Sowing the Seed

 

The story that Jesus told of the sowing of the seeds, and what became of them, is one of the first we ever learn, isn’t it?
We drew pictures, in Sunday School, or in our primary school Scripture lessons,
of the sower, with his trayful of seeds,
and squiggly seagulls swooping down to grab them before they could take root,
hot sun shining on others,
and lovely scribbly weeds choking still others....
and a few, just a very few, ears of wheat standing up in a field.

And then, perhaps, as we grew older and began to stay in Church rather than go to Sunday School, we would hear sermons on this parable,
and if you are anything like me, what you heard –
not, I should emphasize, necessarily what had been said, but what you heard –
was that Proper People, or perhaps I should say Proper Christians,
were the ones who were the fertile soil,
where the Word could take root, grow and flourish.

But, of course, if you were anything like me, that just made you feel guilty and miserable –
what if you weren’t the good soil?
What if you were the stony places, or the weedy patches?
And I’m sure that there are times when we do allow other things to take priority, perhaps when we ought not.
And there are times when we do rather wither up,
in times of spiritual drought.
All of us go through them, of course.
But it doesn’t help when the preacher starts banging on about how dreadful we are if we are not 100% fully fertile soil, and bearing fruit 100%.
We just end up feeling guilty and thinking that we must be terrible people.

But I don’t think Jesus meant us to think that!
After all, we are told over and over again how much we are loved,
and St Paul reminds us, in the reading we heard from his letter to the Romans, that if we live according to the Spirit,
we won’t be the barren ground Jesus talks about!

Of course, again, if you are like me, you’re apt to think that you can’t possibly be living according to the Spirit, because, pride....
but that’s stupid!
Why would we not be, if we are committed to being Jesus’ person?
You might remember last week’s reading,
where St Paul was being upset about the fact that he found it nearly impossible not to do wrong things, but now he is triumphant –
God’s Spirit enables him to live as he should.
And us, too.

Going back to the story of the sower for a moment, I think that it’s not so much that any given one of us is barren ground,
or weedy, or stony, or fertile –
but that each of us has all of those characteristics within us.
Think, for a moment.
Sometimes it’s really easy to be God’s person,
we can’t think of anything else we’d rather be.
Other times, not so much!
Times when we are tempted to sin,
or times when we want to do something that isn’t necessarily sinful, but isn’t going to help our spiritual lives.
Times when we know God is asking us to do something that we would really rather not....
you know the kind of thing.

But the thing is, if –
or rather because –
we are living according to the Spirit,
we are able to allow God to help us grow and change.
We don’t have to struggle to be good,
we don’t have to struggle to turn ourselves into fertile ground!
That part of it is God’s job.
All we have to do is to be willing to let that happen.

And, meanwhile, sometimes we are the sowers ourselves –
often, maybe, we don’t even know it.
Again, it’s probably as well when we don’t –
nothing worse than a rather forced presentation of the Gospel as someone tries to explain, embarrassed, why they follow Christ.
But sometimes, who knows, just a “Good morning”, or a smile in the right place can tip the balance for someone who may have been despairing;
a box of pasta or tampons in the food bank box might make all the difference to someone’s summer holidays.

Which reminds me – as you know, I’m sure, many families who can just about cope in term time when their children get a meal at school find it a lot more difficult during the holidays.
You will remember Marcus Rashford’s campaign during the pandemic to get children the food they so desperately needed while the schools were closed.
So do consider giving a little more to the various food banks than you usually do – most supermarkets have a box where you can put donations, or you can give money.
Or, of course, bring stuff to Brixton Hill, which hosts a food bank on a Wednesday.
And not only a food bank – there is an advice centre where people can get helped to get the benefits they need, or with housing, or whatever.
Wednesdays, 11 until 1.
It’s also a social session; people are free to stop and chat and have a coffee – it’s basically a descendant of the “warm space” we had last winter.

That’s a bit of a digression.
But the point is – well, the other week we heard Jesus reminding us that whatever we did for anybody else, we did it to him.
So we don’t judge, we don’t look down on people who need food, we don’t try to preach to them.
But who knows?
Maybe one day they will come to know and love God, just because we were kind to them and smiled at them and helped them in their need.

Some years ago now, I read about a church in Colorado whose congregation was mostly elderly, with no young families, but who wanted, and prayed for, a youth group.
One day, their minister was sitting in a coffee shop when he was approached by a group of young people who asked whether his church was a place where people could say goodbye to friends who had died.
He explained that it was, and they explained that one of their friends had just died of an overdose, but his parents had taken his body home before there could be any funeral.
The young people were allowed to use the church to hold their own funeral –
no hymns or prayers, but they spent time telling stories about their friend, and then ate a meal that church members had prepared for them.
One of them said “Oh, I wish we could eat like this every week –
it reminds me of my grandma’s cooking!”
And the church members said “Well, of course you can –
we’re here every Sunday;
you come and bring your friends!”
Those young people may never attend worship at that Church, but the congregation still loves them and cares for them and feeds them every Sunday.

Nearer home, a friend of a friend had four tiny children, including twins, when her husband was diagnosed with terminal cancer.
She was left widowed, but her local church stepped up to the mark and started to care for her, bringing her meals, babysitting, finding clothes for the children that, perhaps, their own children had outgrown but which were still good, and generally caring for her.
I believe that she is now a pillar of that church, although before her husband died she had no idea of faith.

What I’m trying to say is that often it’s not what we say that is the seed we are sowing, it’s what we do.
And not putting pressure on people –
the church in Colorado knew that they would lose the young people if they started insisting they came to church,
or even conformed to any kind of dress code when they entered the building.
My friend’s church knew that someone with four small children would find coming to church very difficult, even if they had wanted to come.

We may never be in exactly that sort of situation, but there will always be times when we are called to love people into the Kingdom of God.
Our duty is to do the loving we’re called to do –
and it’s God’s job to worry about the results!
Whether the seed falls on the path, or on stony ground, weedy ground, or a fertile field isn’t our business –
our job is to sow the seeds.
And our job is also to allow God the Holy Spirit to live in us and transform more and more of us into fertile ground in which God’s Word can bear fruit.

God is good, and, going back to our theme, if we say “Yes” to God, God will help us become more and more fertile ground for growing seed and producing fruit;
God will help us live by the Spirit, the life that leads to life.
And God will help us sow seeds that may or may not fall in fertile ground.
Amen.

God gets involved

 

A new introduction to an old friend!

At this time of year, our Old Testament readings are all about Abraham. Over the last month, if the Old Testament lesson was read, we learnt how God called Abraham to leave his home in Ur
how he and Sarah were childless, but God promised them a child;
how Abraham pre-empted this by conceiving a child, Ishmael, on his servant;
how that all went rather pear-shaped when Ishmael started playing too roughly with Isaac, when he was finally born, and making him cry;
last week, we had that extraordinary episode when God appeared to be asking Abraham to sacrifice Isaac;
and now, this week, we come to a nearly-grown-up Isaac, and his search for a wife.

