Wot’s going on ’ere?

Okay, we have all heard this Gospel story many, many, many times. Probably several times every year, depending on how many carol services we’ve been to, or listened to on the radio, or watched on television! It’s part of the great cycle of nine lessons and carols without which no Christmas is complete.

So we let it wash over us. “The birth of Jesus was in this wise….” yadda, yadda, yadda. We knew it all before.

But, you know, it really is a most extraordinary story. We know that Matthew tells his version of the nativity from Joseph’s point of view, while Luke tells his from Mary’s, and that there are several very significant differences between the two versions. In fact, Luke’s version of events is so different you sometimes wonder whether they are talking about the same thing.

In Matthew,

we find the Holy Family living in Bethlehem,

fleeing to Egypt,

and then settling in Nazareth,

well out of reach of Herod’s descendants.

But Luke tells us that the family lived in Nazareth in the first place,

went to Bethlehem for the census,

and, far from avoiding Jerusalem,

called in there on their way back to Nazareth!

And, indeed, went there each year for the festivals –

I wonder, don’t you, whether they stayed with Mary’s cousin Elisabeth

and whether Jesus and John played together as children?

And while Luke has the shepherds visiting the manger, Matthew has eastern astrologers calling in at the house to worship the child.

Not that it matters.

We all rationalise the two stories into one,

and add our own extraneous bits –

the ox and the ass, for instance,

are figments of people’s imaginations, not part of the Luke’s account.

Even the stable – the manger may well have been separating the dwelling-house from the animal-house, rather than in a separate stable as we envisage it.

But from Matthew’s telling of it, the Holy Family lived in Bethlehem anyway and didn’t need to use a stable!

But that doesn’t matter now.

What does matter, is that Joseph was a righteous man. A righteous man, in the Bible, is one who always tries his hardest to do what he believed God wanted. Job is another “righteous man”, and I’m sure there were others in the Bible, but I can’t think of them off-hand right now. Anyway, Joseph always wanted to do what was right in God’s eyes. And now, suddenly, his world is torn apart. Mary, to whom he was betrothed – and a betrothal back then is far more binding than an engagement today – Mary is expecting a child, and it isn’t his.

I do wonder, don’t you, why Mary didn’t go and discuss the angel’s visit to her with Joseph before saying “Yes”. Although, come to think of it, Luke doesn’t mention Joseph at that stage, but has Mary saying that she can’t possibly get pregnant because she doesn’t have a lover. Joseph only appears in the next chapter as her husband.

Anyway, she didn’t. She accepted God’s request that she bear “a son, who will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end.”

And there she is, and what is Joseph to do? A righteous man, in those days, would probably go to the rabbis and seek guidance from Scripture, and ask what they thought. Back then, they didn’t have the written guidance that Jews have today, known as the Talmud, because it hadn’t been written down, but the rabbis knew, and remembered, what earlier generations had said about the Law. And in this case it was very clear: if your wife, whether married or betrothed, betrayed you, she was to be stoned to death. The man wasn’t, of course – that sort of law didn’t apply to him! He might have to pay a fine to the husband, and he might be required to marry the girl (assuming she hadn’t been stoned first), but he certainly didn’t face death. That, I’m afraid was and remains the reality for all too many women.

Anyway, Joseph is kind-hearted. He knows he can’t marry Mary, but he really can’t bring himself to agree that she be stoned to death. So he decides – and I expect he sought the rabbis’ approval – to quietly end the betrothal and send her back to her parents. She would just have to cope as best she could. If they threw her out – as well they might – she would have to go on the streets or starve.

But then God intervenes, and tells Joseph to marry Mary anyway, because it was he, God himself, who was the father of the coming child. Did that really make it better? It was God who had betrayed him with his future wife? Seriously? And that was supposed to make it all right? Hmph. Joseph wasn’t impressed. I should think he was very angry with God, and probably said so in no uncertain terms. Fortunately, it’s okay to be angry with God – I’m sure we have all been, at one time or another. And that’s fine. God understands. God knows that we need to express our anger in order to get rid of it, and not let it fester and turn to depression.

Poor Joseph. He is a righteous man, but he has to choose between obeying God’s call and going on being seen as righteous. We may or may not have trouble believing that Mary’s baby was conceived by the Holy Spirit – after all, we say we believe it whenever we say the Creed – but I’m quite sure that nobody in first-century Bethlehem would have believed it. And if Joseph had tried to tell people, it might have been his turn to have been stoned, this time for blasphemy!

God does confound our expectations in this story. You might expect the Messiah to be born to a righteous man – but would you expect him to have to choose between doing God’s will and being righteous? God is continually turning our world upside down like that – or should be!

When I was young, there was a book by a man called J B Phillips, entitled “Your God is too small”. I don’t know whether it’s still in print, but it was excellent, I seem to remember. Phillips showed how most of us tried to keep God small enough that our minds could encompass what it was all about. But, of course, you can’t do that. I mean, you can do that, of course, and we all tend to, but if we do, what we are worshipping isn’t God. Similarly, we tend to put God in boxes, telling each other that God always does thus and so – but that’s not true, either, as this story shows.

God required a righteous man to marry a woman who was pregnant, not by another man, which would have been bad enough, but by God himself! We think that God has laid down rules for sexual morality – but is God bound by those rules? Doesn’t look like it, does it? What if God’s rules are actually less rigid than we think? Of course, Jesus told us that we mustn’t use people just for their bodies, but then, that isn’t applying here. Mary has said “Yes” to God, and trusts God enough to believe he’ll do the right thing by her and she won’t end up on the streets. And Joseph trusted God enough to believe he would enable him to live down the scandal of marrying a woman carrying, so it was thought, another man’s child.

