Preparing for Christmas

 

So today is Advent Sunday.
It's the first Sunday in the Church's Year, and, of course, the first in the four-week cycle that brings us up to Christmas.
Christmas is definitely coming –
if you go by what the supermarkets do, it's been going on since September!

It seems strange then, doesn't it, that the readings for this Sunday are about as un-Christmassy as you can get!
This from the Gospel we've just heard:

“There will be strange things happening to the sun, the moon, and the stars. On earth whole countries will be in despair,
afraid of the roar of the sea and the raging tides.
People will faint from fear as they wait for what is coming over the whole earth, for the powers in space will be driven from their courses.
Then the Son of Man will appear, coming in a cloud with great power and glory.
When these things begin to happen, stand up and raise your heads, because your salvation is near.”

It's all about the end of the world!
The time when Jesus will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, as we say in the Creed.
Now, there are frequently scares that the end of the world is about to happen –
some cult or other claims to have deciphered an ancient text that tells us that it might occur on any given date –
Some years ago, people thought a Mayan calendar was predicting the end of the world, which would have been a serious waste of all the Christmas presents we had been buying and making that year!
Of course, it didn’t happen!
And it was only one of a very long line of end-of-the-world stories which people have believed.
Sometimes they have even gone as far as to sell up all their possessions and to gather on a mountain-top,
and at least two groups committed mass suicide to make it easier for them to be found, or something.
I don't know exactly what....
And because some Christians believe that when it happens,
they will be snatched away with no notice whatsoever, leaving their supper to burn in the oven, or their car to crash in the middle of the motorway, some people set up, half as a joke but also have serious, a register of pets, so that if it happened, non-believers, who would be, they thought, left behind, will look after your pets for you! I don’t think the site is still active, but it was for a couple of years, back in the day.

But the point is, Jesus said we don't know when it's going to happen.
Nobody knows.
He didn't know.
He assumed, I think, that it would be fairly soon after his death –
did anybody expect the Church to go on for another two thousand years after that?
Certainly his first followers expected His return any minute now.

What is clear from the Bible –
and from our own knowledge, too –
is that this world isn't designed to last forever;
it's not meant to be permanent.
Just ask the dinosaurs!
We don't know how it will end.
When I was a girl it was assumed it would end in the flames of a nuclear holocaust;
that particular fear has lessened in 1989,
but has returned a bit with Russia making ominous noises.
These days we also think in terms of runaway global warming,
or perhaps a global pandemic far worse than what we endured a couple of years ago,
or a major asteroid strike.
But what is clear is that one day humanity will cease to exist on this planet.
We don't know how or when,
but we do know that God is in charge and will cope when it happens.

Christmas is coming.
Jesus said, of his coming again,
“Look at the fig tree and all the trees.
When they sprout leaves, you can see for yourselves and know that summer is near.
Even so, when you see these things happening,
you know that the kingdom of God is near.
Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened.  
Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.”

No, we are still reading Jesus' words today.
And just as we know summer is coming when the days get longer and the leaves start to shoot, so we know that Christmas is near when the shops start selling Christmas stuff!
But Jesus goes on to give a warning:
“Be careful, or your hearts will be weighed down with carousing, drunkenness and the anxieties of life, and that day will close on you suddenly like a trap.  For it will come on all those who live on the face of the whole earth.  
Be always on the watch, and pray that you may be able to escape all that is about to happen,
and that you may be able to stand before the Son of Man.”

Certainly we appear to celebrate Christmas with carousing and drunkenness, more often than not.
And who isn't weighed down with thoughts of all the preparation for the big day that is going to be necessary?
Whatever am I going to give this person, or that person?
So-and-so wants to know what I should like –
what should I like?
Have I got all the turkey-pudding-mince pies-Christmas Cake-Brussels Sprouts and so on organised?
Who have I not sent a card to, and won't they be offended?
You know the scenario.

But what is Christmas really about?
In much of the country it's been reduced to an extravaganza of food and booze and presents.
And the Christians, like us, chunter and mutter about
“Putting Christ back in Christmas!”, as if He was not there anyway.
But even we tend to reduce Christmas to a baby in a manger.
We render it all pretty-pretty,
with cattle and donkeys surrounding the Holy Family,
shepherds and kings, and so on.
Which is fine when you're two years old, but for us adults?
We forget the less-convenient bits of it –
the fact that Mary could so easily have been left to make her living as best she could on the streets,
the birth that came far from home –
at least, in Luke's version of the story.
Matthew's version says that they lived in Bethlehem anyway.
We forget about the flight to Egypt that Matthew tells us about so dramatically,
and the children whom Herod is alleged to have had killed in Bethlehem to try to avoid any rivalry by another King of the Jews.
We forget that it was the outsiders, the outcasts –
the shepherds, outcast in their own society, or the wise men from the East, not Jewish, not from around here –
it was they who were the first to worship the new-born King.

But the point is, it's not just about that, is it?
We'll teach the babies to sing “Away in a Manger”,
and it's right and proper that we should.
We kneel at the cradle in Bethlehem, yes –
but we worship the Risen Lord.

We worship at the cradle in Bethlehem,
but we also worship Jesus all year round,
remembering not only his birth,
but his teachings,
his ministry,
the Passion,
the Resurrection,
the Ascension
and the coming of the Holy Spirit.
And we worship, not only as an abstract “Thing” –
what was that song:
“I will celebrate Nativity, for it has a place in history....” –
it’s not just about worshipping a distant divinity,
but about God with us. Emmanuel.

And that brings us full circle, for whether we are celebrating once again the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem,
or whether we are looking towards the end times,
as we traditionally do today,
what matters is God with us. Emmanuel.

Jesus said “When these things begin to happen, stand up and raise your heads, because your salvation is near.”
We know that we will be saved,
we have been saved,
we are being saved –
it's not a concept I can actually put into words,
as it's not just about eternal life but about so much more than that.
But “our salvation is near”.
Dreadful things may or may not be going to happen –
and they probably are going to happen, because Life is Like That –
but God is still with us.

Talking about the end of the world like that is called “apocalyptic speech”,
and very often, when people talked apocalyptically,
they were addressing a local situation just as much as the end times.
The prophets certainly were;
they had no idea we would still be reading their words today.
When Jeremiah said, as in our first reading,
“The people of Judah and of Jerusalem will be rescued and will live in safety,” he was thinking of a fairly immediate happening –
and, indeed, we know that the tribes of Judah did return after exile
and live in Jerusalem again.
But his words apply to the end times, too.

And the same with Jesus, I think.
Much of the disasters he spoke of will have happened within a few years of his death –
the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, for one thing.
Don't forget that he was in an occupied country at the time.
And all down the centuries there have been plagues
and wars
and floods
and famines
and earthquakes
and tsunamis
and comets and things;
every age, I think, has applied Jesus' words to itself.

So we are living in the end times no more and no less than any other age has been.
And in our troubled world, we hold on to the one certainty we have:
God with us.
Emmanuel.
Amen.

Becoming Ourselves

 

“So, friends, we can now –
without hesitation –
walk right up to God, into “the Holy Place.”
Jesus has cleared the way by the blood of his sacrifice, acting as our priest before God.
The “curtain” into God’s presence is his body.
So let’s do it –
full of belief, confident that we’re presentable inside and out.
Let’s keep a firm grip on the promises that keep us going.

He always keeps his word.”

©2000 Nathan Nettleton LaughingBird.net

That's a modern translation of part of our first reading today,
from the letter to the Hebrews.
I don't know how much you know about this letter;
it's thought to date from around the year 63 or 64 AD,
before the Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed
and before the Eucharist became a widespread form of Christian worship.
Nobody knows who wrote it, either;
arguments about its authorship go back to at least the 4^th century AD!
Probably one of Paul's pupils, but nobody actually knows who.

The Temple in Jerusalem is still standing when this letter is written.
The author uses it to contrast what used to be –
in the olden days only the High Priest could go into God's presence,
and he had to take blood with him to atone for the people's sins and his own.
Nowadays, it is only Christ, the great High Priest, who can go into God's presence –
but he can and does take us with him.
We can go with Jesus into the very presence of God himself, confidently,
just like you'd walk into your own front room.

The thing is, of course, that it's all because of what Jesus has done for us.
We can't go into God's presence, as the prayer says,
“trusting in our own righteousness”.
If we are to go in with any degree of confidence,
it is because of what Jesus has done for us,
arguably whether or not we recognise this.

