SERMON 8 - SUNDAY 27 MAY 2012

SERMON 8 - SUNDAY 27 MAY 2012 - Whaddon Roman Catholic Chapel

Ezekiel 36:22-28 & John 20:19-23

My wife often describes me as an “anorak” – one of those strange people with, in her mind at least, strange hobbies and interests – Chinese history, steam locomotives, ocean liners, trams and trolleybuses, and reading old maps and star charts astronomical ones (not astrological) to name but a few. 

An enquiring mind - which always wants to know more and more about ever more obscure subjects.  Yes, I can name the presidents of the United States, more or less in order of dates and tell you who won the 1976 FA Cup but I couldn’t tell you who is the front-runner in the current Apprentice!  In most cases, Sara simply lets me get on with it, feigning interest occasionally – and never complaining when I bring home that monthly bottle of wine for being a member of the winning pub trivia quiz team;  but I think her main concern is that, perhaps, I live too much in the past – yearning for those good old days which, perhaps, weren’t all that good after all.  As a friend of mine put it, recently, “nostalgia just isn’t what it used to be”!  Besides we don’t seem to have diphtheria and scurvy anymore.

Earlier this week, my yearning for the good old days nearly got me into trouble.  I was lucky enough to spend Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday at Champney’s Health Resort near Liphook – courtesy of a voucher given to me by my wife. 

Because of the glorious weather we’ve been having this week I decided to forsake the gym and sauna and go for a long walk in the woods.  I had brought with me an old Ordinance Survey map from the 1970s of the area.  Now I told you earlier that I have a passion for old steam railways and I knew that the film “The Great St. Trinian’s Train Robbery” had been filmed close by at the Longmoor Military Railway.  Seeing it marked on my map I strode off with my trekking poles and rucksack intent on finding the old railway and taking some photographs. 

After trudging some two to three miles through a heavily wooded and steep landscape, with my footsteps being accompanied by heavy machine gun and small arms fire, I eventually found myself, not by the railway line I had sought but by the busy A3 dual carriageway and close to a military firing range!  Had I been using a modern up-to-date OS map I probably wouldn’t have ventured off in that direction in the first place – although the views were magnificent and I didn’t step on any unexploded shells.

When I came to sit down and reflect upon today’s readings, the passage from Ezekiel reminded me of that aborted quest to find the long lost railway line.  A member of my House Group once said “I don’t do the Old Testament – I can’t accept a God who smites and seems to be grumpy all the time – I prefer the loving God of the New Testament – I can relate to Him”.  Her words came flooding back to me and I thought, perhaps there is something in that – like my old OS Map, perhaps, in looking for what there is for us today, we need to put aside and forget what went on before - that I shouldn’t ever preach on the Old Testament but concentrate on the Gospels and the writings of Paul and the Apostles.

 But, there again, when I looked at my old map, the contours, the physical geographical features are still there today – the rivers, the mountains and the basic infrastructures haven’t changed.  What has happened to the landscape is that some of the obsolete man made features have gone and new features have been written on the new map – new housing estates, new roads, a new Tesco’s supermarket – but the old is still recognisable – even the paths of “dismantled railways” are shown.   And when we read of the problems which faced the Jewish Nation in exile, then we can often draw many parallels with what we are facing in the world today.

Chapter 36 of Ezekiel, from which a short extract was read to us this evening, comes immediately before the famous story of Ezekiel being commanded by God to prophesy to the dry bones in the valley.  In a series of instructions, Ezekiel is being commanded by Yahweh, God, to prophesy to inanimate or dead objects which represent the state of the Jewish nation at this time – the time of the Exile.  Here, in our passage, Ezekiel is prophesying to the desolate mountains and land of Israel/Judah that God’s people are coming back after their period of exile in Babylon, that the land so barren and broken and corrupted will be renewed because the people will return, fully cleansed and full of the Holy Spirit so that they will obey the laws and do and act in ways which will glorify and please God.

You see, the Jewish people firmly believed that their state of exile and being cut off from their God was due to their disobedience of the law laid down by Moses in the Torah.  God was giving them another chance – just as we as parents have to forgive our children again and again - well at least I seem to have to with my teenage son – so God also forgives us again and again.

Let’s fast forward a moment to our second reading.  If we read John’s account of the coming of the Holy Spirit to the disciples we can immediately see those parallels with Ezekiel’s prophesy.  Just as God promised the Jewish Nation through Ezekiel that he would breathe the Holy Spirit and forgive the Jewish nation by giving them another chance, so Jesus gives the Disciples the Holy Spirit to have God’s power to forgive others.

This was an incredibly powerful message to the disciples.  They would have been familiar with Old Testament law and prophesy – after all that was the only Scripture they had – the Old Testament.  They were writing the New Testament by being in it – being part of it!  Jesus repeatedly said “I have not come to break the law but to fulfil it!” Jesus must have spent an enormous amount of his early years reading and studying the Old Testament.  We know that he got lost in Jerusalem as a small boy because he wandered off to hear and read scripture in the Temple.

There was a craze at one time for WWJD wrist bands and pens – “WWJD” – “What would Jesus do”.  Many of those who wore those bands or used those pens often said things like “We need to get back to how the first Christians acted and worshipped”.  If we did so, we would find that much of the liturgy and structure of the church was based on the old Jewish rituals contained within the Old Testament because they were still worshipping the one and only true God, Yahweh.

I am afraid I cannot agree with my former House Group colleague.  We cannot chuck away the Old Testament just because we don’t like what happened or feel that it will confuse the modern day landscape and not fit in with what we feel is comfortable or familiar.

Neither, though, should we cling on to it and not embrace its meaning and foundation for us today. To understand Jesus’s ministry is to understand the prophesies and history contained in the Old Testament.  To understand the psyche of the Jewish people, and how Jesus’s ministry and teachings fit into the bigger picture. 

We are the fortunate ones – we have the new OS Map showing the new features – Christ’s ministry, crucifixion, resurrection, ascension, Pentecost and early church.  But to look at the new OS map alongside the old one is to see more clearly how the landscape has developed and why.  Not just accept what is there now but also help us to understand why and how it came into being.

I will keep my old map; but I will invest in a new one for when visit that area again.  Call me an anorak if you wish – I’ve been called worse in my time – but I invite you to delve into the Old Testament at frequent intervals and read the histories and prophesies – especially Isaiah, Ezekiel and Malachi.  They all have great stories to tell and they lead, from Creation through the doorway of the Cross towards the establishment of the Christian church and onwards to the New Creation.  They tell Jesus’s message in the context of the much bigger story.

Amen