I don’t know if you’ve ever read the genealogies that comprise the first half of this first chapter of Matthew? If you have, you’ll notice that while mostly it was so-and-so was the father of someone else, on a very few occasions the name of the mother is given. And every time, every single time, there is some scandal attached to that woman. Tamar was a daughter-in-law of Judah, who was a childless widow and who should then have married Judah’s youngest son, but Judah refused to arrange this. So Tamar, who was furious, pretended to be a prostitute and made a bargain with Judah for a goat, and his seal and stick as a deposit on the goat. Then she stopped pretending, and nobody could find her to give her the goat. But when Judah heard that Tamar was pregnant, he ordered her to be burnt – but changed his mind sharpish when she sent him back his seal and stick and said that he was the father!

Rahab, the mother of Boaz, really was a prostitute. And Ruth, of course, is a Gentile, an outsider, a Muggle, if you like, who seduces Boaz to get him to marry her. And then there was Bathsheba, who committed adultery with David while she was still married to Uriah, and later marries David and is the mother of Solomon. Nevertheless, she was probably not as virtuous a woman as all that…. David could have had any woman he wanted, so I expect he probably accepted “No” for an answer. But we’ll never know.

The point is, none of these women were the virtuous women whose price, the book of Proverbs tells us, is above rubies. And yet they played a vital part in the genealogy of Jesus. God has confounded our expectations yet again! The virtuous, righteous women are just in the nameless ruck – it is the outsiders who are named and cherished.

Outsiders. I know that the church has an incredibly bad reputation when it comes to welcoming outsiders – you only have to consider what happened when those who had come over on the Empire Windrush appeared in church their first Sunday in London. But that was not of God. God is the one who welcomes the outsider, the outcast. Jesus spoke to the woman at the well when nobody else would – and his disciples were shocked and horrified.

I wonder how good we are today at welcoming outsiders. What if a gay or lesbian couple turned up at church on Christmas Day? What if a Muslim family, seeking somewhere to worship, turned up? What if…. I know I’m not good at coping if someone drunk wanders in, seeking money – and yet God might have sent that person just to confound our expectations.

God confounded our expectations by having the Messiah born of an unmarried woman – well, carried by an unmarried woman, I should say, as she and Joseph appear to have been married before Jesus was actually born. He then proceeded to confound them still further by having outsiders be the first to be told the news, and to come and worship him. The shepherds, in their own way, were as much outsiders as the magi.

And God continues to confound our expectations today. Are you ready for that to happen? When we sing “O holy child of Bethlehem, be born in us today?” are you ready for that to happen. Or when we sing “Fit us for heaven, to live with thee there”, are you ready for God to fit you, indeed for heaven. Because it won’t be in the way you expect! Amen.

Facing the Future

This time of year, it starts feeling that it’s all downhill until Christmas. We’ve had half-term, we’ve had Halloween, we’ve had Bonfire Night, we’ve had Remembrance Day. Next stop, Christmas!

Of course, for us Christians that isn’t strictly true, as we have Advent first, and the church is already in the countdown to Advent, which is why our readings today are about the future.

Isaiah is optimistic. He is looking far, far ahead to a time when people will routinely live to be well over a hundred, when there will be no more famine, no more war, no more weeping and wailing. People will not have to slave for others, but will work for themselves and live happy and contented lives, with no illness or misfortune.

Well, I don’t know what Isaiah was on when he wrote that, but his vision is still very far from being fulfilled, in these days when so many people are reliant on food banks, trafficking and slavery are a thing, racism is prevalent, the future is so wildly uncertain. It would be lovely if we were anywhere remotely close to what Isaiah saw, but, sadly we aren’t.

We’re much closer to what Jesus said about the future. He was with his friends in the Temple, which was still a fairly new building then, and they were marvelling at the beauty of it, rather as we might go into a cathedral and marvel at its beauty, too. And, let’s face it, our cathedrals and churches are, in many cases, very beautiful.

But Jesus said that the Temple would be pulled down, and not one stone left standing – and, indeed, by the time Luke was writing all this down, this had actually happened. Jerusalem had been overthrown and destroyed in AD 70 by the Romans, who were clamping down on the rebels who had tried to establish a provisional government there. I am reminded of Hungary in 1956 or Czechoslovakia, as it then was, in 1968, when the Soviet Union allowed rebellion for a short time but then clamped down. The Romans came with their equivalent of tanks, and overthrew the city, and destroyed it.

The Temple has never been rebuilt. For us Christians, it didn’t need to be, because Jesus had been the one, sufficient sacrifice, so Temple sacrifices were now obsolete. But for the Jews, of course, it was and has been a cause of immense sadness, especially as the site is now a famous Mosque.

But Jesus makes it clear that anything built by humans is only temporary in the grand scheme of things. And that life is going to be anything but peaceful, most of the time. There will be wars and earthquakes and famines and plagues – are we reading the Bible, or the newspaper? Even then, says Jesus, it’s not going to be the end.

It is futile to speculate, to try to decipher a timeline of events. Every generation, I think, has looked at these words of Jesus and reckoned it applied to them. And it probably has! It applies to us, of course – but it also applied to our parents and grandparents who lived through the cataclysms of the last century. It applied to those who lived through the Great Plague of the 17^th century and the Great Fire of London in 1666. It applied to those who lived through the various religious persecution of Tudor times – perhaps especially to them. Jesus said “They will seize you and persecute you. They will hand you over to synagogues and put you in prison, and you will be brought before kings and governors, and all on account of my name. And so you will bear testimony to me.” I am sure that both the Protestant martyrs in Queen Mary’s day and the Catholic ones murdered by the other Tudor monarchs – well, not actually by them, but you know what I mean – I’m sure they reckoned that these words were addressed to them.

