Listen to Him

The problem with having two thousand years of Christian history behind us is that we don't always appreciate the significance of the stories about Jesus that we hear so regularly each year.

I'm thinking particularly of this story of the Transfiguration,

because it is so easy for it to slide over our heads and mean nothing to us.
It's not like Christmas, when we celebrate God's having come to earth as a human baby.
It's not like Easter,

when we celebrate Jesus' death and resurrection,

with their obvious consequences for us today.
It's not even like the Ascension,

when we celebrate Jesus' going to glory,

so that the Holy Spirit can be sent upon us.

Does this story actually mean anything at all to us today?

Jesus had gone up the mountain,

with his three closest friends,

Peter, James and John.
And suddenly something happened to him,

and he looked quite different,

was dressed in white,

and was chatting to two figures who, we are told,

were Moses and Elijah.
What I am not at all sure is how they knew they were Moses and Elijah –

it's not, after all, very probable that they had their names printed on their T-shirts.
I suppose either they were heard to introduce themselves,

or Jesus knew who they were and said "Hullo Moses, hullo Elijah!"

Anyway, at first the three friends think they are dreaming,

because they were half-asleep anyway,

but then they realise they aren't.
And Peter, getting a bit over-excited,

as he tended to in those days, babbles on about building shelters for the three men, and so on and so forth.
He didn't really, we are told, know what he was saying;

he was just so excited that he wanted to prolong the moment,

go on being there,

keep it going.

Perhaps, too, he felt the need to say something to reassure himself that he was still there.

And then the cloud comes down;

they can't see a thing,

not Moses,

nor Elijah,

nor nothing.
And they are scared, and cold,

the way you are up a mountain when the clouds come down.
And then, the voice that comes out of the cloud:

“This is my own dear Son, with whom I am pleased—listen to him!”

And they couldn't see Moses or Elijah any more, only Jesus.

“This is my own dear Son, with whom I am pleased—listen to him!”

It wasn't Moses they were to listen to,

and it wasn't Elijah.
It was Jesus.
Now, for us, that makes a great deal of sense;

we are quite accustomed to knowing that Jesus is far greater than Elijah or Moses.
But for Peter, James and John –

and, perhaps, for Jesus Himself –

it was far otherwise.
They had grown up being taught that Moses and Elijah were the greatest historical figures there were.
Moses, in their hagiography, represented the Law,

the very foundation of their relationship with God.
And Elijah represented the prophets,

those men and women of old who had walked with God and who had told forth God's message to the world,

whether or not the world would listen.
There really could be no people greater than Moses or Elijah.
No wonder they didn't say anything to anybody until many years later, when it became clearer exactly Who Jesus is.

Because they'd been told not to listen to Moses,

not to listen to Elijah,

but to listen to Jesus.

Well, that's all very well, but we know that.
It doesn't mean anything to us today,

so why do we remember it?

Well, sometimes I actually wonder whether we do remember to listen only to Jesus.
It's not that we don't mean to, but we get distracted.
And I think sometimes we find ourselves listening to Moses, or to Elijah.

If Moses represents the Law, then I think we listen to Moses a great deal more than we mean to!

We know, in our heads, that what matters isn't how well we keep the various rules and regulations we impose upon ourselves,

but whether we are walking with Jesus.
But sometimes we act as though what we do matters more!

As if whether or not we pray, or how we do it, was more important.
As if the various restrictions we impose on ourselves were more important.
As if whether or not we read the Bible every day, were more important.
But what really matters is our walk with Jesus.
If we are walking with Jesus, then we are His people,

and that fact matters far more than the various ways we may try to express that walk.

And sometimes –

I am a bit hesitant to say this, in fear you misunderstand me –

sometimes we even put the Bible in place of Jesus.
It's an easy mistake to make, because after all,

we do sometimes call the Bible the Word of God.
But it's actually clear from the Bible that Jesus is the Word of God.
And the Bible is, if anything, words about the Word.
But it's from the Bible that we learn about Jesus,

it's from the Bible that we learn who God is,

and what sort of people we will become when we become His people.
And it's not too surprising if, sometimes, we get confused.
I have heard people say

"Oh, I do love the Bible"

with the kind of fervour you would expect them to use only of Jesus.
I always want to say,

"but surely it's Jesus who you worship, not the Bible!

