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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SERMON 71 - SUNDAY 14 FEBRUARY 2016

Sermon delivered at All Saint’s Church, Whiteparish, Wiltshire – Sunday 14^th February 2016

Jonah 3; Luke 18:9-14

May I speak in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit and may these words be a blessing to all who hear them.  Amen

When I first read tonight’s passages of scripture in preparation for this evening’s service I was immediately reminded of a story I heard a few years ago which, hopefully, is very much a one off – as it does not show the Church of England in a very good light.

The story goes that a new young and enthusiastic curate became the vicar of a wealthy parish somewhere in the Home Counties.  Having undertaken his placement training in an inner city he had seen deprivation and un-Godliness in great abundance and felt that the church had an important place in any community in shaping people to care more about each other, their environment and thereby break the spiral of evil he saw about that place.

This young vicar felt that even in a rich dormitory town close to London evil and depravation were still present and, anxious to touch the hearts of those less fortunate and to encourage them to come to church, one day he placed a huge billboard outside the front of the church which read “All Sinners Welcome”. It wasn’t long before one of the church wardens spotted it and began to protest. He consulted the parishioners and they requested the young vicar to remove it. They argued that this was giving the church a bad name. Those attending it were good, wealthy and righteous people. They didn’t want to attract the “riff raff” – especially those with no money – and the sign also suggested that those attending that church were themselves sinners. The young cleric refused and there started a battle which involved the archdeacon and the bishop and the good and the great of the Diocese leading to the young cleric’s removal and sending to a parish “more appropriate to his calling”.

I tell you this story because it happened not so many years ago and closely resembles the scriptural stories we heard this evening.  Jesus said, when similarly challenged by the Pharisees when he called Levi (Matthew) the Tax Collector and ate with his colleagues, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor but the sick. But go and learn what this means: I desire mercy, not sacrifice. For I have not come to call the righteous but the sinners” [Matthew 9.9-13] and again we read in Luke how Jesus came and ate in the house of Zacchaeus another tax collector and agent of the Romans and at the end of the meal declared “Today salvation has come to this house because this man too, is a son of Abraham; for the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost.” [Luke 19:1-10].

As we begin our journey through Lent so the concept of salvation should be foremost in our minds. From the period from Ash Wednesday to Easter Sunday is a major journey for all Christians – following as it does Christ’s own journey from the wilderness and temptations, through the triumph of Palm Sunday, the highs and lows of Holy Week culminating in the crucifixion and resurrection. As we go on this Lenten journey of pilgrimage it is good to remind ourselves why Jesus became incarnate and died on the Cross.

Many of us in the Clarendon Team will be following Tim Heaton’s study guide “The Road to Heaven” in our Lent Groups. This guide uses the Martin Sheen film “The Way” to remind us of five important questions – all connected with salvation:

1.         What are we saved from?

2.         What are we saved for?

3.         Who can be saved?

4.         What do we have to do to be saved?

5.         How are we saved?

I don’t want to spoil it for those of you who are doing the course by trying to give you answers to all these questions in this short sermon but I will try and answer the third question from my own theological viewpoint – who can be saved?

It is very clear from Jesus’s teaching and also the moral of the story of Jonah, which Jesus himself referred to as The Sign of Jonah, that all sinners are capable of being saved provided that they repent of their sins honestly and genuinely and agree to sin no more. Jesus did not come into the world to condemn it, we are told, and did not condemn the woman found committing adultery – he merely asked her to sin no more.

However, a lesson we do receive from these readings in scripture is that we must be prepared to humble ourselves before a merciful God. Humility, repentance and especially forgiveness are essential ingredients for salvation. The story of Jonah contains much teaching for us in this regard.  Jonah was sent by God to Ninevah, a Godless city, to warn its king and people of the need to repent and turn from their evil ways.  Jonah, fearful for his own life if he were to evangelise to the Ninevans, ran away to sea where, as we all know from the most famous part of the story, he was cast overboard and swallowed by a large fish. He later himself repented in a long prayer whilst inside the fish and God gave him a second chance.

Sent off to Ninevah a second time he arrived and gave God’s message to the people.

