SERMON 74 - SUNDAY 20 MARCH 2016

Sermon at St. Lawrence’s Parish Church, Stratford sub Castle   -  Palm Sunday BCP  Evensong  – Sunday 20 March 2016

Isaiah 5:1-7; Psalm 69:1-20; Luke 20: 9-19;

May I speak in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen.

One of the best holidays I ever had was a trip to California – in fact it was my first ever trip to the United States – and we based our stay in that wonderful city of San Francisco on the Pacific Coast with its beautiful bridges, cable cars, tramcars, trolleybuses, Chinatown, freshly boiled crabmeat on sour dough bread at Fisherman’s Wharf and that interesting trip across the bay to Alcatraz Island and its redundant prison.  Such a beautiful European-styled city with the ever present danger of another great earthquake.

During our stay we did, however, venture out of the city to cross the Golden Gate Bridge into Marin County and then on to Napa Valley.  Our destination – the best wineries of California.  In the States vineyards are called wineries, Americans preferring to name them for the final product rather than the horticulture from which the wine is made.

We visited quite a number of these wineries over the few days we were there [and I can strongly recommend any wine from the Robert Mondavi Winery in Oakville, Napa Valley! – especially the Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon if you are a red wine drinker].  One very interesting fact we learned on our trip around this winery, and several others for that matter, was that when the dreadful vine disease phylloxera struck most of Europe’s vineyards in the late 18^th Century those vineyards were later replenished with cuttings from California where the vines had become disease-resistant and so most of the wines which you enjoy today, like a good claret from the Bordeaux Region, probably had its origin from a grape grown on a vine originally from North America.  No doubt the vines in California themselves had their origin in the Old World.

Despite the best attempts by those late European vintners to protect their crop, it succumbed to the phylloxera plague with great financial ruin for many vineyards in France and Italy.

The growers must have reflected greatly on what they could have done to prevent this savage destruction of their crops and may have had in mind the Song of the Vineyard read out to us, in part, this evening in our first lesson. Perhaps like Isaiah they reflected on why this had happened.

Jesus too, I believe, had this passage in mind when he told the parable of the tenants which I read out in our second lesson.  What a terrible story it is too. In fact, both of our readings and the first part of Psalm 69 speak of doom and gloom – they sound suitable lyrics for a Leonard Cohen dirge! Everything is going wrong – for the vineyard owners in both of our readings and the psalmist. Destruction and misery surround them.

But Isaiah explains, in Verse 7 that the vineyard represents Israel and the people of Judah are his garden of delight.  Isaiah is writing at the time of the Great Exile of the Jewish people in Babylon which he prophesied was the result of the Jewish people turning their back on God.  Throughout the bible we are reminded that God led the people out of captivity in Egypt into the promised land – a land flowing with milk and honey – only to turn away from God leading, they thought to the eventual splitting of the David’s and Solomon’s united kingdom into the separate kingdoms of Israel and Judah and their eventual capture and occupation by firs the Assyrians and then the Babylonians.  Much of the book of Isaiah is concerned with prophesy and reflections on this history.

Therefore, Isaiah’s metaphor was well known to the Jews of Jesus’s day as it is today. A mourning for the lost kingdom which had held such promises and riches for  God’s chosen people – a vineyard planted with God’s chosen crop to produce a ripe harvest and a rich fulfilling wine – like Robert Mondavi’s.  But like the phylloxera plague it had to be devastated so that it could be rebuilt and strengthened.

In our Gospel reading, Jesus uses this metaphor about himself. It follows on straight after questions posed by the Jewish lawyers to Jesus – “By what authority are you doing these things?” [meaning healing, preaching and teaching] and “who gave you this authority?”  Jesus refused to give direct answers to these questions, instead his answer is to tell this parable about the tenants in the vineyard.

Using the same metaphors as Isaiah he uses the vineyard again to represent Israel; planted by God. The tenants are once again the chosen people, the occupiers of the land but not the owners – ownership remains with God – and it is important to remember the words we use regularly in our Eucharist services – “Let us remember that whatever we give to God comes from God” or as the Apostle James put it “Every good and perfect gift comes from God” [James 1:17].

But in Jesus’s parable the tenants are not prepared to give back any of the fruits to God and just as God had sent prophets to the people in the past to repent of their sins and honour their God so the owner of the vineyard in this parable sends servants to collect his share but those servants are not only ignored they are abused by being beaten up.

