Mary Magdalene

Today, July the twenty-second, is the Feast of St Mary Magdalene, if you are the sort of church that celebrates that sort of thing. Which we aren't, of course, but nevertheless I can't resist having a look at Mary Magdalene today, because she is such an intriguing person. We know very little about her for definite:

Firstly, that Jesus cast out seven demons from her, according to Luke chapter 8 verse 2, and Mark chapter 16 verse 9.

From then on, she appears in the lists of people who followed Jesus, and is one of the very few women mentioned by name all the time.

She was at the Cross, helping the Apostle John to support Jesus' mother Mary.

And, of course, she was the first witness to the Resurrection, and according to John's Gospel, she was actually the first person to see and to speak to the Risen Lord.

And that is basically all that we reliably know about her – all that the Bible tells us, at any rate.

But, of course, that's not the end of the story. Even the Bible isn't quite as clear as it might be, and some Christians believe that she is the woman described as a “sinner” who disrupts the banquet given by Simon the Leper, or Simon the Pharisee or whoever he was by emptying a vial of ointment over his feet – Jesus' feet, I mean, not Simon's – and wiping it away with her hair. Simon, you may recall, was furious, and Jesus said that the woman had done a lot more for him than he had – he hadn't offered him any water to wash his feet, or made him feel at all welcome.

Anyway, that woman is often identified with Mary Magdalene, although some say it is Mary of Bethany, sister to Martha and Lazarus. Some even say they are all three one and the same woman!

So if even the Bible isn't clear whether there are one, two or three women involved, you can imagine what the extra-Biblical traditions are like!

Nobody seems to know where she was born, or when. Arguably in Magdala, but there seem to have been a couple of places called that in Biblical times. However, one of them, Magdala Nunayya, was on the shores of Lake Galilee, so it might well have been there. But nobody knows for certain.

She wasn't called Mary, of course; that is an Anglicisation of her name. The name was Maryam or Miriam, which was very popular around then as it had royal family connections, rather like people in my generation calling their daughters Anne, or all the Dianas born in the 1980s or, perhaps, today, the Catherines. So she was really Maryam, not Mary – as, indeed, were all the biblical Marys.

They don't know where she died, either. One rather splendid legend has her, and the other two women called Mary, being shipwrecked in the Carmargue at the town now called Saintes-Maries-de-la-mer, and she is thought to have died in that area. But then again, another legend has her accompanying Mary the mother of Jesus and the disciple John to Ephesus and dying there. Nobody knows.

And there are so many other legends and rumours and stories about her – even one that she was married to Jesus, or that she was “the beloved disciple”, and those parts of John's gospel where she and the beloved disciple appear in the same scene were hastily edited later when it became clear that a woman disciple being called “Beloved” Simply Would Not Do.

But whoever she was, and whatever she did or did not do, whether she was a former prostitute or a perfectly respectable woman who had become ill and Jesus had healed, it is clear that she did have some kind of special place in the group of people surrounding Jesus. And because she was the first witness to the Resurrection, and went to tell the other disciples about it, she has been called “The Apostle to the Apostles”. So what can we learn from her?

Well, the first thing we really know about her is that Jesus had healed her. She had allowed Jesus to heal her. Now, healing, of course, is as much about forgiveness and making whole as it is about curing physical symptoms. Mary allowed Jesus to make her whole.

This isn't something we find easy to do, is it? We are often quite comfortable in our discomfort, if that makes sense. If we allowed Jesus to heal us, to make us whole, whether in body, mind or spirit, we might have to do something in return. We might have to give up our comfortable lifestyles and actually go and do something!

What Mary did, of course, was to give up her lifestyle, whatever it might have been, and follow Jesus. We don't know whether she was a prostitute, as many have thought down the years, or whether she was a respectable woman, but whichever she was, she gave it all up to follow Jesus. She was the leader of the group of women who went around with Jesus and the disciples, and who made sure that everybody had something to eat, and everybody had a blanket to sleep under, or shelter if it was a rough night, or whatever. Mary gave up everything to follow Jesus.

Again, we quail at the thought of that, even though following Jesus may well mean staying exactly where we are, with our present job and our family.

But Mary didn't quail. She even accompanied Jesus to the foot of the Cross, and stood by him in his final hours. And then, early in the morning of the third day after he was killed, she goes to the tomb to finish off the embalming she hadn't been able to do during the Sabbath Day.

And we know what happened – how she found the tomb empty, and raced back to tell Peter and John about it, and how they came and looked and saw and realised something had happened and dashed off, leaving her weeping in the garden – and then the beloved voice saying “Mary!” and with a cry of joy, she flings herself into his arms.