The author of the Letter to the Hebrews tells us that Christ takes us in there in his own body.
I don't know about you, but for me that rather helps clarify what St Paul said about our being part of the Body of Christ –
and in that Body, we can go into God's presence.

There is nothing we can do to make it any easier or any more difficult;
it is all down to Jesus.
We are made right with God by what Jesus has done, end of.
It isn't about whether we have confessed our sins –
although I hope we have faced up to where we have gone wrong.
It isn't about whether we have asked Jesus to be our Saviour and our Lord –
although I very much hope we have done so.
Neither of those things will save us.
Only God will save us –
and as soon as we reach out a tentative finger to him,
and sometimes even before, he is there,
reassuring us that we are loved,
we are saved,
we are forgiven.

The trouble is, all too often we focus on sin as though that were what Christianity were all about.
We even tend to think the Good News goes
“You are a sinner and God will condemn you to hell unless you believe the right things about him.”

Erm, no.
Just no.
We do things like that.
We are quick to condemn, especially people in public life.
Just read any newspaper, any day.
Look how people’s careers can be destroyed by the revelation of an injudicious tweet they sent when they were a teenager!
We are slow to forgive –
we don't believe people can change, we keep on bringing up episodes in the lives of our nearest and dearest that might have happened a quarter of a century ago!

But God is not like that.
God is love.
God is salvation.
We don't have to do anything, only God can save us.
Yes, following Jesus is not an easy option, we know that.
If we are Jesus' person, we are Jesus' person in every part of our lives –
it isn't just something we do here in Church on Sundays.
It affects who we are when we are at work,
or at home with our families,
or going to the supermarket.
It affects what we choose to do with our free time,
who we choose to spend it with –
not, I hope, exclusively people who think the same way as we do.

You see, the thing is, you never know exactly what God's going to do.
An acquaintance of mine is a fairly well-known author whose books have been published both here and in the USA.
She is a few months older than I am, and some years ago she announced on
her blog that she had met Jesus and was now a Christian.
You don't really expect people to become Christians just before their 60^th birthday, but it happened to her.
God reached out to her and, as she put it, everything changed.

Yet she was still herself.

Another fairly well-known author –
well, well-known to me, anyway,
but if you don't read science fiction or fantasy you'll not have heard of either of these lovely women –
confirmed in the comments on this blog that she, too, is a believer,
although you couldn't have actually read some of her books and not realised that.
And one of her comments read, in part:
“I'm still who I was, probably more so. . . . I was scared of the other –
of becoming the cookie fresh from the cutter, just like every other cookie.
But individuality and diversity appears to be built in to the design concept.”

Individuality and diversity appear to be built into the design concept.
Yes.
God has created and designed each one of us to be uniquely ourselves.
When we are told that we will become more Christ-like as we go on with Jesus,
it doesn't mean we'll all grow to resemble a first-century Jewish carpenter!
We will, in fact, become more and more ourselves, more and more who we were intended to be.

Salvation comes from God, through nothing you or I can do, although we are, of course, at liberty to say “No thank you!”
But if we say “Yes please”, as I suspect most of us here have said, at one time or another, then everything changes.
I've spoken before, although not, I think here, about the consequences of healing.
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!
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.

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 or a wrong attitude.
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 that's scary.

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

So where does this leave our reading?
Jesus, in our gospel reading, reminded us that we mustn't go running this way and that way,
convinced of doomsday scenarios every time we hear a news bulletin.
Yes, the world as we know it is going to end some day –
it wasn't built to be permanent, just ask the dinosaurs!
We don't know how and why it will end;
in my youth, I would have assumed it would end in a nuclear war that would destroy all living things.
These days that is, perhaps, less probable,
but what about runaway global warming or an asteroid strike?
Or just simply running out of fossil fuels and unable to replace them?
And who knows what a second Trump presidency will do to the United States, never mind to the rest of the world?
The answer is that we simply don't know.
Unlike the first Christians,
we don't really expect Jesus to return any minute now –
although I suppose that is possible.
We do, however, accept and appreciate that this world is finite and that one day humanity will no longer exist here.

And we mustn't be scared all the time, either.
Yes, our news headlines can be very scary –
but isn't God greater than terrorists?
Isn't God greater than Russia, or Hamas, or Israel, or even the USA?

And we musn't get bogged down in details, either.
A few years ago there was such a silly row in the USA this week because Starbucks hadn't put Christmas symbols –
not Christian ones, but snowflakes and so on –
on their red cups that year.
Too silly – the God we worship is so very much bigger than whether or not a corporation has decorations on its cups.
There are many good reasons not to go to Starbucks, but that really isn't one of them!
And at the moment there are huge rows going on in the Church of England about reaction to historical abuse scandals, and failures in safeguarding. People are calling for the Archbishop of Canterbury to resign, as indeed he apparently considered doing, but another cleric has pointed out that it’s not a scalp that is needed, but a complete change in safeguarding culture.
Methodists have been working very hard on safeguarding –
just last week I did a course, as all local preachers and others in positions of responsibility must do, about safeguarding and how to ensure vulnerable people are not abused or exploited.
And that is a very important thing, and to know who to contact if you become aware of such things going on, and see what systems and so on need to be implemented to make it more difficult for people to abuse or exploit others.

It is, of course, vital to our life on earth to be aware of such things. But when we are also taught that we will be raised from death and go on Somewhere Else, it almost pales into insignificance.
We don't know what that Somewhere Else will be like,
nor who we'll be when we get there –
although I imagine we'll still be recognisably ourselves.
But we do know that Jesus will be there with us,
and that we will see Him face to face.

But eternal life isn't just pie in the sky when you die, as it is so often caricatured.
If we are Christians, we have eternal life here and now;
so often, it's living it that's the problem, as I expect some of the examples I’ve given have shown.
So I'm going to conclude with part of the quote from Hebrews with which I began:
“Jesus has cleared the way by the blood of his sacrifice,
acting as our priest before God.
The “curtain” into God’s presence is his body.
So let’s do it –
full of belief, confident that we’re presentable inside and out.”

Let's do it!
Amen.

Remembrance Sunday 2024

 

Photo of Oradour-sur-Glane 

Today is Remembrance Sunday.
It’s not an easy day to preach on, although I have done so many times over the years.
But what do you say that doesn’t appear either a facile glorification of war, or a total dismissal of those who lost their lives, or were injured, or, worst of all, lost their faith during them?

Here in Britain we’ve been relatively lucky.
There hasn’t been a battle fought on British soil since Culloden in 1745.
We suffered the Blitz, of course, when many of our cities were badly damaged, or even destroyed –
you can see the scars to this day, even around Brixton.
So many streets of Edwardian terraces have a sudden more modern block in the middle.
But we haven’t had jackbooted soldiers marching about the place, or tanks running through our back gardens.

You know, the more I think of it, the more awful I feel, because I know that many of you had to endure, or your parents had to endure, exactly that!
British troops strutting about the place, issuing orders, interfering with your daily lives, generally behaving as if they owned the world!

It isn’t just the British, of course!
In fact, in 1944, British soldiers were warmly welcomed into Normandy by the local people, who had suffered for four long years of Nazi occupation.
But that, of course, was not the end of it –
much of the local area was destroyed by the troops fighting for dominance.

Today we are supposed to remember those who fought and died, those who fought and were wounded.
And indeed we must and should –
whatever side they fought on;
whether they enlisted voluntarily or were conscripted;
whether they thought their cause was right and just, or whether they went unwillingly in service to a regime they hated. Many of us will know of family members who were killed or wounded in one of the two great wars of the 20^th century, or one of the many lesser conflicts.
Perhaps you have family members involved in the current wars in Ukraine or Gaza or Sudan, or again, in many of the lesser conflicts around the world.
Today is the day we honour them and remember them.

But we also need to remember the civilians;
those whose houses or livelihoods were destroyed by enemy action;
those whose homes were requisitioned by the armed forces, whether their own, or the enemy;
those who lost loved ones;
those whose lives were totally disrupted by having to serve as nurses, or in factories, or down the mines.

