Mary Magdalene

The text of this sermon is substantially the same as this one.  

Thirsting for the Word

Good morning, Church. For the benefit of those who don’t know me, my name is AnnabeI, and I’m M’s daughter and M’s older and wiser sister. I’ve been a Methodist preacher for thirty years now – it’s a long story, but basically at the time, the church where we worshipped in London was what they call a Local Ecumenical Project, both Anglican and Methodist, and when the time came to answer God’s call, it turned out to be becoming a Methodist preacher. Which turned out to be just as well when the Anglicans unilaterally pulled out, leaving us as a Methodist congregation only.

Anyway, I can’t tell you how pleased I am to be here with you this morning, having worshipped here on and off for the past 65 years. I was a very small child indeed when I first sat in the family pew down there, and my brother C wasn’t much more than a baby – M hadn’t even been born then. And although I haven’t lived here much since I was ten years old and went off first to boarding-school, and then to work first in Paris and in London, I have frequently worshipped here down the years, and always love it when I do come. And I have always loved looking at the statues carved into the pulpit – I have always felt sorry for the dragon, he looks so uncomfortable with St George treading on his wing like that!

And there is St Wilfred with his Bible, and two other saints round the other side that you can’t see from our pew. My father, who I know you will remember, said that when he was a small boy, he used to think St Wilfred was carrying a petrol-can rather than a Bible, so that he could come to the aid of stranded motorists – probably a good idea in his boyhood, when petrol stations were few and far between and the tanks on cars smaller than they are now.

Talking of my father, he used, you might remember, to have a fairly bottomless stock of Bible jokes and anecdotes, and one of these was that he said that if you asked him whether he preferred Martha or Mary, he would reply:
“Before dinner, Martha;
afterwards, definitely Mary!”

Me, I’ve always felt a bit sorry for Martha.
There she was, desperate to get all these men fed,
and her sister isn’t helping.
And when she asks Jesus to send her in,
she just gets told that Mary has “chosen the better part”.

Yet it was Martha who, on another occasion, caused Jesus to declare:
“I am the resurrection and the life.
Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live,
and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.”
And Martha herself gave us that wonderful statement of faith:
“Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah,
the Son of God,
the one coming into the world.”
Martha was seriously a woman of faith.
And she wanted to show her love to the Lord by providing him and his disciples with a really good meal.
Maybe she overdid it –
the Lord might have preferred Martha’s company,
even if it did mean dining on bread and cheese, and perhaps a few olives.

The family at Bethany has many links in the Bible.
Some people have identified Mary as the woman who poured ointment all over Jesus’ feet in the house of Simon the Leper –
and because he lived in Bethany –
Simon the Leper, that is, not Jesus –
some people have also said that he was married to Martha.
We don’t know.
At that, some people have said that Jesus was married to Mary;
again, we don’t know.
What we do know is that Martha and Mary were sisters,
and that they had a beloved brother, called Lazarus.
We do know that on one occasion Mary poured her expensive perfume all over the feet of the Lord –
whether this was the same Mary as in the other accounts or a different one isn’t quite clear.
But whatever, they seem to have been a family that Jesus knew well,
a home where he knew he was welcome,
and dear friends whose grief he shared when Lazarus died,
even though he knew that God would raise him.
Lazarus, I mean, not Jesus, this time!

In some ways the story “works” better if the woman who poured ointment on Jesus’ feet in the house of Simon the Leper and this Mary
are one and the same person,
as we know that the woman in Simon’s house was, or had been,
some kind of loose woman that a pious Jew wouldn’t normally associate with.
Now she has repented and been forgiven,
and simply adores Jesus, who made that possible for her.
And she seems to have been taken back into her sister’s household, possibly rather on sufferance.

But then she does nothing but sit at Jesus’ feet, listening to him.
Back then, this simply was Not Done.
Only men were thought to be able to learn,
women were supposed not to be capable.
Actually, I have a feeling that the Jews thought that only Jewish free men were able to learn.
They would thank God each morning that they had not been made a woman, a slave or a Gentile.
And even though St Paul had sufficient insight to be able to write that “In Christ, there is neither male nor female, slave nor free, Jew nor Gentile”,
thus at a stroke disposing of the prayer he’d been taught to make daily, it’s taken us all a very long time to work that out,
and events in the United States would show we haven’t really worked it out yet!­

Anyway, the point is that Mary, by sitting at Jesus’ feet like that,
was behaving in rather an outrageous fashion.
Totally blatant, like throwing herself at him.
He might have felt extremely uncomfortable,
and it’s quite possible that his disciples did.
Martha certainly did, which was one of the reasons why she asked Jesus to send Mary through to help in the kitchen.