We’re not told how long they spent hugging, talking, explaining and weeping in each other’s arms, but eventually Jesus gently explains that, although he’s perfectly alive, and that this is a really real body one can hug, he won’t be around on earth forever, but will ascend to the Father. He can’t stop with Mary for now, but she should go back and tell the others all about it. And so, we are told, she does.

She tells the rest of the disciples how she has seen Jesus. She is the first witness to the Resurrection, although you will note that St Paul leaves her out of his list of people who saw the Risen Lord. That was mostly because the word of a woman, in that day and age, was considered unreliable; women were not considered capable of rational judgement. At least Jesus was different!

So Mary allowed Jesus to heal her, she gave up everything and followed him, she went with him even to the foot of the Cross, even when most of the male disciples, except John, had run away, and she bore witness to the risen Christ.

The question is, of course, do we do any of these things? We don't find them comfortable things to do, do we? It was all very well for Mary, we say, she knew Jesus, she knew what he looked like and what he liked to eat, and so on.

But we don't have to do these things in our own strength. The Jesus who loved Mary Magdalene, in whatever way, he will come to us and fill us with His Holy Spirit and enable us, too, to be healed, to follow Him, even to the foot of the Cross, and to bear witness to His resurrection. The question is, are we going to let him? Amen.

Grief, healing and resurrection

 Note to self: Do check you have all the pages of the sermon before you leave the house.  It doesn't do to find the last 150 words or so are Not There!


“Your daughter is dead.  Why bother the Teacher any more?”
“Your daughter is dead.  Why bother the Teacher any more?”  Jairus was bringing Jesus to his home, to heal his daughter.  Not such a little girl now; she was twelve years old, probably expecting her parents to start thinking of a husband for her within the next couple of years – her culture, you were more or less grown-up at 13.  And then she fell ill.  Seriously ill.  The doctors were shaking their heads; nothing they could do.  

But there was this Teacher, Jesus of Nazareth they called him.  He was beginning to get a reputation locally for healing, as well as teaching.  What had Jairus to lose?  “When he saw Jesus,” we are told, “he fell at his feet.  He pleaded earnestly with him, ‘My little daughter is dying.  Please come and put your hands on her so that she will be healed and live.’”  And Jesus agrees, and goes with him.

And while this is happening, here is the other person to be healed that day.  The one for whom twelve years was not so much a lifetime as a life sentence. The one with the haemorrhage. Twelve years of constant nagging, dragging pain. Twelve years of constant blood loss, of constantly feeling unwell, of constantly being tired and anaemic.
 
And nothing was helping. She’d spent all her money on seeing doctors, but they hadn’t been able to help, and the problem was, if anything, growing worse. She was becoming weaker, and knew that soon she would be too weak to carry on. Her life, too, was drawing to a close – and it may well be that she was profoundly grateful that it was happening.

But then, a rumour swept through the crowds. Jesus of Nazareth was visiting Capernaum today! Everybody had heard of Jesus of Nazareth. He had done some spectacular healings. Maybe, just maybe....

He was coming to look at Jairus’ daughter, the rich man’s kid.  Jesus wouldn’t look at the likes of a poor old woman, no doubt. She didn’t have any money. She didn’t have clout, like a synagogue leader. She was just a lonely old woman.

But the crowd was so huge that Jesus could barely walk up the street. The disciples were going, “Excuse me, excuse me, make way there now, oh would you please shift your – er – yourselves”, but progress was very slow. And the woman, caught up in the crowd, suddenly plucked up the courage and just, with one finger, touched his cloak.

And Jesus felt it. In all the crowd, with people everywhere, jostling and rubbing up against him, he felt that one deliberate touch. "Who touched me?" he asked. We aren't told the tone of voice he said it in. Sometimes, preachers seem to reckon he was irritated, angry even. I don't think so. I think he was full of compassion and love. He knew. He may not have known who she was, but he knew why she was hiding.

And yes, he did have time for her.  It wasn’t about money.  It wasn’t about social status.  It was about compassion.  And also, of course, it was about knowing that she was now well, that she could resume her rightful place in society.  That she would no longer be poorly all the time.  So he lifts her up: “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.”

And then they come out of Jairus’ house to tell him that it is too late.  “Your daughter is dead.  Why bother the Teacher any more?”

But Jesus was undaunted.  He grabbed his three closest associates and told everybody else to butt out.  And he reached out to her and held her hand. "Get up, little one!" he said. And she did. She woke up, yawned, and stretched, for all the world as if she had just been enjoying a lovely, refreshing nap. "Get her something to eat," Jesus said, what could be more practical? And he didn't want her surrounded by the media of the day all yelling at her and stressing her out, either, so he suggests the parents don't tell anybody.