This summer, we visited the village of Oradour-sur-Glane in France, which has been left as a memorial to the 641 people who were killed by SS troops there in June 1944.
You go into the village through the visitor centre, and past a wall with photographs of all those who were killed.
From old men down to small children.
Many of the photos were formal pictures, wedding shots, first Communion pictures, that sort of thing.
It really didn’t bear thinking about, and yet it was only one of many atrocities committed in that war.
Allies as well as Axis powers, I may say –
both sides did awful things, as happens in any war.

And even if you escaped being bombed, or shot, or anything, there were still awful things.
I’ve read my great-grandfather’s diaries.
His elder son was wounded so badly in 1916 that nobody thought he would live –
although he did, or I wouldn’t be here to tell the tale.
He only lived because the surgeon said he would remove his leg if he thought it would save his life, but it probably wouldn’t.
So he was left in the pile of soldiers who were going to die which, it is thought, is what saved him, as the cold protected him from shock.
Anyway,
my great-grandfather got permission from the War Office and went over to France to visit him.
And then it became clear that he would live, after all, so my great-grandfather came home again, only to hear that his other son had been killed on the Somme.
And, twenty years later or so, my grandparents had to suffer the agony of knowing their only son –
my father –
was on active service, as was a daughter’s fiancé.
Not only that, but their home had been requisitioned by the War Office and they had ten days to get out – and the troops that occupied it damaged it and destroyed many old family records.

I’m not saying this to elicit pity.
It happened, and we were very far from the only family it happened to.
Many had things far, far worse.

So where, then, is God in all this?
To quote St Paul:
“I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
But it’s difficult, isn’t it?
Many people, I know, lost their faith during and after the World Wars, feeling that if God could allow such horrors –
well….

But then, we were never told life would be a bed of roses.
In fact, rather the reverse.
In fact, Jesus explicitly said it wouldn’t be easy.
He said, “Blessed are the Peacemakers”
But he also said that there would always be wars, and rumours of wars.
We are told to make peace, even while we know we will be unsuccessful.

Many years ago now, Robert and I visited New York less than a fortnight after the World Trade Centre was destroyed.
We had planned our holiday months earlier, and decided not to allow terrorism and war to disrupt our lives more than was strictly necessary.
Besides, what safer time to go, just when security was at its height?

Anyway, the first Sunday we were there, we felt an urgent need to go to Church, to worship with God’s people.
Not knowing anything about churches in Brooklyn, we went to the one round the corner from where we were staying, which turned out to be a Lutheran Church.
And I’m so glad we went –
the people there were so pleased to know that people were still visiting from England.
They knew they faced a hard time coming to terms with what had happened, and that the future was very uncertain for all of us, yet they knew, too, that God was in it with them.

And God is in it with us, too.
Whatever happens.
God was there in the trenches with those young men in the first War;
God was there in the bombing and occupations of the Second War.
God was there in the Twin Towers that day, and in the hijacked planes, too.
God is there in Ukraine, and in Russia;
in Gaza and in Israel.

We, who call ourselves Christians, sometimes refuse to fight for our country,
believing that warfare and Christianity aren’t really compatible.
I am inclined to agree, but for one thing –
do we really want our armed forces to be places where God is not honoured?
That’s the big problem with Christian pacifism –
it leaves the armed forces very vulnerable.

But we must do all that we can to make peace.
I don’t know what the rights and wrongs of most current conflicts, but I do know that people are suffering.

They are suffering in Ukraine.
They are suffering in Gaza, and that conflict may yet escalate –
British troops have been sent to Cyprus to help if British subjects need to be evacuated from Lebanon.
At that British troops are training, with others, all across Europe in case the Ukraine conflicts escalate.

War causes suffering.
It is never noble, or glorious, and I’m not quite sure whether it is ever right.
Even if it is, it is horrible.
And inevitable.
And we Christians must do all we can to bring peace,
and we must wear our poppies
and remember, each year, those who had to suffer and die, and those who continue to suffer and die.

And above all, we must pray for our armed forces –
for any value of “our”, by the way;
I certainly don’t mean just British ones!
We need to pray, and to remember, with St Paul, that nothing, absolutely nothing, can separate us from the love of Christ.
Amen.

All Saints Year B

 

The Children's talk at the start of the recording was "winged", as I forgot there would be children present!!!  They sit at the back with their own activities, and are extremely good, so I like to include them a bit if I can.

So today is All Saints’ Sunday. All Saints’ Day itself was last Friday, and there was the annual service to remember those who died during the past year, either from our churches or people dear to church members. I expect there’s considerable overlap between the two! But, you know, while that is a wonderful thing to do, and can help enormously when people are grieving, in fact, All Saints is a celebration of life, not a memorial of death!

After all, we believe that this life, wonderful though it is, isn’t the end, but that we are raised from death to new life with Christ. We become part of what’s called the Church Triumphal – here on earth, we’re known as the Church Militant. And that’s what we’re celebrating today. Our hymns and readings are reflecting that, I hope.

Our first reading came from that part of the Bible known as the Apocrypha. Those are the books that Catholic and Orthodox Christians consider part of the Bible, but Protestants don’t, although we are encouraged to read them, but not necessarily to consider them doctrinally sound. This particular book is called Wisdom, or the Wisdom of Solomon. They don’t know who wrote it – spoiler alert: it wasn’t King Solomon – but they think it came from Alexandria between the first century BC and the first century AD. It’s one of the books where Wisdom – Sofia – is personified and equated to God herself!

We read part of chapter 3 this morning, which tells us that the righteous who have died are with God: “They leave us, but it is not a disaster. In fact, the righteous are at peace.  It might appear that they have suffered punishment, but they have the confident hope of immortality. Their sufferings were minor compared with the blessings they will receive.”

St Paul said much the same thing, if you remember, in his letter to the church in Rome: “I consider that what we suffer at this present time cannot be compared at all with the glory that is going to be revealed to us.”

I believe that, in very ancient times, the Hebrew people didn’t really have the concept of an afterlife. You can see that in the Psalms, when they write things like “No-one praises you when they’re dead”, and words to that effect. But gradually, over the centuries, as they were taken into exile, as they were persecuted, they began to believe that the God they believed loved them wouldn’t just let them suffer without some reward. They could, after all, “eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die!” They could curse God and die, as Job’s wife suggested he might want to. But instead, they gradually began to realise that this life wasn’t all there is. And in the passage we heard read, we are told that “the righteous” will be in God’s presence, and will be rewarded.

As Christians, of course, we believe that Jesus is our righteousness. We can’t, and won’t, get into heaven on our own merits, but because of Jesus’ death and resurrection. I’m sure our merits will be acknowledged, but our tickets to heaven have already been paid for by Jesus!

As Martha realises, in our Gospel reading. You know the story, of course –
Lazarus was the brother of Martha and Mary, and Jesus seems to have been a frequent, and beloved, visitor to their home in Bethany, just outside Jerusalem. It’s possible, if not probable, that he stayed there most years when he came up to Jerusalem for the Passover, and they certainly seem to have been among his closest friends.

Anyway, Lazarus falls ill, and they send to Jesus to come and heal him. But Jesus, unaccountably, delays for another two days. And when he does set out to go there, the disciples are rather worried, as they fear for his safety. But he explains that Lazarus has died, and God wants him raised from the dead.

And when he gets to Bethany, both Martha and Mary disobey tradition, and come out to meet him. Normally, relatives of the deceased were expected to stay seated on low stools while the visitors came to them to offer their condolences – it’s called sitting shiva, and I understand it’s done in Jewish families to this day. Anyway, Martha and Mary run out to meet him, Martha first. Jesus has this wonderful conversation with her which culminates in him saying to her, “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. Do you believe this?” and Martha replying with that wonderful declaration of faith: “I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God who was to come into the world.” Martha said this. Martha. A woman – and not only a woman, but a traditional woman, usually more concerned with getting a meal for Jesus and the disciples than in learning what he had to say! It’s amazing.

And, as you know, the story goes on and we learn how Mary comes out to Jesus in her turn, and Jesus weeps at his friend’s grave. And then he calls for the stone to be rolled away and Martha, wonderful, practical Martha, complains that it’s going to stink quite dreadfully after four days.... but the stone gets rolled away, and Lazarus comes forth, still wrapped in his graveclothes.

Now, it’s a wonderful story, and I expect you, like me, have heard many great sermons and much wonderful teaching on it. But for today, it’s about life. Lazarus is raised to life, and he will continue his life on earth until the day comes when he really is ready to go and be with Jesus in heaven.