But Jesus replied:
“Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”

Mary, with all her history, was now thirsty for the Word of God.
Jesus wanted to be able to give Mary what she needed,
the teaching that only he could provide.
He would have liked to have given it to Martha, too,
if only Martha could be persuaded that they’d be quite happy with bread and cheese, and perhaps a few olives.
But Martha wasn’t ready.
Not then.
Later on, yes, after Lazarus had died, but not then.

In many ways, Martha and Mary represent the two different sides of spirituality, perhaps even of Christianity.
Mary, wrapped up in sitting at the feet of her Lord, learning from him, listening to him,
was perhaps so heavenly-minded she was of no earthly use.
Martha, rather the reverse.
She was so wrapped up in doing something for Jesus
that she couldn’t see the importance of taking time out to sit at Jesus’ feet and listen.
Or if she could, it wasn’t something she wanted to do while there was work that needed to be done.
She expressed her love for Jesus by wanting to feed him,
wanting to work for him.

All of us, I think, are like either Martha or Mary in some ways.
Many of us are more or less integrated, of course,
finding time both to sit at Jesus’ feet in worship, adoration and learning,
and time to serve Him in practical ways,
mostly through working either in the Church or in the Community.
Others of us are less balanced.
We spend our time doing one or the other, but not both.
Mind you, it usually balances out within the context of a church;
the people who do the praying and listening,
the people who do the practical jobs that need to be done around the place,
and the people who do both.
And perhaps in an area, too, it balances out,
with some churches doing more in the way of work in the community than others,
but perhaps less in the way of prayer meetings,
Alpha, or similar courses
and other Bible studies.
And so it goes on.

But, you know what? Just look at the first reading this morning, from Paul’s letter to the Colossians. This letter may well have been written in about 62 AD, so probably less than 35 years since that evening in Bethany. People who had known Jesus as a human being would still have been alive. Maybe even Mary, Martha or Lazarus was still alive. They might have remembered that evening, Mary, sitting at her Lord’s feet with the men; Martha, bustling about in the kitchen and wishing for another pair of hands to help dish up. We’re not told what Lazarus was doing, or even if he was there, but if he was there, he was probably sitting at Jesus’ feet with his sister.

And yet, only a few years later, Paul writes of Jesus: “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible,” and “in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.”

Imagine – all the fullness of God sitting in your living-room eating olives! It kind of blows your mind, doesn’t it? And yet, this was what Martha and Mary experienced, and learnt to believe that Jesus was “the son of God who has come into this world”.

And, of course, the even more extraordinary thing is that we, too, can know Jesus, if not eating olives in our sitting-room, exactly, yet still alive and living within us – indwelling us, they call it – through the power of his Holy Spirit. Indwelling us, delighting in us, loving us, growing us, changing us, helping us become, day by day, more and more the person we were created to be.

You know this, of course. And you know, too, how easy it is to slip away from being God’s person, how it’s a commitment you have to keep on making, not just the once.

The first time you make such a commitment is huge – and, by the way, if you never have, you really do have nothing to lose by saying “Yes” to Jesus,
deciding to be God’s person,
deciding that what you say and do here on a Sunday
should carry over and be part of who you are during the week, too.
Truly, you have nothing to lose and everything to gain!
But the point is, even if you first consciously made that commitment, as I did, over fifty years ago, you know how you slip away, usually quite unintentionally, and have to keep on coming back and back. But the Jesus who let Mary sit at his feet, who reminded Martha that she, too, could, and should learn from him, the Jesus in whom the fullness of God was pleased to dwell – that Jesus will always, always, always welcome us back! Amen.

Who is my neighbour?

This story that Jesus told is perhaps one of the most famous. The phrase “Good Samaritan”, and even “Samaritan” have entered our language with very different meanings to the original. A Good Samaritan, these days, is anybody who helps someone else without thought for the consequences. The Samaritans are an organisation to help people who are feeling suicidal, just a telephone call away. And we know we are all supposed to be Good Samaritans and help people in need.

Down the years people have liked to think the priest and the Levite were too holy, too concerned with their religious duties, to stop and help. The man might be dead, so if they touched him they would become unclean and unable to fulfil their Temple duties. We assume that they, like many of the religious leaders Jesus wasn’t too happy with, strain out a gnat but swallow a camel. They tithe cumin and mint, but don’t help their elderly relations. And so on. But the text doesn’t say that. It just said they passed by. Quite apart from anything else, they were coming from Jerusalem, so if they had had Temple duties, they had finished them.

