Put right with God

 The service starts about 15 minutes into the video, although I'm not quite sure when the IT team realised they weren't focussing on me!  

I wonder whether you can remember when you first made a conscious decision to be Jesus’ person?

I know some people can’t remember, they have been Jesus’ person all their lives and it would never have occurred to them to do otherwise.
And some people know that once upon a time they were not Christians,
but their journey to God was such a slow, gradual and yet purposeful one
that they can’t point to a given day when they were a Christian,
yet were not the day before.

And others have a definite date that they can point to and say “Then.
That was the day I became a Christian.”
I sort-of have that.
In many ways the second Sunday in October, well over fifty years ago, was the day for me,
but in fact, there was a lot of stuff that went before it,
and a great deal more that came after it.
It didn’t happen in a vacuum, although it felt a bit like that at the time.

I was just a child then, eighteen years old and on my own in Paris.
I was rather lonely and having trouble making friends,
and my grandmother suggested I went along to the English church
to see whether they had any activities for young people.
They most certainly did, and it didn’t take long for me to hear a sermon on “Behold, I stand at the door and knock.....”.
And this was obviously the thing you did if you wanted to be accepted by this group of people..... so.....
I’m so glad God is gracious and loved me anyway!

But the reason I’m raking up ancient history like this is that when you had become a Christian, as it was called,
you were expected to attend the weekly Bible Study
as well as the more formal teaching sessions which took place on a Wednesday.
The Bible Studies were small discussion groups, people roughly the same age, peer-led.
The minister stayed away, on the grounds that people needed to learn to read the Scriptures for themselves, not just be taught what to think.
And it was noticeable that, very often, if we had got stuck with something,
he would talk about the very thing we’d got stuck on in the Wednesday teaching sessions.

This form of studying the Bible was new to me –
attending Bible Study and prayer meetings –
the two tended to merge, rather –

was not something that was done at the school I attended,
or at my parents’ church.
So I can still remember the very first passage I ever studied with my contemporaries, and do you know,
it was that very passage from Romans that we’ve just heard read.
We used the Good News Bible, only back then it was only the Good News New Testament, which is why I asked Robert to read from this version today.

“Now that we have been put right with God through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
He has brought us by faith into this experience of God's grace,
in which we now live.
And so we boast of the hope we have of sharing God's glory!”

“Now that we have been put right with God through faith”
What does that even mean?
Most translations say “Now that we have been justified by faith”. “Justified” is a technical term, meaning – well, basically meaning “put right with God”!
All the nasty squirmy bits of ourselves that we really don’t want God to look at too closely –
and that, come to that, we don’t actually want to look at too closely ourselves –
they are –
not swept away, sadly, much though we might like that to happen.
Quite the reverse;

they are brought out into the light so that we can look at them and God can look at them and say –
okay, that needs to change.
And then, if we are sensible, we allow God to change us.

That, of course, is a very long process, and will probably never be completely finished this side of heaven.
That’s what we call “sanctification”, being made holy, being made whole, being made more like God, being made more into the person we were created to be.
But the point is, God doesn’t make us wait until we are perfect before he will put up with us.
All the nasty squirmy bits, what the jargon calls “Sin”,
God decrees they no longer exist.
They do, of course, and we deal with them in due course,
but the point is, they no longer come between us and God.

We have, so St Paul tells us, peace with God.
But I really do think the most important thing that I’ve learnt in all the years since that first Bible study, so long ago,
is that I don’t have to do the putting right!
It took me a really long time to learn that particular lesson!
I thought I had to grow my own faith, as though my salvation were down to me.
It’s not.

Our salvation doesn’t depend on what we do.
We all need to be saved, and we all can be saved –
these days, I’m not entirely sure what I mean by “saved”,
and it’s one of those words that I suspect we all interpret slightly differently, but that doesn’t matter.
The point is, we don’t have to –
and, indeed, we can’t –
save ourselves.
God does that.
All we have to do is to reach out, to say “Yes please!”
and accept what is on offer.
“Listen,” says Jesus, according to the book of Revelation,
“Listen! I stand at the door and knock;
if any hear my voice and open the door, I will come into their house and eat with them, and they will eat with me.”

Of course, one shouldn’t really take a verse out of context like that,
but it is a helpful illustration.
All we need do is open the door to Jesus –
and then let go.
Then we are put right with God by faith,
we do have peace with God,
and we can relax and allow God to re-create us into the person we were designed to be.
That bit isn’t always easy –
far from it –
but it’s worth it.

But it’s not just about us, is it?
Of course, our individual relationship with God is essential
it is something that needs to permeate all our lives.
It’s not just about what we do in Church on Sundays, although that too –
it’s about how we live the rest of our lives.
I have often said that these Sundays in Ordinary Time are where what we think we believe comes up against what we really do believe!
And sometimes, I think, we forget that we aren’t in it just as individuals, but as a community.
Paul says “We” all the time in this passage, not just “I”.
We, as a church, have been put right with God;
we, as a church, are being made more Christ-like, more the community that God created us to be.

We don’t have to wait to come to God;
Paul tells us that Jesus died for us end of story.
We could be the foulest person who ever trod this earth, but Jesus died for us.
We could be almost perfect –
and Jesus still died for us!
And that includes everybody –
even those we want to hate.
Even those who want nothing to do with God and treat religion with contempt.
Even those who set themselves up in place of God….
Jesus still died for them, and longs and longs for them to turn to him.

And Paul also points out that when trouble comes –
as it always does, always has, and always will,
God can use it to help us grow and become more what we can be.
Both us as individuals, and us as a community.

God will continue to work on us, if we let him, right up until the day we die, and probably afterwards, too!
Like butterflies, we are in our caterpillar stage right now, and our journey through the valley of the shadow of death is the equivalent of the pupa, and then, we believe, we will be transformed –
perhaps not into a butterfly, but certainly into something wonderful.
To a certain extent, of course, that happens, and is happening right now, here on earth,
which is why God has already started to work in us and to make us into the person we were created to be.
But how much more work will need to be done on us before we are perfect!
I know John Wesley believed that Christians could be perfect,
but I also know I’m very far from!
And God still needs to do a great deal of work on me before I fulfil my potential.

