The Things that Really Matter

Some years ago now I went into my father’s study, and found him reading his Bible. I enquired what he was reading, and he told me that he was looking ­ up the passage he had heard in Church that morning, as it struck him that it must have been written for people who owned more than one dog: “The more I called them, the more they went from me!”

Dogs do that. Puppies, especially. And so do small children – if you chase a puppy or a small child, it will run away, in the case of the child usually laughing hysterically until it falls over, at which point it howls. If you’re serious about getting either child or dog to come to you, you need to stop calling, turn round, and pretend you’re going to go away, at which point dog and child will usually come running.

This is a lovely passage, one of the ones in the Old Testament that shows us God as a loving parent, and helps us to understand why Jesus said to call him “Abba”, or “Daddy” - children today who speak Hebrew as their first language usually call their fathers “Abba”, and their mums are “Ima”.

Anyway, the person who wrote this passage, Hosea, was a prophet in Israel in the 8^th Century BC, so ten thousand years ago. Which is a very long time indeed, but nevertheless! In the Armenian church, they celebrate Hosea and the other so-called “minor prophets” today, 31 July.

Hosea was one of those people who did things to illustrate what he believed God was saying, as well as saying them. He married a woman, Gomer, who was a prostitute, and she continued to go with other men even after she was married to him. This was to illustrate God’s sadness and disappointment that Israel was going after other gods and not worshipping God any more. And there are all sorts of doom-and-gloom prophecies, you know the kind of thing, saying that the people will be taken away into slavery if they do not repent and turn back to God.

­But Chapter 11, the chapter we read today, is a little different. The metaphor changes from a husband-wife relationship to a parent-child one. And God laments, loud and long, that his children will not come back to him. Verses 3 and 4 are maternal in their love for Israel, or Ephraim as it is also known: 

“Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk,
    I took them up in my arms;
    but they did not know that I healed them.
I led them with cords of human kindness,
    with bands of love.
I was to them like those
    who lift infants to their cheeks.
    I bent down to them and fed them.”

The image is of God as mother, breastfeeding her children, who then grow up and turn away, doing the things they know their mother hates. And suffering the consequences, too. And God also hates that:

“How can I give you up, Ephraim?
    How can I hand you over, O Israel?
. . .

My heart recoils within me;
    my compassion grows warm and tender.
I will not execute my fierce anger;
    I will not again destroy Ephraim;
for I am God and no mortal,
    the Holy One in your midst,
    and I will not come in wrath.”

God’s own law says that Ephraim must be destroyed, but God’s heart revolts against the implications of that law, and refuses to destroy a beloved child. The Israelites did go into exile, as promised/threatened:

“They shall return to the land of Egypt,
    and Assyria shall be their king,
    because they have refused to return to me.
The sword rages in their cities,
    it consumes their oracle-priests,
    and devours because of their schemes.
My people are bent on turning away from me.”

The King of Assyria was put on the throne, and the tribes were lost. Admah and Thingummy – Zeboiim, I think you say it – were two of the Cities of the plain that were destroyed with Sodom and Gomorrah.

But God didn’t cease to love Ephraim, even though Israel made its own plans, worshipped its own gods, and refused to turn back to God. That didn’t matter to the great Father-heart of God.

In our Gospel reading, we hear about someone else who made his own plans and they went astray. The rich farmer decided to pull down his barns and build bigger ones to store his crops so that he would be comfortable in the future. But do you notice, it’s all “I, me, mine!” “I will build bigger barns to have more room to store my crops”. There appears to be no question of his giving away his surplus this year – no, he plans to be rich!

But then – the heart attack, the stroke, the ruptured artery, and bye-bye rich farmer! And who are all those crops going to belong to now? asks Jesus, cleverly coming back to the question that started it all: “Tell my brother I want my fair share of my inheritance!”

It is not earthly goods that matter. Not in God’s eyes, anyway. Elsewhere, Jesus tells his followers not to store up treasure on earth “Where moth and rust corrupt, and thieves break in and steal”, but rather to store up treasure in heaven. And that’s pretty much what he is saying here, too.

But what does it all mean for us, and how do we relate it to the passage in Hosea?

It’s about what we value ourselves by, I think. All of us here are pretty well off, by the standards of much of the world – I expect we are all wearing clothes and shoes – and if we are barefoot, it is from choice. We probably have a change of clothes and of shoes at home, and we can wash in warm water each morning and have drains to dispose of used water and other waste. We are going home to eat enough food, to homes that keep out the elements and are warm in winter; we probably have a television and a telephone, and may well have the Internet.

Now, there is nothing wrong with any of those things, as long as we don’t start to value ourselves by how much we have. And as long as we realise that most of the world doesn’t have these things, that millions of people have been forced to leave their homes due to war or famine and to live in makeshift camps with no running water or proper facilities for disposing of sewage, with no jobs, no residents’ permits, no real hope. If they have been lucky enough to be admitted to a European country they still can’t work while their request for asylum is being processed, and even though they get a small allowance, it isn’t really enough to live on, and certainly not enough to lead a comfortable life.