Scholars seem to think that these stories of Abraham,
which had been an integral part of the Jewish tradition,
were collected together and written down during the 5^th and 6^th centuries BC –
this, you remember, was when the Israelites were in exile,
the Temple had been destroyed,
and they had no king of their own.
Only a very few Israelites were left in Jerusalem,
and they had rather lapsed from their traditions and practice.
So the various stories were collected and written down,
possibly somewhat haphazardly, in case it should all be lost.

Abraham himself is thought to have lived in the early part of the 2^nd millennium BC.
Apparently the earliest he could have been born was 1976 BC and the latest he could have died was 1637 BC.
This was in the Bronze age –
he would have had bronze tools, not iron, and possibly still a flint knife.

Many years ago now, Robert and I visited the town of Bolzano,
where they have the museum where the body of Oetzi, the ice-man, is stored.
You may remember that he was found in the Alps about 20 years ago,
having been shot by person or persons unknown.
His body had been preserved in a glacier for over 5,000 years.
The point is, this was even longer ago than Abraham –
he only had a copper axe, as they hadn't discovered about bronze yet.
But the things that were found with him –
his axe,
his coat,
his trousers,
his bow and arrows,
his knife and so on,
you could see just how they were used, and he was really a person just like you or me!
That makes Abraham feel less remote, as he, too, would have worn clothes we recognise, and carried tools we'd know and so on.

Abraham had felt called by God to leave his home-town of Ur in the Chaldees, which in his day was allegedly highly civilised.
They had, apparently, nineteen different kinds of beer and a great many fried-fish shops, if you call that being civilized!
However, they did enjoy other kinds of food, such as
onions,
leeks,
cucumbers,
beans,
garlic,
lentils,
milk,
butter,
cheese,
dates,
and the occasional meal of beef or lamb.
Just the sort of food I like!

There was wine available, to make a change from beer,
but it was expensive, and drunk only by the rich.
They played board-games,
enjoyed poetry and music, which they played on the lyre, harp and drum,
and were generally rather well-found, from all one gathers.

The only thing was that without many trees in their part of the world,
they had to do without much furniture,
and tended to sleep on mats on the floor, for instance, instead of beds.
But definitely a sensible and civilised place in which to live.
When you hear it described, it doesn't sound all that remote, does it?
They were people like us, and had similar tastes to us.

But Abraham had felt called to leave there,
and to take his family and household and to live in the desert.
And they had all sorts of adventures, and sometimes things went very wrong, but mostly they went all right.

And now Isaac has grown up and Sarah has died,
and it is time for Isaac to marry.
Abraham is urgent that he marry a woman from his own tribe,
not a local Canaanite woman, who wouldn't have known about God,
so he sends his servant back to Ur, to find a suitable relation for Isaac to marry.

The servant explains, rather earnestly, how he asked God to show him which the right woman was –
would she offer to draw water for his camels, or not?
That wasn't an easy task –
camels, which can go four or five days without water, like to drink A LOT at one time, so she'd have needed a fair few bucketsful!

Rebecca's family would have liked a few days to get used to the idea,
but the servant says he needs to get back as soon as possible,
and Rebecca agrees to leave next day.
So she and her various maidservants –
one of them may have been her old nurse –
got packed up and ready, and set off.
And eventually they get home safely,
and there is Isaac coming to meet them.
And they get married, and live more-or-less happily ever after!

We sometimes get alarmed about arranged marriages these days;

we know that in those communities where they're still more-or-less the norm, things can go horribly wrong –
think of those so-called “honour killings” we hear so much about!
Even in this day and age, it isn't always easy for someone to escape an abusive situation if they don't know where to go.
But as I understand it, an arranged marriage can be every bit as happy and as successful as one where the bride and groom have chosen one another;

we all know that you have to work at being married,
whether you knew your husband for years beforehand or whether you met him a few days or weeks before the wedding –
or even at the wedding!

I think Rebecca was very brave going off with Abraham's servant like that;

she had no way of knowing who or what was awaiting her at the far end of the journey.
The servant had bigged up Abraham's –
and thus Isaac's –
wealth, and had given her lots of gold jewellery, but was he telling the truth?

But one thing stands out about this story and that is that God was involved from beginning to end!
And God led them all to a happy ending.

I wonder how much we actually believe that God is really involved in our lives?
I know we say we do, but these Sundays in Ordinary Time are very much places where what we think we believe tends to come up against what we really do believe!
After all, not all of our stories have happy endings, do they?
Some do, many do, and for these we give thanks,
but what happens when they don't?
Does God get involved in our lives?
And if so, how does this work, and how can we work with God to ensure a happy ending?

Well, the Bible definitely tells us that God is involved in our lives,
and I am sure most of us could tell of moments when we were perfectly and utterly sure of this.
But equally, most of us could tell of moments when we really struggled with it!
Where was God when this or that bad thing happened?
Does God really care?
In the story from two weeks ago, Ishmael and Hagar in the desert,
we found that God was there with them, even though it hadn't felt like it.

Many of us have lived through enough bleak times to know that one comes out the other side.
We know that, when we look back, we will see God's hand upon it all.
God may not have led us to a happy ending, exactly,
but we can see how God has worked all things together for good for us.

It's not a matter of God waving a magic wand and producing the happy ending we want;

we all know God doesn't work like that.
And it's not a matter, either, of God having set the future in stone so that nothing we can do can change things.
Nor is it a matter of God simply sitting back and letting us struggle as best we can, although everybody feels at times that this is what is happening.

It's more as if God is working with us, moment by moment.
Sometimes we –
or other people –
do things that mean the situation can't come out as God would have wished.
God has a detailed plan for creation, but his plan for our individual lives isn't –
can't be –
mapped out in moment-by-moment detail
since we are free to make our own choices.
But God truly wants the best possible life for each one of us.
The idea, I think, is to stay as close to God as possible,
trying to be aware of each moment of decision and what God would like for us to do.

But, of course, as St Paul points out in the letter to the Romans, that isn't actually possible!
We're a bit crap at actually doing the right thing, no matter how much we know we want to!
It was impossible for Paul to keep the Jewish law in its entirety,
no matter how much he wanted to.
And although we know we are, and I quote, under grace not under the law,
we do tend to find it easier to try to follow a set of rules and regulations than to follow Jesus!
And, of course, we don't follow those rules and regulations perfectly –
how could we?

But Jesus points out that his burden is light!
Sometimes we don't feel as though it is.
“Come unto me all you who are burdened, and I will give you rest!”

I am sure Abraham's servant must have felt incredibly burdened when he went back to Ur to find Rebecca.
But the servant, at least, spent his time moment-by-moment in God's presence.
He trusted that God would lead him, step by step, to the right woman and that God would bring the whole journey to a happy conclusion.
“Come unto Me all you who are burdened, and I will give you rest!”
Abraham's servant trusted God.
I wonder how much we trust God?
It isn't always easy, is it.
Last week's story, how God asked Abraham to kill Isaac,
was very much about trust.
Abraham didn't even argue with God –
he just went ahead and did as he was told, leaving it very much up to God to do the right thing!
Even Isaac didn't struggle –
he was a young man at that stage, not a small boy,
and he could easily have overpowered his elderly father.
But no –
he allowed himself to be bound and laid upon the altar.
And God did do the right thing, as it were, and produced the ram.