And there was the Black Death, the Hundred Years’ War, and, of course, the various major earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, hurricanes and other natural disasters that have happened over the years.

We’ve just been to Pompeii, last month, and visited the town that was destroyed by an eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD. It was fascinating to see how they lived – you had the big houses, but most of them had let out their front rooms to shops. You could tell which were the shops, because they had had sliding doors, and you could see where they had been. And some of the shops had sold hot food – the local equivalent of McDonald’s or Burger King. There was a bakery, and we have seen a loaf of bread – burnt to carbon, of course – in an exhibition in Oxford about the food in Pompeii and contemporary Roman Britain. The exhibition is fascinating – do go, if you’re ever near Oxford, it’s on until 20 January. Anyway, the point is, they had things just like us, even muffin tins! They were people just like us, living lives similar to ours, enjoying the same kind of things we do – and their world came very abruptly to a very decisive end.

I think this is partly what Jesus was talking about. The end can come incredibly quickly and unexpectedly. Of course, many people get “notice to quit”, and know full well that they are going to die very soon. Others, however – well, it’s the road accident, the stroke, the heart attack, and “this night your soul will be required of you”, as Jesus said in the story he told about the rich farmer, who concentrated so much on gaining great harvests and making loads of money that he forgot about the things that really do last.

That, after all, is what is important. Jesus said that we will face persecution – well, we in the West don’t, just now, but that’s not true of all the world. Although some churches in the USA say they’re being persecuted, when they really aren’t…. they aren’t likely to get put in prison, or worse, for meeting to worship, or for telling other people about their faith and about Jesus. That, sadly, is not true in some parts of the world today. And who knows what it will be like here, in the future? We don’t know. We don’t know the future, we don’t even know our personal futures. Yes, we expect we’ll be leaving here and enjoying a good Sunday lunch, or perhaps we’re planning on going out to brunch, as lots of people do on a Sunday. We expect that tomorrow morning we’ll be heading off to work or college or school, or whatever we usually do on a Monday morning.

But things can change so quickly. A month’s worth of rain has recently fallen in the Midlands, causing rivers to burst their banks and homes to be flooded. In Australia, people’s homes, and, indeed, their lives are being menaced by bush fires – I have a friend who has spent the past few days on high alert, expecting that she and her family may have to evacuate their home any minute. Thus far, fortunately, that hasn’t happened, but….

The people in Pompeii and the neighbouring town of Herculaneum were enjoying their lives right up until the last few minutes, when the volcanic ash started to fall on them.

It is possible – not very probable, but possible – that we are in “the end times” and Jesus will return in glory, as we say we believe he will, to judge the living and the dead. But it’s far more probable that some natural or human-made disaster will intervene first. But whichever it is, we are expected to carry on with our lives as if they were going to go on forever. I didn’t choose to have the reading from the Epistle today, but it’s the one where Paul reminds the people of Thessalonia that they do have to work, even if they are expecting Jesus to come back at any minute. They still need to eat, and nobody is going to feed them! They must go and earn their livings, and expect Jesus to find them getting on with things.

Jesus is pessimistic about the future, and with hindsight we can see that he was right to be. Life is pretty good most of the time, except when it isn’t. And we don’t know when it will suddenly switch from being great to being ghastly. All we can do is trust Jesus, and trust that we will be shown what to say and what to do in the face of catastrophe.

And we mustn’t lose sight of Isaiah’s vision, either. One of thing things I specially noticed was that God is going to be there and speaking with us - “Before they call, I will answer, and while they are yet speaking, I will hear.” That contrasts with the dire warnings in the Old Testament about how the heavens will be shut up, and people will long and long to hear from God but it simply won’t happen.

I don’t know whether Isaiah’s vision can come true this side of heaven. It probably can’t. Jesus’ vision of the future seems really rather more probable. But does it have to be inevitable? I don’t know whether we can do very much to change things, to bring about the peaceable Kingdom that Isaiah foresaw, rather than the disastrous world that Jesus did. But shouldn’t we be trying? Shouldn’t we be doing what we can in the cause of peace and justice? In the cause of trying not to destroy our planet? In the cause of balancing humanity’s needs with those of the natural world? Maybe, just maybe, if enough of us did, it would tip the balance. Amen.

... And with all the company of Heaven

Today, 29 September, is the feast of St Michael and All Angels. Michaelmas, they used to call it, a term which still survives in Michaelmas daisies, which are in bloom at this time of year. It is a Quarter Day, when, back in the day, rents had to be paid, and rural employment contracts ran from one Michaelmas to the next, so you would have Michaelmas fairs in various towns which were hiring fairs – people whose jobs hadn’t been renewed, for whatever reason, would stand in lines with some token showing what their trade was – a dairyman, for instance, would probably have a piece of straw – so farmers in need of labourers could come and hire them.

You haven’t to pick blackberries after today, either – the old superstition is that the devil comes and pees on them or spits on them or something, and they are no longer worth eating. Basically, it is the end of summer and the start of autumn.

But who were St Michael and all the angels? Do angels even matter? If so, why do they matter to us? And what, if anything, does this festival mean to us today?

What are angels, anyway? They appear to be a different kind of creation, not human at all. I know we talk casually about someone “growing their wings” when they die, particularly of children, but in fact that’s probably not what happens. Our children will, I’m sure, be with God in heaven in some way, but probably not as angels!

