Lost and Found

 

Sheep are extremely silly animals.
They are always looking for innovative ways to get dead!

Whether it is becoming stuck on cliffs,

or in snowdrifts,

or brambles

or barbed wire,

or even hanging themselves on the fence,

or eating the wrong thing,

whatever,

a sheep will do its utmost to frustrate the shepherd’s attempts at keeping it alive!

And in the story that Jesus told in our Gospel reading,

the sheep has wandered off somewhere and got lost.

This is a very familiar story;
the Good Shepherd abandons all the rest of the sheep to go and find the lost one.
Because, we are told, there is more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents, than over the ninety-nine who never went astray.

And the woman who drops her valuable coin somewhere and who turns the house upside-down looking for it –
been there, done that, haven’t you?
The most recent thing we lost was a dozen eggs,

which sounds odd but I had bought two dozen in Belgium last week because they were on a BOGOF, or Buy One Get One Free offer,

but when we had unpacked and I came to look in the fridge, there was only one dozen there.
We had to go down to Sussex again that day, so we went to the motor home and turned it upside-down, looking in every cupboard, just in case they had been left there, but no joy,

and it wasn’t until we got back to London that I saw them sitting innocently on the corner of a chest where they had no business to be!
So we were delighted.
Sometimes I really think there is a black hole in the flat that swallows things and then spits them out again randomly,

usually when you are looking for something else!
Anyway, the woman in Jesus’ story did eventually find her coin,

perhaps when she was looking for something else, and called her neighbours –

who had, perhaps, been helping her look for it –

to share her joy.

These are the first two of the three stories Jesus told about finding things –

the third, of course, is the story that we know as the Prodigal Son, about the young man who insists on having his legacy now, without waiting for his father’s death, and heads off to make his fortune,

only to come crawling back when it all goes horribly wrong.
But we’ll leave that one for now, as it wasn’t part of today’s reading.

There is a subtle difference between the lost coin and the lost sheep.
You see, the coin couldn’t help getting lost.
It was probably attached to a headband that the woman normally wore, which was the custom in that time and place, apparently.
It probably formed part of her dowry –

a tenth of it, in fact, we are told, as she had ten coins.
And one having fallen off would be incredibly obvious, a great gap in the middle of her headband.
But it was nothing to do with the coin.
A coin is an inanimate object.
It couldn’t choose to twist off the headband and go exploring.
And when it had fallen off, it couldn’t attract attention to itself.

But the sheep wandered off of its own volition.
I don’t suppose it meant to go so far from the flock;
sheep do like being together, they are herd animals.
Which makes sense, since they are prey animals, and there is safety in numbers.

So a sheep that has got lost will bleat very loudly to try to attract attention.

But sometimes it’s difficult to come back.
Like the coin, we are dumb, we are stuck.
We have wandered away from God, and perhaps we don’t even want to come back.
Perhaps we don’t even realise we need to!


“Do these evildoers know nothing?” asks God in our first reading.
“They devour my people as though eating bread!”

“Fools,” we are told, “have said in their heart there is no God.”
They may or may not pay lip-service to Christianity, or other religions,

but they certainly don’t behave that way.
People who want to deny women the right to their own bodies.
People who want to deny women even the right to an education.

People who want to send refugees back where they came from,

or on to other countries who don’t want them, either.

People who want to give tax breaks to the rich,

while increasing the burden on the poor.

People who are quite happy to see others having to use food banks,

or not knowing how to feed or clothe their children.

People who are quite happy to allow energy prices to increase by far more than in other European countries,

even though we actually imported far less gas from Russia than many.

And so it goes on.
“They devour my people as though eating bread!”

But we know, too, that we’re not blameless.

We can’t sit here thinking “Thank God I’m not like that!”

because that would put us in the same pew as that Pharisee who thanked God because he felt he was righteous.