The owner becomes frustrated but believes that if he sends his son, whom he loves, the tenants will respect him, listen to him, return some of the fruits to the owner through him and the relationship will be restored.  The tenants repay the owner by killing the son believing that in so doing they will actually be able to take over the vineyard for themselves as the heir will be dead. But their treachery and folly is repaid by losing the vineyard which is given to others.

The metaphor is clear, Jesus, the Son of God has been sent by God to redeem the chosen people of Israel. He is the Saviour, the Great Redeemer, as many of our hymns proclaim.  Jesus is prophesying and predicting what will happen. Those listening to him proclaim disbelief that the outcome would ever be as told in the story “May this never be” they proclaim in Verse 16.

Jesus responds by telling them that this is precisely what will happen in Verse 17 when he says “Then what is the meaning:  “The stone the builders rejected has become the capstone?”.

This is a direct quote from Psalm 118:22.  Jesus goes on to explain that

“Everyone who falls on that stone will be broken to pieces, but he on whom it falls will be crushed.”

Not good news for those who heard this – indeed, the lawyers and teachers to whom this whole parable was addressed, having recognised themselves as the tenants in the story, then seek to find a way to arrest him and put him away – not realising that this is precisely God’s plan so that salvation for all mankind, not just the tenants of the vineyard, might come about.

What does this story hold for us today – Christ’s modern disciples? 

The most important lesson, I think, is to remember that we are like the tenants – we are here on the Earth for only a short time and that our tenure of everything which we would like to think of as our own is in fact a gift from God – the greatest gift so far therefore being the time he has given us to be here on Earth. Time we should use wisely and not fritter away and, more importantly, to remember that time spent with God, in his presence, in prayer and doing his work is time well spent.

It also reminds us that God sent Christ amongst us to die for our sins on the Cross of Calvary.  Like the tenants, we can often be ungrateful and forget that enormous sacrifice which God made for us.

“God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son” the Apostle John tells us. It’s something which we should remember every time we recite the Creed – that great article of Faith which binds all Christians the world over.

Jesus in another metaphor described himself as “The Vine” from which all goodness is derived; and we are the branches.  If we are to yield a good wine harvest the vintner has to prune the vine quite drastically in the dormant period. 

When I worked in Dorking, Surrey, my office window overlooked Denbies’ wine estate on the slopes close to Box Hill.    Occasionally we would take lunchtime walks over there and could walk close to the vines.  It never ceased to amaze me how the choicest grapes to make the wine (and I do recommend their English “champagne”) came from such stubby vines over the winter months.  Massive pruning would ensure that the harvest was abundant and that the grapes would be plump and juicy at harvest time.

We as the branches need pruning too if not, like my own little vineyard back in Winterslow, we become straggly and unable to concentrate on that which God wants for us.  We straggle and bear little or small bitter fruit and like my vines, and those of Isaiah, they need pulling up and starting again.  As Jesus said, if the vineyard is not managed properly and we do not give back to God some of the blessings he has given to us then it will be taken away from us.

It is Palm Sunday, so let us remember that Jesus’s triumphant entry into Jerusalem was the beginning of a week of earth shattering events leading eventually to his glorious resurrection on Easter Sunday. Let us this week follow his progress and be worthy of Him who has given us the opportunity to maintain and prosper in the vineyard he has left for us.  

Amen.

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SERMON 73 - SUNDAY 13 MARCH 2016

Sermon at St. John’s Parish Church, West Grimstead   -  Passiontide Sunday – Morning Worship  – Sunday 13 March 2016

Isaiah 43: 16-21; Philippians 3:4b-14; John 12:1-8

May I speak in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen.

This morning’s Gospel reading from John is one of my favourite pieces of scripture as it reminds me of that wonderful oil painting by the Spanish artist, Diego Velazquez (1599-1660), entitled “Christ in the House of Martha and Mary” – a couple of copies of which I have brought with me for you to look at:

What appeals to me about this story and painting is that it indicates that Jesus really did enjoy visiting his friends – and especially his very good friend Lazarus, whom he had already raised from the dead, and his two sisters Martha and Mary.