There seem to be several different kinds of angels – Michael is described as an archangel, but he is the only one. Although tradition says Raphael, Gabriel and Uriel are also archangels, the Bible doesn’t describe them as such. But there are also seraphim – they are the ones with six wings that Isaiah saw, you may remember: two wings to cover their heads, two to cover their feet, or more probably their private parts, since “feet” is often a euphemism for that in the Bible, and two to fly with. And there are cherubim – not the chubby little baby angels of popular culture, which are more properly called putti, but very grand beings indeed. Two of them were stationed outside the Garden of Eden, with a flaming sword, to stop Adam and Eve going back in there after the Fall. And there were golden cherubim represented on the Ark of the Covenant, and images of them woven into the curtains of the Ark of the Covenant. And God, apparently, spoke to Moses from between the cherubim. And when the Temple was built, the Ark was placed between two great statues of cherubim, wooden statues overlaid with gold.

It’s amazing how often angels of various kinds do appear in the Bible. I did an on-line search, and they seem to be mentioned in practically every book! There are only two mentions of an Archangel, in one instance explicitly Michael, but pages and pages of angels, cherubim and seraphim. So they obviously do matter.

But what do they do? What’s the point of them? Certainly Michael is depicted as a warrior prince, fighting and defeating the evil one. And there is a book in the Apocrypha called the book of Tobit – if you have access to an Apocrypha, either a dead-tree version or on-line, have a read of it sometime. It’s actually a good story that hangs together. Tobit is a pious old man who goes blind when a bird poos on his eyes when he is asleep in the sun; his wife Anna is a bit of a nag; Sarah is possessed by a demon who kills any man she marries before he’s crossed the bedroom door – and she’s been married seven times so far, but is still a virgin. Tobit sends his son Tobias to collect some money he left with a relative some years earlier, and God sends the angel Raphael to accompany Tobias, posing as his cousin Azariah. Raphael helps Tobias defeat the demon and marry Sarah, and then goes and gets the money for him while Tobias and Sarah are on their honeymoon, and then when they get back he heals Tobit’s sight. And then he reveals who he is and departs, reminding them always to praise God.

Mostly, though, angels seem to be God’s messengers. In the Old Testament they tell Abram and Sarai that they are to have a child, much to their amusement; an angel fights with Jacob at Bethel; angels go before the Children of Israel to defeat their enemies and so on and so forth. Apparently there are 290 references to angels in the Bible, not counting cherubim and seraphim. Of these, 108 references are in the Old Testament and/or the Apocrypha, and 182 in the New Testament. Obviously we know about the role of the angels in the Nativity story – how the angel appears first to Zechariah in the Temple to announce John’s birth, then to Mary to tell her she will bear the Messiah, if she is willing, then to Joseph to tell him to marry Mary anyway, and the various disclosures to the magi and the shepherds and so on. And, of course, angels minister to Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, and in some versions of the Resurrection it is an angel who tells the women that Jesus has risen.

And there is that wonderful story in Acts where Peter is in prison and an angel comes and sets him free, and he thinks he’s dreaming, and when he realises he isn’t, he goes to the safe house where they are all praying for him, and the maid who answers the door is so startled that she leaves him standing there, and they have trouble believing that it’s really him! An angel appears to Cornelius in a vision, and to Philip to take him to the Ethiopian treasury official who wanted to know about Jesus.

Angels also seem to have guard duty – we are told that when the Lord returns, he will come “with his angels”, like an escort, or guard of honour. And they also fight – Jesus comments on the Cross that he could ask the Father who would send twelve legions of angels to rescue him, if necessary, but he knows that’s not part of the plan.

And so it goes on. I honestly thought, when I started to think about this sermon, that there weren’t many references to angels in the Bible, and it was mostly extra-biblical tradition, but I was wrong! Of course, there is a lot of tradition around angels. One comes, I think, from the passage where Jesus says about children: “‘See that you do not despise one of these little ones. For I tell you that their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father in heaven.” I think it’s that passage that has given rise to the idea of guardian angels, one per person, but I’m not sure whether that is actually what happens.

But why does it matter? Are angels important to us? Why should we bother with St Michael and his angels?

I think, by and large, angels are one of the things we don’t necessarily think about most of the time. They are not, for most of us, something that impinges on our daily walk with God, on our daily journey with Christ. But they are, nevertheless, there in the background. We are told that they rejoice when a sinner repents, when someone says “Yes” to Jesus, perhaps for the first time, perhaps for the hundredth. The angels rejoice. They rejoice when you, or when I, consciously decide, yet again, to be God’s person, to walk in God’s way. They rejoice even more when someone who had never made that decision makes it for the first time.

The writer of the letter to the Hebrews reminds us not to “forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it.” Although angels, apparently, don’t actually eat or drink, but they can make it look as though they are doing so.

Angels lead us in our struggle against the powers of darkness. You remember how St Paul tells us to put on the whole armour of God? “Our struggle,” he reminds us, “is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” Angels are the ones in the front line of the battle, and bear the brunt of the struggle.

We are not to worship angels. It’s made pretty clear that they, too, are created beings who worship their Creator. In fact, we sometimes invoke their aid in our hymns, as in some of the ones I’ve chosen for today. Angels can, perhaps, help us in our worship. And, if you remember, in the great prayer of thanksgiving, in our Communion service, we say “Therefore, with angels and archangels, and all the company of heaven, we proclaim your great and glorious name, forever praising you, and saying,” and go on into “Holy, holy, holy.”

And on that note, let’s do just that, and sing together….

Pride and Prejudice

Our Old Testament reading this morning came from a book you may never have heard of – the book of Sirach, also known as Ecclesiasticus, the book of the Church. It didn’t make the cut into the Protestant Old Testament, although Catholics see it as canonical, but for us it is part of that collection of books we call the Apocrypha, which we are told to study “for example of life and instruction of manners; but yet not apply them to establish any doctrine.” But once in awhile the Lectionary throws up a reading from the Apocrypha as an alternative, and I think, particularly where it resonates with the Gospel reading, it’s no bad thing to have a look at it.