The farmer in Jesus’ story was valuing himself by his possessions, by how much he owned. It is a seductive temptation, isn’t it? Even the Jews were inclined to believe that wealth was a sign of God’s blessing, and poverty a sign of the reverse. And we have all heard of “prosperity theology” which claims that God wants you to be rich – and so God does, but not necessarily in material possessions! In fact, they are of least importance, when moth and rust can corrupt and thieves break in and steal.

It is the treasures in heaven that God wants us to store up. Jesus said, “In my Father’s house are many mansions”, and we know that values in God’s country are totally different from values here. But it is in God’s country that we need to store up our treasure!

So we need to stop valuing ourselves by our jobs, or by our income, or even by how hard we work for the Church. We need to value ourselves because Jesus values us. Because Jesus died for us on the Cross, and God raised him from the dead. Because we are loved so much that God found a way to keep us with Him.

“The more I called them, the more they went from me”, said Hosea. “You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you,” says God to the rich farmer.

What are you valuing yourself by? And incidentally, it’s no good valuing yourself by how much you pray or use the other means of grace. Because it is only through the grace of God that we have any value at all in God’s eyes – but in God’s eyes, our value is enormous! Amen.

Thirsting for the Word

You might want to listen to the podcast, as between having written this and preaching it, there was an atrocity in Nice and an attempted coup d'etat in Turkey, both of which had to be talked about.  I'm told I "gabbled rather", and I expect I did, as I always do when preaching extempore!  See what you think!

 

I forget who it was who, when asked whether he preferred Martha or Mary, said:
“Before dinner, Martha; afterwards, definitely Mary!”

Me, I’ve always felt a bit sorry for Martha.
There she was, desperate to get all these men fed,

and her sister isn’t helping.
And when she asks Jesus to send her in,

she just gets told that Mary has “chosen the better part”.

Yet it was Martha who, on another occasion, caused Jesus to declare:
“I am the resurrection and the life.

Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live,

and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.”
And Martha herself gave us that wonderful statement of faith:
“Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah,

the Son of God,

the one coming into the world.”
Martha was seriously a woman of faith.
And she wanted to show her love to the Lord by providing him and his disciples with a really good meal.
Maybe she overdid it –
the Lord might have preferred Martha’s company, even if it did mean dining on bread and cheese, and perhaps a few olives.

The family at Bethany has many links in the Bible.
Some people have identified Mary as the woman who poured ointment all over Jesus’ feet in the house of Simon the Leper –
and because he lived in Bethany –

Simon the Leper, that is, not Jesus –

some people have also said that he was married to Martha.
We don’t know.

At that, some people have said that Jesus was married to Mary; again, we don’t know.
What we do know is that Martha and Mary were sisters,

and that they had a beloved brother, called Lazarus.
We do know that on one occasion Mary poured her expensive perfume all over the feet of the Lord –
whether this was the same Mary as in the other accounts or a different one isn’t quite clear.
But whatever, they seem to have been a family that Jesus knew well,

a home where he knew he was welcome,

and dear friends whose grief he shared when Lazarus died,

even though he knew that God would raise him.
Lazarus, I mean, not Jesus, this time!

In some ways the story “works” better if the woman who poured ointment on Jesus’ feet in the house of Simon the Leper and this Mary

are one and the same person,

as we know that the woman in Simon’s house was, or had been,

some kind of loose woman that a pious Jew wouldn’t normally associate with.
Now she has repented and been forgiven,

and simply adores Jesus, who made that possible for her.
And she seems to have been taken back into her sister’s household, possibly rather on sufferance.

But then she does nothing but sit at Jesus’ feet, listening to him.
Back then, this simply was Not Done.
Only men were thought to be able to learn,

women were supposed not to be capable.
Actually, I have a feeling that the Jews thought that only Jewish free men were able to learn.
They would thank God each morning that they had not been made a woman, a slave or a Gentile.
And even though St Paul had sufficient insight to be able to write that “In Christ, there is neither male nor female, slave nor free, Jew nor Gentile”,

thus at a stroke disposing of the prayer he’d been taught to make daily, it’s taken us all a very long time to work that out,

and recent events would show we haven’t really worked it out yet!­

Anyway, the point is that Mary, by sitting at Jesus’ feet like that,

was behaving in rather an outrageous fashion.
Totally blatant, like throwing herself at him.
He might have felt extremely uncomfortable,

and it’s quite possible that his disciples did.
Martha certainly did, which was one of the reasons why she asked Jesus to send Mary through to help in the kitchen.

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

Mary, with all her history, was now thirsty for the Word of God.
Jesus wanted to be able to give Mary what she needed,

the teaching that only he could provide.
He would have liked to have given it to Martha, too,

if only Martha could be persuaded that they’d be quite happy with bread and cheese.

But Martha wasn’t ready.
Not then.
Later on, yes, after Lazarus had died, but not then.

In many ways, Martha and Mary represent the two different sides of spirituality, perhaps even of Christianity.
Mary, wrapped up in sitting at the feet of her Lord, learning from him, listening to him,

was perhaps so heavenly-minded she was of no earthly use.
Martha, rather the reverse.
She was so wrapped up in doing something for Jesus

that she couldn’t see the importance of taking time out to sit at Jesus’ feet and listen.
Or if she could, it wasn’t something she wanted to do while there was work that needed to be done.
She expressed her love for Jesus by wanting to feed him,

wanting to work for him.