We do like to think of ourselves as better than others.
We know God doesn’t hate gays, or immigrants, or Muslims, or whoever the current hate group is right now.
Does that make us any better than those who think God does hate certain groups of people?
I don’t think so!
I’d like to think so, but, alas, I can’t.

You see, I’m human, too.
Just as you are.
Just as those who would deny others basic human rights are.
Just as those who deny God are.
We are all human, and we all need God.

Of course, there are many millions of people who don’t believe in God,

but who nevertheless lead honest, decent, upright lives, giving to charity,

being active against the worst excesses of our society, and so on –

please, don’t think there aren’t.

And God loves them every bit as much as God loves you and me,

and, of course, longs and longs for them to turn to him.

Because, like you and like me, they are human, and humans screw things up!

No matter how good and upright a person is,

whether or not they are God-fearing, they –

we –

screw things up.

Big-time.

The Bible calls it sin, and one of the definitions is missing the target.

Missing the good things that God has for us because,

like the lost sheep, we wander off after something that looks better.

So where am I going with this?
The thing is, we don’t like admitting we’ve made a nonsense.
We don’t like saying we’re up the creek without a paddle.
Or maybe we aren’t even aware that we’re lost!

Like the coin, we have no idea that we aren’t where we’re meant to be,

but are perfectly happy in the dust and dirt of a dark corner, or the cracks between the floorboards.

But then, coming back is not, according to these stories, our idea.
It is God who does the seeking.
Like the woman in the story turning her house upside-down to find the coin, God searches and searches and calls to us to come back to him.
The Good Shepherd pulls on his coat and wellies, grabs his staff, and goes out into the wind and rain to rescue the lost sheep.

We may feel that we ought not to expect God to come and rescue us if we’ve got into a mess through our own silly fault.
But then, how else would we get into a mess?
Yes, there are times when it feels as though God has abandoned us and, as far as we are aware, we have done nothing to deserve it.
We all go through those times of darkness, they appear to be a necessary part of the Christian journey.
And, like the coin, all we can do is wait quietly until we are found.
If you were at the circuit service last Sunday, you will have heard K read a story about a man who planted trees and then deliberately neglected them, requiring them to grow their own roots to get water, and in the end his trees were a lot stronger, and grew better, than those which were looked after more conventionally.
Maybe these times of darkness, where we feel God is neglecting us, are necessary to help us grow into the person we are meant to be.

But a great deal of the time we have got ourselves into a mess.

We may not have meant to –

or we may have done it deliberately.

And there we are, totally lost.
Caught in the brambles, unable or unwilling to move from our position.
All we can do is call out to God, just as the sheep will bleat when it hears someone coming.

Or maybe, even, we don’t really want to be found.
Maybe we are quite comfortable as we are, or maybe we aren’t, but can’t quite see how God could possibly forgive us and welcome us back.
But that’s the whole point, in a way.
If we have our act together, if we know we are “doing it right”, then we aren’t, just as the Pharisee in that other story Jesus told wasn’t.
He was convinced he was better than most people, and especially better than that tax-collector over there.
But he wasn’t.
And we aren’t.
You know what?
We’re no better and no worse than anybody else, and like anybody else, like everybody else, we need to allow the Good Shepherd to rescue us.

There will be no condemnation.
No blame.
No telling-off.
Not from the Good Shepherd.
We might have to put things right with other people –

that’s normal.
But as far as the Good Shepherd is concerned, there is just an enormous smile and, “There you are at last!
Come on, let’s go back to the others!”
Amen.

Mary the Mother of God

Tomorrow, in some parts of the Christian Church, will be a major festival in the Church’s calendar.
It’s what’s called the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary,
and celebrates the belief that her body, as well as her soul,
was taken to heaven after she’d died.
Or possibly even before, it’s not clear.
Either way, it’s a very old tradition,
going right back to the early years of Christianity,
even though there’s nothing about it in Scripture.
And even those Christians, like us,
who don’t necessarily subscribe to that doctrine,
do still consider 15 August one of the Festivals of Saint Mary, along with the Annunciation in March..