And now God did show the servant his choice of wife for Isaac.
And so was born the Kingdom of Israel.
We never know the consequences of our choices –
they may be far more far-reaching than we expect.
But we do need to practice involving God in our everyday lives,
otherwise, when the crunch comes, we'll find it much harder than it need be to rely on him.
“I will give you rest,” says Jesus, but if we don't know how to come to him for that rest, how can he give it to us?
Amen.

Trinity Sunday 2023 Evening service

 This is similar, but not identical, to what I preached this morning.  This was a Zoom service; please excuse the washing-machine noises at the beginning!

Today is Trinity Sunday,
the day on which we celebrate all the different aspects of God.
It’s actually a very difficult day to preach on,
since it’s very easy to get bogged down in the sort of theology which none of us understands,
and which we can very easily get wrong.

The trouble is, of course, that the concept of the Trinity is trying to explain something that simply won’t go into words.
We are accustomed to thinking of God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
and most of the time we don’t really stop and think about it.
Trinity Sunday is the day we are expected to stop and think!

The thing is, the first half of the Christian year,
which begins way back before Christmas,
is the time when we think about Jesus.
We prepare for the coming of the King, in Advent,
and then we remember his birth,
his being shown to the Gentiles,
his presentation in the Temple as a baby.
Then we skip a few years and remember his ministry,
his arrest, death and resurrection, and his ascension into heaven.
Then we remember the coming of the promised Holy Spirit,
and today we celebrate God in all his Godness, as someone once put it.

The second half of the year, all those Sundays after Trinity,
tend to focus on different aspects of our Christian life.
And today is the one day in the year when we are expected to stop and think about God as Three and God as One.
And it is difficult.
It’s a concept that doesn’t really go into words,
and so whatever we say about it is going to be in some way flawed.
It took the early Church a good 400 years to work out what it wanted to say about it, and even that is very obscure:
“That we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity:
Neither confounding the persons nor dividing the substance.
For there is one person of the Father,
another of the Son,
and another of the Holy Spirit.
But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit is all one,
the glory equal, the majesty coeternal.
Such as the Father is, such is the Son, and such is the Holy Spirit.
The Father uncreated, the Son uncreated, and the Holy Spirit uncreated.
The Father incomprehensible, the Son incomprehensible, and the Holy Spirit incomprehensible.”
The whole thing incomprehensible, if you ask me!

There are all sort of illustrations you can use to try to get a mental image of what it’s all about.
Look, for instance, at what happens when you join two hydrogen atoms to one oxygen one –
you get H₂O.
Di-hydrogen monoxide!
Which, I am sure you realise, can be ice –
a solid, good for cooling drinks or injuries, for preserving food, or for skating on.
Or it can be water –
a liquid, making up most of our bodies, good for drinking, sustaining all life.
Or it can be steam –
a gas, good for removing creases from our clothes or for cooking vegetables. Ice, water, steam, all very different from each other, but all, still, H₂O.

It’s an illustration.
It happens to be my favourite one, but there are plenty of others.
Another local preacher, on the same subject, brought in three tins of soup –
lentil, mushroom and tomato –
well, it might not have been exactly those, but something like that –
all tasting very different but all soup.
Some people like thinking of an egg,
which has the shell, the white, and the yolk....
They are all sort-of pictures, but only sort-of.
Nobody really understands it.
And, of course, that is as it should be.
If we could understand it,
if we knew all the ins and outs and ramifications of it,
then we would be equal to God.
And it’s very good for us to know that there are things about God we don’t really understand!
It’s called, in the jargon, a “mystery”.
That means something that we are never going to understand,
even after a lifetime of study.
Lots of things to do with God are mysteries, in that sense.
Holy Communion, for one –
we know what we mean when we take Communion,
but we also know that it may very well mean something quite different, but equally valid, to the person standing next to us.
Or even the Atonement –
none of us really understands exactly what happened when Jesus died on the Cross, only that some sort of change took place in the moral nature of the Universe.

Nevertheless, for all practical purposes,
we live very happily with not understanding.
We synthesise some form of understanding that suits us,
and, provided we know it is not the whole story, that’s fine.
And the same applies to the Trinity.
It doesn’t matter if we don’t really understand how God can be Three and One at the same time:
what matters is that we love and trust him, whatever!

And in our Gospel reading, Jesus talks of Himself, the Father and the Spirit as equal:
“All that belongs to the Father is mine.
That is why I said the Spirit will take from what is mine and make it known to you.”
Like St Paul, He doesn’t have the word “Trinity”, but it is the kind of thing He means.

And in the reading from Proverbs, which is sometimes used today, we are reminded of Wisdom.

“The LORD brought me forth as the first of his works,
before his deeds of old:
I was appointed from eternity,
from the beginning, before the world began.
When there were no oceans, I was given birth,
when there were no springs abounding with water;”

and so on and so forth.
Wisdom, here, is personified as female.
The Greek word for Wisdom is Sophia.
And some commentators equate Sophia, here, and in other passages, with the Holy Spirit.

Incidentally, some people find the image of God as Sophia, Wisdom, helpful and different.
It’s one of the many images of God we have, up there alongside the Shepherd, the Rock, the Strong Tower and so on.
If you don’t find it helpful, then don’t use it, but if it is something that appeals, then do.

But that is beside the point.
Seeing God as Wisdom is a very old tradition,
but the real point is that even in the Old Testament we get glimpses of God as having more than One Person.
The Trinity might not be a Bible expression, but it is a Bible concept.

But really, the thing about today is that, no matter how much we don’t understand God as Three but still One,
today is a day for praising God in all his Godness.
It is not really a day for deep theological reflection, nor for self-examination, but a day for praise and wonder and love and adoration. Amen

Trinity Sunday 2023 Morning Service

 

Today is Trinity Sunday, the day on which we celebrate all the different aspects of God.
It’s actually a very difficult day to preach on, since it’s very easy to get bogged down in the sort of theology which none of us understands, and which we can very easily get wrong.

The trouble is, of course, that the concept of the Trinity is trying to explain something that simply won’t go into words.
We are accustomed to thinking of God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and most of the time we don’t really stop and think about it.
Trinity Sunday is the day we are expected to stop and think!

The thing is, the first half of the Christian year, which begins way back before Christmas, is the time when we think about Jesus.
We prepare for the coming of the King, in Advent,
and then we remember his birth,
his being shown to the Gentiles,
his presentation in the Temple as a baby.
Then we skip a few years and remember his ministry,
his arrest,
death and resurrection,
and his ascension into heaven.
Then we remember the coming of the promised Holy Spirit,
and today we celebrate the whole Godness of God, as someone once put it.