He wasn’t the only person Jesus raised from the dead, if you remember. There was Jairus’ daughter, who was only twelve years old, so Jesus called her back from the dead. And there was a young man who was his widowed mother’s only support, and Jesus called him back, too. Someone once said that he disrupted every funeral he ever attended. I’m not sure how true that is – there must have been many funerals he went to where the person’s time had really come, and it was only right to bury their body. But certainly, the ones we are told about.

His first disciples did that, too – Peter certainly raised Dorcas, or Tabitha – her name depends on what language you were thinking in, as she’s Tabitha in Aramaic, but Dorcas in Greek – anyway, Peter raised her from the dead. I got a grin out of re-reading the story, as I’d never noticed before that Peter has turfed everybody out of the room, and kneels down to pray, and then, we are told “he turned to the body and said, “Tabitha, get up!” She opened her eyes, and when she saw Peter, she sat up.” I can’t help but wonder what she thought he was doing – I can just picture her sitting up, most indignantly, demanding to know what this strange man was doing in her bedroom!

However, that’s beside the point. What is the point, though, is that it’s all about life. We believe that, like Lazarus, we shall be raised from dead. But unlike him, we shall probably be raised to eternal life with Jesus, and God will wipe away every tear from our eyes. And we are also told that Jesus came so that we might have life, and have it abundantly. And that applies to the here and now, too; it’s not just pie in the sky when we die! Our whole lives now have that eternal dimension.

That doesn’t mean, of course, that we won’t experience great sorrow, and quite possibly great suffering, here – sadly, that is part of human existence.
And it doesn’t mean that we can live just as we like, doing whatever we like, because God has saved us. Rather to the contrary, I think personal holiness is very important. We need to do all we can to avoid sin.

Jesus shows us in some of his teachings what his people are going to be like:
poor in spirit – not thinking more of themselves than they ought; mourning, perhaps for the ungodly world in which we live; meek, which means slow to anger and gentle with others; hungry and thirsty for righteousness; merciful; pure in heart; peacemakers and so on.

St Paul gives other lists of characteristics that Christians will display;
you probably remember from his letter to the Galatians:
Love, joy, peace, patience and so on. And he gives lots of lists of the sort of behaviour that Christians don’t do, ranging from gluttony to fornication. Basically the sort of things that put “Me” first, and make “me” the centre of my life.

But the wonderful thing is that we don’t have to strive and struggle and do violence to our own natures. Yes, of course, we are inherently selfish and it’s nearly impossible to put God first in our own strength. But the whole point is, we don’t have to do it in our own strength. That is why God sent the Holy Spirit, to come into us, fill us, and transform us. We wouldn’t be very happy in heaven if we were stuck in our old nature, after all!

But if we let God transform us, we can have abundant life here on this earth, and then we leave our bodies behind and go on to be with Jesus. And that, we are told, is even better! As St Paul said, “What we suffer at this present time cannot be compared at all with the glory that is going to be revealed to us.”

Jesus asks us, “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. Do you believe this?”

Can we reply, with Martha, “I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who was to come into the world.”?

Looking for God

 

Our two readings today are both about people who can’t find God.
Firstly Job, and then the man who we call “The rich young ruler”.

So, Job.
It's a funny old story, isn't it, this story of Job.
Do you know, nobody knows anything about it –
what you see is totally what you get!
Nobody knows who it was written, or when, or why, or whether it is true history or a fictional story –
most probably the latter!

The Book of Job is incredibly ancient, or parts of it are.
And so it makes it very difficult for us to understand.
We do realise, of course, that it was one of the earliest attempts someone made to rationalise why bad things happen to good people, but it still seems odd to us.
I think one of the oddest things is that picture of God as almost an earthly King, with his court around him.
And Satan as one of the heavenly beings belonging to that court.

You know the story, of course – how God allowed Satan to kill all Job’s children, destroy his crops and herds, and ultimately give him a plague of boils – some sort of blood-poisoning, perhaps, or monkey pox or something like that. His wife, who must be suffering equally as much as Job, if not more so, says “Curse God and die!” but Job refuses to do that, although he does, with some justification, curse the day he was born.

And you will remember how his three friends come to “comfort” him (in quotes), and spend their time trying to make Job admit that he has done wrong and deserved everything that had happened. Job knows quite well he hasn’t, but he is stuck. He can’t see where God is in all this.

“If only I knew where I could find God,
I’d pound on the door and demand a hearing.
God would have to listen to me state my case
and argue my innocence.
Let’s see what God would have to say to that!
Then I could get God’s answer clear in my head.

Would God simply pull rank and rule me out of order?
I don’t think so. Surely God would listen.
Surely if an honest bloke like me gets a fair hearing,
God would judge in my favour
and clear my name once and for all.

But I can’t find God anywhere.
I look up, down, forwards, backwards – nothing.
I think I catch a glimpse to the left, but no;
I rush to the right, but God vanishes like a mirage.”
©2000 Nathan Nettleton LaughingBird.net

That’s a modern paraphrase of part of our first reading.

We know what happens in the end, of course –
God does eventually answer Job, and, in some of the loveliest poetry ever written, tells him that he’s all wrong.
He’s looking in the wrong place.
He’s looking at all his problems and trying to find a reason for them,
but where he should be looking is at God, at his Creator:

“Do you give the horse its might?
Do you clothe its neck with mane?
Do you make it leap like the locust?
Its majestic snorting is terrible.
It paws violently, exults mightily;
it goes out to meet the weapons.
It laughs at fear, and is not dismayed;
it does not turn back from the sword.
Upon it rattle the quiver, the flashing spear, and the javelin.
With fierceness and rage it swallows the ground;
it cannot stand still at the sound of the trumpet.
When the trumpet sounds, it says "Aha!"
From a distance it smells the battle, the thunder of the captains, and the shouting.”

Wonderful stuff, and it goes on for about three chapters, talking of the natural world and its wonders, and how God is the author of them all. My father loved these chapters so much that he asked me to read chapter 39 at his funeral, which I did – in the Authorised Version he had grown up with, and preferred. It is very lovely, whichever version you read it in, but the Authorised Version has unicorns:
“Will the unicorn be willing to serve thee,
or abide by thy crib?
Canst thou bind the unicorn with his band in the furrow?
or will he harrow the valleys after thee?”
Sadly, all the more recent translations say “wild ox” instead of “unicorn”, but I prefer unicorns, don’t you?

If you ever want to rejoice in creation, read Job chapters 38, 39 and 40.
And at the end, Job repents "in dust and ashes", we are told, and then his riches are restored to him.

Job, you see, was looking at his problems, so he couldn’t find God.

And so we turn to the Gospel reading, the story of the rich young ruler.
Well, all three gospels tell us that the person who came was a rich man, but Matthew tells us that he was young and Luke tells us that he was a ruler.
He was probably a ruler in the synagogue.
So we call him the rich young ruler.

Anyway, he comes running to Jesus just as he –
Jesus –
is about to leave town.
I wonder why he left it so late?
Perhaps he really didn’t want to ask.
If he was a ruler in the synagogue, he probably thought he ought to know better than this travelling preacher who has come to town.
Or perhaps he was held up by looking after business –
people with a lot of money do seem to have to spend an awful lot of time looking after it.
But whatever, he comes racing up, falls at Jesus’ feet, and addresses him as “Good Teacher!”

Jesus fends him off by saying “No one deserves to be called ‘good’ except God”.
But he sees that the young man is in earnest –
he really does want to know how to gain eternal life.
He is looking for God.

So Jesus reminds him of the Commandments, and the young man says he’s followed them all since he was a boy.

Jesus looked him straight in the eye and, filled with love for him, he said, “One thing you lack. Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”

And we are told that the man went away, very sad, because he was very rich.
The rich young ruler was looking at his money, his property, his business, not at his Creator. And when he did try to find God, he was looking at the rules, not at any kind of relationship.

Job was looking at his problems, not at his Creator. He couldn’t find God, because God was not in his problems. God was absolutely there with Job, but Job was focussing on what was wrong. All too easy to do, isn’t it? And please, I’m not saying that if we turn to God, all our problems will magically vanish – you know, and I know, that that isn’t how God works! What I am saying is that God is there with us, even if it totally doesn’t feel like it, and if we possibly can, we need to look at that. “In all things,” says St Paul, “Give thanks.” That doesn’t mean being thankful for the bad things – what sort of a monster would God be if we were expected to do that? But we can still remember that God is there with us. We can still praise God – using other people’s words if we can’t find any of our own just now; that, after all, is what the various hymn and prayer books are for!