But the thing is, we don’t have to do it.
And we don’t have to wait until it’s done before we can get on with our lives as Christians, as God’s people.
We have been put right with God through faith, and now have peace with him through our Lord Jesus Christ.
So we can get on with our lives.
Amen.

Mercy, not sacrifice

 

“Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’” Jesus is referring his hearers to the passage in Hosea that we heard in our first reading. So firstly, why; secondly, what was Hosea even talking about, and thirdly, is it relevant to us in any way?

Well, the first question is easy enough to answer. Why did Jesus refer his hearers to that passage?

He had just called Matthew from the tax office. Now, as I am sure you know, back in the day, tax collectors were quislings, collaborators with the occupying power. They were expected to hand over so much to the Roman authorities every – I don’t know whether it was every month, or every quarter, but certainly every so often – and also to pay themselves a decent salary out of what they had collected. And human nature being what it is, many, if not most tax collectors were apt to feather their own nests at the expense of the public! They would demand far more than they were owed, and enforce payment. We don’t know that Matthew did that – we do know that Zaccheus did.

So, anyway, Jesus has called Matthew, and then he has dinner with Matthew and, presumably, some of his tax-collector friends. And the virtue-signallers, the Pharisees, start chuntering about this and asking why on earth he would want to eat with such dreadful people. To which Jesus replies that these are the very people who need him, the ones he was sent to help! The ones who think they’re doing fine don’t need him, or don’t admit to needing him. So he sends them away to look up Hosea….. and I don’t suppose they were best pleased, because of course they knew the Scriptures, didn’t they? Didn’t they?

And what, then, of Hosea? Hosea is the prophet who was asked to marry a prostitute who he couldn’t trust to be faithful to him, as a picture of the way the tribes of Israel and Judah couldn’t be trusted to stay faithful to God, but were apt to go off after the local gods of the area who were so much easier to cope with, as they only wanted you to do the various rituals. They didn’t want a relationship with God; that might interfere with their own lives, and make them live in ways they didn’t want to live!

Every so often they would make attempts to come back to God, but what usually ended up happening was that, as we heard in our reading, “their love is like a morning cloud,
    like the dew that goes away early.”

In other words, they start off well, but then get distracted. Like the seed in Jesus’ story that landed in the rocky ground or in the thistles, and didn’t grow much after the first sprout. And God says, through Hosea, that sacrifices and temple rituals are all very well but what is wanted is mercy – steadfast love, says the NRSV – not sacrifice!

I don’t know whether you’ve ever read John Wesley’s sermon on the means of grace? We local preachers have to read certain selected sermons as part of our training, and this is one of them. Wesley tries to navigate between two equal and opposite errors, the first being formalism – ritual without substance, just what Hosea is talking about here, and the second being what was called quietism, where you did nothing but wait for God to give you faith.

Wesley reckoned – and so do we, to this day – that God has ordained three specific means of grace that we all need to use. They are:

Prayer; both private and corporate. After all we all have times when, try as we might, we simply can’t pray, and that’s when we have to rely on corporate prayer, and perhaps prayers that other people have written. It doesn’t matter how you pray, of course – verbal prayer is only one way of praying – it is the contact with God that matters.

Then there is searching the Scripture, by reading, hearing and meditating on it. You probably have your own method of doing this, whether you like to meditate on the week’s readings, or whether you use a daily Bible reading guide, or whatever, but there again, Scripture is there to help us know God.

And finally there is the Sacrament of Holy Communion, which, whatever we may mean when we make our Communion – and of course, our views on it will change as we go on in our journey of faith – is important to our spiritual growth.

So far, so good. But: “I desire mercy, rather than sacrifice”. Wesley goes on to point out that these things, important though they are, have no intrinsic power: Separate from the Spirit of God, a ritual is just what Wesley calls "a dry leaf, a shadow." Spoken words, printed text, or bread and wine aren’t magic!

They possess no merit: Performing these duties does not buy God's favour or atone for sins. Only the blood of Christ saves. And this, of course, is part of what Hosea was talking about. Mercy rather than sacrifice. Steadfast love rather than keeping the rules.

And Wesley also reminds us that God is greater than the means of grace! We should use them, because he told us to, but God is perfectly capable of acting outside them! Again, they are not a magic formula!

But there is more to it than just our personal relationship with God. Of course, that is important, vital, even. But I don’t suppose for one moment that there were no followers of God at the time Hosea was writing. There were probably a minority of people who did want to be God’s people, who did do their best to give mercy, steadfast love, rather than mere form. But the people as a whole were not God’s people. The community was not a God-fearing one. As, of course, ours isn’t.

And you will note what was happening when Jesus told the Pharisees to go away and read Hosea – he was eating with a group of people who were widely hated. Hated. Outcast. Other. And we know all about that in our society, don’t we? Yes, I’m white and privileged, I know that, but I also know that many people are pretty much outcast and hated in much of our society, due to skin colour, sexuality or religion. Or are hated because they are so-called “migrants”, many of whom are so desperate to get here that they take their lives in their hands to do so, only to find they are not only officially unwelcome but are widely mistrusted and hated.

And yes, we know we must and will stand by such people, love them, defend them, help them as best we can. As Jesus did with the tax-collectors. As he did with other outcasts of the day – Samaritans, lepers, and so on.

But then, and this is where it gets really difficult, and why I’ll probably start speaking far too fast – do attract my attention if I do! But then, there are the haters. The Christian nationalists, Reform, Nigel Farage, the MAGA republicans, Donald Trump. What should our attitude to them be? What would Jesus say to them?

It’s so easy, isn’t it, to hate them in our turn. Certainly I hate some of the things that seem to be happening in the US, although I do wonder sometimes if there isn’t a bit of exaggeration. And it makes it very difficult not to hate the perpetrators – but we mustn’t. Jesus doesn’t. He argues with the pharisees, sure. He refers them to Scripture. He tells them frankly that their self-satisfaction means they can’t get close to God. But he doesn’t hate them.