And even though, as Protestants, we don’t really think about Mary much,
the fact that she’s such an important figure in so much of Christianity means she’s probably worth thinking about from time to time.

So what do we actually know about her from the Bible, as opposed to tradition?
She first appears in our Bibles when Gabriel comes to her to ask her if she will bear Jesus,
and, of course, as we all know, she said she would,
and Joseph agreed to marry her despite her being pregnant with a baby he knew he wasn’t responsible for.
I do rather love Luke’s stories about Mary –
how one of the things the angel had said to her was that her relation, Elisabeth, was pregnant after all those years.
And, as we heard in our reading, Mary rushes off to visit her.
Was this to reassure herself that the angel was telling the truth?
Or to congratulate Elisabeth?
Or just to get away for a bit of space, do you suppose?
We aren’t told.
But Elisabeth recognises Mary as the mother-to-be of the promised Saviour, and Mary’s response is that great song that we now call the “Magnificat”.
Or if it wasn’t exactly that –
that may well be Luke putting down what she ought to have said, like Shakespeare giving Henry V that great speech before Agincourt –
it was probably words to that effect!
I think she was very, very relieved to find the angel had been speaking the truth, and probably did explode in an outpouring of praise and joy!

And later, in Bethlehem, when the shepherds come to visit her, we are told that she “kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart.”

The next time we see Mary is when Jesus is twelve and gets separated from them in the Temple.
I spent a lot of time with that story when my daughter was a teenager –
how Mary and Joseph say to Jesus, “But why did you stay behind?
Didn’t you realise we’d be worried about you?”
and Jesus goes, “Oh, you don’t understand!” –
typical teenager!

We don’t see Joseph again after this –
tradition has it that he was a lot older than Mary, and, of course, he had a very physical job.
It wasn’t just a carpenter as we know it –
the Greek word is “technion”, which is the same root as our “technician”;
if it had to do with houses, Joseph did it,
from designing them,
to building them,
to making the furniture that went in them!
And tradition has it that sometime between Jesus’ 12th birthday, and when we next see him, Joseph has died.

But we see a lot more of Mary.
She is there at the wedding at Cana, and indeed,
it’s she who goes to Jesus when they’ve run out of wine.
And Jesus says, at first, “Um, no –
my time has not yet come!” but Mary knew.
And she told the servants to “Do whatever he tells you”, and, sure enough, the water is turned into wine.

There’s a glimpse of her at one point when Jesus is teaching, and he’s told his mother and brother are outside waiting for him, but he refuses to be diverted from what he’s doing.
And, of course, it could have been that it was just random people who said they were his relations to try to get closer to him.

We see Mary, of course, weeping at the Cross –
something no mother should ever have to do.
And Jesus commending her into the care of the “beloved disciple” John.
And, finally, we see her in the Upper Room in Jerusalem when the Holy Spirit came.

That’s really all we know about her from the Bible, but other early traditions and writings, including some of what’s called the apocryphal gospels –
they’re the ones that didn’t make the cut into the New Testament as we know it –
tell us a bit more.
They tell us that her mother was called Anne and her father was called Joachim, and that she was only about 16 when Gabriel came to her.
One source has it that Anne couldn’t have babies, and when Mary finally arrived, she was given to be reared in the Temple, like Samuel.
And traditional sources also tell us that she went to live in Ephesus, probably with John, and died somewhere between 3 and 15 years after the Crucifixion, surrounded by all the apostles.
And that her body was taken up to heaven, which is where we came in!

Well, so far, so good, but how did they get from there to the veneration of her, not to say worship in some cases, that we see today?
This may be something you find difficult to understand –
I certainly do –
and that’s okay.
We aren’t required to do more than honour her as the Mother of our dear Lord;
we mention her when we say the Creed, of course, and there are lots of churches dedicated to her.