John Wesley reminded us of what he called “The means of Grace” – prayer, Bible Study, fellowship and the Sacrament. These are still the foundation stones to help us grow our faith – but Wesley points out that they are only means to an end. They are not ends in themselves. But as a structure, they can really help when our problems threaten to overwhelm us.

In one way, that was where the rich young ruler went wrong. He was focussing on the commandments as ends in themselves, not looking past them to the One who gave them. And he was also focussed on his wealth. We don’t know – we can’t know, at this distance – what the problem was. Was he insecure, and felt that he needed his money, his familiar things, to be safe? Did he want to keep his money safe to pass on to his children when the time came? All we know is that for him, his money was an obstacle that came between him and God.

What are you looking at that comes between you and God? Obviously we’re all going to be looking at our problems much of the time, because we’re human. But if we can, even for moments, look past them and reach out to God, God will be there with us. “Lord, I believe, help thou my unbelief!”

What, if anything, is stopping you from finding God?

Are you wise?

 

“Are you wise?” I wonder what your answer to that question would be. There is a series of books I love by an author called Elizabeth Moon, in which the Dragon – in her world there is only one dragon – has very little to do with people unless there is a crisis in which he needs to intervene, and when he meets a new person, he tends to ask them “Are you wise?”

Dragon, in the books, is not God – I believe that in a forthcoming novel he will make a bad error of judgement, although I don’t yet know what – but he values wisdom in human beings above all other qualities. And wisdom is very highly valued in the Bible, too.

The wise person, in the Bible, is one who worships God. “The fear of the Lord,” we are told, “is the beginning of wisdom”. “The fool has said in his heart ‘There is no God’”.

So, in the Old Testament, at any rate, wisdom is seeking out God, following God, fearing God – not in the sense of being afraid, but in the sense of being aware who God is, how much greater God is than us, and so on. And wisdom is very definitely a quality that is valued.

But Wisdom, with a capital W, is also a person, especially in the book of Proverbs – we heard something of that in our first reading, did we not?

“Wisdom cries out in the street;
   in the squares she raises her voice.
At the busiest corner she cries out;
   at the entrance of the city gates she speaks:
‘How long, O simple ones, will you love being simple?
How long will scoffers delight in their scoffing
   and fools hate knowledge?”

There are many other passages about Wisdom in Proverbs, and there is even a whole book, in that section of the Bible we call the Apocrypha, known as the Wisdom of Solomon. The Apocrypha is the collection of books that didn’t make the cut into the Protestant Old Testament, although Catholics see them as canonical, which we are told to study “for example of life and instruction of manners;
but yet not apply them to establish any doctrine.”

I want to quote a bit from the Wisdom of Solomon here, as it was an alternative to the Psalm set for today:

The Spirit of Wisdom is like a polished mirror,
reflecting bright light onto everything God is and does.
In her we see a crystal clear image of God’s goodness.

Although there is only one of her,
there is no limit to what she can do.
Without needing to change, she is always fresh,
and she renews and refreshes everything she touches.

Agelessly passing from one generation to the next,
she embraces those who dedicate themselves to God.
Making a home in their hearts,
she nurtures their friendship with God.
She enables them to pass on God’s word to others,
for God’s greatest delight is in those
who are at home with wisdom.

The beauty of Wisdom outshines the sun,
and the stars in the sky look pale by comparison.
She is more illuminating than light itself,
because light is regularly subdued by the dark of night,
but there is no evil that can ever get the better of Wisdom.
She stretches out her arms and embraces the whole earth.
She uses her strength to set everything right for the benefit of all.

©2000 Nathan Nettleton LaughingBird.net

Lovely, isn’t it? And, as in the book of Proverbs, Wisdom is personified. The Greek word for wisdom is Sophia, a woman’s name. You might want to try addressing God as “Lady Sophia” or “Lady Wisdom”; it might do nothing for you, or you might find it really helpful! The titles we use for God, the way we think about God, are apt to change over time and will be different for each one of us. Some weeks we find it helpful to think of God as the Shepherd; then perhaps as Lady Wisdom; then as Love; then as the shadow of a great Rock in a weary land! I’ve been focussed on that one, the shadow of a great Rock, for some months now!

Anyway, to return to wisdom. Are you wise?
What is wisdom, anyway?
It’s not about book-learning. It’s not about education. The most educated person can be incredibly foolish at times; we’ve all seen that in politicians and other leaders. Equally, they can, of course, be very wise. But you don’t need an education to be wise! Remember the psalmist: “Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings….”

I think wisdom is definitely a gift from God.

Humanly speaking, we can all be wise sometimes, and incredibly foolish next minute. Look at Peter, in our Gospel reading.

When Jesus asks “Who do you reckon I am?”, Peter replies that “You are the Messiah!” God’s anointed one. The one they had been expecting for so long. Peter was wise, there, with the wisdom of God.

But then it all went pear-shaped. Jesus started to tell them that he was probably going to have to die, and Peter says “No, I won't let that happen!”

But Jesus mustn't listen.

This was the voice of the tempter, always so near, so insidious, so tempting.... “Get thee behind me Satan!” he says.
“Peter, you're not helping!”

Peter was not being wise there! He was only trying to be kind. He had a sword, he could use it, he would protect Jesus with his life. That must have been heartwarming for Jesus, but no.

It’s so easy to do that, isn’t it? To say the wrong thing when you’re only trying to help. It's so not easy to get it right – often, we want to comfort a friend, for instance, but what do you say?
So often, whatever we actually make things worse!
I know sometimes being told that God will never fail me or forsake me really hasn't helped when it's felt that this is exactly what has just happened!
I know, obviously, that God hadn't failed me or forsaken me,
but at the time, it felt like it!
But sometimes people simply won't acknowledge the reality of our feelings:
“Oh no, you don't feel like that”,
or “Oh no, you don't believe that!”
It doesn’t help.
I remember once being told, by someone who really ought to have known better, that if I didn't find God's promises true –
I forget which one I was complaining about –
there was something wrong with me!

Well, quite probably there was –
but it really didn't help for the person to say so.
God doesn't always work in ways that are as straightforward as we would like to believe, does He?
The Holy Spirit is a rushing mighty wind, not an electric fan.
Or, if you like, he is not a tame lion!
God does exactly what God wants, and because God sees round corners in a way that you and I simply can't,
we don't always know what's going on.
And being told that if we believe thus and so,
or pray in these words rather than that,
then our pain will wrap itself up into a nice little ball and go away
really isn't helping! It is not wise of the person who told us that. We are not wise if we try to tell other people that.

But it’s all too easy to let our tongues run away with us unwisely! We didn’t read the passage from James’ letter which is one of the readings for today, but in it, he reminds us that you can’t tame the human tongue. Teachers have a huge responsibility – not just teachers in school, but preachers like me and others, and those responsible for lifelong learning – a huge responsibility to get it right. Those who listen are going to pick up what we said and, if they believe it, may well tell other people, and before you know it, misinformation and fake news has swept round the community, and, in these days of social media, has swept around the planet.

This, of course, means that we all, whether we teach, or learn, or do both, have a responsibility to discern what is true and right from what we read or see on social media, or what our friends tell us, or what our teachers and preachers tell us. And that isn’t easy, although discernment is, or can be, one of God’s many gifts to us. Discernment – wisdom. Are you wise?

Peter wasn’t wise just then. He was thinking in human terms – but then, did he know any others at that stage? For him, Jesus’ death would be the worst possible thing that could happen. But Jesus knew, or was beginning to know, that it had to happen, and being tempted to allow Peter to prevent it, or to try to, would be quite the wrong thing. It would not be wise.

Jesus goes on to say, pretty much, that it is the wise who will stick with him, rather than seeking after human glory and values. Even if this means suffering and death. The wise will continue to acknowledge Jesus, even in this day and age.

In our reading from Proverbs, Wisdom tells us that if we only call on her when disaster strikes, it’s too late! We need to learn to be God’s people all the time, not just on Sundays and when disaster strikes. We need to learn how to trust God all the time. And perhaps more importantly, we need to learn how to listen to those in trouble rather than to try to put things right. We need God’s discernment to know what, if anything, to say.