The second half of the year, all those Sundays in Ordinary Time, tend to focus on different aspects of our Christian life, and how what we think we believe informs, or should inform, the way we live.
And today is the fulcrum, the changeover day
the one day in the year when we are expected to stop and think about God as Three and God as One.

The concept of the Trinity isn't really found in the Bible.
The bit about doing things in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit is as near as it gets.
It's really the early church's efforts to put things into words that don't really go.
They knew, as we know,
that the Father is not the Son or the Spirit,
the Son is not the Father or the Spirit,
and the Spirit is not the Father or the Son.
But the Father is God,
the Son is God
and the Holy Spirit is God.
And yet we don't have three Gods, we only have one God.

That's basically what it's about, but it's very confusing.
And the trouble is, most illustrations simply don't give you more than a tiny glimpse of it, if that.
You can, for instance, think of three tins of soup –
maybe you have lentil soup, mushroom soup and chicken soup, which are all different but all soup.
But that doesn't really help, as soup is soup, whatever flavour you drink.
Some people like to think of an egg –
the yolk, the white and the shell.
Or an apple –
the core, the flesh and the skin.

My own preferred illustration is of water, ice and steam –
all H₂O, but very different from each other and used for different purposes.
Water is not ice, and water is not steam;
ice is not water, and ice is not steam;
steam is not water and steam is not ice.
But water is H₂O, ice is H₂O and steam is H₂O.
Water is about drinking and washing;
ice is about skating and cooling injuries.
Oh, and cooling drinks, too, of course.
And steam is about clearing your head when you have a cold,
and showing you that the kettle is boiling....
So it is quite a good illustration.

But even that is merely a tiny glimpse of what the Trinity is all about.
Maybe we shouldn't even try to explain the Trinity –
it's what's called a mystery, meaning that while we can get a good working image of what it's all about,
we know that it isn't more than an image
and our conception may well change over time.
We'll never know exactly what it's all about, because we are not God!

But, as St Paul points out, we can think of the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit!
That makes it easier, I think.
We might not understand how we can have three Persons, as the technical term has it, in one God,
but we can understand a little about the Grace.
We will close this service, as we close so many services, by wishing one another God's grace in these very words.

I wonder, then, what we are actually wishing each other.
Again, when you start to unpack it, it isn't as easy as it looks.
After all, what, exactly, does “Grace” mean?
We think we know –
we have a working model of it –
but again, it's one of those concepts that really doesn't go into words,
as so many of the things of God don't.
Oh, we say glibly that it's “God's riches at Christ's expense”,
and of course that is very much part of it, but it's only part of it.
Grace is about all that Christ gives to us in the package we call “salvation”.
We can't earn grace, we can only accept it as a freebie.
It is everything that Christ poured out for us on the Cross.
And it is that that we pray for one another!

And then Love.
Again, how can we put this into words?
We know what love means –
we think.
But then, we love strawberries and we love our children and we love our spouses or partners, and it's not the same sort of love, is it?

If you want a general definition of love, one can say it is the condition whereby the happiness and safety of the beloved is of greater concern than your own.
The happiness and safety of the beloved is of greater concern than your own.
That, of course, can't apply to strawberries!
And I would have difficulty in applying it to our love for God, I think, wouldn't you?

But I have no difficulty whatsoever in applying it to God's love for us.
God's love for us is quite beyond our imagination.
It is constant, unremitting.
God loves each and every one of us as though we were unique.
It doesn't matter who we are, or what we have done, or whether we serve Him or not –
God loves us.
In a way, our prayer ought to start with the love of God,
for it is from that love that the rest stems.
If God didn't love us, he would not have sent Jesus, nor the Holy Spirit.

Some of us here this morning have children, maybe grandchildren.
Anybody have great-grandchildren?
Well, I don't know about you, but I do remember that when my daughter was born,
I began to have a glimpse, just a tiny glimpse of what God's love for us is like.
That was over 40 years ago, and I am a grandmother now,
but I still remember it.
That realisation that this, this is something a tiny bit like how God cares for me!
Amazing!

So, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ,
and the love of God,
and then, of course, the Fellowship of the Holy Spirit.
The Fellowship of the Holy Spirit.
Some translations say the Communion of the Holy Spirit.
You notice it's “of” the Holy Spirit, just as it is the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God.
The Holy Spirit sends, among other amazing things, fellowship, communion.
Both with God and with one another.

Yes, of course, we are friends.
And there are always going to be people in the church we are more friendly with and less friendly with, if that makes sense.
But by our very human nature, we're going to like some people more than we like others.
That's okay.
But we are given the gift of having fellowship with everybody in the Church, whether we like them or whether we don't.
We can sit beside them in worship,
we can study the Scriptures with them,
we can pray for them and their concerns,
we can lift them to the Throne of Grace.
And that is the gift of the Holy Spirit here.

And we can also have fellowship with God.
That sounds even more amazing, doesn't it?
Fellowship with God himself, the Creator.
The Father –
Jesus said to call God “Father”,
but I know that isn't helpful to everybody, if they have had a poor relationship with their own father, for instance.
You may prefer a totally different name for God, and that's okay, too –
and often, your preferred name for God changes as you travel along your Christian journey.

We know the Old Testament was full of different names,
from the plain basic “El” that meant “The Lord” –
you still get this in names like “Michael” or “Rachel” or “Gabriel”, or any of those Bible names that end in “El”.
They all mean something about God –
Michael, for instance, means “Who is like God?”,
which is a rhetorical question, of course, because nobody is!
Gabriel means “Strong man of God”, and so on.....
Anyway, names for God –
the plain basic “El” that I mentioned, and then a lot of other ones –
shepherd, judge, redeemer, king, rock.
Or there is “El Shaddai”, which has several different possible meanings, including God the Destroyer, or even God with breasts –
but is mostly used to mean God Almighty.

And talking of God with breasts, there are a few feminine names for God, which you may or may not find helpful,
including Lady Love, and Lady Wisdom.
Some people refer to the Holy Spirit as “She”,
on the grounds that the Hebrew word, Ruach, is feminine.
There’s that lovely hymn you may have sung last week – we did at Stockwell – with the image of a female dove brooding on the water.
Do so if you find it helpful, but if it irritates you or feels gimmicky, then don't.

I seem to have wandered rather far from “The fellowship of the Holy Spirit”.
But today isn't really a day for understanding, you see.
It's much more of a day for rejoicing.
I said at the beginning that it was a day to celebrate the whole Godness of God, and I rather like that definition.
We will never even begin to understand who God is, and that's okay.
We know that we have a loving Father in God –
or whatever other title we wish to use.
We we know that we have a Redeemer and a Brother in our Lord Jesus.
And we know that we are filled with the Holy Spirit, who enables us to grow into the person God created us to be, and who gives us all we need, and more beside, to become that person.

And then, there is the fact that it is a mystery.
That we can't understand or explain it.
And that's great, too!
So let us rejoice, and give thanks to God.
Amen.

Pentecost 2023

 

I wonder what it must have been like.
It almost beggars imagination, doesn't it.
There they were, in that upper room.
One hundred and twenty of them, they say,
including Mary the mother of Jesus
and several other women.
Waiting.
Waiting for what must have felt like simply forever.