You will recall that earlier on Martha and Mary had looked after Jesus on a previous visit when Mary had spent her time at Jesus’s feet listening to him whilst Martha was getting stressed out in the kitchen and elsewhere attending to the preparations and serving of food. Velazquez might very well be portraying that earlier visit in his painting but in today’s gospel reading the two sisters again seem to be taking up their established roles in Lazarus’s household – Martha the busy woman pottering around the kitchen preparing and serving the food whilst her sister is again seated at Jesus’s feet listening to him and, we read, anointing him with perfume made from pure nard.

One of the reasons why I love Velazquez’s painting so much is that I have spent a considerable amount of time studying it and contemplating its menaing and message because it so encapsulates the story.  Here we see Martha busy with a pestle and mortar on the kitchen table grinding herbs or spices surrounded by garlic, herbs, fish and eggs – preparing a meal for Jesus.  We see Christ reflected in a mirror in conversation with Lazarus and Mary (and presumably Judas if this relates to the visit described in John.  It leads me to wonder on the contents of the conversation and even more intriguing what is it that the old lady is whispering to Martha in the foreground?

In John’s account we are told that it is this Mary who is anointing Jesus with nard whereas other Gospels suggest that it might have been Mary Magdalene or even the woman whom he had saved from stoning – from where we have been given the impression that it was a woman of dubious repute. John is clear that it is Lazarus’s sister Mary who broke open the perfume and wiped Jesus’s feet with her hair.

Having done some research into nard I have discovered that pure nard comes from a flower to be found in the foothills of the Himalayas in Nepal or northern India and was much prized in the Middle East for its use in embalming and, we learn from the Old Testament, in worship in the Temple at Jerusalem.  It might also be broken open at a wedding and was, therefore, probably in Mary’s possession to be used on her wedding day. She chose to break it open on this occasion – a symbol of worship and also to foretell Jesus’s impending death.  It has been suggested that the value of such a jar of nard would, in today’s terms, equate to about £30,000 – an enormous amount. No wonder Judas was eager for it to be sold and placed in the apostle’s treasury!

This is the first time that Judas Iscariot is mentioned other than in the passing list of disciples. Judas was clearly trusted by Jesus and the others as he was, effectively, the treasurer of the group “he held the common purse”. At first glance he appears quite altruistic saying that such an expensive item would provide enough money, if sold, for resources for the poor.  Indeed this does seem to be good philosophy especially as Jesus had declared that he had come for the poor. After all had not Jesus told the rich man to sell all his treasures and give them away to the poor if he wanted to enter the kingdom of Heaven? But John tells us that Judas’s motives were far from altruistic. He doesn’t beat about the bush. He tells us that Judas was a thief and suggests that he dips his hand into the common purse from time to time.

Jesus’s response is very telling. He says simply “You will always have the poor with you but not always me.”

He is absolutely right. Even in today’s modern world we find immense poverty existing – even in our affluent western world, here in the United Kingdom despite all our riches and technologies.

The lesson, I would suggest, that we can learn from this passage is that in all things we should always put Jesus first.

Jesus tells Martha that Mary is doing just that by spending her time and energy, and her money, on Him.  He is also telling this precise same thing to Judas – that time and money spent on and with him is precious.

In today’s very modern world of speed, instant gratification, ambition, problems and difficulties, cyber friends and egotistical postings we can so easily forget the mystery which is God, and in a moment I would like to share a poem with you that I was given only just a few days ago at a Chaplains’ Gathering which, I think, reminds us of that mystery.

We are now well on our Lenten journey – following Christ’s journey to the Cross on Good Friday and his resurrection on Easter Sunday. Today begins the period known as Passiontide which will take us through to Palm Sunday next week and into Holy Week.

Jesus trod that long and painful and at times extremely lonely road to Calvary.

Today as we walk on our own individual journeys of life we are not alone as he was.  We will never be abandoned as he was.  We will never have to suffer for our sins the way he, without sin, was made to suffer and die; because, his death and resurrection freed us from having to suffer and die alone.  He gave us the promise of everlasting life by his ultimate sacrifice upon the Cross.

What an amazing act for all of us – Jews, Gentiles everyone.  In the context of this we see how Mary’s sacrifice of her precious jar of nard is so fitting – honouring the person who could offer so much more to her and family and all of us.  She was anointing and acknowledging the importance of God’s incarnation.

So as we continue to make the Lenten journey together let us reflect on the almost incomprehensible mystery of God’s presence and grace so that we all make the journey together not only with ourselves but also our great and wondrous saviour, Jesus Christ.

Let me now share that poem with you

Primary Wonder

Days pass when I forget the mystery.