Well yes.  And the story is a lovely, hopeful story  –  and we, here at King’s Acre, are having our antepenultimate service before we are closed down.  What has this story to say to us today, as we grieve for the death of our church?

It is about faith, of course.  It’s about not losing hope.  About not despairing.

Jairus must have despaired when they came out to him and told them  his daughter was dead.  Or perhaps he despaired before that, when the doctors told him there was nothing more they could do.  

The woman must have despaired long since, when the bleeding simply would not stop,  when the naggy, draggy pains in her uterus wouldn’t go away.  Maybe she had been a young woman, looking to start a family.  That wasn’t going to happen now.  She despaired.

But Jesus didn’t despair.  Not ever.  Not even in the Garden of Gethsemane.  It was pretty close, I think.  “ ‘My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death,’ he said to them. ‘Stay here and keep watch.’  Going a little farther, he fell to the ground and prayed that if possible the hour might pass from him. ‘Abba, Father,’ he said, ‘everything is possible for you.  Take this cup from me.  Yet not what I will, but what you will.’”

“Not what I will, but what you will.”  I wonder how much struggle it took for Jesus to get to the place where he could say that.  Quite a lot, I shouldn’t wonder.  It isn’t easy, is it?

I know when this thing of King’s Acre closing was first mooted, my immediate reaction was, “Look here, God, if you do that, I’m never speaking to you again!”  Mind you, on sober reflection I decided I couldn’t actually cope without God, so I changed it to, “If this is seriously what you want to happen, please make me willing to accept it!”

I do wish he’d hurry up!!!

Seriously, though, it’s all very well, isn’t it, reading these stories and thinking about them, and reminding ourselves that we do not need to despair.  Right now, I don’t know about you, but for me right now that feels like rather a huge ask.  

And yet the rational part of me knows  –  not just believes, KNOWS  –  that God is going to bring something great out of this.  I don’t know what, yet, and it is not yet time to even think of finding out.  But we know, as St Paul reminds us in his letter to the Romans, that God works all things together for good for those who love him.  We also know that there is resurrection.  Even in nature.  Jesus said that if a seed didn’t fall into the ground and die, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.  And look at caterpillars.  To become a butterfly, caterpillars have to be completely remade.  While they are in the pupa, all their bits dissolve away, and are made from scratch, from the material that is there.  It’s not just a matter of rearranging what is there, it’s a matter of total breakdown and starting again. The caterpillar more-or-less has to die before it can become a butterfly.

I wonder what sort of butterfly we will become.  What sort of fruit we shall bear?

We don’t know yet.  And maybe now is not the time to find out.  Now, and these next two Sundays, is a time for grieving.  We need to grieve.  We need to acknowledge our emotions, our sadness, our anger, our whatever else we may be feeling.  That’s okay, and it’s right to be sad  –  even Jesus wept, you may remember, when his friend Lazarus died, even though he then went on to raise Lazarus from death.  He had no thought that there was anything wrong with grief.  Yes, he removed the mourners from the little girl’s bedroom, but that was basically so she wouldn’t be frightened when she woke up.  There was nothing wrong with grieving for her death.

But within all that we also need to be aware that there is hope.  There will be resurrection  –  perhaps not of King’s Acre as we know and love it, but of something.  In the Psalm we had for our first reading, we were reminded that:
“weeping may stay for the night,
   but rejoicing comes in the morning.

And the Psalm finished on a hopeful note, too, didn’t it:
“You turned my wailing into dancing;
   you removed my sackcloth and clothed me with joy,
that my heart may sing your praises and not be silent.
   Lord my God, I will praise you for ever.”

Today we grieve, and it’s right and proper that we should.  But there will be resurrection.  God will remove our sackcloth and clothe us with joy.  It may not happen this month, maybe not even this year, but one day it will happen.  The woman who was bleeding had to wait for twelve solid years.  I don’t for one moment think we will have to wait so long  –  some of us can’t, anyway.  Let’s be on the lookout for it, whenever it happens!  Amen.

God's In Charge

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! Apparently, 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.

Just to remind you, the story first of all establishes Job as really rich, and then as a really holy type – whenever his children have parties, which they seem to have done pretty frequently, he offers sacrifices to God just in case the parties were orgies! And so on. Then God says to Satan, hey, look at old Job, isn't he a super servant of mine, and Satan says, rather crossly, yeah, well, it's all right for him – just look how you've blessed him. Anybody would be a super servant like that. You take all those blessings away from him, and see if he still serves you!