But here we see a rather smug Jonah hoping that the people of Ninevah will not repent and that they will meet their doom at the hands of a punishing God. Here we see a rather self-righteous Jonah feeling better than them feeling sure that, unlike him, they will not repent and will get nuked! As we read tonight, they did indeed repent and God did not destroy the city.  Jonah had actually done quite a good job – he must have been a really good evangelist.  Instead of celebrating the success of God’s mission he was given, he sulks because God has actually accepted their contrition and saved them. The last chapter of Jonah, where he sits under a fig tree lamenting the saving of Ninevah says much about his character as being very flawed himself and needing salvation. But for that he must be prepared to forgive, just as Jesus in the prayer he gave us, the Lord’s Prayer, puts forgiveness at the heart of it.

Jesus in his parable of the sinner and the Pharisee makes the point again that for a sinner to recognise his sin and want to do something about it takes an amazing amount of courage and humility and an asking for forgiveness.

I wonder what Jesus would have made of the church I mentioned at the beginning of this short talk?  I have no doubt that he would have recognised the congregation of that church to be very similar indeed to the Pharisees surrounding the Temple in Jerusalem.  That like the Pharisees they felt an adherence to the law (or in our more recent examples the ritual of the church) would lead to salvation whereas the truth is that our God is a merciful God (“always to have mercy we are told”) and that the true way to salvation is a not just a belief in God’s existence, not just doing good deeds, not just giving money and time to the church but having a real and open and loving heart towards his Son, Jesus, which means being in a relationship with him through the Holy Spirit. That also means loving our fellow humans – fellow creatures of God and being prepared to accept them for the people they are. 

As the character Tom in “The Way” finds out, it is by being with fellow pilgrims, by loving them as God loves us, by treating others with respect, by allowing them the opportunity and encouraging them to be saved, that we are ourselves assured of salvation ourselves.  Tom at first rejected those who joined him on the route to Santiago de Compostela as a hindrance to his own journey but later came to realise that even with their flaws, he recognised those in himself and they journeyed together with mutual love and respect for each other.

During these coming weeks, as we progress through Lent, many will have decided to give things up. This year I have chosen not to give anything up but instead I have decided to dedicate more time in helping those who might seek salvation. Encouraging others to find their spirituality and thereby themselves.  I work as chaplain to the homeless here in Salisbury. Many of those I minister to are like those whom the church at the beginning would have shun from their doors. When I sit and talk to them many are in places of darkness through events which were not entirely of their making and their sins very often are brought about by the even greater sins of others. Forgiveness is what will break this circle and lead to salvation.

Not one of them is past redemption.  So during this Lent, let’s think what we can do to minister to somebody we know might be struggling and make them feel that they too are God’s chosen whom he loves and wants to save. 

Amen

MFB/71/11022016

SERMON 70 - SUNDAY 7 FEBRUARY 2016

Sermon delivered at St. Mary’s Church, Alderbury, Wiltshire – Sunday 7^th February 2016

Exodus 34:29-35; 2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2; Luke 9:28-36

May I speak in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit and may these words be a blessing to all who hear them.  Amen

In the Old Testament reading we heard first, this morning, Moses returns down from the summit of Mount Sinai after having conversed with God and having been given the law (in the form of the tablets containing the Ten Commandments).  Totally unbeknown to him, the skin on his face was shining so brightly following this divine encounter that Aaron and all the Jewish leaders were afraid to come near him.  Such was the glory of God reflected in his face that Moses had to place a veil over that face in order to converse with the leaders and congregation. The passage goes on to suggest that every time, afterwards, when Moses went to converse with God he would remove the veil only to cover up his face again when returning from the mountain.

Quite a story. Here the glory of God is revealed by the light shining from Moses skin which is also mirrored in our Gospel reading by the account of the Transfiguration when Jesus appears to be joined by Moses and the prophet Elijah. Again we read how the figures appeared to glow dazzlingly white and the two prophets are described as appearing “in glory”.  Any Jew seeing this amazing sight would have immediately been transported back in time to our earlier reading – an acknowledgement that these figures, just like Moses himself on Mount Sinai, had been clothed in the light of God’s glory. Only Peter, and his companions, James and John, were present to see this. They also heard the voice of God coming from a cloud, “This is my Son, My Chosen, listen to him”.

It must have been awesome – perhaps terrifying. For Peter, it was clearly a revelation and an affirmation of his faith in following Jesus, recognising the importance of this event.  But Peter, like so many of us, brings it down to basics and the factual, rather than the spiritual. He thinks of it as some permanent state requiring the building or three shelters.  He thinks the moment can be bottled and preserved – perhaps just like the way his fish can be salted.  He misses the point – here is a short revelation of God’s glory through his Son who is soon to make the journey to Jerusalem and the horror of rejection and crucifixion.