I’m thankful, as always, that wisdom is a gift of the Holy Spirit. We don’t have to generate it ourselves! Are you wise? Or perhaps the question should be “Are you wise enough to let God give you the gift of wisdom, of discernment?” Amen.

Deuteronomy

 

Once upon a time, long, long ago, in a kingdom far away,
there was trouble in the land.
The King, whose name was Manasseh,
had decided to forsake worshipping the God of his ancestors,
and to worship other, more exciting gods instead.
Not only that, but he put up altars to them in the holy Temple at Jerusalem, and despite all the priests could do,
and despite dire warnings from the prophets,
he carried on like this, even sacrificing one of his children and practising black magic.

The priests in the Temple were scared.
They didn't know how much longer they would be allowed to stay,
or even whether the King would have them killed.
What if no new priests could come?
How would future generations know how to worship God?
Their country had enemies, and it was quite possible that it would be over-run, and God's name might disappear altogether.

So the priests did the only thing they could think of.
They wrote a book to tell future generations all about God,
and how to worship,
and, especially, how to live as God's people.
And then they hid it away in the depths of the Temple,
and carried on as best they could.

Roughly fifty years later, there was a new king on the throne,
the grandson of King Manasseh, and his name was King Josiah.
King Josiah did worship God, and one day he decided that it was high time the Temple in Jerusalem was refurbished:
painted, cleaned, the stonework repointed, all that sort of thing.
And while that was happening, the priests found this book that had been hidden away for so long –
either that, or they decided that now was a good moment to produce it –
and they brought it to the King.

And that book was at least part of, and perhaps all of, the book of Deuteronomy which our reading came from.
I'll tell you more about what it said in a bit,
but when Josiah read it, he was horrified and realised that he and his people had been doing things all wrong,
and he made them all listen to it and do what it said.
And God was pleased.
The doom that had been prophesied did come on the land,
but not in Josiah's lifetime.
You can read all the story in 2 Kings chapters 21 to 23, if you've got a good modern English translation.
Not now, though.
(Now you younger ones are going to go to your own classes, while the rest of us sing….)

---oo0oo---

The book of Deuteronomy turned out to be like nothing Josiah had ever heard before.
The central theme of the book,
how God wants his people to be,
is of course that famous passage that begins
"Hear, O Israel, The Lord is God, the Lord is One".
We are to love God with all of our being,
and to keep all the commandments, decrees and ordinances,
says the book of Deuteronomy.
And, as Moses is alleged to have said in the passage we heard read, you must remember them, and observe them, and show all the nations round about that God is God!

The rest of the book is an expansion of that theme.
You look after your neighbour, especially if your neighbour is an Israelite.
Refugees or "sojourners" who have settled among you are also to be treated with kindness and compassion,
since you were once sojourners in Egypt.
If you have slaves or servants,
you must give them the opportunity to go free at the end of six years,
and give them some capital to help them make a new start.
You mustn't give it grudgingly, either,
since you've had work from the slave for six years,
and no way could you have got a hired servant so cheap.
If your slave runs away,
people are to assume that you were a cruel owner,
and the slave won't be returned to you.
If your paid servants need it, you must pay them daily,
and don't you dare cheat them!

You don't fancy military service?
Well, you don't have to go if you are about to get married,
or have just got married,
or if you've just built yourself a house or planted a vineyard,
or even if you are afraid.
Fighting is the Lord's work, and we don't want anyone who isn't whole-hearted about it.
If you do go to war, the camp must be kept clean and hygienic at all times - please go right outside the perimeter when you need to "go",
and use your trowel afterwards.
And when you fight, give your enemy every chance to surrender first.

Above all else, the book of Deuteronomy is concerned with rooting out idolatry,
forcefully if necessary.
Because of this the whole system of worship is being changed.
From now on, you can't sacrifice to God where you please,
but only in the Temple in Jerusalem.
No more popping into the local shrine;
it's too difficult to police it and to make sure it is only God that sacrifices have been made to.
Now, obviously, this is going to cause some upheavals,
and the authors have made provision for this.

Firstly, you ask, what about your dinner?
If you've been in the habit of eating your share of the sacrifice, what do you do if you can't sacrifice any more?
Have you really got to go hunting every time you fancy some meat?
No.
From now on you may butcher your own meat,
or have it butchered for you,
so long as it is done in a certain way.
It doesn't have to have been sacrificed first.
Secular meat is quite OK.

Bur what about me?
I'm a Levite, a descendent of Levi.
I've been used to working in the shrines
and keeping myself on part of the meat brought as sacrifice.
What am I going to do now?
Well, you get given charitable status, along with widows, orphans and sojourners.
Henceforth it is the duty of all religious Jews to support you.

Well, OK, that's fine, you say.
But how am I going to worship God?
It's three days' journey to Jerusalem;
I can't go gallivanting up and down each week.
What am I to do?

The answer to that one has repercussions to this day!
What they did was, they set up a system of praying with psalms and readings that gradually developed into the synagogue worship that persists right up until today.
What's more, we Christians adapted it,
and in various forms it became the Benedictine Daily Office,
the Anglican Matins and Evensong,
and even has echoes in a Methodist preaching service such as this one!
All because those who wrote Deuteronomy felt it would be better,
or that God was saying, if you prefer it said that way,
to have sacrifices made only in the Temple in Jerusalem
so that an eye could be kept on what happened.
There was too much worshipping of other gods going on.

The other thing that shows God's hand in all this, of course, is that the Temple was destroyed in 70 AD.
Suppose the Jews hadn't had an alternative form of worship to fall back on?
And what would we have done without it?
Jesus rendered Temple worship obsolete, because he was, as the old Prayer Book has it, "a full, perfect and sufficient sacrifice, oblation and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world."
God is clever sometimes!

But that is all detail –
I find it fascinating, and suggest you sit down and have a good read of the book of Deuteronomy in a modern paraphrase sometime.
All sorts of fascinating rules and regulations....

But that's the point.
They could so easily become just dry rules and regulations.

But it got too easy to follow God just by keeping the rules, and by the time Jesus came along, that, all too often, is what was happening.
And all the rules were getting hedged around with “Well, what if....” and “In this case, you should...” until they had become a real burden.
It is clearly said that you mustn’t add or subtract to any of the commandments, and I don’t think they meant to. It was just clarifying, but they went too far.

Jesus cuts through this, as we heard in our second reading.
“Look,” he says to the Pharisees, “Outward observance really doesn’t mean anything if you’re just going through the motions! It’s not what goes into a person that matters; after all, eventually that just goes down the drain. It’s what is in your heart that matters!” He pointed out that they have abandoned God’s commandments in favour of human rules.

And he told the crowd that they can’t be defiled by anything external, but it is from the heart that come things like sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly.

In the collections of Jesus’ teachings that we call the Sermon on the Mount, he gives a description of what God’s people will be like – they won’t be angry with anybody in a destructive way, far less murder them;
they will always be the first to try to put things right if they have had an upset with someone;
they won’t use or abuse people sexually;
they won’t get divorced for trivial reasons;
they will be honest to a fault;
in short, they will treat other people with the greatest possible respect for who they are.

Jesus is giving this picture of what his followers would be like,
and it's really hard to live up to.
I'm pretty sure I don't, and I'm pretty sure you don't, either.

But then, of course, we don't have to.
I mean, not like that.
It's not about our trying and struggling and failing to make ourselves into better people.
It never has been.
In our own strength, we are always going to fail.
It's about a reciprocal relationship with God.
It's about allowing ourselves to be transformed.
About saying to the Holy Spirit, okay, here I am, You do it.
He will!
Probably not in ways you'd expect,
and quite possibly not in ways you'd like, given a choice,
but you will be transformed, more and more,
into the kind of person God created you to be.

Josiah could have just listened to the book of the Law, and nodded, and said "Oh yes, how very interesting", and let it flow over him.
But he didn't.
Josiah really wanted to worship God properly –
his cousin Zephaniah was a prophet, and quite possibly influenced him to follow God –
so he rooted out all the shrines to God that were sometimes used to worship other gods,
and he required his subjects to worship God alone,
and to celebrate the Passover.
The Bible tells us that that first Passover, in the eighteenth year of Josiah's reign, so in about 621 BC by our reckoning, was unique:
"No such Passover," it says, "had been kept since the days of the judges who judged Israel, or during all the days of the kings of Israel or of the kings of Judah."