All of us, I think, are like either Martha or Mary in some ways.
Many of us are more or less integrated, of course,

finding time both to sit at Jesus’ feet in worship, adoration and learning, and time to serve Him in practical ways,

mostly through working either in the Church or in the Community.

Others of us are less balanced.
We spend our time doing one or the other, but not both.
Mind you, it usually balances out within the context of a church;
the people who do the praying and listening,

the people who do the practical jobs that need to be done around the place,

and the people who do both.
And perhaps in an area, too, it balances out,

with some churches doing far more in the way of work in the community than others,

but perhaps less in the way of prayer meetings,

Alpha, or similar courses

and other Bible studies.
And so it goes on.

Our Old Testament reading brings this need for balance very much to the fore-front.
The Lord, speaking through the prophet Amos,

expresses his disgust with those who have failed to be honest and upright in their dealings:

‘Listen to this, you that trample on the needy and try to destroy the poor of the country. You say to yourselves, “We can hardly wait for the holy days to be over so that we can sell our grain. When will the Sabbath end, so that we can start selling again? Then we can overcharge, use false measures, and fix the scales to cheat our customers. We can sell worthless wheat at a high price. We'll find someone poor who can't pay his debts, not even the price of a pair of sandals, and we'll buy him as a slave.”’

And then, after a paragraph of warning of physical misery, comes the terrible warning: “The time is coming when I will send famine on the land. People will be hungry, but not for bread; they will be thirsty, but not for water. They will hunger and thirst for a message from the Lord. I, the Sovereign Lord, have spoken. People will wander from the Dead Sea to the Mediterranean and then on around from the north to the east. They will look everywhere for a message from the Lord, but they will not find it.”

“They will look everywhere for a message from the Lord, but they will not find it.” The people started off with dishonest measures, with forcing the poor into slavery, and end up longing to hear from the Lord, but the heavens have been closed off to them.

Why am I reminded of current events? This whole mess in our country, everybody wondering what will happen next; will we really have to leave the EU, and what are the implications if we do? Parliament going into a tailspin and leaders resigning left, right and centre – well, mostly left and right, actually; I think the Liberal Democrat leader is still there. Or he was when I was writing this, but who knows?

I don’t want to go into detail about the causes of this whole disaster; you know them as well as I do. The road this country has chosen to take over the past 50 years hasn’t helped – the erosion of our manufacturing base, the disappearance of industries such as shipbuilding, consumer electronics, aircraft manufacture and most of the vehicle construction industry.  The fact that we were lied to, over and over again, by politicians and by the Murdoch press.... you know all that as well as I do. And I’m finding it incredibly difficult to work out what to say, anyway, as I’m so aware that my experience as a White, middle-class, elderly British woman is so very different to so much of many of your experiences. What, after all, do I know?

But whatever our experiences, however afraid of the future we might be, can we do anything about it?

None of us knows what is going to happen tomorrow; we can’t see round the bend in the road. But there is much we can do – not least, to pray for our country, and for our leaders; for Mrs May as she settles in to the job of being Prime Minister, and the Cabinet she is going to have to choose – and the awful decision she faces as to whether and when to trigger Article 50, and whether she can lawfully do this without the consent of Parliament as a whole... she needs our prayers, I reckon, even if we wouldn’t dream of voting for either her or her party!­

Those of us whose Christianity is more like Martha’s will want to get involved in many different ways; those of us who are like Mary will want to spend time in prayer and perhaps even fasting for this country we call home.

We don’t know the future; but we do know the One who holds the future in his hands. We may long and long for a word that doesn’t come, but we know that we have not been abandoned. We know that we may sit at His feet and drink of His word, and we may, must and will trust Him for tomorrow. Amen.

The Fruit of the Spirit

This is pretty much the same as this sermon (my most popular, I believe!), so am only posting the podcast here. 

Jesus and the Pharisee

This was an informal service, just a few of us, on holiday in the German Alps. I didn't record it.

This story, of the anointing of Jesus, is incredibly familiar. It’s one of the few stories which appears in all four Gospels, although in slightly different versions, which reflects the fact that those who made the gospels wrote down what was said and taught in their particular fellowships, and from their particular collections of "The sayings of Jesus", or whatever unofficial manuscripts were floating around their church.

Matthew's and Mark's stories are the most similar. They set the episode in Bethany, at the house of Simon the Leper. A woman wanders in off the street, pours the ointment over Jesus' head and, for all we know, wanders straight out again. The disciples and others gathered there go: "Oh, what a waste! If she didn't want it we could have sold it and given the money to the poor."

Jesus tells them to be quiet, because the woman was anointing his body for burial and what she did would be remembered for ever. As, indeed, it has been.

In John's gospel, the story is still set in Bethany, but John says that Jesus was staying with his friends Mary, Martha and Lazarus, and that it was Mary who upended the ointment all over his feet.

Luke’s version, the one we have just heard, might possibly be talking about a different episode, because his version takes place in a Pharisee's house, although said Pharisee is also called Simon, and the woman is known to be a hooker, and she pours the stuff all over his feet, and Jesus said that only goes to show how much she knows God has forgiven her.

Putting the stories together we know that Simon lived in the village of Bethany, where Martha, Mary and Lazarus lived –

some commentators have even suggested that Simon was Martha's husband, which is possible, but not explicitly stated anywhere.