Problems insoluble and problems offering their own ignorant solutions

jostle for my attention, they crowd its antechamber

along with a host of diversions, my courtiers, wearing

their coloured clothes, caps and bells

And then

once more the quiet mystery

is present to me, the throng’s clamorous

recedes: the mystery

that there is anything, anything at all,

let alone cosmos, joy, memory, everything

rather than void: and that, O Lord

Creator, Hallowed one, You still

Hour by hour sustain it.

Denise Levertov

Amen

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SERMON 72 - SUNDAY 6 MARCH 2016

Sermon at St. John’s Parish Church, West Grimstead   -  Mothering Sunday – Morning Worship  – Sunday 6 March 2016  - (Adopted from Sermon 21)

Exodus 2:1-10; Colossians 3:12-17; Luke 2:33-35

May I speak in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen.

Since Monday, I have seen literally hundreds of advertisements from commercial organisations as to how best to celebrate “Mothers’ Day” as it is more commonly known in the secular world – from cards, flowers  and meals to some quite bizarre and exotic gifts – cruises, weekends in Paris and so on.  This  got me into thinking about what the origins of this festival were and how did it develop into the secular celebration we often see today.

Mothering Sunday is clearly set out as a festival within the Church’s Lectionary and indeed, when putting together this service, there were plenty of both on-line and good old fashioned off-line resources to help me – not least from the Church of England itself.  Unlike Fathers’ Day, which started in 1910 in the United States to show equality of honouring fathers with mothers, Mothering Sunday goes much further back and its origin, whilst steeped in ecclesiology, was not quite what we see today and I thought that I would share my research with you.

Mothering Sunday always falls on the fourth Sunday in Lent and as such has no connection with the American celebration of Mothers’ Day.  Traditionally, it was the day when children, mainly daughters who had gone to work in domestic service, were given the day off to visit their mother and family.  As we know, now it is the day when children give cards, flowers and presents to their mother and now, thanks to the commercial world, grandmothers and stepmothers. 

Churchgoers, generally, worshipped in the church nearest to where they were living – although this is not always the case today – known as their “daughter church” – and in the sixteenth century it was felt important that people returned to their home or “mother church” at least once a year.

So each year, in the middle of Lent, everyone would visit their “mother church” – the main church or cathedral of the area.

Inevitably, the return to the “mother” church became an occasion for family re-unions when children who were working away returned home (it was quite common in those days for children as young as ten to leave home and find work away).

Most historians think that it was the return to the “Mother Church” which led to the tradition of children, particularly those working as domestic servants, or as apprentices, being given the day off to visit their mother and family.

How lovely it would be if our modern day employers allowed their staff a long weekend off to visit their mothers and go to their mother’s local parish church once a year)!  Unfortunately, I cannot see that happening.  In today’s modern age many children are separated from their parents by many hundreds of miles – often across continents. Quite a number of these situations spring immediately to mind within my own family and friends.

As they walked along the country lanes, children would pick wild flowers or violets to take to church or give to their mother as a small gift – hence the tradition of giving flowers to the mums.  The term given to these visits was to go “a-mothering”.  Traditionally now in our churches we give daffodils as being commonly seen growing at this time of the year.

Another explanation is that Mothering Sunday derived from the original Epistle scriptural text for the Fourth Sunday in Lent as set out in the Book of Common Prayer before the modern Lectionary came into being – Galatians 4:26 – which reads

“.. Jerusalem that is above is free and she is our mother”. 

Paul, writing to the church of Galatia, was wanting to explain to the Christian community there what their relationship as Christians was to the Jewish law which the Galatians were being told, by others, they were breaking by following Paul’s teachings.

In the full passage (Galatians 4:21-31), the two children born by Hagar and Sarah to Abraham are seen as symbolising two promises from God:

One is the Torah which is restraining and earthly.  The other is the Gospel, which is spiritual and liberating.  The Galatians are told to regard themselves as the children of the Gospel.

“Mothering Sunday” has also been called Refreshment Sunday amongst other names.  It stands right in the middle of Lent and traditionally it has been seen as the one day when the rules of fasting can be relaxed. You can eat chocolate and drink wine today!  I rather like that idea. In some Church of England churches, even today, it was also seen as the one and only day during the period of Lent when a couple could get married.