Anyway, this book was written, or possibly compiled, by someone known as Joshua Ben Sirach, who was a Jewish scribe who had lived in Jerusalem, and who may have been living in Alexandria when he compiled the work between about 180-175 BCE. We know who wrote it because, uniquely among the Old Testament and Apocryphal writers, he signs his work. And there is a prologue to the Greek version, written by his grandson in 130 BCE who translated it from the original Hebrew! There are far more Greek manuscripts of it available than there are Hebrew ones, although a large portion of the Hebrew version was found among the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Anyway, that’s all very interesting, but what was he about? Basically, it was a collection of ethical teachings, rather like the book of Proverbs. I must admit I’ve not read all the book, although I have skimmed the first few chapters, and he writes a great deal about Wisdom, pretty much equating her with God Himself, as the apocryphal writers are apt to do. And a great deal of it, as in the passage we just heard read, is to do with pride.

Pride, we are told, begins when a person abandons the Lord. Pride begins when a person abandons the Lord. Pride, says ben Sirach, is like a fountain pouring out sin, and whoever persists in it will be full of wickedness. A fountain pouring out sin. Strong stuff, no?

The thing is, though, he’s right. Pride is the worst of sins – if sin can be said to have any “worst”, because it is the one that totally turns us away from God. C S Lewis had a lot to say about it in his book, Mere Christianity, and I propose to quote from it, because he says it better than I could: “According to Christian teachers, the essential vice, the utmost evil, is Pride.  Unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness, and all that, are mere fleabites in comparison: it was through Pride that the devil became the devil: Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind.”

Lewis goes on in this vein for some time, saying that Pride is essentially competitive – I’m not too sure he’s right there – and then we come to the heart of it:

“But pride always means enmity – it is enmity. And not only enmity between human beings, but enmity to God.

“In God”, says Lewis, “you come up against something which is in every respect immeasurably superior to yourself. Unless you know God as that – and, therefore, know yourself as nothing in comparison – you do not know God at all. As long as you are proud you cannot know God. A proud man is always looking down on things and people: and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.”

Of course, Lewis points out, it’s not pride to be pleased when someone pays you a sincere compliment – as long, that is, as the compliment doesn’t lead you to believe you’re cleverer or prettier or a finer person! As long as you delight in the praise, and don’t start thinking you must be a grand person to have merited it. And he also points out that it’s fine to be proud of your school or your father or your children as long as you don’t start thinking you must be a grand person to have been to such a school, or had such parents or children. The “Aren’t I clever, knowing a famous person” syndrome is alive and well today!

And obviously Pride, as in the carnival of that name, is fine, too – again, as long as you don’t think yourself rather superior for being part of it, or, indeed, rather broad-minded for enjoying it even if you aren’t gay!

Jesus, of course, knows all about it. In our Gospel reading, we saw him and his disciples – dare I say being amused by the people who obviously thought they deserved the best place at table, and being asked to move down…. As Jesus said, it makes far more sense to go down to the bottom, less honoured, places at the table and be asked to move up than to try to grab a place at the high table and be told in no uncertain terms you don’t belong there! Although I can see, as I’m sure you can, a danger lurking there whereby you rather ostentatiously go to the lowest place and look, expectantly, for the host coming to move you up a bit! And, indeed, it’s all too easy to see how, if you were to give a dinner for those who couldn’t return it, you could feel rather good about yourself in the wrong way: “What a good person I am to help out at Robes”…..

As I said, Jesus knew all about it. Look at the story he told of the Pharisee and the tax-collector who went to pray at the same time, and the Pharisee was all, “Oh God, I thank you I am not like this tax collector; I tithe and I fast and I’m generally a Most Superior Person, thank you very much.” But Jesus said it was the tax collector, who knew himself to be a sinner, who went away right with God on that occasion.

I heard a story once of a Sunday school teacher who was discussing this parable with her class, and at the end, she said “Now, let us thank God that we are not like this Pharisee”. Hmm – all well and good, until the moment I found myself thanking God that I was not like that Sunday School teacher!

No, pride and God are basically incompatible. Or rather the wrong sort of pride is. It can be very insidious – we go, imperceptibly, from being delighted that we have become God’s person, that we have been cleansed, forgiven and made whole, we go from that into thinking that we must be a pretty good person, really, to have allowed God into our lives.

Or, worse, we take this sort of thing to heart and, knowing that we are apt to be a bit proud on occasions, we think we must be truly terrible people, and quite beyond redemption. Which is another sort of pride, isn’t it – pride in one’s own sinfulness!

You know, this sermon feels very thou-shalt-nottish, which is not at all where I want to leave it. Pride is a very great sin, it is the sin that brings us into total opposition to God. Ben Sirach warns us, that whoever persists in pride will be full of wickedness. That is why, he tells us, the Lord brought terrible punishments on some people and completely destroyed them. And not only people, he says, but nations and empires, too. And if I were to leave it there, we would all be in a very sad case.

But there is hope. After all, we aren’t supposed to try to pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps. We aren’t supposed to strain and strive and continually fail and hate ourselves for so doing. No, my friends, not that. Never that.

If we try to overcome our faults in our own strength, we will fail. And we will become proud of ourselves for trying – I try far harder than he does, of course. I’m sure God will reward me better than him.

No, that’s not the answer. And continuing in our pride isn’t the answer, either. Let’s face it, we’re all guilty of feeling proud, some of the time. But if we continue, we will cut ourselves off from God, and perhaps end up worshipping what we think is God, but is in fact a god, made in our own image, who thinks we’re really rather brilliant!