And that, of course, is just exactly what happens. The children are all killed, the crops are all destroyed, the flocks and herds perish. And Job still remains faithful to God: “Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked shall I return there; the Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”

So then Satan says, well, all right, Job is still worshipping you, but he still has his health, doesn't he? I bet he would sing a very different tune if you let me take his health away!

So God says, well, okay, only you mustn't kill him. And Job gets a plague of boils, which must have been really nasty – painful, uncomfortable, itchy and making him feel rotten in himself as well. Poor sod. No wonder he ends up sitting on a dung-heap, scratching himself with a piece of broken china!

And his wife, who must have suffered just as much as Job, only of course women weren't really people in those days, she says “Curse God, and die!” In other words, what do you have left to live for? But Job refuses, although he does, with some justification, curse the day on which he was born.

Then you know the rest of the story, of course. How the three "friends" come and try to persuade him to admit that he deserves all that had come upon him – we've all had friends like that who try to make our various sufferings be our fault, and who try to poultice them with pious platitudes. And Job insists that he is not at fault, and demands some answers from God!

Which, in the end, he gets. But not totally satisfactory to our ears, although they really are the most glorious poetry. We just had the first of the three chapters this morning, but Job chapters 38, 39 and 40 are the most glorious celebration of God's creation that there is! My father, indeed, says that when he dies, he wants Job chapter 39 to be read at his funeral, and I don't blame him, it really is lovely! Sit down and read them sometime, when you want to be cheered up!

But, of course, God's creation can be a frightening and terrible place sometimes – there are earthquakes and tsunamis and volcanoes and storms.... and in our second reading, there was a storm.

I've never been to the Holy Land, but some years ago now a minister in this circuit did go, and he said that while he was there, just such a storm blew up on the Sea of Galilee! He said he really understood this particular story for the first time ever.

The disciples were with Jesus, of course, but Jesus was asleep. He'd been teaching all day, and may well have been very tired. Or perhaps he felt a bit seasick, who knows? Whatever, there he is, curled up in the stern, head on a pillow, snoring. Well, we aren't actually told he was snoring, but people do very often snore if they fall asleep in uncomfortable positions – you should hear my grandson when he falls asleep in his pushchair! So Jesus might well have snored. Whatever, there he is, fast asleep....

And a storm blows up.

I don't know why the disciples were so scared; after all, Peter and Andrew and James and John were all fishermen, and knew all about Lake Galilee, so you would have thought they would have been able to cope. Perhaps the non-fishermen among them were frightened and hampering the fishermen in their work. Perhaps it was a smaller boat than they were used to, and the Bible does say that it was beginning to fill with water. Anyway, whatever, they are terrified. So they do the most sensible thing they can; they go to Jesus and wake him up, asking for help. And Jesus tells the winds and waves to be still. And they are still. The storm stops. The wind drops. The sun comes out. And Jesus says, “What were you so afraid of? Where is your faith?”

Now, that seems a nasty thing to say. After all, the disciples had seriously thought they were all going to drown, including Jesus. But the point was, he had been with them. They could have trusted him, in spite of appearances.

When it comes to God's creation, we are not in control. The disciples weren't in control of the weather conditions on the lake. And God reminds us in the book of Job that we aren't, either:

‘Can you raise your voice to the clouds and cover yourself with a flood of water?
Do you send the lightning bolts on their way? Do they report to you, “Here we are”?'

But God is in control. God is always in charge, even when we are not. That's sometimes a comforting thought when things happen that are beyond our control. God is still in charge.

The Bible promises, in Romans chapter 8, that God works all things for good to those who love him.

Mind you, sometimes – frequently – it doesn't feel like that. When bad things happen, when someone gets a really nasty illness or dies out of time, when a relationship ends, when they close down your church, sometimes it feels as though God has kicked you in the face. But I've found, over the years, that most of the time that is not what has happened, only what it feels like. If I've gone on trusting God, and gone on trying to be his person in spite of everything – and right now this is being horrendously difficult for me – then I've usually found that in the very end God has worked things out. As I'm sure will happen this time, although I do wish he'd hurry up! God is never surprised by what is happening; God can always work things out, and will always work things out for good.

Now, some people have said that because God is always in control, and because he always does work things out, we should praise him and thank him even for the bad things. I don't see how we can do that – I mean, we know that God's heart breaks when a child is killed on the roads, or when an earthquake devastates a country. How are we supposed to give thanks for things that make God Himself weep?

I don't think it means that. I think it's more about having a thankful heart. About acknowledging God's good gifts to us. About – okay, if you like, about counting our blessings. We can't, and I don't think we should, thank God for the dreadful things – but we can be aware that God is there, in the midst of the dreadful things, and we can certainly thank him for that. We can be aware that in all things God does work for good for those who love him. And I think, too, we may ask to be shown exactly how God is working whatever dreadful situation it is for good.