Finally, it was also a day when the congregation engaged in a tradition known as “clipping the church” – when everyone would encircle the church holding hands – a bit difficult with the size of our modern congregations to embrace the building in this way.  I don’t expect anyone to do that today!

Enough of Church history! Neither our modern Lectionary nor Book of Common Prayer has the Galatians reading assigned for today – but they do have the readings which we heard – and how much more they are relevant too.  Both the Old Testament reading from Exodus – part of the Torah - and Luke (one of the Gospels) are well known stories which often appear in the junior bible stories – the first where a mother abandons her child out of the deepest love and emotion she can have – to protect him for a certain death.  What a wrench, though,  it must be for any mother to be separated from her child. 

In the passage immediately before the one we had read to us, Pharaoh has given commands to ethnically cleanse his country by culling the number of Israelites in his country - killing every male child immediately after he is born by throwing him in the Nile.  In a bid to save her new-born child, the mother of Moses hides him in the rushes by the side of the Nile where he is shortly picked up by the daughter of the very same Pharaoh who has decreed he should die.  In a twist of providence, the child’s mother is later employed to act as his nurse.

So many parallels with the Gospel story – the slaughter of the innocence and the hiding of the child to avoid capture – ironically in the case of Jesus by taking him to the very country where the kinsmen of Moses had been enslaved and persecuted. It must have been a wonderful re-union for the mother of Moses but, in its way, must have been quite painful to know that the child being cared for by the Egyptian princess is the very child you went through labour and birthing pains for.  He was, after all, her own flesh and blood.

In our Gospel story, Mary and Joseph have taken the baby Jesus to the Temple to present him to the Lord and give praise and thanksgiving for his birth.  There they meet Simeon and Anna, two devout senior worshippers.  We read that Simeon had the Holy Spirit on him and that he immediately recognized whom the baby was.  After taking Jesus in his arms he gave praise in the words of the Nunc Dimittis (which we say at Evening Prayer) and Mary and Joseph marvelled at these words.

But, in the next breath, Simeon says something to Mary which must have sent a cold shiver down her spine – “This child is destined to cause a falling and rising of many in Israel and to be a sign that will be spoken against so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed.  A sword will pierce your own soul too”.

Prophetic words indeed – Mary, 33 years later was to witness the cruelest of deaths of the child which she had just borne and whose beautiful tiny hands which he was clenching and unclenching as all babies do as she held him in her arms, would one day be nailed to a crude instrument of execution.  One wonders what she must have thought.

All parents have only the best thoughts and intentions for their children.  Both the mother of Moses and the mother of Jesus could not have known, in those early days, how life would pan out for their first born sons. But of one thing that is certain, both mothers lavished so much love on them and formed them into the people that God wanted them to become. Mary’s love for her son clearly lasted well beyond his cruel crucifixion and resurrection.

Mothers bear many strains and anguish.  The joy of having children bears with it physical pain and suffering too.  A few years ago my Lent Group read about the relationship that C. S. Lewis had with his future wife, Joy Gresham, and her words to Jack during their wonderful day out to the Golden Valley when they felt so happy in each other’s company ring so true: – “The pain then [in the future], is part of the happiness now. That’s the deal”.  In other words, whenever there is much happiness there is likely to be pain at some time in the future – and the happier the experience or relationship now, the greater the pain is likely to be in the future. To fall in love for many people can be difficult because of the fear of the pain of inevitable loss at a future date.

Our mothers are, or have been, cooks, nurses, storytellers, waitresses, bottle washers, shoppers, designers, taxi drivers, preachers, teachers, and much much more. 

Human mothers have a bond with their children which is probably the strongest in nature. 

The reading which I did not choose today is the piece of scripture when Jesus from the Cross says to his mother Mary who is standing next to the disciple John,

“Dear woman, here is your son”, and to John, “Here is your mother. From that time on, this disciple took her into his home”.

Even in the middle of his own agony on the Cross, Jesus realised also the pain which both mother and disciple were going through – a mother needed a son and the disciple a mother. 

We all need our mothers, whether our natural mother or our mother church.  For those who have lost their mothers, today can be the painful part of the happiness you have had as described by Joy Lewis.   As we later give and receive flowers as a token of the love which exists between mother and child, let’s not forget that such love comes from God himself and is a sample of the love that he has in amazing abundance for all of us.  Like the Levi woman, the mother of Moses, and Mary, mother of Jesus, they sacrificed up their sons for the greater glory of God.

Amen

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