They'd been told, in Luke's version of the story, to wait in Jerusalem and they would receive power when the Spirit came upon them.
So they waited, and waited.
At least ten days,
we don't, I think, know exactly how long,
until the Day of Pentecost dawned.
I wonder how many of them had felt like giving up and going home,
and celebrating Pentecost,
which back then was a sort of Harvest Festival,
celebrating the first fruits of the harvest,
celebrating Pentecost with their neighbours?

But they didn't go home.
They stayed.
And when the day of Pentecost was fully come,
the Spirit came on them.

It must have been a pretty dramatic visitation.
The tongues of flame,
the rushing mighty wind.
And the immediate explosion of praise,
and when they ran out of words those other words,
words of praise that, in this instance,
turned out to be words "in our own native language?

Parthians,
Medes,
Elamites,
and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia,
Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia,
Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene,
and visitors from Rome,
both Jews and proselytes,
Cretans and Arabs –
in our own languages we hear them speaking about God's deeds of power."

Thus the bystanders.
They might not have seen the tongues of flame,
or heard the rushing mighty wind,
but they certainly saw the results.

But some people were more cynical
And they said,
oh, these people have been on the booze;
they're bladdered;
they're lathered.....
And I can think of several rather ruder things they might have said,
and so, I expect, can you.

So Peter, glorious, wonderful Peter,
who never used to be able to open his mouth without putting his foot in it –they used to say he only opened his mouth to change feet –
Peter jumps up and lets out this terrific bellow which shuts everybody up, sharpish.
"No, no, no, no, no, no, no," he goes,
"we're not on the sauce –
come off it, it's only nine am, what do you take us for?
We're not football fans!"
And he goes on to explain that this is what Joel was talking about,
this is what they'd all been expecting.
And, as you know, he preached so powerfully,
and God's presence was so overwhelming,
that three thousand people got converted that day alone!

Thus the story.
We know it so well, don’t we?
Every year, this passage from the book of Acts is read.
We could probably quote a great deal of it off by heart, and the bits we can’t quote –
all those nationalities, I can never remember them without looking –
we know what they say, even if we don’t know the words!

Obviously, then, it is an important story –
as important as those other stories we hear every year,
the stories of Jesus’ birth,
the coming of the magi,
the presentation in the Temple,
the visit to the Temple the year Jesus was 12,
and then the gap to the adult Jesus,
his arrest,
death,
resurrection,
and ascension into Heaven.
And then the coming of the Spirit.

One way of seeing it is that it’s the Church’s birthday.
The day we celebrate the anniversary of the explosive growth from a tiny handful of believers –
barely more than a hundred –
to several thousand,
and on down the millennia to the worldwide organisations and denominations that is the Church today.
But there again, that’s just history, rather like we celebrate our own birthdays.
Pentecost is more than that.
I think that much of it is one of those things that doesn’t go into words very well –
what is officially called a “mystery” -
the Church’s word for something that words can never fully explain.

After all –
a mighty wind, and what looked like tongues of fire?
We know the damage that both wind and fire can do –
hurricanes seem to be increasing in both frequency and strength, and have caused terrific damage over the years.
And we all know what terrible damage fire can do.

But the wind and flame from God were not sent to destroy,
but to cleanse, to heal, and to empower.
Some of the empowerment was pretty spectacular –
the speaking in other languages,
the healings,
the preaching that brought thousands to Christ in one go....
some of it, of course, would have been less so.

And then there were the other side-effects –
the changes in people’s character to become more the people God meant them to be.
The fruit of the Spirit –
Paul, in his various letters, reminds us both of the various gifts he saw in use (the tongues, the prophecies, the healings and so on) and the fruits he saw develop in people’s characters:
"love,
joy,
peace,
patience,
kindness,
generosity,
faithfulness,
gentleness,
and self-control" .

The thing is, of course, that it wasn’t and isn’t just those few people in the Upper Room in Jerusalem who received the Holy Spirit.
Nor was it just the three thousand people who were added to the church that day!
Right down throughout history, and right down to today,
God has sent his Holy Spirit on to believers.
And that includes you and it includes me.

But some of us will say, oh, help, no, not me,
I'm not worthy.
I'm not clean.
Well, you're no more and no less worthy than anybody else.
But there are things that can stop you being filled with the Holy Spirit.
The first is if you are not walking God's way.
You do need to be God's person
and that is not something that happens automatically.
You have to consciously commit yourself to God.
We Methodists do this formally each year in the Covenant Service,
but you don't have to wait until then!

And you may say, well, yes, years ago –
but these days?
I’m all dried up and God doesn’t use me any more.

Well, look at my cup.
I get very thirsty when I preach, and like to have my water-bottle with me – we do try not to use single-use plastic bottles unless we know we have another use for them afterwards.

But supposing I wanted to put some coffee in a cup like this?
(waves reusable coffee cup with lid)
I can’t, can I, as it has the lid on!

Okay, let’s take the lid off.
Hmmm.... still can’t put any coffee in here, just look at it.
All sorts of bits and pieces in here......

think this mug must be rather elastic!

(removes bits and pieces from mug)

The point is, it doesn’t really matter what’s in there,
but they shouldn’t be there.
Perfectly good, valid and worthwhile things in themselves,
but they don’t live in a coffee cup.

And thank you, but I don’t fancy drinking my coffee out of a mug that has been filled with all these things.

So we need to wash the mug, and rinse it, and dry it....

and now, at last, we can put coffee in it!

(Mimes these actions).

That’s a very old illustration;
I first heard it about fifty years ago.
But it’s still valid today.
You see, we can thwart God completely by refusing, if you like,
to “take the lid off” yourself and allow God in there to work.
And yes, it’s scary doing that.
Horribly so.
We really do have to trust God and trust that He loves us.
And once we have “taken the lid off”,
we have to allow God to search for those things that are filling us up wrongly –
perfectly valuable, valid things in their own right,
but things that aren’t right for us.
John Wesley, for example, said that while there was absolutely nothing intrinsically wrong with a career in mathematics, it wouldn’t have been right for him.


That, too, is hard.
We are so afraid that God will take all the things we love from us, and leave us with boring Church things....
I doubt it.
Most of us love what we do, or we wouldn’t do it!
God doesn’t call us to be bored and miserable, but to be fulfilled and happy.

And then finally we need to be washed –
cleansed, forgiven, made whole.
Again, sometimes it’s difficult to allow that to happen, which is largely because we often find it very hard to forgive ourselves when things go wrong.
And that makes it hard for us to believe that God has forgiven us.

But when all that has happened, then we become fit for purpose.
We can be filled with God’s Spirit....
not only filled up, as we would fill a coffee cup, but filled to overflowing,
pouring out everywhere, a sort of coffee-fountain, if you like....