Look at the healings in the second half of the Gospel. Matthew’s account is very bald compared to those in Mark and Luke, but he still tells the story. How the leader of the synagogue comes to Jesus in despair as his daughter is deathly ill – in this account, he says she has already died. But Jairus, as the other accounts tell us he is called, is probably a Pharisee. He may have been one of the haters; he may have thought that Jesus was blaspheming when he suggested that they should come to him to know righteousness with God. But he was desperate, and he came to Jesus in his despair – and Jesus raised his daughter. He didn’t hate Jairus, any more than he hated any other Pharisee.

And we haven’t to hate, either. Not even Trump. Not even Farage. Not even Boris Johnson for what he did to our country…. We mustn’t hate. But how not to? This is what I find hard – I want to hate them! Yet Jesus says, very firmly, to love our enemies, and he sets us an example of how it is done. He didn’t let them get away with anything – he was, after all, the one who drove the traders out of the Temple – but he didn’t hate them, and when they were in need, he responded to that need.

So how not to hate? I think there’s only one way, and that is to ask God to love them through us. We are given the potential through the Holy Spirit indwelling us; we can, I think, be guided as to whether we should speak out, or not. Probably we should – we need to call out wrongdoing and hatred when we find it. Not always easy to do – much easier to leave it to other people! But we are promised that we’ll be given the words when we need them.

But I don’t want to end on a negative note – let’s think about love, not hatred! Matthew doesn’t really show it, but look how lovely Jesus is with the woman who couldn’t stop bleeding, and, indeed, with Jairus’ daughter. And, indeed, with the tax-gatherers, with whom he enjoyed a convivial lunch! Which reminds me of the passage in Revelation that so many of us have used, over the years, to commit and to recommit ourselves to being Jesus’ person: “Listen! I am standing at the door, knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to you and eat with you, and you with me.”
“I will come in to you and eat with you, and you with me.” Amen.

The Gate

 

I don’t know about you, but I sometimes find the cultural assumptions in the Bible very difficult.

We don’t really know about sheep here in London, other than as curry mutton or a half-leg of lamb such as we enjoyed on Easter Sunday.

But for sheep farmers, they are an essential part of the economy, as, indeed, they have been for millennia.
As they were in first-century Palestine.
Jesus’ first hearers would have known exactly what he was talking about, exactly what image he wanted to conjure up in their minds.

As it happens, I do know a little about sheep and sheep-rearing, as my brother was a sheep farmer until he retired last year.
Obviously, many of the methods he used were very different from those used in the Bible – but sheep don’t really change.
Shepherds still use dogs to round up the sheep and move them to a different field.
Electric fences and quad-bikes have replaced sheep-folds and people on foot, in the South of England;
but in other areas, like the Yorkshire moors or the Scottish Highlands, sheep are still at liberty to roam pretty much where they will.
In fact, they are what’s called “hefted” to their local area;
it is imprinted on them, so they don’t go far away.
In some areas, they are brought back to the farmyard at lambing time, or at shearing time, but otherwise they live freely on the hill.

Back in the day, in Southern England, sheep would also roam fairly freely on the South Downs.The shepherd would be with them, and often had a little caravan-type hut, on wheels, where he could keep his stuff, and, if necessary, sleep at night.

At night, the shepherds would make a large pen for the sheep, often using hazel hurdles, and close them in, to keep them from straying in the dark, and to keep them safe from predators.
There haven’t been wolves in the UK for many centuries now, but the sheep are kept from getting lost, and it gives the shepherd a chance to check them over for parasites, sore feet and so on.

Anyway, the point is, that’s the sort of sheep pen that I think Jesus was talking about.
We know that in Palestine there were plenty of predators that the shepherds had to be alert.
Do you remember how David, when he heard about Goliath’s challenge, volunteered to go, and when Saul asked him how on earth he thought he could beat a professional solder, said that he was accustomed to fighting off lions and bears when he was looking after his sheep.

So the shepherds had to be alert for lions and bears, and, Jesus said, for robbers, too.
Sheep were, and are, a pretty valuable commodity, and need to be kept safe.
So they were enclosed at night, and apparently the shepherd would often lie down in the gateway, so that any predator or robber would have to get past him, and, conversely, any sheep who felt minded to stray would have to do so, too!
And sheep do stray!
The grass, as they say, is always greener on the other side of the fence.
Hence Jesus’ story of the lost sheep, with the shepherd grabbing his coat and staff and going off to look for it.

And it’s also true that the sheep know their shepherd.
These days, they are more likely to recognise the shepherd’s quad bike or car than the actual person.
When my brother farmed sheep, if he, or a shepherd in his employ, drove into their field, they would cluster round the vehicle, expecting that there would be supplementary feed coming.
But if an unfamiliar car, or even an unfamiliar person, were to go into that field – perhaps we would be driving around to look at the woods – they would run away, bleating loudly.

But what on earth does this have to do with us?
The nearest most of us are likely to get to a sheep is the meat aisle in the supermarket!
Or a woollen jumper, of course – sheep give wool as well as meat, although that is far less profitable these days.
Not like a few centuries ago, when England’s fortunes were derived from wool, and everybody knew how to spin, and carried a spindle around most of the time.
But not today, except for hobbyists.

It’s about being kept safe, I think.
About being able to trust God to keep us safe.
About trusting that it will be as Isaiah says:
“The Lord will make you go through hard times, but he himself will be there to teach you, and you will not have to search for him any more. If you wander off the road to the right or the left, you will hear his voice behind you saying, ‘Here is the road. Follow it.’”
Which makes it sound as though God is our satnav!
Hmmm, that might be an interesting theme to follow up.
“The Lord is my Satnav, therefore shall I never get lost.
He leads me beside still waters….” and so on.
It works!
After all, we don’t know much about shepherds, but we do know about satnavs! Although the analogy only holds so far, because you always have to check your satnav to make sure it isn’t taking you on some most peculiar route, whereas you can always trust God to lead you in the right way.

But then, how do we know the Shepherd's voice?
Well, he speaks to us;
and we listen to him.