The point is that Josiah really meant it about worshipping God, and when he was confronted with the Scriptures, the book of the Law, he chose to obey that law, and by doing so, he met with God.

The Scriptures don’t tell us, but I imagine Josiah also instituted laws to look after refugees, widows, and orphans, and those whose income had been upset by the new worship systems.

The passage from Deuteronomy that we heard read asks: “What other nation is so great as to have their gods near them the way the Lord our God is near us whenever we pray to him?”

We don’t think of God as the God of a particular nation,
but perhaps we should wonder whether those of other belief systems know that God is near us whenever they pray to him!
We know.
Jesus said that nobody can know God as Father except through him –
we discussed this last week, you will remember.

So we, too, need to learn to listen to God’s commandments and obey them.
And sometimes that will be hard.
Being God’s person isn’t always easy, as those priests so long ago found, and as Josiah found a couple of generations later.
But it is oh, so very worth while! Amen.

You have the words of eternal life.

 

The recording may be a little odd, as I had visual aids - laminated sheets with the "I am" sayings and an image, and got some volunteers to hold them up and read them out to the rest of the congregation.  So I am interacting with them during the course of the sermon.

“Lord, to whom can we go?
You have the words of eternal life.”

“To whom can we go?
You have the words of eternal life.”

It was Peter who said it.
A great many people who might have liked to have been followers of Jesus have given up –
they found what Jesus was saying just simply too much to swallow.
Literally!
And then, when Jesus asks Peter and the others if they are going to disappear, too, Peter says “Lord, to whom can we go?
You have the words of eternal life!”

Peter is a pretty terrific person all round.
He does have his moments, and he gets it wrong a lot of the time, but he goes on because, whatever else happens, he knows that Jesus is the Holy One of God.

I don't know whether Jesus really knows that he is, or if he's just beginning to think so, or what.
But in John's Gospel we have those seven great sayings beginning “I am”,
that we've just sung about.
And I want us to think about these a bit this morning,
because I think some of these “I Am” sayings are, to us,
the words of eternal life.

You see, even though Jesus might not have been totally aware of it when he was saying it,
what he was doing, on one level, was declaring himself to be divine.
I expect you know the story of Moses and the burning bush,
where a voice speaks to Moses out of the bush,
which was burning up but didn't burn away.
And it told him to get Pharoah to let the Israelite slaves go.
And Moses said, “Well, who shall I say sent me?”
and the voice said “I Am has sent you”.
And Jesus, apparently used exactly the same wording.
Now I don't know how fully he was aware of this,
but certainly on one level this is what he was saying.

In John’s Gospel, Jesus says “I am” seven times, and I thought that we would look at those sayings this morning. Because there really is nowhere else to go, is there. So to whom are we going?

I am the Bread of Life
Let's start with the one this chapter of John's Gospel has been expounding for the last month.
I expect you have heard several sermons on it over the past few weeks, so I won't add much, except to remind you that his first hearers reacted very differently to the way we do when we hear those words.
At first they said, “Oh rubbish, we know this man, he's Joseph the Carpenter's son, we know his Mum, too –
how can he say he is the bread that comes down from heaven?
Don't be silly!”

And then Jesus expounds a bit on it:
“Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.
Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day.”
And he goes on like that,
and this is when most people decide he's either being totally gross,
or else he's talking nonsense, and go away.
Peter and the other disciples may not have understood what Jesus was talking about –
after all, it doesn't go into words very well, does it?
All the same, they knew that the needed to go on following Jesus:
“Lord, to whom else should we go?
For you have the words of eternal life.”



I am the Light of the World
“I am the Light of the World.”
And in fact Jesus added that and said:
“I am the light of the world.
Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness
but will have the light of life.”

“Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness
but will have the light of life.”

Here in London it doesn't really ever get totally dark, does it?
There are so many streetlights and so on that it is even quite difficult to see the stars, always assuming it doesn't rain.
But when we're in the country, it can be quite different.
I remember one Christmas when we were going to midnight service at my sister's church in Norfolk,
and we had to park the car in a field next to the church.
So there were no streetlights or anything, and we had to turn the torches on on our phones so that we could see what we were treading in!

That's the thing, isn't it.
Light, however feeble, is always stronger than darkness.
Think of the rare occasions when we have power cuts –
if you go and find a tea-light or similar candle, it doesn't produce much light, but you can still see enough not to bump into the furniture.
And the same here –
if you follow Jesus, there will always be light enough to see your way ahead in life, even if it's only one tiny step.
“Lord, to whom else should we go?
For you have the words of eternal life.”


I am the Gate for the Sheep
“I am the Gate for the sheep”.
This one's a bit weird, isn't it?
Whatever can he mean?

I don't think it's quite within living memory these days, but time was, on the Sussex Downs and elsewhere, the shepherd lived with his sheep for weeks on end.
He had a little hut that was like a tiny caravan where he could sleep and store food and so on.
During the day, the sheep roamed fairly freely on the Downs, but at night, the shepherd would build an enclosure from hurdles, and “fold” as it was called, the sheep in there.
They would move the fold each night,
so that the sheep weren't subjected to mounds of manure.
These folds were closed in with a final hurdle, but in the middle east, the shepherd himself would lie down in the gap so that wolves and stray dogs and thieves and so on couldn't get in.
And the wolves and stray dogs and thieves and so on knew that,
and would sometimes jump over the walls of the fold.
Jesus riffs on this:
“Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep.
All who came before me are thieves and bandits;
but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the gate.
Whoever enters by me will be saved,
and will come in and go out and find pasture.
The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy.
I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”

“Lord, to whom else should we go?
For you have the words of eternal life.”


I am the good shepherd
This is the more familiar of the two “sheep” sayings, isn't it?
Actually, it happens in the next paragraph in John 10.

“I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep.”

“I know my own, and my own know me.”
I think I may have told you before that my brother and his wife were shepherds, and when they went into the field where the sheep were, the sheep knew who they were and would either carry on with their own lives, or else, if they were hungry, start demanding food NOW!
But if Robert or I, or anybody else they didn’t know, went into that field, they would run away, bleating ferociously.
Jesus also points out that a hired shepherd might run away if a wolf comes, because they aren't his sheep,
so naturally he'd rather save his own skin than that of the sheep,
but Jesus, the Good Shepherd, will lay down his life for the sheep, if necessary.

“Lord, to whom else should we go?
For you have the words of eternal life.”



I am the Resurrection and the Life
“I am the Resurrection and the Life”.
This, of course, comes in that lovely story where Jesus' friend Lazarus has died, and his sisters Martha and Mary are grieving for him.
Jesus, weeping himself, says that Lazarus will rise again.
And Martha says:
“‘I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.’
Jesus said to her, ‘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.
Do you believe this?’
She said to him, ‘Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah,
the Son of God, the one coming into the world.’”

“Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live,
and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.”

Do you believe this?

“Lord, to whom else should we go?
For you have the words of eternal life.”



I am the way, and the truth, and the life
“I am the way, and the truth, and the life”.
Here, Jesus is talking to his disciples only, not to the crowds.
He has reminded them that he is going to prepare a place for them in his Father's house.
But Thomas says, “Well, how are we going to know the way?”
and that is when Jesus says, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.
No one comes to the Father except through me.
If you know me, you will know my Father also.
From now on you do know him and have seen him.”

So it is through Jesus, and Jesus alone, that we can know God as Father, that we can know ourselves beloved children of God.

“Lord, to whom else should we go?
For you have the words of eternal life.”



I am the true vine.
“I am the true vine”.
Jesus is speaking to his disciples again, here.
And this time, it's a two-way thing.
First of all, he says he is the vine, and his Father is the vine-grower.
“He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit.
Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit.”

And then Jesus goes on to explain:
“You have already been cleansed by the word that I have spoken to you.
Abide in me as I abide in you.
Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me.
I am the vine, you are the branches.”

So this “I am” is a two way one, pointing up to the Father and down to us.
We can do nothing unless we “abide” in Jesus.
I don't know about you, but that always makes me feel that we have to strive and struggle to stay in Jesus,
but if you think of branches on a fruit tree, they don't do any such thing!
They just stay where they are put, perhaps swaying a bit if it's windy, but otherwise just relaxing, knowing that the trunk of the tree is holding them tight so that they will bear fruit in due season.
As, I expect, will we.