And once we are filled, what then?
That, of course, is up to God, who knows us far better than we know ourselves.
He knows our characters, our desires, our needs, our failings....
It’s not our job to worry about the “what then”.
If there’s something specific God wants us to do,
you can be sure we will know it, one way or the other.
Otherwise, we go on with our lives, just being!
God does the rest –
we very often don’t know

So –
how?
That one’s easy –
just be willing!
That’s all we have to do –
be willing.
God does all the rest.

To help us find the words to be willing, let’s stand and sing hymn 385: “Holy Spirit, we welcome you”

Coronations and Vocations

 

Jesus said to his disciples: “Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you?”

“My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told that I am going there to prepare a place for you?”

This Eastertide, I have been thinking a lot about how Jesus deals with people as individuals. You can see it during his ministry, of course – far too many instances to go into here. But what I have been thinking of specially was how he came to people after his resurrection. I mean, you have Mary Magdalene crying in the garden, and how lovely he is with her; then there was the walk and chat with Cleopas and his wife on their way to Emmmaus, when he went through the Scriptures with them to show them how the Resurrection was foretold – and agreed to stay the night, but then vanished after he’d broken bread at the supper-table. Then he comes specially to Thomas when he had missed the original appearance to all the disciples, and had trouble believing it had really happened. And, perhaps finally, he speaks to Peter on the shore of Lake Galilee, forgiving him for denying he knew him, and reinstating him.

All these people needed a different touch from Jesus, and they all got it. And that holds true for us, too. Jesus comes to us through the Holy Spirit, but our experiences of this will all be different. “In my Father’s house are many rooms.” Many rooms. They will all be of different shapes and sizes, according to our individual needs.

I wish, in a way, that the Epistle set for today was that lovely passage from 1 Corinthians about how we are all part of one body, but all different parts.

Today, you see, is Vocations Sunday, when I think I’m supposed to urge you all to offer for ordination, or something like that. Don’t worry, I’m not going to! Although I will just say that if you do think you are experiencing a call to offer for ordination, or indeed to become a local preacher, worship leader, or another role in the church, do go and talk to Rev R about it! She will be able to tell you what your first steps should be. And, by the way, if you think you might be feeling such a call, you haven’t gone mad! It’s always worth exploring, even if the call turns out to be for something quite else. I mean, look at me – I’ve been a local preacher for over 30 years now, if you count time spent on note and on trial. They still haven’t discovered they made a terrible mistake….

Seriously, though, our vocation need not necessarily be for a role within the church. Some people are called to be teachers, or medical professionals – and, goodness knows, given the way the Government sees fit to pay public sector workers, it would have need to be a vocation, as you certainly wouldn’t be in it for the money! And in other roles, that aren’t necessarily anything to do with the church, or a profession, for that matter. God needs Christians in any and every role, from doctor to decorator, judge to janitor, lawyer to labourer, professor to plumber, rat-catcher to retired, and so on. We need people to stand as local councillors, or maybe even get more involved in politics, if that is something that interests you. And our schoolchildren and students need to be focussing on their studies and their play, and on finding out who they are as beloved children of God.

From youngest to oldest, we all have our role to play in God’s plan for this world. We all fit in the community in our various roles. We all have different needs, different gifts, different preferences, different dreams.

It can be instructive, sometimes, to read how God dealt with his prophets and leaders who really didn’t want to answer God’s call. Moses said he was crap at public speaking, so God gave him Aaron to be his mouthpiece. Jeremiah also said he was hopeless at it, and anyway, he was far too young for anybody to take him seriously. He needed God’s reassurance that “I am with you, and I will protect you,” plus a special touch from God, a special gift of the Holy Spirit, if you like, for him to be able to speak.

Isaiah, too, was horrified when he saw God’s glory in the Temple and realised that God was calling him to be a prophet. “Oh, no! I will be destroyed. I am not pure enough to speak to God, and I live among people who are not pure enough to speak to him. But I have seen the King, the Lord All-Powerful.” And he needed a cleansing touch from an angel before he could say “Here I am, send me!” to God.

Three different men, with very similar concerns – they simply weren’t good enough for God to use them. And God basically said “Rubbish!” and gave them the reassurance they needed that they could, indeed, do the work to which they were being called.

And it’s the same for us. No matter what we are being called to do – and don’t forget that most of us, probably, indeed, all of us, are doing exactly what we are meant to be doing – no matter what it is, God will enable us.

Whether we are called to actively preach the Good News, or whether we are being asked to pray quietly at home, we will be given the gifts we need to do so. All our gifts are given to us as individuals, and, of course, God isn’t stingy! In fact, given half a chance, God would give us far more than we are able to cope with.

We are, after all, God’s children, not his servants! Jesus reminds us, also in our Gospel passage, that nobody can come to the Father except through him. There may be – there are – other paths to God, but only Christians can know God as Father. And Jesus reminds us that earthly fathers don’t – or most don’t, we see exceptions in our newspapers all the time – give bad things to their children; they don’t give a stone instead of bread, or scorpions instead of fish.  “If you, then,” Jesus concludes, “though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!”

How much more! More than we can ask, or even imagine.

God deals with us, then, as individuals – but, of course, we are part of a community, of a family, and our gifts and calling will reflect that. We are all one body, with many parts. We are, as our first reading reminded us, “a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.”

Yesterday, of course, was a very special day in the life of our nation, as our King was anointed and crowned to his office. I know our late Queen felt that God had anointed her as Queen, and this meant being Queen was who she was, not what she did. I rather suspect our new King feels the same way. Certainly he, like his mother before him, believes that he has been appointed to serve the various countries of which he is King, and has sworn an oath to that effect. The crowning and anointing, so we were told in the service yesterday, set him apart and consecrated him for the service of his people.

There is, of course, only one King. But we are all consecrated by God for his service, as our reading from Peter’s letter reminded us: “But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.” God does not call without enabling. Of course, that doesn’t mean our service – whatever it may be – will always be easy and trouble-free; you know as well as I do that it won’t be! There are always rocks along the way – as Jesus said, “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”

And, finally, many years ago now I knew someone who had served as a medical missionary in Burundi. She told me once that, when she had been getting ready to leave, she got worried, as she was so looking forward to going she started to wonder whether it was really God calling her to go there, or whether it was just what she herself wanted. And when she took this worry to her advisor, she was told, “Why on earth would God call you to do something you would hate? You wouldn’t do a great job if you were unhappy all the time, quite apart from anything else. And the God who loves you gives good gifts to all His children!”

It won’t always be easy. Often we will wonder whether we’re on the right track or not. Often we will wonder why so-and-so is called to be a worship leader and we aren’t, or vice versa. But “In my Father’s house are many rooms,” and each and every one of those rooms has been specially designed. There is one for you, and there is one for me! Amen.

Going to Emmaus

 

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

Jesus and Thomas

 

So it is the evening of what we now call Easter Sunday.
Jerusalem is quiet, shocked still by the happenings at the end of the previous week.
Not so much by the executions –
they seem to be two a penny these days –
but by the fact that that rabbi, the one they called Jesus, the one who had come into the city on a donkey with a huge crowd shouting and cheering him on –
they had killed him!