He speaks to us.
Well, in one sense that's somewhat of a no-brainer, as the Americans so graphically put it.
We are told, from our earliest days as Christians,
that God speaks to us through the Bible,
and through other people,
and even, although we must be careful, through our own imaginations.
But being told it and knowing it seem to be two different things!
Of course, there are times when we hear the Shepherd's voice so clearly, times when we know we are his, held in his arms –
or, indeed, round his neck, the way shepherd today will still carry a young sheep.

Just look at our first reading, from Acts.

The believers were going through one of those times when God was so close to them, when new believers were coming in all the time, when life was simply ideal.
They ate together, they shared everything in common.
It was idyllic, and, of course, it couldn't last.
Ethnic tensions crept in between the Jews and the Greeks;
there was that dreadful time when Ananias and his wife pretended they'd given their all to the church, when they hadn't at all.
It wouldn't have mattered –
nobody was making them give anything at all, never mind all they had –
but to lie about it?
They paid a fearful penalty.
The community was wonderful while it lasted, but it didn't, couldn't, last.
I wonder whether they felt they were failures when it all broke up, when they started to be persecuted, when things basically went wrong –
or did they accept that things happen, and that God still loved them?

We have all known times when we hear the Shepherd's voice so clearly,
but, of course, we have all known those other times, too;
times when God seems far away, when our prayers go no further than the ceiling, when, so far from hearing God's voice, we wonder whether, in fact, our whole faith has been based on a delusion!
I'm sure we've all been there and done that, too!

Now, it's traditional to be told that when those times happen, it is our fault.
We have stopped listening, we are told, we have gone our own way,
we have sinned.
And, of course, some of the time that is exactly what has happened,
even if some preachers do make it sound like God isn't talking to us any more because we've offended him!
I think, rather, it is we who cannot hear the voice of God when we are uncomfortable in God's presence.
But usually when that has happened we know that is what the matter is,
and sooner or later we admit this to ourselves, and to God,
and things come all right again.

But some of the time, with the best will in the world,
we know we have not sinned,
and it really doesn't seem to be our fault.
Times when everything goes pear-shaped,
and you wonder where on earth God is in the middle of it all?
And part of you knows that this is exactly where God is –
in the middle of it all –
but that part is operating on sheer faith.
You can't sense God's presence, or hear the Shepherd's voice at all,
no matter how hard you listen.
It happens to all of us, probably more often than we care to admit.
Again, preachers have various explanations for it,
and you've probably heard them as often as I have.
That God is testing our faith, as though God didn't know how strong our faith actually is.
Actually, of course, God does know, but we don't necessarily,
and it can be a salutary shock to us!

The thing is, of course, that we don't understand, can't understand, why these things happen.
God is God, not just another person like us, and it's not possible to understand.
We don't know why we suddenly seem to lose the ability to hear God's voice, and why, even worse, we suddenly seem to lose all sense of God, and seem to simply be going through the motions.

Years ago now, there was an epidemic of foot-and-mouth disease, and the government issued movement restriction orders.
The sheep had to stay in the same field for weeks on end, and they hated it!
They had eaten all the grass, and were reliant on supplementary feeding, and they longed and longed to be moved elsewhere, as normally they would have been.
So they would run after any car that went into that field, on the off-chance it had come to move them. But you try explaining that to sheep!

And since God is even further beyond us than we are from real sheep, how could we be expected to understand what constraints He has?

The fact that it's almost universal, that almost every Christian goes through it from time to time must mean that it is normal.
But I don't know why it happens,
and I don't altogether accept the explanations as to why.
I think it's just "part of the human condition", or, if you prefer, "part of the mystery of faith", and we must accept it as such.

We, of course, behave like sheep from time to time.
We think we do not hear the voice of the Shepherd, so we rush after any and every passing thing that looks as though it might be the Shepherd.

The most recent seems to be this vile, racist so-called Christian Nationalist movement, which is basically White Supremacy under another name.
Just as my brother's sheep ran after another car,
hoping that we were coming to move them to a better field.
Is this the right Shepherd, we ask ourselves, rushing to find out.
And sometimes, in the process, we get ourselves badly lost.
We find that the better field was no such thing.

But remember our Lord's story about the lost sheep?
When we do get lost, we can trust the Good Shepherd to pull on coat and boots, forthwith, grab a crook, and head out to find us.
"No one will snatch them out of my hand," Jesus said.
So even if we, or someone we care about, has gone off down the wrong track and got lost, we can trust the Good Shepherd to come and find us again.

Because the Good Shepherd, Jesus tells us, is come "that they may have life and have it abundantly".
Abundantly.

So when we get to a time where we seem not to hear His voice,
a time when we look round and He seems to have vanished, let's not panic.
Let's not assume it was all our fault –
it might have been, but not necessarily.
Let's not abandon all idea of Christianity, of churchgoing, of being God's person.
Instead, let's sit and wait, calling out to God in prayer, but accepting the silence, trusting that one day the Good Shepherd will come and find us, and say
"There you are!
Come on, I'll take you back to the rest!" Amen.

Going to Emmaus

 Although this is very similar to sermons I have preached in earlier years, I did change it a bit so am reposting the full text.

In our Gospel reading it is Easter Day still.
And all of Jesus’ disciples and friends are confused and sad –
many of them haven’t really heard about the resurrection,
or believe it if they have heard it.
Everybody is scared –
will they be next?
Will the authorities clobber them for being part of Jesus’ retinue?

Anyway it’s all over now.
The Teacher is dead.
And something weird has happened to his body.
Maybe it’s time to go home, to get on with their lives.
Cleopas certainly thinks so.
He doesn’t live very far from Jerusalem –
only seven miles.
High time he was going home.
So he and his companion –
who may well have been his wife –
pack up and go home, sadly, tiredly.
And Jesus comes and walks along with them, but they don’t recognise him.

But they start talking and he asks why they are so sad.
What has gone wrong?
And when they say, “Crumbs, you must be totally out of the loop if you haven’t heard;
what stone have you just crawled out from under?”
he goes through the Scriptures with them to show them that this wasn’t disaster, it wasn’t the end of the world, but, quite the reverse, it was what had been planned from the beginning of the world.