And here too is a parallel, Moses himself was rejected several times by those he led out of Egypt.  Many believing that they might have been better off staying under the control of their slave masters than traipsing through the wilderness on a “wing and a prayer”.  Indeed, you will recall that whilst Moses was up the mountain conversing with God, the people built and started to worship a golden calf idol.

In our Epistle reading from Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians, the author refers back to our first reading. Such was God’s glory revealed that it proved too dazzling to the people and it seemed Moses reserved his glowing face only for conversing with God. Paul, writing to the early Christian church members, who would have been Jewish in origin, would have known their Hebrew Scripture and recall this passage.  Paul suggests that the veil which separated the people from a realisation of God’s glory was not the veil over Moses face but a veil across the hearts of the people themselves – a hardening of their hearts. Such a veil would prevent the glory being reflected in the faces of Moses’s hearers – just as if we were to place a curtain over a mirror so we could no longer see our own reflection.

Paul is saying that the veil should be removed so that God’s glory can shine in the faces of us all.  I am reminded of two further pieces of scripture when I read this – the tearing of the veil of the Temple at the moment of Jesus’s death on the Cross – symbolising that we all have access to God’s forgiveness and grace without shutting him away behind a screen and also that piece in Matthew 5:15 “Don’t hide your light under a bushel”.

When I was a young lawyer I used to commute most days between Brighton and London Victoria. As time went on I would travel in the same carriage each morning with the same travelling companions. One of those was a young lady named Val whom I discovered was also a lawyer working in the city. But what struck me about her was that she didn’t look like the average business commuter – the lawyer, accountant, business executive. Whilst most commuters would be quiet, reading their papers or asleep, she would read her daily devotions and she literally beamed as she sat there and engaged in conversation. I got to know her over a number of years commuting and discovered that she was an Evangelical Christian, a member of the Christian Lawyers' Association, which through her I later joined, and she made it her business not to undertake any legal matters in an adversarial way but only undertook pro bona work or constructive work to help people. I tell this story because there was surrounding her a glow of God’s grace.

You can often see this same glow in the faces of people in love.  And what greater love can there be than to love God with all your heart and soul. Indeed, Jesus himself, when questioned, relayed this to the teachers of the law as being the greatest of the commandments, followed by loving each other. From these two simple yet, often for us humans, quite difficult things to achieve, will flow the glory of God.

When people are in love they will feel fully alive. St. Irenaeus is often quoted as saying “The glory of God is a human being fully alive”. When we love God we should feel fully alive and that should be seen by others. When I saw Val on the train and saw the love and compassion she showed to others, even towards grumpy fellow commuters, I really felt that I wanted some of what she had got.  Just as Peter wanted to bottle the moment of the Transfiguration – keeping Jesus and the prophets there - we too would love to be able to stay up there on the mountain top.  But these are often only just that - mountain top experiences – in the case of Moses and Jesus quite literally. 

Being a Christian is hard work – nobody ever said it would be any different [and if they did they were misleading you]. The disciples often found it hard to believe and follow, hard to heal, hard to minister and were often chastised and challenged (sometimes by Jesus himself). In today’s world there is a great revival of Christianity – not in the western world but in Africa and Asia. There the poverty and war and famine could hardly be described as a mountain top experience yet in amongst all those dark valleys towering mountain tops do appear – miraculous healings and steadfast faith.  As we have seen both Moses’s and Jesus’s mountain top experiences preceded very difficult and challenging times indeed.  People like Val glowed in amongst the tired and grumpy commuters. Moses shone amongst the disgruntled wanderers, Jesus’s Transfiguration came at a time when he was about to be crucified. We shine brightest when our surroundings are dark.

I can speak from personal experience too.  After my licensing as a minister I was on a high – right at the top of the mountain. I remember our curate telling me (and others too) to be wary for it is when we give our life to God’s ministry we will find Satan just around the corner to pull us down. Six months later my world seemed to collapse around me when I encountered a major personal storm. I was determined, however, that my faith would remain steadfast and that experience (entering a deep and very long and dark tunnel) tested my faith to the utmost. I needed a light to see me through that tunnel until I could see natural daylight at the end of it.  I never felt alone during that time but it was not easy. Now, thanks to God and the power of the Holy Spirit I am out of the tunnel, into the bright sunshine and the tunnel is not only behind me but round a corner where I can no longer see it – or to use another metaphor, I am now once again standing on the summit with the dark valley down below me.