God knows what we’re like. God knows our struggles, our failures, our weaknesses, our tendency to think we’re rather good for allowing Him to heal us…. And God goes on loving us and forgiving us and healing us. No matter how often we take our eyes off him to look at ourselves, or to look down on our neighbours, as soon as ever we realise what we’re doing, as soon as ever we turn back to God with an, “Oh, sorry!” or “Oops!” then God is there, forgiving us, healing us, helping us to grow into the person we were designed to be. “The Creator,” says ben Sirach, “never intended for human beings to be arrogant and violent.” And that being so, the Creator will help us become humble and peacable folk, the peacemakers who Jesus told us were to be given the kingdom of Heaven. Amen.

Great Expectations

Once upon a time, there was a young man called Jeremiah.

He was from quite a good family –

his father was a priest, although not a high priest,

and owned a fair bit of land not far from Jerusalem.

So Jeremiah grew up in a fair amount of comfort,

loved and nurtured by his family.

Perhaps he had planned to be a priest himself when he grew up.

But then one day, in about 626 BC, God came to him, and said:

"Jeremiah, I am your Creator, and before you were born, I chose you to speak for me to the nations."

Jeremiah is shattered!

“Lord God, you’re making a big mistake!

I am a lousy public speaker and I’m too young for anybody to take me seriously.”

But God insists:

“Don’t put yourself down because of your age.

Just go to whoever I send you to, and say whatever I tell you to say.

Don’t let yourself feel intimidated by anyone, because I’ll be there as back up for you.

You’ll be okay;

take my word for it.”

And Jeremiah is touched by God, and enabled to speak God’s word.

Some six hundred years later, Jesus is teaching in the synagogue one Sabbath day, as he often did.

There was a woman in the congregation who was twisted and deformed –

perhaps she had scoliosis or perhaps it was an arthritic condition.

Certainly it was long-standing.

We are told she had been like this for eighteen years.

And Jesus suddenly notices her, and heals her.

She is able to stand fully upright again, and starts praising God.

Well, that didn’t please the leader of the synagogue.

Healing people like that on the Sabbath –

wasn’t that dangerously close to work?

“Oi,” he goes, “Stop healing people on the Sabbath!

Now then you lot, if any of you want healed,

you come on any of the other six days of the week;

I don’t want any Sabbath-breaking going on here!”

“Oh come on, mate,” says Jesus.

“I saw you taking your donkey down to the drinking-trough earlier this morning, Sabbath day or no Sabbath day.

If it’s all right for you to take your donkey to have a drink on the Sabbath,

it’s all right for me to heal this good lady,

whom Satan had bound for eighteen whole years!”

The leader of the synagogue had nothing to say to this, but the crowd really cheered.

---oo0oo---

I think it’s about expectations, isn’t it?

God expected Jeremiah to proclaim His word to the nations.

Jesus expected that the woman would be healed,

Sabbath day or no Sabbath day.

The ruler of the synagogue expected Jesus to keep the Sabbath.

And Jeremiah and the woman?

I don’t think they expected anything at all!

What does God expect from us?

What do we expect from God’s people?

And what do we expect from God?

Firstly, then, what does God expect from us?

Jeremiah was expected to go and proclaim God’s word.

He had been specifically called for this purpose,

and although he was horrified when the call came, and tried to get out of it,

he ultimately accepted it, and trusted in God’s promise that

“Attack you they will, overcome you they can’t”;

a promise that was fulfilled many times over in the Biblical narrative.

I wonder what God is expecting of you?

I know I am expected to preach the Gospel.

Like Jeremiah, I was very young when I was called –

about fifteen.

Unlike him, I wasn’t able to answer that call for many years for reasons that I won’t go into now,

but suffice it to say that for about the past thirty years I have known that this is what God has wanted me to do.

This is what God expects of me.

I am so grateful, every time I preach,

that all I am expected to do is to provide the words;

God does the rest!

So what does he expect of you?

Some of you will know, definitely, what God expects;

you are a steward,

or a local preacher,

or a musician.

Or, like my daughter, you’re called to children’s ministry.

For others, it’s less clear cut.

You have a job, perhaps, or are bringing up a family.

Or perhaps that is all behind you now, and you are retired.

But whatever it is you do, you are expected to be Christ’s ambassador.

You are a witness to him in everything you say and do.

Now, before you start squirming uncomfortably,

and thinking “Oh dear, I’m not a very good one, am I?”,

don’t forget that Jesus said that when the Holy Spirit came,

we would be his witnesses throughout the known world.

Not that we should be,

or ought to be,

but that we would be.

We are.

You are an ambassador for Christ,

and whether you like it or not,

whether you know it or not,

this is what you are, through the power of the Holy Spirit who dwells within you.

When God calls you to do something,

whether it is some well-defined job like cleaning the church,

or running a prayer group,

or speaking forth his word,

or simply praying quietly at home,

or whether you’re called to be God’s person where you work, or where you live, God will enable you to do it, just as he enabled Jeremiah.

---oo0oo---

And so to my second question for this morning:

What do you expect of God’s people?

When someone says he or she is a Christian,

what do you reckon they’re going to be like?

The leader of the synagogue was confounded when Jesus didn’t conform to his expectation of what a good Jewish man did or didn’t do on the Sabbath.

Healing people?

Seriously?

No, no, that counted as work!

And sometimes we are confounded when we come across Christians whose standards of acceptable behaviour might differ from ours.

Could they possibly be Christians at all?

Do real Christians behave like that?

Some churches have felt so strongly about some of these issues that they have even split up,

causing enormous hurt and upset in their various denominations.

Yet who are we to judge another’s behaviour?

In fact, you might remember that St Paul suggests

that if your brother is offended by something you do or don’t do,

you should do it, or not do it, as the case may be,

so as not to upset them, or, worse,

to let them think it’s all right for them to do it,

when it might not be at all all right,

and might lead them away from God.

We need to be sensitive to one another,

and to refrain from judging one another.