And when they get home, they invite this stranger, this wonderful person who has brought them hope, to stay for supper.
And part-way through the meal, he takes the bread and blesses it –
and they know who He is.
It is Jesus!
And then he is gone.
But they know.
And they know they must tell the others, too,
so as soon as they’ve finished eating, they get up and go back to Jerusalem.
Seven miles;
a couple of hours’ walk.
Not so bad early in the day, when they were fresh –
but after supper, when they were tired?

And when they get to Jerusalem, they hear that Simon, too, has seen the Lord, and that he is really risen.
And they share their story, too.

---oo0oo---

In a lot of ways, this story poses more questions than it answers.
Who were Cleopas and his companion?
Have we ever heard of them before?
Why didn’t they recognise Jesus?

I don’t know who Cleopas was;
but it’s possible that the companion was his wife.
Certainly a former minister of mine thought so, and would use the text “Jesus himself drew near and went with them” whenever he preached at a wedding.
But I noticed awhile back, when reading John’s Gospel that one of the few women named is a Mary, the wife of Clopas.
Clopas, Cleopas?
Same person, do you think?
So is he walking with his wife, Mary?

I think it’s significant that they weren’t in the main group of disciples;
Cleopas wasn’t part of “The Twelve”, still less part of the very close group around Jesus.
But they were followers, fellow-travellers.
The wife was one of the group of women who kept the whole show on the road, I expect, probably seeing to it that everybody ate,
and that nobody got too dirty
and everybody had a blanket at night,
if there wasn’t a convenient place to stay.
But they weren’t in the close group.

Which, I think, shows us that Jesus was and is anxious for all his followers, not just the big names!
Sometimes it feels difficult, doesn’t it –
there we are, small churches in a small circuit,
in a country that doesn’t “do” God very much,
and is apt to be a bit frightened of those who do...
but Jesus himself draws near and walks with us,
even if we don’t always recognise him.

I wonder why they didn’t recognise him?
The text says “their eyes were kept from recognising him.”,
as though it was done on purpose.
Did the risen Lord look so very different from him as they’d known him before?
Or was it just that he was out of context, as it were –
look how it isn’t easy to recognise someone you only know slightly,
your hairdresser, for instance,
or the guy who shoves trolleys around at Tesco’s,
if you meet them on the bus.
You know you know them, but you can’t think where from,
and what is their name?
Or had he the hood of his cloak up, so they couldn’t actually see his face?
But eventually he does something so familiar,
the taking of the bread and blessing it,
that they can’t help but recognise him.
Of course, they may not have been present at the Last Supper –
as far as we know, it was only the Twelve who were –
but they would have seen Jesus do this at almost any meal they took together.
It was a part of a normal Jewish evening meal,
especially the Friday-evening Sabbath meal.
It would have been well familiar to them.
And so they recognised Jesus, knew it was true –
he had risen, he wasn’t dead any more –
and then he wasn’t there any more, either!

I wonder, too, whether when Jesus opened the Scriptures to them,
he wasn’t opening them to himself, just as much.
He had told the disciples, frequently –
although often only the smaller group –
that he was to rise again, but it must have been well scary for him.
We saw him in the park that awful night, absolutely dreading the whole prospect of death on a cross,
one of the most painful deaths a person could suffer,
with no real assurance that God would raise him.
He knew, he believed –
but what if it wasn’t so?
What if he really were just deluding himself?
We all get moments of doubt like that, don’t we?
What if the whole God thing is just a delusion,
dreamed up by human beings to help us cope with the nastinesses of life?
But Jesus was vindicated.
He had been raised.
And maybe, just maybe, when he opened the Scriptures to Cleopas and his wife, he was reminding himself, too!
Yes, this was what it said, and this was what it meant!
How lovely to know for certain!

We can’t know for certain yet, and we often doubt.
That’s okay –
if we knew for sure it would be called certainty, not faith!

But so often, when the awful times come,
when God seems far away and maybe summer and daylight will never come,
then Jesus himself draws near and walks with us.
We don’t always recognise him, of course;
in fact, very often we don’t even know that he is there.
I don’t know about you, but I’m very bad at recognising Jesus!
But sometimes a friend or even an acquaintance will say something, and you know that it is from God!
Don’t ask me to explain how you know, you just do!
Been there, done that?
Yes, I thought some of you would have!

And there are times, too, when we don’t recognise Jesus at the time;
things are just too awful for that.
And yet, when we look back, we see that he was there, all the time,
just that we didn’t recognise him.
Maybe he was there in the tissue a friend offered us to mop up with, the shoulder offered to cry on, the hand-clasp in the darkness.... but he was there.

I think, too, that Jesus is walking with us during this dreadful time of uncertainty,
when the world seems to be on the brink of another global war; when energy prices are out of control;
when we don’t know how we are going to cope –
or even if we are going to still be around to cope!
Jesus is walking with those in America who fear deportation or worse, with those who wonder –
both there and here –
how the frightful travesty known as Christian Nationalism could possibly be mistaken for Christianity….
Jesus is there, even though it doesn’t seem possible!

Remember how Jesus wept at the tomb of his friend Lazarus,
even though he was about to raise him from the dead?
There are times, I think, when all God can do is to weep with us, or to share in our frustrations, or even to act as a receptacle for our anger.
But at least he is there doing that.
I remember when the daughter of an acquaintance was killed in a dreadful accident some years ago now, her father said at the funeral “Thank God for a God to be angry with!”

Jesus himself drew near and walked with them.
It’s not just in the bad times, of course –
them too, but in the good times, too.
And perhaps in the indifferent times, the time when life goes smoothly and the days slip past too fast to count.
Jesus is there, I think, in a piece of music that lifts our spirits,
like the Hallelujah Chorus or some other favourite piece.
Jesus is there when we are getting ready to go on holiday,
or share a family celebration.
When we are looking forward to things, when we are dreading them.