At some stage I will be forced to come down again, just as Jesus and Moses and Elijah had to come down from their mountains but that glory which God has shared out to us, that light which we have received through the power of the Holy Spirit, we must bring down with us and spread through the dark canyons of this bitter dark and sometimes, it appears, Godless world. With the Holy Spirit in us and shining from us we have a piece of God’s chosen Son also in us. A Son in whom God the Father is well pleased.

Let us pray:

O God, Glorious and Faithful

To those who seek you with a sincere heart

you reveal the beauty of your face

Strengthen us in Faith

to embrace the mystery of the cross

and open our hearts to its transfiguring power;

that clinging in love to your will for us,

we may walk the path of discipleship

as  followers of your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord

Amen

MFB/70/05012016

SERMON 69 - SUNDAY 24 JANUARY 2016

Sermon delivered at St. Mary’s Church, West Dean , Wiltshire – Sunday 24^th January 2016

Nehemiah 8:1-3,5-6,8-10; 1 Corinthians 12:12-31a; Luke 4:14-2

May I speak in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit and may these words be a blessing to all who hear them.  Amen

Our First Reading, from Nehemiah, and our Gospel reading today have a common theme – the law. Something, which as a student of, and then a practising solicitor for over thirty years, has taken up a great deal of my life. 

I was very privileged to have been presented with my final professional certificate by the then Master of the Rolls, Lord Denning, a relatively local man to this part of the world (from Whitchurch in Hampshire), who made a great name for himself in legal circles by his often unusual judgments in the Court of Appeal which grafted the rules of Equity onto the Common Law.

Our English legal system is made up of three basic strands – common law (the law of the Crown administered through the courts and producing case law), statute – laws made by Parliament and Equity – rules of fairness and justice which began their journey in the ecclesiastical courts of the Lord Chancellor (who was usually a cleric).  Indeed, the Degree of Batchelor of Law is actually Batchelor of Laws indicating the duality of our system – law and equity. Of course today we also have to add European Law and the statutory human rights legislation.

Lord Denning would take a case, consider the common law remedy and if he found it too harsh or wanting -without regard for the fairness of the situation - he would seek to provide what we lawyers call an equitable remedy - which he would deliver in a clipped judgment spoken with his soft Hampshire burr.  In simple terms, for example, if somebody stole food, then the common law would provide a remedy – say a custodial sentence. The proven act of stealing in itself leading to the common law remedy. Applying, Equity, the courts would then look at the surrounding circumstances – the fact that the accused’s family was starving and the food was taken because the Lord of the Manor refused access to a food store to his peasants – and the sentence could be revoked or changed to something less harsh. This difference between the Crown’s law and the Church’s Equity led to the dispute between King Henry II and Thomas Becket.  But the Courts of Equity had a maxim – “He comes to Equity must come with clean hands” – in other words, the person seeking an Equitable solution must themselves not be tainted or using Equity to evade their responsibilities.

In our First Reading, we are taken back to those days following the return of the Exiles to Jerusalem from Babylon to rebuild the Temple and the Walls.  Much of the book of Nehemiah is taken up with the rebuilding of the walls.  The Hebrews had been in captivity for seventy years under the control of the Babylonians influenced by their pagan worship and Ezra, the priest who had led many of them out of that captivity, felt it necessary to remind them of the Laws of Moses which God had given to him on Mount Sinai – especially the Ten Commandments.  

Many may well have forgotten the law or if they hadn’t forgotten it, then its meaning or its interpretation had become lost.  Even today, in Jewish synagogues (the word “synagogue” means place of learning) the Torah (or first five books of the Old Testament containing the law) is read out by the rabbi completely through the course of every year – a bit like our three-year lectionary cycle of gospel readings – in order to remind the Jewish congregation of the law and its meaning.  The early covenants with God made it necessary, in the eyes of the Jews, to observe the law in its entirety in order for God to bless the people.  Failure to observe the law they thought would bring about calamity and destruction – such as the Babylonian Exile itself. Over a period of time more and more complicated rules were embedded into the law and many can be read in the books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy. Some make quite humorous reading in today’s modern world. Some are quite sinister.