The book of Job is an attempt to show why bad things happen to good people. And the only answer it can really come up with is that God is in control, and we are not.

It isn't always easy to let God be in control. Even our dear Lord struggled with it in the Garden of Gethsemane. But in the end he came to the place where he could say “Do it your way. Your will, not mine, be done!” and the result was that all the things we mean by the Atonement were able to happen.

It isn't easy. But when we have a God who controls even the winds and the waves, when we can trust him, when we can say “Your will, not mine, be done!”, then, I am sure, that in the words of Julian of Norwich, all will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of thing will be well. Amen.

Pentecost 2012

Between writing this on the Friday and preaching it on the Sunday we watched a television programme about a whole fieldful of skeletons discovered in Peru, so that was mentioned in context, as was a discussion we'd had about the trees on Clapham Common and their regeneration since the Great Storm of 1987!
 
Do you follow football? I know some people do. I don't, personally, but it's actually quite difficult to be totally ignorant of it! For instance, I do know that last week, Chelsea were playing Bayern Munich in the final of the UEFA cup, and Chelsea won on penalties. And I remember another UEFA cup final some years ago, which also starred Bayern Munich, who were playing, I think it was Manchester United. Anyway, Bayern Munich were winning and winning, and the poor Manchester United fans were quite despairing, and then suddenly, in the final moments of the game, Manchester United scored twice to win, quite unexpectedly. Somehow the spirit had come back into the team, and they were able to turn certain defeat into victory.

Also last Saturday it was the final of the Heineken Cup, and because Ulster were in the final, Robert treated himself to a ticket and went, but Ulster were never going to win, and were, in the end, very soundly thrashed. Robert said that the Ulster fans were leaving in droves before the match had even finished. The spirit had gone out of them.

It was like that for the field of bones in Ezekiel's vision. No spirit. Not even any flesh.

Can you imagine a field of bones? We’ve all seen skeletons on television, of course, and some of us may have visited ossuaries on the continent, which are usually memorials to soldiers who fell in the first world war, and they put the bones of soldiers who have got separated from their identity into the ossuaries to honour them. And the older ones among us may remember seeing pictures of a huge pile of bones in Cambodia after the Pol Pot atrocities of the 1970s.

I think Ezekiel, in his vision, must have seen something like that. A huge pile of skulls and bones…. “Son of man, can these bones live?”

And, at God’s command, Ezekiel prophesied to the bones, and then he saw the skeletons fitting themselves together like a jigsaw puzzle, and then internal organs and tendons and muscle and fat and skin growing on the bare skeletons. I’m sure I’ve seen some kind of computer animation like that on television, haven’t you? But for Ezekiel, it must have been totally weird, unless he was in one of those dream-states where it’s all rational.

But once the skeletons had come together and grown bodies, things were still not right.

It must have been a bit like those television programmes where they take someone's skull and build it up with clay to show you what they might have looked like – they never look very like anything, because they are not alive. There is no life in their eyes, no spirit.

And when they first started doing those CGI programmes about dinosaurs, the models were never very alive or realistic, although they've improved in recent years. But the early programmes had no life in them.

And that’s what Ezekiel saw in his vision – there were just so many plastic models lying there, no life, no spirit. Ezekiel had to preach to them again, and they eventually came to life as a vast army.

And then Ezekiel was told the interpretation of his vision – it was a prophecy of what God was going to do for Israel, which at the time seemed dead and buried. God was going to bring Israel back to life, to breathe new life into the nation, and put His Spirit into them.

Of course, the reason why this has been chosen as the Old Testament reading for today is that it is Pentecost. The day we celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit. The birth of the Church.

It was, of course, a Jewish festival. Even today it is still celebrated – they call it Shavuot, and according to a Jewish friend of mine, what you do is eat cheesecake – don't know why you should do that, but it is apparently the tradition to do so. The festival celebrated the coming of the Torah, the Law of Moses so it was a very appropriate day for the Holy Spirit to come.

But I wonder what it would have been like, up there in the upper room. They'd been told to wait, but they had no idea what they were waiting for. They had said a final goodbye to Jesus; they knew that if and when they would see him again, it would be very different. And they had been told that the Holy Spirit would come. I wonder what they thought that meant. Perhaps some gave up and went home, in despair. But a good 120 of them waited and waited, and when the day of Pentecost was fully come, the Spirit came.

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 "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.

Some were puzzled – were these people drunk, or what? 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 a.m., what do you take us for?" 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!