Jesus himself drew near and went with them.
If we are Jesus’ people, then we need to learn to be aware of his presence with us.
It’s not always about feeling –
we don’t always feel his presence, and that’s as it should be.
As I said, if we were certain, they wouldn’t call it faith.
But if we believe that Jesus is present with us all the time –
even when we’re in Tesco’s, even when we’re at the office or washing-up the supper dishes –
then how are we going to live?

Once upon a time there was a monk who served God in a community of brothers, and he was called Brother Lawrence.
And he learnt over the years that God was just as real and there whether he was washing the dishes in the community kitchen, or whether he was on his knees in the chapel.
He wrote about it, and developed a correspondence with other people who wished to find this out for themselves.
You may have come across his writings yourself;
he was called Brother Lawrence.
As he explains, staying aware of God’s presence is far from easy, but it doesn’t matter if you make a nonsense of it –
you just come back to remembering as soon as you realise you have forgotten.
The Jesus who walked along the road to Emmaus with Cleopas and his wife also walks with us while we’re doing the washing-up or reading our e-mail.

So –
do you stay aware of that?
I know I don’t, not as much as I should!
Maybe we should all make more of an effort to stay aware of God’s presence with us at all times.
Even when we can’t see Him, even when it feels as though all trace of him has totally vanished from the universe.
There are all sorts of methods you can use to help with this –
making a point of a quick prayer when you put the kettle on, for example, or whenever you get up to go to the loo at work.
Even just “Lord, have mercy” or “Into Your hands”.
A couple of years ago there was a discussion on one of the book groups I belong to on Facebook about the amount of times a day children at boarding-schools were expected to pray –
space for private prayer in the mornings,
Grace before and after every meal,
corporate prayer in Assembly, probably twice a day....
and so it went on.
Not that the children probably appreciated it at that age –
I know I didn’t –
but if you think about it, a routine like that does structure pauses into your day to be aware of God.

Jesus himself drew nigh and went with them.
Two ordinary Christians –
well, they weren’t even that, of course, as the name wouldn’t be coined for awhile, but you know what I mean.
They weren’t part of the inner ring, they weren’t special.
They were ordinary people, people like you and me.
And Jesus himself draws near and walks with us, too.
Hallelujah.
Amen.

Jesus and Thomas

 

The text of this sermon is substantially the same as this one, preached in 2023.

Palm Sunday 2026

 

Forgot to record the first meditation, and then it hardly seemed worth recording the rest!  Sorry!

Meditation 1: On the Road

It’s been a long, hot old journey up from your village to Jerusalem. It is, every year. Almost the whole village goes – from the babies, slung across their mothers’ bodies, or, slightly older ones on their fathers’ shoulders; the older kids, travelling together, being warned not to get too far ahead, not to lag behind, stay where you can see us, please…. Adults, trudging along at the steady pace you can keep up for hours. The elderly on donkeys, or perhaps in carts – some, even, in carts pulled by their sons and daughters, rather than an animal. Almost the whole village.

Each night you have made camp in the old, familiar campgrounds. You’ve sung the songs that have been sung from time immemorial, you know the ones: “I will lift up mine eyes to the hills, from whence doth my help come!” and so on.

And, at last, you are coming into Jerusalem. Only a few more miles – you’ll make it by supper-time, just in time for the Seder. You’ll be glad to sit down!

But, hang on a minute, what’s happening? There’s some some sort of disturbance over there. Bloke on a donkey, it looks like, and a crowd gathering round. Wonder what’s so special about him?

“They say it’s the Messiah”, says a random bystander. “Can’t be, of course – Messiah wouldn’t come on a donkey. He’d come at the head of a huge army - “ he drops his voice “- get rid of those wretched Romans for us!”

You go closer to have a better look. People are shouting “Hosanna, hosanna!” And tearing branches off the trees to spread on the road ahead of him. And throwing their cloaks on the ground for the donkey to walk on.

He turns and looks at you. And from that one glance – well, maybe he is the Messiah, after all!

Meditation 2: In the Courtyard

It’s no good – you can’t sleep. That extra Passover glass of wine was a bad mistake. So you get up and wander around the city. It’s not the safest place to be, but you’ve got a knife and can defend yourself if you have to.

In the courtyard outside the high priest’s house, a crowd has gathered. There’s a fire, and as it’s a chilly night, you wander in to warm yourself. You listen to the various conversations going on around you and learn, to your horror, that the man who had been riding the donkey has been arrested, and is being questioned by the high priests, who suspect him of blasphemy. People are telling stories of some of the wonders they saw him do – how ill people had been miraculously made well again; even one story of someone who had been dead, and this Jesus of Nazareth had brought him back to life again. As if! These things don’t really happen, do they? According to the people chatting round the fire, they do.

And then another disturbance. Someone is shouting, “I tell you, I do not know this man! You’ve got the wrong chap. Now just do one and leave me alone!”
Odd that – he’s got a Galilean accent, and if this Jesus is from Nazareth, then they probably do know each other. You call out to the man, and suggest that they must have at least known who each other was, since they were both from Galilee, and not that many Galileans can afford to come to Jerusalem each year.

To your horror, he turns on you and starts cursing and swearing – dreadful language. And then the cock crows, and he stops dead, his face paling. And he bursts into tears and dashes out of the courtyard.

Wonder who he was, and why the cock crowing affected him so.

Meditation 3: The Governor’s Palace

Time passes. The prisoner is brought out from the High Priest’s house and taken to the Governor’s palace. The crowd, including you, drifts after him.

The crowd grows, and there is a sense of expectancy.

"Pilate's going to release a prisoner",
explains the knowledgeable one.
"Like every year.
This year it's going to be a chap called Barabbas,
you know, the terrorist."

"No it isn't," interrupts another person.
"There was a new prisoner bought in last night.
That teacher, the Galilean one.
You know.
They arrested him,
but I gather Pilate wants to release him."

"No way," says a third voice.
"The chief priests won't wear that.
They want him dead."