But we do not think of her as quasi-divine in some way.
We do believe that Jesus was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit,
not by ordinary human means,
but that this was something that happened in time, not in eternity!
She became the Mother of God –
she was not the Mother of God before Jesus was born.

In Italy, the day is called “Ferragosto”, and is far older than Christianity –
it was originally a festival of the goddess Diana,
who, if you remember your Roman mythology,
was the goddess of the hunt,
and of the Moon, and,
incidentally, was celebrated as a virgin goddess.

Hmmm, that’s interesting.
We celebrate the Virgin Mary on a feast-day originally dedicated to a pagan virgin goddess.
It makes sense, really, when you come to think about it,
given that Christianity took over many other pagan festivals.
But perhaps it helps to explain why some versions of Christianity do venerate Mary so much.
If you were Jewish, you were quite used to thinking of God as Father and Creator,
but if you came from a background which worshipped a virgin goddess,
Mary obviously provided what you found you were missing.
And again, if you were used to worshipping a mother figure,
as so many people were,
you found something in Mary that perhaps you missed in the Christian depiction of God.
Don’t forget, in the olden days you had to convert to Christianity when your ruler did, or the head of your tribe, or whatever,
and if the worship you were used to was suddenly no longer provided,
you had to make what you could of what you did have!

And then, of course, the Catholic Church being nothing if not practical,
formalised a great deal of what was happening, and thought, about Mary into doctrine....
and so it went on.
Chicken and egg type of situation,
drawing on tradition and practice more than on Scripture.
And so, of course, when the Protestants went back to the Bible,
discarding most, although not all, traditional theology,
Mary rather fell back into the background.

There is a tradition of venerating Mary in some parts of the Protestant Church, but it is far from compulsory.
We honour her as the Mother of our dear Lord –
and we honour her, too, for her bravery in saying “Yes” to God like that.
After all, had Joseph repudiated her for carrying someone else’s child, she could have ended up on the streets!

As for the Assumption –
well, who knows?
Some Catholics think she was still alive when that happened, but the official position is unclear.
The Orthodox call it the Dormition, or falling-asleep, and celebrate her death, but they, too, believe her body was carried up to heaven.

But what, then, can we learn from Mary?
We don’t tend to think of her very much, at least, I don’t.
But there is that incredible bravery that said “Yes” to God –
and remember, she didn’t know the end of the story, not at that stage!
There are times I wonder what she must think of it all!
But she was totally submitted to God in a way that very few people can claim to be.

And, of course, there is what she said to the servants at that wedding in Cana - “Do whatever He tells you”.
And that’s not a bad motto to live by, either:
Do whatever Jesus tells you.

Amen. 

You have to go there to be there

Completely and utterly forgot to record this!  Oh well...

Have you been on holiday yet? We’re off again next week, to a family wedding in Germany.
This time, we are going to drive across northern France, instead of going through Belgium.

We both love our trips in the motor home, but we both hate the long, dreary drives across Belgium to get to where we’re going in Germany!
It is always a long, dreary day.
It always rains, seemingly.
The traffic round Brussels is always dire.
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!

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.
I wonder if you’ve been watching the Commonwealth Games as much as we have this week,
and thinking about how much the athletes have had to train to be able to qualify for the Games.
I remember in my skating days how hard one had to work for what felt like very minimal improvement;
and we didn’t train nearly as hard as the elite skaters have to.

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:

“Do you think I want all these sacrifices you keep offering to me?” asks God. “I have had more than enough of the sheep you burn as sacrifices and of the fat of your fine animals. I am tired of the blood of bulls and sheep and goats.”

And then;
“When you lift your hands in prayer, I will not look at you. No matter how much you pray, I will not listen, for your hands are covered with 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 clean. Stop all this evil that I see you doing. Yes, stop doing evil and learn to do right. See that justice is done – help those who are oppressed, give orphans their rights, and defend widows.”