“Lord, to whom else should we go?
For you have the words of eternal life.”

And that's it.
The seven great sayings of Jesus.

Get the congregation to read them aloud, one at a time.

“Lord, to whom else should we go?
For you have the words of eternal life.”
Amen.

It's you, dear

Sadly I was unable to preach this, as we were detained in France due to a family emergency. I sent the text to the Worship Leader at Springfield, and I expect he read it. Obviously no recording today! 

I want to talk about our Gospel reading in a minute,
but first of all, we need to look at the Old Testament reading,
the story of David and Bathsheba.
This is, in fact, the second week of this story –
you may or may not have heard the first part last week,
but just in case you didn't, I'll recapitulate.

David is now King of Israel and Judah, a united kingdom.
He has built a very splendid palace in Jerusalem,
and is one of the richest and most powerful men in the region.
And, like many rich and powerful men, he has a high sex drive, and, of course, many women find riches and power very aphrodisiac.

So David can more-or-less have any woman he wants,
and, quite probably, the reverse is also true –
any woman who wants the King can have him!
And there is Bathsheba, Uriah's wife,
who allows herself to be seen while having her ritual bath –
and responds to the King's summons.

Unfortunately, what neither Bathsheba nor David had any way of knowing, given the state of medical knowledge back then,
was that when you have just finished your monthly purification rituals is when you are likely to be at your most fertile.
And so it comes about that Bathsheba finds herself pregnant,
and there's no way it can be anybody other than David's.

And they panic.
David could arguably have got away with it,
but he wasn't going to abandon Bathsheba like that, and, it's probable that it was she who panicked.
Uriah, from what we read about him, strikes me as very much the kind of person who always does the right thing,
no matter what the personal cost to himself,
and in this case, the right thing to have done was to have had Bathsheba,
who had obviously committed adultery,
stoned to death.
Yes, killed.
Even if he hadn't wanted to do that.
He was far too prim and proper to sleep with his wife while on active service, no matter how hard David tried to make him do that –
if he had, he would have accepted the coming child as his own, and their problems would have been solved.
But he refused, because his country was at war and he was a soldier on active service,
and wouldn't even go and see Bathsheba, even when David got him drunk, but just slept on his blanket in the guard room.

So David feels he has no option but to get rid of Uriah,
which he does by causing him to be sent into the front line of battle,
and get killed.
And as soon as it is decently possible, he marries Bathsheba.

End of story?
No, not quite.
You see, it might seem to have all been tidied up and nobody any the wiser, but they had forgotten God.
And God was not one bit pleased with what David had done.

So he sends Nathan the Prophet –
brave man, Nathan, wasn't he? –
to say to David that there is a man who only had one sheep, just one, and a rich bully had taken that sheep away from him.
So David said, well, who is this bully, I'll deal with him –
he can't get away with that sort of thing in my kingdom, so he can't!
And Nathan looks him in the eye and says, “It's you, dear!”

And, then David sees exactly what he has done.
The lust, the adultery, the deception, the murder.
He looks at himself and does not like what he sees, not one tiny little bit.
He doesn't know what God must think of him,
but he knows what he thinks of himself –
and he knows, too, that he needs to repent.
Which he does, and some of the words he is said to have used have come down to us:
Have mercy on me, O God, in your great goodness; 
   according to the abundance of your compassion
      blot out my offences.
  Wash me thoroughly from my wickedness
   and cleanse me from my sin.
  For I acknowledge my faults
   and my sin is ever before me.
 Behold, you desire truth deep within me
   and shall make me understand wisdom
      in the depths of my heart.

Turn your face from my sins
   and blot out all my misdeeds.
  Make me a clean heart, O God,
   and renew a right spirit within me.
  Cast me not away from your presence
   and take not your holy spirit from me.
  Give me again the joy of your salvation
   and sustain me with your gracious spirit;

Deliver me from my guilt, O God,
      the God of my salvation,
   and my tongue shall sing of your righteousness.
  O Lord, open my lips
   and my mouth shall proclaim your praise.
  For you desire no sacrifice, else I would give it;
   you take no delight in burnt offerings.
  The sacrifice of God is a broken spirit;
   a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.

And so on.
There's a bit more, but I've not quoted it all –
it's Psalm 51, if you want to have a read of it.

Anyway, the point is, his repentance is genuine, and he will be reinstated.
The child will not live, though.
And there is that lovely scene where the child is born,
and David is told that it cannot live –
it hasn't “come to stay”, as they used to say –
and he prostrates himself before the Lord in prayer.
And the baby duly dies,
and the servants are at a loss to know how to tell him,
thinking that if he's in that sort of mood, he might well shoot the messenger, but when they have stood outside the door for ten minutes going “You tell him,”
“No, you tell him!” he realises what's going on –
and when he finds out that the baby has died,
he astonishes them all by going and washing his face and going to comfort Bathsheba,
and when asked, he points out that while the baby was still alive, there was hope that God might yet be persuaded to let it live,
but now that it's dead, there's no hope;
and yes of course he minds,
but it won't help anybody to lie on the floor rolling about in grief.

And as we know, just to round off the story, Bathsheba and David do eventually have another child, who becomes King Solomon, arguably the greatest King of the combined kingdoms.

David's main fault, I think, that started the whole sorry saga, was greed.
He was greedy for life, and for women, and for pleasure.
He wanted to have it all, and had to learn the hard way that it wasn't all his.

Jesus says much the same to the followers in the Gospel reading, doesn't he?
It takes place almost immediately after Jesus has fed five thousand or more people with a small boy’s packed lunch.

He then sends the disciples on ahead of him, so he can spend some time in prayer and being quiet for a bit –
in some of the gospels, we’re told that he’s just heard about his cousin John’s execution and needs a bit of space to grieve.
Anyway, he then walks across the lake to join the disciples,
and next day the crowd finds him on the other side of the lake than they’d expected.

But Jesus reckons they’re not following him because of his teachings,
but because they want another free lunch.
“Very truly, I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw signs,
but because you ate your fill of the loaves."
And this is not what he plans for them.
“Do not work for the food that perishes,
but for the food that endures for eternal life,
which the Son of Man will give you.”

Jesus points out that in the wilderness, it wasn’t Moses who provided manna for the children of Israel to eat, but God.
And it is God who gives the true Bread from Heaven.
“I,” said Jesus, “am the Bread of Life”.

You know what I’m reminded of here?
The story of woman at the well, a little earlier on in John’s Gospel.
She asks Jesus to work the pump for her, which he duly does, but he tells her that he is the Living Water, and any who drink of that water will never be thirsty again.
Same sort of principle.

Many –
not all, but many –
of those who followed Jesus did so because they wanted the spectacular.
They wanted a free lunch from a small boy's packed lunch.
They wanted to see the healings, the deliverances, the people collapsing on the floor as evil spirits left them, and so on.
They weren't interested in the teachings,
in the way your faith has to manifest itself in actions or it isn't really part of you,
in loving their neighbour, in feeding the hungry....
they were wanting to believe in Jesus without having to become Jesus' person.
I don't want to pre-empt what you'll doubtless hear about next week,
but many of them walked away when the teachings got too hard for them to cope with.

And what about us?
What about you and me?
Are we just interested in the next thrill,
the next sensation,
the next fashion?
Are we willing to be Jesus' disciples,
and pay the price that the Bread of Life requires –
all of us.
Even the dreadful bits, even the bits that we'd rather keep hidden.
David had to surrender all of himself before he could receive God's forgiveness.
Can we do that?
It's very far from easy,
and I don't pretend to be able to, at least, not all the time.
It has to be a daily, hourly, moment-by-moment surrender.
And when you find you've taken yourself back again, as it were,
then it's all to be done again.
What it needs, of course, is the will on our part to be Jesus' person,
even if we don't succeed all the time.

King David was not a wicked man.
He did a very evil thing when he allowed his lust for Bathsheba to overtake his common sense, but normally he was God's person –
and when it was pointed out to him where he'd gone wrong, he came back.

My friends, let's be like David.
When we go wrong,
when we take ourselves back and live our own lives again,
and when we realise we're doing that,
then let's recommit ourselves into God's hands.
He will be there to welcome us back with loving arms.
“There you are, there you are at last!
Welcome home!”
Amen.