nation.  And, make no mistake:  rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar’s is all well and good, but Mr. Obama would never have got that far if Martin Luther King—and the Christians both black and white who followed him—had been prepared to render unto Caesar what was God’s.  See what I mean?  Matter of fact, I think that we Christians in this country, looking across the sea, I think we would do pretty well to ask ourselves whether Great Britain, in fact, has yet become ready to have a Prime Minister of black or Asian origin.  To be honest, as someone who grew up in the death throes of the segregated South, and someone who knows the British immigration system up close and personal, I don’t see that we are.  We can have a white woman prime minister in Britain, but not a black man.  We can have a black man as president in America, but not a white woman.  And that’s exactly what I mean:  rendering unto Caesar gives us permission—as the Pharisees did not have—to be good citizens of our country; but rendering unto God gives us the obligation—as the Herodians did not have—to form a higher allegiance to God’s Kingdom—and from that allegiance to speak out, to ask awkward questions—and, make no mistake, I ask them of Mr. Obama as well—he hasn’t ruled as I would have wished.  Sometimes I want my vote back—so I can give it to Hillary Clinton.  Our allegiance requires us to build a world where justice and mercy and compassion and integrity hold the greater sway.

I have here another coin from my stash that I’d like you to see—and this one tells us a bit about Caesar, too.  Truth be told, I can’t tell you much about this coin:  it’s not a denarius; it’s too big.  But more than that, I don’t know.  Why?—because this one is corroded beyond recognition.  You can’t see whose face is on the front; you can’t see the image on the back; because, down the centuries, this coin has been weathered beyond its tolerance.  It’s melded together with bits of other coins around it, maybe some petrified dirt and minerals that are now stuck to it forever.  It’s of no value to coin collectors.  It is, for all practical purposes, just an old chunk of metal.  This, too, is what belonged to Caesar—what at some point in history was rendered unto him, no doubt—and indeed it has gone the way of Caesar—the whole Roman Empire.  And all empires.  Because human empires are fleeting.  Jesus must have known this, too.  What loss is this coin to God if it ended up in the imperial treasury of Rome?  And what good could it be to him now?  But God’s Kingdom?—well … that goes on.  Two thousand years now.  Countless Empires have come and gone—including our own British Empire—the Church has gone on—sometimes rendering truly unto God—and sometimes not so much—but always with God’s image stamped there—and always issuing the call for us to live in this world as his children, building his Kingdom.  It is the call we hear today, too:  render unto God what is God’s.  So let the response we make be faithful.