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
“To have faith is to be sure of the things we hope for, to be certain of the things we cannot see.”

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 your Father is pleased to give you the Kingdom.”
That's great, isn't it?
“Your Father is pleased to give you the Kingdom.”

Well, it would be great, but then he says, “Sell all your belongings and give the money to the poor. Provide for yourselves purses that don't wear out, and save your riches in heaven, where they will never decrease, because no thief can get to them, and no moth can destroy them.  For your heart will always be where your riches are.”

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,
our 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.
Scientists tell us it will be very soon now, as climate change runs out of control.
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

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

Thirsting for the Word

Good morning, Church. For the benefit of those who don’t know me, my name is AnnabeI, and I’m M’s daughter and M’s older and wiser sister. I’ve been a Methodist preacher for thirty years now – it’s a long story, but basically at the time, the church where we worshipped in London was what they call a Local Ecumenical Project, both Anglican and Methodist, and when the time came to answer God’s call, it turned out to be becoming a Methodist preacher. Which turned out to be just as well when the Anglicans unilaterally pulled out, leaving us as a Methodist congregation only.

Anyway, I can’t tell you how pleased I am to be here with you this morning, having worshipped here on and off for the past 65 years. I was a very small child indeed when I first sat in the family pew down there, and my brother C wasn’t much more than a baby – M hadn’t even been born then. And although I haven’t lived here much since I was ten years old and went off first to boarding-school, and then to work first in Paris and in London, I have frequently worshipped here down the years, and always love it when I do come. And I have always loved looking at the statues carved into the pulpit – I have always felt sorry for the dragon, he looks so uncomfortable with St George treading on his wing like that!

And there is St Wilfred with his Bible, and two other saints round the other side that you can’t see from our pew. My father, who I know you will remember, said that when he was a small boy, he used to think St Wilfred was carrying a petrol-can rather than a Bible, so that he could come to the aid of stranded motorists – probably a good idea in his boyhood, when petrol stations were few and far between and the tanks on cars smaller than they are now.

Talking of my father, he used, you might remember, to have a fairly bottomless stock of Bible jokes and anecdotes, and one of these was that he said that if you asked him whether he preferred Martha or Mary, he would reply:
“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 events in the United States 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, and perhaps a few olives.
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 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.

But, you know what? Just look at the first reading this morning, from Paul’s letter to the Colossians. This letter may well have been written in about 62 AD, so probably less than 35 years since that evening in Bethany. People who had known Jesus as a human being would still have been alive. Maybe even Mary, Martha or Lazarus was still alive. They might have remembered that evening, Mary, sitting at her Lord’s feet with the men; Martha, bustling about in the kitchen and wishing for another pair of hands to help dish up. We’re not told what Lazarus was doing, or even if he was there, but if he was there, he was probably sitting at Jesus’ feet with his sister.

And yet, only a few years later, Paul writes of Jesus: “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible,” and “in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.”

Imagine – all the fullness of God sitting in your living-room eating olives! It kind of blows your mind, doesn’t it? And yet, this was what Martha and Mary experienced, and learnt to believe that Jesus was “the son of God who has come into this world”.

And, of course, the even more extraordinary thing is that we, too, can know Jesus, if not eating olives in our sitting-room, exactly, yet still alive and living within us – indwelling us, they call it – through the power of his Holy Spirit. Indwelling us, delighting in us, loving us, growing us, changing us, helping us become, day by day, more and more the person we were created to be.

You know this, of course. And you know, too, how easy it is to slip away from being God’s person, how it’s a commitment you have to keep on making, not just the once.