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 over 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; we've seen it all too often. 1987 was a long time ago now, but I still remember clearly the devastation caused both by a fire at King's Cross Underground Station and a huge gale that destroyed vast swathes of woodland. Even today you can still see traces of the damage it caused, if you know where to look.

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".

But above all, the Spirit gives life. Jesus said “I am come that you may have life, and have it abundantly!” In Ezekiel's vision, the Spirit of God breathed into the dry bones and both clothed them with flesh and then brought them to life.

For Ezekiel, it was a vision that God would breathe new life into the people of Israel.

This year is so horrendously difficult for us all, having to leave the churches that have been home to us for so many years. We don't know what the future holds, nor where or how we shall celebrate next Pentecost. Except I think I shall eat cheesecake – I like that idea!

But seriously, God is still God. The Holy Spirit still gives life. It's so sad, and scary and horrid – but God hasn't gone away. And the Spirit that inspired Peter's preaching that sunny morning in Jerusalem will lead us and guide us and give us life. God knows where we are needed and wanted, and will lead us there. Amen.

The Ethiopian Eunuch

“Here is some water. What is to keep me from being baptised?”

This is an odd little story, the one we heard from Acts, isn't it? I wonder who these people were, what they were doing, and, above all, why it matters to us this morning.

Well, finding out who these people are is probably the least difficult part of it. The man was, we are told, a eunuch who held a high post in the government of the Queen of Ethiopia. Now, we do know a little about her – her official title was Candace, or Kandake, or even Kentake – nobody is really sure, but if you know somebody called Candace, that's where the name comes from. Anyway, this one was called Amanitore, apparently, and her royal palace of Jebel Barkal in the Sudan is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Her tomb is also in the Sudan, in a place called Meroë. Confusingly, the area that our Bibles call “Ethiopia” or “Kush” is actually in what is now Sudan, and present-day Ethiopia was then the Kingdom of the Axumites! Anyway, the Queen isn't important, except that you should understand that she was a ruler in her own right, not just a regent – Amanitore, for instance, was co-ruler with Natakamani, who may have been her husband, but was more probably her son. The Candaces were very powerful, and could order their sons to end their rule by committing suicide if necessary. So a senior treasury official in her government would be a pretty high mucky-muck back then.

We know rather more about his employer, though, than we do about the treasury official himself. He might not even have been a Kushite, which is the more proper term for Ethiopians back then – the word “Ethiop” in Greek basically just means someone from sub-Saharan Africa. He probably was a eunuch, though; many people in positions of authority were, in those days, rather like in the Middle Ages in this country they were usually in holy orders of some kind. Basically they were people who were celibate, for whatever reason, so as not to have divided loyalties between their job and their families – with all the stuff one hears about work-life balance, and the sort of hours people who work for American companies are expected to put in, maybe they had a point! Anyway, our friend was probably a slave, or at least born into slavery, and brought up to eventually get this high and trustworthy position. There is, of course, plenty of form for this – look at Joseph, who was sold into slavery in Egypt but ended up as a hugely influential administrator in Pharoah's court.

And the same was true for this man. We don't know his name, which is unfortunate as I don't like to keep referring to him as “The Eunuch” as though it were the most important thing about him, so let's call him “The Treasurer”. He was probably born into slavery, maybe into a family who belonged to the Ethiopian court, and raised from an early age to serve the Royal Family. I have no idea what sort of education he would have had, but he obviously was an educated man; he could read, which was not very usual in that day and age, and what is more, he could read Greek or Hebrew, I am not sure which, but neither could have been his first language.

And when we meet him, he has just been to Jerusalem to worship God. Again, I have no idea how he became what's called a God-fearer, a non-Jew who worships God without converting to Judaism, but he could not have been a convert, or proselyte as they were known, because he was a eunuch, and the Old Testament forbids anybody mutilated in that way to enter the Temple. And now he is on his way home – he must have been a pretty high-up official to have been allowed to go on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, don't you think?

I wonder whether he bought his copy of the Book of Isaiah during his visit? I don't know whether it was in the Greek translation known as the Septuagint, or whether he had been able to read Hebrew and buy one of the Hebrew versions. Jewish men could all read, because they were expected to read the Scriptures in their services, but elsewhere the skill was not that common long before printing was even thought of, when all manuscripts had to be copied by hand. So a copy of the book of Isaiah would have been very valuable. And he had one, and was reading it during his journey, but not really understanding what he read, and doubtless wishing for someone to come and explain it to him.

That someone turned out to be Philip the Evangelist. Now, this isn't the Apostle Philip, the one who tends to be partnered with Bartholomew in the lists of apostles; he's a different Philip. We first meet this one early in the Book of Acts, when the gathering of believers is getting a bit large, and the Jewish and Greek believers are squabbling over the distribution of food. Philip and seven other people were appointed deacons to sort it out for them. Philip would have been Greek – it's a Greek name – but he might also have been Jewish, since he was fairly obviously resident in Jerusalem around then.