It's also possible that the woman who comes in with the alabaster jar of ointment is actually Mary –

in John's gospel we're told that she did anoint Jesus' feet.

On the other hand, that could have been two separate instances;

we don't know and it isn't quite clear. The Bible isn’t even clear whether this woman, Mary Magdalen and Mary of Bethany are one, two or three different people!

Anyway, it doesn't really matter, although it's fun to speculate.

But the point is that Simon has asked Jesus to dinner,

but he obviously thinks he's being terribly broad-minded doing so.

It was a public dinner, probably held in the yard in front of the house,

so everybody could see what Simon was doing.

The public were rather expected to come and gawp,

rather like we do at film stars going into premières and so on today.

But, according to Jesus, Simon is really an appallingly bad host –

he didn't offer Jesus any of the usual courtesies of the day.

I wonder whether he even spoke to him during the meal, or whether he had sat him as far away as possible.

"I might ask him to dinner, but that doesn't mean I have to be friends with him!"

And then this woman wanders in, this street woman.

From the context, it's clear that she has lived a sinful life,

probably as a prostitute.

Although we don't know why she became one,

probably not by her own choice.

Sometimes, in that time and place, it was that or starve.

But she had one possession that stood between her and utter destitution –

her alabaster box of ointment.

These were incredibly precious –

you may remember that in most versions of the story,

the disciples, and especially Judas, chunter about how she could have sold it and given the money to the poor,

it would have been less of a waste.

Luke doesn't mention that;

what he does mention is that Simon gets impossibly uptight about all this,

and wants to have the woman thrown out, but Jesus intervenes.

And first of all, he tells Simon a little story:

Suppose there were two men, and one owed you a vast fortune, and the other owed just a couple of days' pay, and you let them both off, said it was a gift.

Which one do you reckon would love you most?

And Simon, quite rightly, suggests it would be the one who had owed the fortune.

And Jesus then points out to him that her actions, which incidentally have more than made up for his, Simon's deficiencies as a host, show how much she has been forgiven, and tells the woman that she has been forgiven, and that her faith has saved her.

Which, of course, leads to chuntering about who on earth was Jesus to say that sort of thing..... poor man couldn't win, at times!

But what’s it all about, and what does it say to us?

I think it’s partly about extravagance. Those alabaster jars were incredibly precious. If you were lucky enough to have one, it was your most precious thing and you guarded it with your life, practically. It could only be opened by breaking it, so it couldn't ever be used again. You didn't go pouring the contents all over the head of passing prophets, no matter how charismatic.

So when the disciples said, "What a waste!" they seriously meant it. The jar was broken, it was no use any more. The ointment was poured out, and that in itself was costly enough. The woman, Mary or whoever she was, had given her most precious thing to Jesus, and from everyone else's point of view, it looked like a terrible waste. They couldn't even make use of the gift by selling it and giving the money to charity. It was all gone. What a waste.

But – how like God. You see, Mary was frantically extravagant and wasteful. But so often, God's like that.

Think of the story of the wedding at Cana, right at the beginning of Jesus' ministry. When they ran out of wine, towards the end of the festivities, Jesus provided some more. But he provided far more wine than anyone could drink. I worked it out once that the six stone jars he had filled would hold about eight hundred bottles of wine. You could open a young off-licence with that.

Or think of the story of the feeding of the five thousand. Actually, one of the gospels, Matthew, I think, says that the five thousand was only the men, and didn't count the women and children, which would have made it more like thirty-five thousand. Anyway, when Jesus provided lunch for them, and he certainly did count the women and children, even if nobody else bothered, it wasn't as though there was only just enough to go round; there were twelve huge basketfuls left over. Enough for each disciple to take one home to Mum.

Or what about our natural world? Look at the beauty of the Alps all around us.... not just the scenery, though, but all the flowers and the grasses and so on. And think of all the houses and towns and villages between home and here, and yet God knows and loves the inhabitants of each and every one of them!

It’s about extravagance – the woman knew she had been forgiven so very much, and responded in her turn with a gesture of extravagance.

Simon, on the other hand, couldn’t see it at all. He really shouldn't have asked Jesus to dinner if he wasn't prepared to accept him for who he was.

Holding him at arms' length, failing to offer him more than the most rudimentary hospitality, you wonder why he bothered.

He might have wanted to show how broad-minded he was, inviting this itinerant preacher that none of the other Pharisees would dream of inviting.

Or maybe he was curious about what Jesus had to say –

but his curiosity didn't extend far enough to actually welcoming him, and certainly not to welcoming someone that Jesus wanted to see but he didn't.

For Simon, allowing a street woman into his grounds was quite beyond the pale, totally not done!

It looks as though Simon missed the whole point of Jesus altogether.

At that stage, Jesus was teaching about the Kingdom of God, and the kind of person that was part of the kingdom –

we know from the various collections of Jesus' teachings and stories that have come down to us what sort of a person that is.

And basically, Simon wasn't it!

He was judgemental, he put people down in the worst kind of way, he wasn't open to new ideas....

as for loving his enemies, well, I highly doubt he would have thought that proper behaviour for a good, upright Pharisee like himself!