The first time you make such a commitment is huge – and, by the way, if you never have, you really do have nothing to lose by saying “Yes” to Jesus,
deciding to be God’s person,
deciding that what you say and do here on a Sunday
should carry over and be part of who you are during the week, too.
Truly, you have nothing to lose and everything to gain!
But the point is, even if you first consciously made that commitment, as I did, over fifty years ago, you know how you slip away, usually quite unintentionally, and have to keep on coming back and back. But the Jesus who let Mary sit at his feet, who reminded Martha that she, too, could, and should learn from him, the Jesus in whom the fullness of God was pleased to dwell – that Jesus will always, always, always welcome us back! Amen.

Who is my neighbour?

This story that Jesus told is perhaps one of the most famous. The phrase “Good Samaritan”, and even “Samaritan” have entered our language with very different meanings to the original. A Good Samaritan, these days, is anybody who helps someone else without thought for the consequences. The Samaritans are an organisation to help people who are feeling suicidal, just a telephone call away. And we know we are all supposed to be Good Samaritans and help people in need.

Down the years people have liked to think the priest and the Levite were too holy, too concerned with their religious duties, to stop and help. The man might be dead, so if they touched him they would become unclean and unable to fulfil their Temple duties. We assume that they, like many of the religious leaders Jesus wasn’t too happy with, strain out a gnat but swallow a camel. They tithe cumin and mint, but don’t help their elderly relations. And so on. But the text doesn’t say that. It just said they passed by. Quite apart from anything else, they were coming from Jerusalem, so if they had had Temple duties, they had finished them.

It’s possible, isn’t it, that they were afraid of an ambush. Perhaps the brigands who had attacked this man were lying in wait to attack anybody who came over to see if they could help. Perhaps the man wasn’t really injured at all, but lying there as bait to attract helpers. Perhaps they thought he was just sleeping off drink or drugs.

We don’t know, because Luke doesn’t tell us. Either way, the Priest and the Levite didn’t do what had been expected of them. They didn’t stop to help the man. We have no way of knowing their motives, and I suspect it would be a plan not to speculate too much.

And then along comes the Samaritan. Luke doesn’t say he is good. Perhaps he wasn’t. Perhaps he was a con-man, or a thief. Perhaps he beat up his wife, or raped prostitutes, or perhaps he really was good, trying to be God’s person to the best of his ability, trying to get on with everybody, ignoring the very real theological differences that separated the Samaritans and the Jews. We are not told. We have no way of knowing. All we are told is that he was a Samaritan.

In John’s Gospel, we are told that Jews have no dealings with Samaritans, but in fact there was some overlap. Jesus and his disciples were able to travel through Samaria without much problem, and this man seems to have been able to travel through Judea. Luke, who after all was himself a Gentile, doesn’t seem to have seen all that much difference between the two communities, although the Samaritans do seem to have been outsiders as far as the Jews were concerned. Whether they saw the Jews as outsiders is debatable.

Anyway, as we all know, the Samaritan either doesn’t think of the possibilities of an ambush, or if he does, it doesn’t worry him. Perhaps he was part of the ambush party, and came back to see whether the victim had died. We don’t know. We are not told. What we are told is that he tends the man as best he can, and then takes him to the nearest inn.

And here is the fourth person who doesn’t act as expected. The innkeeper seems quite happy to take in the wounded man and look after him. Even with the money the Samaritan leaves with him, that would be expecting a very great deal of the landlord of a roadside inn. The landlord would have expected to provide drink, a meal, and perhaps a bed for the night – arguably on straw in a common room, or perhaps a private room for the very rich – but not nursing care and tending someone who would be helpless for many days. He was an innkeeper, not a nurse! But, we are told, the innkeeper took in the sick man and cared for him. The innkeeper, too, was a “Good Samaritan” if you like, only he was probably Jewish!

So then, what is it all about? What does it mean for us? I think that, before we see if we can answer these questions, we need to look a bit at the context of the story. You see, Jesus doesn’t just tell it in a vacuum – we know why he tells it. A teacher of the Law – and Luke is far more likely to talk about teachers of the law, or scribes, than he is about priests or Levites, either – anyway, a teacher of the Law comes to Jesus with a trick question: “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” He’s hoping Jesus will give some kind of controversial answer and get himself into trouble, but Jesus always does seem to see through this sort of question and turns the question back on the scribe: “What is written in the Law? How do you read it?”