He, incidentally, is the chap who ends up with four daughters who prophesy who entertains St Paul on his way back to Jerusalem later on in Acts.

But for now, he is wanted on the old road between Jerusalem and Gaza and, prompted by the Holy Spirit, he goes there and walks alongside the Treasurer in his carriage – I expect the horse was only going at walking pace. Back then, the concept of reading to yourself was, I believe, unknown, and everybody always read aloud, even if only under their breath, so he would soon have known what the Treasurer was reading, and was intrigued:

“Do you understand what you're reading?” This man, an obvious foreigner, someone who obviously wasn't Jewish, probably didn't know the traditions at all – what on earth was he finding in the book?

And the Treasurer admits that yes, actually, he is a bit lost.... and Philip explains it all, and explains about how the prophet was referring to Jesus, which of course meant explaining all about Jesus. And so the Ethiopian challenges him: “Okay, there's some water. Any reason I shouldn't be baptised?”

He couldn't be accepted in the Temple as a Jew – would these followers of the Way – they were barely called “Christians” yet – would they accept the likes of him, or was this going to be another disappointment? I can hear a challenge in his voice, can't you? The Authorised version, which I know some of you still like to read, claims he made a profession of faith, but apparently that's not in the earliest manuscripts available and has been left out of more recent translations.

“Why can't I be baptised?” Well, there was no good reason. Jesus loved him and died for him, and Philip knew that, so he baptised him. And then left the new young Christian to cope as best he could, while the Holy Spirit took Philip off to the next thing.

It is a strange story, and I know I've spent rather a long time on it, but it intrigues me. You can't help comparing it with the story of Cornelius, a couple of chapters later. Cornelius, too, is an outsider, a member of the Army of Occupation, a Gentile – but he, too, loves God and wants to know more. And Peter is sent to help him, although Jewish Peter needed a lot more persuading than Greek Philip to go and help. And again, it is clear that God approves, and Cornelius and his household are baptised.

The thing is, this was an age when the Church was gaining new converts every day – three thousand in one day, we're told, after Pentecost. How come these two are picked out as special?

I think it's because they are special. These are the outsiders, the misfits. They aren't your average Jewish person in the Holy Land of those days. Cornelius is a member of the hated Roman army; but at least he lives in Caesarea and might have been expected to pick up one or two ideas about local culture and so on. But the Treasurer? He is not only a Gentile, but of a completely different race, and a different sexuality. A total and utter outsider, in fact.

But he is accepted! That's the whole point, isn't it? There was nothing to stop him being baptised. The Holy Spirit made it quite clear to Philip that this man was loved, accepted and forgiven and could be baptised in the nearest puddle. Or perhaps there wasn't a puddle - he would have had water with him in a carafe of some kind, perhaps they used that!

How difficult we make it, sometimes. We agonise over who is a Christian and who isn't. We wonder what behaviour might put people right away from God. And sometimes we cut ourselves off from God by persisting in behaviour, or patterns of thought, that we know God doesn't like, and we aren't comfortable in God's company. And yet God makes it so simple: “Here is some water. What is to keep me from being baptised?” And the answer, so far as God is concerned, is “Nothing”. Anybody, anybody at all, who stretches out a tentative hand, even a tentative finger, to God is gathered up and welcomed into his Kingdom. I don't know what happens when it's people like Richard Dawkins who really don't want God to exist – I suppose that when people say “No, thank you!” to God, God respects their wishes, even if that means He is deprived of their company, which He so wanted and longed for.

The Treasurer, the Ethiopian Eunuch, was the most complete outsider, from the point of view of the first Christians, that it was possible to imagine. And yet God accepted him and welcomed him, and he went on his way rejoicing. We aren't told what happened to him. Was he able to meet up with other Christians? Was he able to keep in touch with the early Christian communities and learn more about early Christian thinking? We don't know. We aren't told anything more about him – but then, I don't suppose Philip ever heard any more. Our Gospel reading minded us that unless you abide in Jesus you wither away – or perhaps more properly that your faith does – and perhaps that happened to him. We will never know. But perhaps he did abide in Jesus. Perhaps, even without fellowship and teaching and the Sacrament and the other Means of Grace we find so important, perhaps he still went on following Jesus as best he knew how. I hope he did. Maybe his relationship with God would have been purer and stronger than ours is, because there wouldn't have been anybody to tell him that he was doing it all wrong.