It’s possible, isn’t it, that they were afraid of an ambush. Perhaps the brigands who had attacked this man were lying in wait to attack anybody who came over to see if they could help. Perhaps the man wasn’t really injured at all, but lying there as bait to attract helpers. Perhaps they thought he was just sleeping off drink or drugs.

We don’t know, because Luke doesn’t tell us. Either way, the Priest and the Levite didn’t do what had been expected of them. They didn’t stop to help the man. We have no way of knowing their motives, and I suspect it would be a plan not to speculate too much.

And then along comes the Samaritan. Luke doesn’t say he is good. Perhaps he wasn’t. Perhaps he was a con-man, or a thief. Perhaps he beat up his wife, or raped prostitutes, or perhaps he really was good, trying to be God’s person to the best of his ability, trying to get on with everybody, ignoring the very real theological differences that separated the Samaritans and the Jews. We are not told. We have no way of knowing. All we are told is that he was a Samaritan.

In John’s Gospel, we are told that Jews have no dealings with Samaritans, but in fact there was some overlap. Jesus and his disciples were able to travel through Samaria without much problem, and this man seems to have been able to travel through Judea. Luke, who after all was himself a Gentile, doesn’t seem to have seen all that much difference between the two communities, although the Samaritans do seem to have been outsiders as far as the Jews were concerned. Whether they saw the Jews as outsiders is debatable.

Anyway, as we all know, the Samaritan either doesn’t think of the possibilities of an ambush, or if he does, it doesn’t worry him. Perhaps he was part of the ambush party, and came back to see whether the victim had died. We don’t know. We are not told. What we are told is that he tends the man as best he can, and then takes him to the nearest inn.

And here is the fourth person who doesn’t act as expected. The innkeeper seems quite happy to take in the wounded man and look after him. Even with the money the Samaritan leaves with him, that would be expecting a very great deal of the landlord of a roadside inn. The landlord would have expected to provide drink, a meal, and perhaps a bed for the night – arguably on straw in a common room, or perhaps a private room for the very rich – but not nursing care and tending someone who would be helpless for many days. He was an innkeeper, not a nurse! But, we are told, the innkeeper took in the sick man and cared for him. The innkeeper, too, was a “Good Samaritan” if you like, only he was probably Jewish!

So then, what is it all about? What does it mean for us? I think that, before we see if we can answer these questions, we need to look a bit at the context of the story. You see, Jesus doesn’t just tell it in a vacuum – we know why he tells it. A teacher of the Law – and Luke is far more likely to talk about teachers of the law, or scribes, than he is about priests or Levites, either – anyway, a teacher of the Law comes to Jesus with a trick question: “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” He’s hoping Jesus will give some kind of controversial answer and get himself into trouble, but Jesus always does seem to see through this sort of question and turns the question back on the scribe: “What is written in the Law? How do you read it?”

Now, first of all you notice that the lawyer asks what he must do to inherit eternal life. Not gain it, or receive it, or even earn it, but inherit it. It looks as though he reckons he’s probably already right with God, so when Jesus asks “How do you read it?” he is ready with the conventional answer:

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind; and, Love your neighbour as yourself.”

Now, we know from elsewhere in the Scriptures that this was a pretty conventional thing to say – devout Jews said it on their deathbeds, even! At least the first part of it. And Jesus is reported as quoting it to the rich young ruler in the other gospels. But this lawyer doesn’t get told to sell all he has and give it to the poor – he gets told “Do this, and you will live.”

Well, he’s not satisfied with that; he asks a follow-up question to try to get Jesus into trouble. “Well, who is my neighbour, then?” Who do I have to be nice to? Who can I get away with not being nice to? Maybe he should have phrased his question “Who is NOT my neighbour?” as that’s what it would seem he wanted to know.

So Jesus tells the story and, at the end, as you know, he asks “Who was the neighbour to the man that fell into the hands of robbers?” and the lawyer replies, “The one who cared for him.”

And Jesus tells him to “Go and do likewise!”