Simon, I don't think, did accept that he was wrong.

We don't hear what he replied to Jesus, but maybe he just said, "Yes, yes", but didn't let what Jesus said get to him.

I hope that's not the case, but too often it happens.

We don't really let God's word into us and change us the way the woman did.

She knew she was all wrong.

We don't know why she went wrong –

perhaps it was her only option if she was to feed her babies.

Perhaps someone like Simon, perhaps even Simon himself, had abused her and then cast her out into the street like so much litter.

But she repented, and demonstrated her repentance by giving Jesus her most precious possession, anointing him with very precious ointment, weeping over him.

Maybe she could have stopped her descent into prostitution by selling the ointment and its jar.

We don't know.

We do know, though, that she thought Jesus was worth all of it.

It's quite scary, isn't it? There are so many issues about world poverty and so on that the very word "extravagance" seems to sit oddly on Christian lips. Yet we only have to look at so many of the stories of God and God's people to see that it isn't a word that is out of place when it comes to God.

We can be desperately hard on ourselves, far harder than God ever is. Even this holiday week – it’s can be quite difficult to escape the notion that it’s wrong to enjoy ourselves, or to realise that God wants us to enjoy ourselves, and to enjoy the holiday in and through us! Our God is an extravagant God, and we need to rejoice in that! Amen.

Trinity Sunday 2016

For the children's talk, I had a Thermos with ice in it, a flask of water, and an electric kettle that I brought to the boil during the hymn before.  So steam, ice, and water.  I asked the children why they were different, and what qualities they had.  But then I pointed out that, no matter whether it was solid, liquid or gas, it was all chemically identical: H2O.  And that it is just a tiny picture of how God as Three and God as One could work, but only a picture.

---oo0oo---

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!

St Paul said it better, in our first reading. ‘We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,’ and a little later in the same paragraph, ‘God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.’ St Paul may not have known the expression “The Holy Trinity, but he certainly was aware of the concept!

The illustration I gave earlier of steam, liquid water, and ice all being H₂O but all different from each other and with different purposes, is just that. An illustration. It happens to be my favourite one, but I could have brought in three tins of soup – lentil, mushroom and tomato, say – all tasting very different but all soup. Or perhaps I could have mentioned Wesley's favourite illustration: he lit three candles, but there was only one light. 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 I chose not to use, 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 the whole Godness of God. 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.

So I’m going to be quiet now, and let’s spend a few moments in silent worship before we sing our next hymn.

Our Doctrines

It was Hannukah. This is the festival of dedication that our Jewish friends celebrate every year shortly before Christmas, which involves lighting candles every night for eight nights – one more candle each night. Various blessings are said, and hymns are sung, and, of course, there is the usual feasting and celebration, although you still go to work or school, as appropriate. In Israel it's a school holiday, but elsewhere it isn't, and you aren't excused school as you are for some of the Jewish holidays. The festival commemorates the victory of the Maccabees over pagan kings who wanted to ban Judaism and defile the Temple.

The festival was about 200 years old in Jesus' day, and he, as we see, is in Jerusalem for it, and he's walking up and down what's called Solomon's Porch, or Solomon's Colonnade, which was on the eastern side of the outer court of the Temple. And various people – ones, I suspect, who had no reason to wish him well – came up to him and said “We do wish you'd tell us clearly, are you the Messiah, or not?”

To which he replied: “But I have told you! You just didn't believe me!” And he goes on to explain that those who are never going to be his disciples, no matter what, will not listen to him. But “My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never die. No one can snatch them away from me.”

“My sheep listen to my voice”. And, conversely, “You will not believe, for you are not my sheep.”

So, Jesus is basically saying that he can tell them he's the Messiah until he's blue in the face, but they are never going to listen. They are not his sheep.

Now, I think we need to look at this a bit this morning, because it can be quite scary to think that there are people who are not Jesus' sheep. I wonder what he meant.

Well, first of all, our doctrines tell us that everybody can be saved. We don't believe, as some churches teach, that there is only a limited atonement and it's not for everybody. We believe that everybody can be saved. Everybody. Even a terrorist. Even a paedophile. Even a politician. Everybody can be saved. Jesus doesn't exclude anybody from His flock.

But yet, we also believe that everybody needs to be saved. Everybody needs to be saved. I strongly suspect that the default position, for very small children and so on, is that they are part of Jesus' flock – but people can exclude themselves. There are prominent atheists like Stephen Fry or Jimmy Carr who would be horrified to find themselves part of the flock! And others who exclude themselves by their actions – they couldn't care less whether they are part of the flock or not, but go their own sweet way regardless. And then there are those who don't follow Jesus, but do follow God to the best of their ability and knowledge, people like Jews and Muslims and Hindus and Buddhists. I don't know how God deals with such people, but I'm quite sure whatever happens to them after this life is fair and right. Jesus condemned the Jewish church leaders of his day, certainly, but that was basically because they didn't want to know, when he was right there in front of them.

But in many ways that is not our problem. Sure, we share our faith with Jews and Muslims and so on when it's appropriate to do so – and I very much hope that we listen when they tell us about theirs! But whatever God has provided for their salvation – and I'm perfectly convinced He has, because whatever else God is He's not unfair, and it would be terribly unfair to exclude people because they had been taught to worship God differently and to say different creeds; whatever God has provided for their salvation, the point is we do know what­ He has provided for ours!