We probably have our rules that we live by,

but we don’t have the right to force those rules on to other people,

not even on to other Christians.

I suppose the thing is, we shouldn’t really expect other Christians to be like us!

Many, of course, will be –

that’s why you go to this church, here,

because you find people you are comfortable with,

people whose vision of what God’s people are like resonates with yours.

But there will be others whose views you are less comfortable with;

who perhaps strike you as rather puritanical, or rather lax.

Of course, when we know someone, we know what they are like,

whether they are reliable,

whether you can trust them.

And we accept them, normally, for who they are.

Just as God does with us.

But we mustn’t be judgemental.

Maybe they hold views that we find strange, or even unpleasant.

Maybe they feel free to behave in ways we’ve been taught that Christians don’t do,

or ways that we feel would be sinful for us.

But it is not for us to judge.

Our Lord points out, in that collection of His teachings known as the Sermon on the Mount,

that we very often have socking great logs in our own eyes,

so how can we see clearly to remove the speck in someone else’s?

In other words, keep your eyes on what’s wrong with you,

not on what’s wrong with other people!

See to it that you obey your rules, and leave other people to obey theirs.

That’s something, I think, that the leader of the synagogue would have been wise to keep in mind,

rather than criticising Jesus for healing someone on the Sabbath,

to say nothing of criticising the congregation for coming to be healed that day.

He had rules he needed to keep,

and he needed other people to keep them, too.

But Jesus had other ideas.

For him, healing someone on the Sabbath was as normal and as natural as making sure your livestock were fed, or your cow was milked.

---oo0oo---

So, then, God is free to expect anything from us;

we should not, though, expect other Christians to be just like us.

But what do we expect from God?

Jeremiah didn’t expect anything from God.

When told that he was to proclaim God’s word, his first reaction was to panic:

“I can’t possibly! I’m a lousy public speaker and much too young!”

But God gave him the gifts he needed to fulfil his task,

and sometimes Jeremiah had to actively act out God’s word, not just speak it!

The woman who was all twisted and bent over didn’t expect anything from God, either.

She presumably went to the synagogue each week to worship,

not really expecting anything to happen.

But that particular Sabbath day, Jesus was there –

and that made all the difference.

After eighteen years she was finally free of her illness,

able to stand up straight,

able to walk normally and talk to people face to face once more.

What did you expect from God this morning?

Let’s be honest, we come to church week after week,

and on most Sundays nothing much happens!

We worship God, we spend some time with our friends,

and then we go home again.

And that’s okay.

But some weeks are different, aren’t they?

Not often, but just sometimes we come away from Church

knowing that God was there, and present, and real.

I wonder why these occasions are so rare?

Partly, of course, because mountain-top experiences like that are rare,

that’s why we remember them.

There’s an old story of two men coming out of Church one Sunday morning when the preacher had been rather more boring even than usual.

The first man said, “Honestly, what’s the point?

I’ve been going to Church more or less every Sunday for the past 30 years,

and I must have heard hundreds of sermons,

yet I hardly remember any of them!”

To which the second man replied, “Hmm, well;

I’ve been married for 30 years and my wife has cooked me a meal more or less every night,

and I don’t really remember many of them, either.

But where would I be without them?”

Church, mostly, is about providing daily bread for daily needs.

We don’t expect to see miracles each Sunday,

or healings such as took place in the synagogue that day.

But what do we expect when we come to Church?

Do we expect to meet God in some way?

What do we expect from God?

We know that our sins have been forgiven, right?

And that God is gradually making us into the people he designed us to be.

But do we expect more?

Should we expect more?

Neither Jeremiah nor the woman in the synagogue expected anything from God –

yet God gave, bountifully, to both of them in very different ways.

---oo0oo---

Who was it who said “Expect great things from God.

Attempt great things for God”?

I can’t remember right now,

but it’s really what I want to leave with you this morning.

What does God expect from you?

Are you trying not to hear something you think God might be trying to say?

What do you expect from other Christians?

Are you requiring a higher standard from them than from yourself?

And what are you expecting God to do for you today?

Amen.

You have to go there to be there!

Recording didn't work - not sure why - which is a great pity as I added in some stuff about migrants.

Have you been on holiday yet?

We’re off again in a few weeks, when the schools go back.

I love our trips in the motor home, but one thing I don’t love is the long, dreary drives across Belgium to get to where we’re going in Germany!

It is always a long, dreary day –

Robert drives,

I knit or doze,

we listen to podcasts and music

and, of course, stop every few hours.

But oh, how I wish, sometimes, that we could get there without the long journey!

I want to be there without going there!

I don’t quite go “Are we nearly there?” like a small child,

but I’m very tempted….

I probably would, if our Satnav didn’t tell us how far there was, and how long it would probably take.

And I am sure that anybody who has travelled with children longs and longs for the journey to be over,

whether it’s by car, train or aeroplane.

You long to reach the resort, and if you could,

would get there without having to go there.

It’s the same if we’re learning a new skill, or a new subject at school.

We don’t start off being brilliant at it.

Our first attempts to speak a foreign language sound like baby talk!

Our first knitted strip is going to be uneven and full of holes.

We have to learn and study and practice, and in the end we get good at it.

And it’s the same with faith, which is what our Bible readings this morning are all about.

You don’t start off being a person of terrific faith –

you have to learn how.

We all hope to be brilliant Christians, but it takes time, and it takes practice.

You can’t be there without going there!

I have often said that these Sundays in Ordinary Time are when we discover whether what we think we believe actually matches up to what we really do believe.

And our readings this morning are the absolute epitome of that.

All our readings emphasize faith, but slightly different aspects of it.

Isaiah, for instance, is talking about repentance:

“What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices?”
   says the Lord;
“I have had enough of burnt-offerings of rams
   and the fat of fed beasts;
I do not delight in the blood of bulls,
   or of lambs, or of goats.”