So what does it mean for us? I don’t know about you, but if I see someone lying on the ground, hurt, I’m far more likely to walk away sharpish, maybe dialling 999, but I’m very unlikely to stop and help. I’m not a trained nurse, and can’t be doing with drunks and so on. But perhaps you are good at that sort of thing? The priest and the Levite ought to have been – Jewish law commands that they have compassion on the sick and injured every bit as much as we Christians are expected to. We don’t know why they didn’t stop, and the story gives us no hints at all. Jesus is normally quite good, at least in Luke’s version of events, at telling us what the characters in his stories are thinking and feeling, but not in this case.

You will have heard, as I have, many, many sermons on this passage, telling us that we need to look out for those less fortunate than us. We need, in fact, to love other neighbour as we love ourselves. And we will have been told that our neighbour includes absolutely everybody; “The creed and the colour and the name don’t matter”, as the hymn says. And of course that’s true. But we are human, and often and often we fail to even notice a problem, never mind do something about it.

But then, there is the undoubted fact that many of us do not love ourselves. Facebook, recently, has had a plethora of memes reminding us to look after ourselves first so that we can look after others, and I sometimes find that uncomfortable, having understood – I was going to say having been taught, but I think it was me picking it up wrong – having understood that we were not supposed to want our own wants or to be anything less than content with our current lot, even if we were standing up to our neck in icy water! But one meme I liked reminded us that if we are on an aircraft and the oxygen masks come down, we should put our own mask on so that we can then help the person next to us with theirs.

The thing is, we can’t love our neighbour unless we are comfortable with ourselves, unless we have got ourselves right with God, unless we have allowed God to love us and heal us and start on the very long job of making us whole.

But if we can do that – I know I often say we need to let God work in us, but I’ve been realising lately that I am very bad at doing this. However, if we can, even for mere moments, then we will begin to be comfortable in our own skin, to value ourselves and to value our neighbours. And not only that, but to notice when they need something. It mightn’t be much – but how much do we actually notice other people. Bus drivers, for instance? Are they just remote figures behind a screen, or do you wish them good morning when you get on, and perhaps thank them when you get off? Supermarket checkout staff, too, are human beings…

Of course, “compassion fatigue” is very real; every other ad on television seems to want us to give three pounds a month to some charity or other, often with pictures of starving babies or cute snow leopard cubs. If one gave three pounds to every charity that asks, we’d soon go broke! Obviously sometimes we will both want and need to give – incidentally I do hope you are sponsoring Robert who is running for the Methodist charity All We Can this morning, but that’s beside the point – we probably donated something to one of the various charities helping Ukrainian refugees, for instance, and there are other global crises when giving money to the relevant relief organisation is the right thing to do. But at times it seems everybody wants a piece of the action! And when whatever the latest crisis is is happening at the other side of the world, it’s awfully difficult to remain engaged. These are not people we know, they are just people on the telly.

And yet God loves each and every one of them, just as He loves each and every one of us. And you can be very sure that, if you are wanted to be a neighbour to one of them, God will let you know. And also, give you the gifts you need to be able to be that neighbour! Amen.

Church Anniversary

 

It was, apparently, 65 years ago, in March 1957, that the foundation stones of this building were laid. I am not sure when the actual first service was held in the building, but I imagine it must have been in 1958 or 1959. A very long time ago! But I am told that the reading from John’s Gospel that we have just heard was used at that service, specifically focussing on verse 36: “Look, here is the Lamb of God!”

“Look, here is the Lamb of God!”

I wonder, if someone were to ask you what you meant by church, how you would answer? Most people who don’t go to church would probably say “That building on Brixton Hill”, or something similar. We, who belong to a church, would be more likely to say “The people of God”. We would probably talk of Brixton Hill Church and its buildings, rather than Brixton Hill Church and its people.

Mind you, having said that, buildings are not unimportant. Yes, we’ve learnt how to manage without, during the pandemic – but it’s not the same! And I don’t know if you’ve ever visited a really old church – I know some of the former King’s Acre people visited my family’s 13th-century church in Sussex a few years ago. I’m going to be preaching there in a couple of weeks and am really looking forward to it. Anyway, the point is, in a really old church, or a Cathedral, especially in those chapels in a Cathedral that have been set aside for private prayer, you get the feeling that it has been “prayed in” over the years. You become aware of God’s presence in the building. Perhaps you do here – I know I do, sometimes.

Of course, any building requires a great deal of upkeep – Cathedrals have, sadly, had to start charging people who only want to look round, rather than attend public worship, because they cost so much to maintain. Even a relatively modern building like this one takes a great deal of maintenance – Robert has been having an awful time lately chivvying the builders who have been repairing it, just ask him!