And then a hush.
Pilate appears on the balcony. A few quiet "boos",
but the crowd is fairly patient.
"Who shall I release to you?" he asks.
"Barabbas!" yell the crowd.
"We want Barabbas.
At first it is only a few voices,
but gradually more and more people start to shout for Barabbas.
"We want Barabbas, we want Barabbas!"
"Well," goes Pilate,
"Are you sure you don't want Jesus who is called the Christ?"
One or two voices shout “Yes”, but there are heavies in the crowd, and they are soon subdued.
And the voices start, slowly at first,
but more and more people join in:
"Crucify him, Crucify him!"
And you find yourself shouting, too.
"Crucify him, crucify him!"

But why?
Normally you hate the thought of crucifixion.
The Romans consider it too barbarous for their own citizens.
Only people who aren't Roman citizens,
local people, slaves.
Only they get crucified.
So why are you shouting for this man to be crucified?

Meditation 4: At the Cross
So they did crucify him.
Well, the crowd asked for it. Even you asked for it, when push came to shove.
They didn’t hang about – they must have wanted to get it done before the Sabbath.
And there he is, being put to death.
Maybe he was no better than those thieves beside him.
Who knows?
You certainly don't.
Yes, he's suffering.
God, that must hurt.
Hope it never happens to me.
Shouldn't happen to a dog, crucifixion.

All the same, what does this mean?
Didn't he say he was going to destroy the Temple, rebuild it in three days?
Now he's dying; now he's up there, can't do anything about it...
Maybe he was all a big fake, not the great Teacher.
Such a pity. He could have been the Messiah, but......
that death?
Would the Messiah really die?

Oh yes, he's dying.
Forsaken!
Forsaken by God.
Left alone, alone on the Cross to die.
And yet, and yet.
He feels alone, abandoned, forsaken.
And yet, and yet.
He suffers, suffers dreadfully.
And yet, and yet.
That cry, that cry when he died:
“It is finished! I've done it!”
A cry of triumph, of triumph over death.
Forsaken, yet triumphant.
“Surely this man was a Son of God”.

Can you see?

 

The service begins about 7 minutes into the recording.

The Mothering Sunday talk is recorded directly below the recording of the main sermon

This is a very splendid story in John's Gospel, although it's rather long, which is why I divided the reading into two bits.
It's not just about a healing, it's about what happened afterwards.

We start with the man born blind,
and first of all the disciples want to know why this had happened.
We all want to know why, don't we,
when dreadful things happen.
Why was this child born disabled?
Why have so many people died in avalanches this year?
Why are there such widespread floods across Europe?
Why did so and so get cancer?
Why did so and so get cancer and then get better,
when someone else couldn't get better, and died?
And so on and so forth.
It's human nature.
Even though we sometimes know the answers, or at least part of them –
the avalanches and floods are caused by exceptionally heavy rain and snow, arguably caused by global warming;
that person shortened their lifespan by smoking.
And so on.
But other times there seems to be no reason for it.

And so the disciples ask Jesus whether the man's blindness was some kind of punishment for him, or for his parents.
I wonder if the parents were asking, too:
“Why us?
What did we do wrong?”

But Jesus said no, it wasn't anything like that, but to show how he, Jesus, is the Light of the World.
And he proceeds to heal the man.

Now, all the Gospels tell of Jesus healing a blind man, sometimes called Bartimaeus, but this is the only one that takes it further, and looks at the consequences.
You see, after all, if your life is touched by Christ there are, or should be, consequences.
If nothing changes, was it a real touch?

For the blind man –
and let's call him Bartimaeus for now,
as it makes life easier with pronouns and such –
life changed immediately.
My sister-in-law, who is blind,
says that not only would he have been given his sight,
but he would have been given the gift of being able to see,
otherwise how would he have known what he was looking at?
He wouldn't have known whether what he was looking at was a person or a camel or a tree, would he?
But he was given that gift, as well.

And he could stop begging for his living, he realised,
and he went and did whatever the local equivalent of signing-on was.
And, of course there were lots of mutterings and whisperings –
Is it him?
Can't be!
Must be someone new in town, who just looks like him!

“Yes, it's me,” explains Bartimaeus, anxious to tell his story.
“Yes, I was blind, and yes, I can see now!”

“So what happened?” asks the neighbours.

“Well, this bloke put some mud on my eyes and told me to go and wash,
and when I did, then I could see.
No, I don't know where he is –
I never saw him;
Yeah, I'd probably know his voice, but I didn't actually see him!”

And the neighbours, thinking all this a bit odd, drag him before the Pharisees, the religious authorities of the day.
And they don't believe him.
Not possible.
Nobody born blind gets to see, it just doesn't happen.
And if it did, it couldn't happen on the Sabbath.
Not unless the person who did it was a sinner,
because only a sinner would do that on the Sabbath –
it's work, isn't it?
And if the person who did it was a sinner, it can't have happened!

They got themselves in a right old muddle.
Now we, of course, know what Jesus' thoughts about healing on the Sabbath day were –
he is on record elsewhere as pointing out that you'd rescue a distressed donkey,
or, indeed, lead it to the horse-trough to get a drink,
whatever day of the week it was,
so surely healing a human being was a right and proper activity for the Sabbath.
But the Pharisees didn't believe this.
They thought healing was work,
and thus not a proper activity for the Sabbath at all.

So they decided it couldn't possibly have happened,
and sent for Bartimaeus's parents to say
“Now come on, your son wasn't really blind, was he?
What has happened?”
And his parents, equally bewildered, say
“Well yes, he is our son;
yes, he was born blind;
yes, it does appear that he can now see;
no, we don't know what happened;
why don't you ask him?”
And the Bible tells us they were also scared of being expelled from the synagogue, which is why they didn't say anything more.

Actually, they must have had a fearful mixture of emotions, don't you think –
thrilled that their son could suddenly see,
scared of the authorities,
wondering what exactly Jesus had done,
and was it something they could have done themselves, and so on.
And, of course, wondering how life was going to be from now on.
Very soon now, their son probably wouldn't need them any more;
now he was like other people, he could, perhaps, earn a proper living and even marry and have a family.