Surely it is Jesus you are following, in that sense."

Of course, we do follow the Bible,

we would be very silly if we didn't.
If we didn't read our Bibles and learn from them,

we wouldn't know how to follow Jesus, and we'd go off on all sorts of tangents.
And of course, even if we do read our Bibles and learn from them, we can still go off at all sorts of tangents,

and get things tragically wrong.

Look at the Crusades –

hundreds of years ago, they genuinely believed that fighting and killing Moslems was what God wanted them to do;

they seem to have taken some of the bloodthirstier parts of the Old Testament a bit literally!

Er – has anything changed much? People do seem to want to worship a bloodthirsty God, a God who is judgemental and harsh, who wants nothing more than to condemn people,

and looks for any excuse to do so,

And, sadly, they apt to find him.

You only have to look at some of the stuff coming out of the USA these days, the Biblical literalism that demands that men have control of women’s bodies, that believes it is all right to hate people of certain ethnicities,

or certain sexualities.

And similarly, if we come to it looking for a God who is loving and kind,

wanting nothing more than not to condemn people

and looking for any excuse not to do so, then that is what we are apt to find!

So while the Bible is terribly important,

we have to be careful with it.
We can't rely on the Bible without knowing that we are to rely on the One to whom the Bible points.
The Bible alone, Moses alone, cannot save us.
"This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!"

And if Moses alone cannot save us, how much less can Elijah!

Elijah was on that mountain-top representing the prophets.
We are to listen, we are told, to Jesus.

That doesn't mean that prophets are not important to us.
Prophets, of course, are those people who speak forth God's word, whether as preachers –

although not all preachers are prophetic, many are –

or whether more informally,

in the sort of setting where the so-called charismata are used.
Of course if someone is telling you what he or she believes God is saying to the assembled company, that is very important,

and you would do well to listen.
But you also have to weigh it up,

to make sure that this is what God is really saying.
They do say, don't they, that one of the marks of a cult is when the leader's words are given an importance equal to, or greater than, the Bible.
Which would not, I suspect, happen if the leader's followers weren't prepared to let it!

I don't know about anybody else,

but when I come to preach, I have to remember two things.
The first is that all I have is words.
They may be very good words, or I may have written a load of –

er –

round objects,

but all they are is words.
And unless God takes those words and does something with them, we might as well all go home!

My job is to provide the words;

God's job is to do the rest.

The other thing I try to remember when I come to preach is a story I read when I was training.
Two men were coming out of church on a morning when the preacher had been more than usually dull,

and the first man had not only been bored, but had had a severe case of chapel-bottom!

And he said to his friend,

"You know, there are times I really don't know why I bother!

I have heard a sermon nearly every Sunday for the past 40 years, they have mostly been very dull, and I can hardly remember any of them!"

To which his friend, who was somewhat older, replied,

"Well yes.
I've been married for 40 years,

and my wife has cooked me dinner almost every night of those years.
I can't remember many of them, either –

but where would I be today without them?"

In other words, our sermons are to be daily bread.
They aren't supposed to last a life-time, and be life-changing –

if they are to be, that's God's job, again, not ours.

"Listen to Him".
It is Jesus that matters, not the preachers and prophets of our age.
They are at best conductors –

they bring us to Jesus.
They are not Jesus, and we are very silly if we trust them more than Him.
They cannot save us;

only Jesus can do that.

It is not Moses we must listen to,

Moses who represents the Law, or the Scriptures.
It is not Elijah,

Elijah who represents the prophets and preachers.
It is Jesus.
"This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!"

Of course, the Bible is important.
Of course, our prophets and preachers are important.
But they are only important in so far as they lead us to Jesus.
That is what matters.
They do not, and cannot, of themselves save us;

only Jesus can do that.

And do note that I said only Jesus –

all too often we use a form of shorthand,

when we say that we are saved by faith!

Mostly we know what we mean –

but it is not our faith that saves us.
It is Jesus.
Sometimes we talk and think and act as though our faith saves us.
It doesn't.
Jesus does.
We are saved by what Jesus did on the Cross,

not by what we believe about it.
Nor by what we read about it.
Nor by what our preachers tell us about it.
Salvation is God's idea, and God's job, not ours.

And that, I think, is the message of the Transfiguration.
"This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!"
Amen.