But most of us would, I think, agree that while a church meets in a building; the church is more than the building. Much more. People talk, of course, about “going into the Church” when they mean getting ordained, or, occasionally, entering religious life as a nun or monk. But basically we are the Church.

The Girls’ Brigade used to sing

“I am the Church,

you are the Church,

we are the Church together.

All who follow Jesus,

all around the world,

we are the Church together”.

And they were not wrong. We, God’s people met here, this morning, or following on the Livestream, we are the Church. Well, we are part of the Church!

And what we are part of is known as the Church Militant – the Church here on earth, fighting against evil. The larger part is known as the Church Triumphant, the saints in glory. The ones who fought the good fight, kept the faith, and who lived and died as God’s people.

Of course, the Church here on earth is far from perfect. Never has been. Even back in the 1^st century AD St Paul was having to write to the Church at Philippi and tell two of the women there, Euodia and Syntyche – or U-Odious and Soon-Touchy, as I have heard them called – to try to resolve their differences and to work together, and asked others in the church to try to help them do so. And, as we heard in our first reading, St Peter found it necessary to remind his readers that they should “Rid themselves, therefore, of all malice, and all guile, insincerity, envy, and all slander.”

Church squabbles are nothing new! As our own history will soon tell us, if we look back – and I’m not going to go into any details, you know them as well as I do!

But although we are far from perfect, we know that the Church is also a place where Jesus is. The Church is also a place where Jesus is. “Look,” said John the Baptist, “There is the Lamb of God.” As I just said, in many, if not most, churches you can come in and feel that this is a place that has been prayed in, a place where God has been at work, a place where God is. It is a place of healing, a place of power. A place where, as St Peter reminds us, we are being built into “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people.”

That’s pretty amazing, right? But then, there are people, we know, who feel that just attending public worship on a Sunday morning is enough, they don’t feel any need to take it further. I hope that’s not you – for you have, I promise you, nothing to lose by saying “Yes” to Jesus, to deciding to be God’s person, to deciding that what you say and do here on a Sunday should carry over and be part of who you are during the week, too. Truly, you have nothing to lose and everything to gain!

So we know that the Church is God’s people meeting together – or even not meeting together, for we remain God’s people during the week, when we are apart. We know, too, that the Church is a place where Jesus is, where we can say “Look, here is the Lamb of God”. At least, I hope and pray that this is as true of us as it is of many, if not most, Churches.

But there is another definition of “Church” that I’d like us to look at this morning, and that is, “The Church is the only organisation that exists primarily for the benefit of those who are not its members.”

“The Church is the only organisation that exists primarily for the benefit of those who are not its members.”

Sometimes we’re apt to treat the Church as though it were our own private club, a place where we meet our friends, a place where we receive the spiritual food we need, a place where we can worship God in the way that most appeals to us, and so on. In other words, it’s all about us! And, of course, in many ways it’s always going to be like that. We are inherently selfish creatures, and God has provided us with our churches for our own comfort and renewal. But nevertheless, it is still true that we should be looking outward, rather than inward. We should be reaching out into the community, loving people into the Kingdom of God – as, indeed, I think we are doing with our youth work and our Pop-In club, although much of our community work has been lost during the pandemic. But God will build it up again.

And you note that I said God will build it up again – we are not required to do it without help. St Peter reminds us that we are being built into a holy nation, God’s own people, not just for our own benefit – although I am sure that, too – but also “in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvellous light.”

“In order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvellous light.”

Jesus reminded us that when the Spirit came, we would be his witnesses throughout the world. Not that we could be, or that we ought to be, but that we would be. And so we are. If we are truly God’s people, then we are his witnesses, whether we’re here in Church, or out shopping, or at work or school. I know that, many years ago now, when I first encountered people who were consciously Christian, I really wanted them to like me. Quite the wrong reason for “inviting Jesus into your heart”, as we called it, but hey. Jesus is bigger than our wrong reasons! These young people – for we all were young then, very young – probably had no idea how attractive they were, but Jesus knew!

So, anyway. The Church is more than its buildings, nice though they are. The Church is more than professional Christians – clergy and so on. The Church is more than its people. The Church, too, is more than a base for reaching out into the community. All of these things are true. All of these things are part of being Church. But I would suggest that the main definition of Church, the one we want to look to on this Anniversary Sunday, is that it is a place where Jesus is. Jesus told us that where two or three are gathered in his name, he is there in the midst of us. And that is Church. A place where, I hope, we can look up and see the Lamb of God. Amen!

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