We know that everybody can know that they are saved. Everybody can know that they are saved, that they are part of Jesus' flock. We know that we can hear His voice, through Scripture, through our friends, through our teachers.... I think all of us here have made a commitment, one way and another, to being Jesus' person; whether we said a specific prayer of commitment on a specific day, or whether it came so gradually that we couldn't possibly say when it was, only that you couldn't be doing without Jesus now. We have all, I expect, made such a commitment – and if by any chance you haven't, you might think whether it is time that you did so – and we can know that we are saved.

I don't really know exactly what “our doctrines” mean by “saved” in this context. It's far more than just “pie in the sky when you die”, of course; it's about being Jesus' person all the time, the “abundant life” Jesus talks about is for here and now, not just in some remote afterlife. It's about being filled with the Holy Spirit; it's about receiving the gifts of the Spirit to enable us to become more and more the person God created us to be. But it's one of those things where we all probably have part of the truth, and none of us has the whole truth, because it's about God. I know what I mean when I say “saved”, and I expect you know what you mean when you say it, but we may not mean quite the same things. And we may not mean now what we meant when we said it twenty years ago, or even yesterday – we all grow and change and this sort of thing is apt to change a bit as we go on our Christian journey.

So: Everybody needs to be saved; everybody can be saved; everybody can know they are saved, and the fourth line of “our doctrines” is “Everybody can be saved to the uttermost”.

“My sheep listen to my voice”, says Jesus. And it isn't just listening like we might listen to the radio or a CD, just background noise. It is active listening, that focusses on what is being said and reacts to it. It is the sort of listening that enables God to make us into the person we were created to be, the sort of listening that enables God to give us the gifts we need.

Most of us, of course, aren't good at listening to God all the time. Like sheep, we wander away and have to be brought back. Have you ever seen a field of sheep with their lambs? Actually, more to the point, have you ever listened? There is constant bleating going on, as that's how the sheep stay in touch with their lambs. Each sheep knows her lamb's particular bleat, and each lamb knows it's mother's. So they listen out for their own lamb, and ignore other people's. It would be a serious mess if they didn't know how to identify their own lamb in all that flock. And­ most sheep learn to recognise their shepherd, or at least the car or quad-bike. Their reaction to a familiar vehicle or person is quite different to an unfamiliar one. “My sheep listen to my voice!”

And, like sheep, we are apt to wander away, but the joy is that the Good Shepherd is always there to bring us back, always on the alert for someone straying, and grabbing them before they go too far. Those of us who are committed to being Jesus' person, and committed to being part of the flock, know that. It is a great comfort, as we know we're going to mess up sooner or later, but Jesus will be there to help us get things right again.

But John Wesley was convinced that there were some people who had grasped the knack of living so closely with God that they didn't mess up. They were, in all the ways that matter, perfect. He says obviously nobody is perfect in understanding God – you can't be. And making mistakes doesn't necessarily make you less than perfect, nor does any kind of infirmity – physical or mental. Although he does qualify that, when he says: 'Only let us not give that soft title to known sins, as the manner of some is. So, one man tells us, "Every man has his infirmity, and mine is drunkenness;” Another has the infirmity of uncleanness; another of taking God's holy name in vain; and yet another has the infirmity of calling his brother, "Thou fool," or returning "railing for railing." It is plain that all you who thus speak, if ye repent not, shall, with your infirmities, go quick into hell!' And, of course, one can be tempted. Wesley says, 'Christian perfection, therefore, does not imply (as some . . . seem to have imagined) an exemption either from ignorance or mistake, or infirmities or temptations. Indeed, it is only another term for holiness.'

Holiness. Wesley goes on to define holiness as he sees it, being freedom from sin. He spends a great deal of time saying, “Oh but people say the Bible says”.... yadda yadda yadda and refuting it, rather like people do about homosexuality in our day. But he also tries to explain that we are forgiven in this life, forgiven and cleansed, and that we can live in the reality of that. He reminds us of Paul's letter to the Galatians: “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” And he reminds us, too, that we produce fruit by the power of the Holy Spirit. He doesn't quote the list of fruit of the Spirit given in Galatians, but you can tell he's thinking of it.

We can be saved to the uttermost. We can so spend our time listening to the Good Shepherd, aware of His presence, that we become fully whole, fully holy, more fully his person than we could possibly imagine. And yes, one can – well, I can't always, but people do – be aware of God and of His presence with us even while busy with the rest of life, with school and work and watching television and being with friends....

I'm not quite sure how I ended up talking about our doctrines this morning, but it's always good to remind ourselves of them.

Everybody needs to be saved.

Everybody can be saved.

Everybody can know they are saved.

Everybody can be saved to the uttermost.

It seems to me the secret is to be open to listening to Jesus, to be part of His flock, not to close off His voice because we are so convinced that we are right and everybody else is wrong. The Jews, that Hannukah festival so long ago, simply couldn't hear Jesus – they were so convinced that this young man couldn't possibly be the Messiah that they were unable to listen to what he was actually saying, not what they thought he was saying!