The interpretation of scripture is something which, today, can cause immense problems and you only have to watch some of the TV Evangelists to see some incredibly interesting and zany interpretations often connected with the “prosperity gospel”.  In theology, scriptural interpretation is called hermeneutics – something which later, as a theology student, I had to try and get my head around. It is all well and good to read scripture piecemeal, as we often do in church on a Sunday – short readings from the lectionary – but it is quite another to understand the passage within the context of the whole of the bible story and the events surrounding it. In the case of Ezra, the passage tells us that the Levites, i.e. those who are not priests but rather like us licensed lay ministers – trained and authorised to assist the priests as a holy clan – stood by to interpret the law as it was spoken out by Ezra the priest so there could be no doubt as to its meaning.

Likewise, in our Gospel reading, we again heard of the reading of scripture and its interpretation – this time by Jesus himself in his local synagogue.  This time the piece of scripture he was given to read was not from the Torah but from the prophet Isaiah where it is written:-

“The spirit of the Lord is on me,

Because he has anointed me

to preach good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim freedom for prisoners

and recovery of sight for the blind,

to release the oppressed,

to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour” [Isaiah 61:1-2]

Jesus’s hermeneutics is simple – this passage foretells his arrival on Earth as the Son of God and he proclaims that this piece of scripture, this prophesy, has been fulfilled that very day in the sight and hearing of the congregation.  Jesus is here, the anointed one is here, the Messiah is here.  No wonder, then, the local Nazarene congregation, local to Jesus and his family, found this so hard to believe or thought of it as blasphemy that the local carpenter’s son should make such claims. Indeed, such was the outcry that the local people sought to drive him out of the town and push him over a cliff.

It is so easy to simply read the words of scripture and not to undertake a study or reflection of them – especially how scripture interacts with our lives today or its prophetic qualities. 

I readily admit that I have to take time out to sit down and read my bible but when I do – usually first thing in the morning with a cup of tea by my bed - I find there is always something new and refreshing to discover and often a message for me for the day ahead. In particular, I find that Jesus’s wonderful interpretation of the law is so profound and wise. The bible is full of so many do’s and don’ts in the Old Testament law. The presence of these so very often goes towards people’s reluctance to read their bible or follow the Christian faith believing that being a Christian means the end of having any fun in life. Wrong!  I have lots of fun!

Jesus was at great pains to tell the Pharisees and the Sadducees that he had come not to break the law but to fulfil it – that all the laws were put in place to support the good news that is Jesus Christ – our great high priest and intercessor, the one through whom we can seek God’s forgiveness direct. The one who saved us by dying on the Cross for our sins. When asked by the teachers of the law which of the commandments was the greatest he answered that there were two – “Love your God with all your heart, mind and body” and “Love your neighbour as God loves you”.  Upon these basic precepts all other laws follows. What a simple and yet great message – I love it!  It even applies to our complicated system of English laws. The long reading out of the law in Jerusalem by Ezra could have been dispensed with and the feast celebrations referred to in Nehemiah could have commenced earlier!  But in reality how easy is it for us to obey these two short commandments?

Paul in that part of his first letter to the Corinthians, which was read to us, goes some way to giving us the answer. Basically, we can’t do it on our own - but only through the unity which is the Church. In this respect I don’t mean the church as in the building or parish but all Christ’s community of faithful disciples. We need to help each other and then we can then reach out to those who do not share our Faith and show them the love which God has shown to us.  Here today, in this building, we all have different gifts given to us by the Holy Spirit. We are not all prophets, we are not all teachers, we are not all preachers, we do not all have the gift of healing, we do not all speak in tongues or interpret tongues, but each of us does possess a gift or more likely gifts which have been given and which we need each other’s help to discern. As Paul puts it, the body needs all its different parts to help it function and Christ’s community on Earth likewise needs all those gifts collected up from all its different disciples. 

So my message to you today is how can we, as individuals, discern what gifts we have and how can we use them to fulfil the prophesies and the “law” – to love God with all our hearts and our neighbours as ourselves?  You might like to think about the community here in West Dean. Here we have a population living close to a railway and a church with great facilities. How can we, acting together as one body in Christ, show that love of God through our actions locally. We can start with much prayer asking God to show us these things.

Let us pray

Lord, there are so many things in my life that I do not understand,

So many scriptural passages which need interpreting for me

So many questions about the future that I need to ask.
What is Your plan for me?
What is the work You want me to do?

All I really know is that You love me.
Show me the road You want me to walk –
to fulfilment, to happiness, to holiness and to help me love my neighbour.

And if You are calling me to
ministry or additional duties give me the strength to say “yes”
and the grace to begin even now
to prepare myself for the challenge
of a life spent in Your service and
in the care of Your people.

I ask You this in Jesus’ Name.

  

Amen

MFB/69/23012016