And his disciples –
most of them, anyway, had locked themselves in the upper room of a house, as they were afraid, with good reason, that the authorities who had taken Jesus to his death would be after them, too.

There were odd rumours going round.
A couple of the women said they had gone to the place where he was buried, and found he wasn’t there.
An angel had apparently told them that he had been raised from death.
Mary Magdalene even said she’d seen him and talked to him.
Well, you can’t trust what women say, can you?
But then Cleopas and his wife come rushing in, breathless and exhausted, saying that they had seen Jesus on the road and walked with him, and he’d come in to supper with them.

And then, suddenly, Jesus himself is there, standing in the middle of the room.
He hadn’t opened the door –
they had been careful to lock it again once Cleopas had arrived.
But he was there.
Alive.
Real.
You could touch him,
see where those terrible nails had been hammered through his hands and feet,
see where the soldiers had stuck a spear into his side to make quite sure he was dead.

But he wasn’t dead.
“Peace be with you!” he said.
And they were no longer afraid.

He said he was hungry, and shared their supper with them, just like in the olden days.
But it wasn’t quite like that, he was different.
His body was just as solid as ever, but somehow, not quite the same.
And in his manner, he seemed far more sure of himself, far more certain.

“Receive the Holy Spirit” –
what did he mean by that, they wondered?
“If you forgive people’s sins, they are forgiven;
if you don’t forgive them, they aren’t.”

Again, what did he mean? The disciples, at that stage, had no real idea.
And then Jesus wasn’t there any more, although nobody saw him go.

And then Thomas arrived.
“Sorry I’m late,” he said.
“Got held up.”
And, all talking at once, they try to tell him what has happened.

But Thomas is sceptical.
Can’t really be true, he says.
You must have been dreaming, or a mass hallucination or something.
And even though they tell him over and over again, he still has trouble believing.
“I’d need to touch those wounds you say you saw, need to put my hand on his side where the spear was.
Then I might believe, but really, no –
people don’t come back from the dead!”

Poor Thomas.
It seems less than ten days ago that he was the one who said to Jesus, “Well, if you insist on going to Jerusalem, let’s all go with you and die with you!”
and now he seems to have missed out on all the excitement.
People don’t come back from being dead,
no matter how much you would like them to.

But then, on the other hand, there had been those miracles, people healed –
the time Jesus’s friend Lazarus had died,
and Jesus had called him to come out of the tomb, and he had come.
Or when that little girl had died, only Jesus had said she was only sleeping.
Or that time when….
Thomas remembers all the times Jesus had healed the sick or done other miracles.
But then, he couldn’t be alive, could he?
And so on, round and round, on the treadmill of his thoughts.

This goes on for a whole week.
It must have seemed an eternity to poor Thomas,
with the others, although still cautious and hiding from the authorities –
indeed, some of the fishermen were talking of going back to Galilee and getting the boats out;
safer that way, and Jesus had apparently told the women to tell them to go back to Galilee –
the others, still cautious, yet fizzing and bubbling that the Teacher was alive!

A whole week.

But at the end of the week, they are still in the locked room.
They have been gathering there every day to pray and be together,
and trying not to come to the attention of the authorities.
Thomas is beginning to seriously wonder whether they’ve gone mad, or whether he has.
Maybe he should just leave them, and go on home to Galilee.
But maybe, one last time, he’ll join them.

And he’s so glad he did, because Jesus comes again, specially to talk to him,
to show him his hands and his side, and say
“Go on, you can touch them if that’s what you need to do to believe in me!”
Thomas doesn’t seem to need to, he believes anyway and worships his risen Lord.

And then later on, tradition tells us,
he goes to India and founds the church there,
and many denominations there say they trace their origins back to his ministry!
So what do we learn from this story.
We sometimes call Thomas “Doubting Thomas”,
as though that was the only significant thing about him.
It wasn’t, of course.
He was a brave and bold disciple, and he went to the furthest reaches of the known world, and beyond, to tell people about Jesus.

What’s more he was brave enough to say that he didn’t believe it.
That took a great deal of courage, if you think about it.
All the others seemed to be totally convinced that Jesus was alive, even if they did privately wonder if they had dreamed the whole thing.
But Thomas was the only one brave enough to say he thought it was all rubbish.

But in a way, the story isn’t really about Thomas, is it?
It’s far more about Jesus, and the way Jesus deals with Thomas’s doubts and fears.

I wonder why Jesus felt it necessary to wait a whole week before coming to reassure Thomas?
It does seem odd, when you think that Thomas had been one of his most loyal followers.
Some people might think that he was punishing him for doubting, but that doesn’t seem very probable.
Not when you look at the way he treated him when he finally did turn up.

Jesus has form for delaying, if you remember.
When Lazarus was so ill, and then died?
And we know that Jesus loved Lazarus, and was badly upset when he saw his tomb.
And Mary and Martha were upset, too:
“Lord, if you had been here, our brother wouldn’t have died!”
But Jesus delayed, so he said, that God’s glory might be revealed –
and he raised Lazarus from death.

I’m not just so sure why he had to delay in this case, though.
But perhaps it was to show us that it’s okay to have to wait.
So often we want to see God at work now.
We want to be healed now.
We want answers now.
But God doesn’t seem to work like that.
Sometimes we need time to work through our feelings about something.
Sometimes we need to be certain that we really do want God to work –
do you remember how Jesus would always ask people what they wanted, did they really want him to heal them?
Were they sure?

After all, when God acts, life changes.
Thomas’ life was irretrievably changed.
Well, obviously, so were all the other disciples’ lives changed.
Jesus said “Receive the Holy Spirit”, and although nothing much seemed to change at that moment –
they were still hiding away in the upper room the following week –
later they were able to receive the Holy Spirit in a more dramatic way, and were changed forever more.

But for Thomas, the change was immediate and dramatic.
He went from unbelief to faith in the course of a single moment.
And his life was changed.

I do like the fact, too, that Thomas was still hanging with the others.
He could have walked away, gone back to Galilee, or wherever it was he came from.
But no, he stayed with the others, and they all saw Jesus come to him specially, they all saw Jesus inviting him to touch his hands and his side.
They all heard Thomas exclaim “My Lord and my God!”

Jesus came to Thomas and gave him a special touch, a special visit.
Later, he came to Peter on the shores of Lake Galilee, and spoke to him, specially, making sure Peter knew he had been forgiven for denying Jesus on that dreadful night when the authorities had arrested him.

The author of John’s Gospel reminds us, too, that Jesus did many more things than that, and that his book is a carefully curated selection
“in order that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through your faith in him you may have life.”
Jesus said to Thomas that people would be able to believe in him without necessarily having seen him.
“How happy they will be!”

And down the years, Jesus has come to us in many different ways.
Some of us may have experienced his presence unmistakeably, no matter how short a time.
Others may never have experienced him directly, but have met him through the words of a friend, the actions of a stranger, a random sermon.
We are all different, and Jesus treats us differently –
he meets us in the way best suited to our nature, the way we would be most inclined to trust.