And, sadly, we all know people like that. People who are so convinced they are right that they can't possibly listen to anybody else's point of view. They may claim to follow Jesus, or they may despise what they tend to call “organised religion” (though quite what they mean by that is totally unclear!), but either way, it's utterly impossible to get through to them about whatever particular bee they have in their bonnet.

The awful thing is, if you are like that – although I don't think anybody here is – you won't have heard a word I've said this morning! Some people do come to church just to have their prejudices confirmed, but I'm sure nobody here does. Or perhaps we all do, who knows? But I do pray that I, and you, will be open to hearing the Shepherd's voice, open to being part of the flock, even when that challenges our ideas, even when it touches places within us we don't want to explore. Because by listening, by hearing, by being willing to be changed, only then can we really be “saved to the uttermost”. Amen.

Peter and Paul

This sermon is very similar to the one I preached three years ago on the 3rd Sunday of Easter, but not identical, as this turned out to be a Parade Sunday. 

Our readings today are about two very different men, both of whom were leaders of the very early church, and both of whom had made appallingly bad starts!

To take them in chronological order, first of all there was Peter.

Simon, as his original name was –

Peter was basically a nickname Jesus gave him.

It means stone or rock;

if Jesus had been speaking English, he might have nicknamed him “Rock” or “Rocky”.

“You're Rock, and on this rock I will build my church.”

But the Greek word was “Petros”, so we know him as Peter.

Anyway, as you know, Peter was an impulsive type,

probably with a hot temper.

We probably know more about him than we know about any of the Twelve, as it is often his comments and answers that are quoted.

And, sadly, the fact that when push came to shove his courage failed him

and he pretended he didn't know Jesus.

And our Gospel reading today is all about his reinstatement.

The disciples have gone back to Galilee after the Resurrection,

and have gone fishing.

I suppose they must have thought that it was all over,

not realising how much their lives were going to change.

And although the other gospel-writers tell us that Peter had seen the risen Lord, he still seems to have had trouble forgiving himself for the denials.

So when he realises that it is Jesus on the lake shore, he grabs his tunic –

he will have been working naked in the boat –

and swims to shore.

And they all have breakfast together, and then Jesus turns to Peter.

You can imagine, can't you, that Peter's heart started beating rather faster than usual.

Now, part of the whole point of this story doesn't actually work in English, because we only have one word for love. We say we love our mums and dads, or we love cheese, or we love watching boxsets.

But the Greeks had several different words for love. I'm not sure what they said about cheese, or about whatever the local equivalent of watching boxsets was, but they said eros to describe the love between a man and a woman;

they said storge, to describe affection, family love, the sort of love you have for your mum and dad or brothers and sisters.

Then, and these are the two words that are relevant to us here, they had the word philia, which is friendship, comradeship, and the word agape, a word only found in the New Testament, which means God's love.

And when Jesus says to Peter “Do you love me?” he uses the word agape.

Do you love me with God's love.

And Peter can't quite manage to say that, and so in his reply he uses philia.

“Yes, Lord, you know I'm your friend”.

And Jesus commissions him to “Feed my lambs.”

This happens again.

“Do you love me with God's love?”

“Lord, you know I'm your friend!”

“So take care of my sheep.”

And then the third time.

Well, that's logical, there were three denials, so perhaps three reinstatements.

But this time it is different:

“Simon, son of John, are you my friend?”

Peter doesn't quite know what to answer.

“Lord, you know everything;

you know whether I'm your friend or not!”

And Jesus tells him, again, to feed His sheep.

And comments that he will die a martyr's death, but instructs him to “Follow Me!”

And, we are told, Peter did follow Jesus.

We know he was in the upper room on the day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit came,

and it was he who preached so powerfully that day that three thousand people were converted.

We know he was imprisoned, and miraculously released from prison;

there is that wonderful scene where he goes and knocks on the door of the safe house,

interrupting the prayer-meeting that has been called for the sole purpose of praying for him,

and the girl who answers the door is so shocked she leaves him standing there while she goes and tells the others, and they don't believe her!

One of the funniest scenes in the Bible, I think.

Anyway, we know that Peter ended up in Rome, and, sadly, tradition tells us that he was crucified upside-down, which those who wrote down John's gospel would have known, which is arguably why it was mentioned.

But the point is, he was completely and utterly forgiven and reinstated, and God used him beyond his wildest dreams.

And so to St Paul.

Now Paul, at that stage known as Saul, also needed a special touch from God.

He couldn't have been more different from Peter, though.

He was born a Roman citizen in the city of Tarsus.

He was well-educated, and had probably gone to university,

contrasting with Peter, who, it is thought, only had the basic education that all Jewish boys of his time and class would have had.

He was a Pharisee, the most learned and holy of the Jewish religious leaders of the day.

And, like so many Pharisees, he felt totally threatened by this new religious movement that was springing up, almost unstoppably.

It was, he thought, complete nonsense, and not only that, it was blasphemy!

He set himself to hunt down and kill as many believers as he could.

But God had other ideas, and grabbed Saul on his way to Damascus.

And I expect you know what happened then –

he was blind for three days, and then a very brave man called Ananias came and laid hands on him,

whereupon he could see again, and then,

after some time out for prayer and study,

he became the apostle to the Gentiles, so-called, and arguably the greatest influence on Christianity ever.