“Here is some water. What is to keep me from being baptised?” We have, I think, all been baptised; possibly as babies or perhaps when we were older – but what keeps us from entering into the full relationship with God that this implies? My friends, if there is something between you and God, put it down now – come back to God and rest and rejoice in Him. There are no outsiders in God's kingdom – everybody is welcome, and that includes you, and that includes me! Amen.

Palm Sunday 2012

I decided to do things a little differently this year, hence including the order of service as well as the meditations, so you can see how they fitted in!  At this particular church, the opening prayer and closing hymn of blessing are the same every week, and led by the worship leader. 

Opening Prayer led by Worship Leader

Introduction

Hymn: All glory, laud and honour

Reading: John 12:12-16

Prayer over the Palms:

Hymn: Make way, make way for Christ the King

Meditation 1:

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.

Prayer (Thanksgiving)

Worship Group sang two songs, "Before Your Majesty I bow" and "You laid aside your Majesty", to lead us from the triumphal procession to the Passion.

Reading: Mark 15:1-15

Meditation 2:

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?

Prayer of penitence and assurance of forgiveness

Hymn: My song is love unknown (H&P 173)

Reading: Mark 15:21-32

Meditation 3:

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?

Prayer (Collect for the Day)

Hymn: When I survey the wondrous Cross

Reading: Mark 15: 33-39

Meditation:

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”.

Prayers of Intercession

The Lord's Prayer

Hymn: Jesus is Lord, Creation's voice proclaims it 

(This was our wedding hymn, and it was our 33rd wedding anniversary yesterday, so I chose it, as I always do if I can at this time of year.)

Notices and Offertory

Closing hymn of blessing.

Butterflies

Today is all about butterflies! First of all, F is going to read us a story. It's a story you know very well – you probably remember it being read to you, or perhaps you read it to younger brothers and sisters, or to your own children. (F reads “The Very Hungry Caterpillar”).

So the caterpillar became a beautiful butterfly. But before he became a butterfly, there was an intermediate stage. He built a cocoon around himself. He became a pupa.

That isn’t just a matter of hibernating, like a dormouse or bear; to become a butterfly, caterpillars have to be completely remade.  While they are in the pupa, all their bits dissolve away, and are made from scratch, from the material that is there.  It’s not just a matter of rearranging what is there, it’s a matter of total breakdown and starting again. The caterpillar more-or-less has to die before it can become a butterfly.

That's really scary. But it's also very appropriate as we enter the season called Passiontide. Jesus said, “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”

Jesus knows that he is going to die. He is dreading it. He was, after all, human. We wouldn’t like it if we knew we were to be put to death tomorrow. I once dreamed that I was going to be executed, and I can’t tell you how frightened I was! I was so relieved to wake up and find that it was all a dream.

The farmers were sowing their fields. Jesus knew, perhaps, that he would not live to see the crops grow. But he knew that they would grow. And, more importantly, he knew that they would not grow if they were not sown. If they remained in their basket, they might germinate, but they would rot away almost at once. Or, if they were kept in very dry conditions, they might remain viable for years, but nothing would happen.

The seeds had to die.

The birds, at that time and in that place, were building their nests and laying their eggs. But the eggs couldn’t remain as eggs – they would addle and be no good to anybody. The young birds had to grow inside the eggs, and then they must force their way out or they would die.

Jesus could see the caterpillars that were hatching from the eggs laid last year. He knew, I expect, that they had to become pupae before they could be butterflies.

Someone he knew had had a baby lately; Jesus remembered this: “When a woman is in labour, she has pain, because her hour has come.

But when her child is born, she no longer remembers the anguish because of the joy of having brought a human being into the world. “

Jesus saw all this and knew that from seeming dissolution, God brought new life. He knew that he would have to die, so that new life could come.

Perhaps at that stage he didn’t really know how this would happen. He knew that it must happen, but not how it would.

We know that God raised Jesus from death, and because of that, we have eternal life. But that didn't stop it being really scary.

But this verse has become very important to me over the last ten days: “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies,
it remains just a single grain;
but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”

What is going to happen to our Circuit with two of our Churches closing? What is going to happen to me? Where will I be worshipping this autumn? It's very scary, especially for the people of King's Acre and Railton Road – and, of course, it's dreadfully sad. I've been worshipping at King's Acre for well over thirty years now. But – what if, what if God is going to bring resurrection out of all of this? What if this Circuit needs to die in order to be raised to something better?

“Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies,
it remains just a single grain;
but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”

This is what I am taking with me into this Eastertide. When a caterpillar becomes a pupa, it seems as though it dies. But it is raised to new life as a butterfly. This Circuit is dying – my church is dying – but what is God going to raise it as? I am sad beyond words, but I'm also looking forward to finding out!