Thomas needed a special visit from Jesus.
And Jesus paid him that special visit.

We all need a special visit from time to time;
maybe we will have to wait, as Thomas had to wait, as Lazarus had to wait.
But Jesus will come to us in the end.
He will come, he will forgive us, heal us, reassure us, and enable us to use our lives to his glory!
Amen.

Palm Sunday 2023

 A series of meditations interspersed with readings, hymns and prayers.

All 4 meditations are on the same recording.

Meditation 1: The Procession
Each year there are a few days’ holidays around Passover,
when as many people as possible go to Jerusalem for the biggest festival of the Jewish year.

This year,
you're going, too.
Perhaps you go every year,
or perhaps you can only go once every few years,
if you don't have much money.
Whatever,
this year, you are going to Jerusalem.
Perhaps you are travelling with a large party,
perhaps there are only two of you.
But today is the day you arrive at Jerusalem.
It's hot.
You're walking along,
a bit hot and rather thirsty,
and somewhat tired of walking.
It will be good to get into Jerusalem,
and to your room at the inn.

Suddenly, though,
there is a noise in the crowd.
What is happening?
Everyone has stopped moving.
But there are cheers and shouts going on.
What are people shouting?
Listen, a minute:
"Hosanna to the Son of David!
Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.
Hosanna in the highest!"
What on earth are they on about?
What's going on?
People are pulling branches off the trees.
They're throwing down their cloaks.
Who is this person coming along, anyway?

It's someone riding a donkey.
How extraordinary.
Why a donkey, please?
How very undignified.
And yet everyone else is cheering him.
Oh well, why not.
"Hosanna", you shout,
joining your voice to everyone else's.
"Hosanna" .
And carried away by the emotion of the moment,
you throw your cloak into the road for the donkey to walk on.

Later, when the moment has passed,
you wonder what on earth it was all about.
Your cloak was torn by the donkey's feet.
It's dusty and spoilt from lying in the road.
Your new cloak,
that you had bought specially for the festival.
It's ruined.
And you were shouting and cheering like a mad thing.
How very odd.

Meditation 2: Peter
Simon Peter.
You're at the Palace,
in the servant's courtyard.
Jesus is in there somewhere.
You'ld like to rush in and rescue him,
but you don't know whereabouts they are keeping him.
Meanwhile you're cold,
tired,
scared
and feeling sick.
You were up all night, praying with Jesus in the garden.
Well, you might have nodded off a time or two,
but basically you haven't had any sleep.
And he was upset, you heard him;
crying, he was.
Crying out to God to spare him,
not to make him have to go through with this.
But they have taken him anyway.
You followed, at a distance.
You would love to rescue him, but....
There's a fire in the courtyard,
and you creep up to it,
staying in the shadows
and listening to the maids flirting with the soldiers,
and being flirted with in their turn.
And they are talking about the arrest,
and the newest prisoner.
You prick up your ears.
A teacher, they say.
A religious nut, more like.

The servants are sneering at your master.
You'ld love to tell them about him,
about the fun you've had,
the travels,
the wonders.
But your voice won't work.
Suddenly one of the maids turns to you:
"Hey, big boy!
You were with him, weren't you? Tell us about him!"
But your voice doesn't do what you want it to.
"No way, no, not me, you've got the wrong chap!"
you hear yourself babbling.

"No, I'm sure I saw you with him," says one of the other maids.
Again, you find you saying it wasn't you.
You begin to sweat.
Why are you telling all these lies?
Can't they just shut up and leave you alone?
What's going to happen, anyway.

"Oh, come on," says another voice.
"You're from Galilee, same as him.
Your accent proves it.
You must have known him, at the very least."

And your temper explodes, and you round on the man,
cursing and swearing.
You fling out of the courtyard.
And the cock crows.
Just as He had said.
"Before the cock crows,
you will deny me three times."
Just what he had said.
Dear God,
what have I done?

Meditation 3: In the Crowd
Now it is two or three days later,
early in the morning.
You look out of your bedroom window,
and see that a massive crowd has gathered outside the governor's palace.
You step over, to see what all the fuss is about.
"What's happening?", you ask.

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

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

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

And then a hush.
Pilate appears on the balcony. A few quiet "boos",
but the crowd is fairly patient.
"Who shall I release to you?" he asks.
"Barabbas!" yell the crowd.
"We want Barabbas.
At first it is only a few voices,
but gradually more and more people start to shout for Barabbas.
"We want Barabbas, we want Barabbas!"
"Well," goes Pilate,
"Are you sure you don't want Jesus who is called the Christ?"
One or two people start to shout "Yes",
but you are aware that there are some heavies in the crowd and they soon shut up, and start the chant again:
"We want Barabbas, we want Barabbas!"

"Then what shall I do with this Jesus?" asks Pilate.
And the voices start, slowly at first,
but more and more people join in:
"Crucify him, Crucify him!"
And you find yourself shouting, too.
"Crucify him, crucify him!"

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

Meditation 4: On the Cross
So they did crucify him.

There were rumours going round all night.
You didn't get any sleep; you kept hearing things
He was with Pilate.
With Herod.
They were going to let him go.
They weren't.
And now he is up there, being put to death.
Maybe he was no better than those thieves beside him.
Who knows?
You certainly don't.
Yes, he's suffering.
God, that must hurt.
Hope it never happens to me.
Shouldn't happen to a dog, crucifixion.

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

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

Can you see?

 

I actually got the two recordings together this time (3rd time of asking!); there will be a gap after the main sermon, and then the secondary sermon will begin.

This is a very splendid story in John's Gospel, although it's rather long, which is why I divided the reading into two bits.

It's not just about a healing, it's about what happened afterwards.

We start with the man born blind,
and first of all the disciples want to know why this had happened.
We all want to know why, don't we,
when dreadful things happen.
Why was this child born disabled?
Why did that earthquake devastate towns on the Turkey/Syria border?
Why did so and so get cancer?
Why did so and so get cancer and then get better,
when someone else couldn't get better, and died?
And so on and so forth.
It's human nature.
Even though we sometimes know the answers, or at least part of them –
the buildings in those cities didn’t conform to earthquake-proofing regulations
which is why the earthquake caused so much devastation;
that person shortened their lifespan by smoking.
And so on.
But other times there seems to be no reason for it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“So what happened?” asks the neighbours.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I wonder what it is for us.
For make no mistake, my friends, when God touches our lives, things change.
Sometimes it is our behaviour which changes –
perhaps we used to get drunk,
but now we find ourselves switching to soft drinks after a couple of glasses.
Perhaps we used to gamble,
but suddenly realise we haven't so much as bought a Lottery ticket for weeks, never mind visiting a bookie!
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.
But as I've said before, the more open we are to God,
the more we can allow God to change us.
Sometimes, of course, we cling on to the familiar bad habits,
as we don't know how to replace them with healthier ways of acting and thinking, and find it too scary to trust God to show us the way.

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

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

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

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

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

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

---oo0oo---

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

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

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

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

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

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