He had a knack for putting the great truths about God and about Jesus into words, and even today, Christians study his letters very seriously.

He started off by persecuting believers, but in the end, God used him beyond his wildest dreams!

So you see the common link between these two men:

one an uneducated provincial fisherman,

the other a suave and sophisticated Pharisee, and a Roman citizen, to boot.

Peter knew how dreadfully he had sinned;

Paul thought he was in the right.

But they both needed a touch from God, they both needed explicit forgiveness,

they both needed to know that they were loved, no matter what they had done.

And they both responded.

If this had just been a story of how God spoke to two different men in two different ways, that would be one thing.

It would be a fabulous story in its own right.

It would show us that we, too, no matter how dreadful we are,

no matter how prone to screw things up,

we too could be loved and forgiven and reinstated.

And this is, of course, true. We are human.

We screw up –

that, after all, is what sin is, when you come down to it –

the human propensity to screw things up.

Which we all do in our own particular ways.

It doesn't actually matter how we mess up –

we all mess up in different ways,

and sometimes we all mess up in the same way.

It is part of being human.

God's forgiveness is constant and unremitting –

all we have to do is to receive it.

There is no more forgiveness for a terrorist

than there is for you or for me.

And there is no less forgiveness, either.

It is offered to us all, everybody,

even the worst sort of person you can possibly imagine.

Even a suicide bomber.

No nonsense about God hating this group of people, or that group of people.

He doesn't.

He loves them, and offers forgiveness to them as and where they need it,

just as he does to you,

and just as he does to me.

But, as I implied, that isn't quite the end of the story.

It would have been a fabulous story, even if we had never heard of Peter or of Paul again.

There are one or two fabulous stories in Acts that we don't know how they came out –

I'm thinking here of Cornelius and the Ethiopian Eunuch;

both men became Christians,

one through Peter's ministry and one through Philip's,

but we are not told what became of them.

We don't know what became of the slave Onesimus who had to return home to Philemon,

bearing with him a letter from Paul asking Philemon to receive him as a brother in Christ.

But we do know what happened to Peter and to Paul.

They both responded to God's forgiveness.

They received it.

They offered themselves to Christ's service and, through their ministry, millions of people down the centuries have come to know and love the Lord Jesus.

Of course, they were exceptional.

We know their stories, just as we know the stories of John Wesley,

or of people like Lord Baden-Powell, Dwight L Moody, Gladys Aylward,

Eric Liddell or Billy Graham.

If you don't know who those people are, look them up on Wikipedia after the service.

But there are countless thousands of men and women whose stories we don't know,

who received God's forgiveness,

offered themselves to His service,

and through whose ministry many millions of men and women came to know and love the Lord.

Some of them went to live and work somewhere else,

but many of them lived out a life of quiet service exactly where they were.

Some of them, sadly, were imprisoned or even put to death for their faith,

but many died in their own beds.

And you see where this is going, don't you?

Now, I know as well as you do that this is where we all start to wriggle and to feel all hot and bothered,

and reckon we can't possibly be doing enough in Christ's service,

or that we are a rotten witness to his love and forgiveness.

Perhaps some of you here this morning aren't quite ready to call yourselves Jesus' people just yet. That's okay – Jesus still loves you and forgives you, and when you are ready to be His person, you just say, and He will accept you.

Others of you will already have made that commitment – some of us did so many years ago, and for others it's more recent.

And we are told that when the Holy Spirit comes,

we will be witnesses to Christ –

not that we ought to be, or we must be, but that we will be!

And I know that many of you are doing all you can to serve the Lord exactly where you are, and I'm sure you're doing a wonderful job of it, too.

But maybe it never occurred to you to offer.

Maybe you accepted Jesus' forgiveness, and promised to be his person, and rather left it at that.

That's fine, of course.

For many of you, school and your studies have to come first, and that's absolutely as it should be.

God wouldn't ask you to do anything that would badly interfere with that. But what if you're missing out?

You see, the giving and offering isn't all on our side –

how could it be?

And when we offer ourselves to Christ's service, you wouldn't believe –

or perhaps you already know –

the wonderful gifts He gives to help you do whatever is is you're asked to do.

I know that sometimes people have even wondered if God could possibly be calling them to do whatever it is,

as they want to do it so badly that it might be just their own wants!

But, you see, God wouldn't call you to do something you would hate, would he?

And so what if it did end badly?

Look at a young lawyer, in a country far from here, who was thrown into prison for his faith, which led him to stand up for what he believed was right against the government of the day.

He left his country when he was released from prison –

and to this day he will tell you that it was knowing his Bible as well as he did that helped him stay sane while he was in it.

And you will have seen him on television, and maybe even you older ones have met him, as he used to be a local vicar, and now he's the Archbishop of York.

I'm rather waffling now, so I'll shut up.

But I do just want to leave this with you:

Perhaps, today, you just needed to be reminded that God loves and forgives you, whoever you are and whatever you have done.

Perhaps, today, you needed to be reminded that when you are ready, you need to commit yourself to being Jesus' person and then you'll really know that love and forgiveness for yourself.

But it maybe you need to think:

have you ever offered yourself to God's service as Peter did, as Paul did, as so many down the years have?

And is God, perhaps, calling you to something new?

Amen.