Salt and Light

Children's talk:

When it's really dark outside, what do we do?

We turn on the lights, and we draw the curtains,

and we are all snug and cosy indoors.

Here in London, we don't often see it being really dark, unless there's a power-cut, because of the street lights and all the lighting up.

When I was a girl, the street lights in the town where I went to school were switched off around 11:00 pm or so,

and last weekend Robert and I stayed in a village in France where that still happens.

And it gets really, really dark.

What if you were out then?

You'd be glad of a torch or a lantern so you could see where you were going, wouldn't you?

And you'd be glad if someone in the house you were going to would pull back the curtains so you could see the lights.

In our Bible reading today, Jesus says that we, his people, are the light of the world.

He didn't have electric lights back then, it was all candles and lanterns.

But even they are enough to dispel the darkness a bit.

And when lots of them get together, the light is multiplied and magnified and gets very bright,

so people who are lost in the dark can see it and come for help.

Which is why, Jesus says, we mustn't hide our light.

We don't have to do anything specific to be light, but we do have to be careful not to hide our light by doing things we know God's people don't do, or by not saying “Sorry” to God when we've been and gone and done them anyway!

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 “You are the salt of the earth;” says Jesus,

“but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored?

It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot.”

“You are the salt of the earth;

but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored?

It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot.”

Salt.

These days it's often considered a bad thing,

as too much is thought to be implicated in raised blood-pressure, and so on.

But back in the days before refrigeration and so on,

salt was vital to help preserve our foods.

Even today, bacon and ham are preserved with salt, and some other foods are, too.

Salt is also useful in other ways.

It's a disinfectant;

if you rinse a small cut in salty water –

stings like crazy, so don't unless you haven't anything better –

it will stop it going nasty.

And if you have

something that has gone nasty, like a boil or an infected cut,

soaking it in very hot, very salty water will draw out the infection and help it heal.

Salt makes a good emergency toothpaste, and if you have a sore mouth and have run out of mouthwash, again, rinse it out with salty water and it will help.

But above all, salt brings out the flavour of our food.

Processed foods often contain far too much salt,

but when we're cooking, we add a pinch or so to whatever it is to bring out the flavour.

Even if you're making a cake, a pinch of salt, no more, can help bring out the flavour.

And if you make your own bread, it is horrible if you don't add enough salt!

Imagine, then, if salt weren't salty.

If it were just a white powder that sat there and did nothing.

I don't know whether modern salt can lose its saltiness, but if it did, we'd throw it away and go and buy fresh, wouldn't we?

And Jesus tells us we are the salt of the world.

Salt, and light.

But how does this work out in practice?

I think, don't you, that we need to look at our Old Testament reading for today, from Isaiah.

In this passage, Isaiah was speaking God's word to people who were wondering why God was taking no notice of their fasting and other religious exercises.

And he was pretty scathing:

it's no good dressing in sackcloth and ashes, and fasting until you faint, if you then spend the day snapping at your servants and quarrelling with your family.

That's not being God's person, and that sort of fast isn't going to do anybody any good.

Jesus said something similar, you may recall, in another part of this collection of his sayings that we call the Sermon on the Mount:

“And whenever you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces so as to show others that they are fasting.

Truly I tell you, they have received their reward.

But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face,

so that your fasting may be seen not by others

but by your Father who is in secret;

and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.”

It's what your heart is doing, not what you look as though you are doing that matters!

Isaiah tells us what sort of fasting God wants:

“Is not this the fast that I choose:

to loose the bonds of injustice,

to undo the thongs of the yoke,

to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? 

Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,

and bring the homeless poor into your house;

when you see the naked, to cover them,

and not to hide yourself from your own kin?”

This is what God wants.

It's not just the big picture, you see.

Yes, maybe we are called to be working for the rights of Palestinians in Israel, or whichever tribe is oppressing whoever –

sadly, it seems inevitable throughout history that whenever two tribes try to share a territory, there will always be friction, whether it is the Muslims and Hindus in India and Pakistan, or Greeks and Turks, Tutsi and Hutu, Loyalists and Nationalists in Northern Ireland, or Palestinians and Israelis.

Throughout history it has been the same –

and that it has not been very much worse has been down to the efforts of God's people,

often unsung,

often not thanked,

often, even, persecuted and tormented for their efforts.