And then;

“When you stretch out your hands,
   I will hide my eyes from you;
even though you make many prayers,
   I will not listen;
   your hands are full of blood.”

In Isaiah's day his day, people worshipped other gods,

gods who didn't actually require you to do more than perform the sacrifices and rituals.

But for God, our God, this was not enough.

God demanded –

and still does demand –

a lot more than that:

“Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean;
   remove the evil of your doings
   from before my eyes;
cease to do evil,
learn to do good;
seek justice,
   rescue the oppressed,
defend the orphan,
   plead for the widow.”

You can't just go on as you were and then come to the temple to do your sacrifices.

This will not work.

Remember Psalm 51;

“The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit;

a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.”

We need a complete change of heart, to turn right round and go God's way, not ours.

This is called repentance, of course –

not so much about being sorry, although that can be part of it,

but about a complete change of outlook.

And then, according to Isaiah:

“Come now, let us argue it out,”
   says the Lord:
“though your sins are like scarlet,
   they shall be like snow;
though they are red like crimson,
   they shall become like wool.
If you are willing and obedient,
   you shall eat the good of the land;
but if you refuse and rebel,
   you shall be devoured by the sword;
   for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”

It is about an attitude of the heart.

The letter to the Hebrews shows us how this faith works out in practice;

we are reminded that

“Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”

Abraham, we are told, was promised a wonderful inheritance.

God promised to make his descendants, quite literally, more numerous than the grains of sand on the seashore.

He was going to be given a wonderful land for them to live in.

Now, at this stage, Abraham was living very comfortably thank you, in a very civilised city called Ur,

and although he didn't have any children, he was happy and settled.

But God told Abraham that if he wanted to see this promise fulfilled he had to get up,

to leave his comfortable life,

and to move on out into the unknown,

just trusting God.

And Abraham did just exactly that.

And, eventually, Isaac was born to carry on the family.

And then Isaac’s son, Jacob.

And we are told that, although none of them actually saw the Promised Land, and although the promise was not fulfilled in their lifetimes,

they never stopped believing that one day, one day, it would be.

Their whole lives were informed by their belief that God was in control.

This sort of faith is the kind we'd all like to have, wouldn't we?

Wouldn't we?

Hmmm, I wonder.

In our Gospel reading, Jesus says, “Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”

That's great, isn't it?

“It is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”

Well, it would be great, but then he says, “Sell your possessions, and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys.

For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

That's the bit we don't like so well, do we?

Like Abraham, we are very-nicely-thank-you in Ur,

comfortably settled in this world,

and we don't want to give it all up to go chasing after something which might or might not be real.

This is the difficult bit, the bit where what we say we believe comes up against what we really do believe.

It's like I was saying earlier, we would like to be there –

wherever “there” is –

without the hassle of actually going there!

We want to have all the privileges and joys of being Christians without actually having to do anything.

Of course, in one of the many great paradoxes of Christianity,

we don't have to do anything!

We can do nothing to save ourselves!

It is God who does all that is necessary for our salvation.

But if we are to be people of faith, if we are to be of any use to God.

And faith does, or should, prompt us to action.

First of all, then, our faith should prompt us to repent.

To turn away from sin and turn to God with all our hearts.

It's not just a once-and-for-all thing;

it's a matter of daily repentance, daily choosing to be God's person.

And as we do that, our faith grows and develops and strengthens to the point where, if we are called to do so,

we can leave our comfort zone and try great things for God.

As Abraham did, and as Jesus calls us to do.

We aren't all called to sell our possessions and give what we have to the poor –

although a little more equity in the way this world's goods are handed out wouldn't be a bad thing;

look how 25% of the world consumes 75% of its production,

or whatever the figures actually are –

I may be being generous on that one.

We are all called to work for justice in our communities,

whether that is a matter of writing to our MPs if something is clearly wrong,

or getting involved in a more hands-on way.

Some people –

maybe some of you, even –

are or have been called to leave your home countries and work in a foreign land to be God's person there,

whether as a professional missionary, as it were,

or just where you are working.

Others are asked to stay put, but to be God's person exactly where they are –

at school,

college,

work,

home,

at the shops,

on the bus,

in a traffic jam,

on social media...

everywhere!

Being God's person isn't something that happens in church on Sundays and is put aside the rest of the week.

It isn't easy. It's the every day, every moment hard slog.

The times when we wish we could skip over all this,

and be the wonderful faith-filled Christian we hope to be one day without the hard work of getting there!

Sadly, it doesn't work like that.

We don't have to do all the hard work in our own strength, of course;

God the Holy Spirit is there to help us, and remind us, and change us, and grow us as we gradually become more and more the people God designed us to be.

But God doesn't push in where He's not wanted.

If we are truly serious about being God's person, then we need to be being that every day.

Each day we need to commit to God, whether explicitly or implicitly.

Jesus reminds us that this world isn't designed to be permanent.

One day it will come to an end, either for each of us individually,

or perhaps in some great second coming.

But whichever way, it will end for us one day,

and not all of us get notice to quit.

We need to be ready and alert, busy with what we have been given to do, but ready to let go and turn to Jesus whenever he calls us.

None of this is easy.

Being a Christian isn't easy.

Becoming a Christian is easy,

because God longs and longs for us to turn to Him.

But being one isn't.

Allowing God to change us,

to pull us out of our comfort zone,

to travel with Him along that narrow way –

it's not easy.

But it is oh, so very worthwhile!

Amen.

Mary Magdalene

Brixton Hill , 28 July 2019

Mary Magdalene

Last Monday, July the twenty-second, was the Feast of St Mary Magdalene,

in the part of the 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, i

n 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.