So the authorities go back to Bartimaeus, and he says,
“Well, how would I know if the person who healed me is a sinner or not?
All I know is that I was blind, and now I can see!”
And then they asked him again, well, how did it happen,
and he gets fed up with them going on and says
“But I told you!
Didn't you listen?
Or maybe you want to be his disciples, too?”
which was, of course, rather cheeky and he deserved being told off for it,
but then again, I expect he was still rather hyper about having been healed.
And he does go on rather and tells them that the man who opened his eyes must be from God, can't possibly not be,
and they get even more fed up with him, and sling him out.

And then Jesus meets him again –
of course Bartimaeus, not having seen him before,
doesn't actually recognise him –
and reveals himself to him.
And Bartimaeus worships him.

Then Jesus, the Light of the World,
says that he has come so that the blind may see,
and those who see will become blind –
looking hard at the Pharisees as he said it.
The Pharisees are horrified:
“What, are we blind, then?”

And Jesus says, “If you acknowledged that you were blind, you, too, could be healed.
But but now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains!”

That's the thing, isn't it –
the Pharisees wouldn't admit they needed Jesus.
They wouldn't admit there was anything wrong.
Jesus has picked up on this before –
you remember the story he told about the Pharisee and the tax-collector,
and the Pharisee was too pleased with himself to be able to receive God's grace.
The tax-collector knew he was a rat-bag, and thus God could do something.

We know that bit.
We know that we need to acknowledge our need of God before God can act –
we must make room for God in our lives.
But when we have done that,
and God has touched us, in whatever way,
things change.
For Bartimaeus, it was about learning to live with his sight,
and about dealing with the issues that it raised.

I wonder what it is for us.
For make no mistake, my friends, when God touches our lives, things change.
Sometimes it is our behaviour which changes –
perhaps we used to get drunk,
but now we find ourselves switching to soft drinks after a couple of glasses.
Perhaps we used to gamble,
but suddenly realise we haven't so much as bought a Lottery ticket for weeks, never mind visiting a bookie, and those apps on our phone remain unopened!
Perhaps we used to be less than scrupulous about what belongs to us, and what belongs to our employer,
but now we find ourselves asking permission to use an office envelope or to log on to the Wi-fi.

Very often these sorts of changes happen without our even noticing them.
Others take more struggle –
sometimes it is many years before we can finally let go of an addiction, or a bad habit.
But as I've said before, the more open we are to God,
the more we can allow God to change us.
Sometimes, of course, we cling on to the familiar bad habits,
as we don't know how to replace them with healthier ways of acting and thinking, and find it too scary to trust God to show us the way.

But perhaps it isn’t just our personal behaviour that changes.
Maybe we find ourselves getting involved in our community in a way we hadn’t been before.
It will be different for all of us, but we will probably find ourselves, in some way, walking alongside the poor and marginalised in our society.

The point is, when God touches our lives, things change.
They changed for Bartimaeus, I know they changed for me,
and they will have changed for many of you, if not all of you, too.

But it's easy to fall out of the habit of allowing God to touch you and change you.
I know I have, many times.
The joy of it is, though, that we can always come back.
We aren't left alone to fend for ourselves –
we would always fail if we were.
We just need to acknowledge to ourselves –
and to God, of course, but God knew, anyway –
that we've wandered away again.

That's a bit simplistic, of course –
there are times when we are quite sure we haven't wandered away, and yet God seems far off.
But I'm not going into that one right now;
nobody really knows why that happens, except God!
But for most of us, most of the time,
if we fall out of the habit of allowing God to touch us and heal us and change us,
we simply have to acknowledge that this is what has happened,
and we are back with him again.

It can be scary.
Bartimaeus was scared, and with some reason
as his healing ended up with his being chucked out of the synagogue.
That was relatively mild compared with what has happened to some of Jesus' followers down the years, though.
But then, we always seem to be given the strength and the ability to cope with whatever comes.
It’s not necessarily true that God never gives us more than we can handle, but what is true is that we don't have to cope alone.
God is there, not only changing us,
but enabling us to cope with that change.

And we are changed and grown, and God gets the glory!
Because it's not just about what happens to us –
although, human as we are, that's the bit we think about most.
It's also about showing God's glory to the world,
showing people that Jesus is the Light of the World.
As happened when Bartimaeus was healed;
as may well happen if and when God touches our lives.
Amen.

---oo0oo---

What day is it today?

Mothers’ Day –

is the wrong answer!
At least, it might be Mothers’ Day out in the world,
but here in Church it’s Mothering Sunday,
and that, in fact, is only tangentially about human mothers!

Today is the fourth Sunday in Lent, and it’s long been known as Laetare Sunday, or Refreshment Sunday –
it’s half-way through Lent, and in days when people kept it rather more strictly than they do now,
it was a day when you could relax the rules a little.
And the tradition grew up that on that day,
you went to the mother church in your area –
often the cathedral, but it might have just been the largest church in your area.
Or sometimes, it might have been the church where you were nurtured and taught as a child, before you left home.
I have had the honour and privilege of preaching at my own “mother church” in a Sussex village, and I love to visit there when I can.

Families went together to the local cathedral, if they lived near enough;
sometimes even whole congregations went together,
and it became traditional for servants to have time off to go home and see their families on that day and go to church with them,
if they lived near enough.
In the Middle Ages, servants may only have got one day off a year,
and it was, traditionally, the 4^th Sunday in Lent.
Many servants had to leave home when they were very young –
only about 11 or 12 –
because their parents simply couldn't afford to feed them any longer.
And, indeed, many of these children hadn't known what a full tummy felt like until they started work.
But even so, they must have missed their families,
and been glad to see them every year.

And today is also a day for remembering God’s love for us.
We’re having the readings for the Fourth Sunday in Lent today,
but if we’d had the traditional Mothering Sunday readings,
we would have heard Jesus weeping over Jerusalem:

“Jerusalem, Jerusalem!
Your people have killed the prophets and have stoned the messengers who were sent to you.
I have often wanted to gather your people, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings.
But you wouldn't let me.”

The image of Jesus as a mother hen!
What we remember on Mothering Sunday isn’t just our mothers,
although that, too,
but above all, the wonderful love of God, our Father and our Mother.