But they have been there, and they have helped.

And God knows their names and has rewarded them.

But it's not just about the big picture, is it?

It's about the little things we do here at home, every day.

We can't always take homeless people into our homes, although some do –

but we can give to the food bank, either in cash or in kind.

We can help the Robes project, either with cash or by volunteering on a Friday night.

And maybe we should be asking our MP awkward questions about exactly why, in 2020, our food bank is so necessary!

Why do we need a soup kitchen in Brixton in 2020?

Why are we still suffering from austerity, especially when the government promised we wouldn’t?

That's part of what our being salt and light to our community is all about.

Not just doing the giving, not just helping out where necessary –

although that too.

But asking the awkward questions,

not settling for the status quo,

making a nuisance of ourselves, if necessary,

until we get some of the answers.

It's not always easy to see how one person can make a difference.

Sometimes, I don't know about you, but when I watch those nature documentaries on TV

and they – especially David Attenborough – go on about how a given species is on the brink of extinction and it's All Our Fault,

I wonder what they expect me to do about it,

and ditto when we get programmes about climate change and all the other frighteners the BBC likes to put on us.

But it's like I said to the children –

maybe one little candle doesn't make too much difference in the dark, except for being there and enabling us to see a little way ahead.

But when lots of us get together, it blazes out and nothing can dim it.

One person alone can't do very much –

but if all of us recycled,

if we all used our own shopping bags,

including for loose fruit and vegetables,

drank water from the tap rather than from a plastic bottle,

used public transport when feasible,

and limited our family sizes,

then there would soon be a difference.

Obviously you don't have to be God's person to do such things.

Lots of excellent projects, including the Brixton soup kitchen, are firmly secular.

But we, God's people, should be in the forefront of doing such things,

leading by example,

showing others how to help this world.

Historically, we always have been.

But sometimes the temptation is to hide in our little ghettoes and shut ourselves away from the world.

It's all too easy to say “Oh dear, this sinful world!”

and to refuse to have anything to do with it –

but if God had done that, if Jesus had done that, then where would we be?

We don't bring people to faith through our words, but through what we do.

As St James says in his letter, it's all very well to say “Go in peace;

keep warm and eat your fill,” to someone who hasn't enough clothes or food, but what good does that do?

That person won't think much of Christianity, will they?

A few years ago a friend told me about someone she knew who had been left a widow with four very small children,

and how the local church heard about her plight and gave her very practical help;

they were there for her when her husband died,

and helped her cope with all the practical details;

and they kept an eye on her and did things like paying for a baby-sitter so she could go to church events without always having to be with her children.

And so on.

And it is through their steady love and support,

rather than through any preaching they may or may not have done,

that this woman came to faith.

Ordinary Time,

and we are in a brief bit of Ordinary Time before the countdown to Lent starts,

is the time when what we say we believe comes up against what we really believe,

and how we allow our faith to work out in practice.

It's all too easy to listen to this sort of sermon and feel all hot and wriggly because you're aware that you don't do all you could to be salt and light in the community –

and then to forget about it by the time you've had a cup of coffee.

It's also all too easy to think it doesn't apply to you –

but, my friends, the Bible says we are all salt and light, doesn't it?

It doesn't say we must be, but that we are.

It's what we do with it that matters!

We don't want to be putting our light under a basket so it can't be seen.

And if, as salt, we lose our saltiness –

well, let's not go there, shall we?

Many of us, of course, are already very engaged in God's work in our community, in whatever way –

youth work of various kinds, the Robes project, such community outreach as happens here….

We might not even think of it as God's work, but that's what it is.

We are being salt and light in the community.

The question is, what more, as a Church, could we or should we be doing?

What should I, as an individual, be doing?

And that's where we have the huge advantage over people who do such work who are not yet consciously God's people –

we pray.

We can bring ourselves to God and ask whether there are places that need our gifts, whether there is something we could be doing to help, or what.

Don't forget, too, that there are those whose main work is praying for those out there on the front line, as it were.

And even if all we can do is put 50p a week aside for the food bank,

and write to Bell Ribiero-Addy every few months and ask why we still need food banks in this day and age and what she, and the rest of Parliament, is doing about it –

well, it all adds up.

Because I don't know about you, but I would rather not risk what might happen if we were to lose our saltiness.