Now, first of all you notice that the lawyer asks what he must do to inherit eternal life. Not gain it, or receive it, or even earn it, but inherit it. It looks as though he reckons he’s probably already right with God, so when Jesus asks “How do you read it?” he is ready with the conventional answer:

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind; and, Love your neighbour as yourself.”

Now, we know from elsewhere in the Scriptures that this was a pretty conventional thing to say – devout Jews said it on their deathbeds, even! At least the first part of it. And Jesus is reported as quoting it to the rich young ruler in the other gospels. But this lawyer doesn’t get told to sell all he has and give it to the poor – he gets told “Do this, and you will live.”

Well, he’s not satisfied with that; he asks a follow-up question to try to get Jesus into trouble. “Well, who is my neighbour, then?” Who do I have to be nice to? Who can I get away with not being nice to? Maybe he should have phrased his question “Who is NOT my neighbour?” as that’s what it would seem he wanted to know.

So Jesus tells the story and, at the end, as you know, he asks “Who was the neighbour to the man that fell into the hands of robbers?” and the lawyer replies, “The one who cared for him.”

And Jesus tells him to “Go and do likewise!”

So what does it mean for us? I don’t know about you, but if I see someone lying on the ground, hurt, I’m far more likely to walk away sharpish, maybe dialling 999, but I’m very unlikely to stop and help. I’m not a trained nurse, and can’t be doing with drunks and so on. But perhaps you are good at that sort of thing? The priest and the Levite ought to have been – Jewish law commands that they have compassion on the sick and injured every bit as much as we Christians are expected to. We don’t know why they didn’t stop, and the story gives us no hints at all. Jesus is normally quite good, at least in Luke’s version of events, at telling us what the characters in his stories are thinking and feeling, but not in this case.

You will have heard, as I have, many, many sermons on this passage, telling us that we need to look out for those less fortunate than us. We need, in fact, to love other neighbour as we love ourselves. And we will have been told that our neighbour includes absolutely everybody; “The creed and the colour and the name don’t matter”, as the hymn says. And of course that’s true. But we are human, and often and often we fail to even notice a problem, never mind do something about it.

But then, there is the undoubted fact that many of us do not love ourselves. Facebook, recently, has had a plethora of memes reminding us to look after ourselves first so that we can look after others, and I sometimes find that uncomfortable, having understood – I was going to say having been taught, but I think it was me picking it up wrong – having understood that we were not supposed to want our own wants or to be anything less than content with our current lot, even if we were standing up to our neck in icy water! But one meme I liked reminded us that if we are on an aircraft and the oxygen masks come down, we should put our own mask on so that we can then help the person next to us with theirs.

The thing is, we can’t love our neighbour unless we are comfortable with ourselves, unless we have got ourselves right with God, unless we have allowed God to love us and heal us and start on the very long job of making us whole.

But if we can do that – I know I often say we need to let God work in us, but I’ve been realising lately that I am very bad at doing this. However, if we can, even for mere moments, then we will begin to be comfortable in our own skin, to value ourselves and to value our neighbours. And not only that, but to notice when they need something. It mightn’t be much – but how much do we actually notice other people. Bus drivers, for instance? Are they just remote figures behind a screen, or do you wish them good morning when you get on, and perhaps thank them when you get off? Supermarket checkout staff, too, are human beings…

Of course, “compassion fatigue” is very real; every other ad on television seems to want us to give three pounds a month to some charity or other, often with pictures of starving babies or cute snow leopard cubs. If one gave three pounds to every charity that asks, we’d soon go broke! Obviously sometimes we will both want and need to give – incidentally I do hope you are sponsoring Robert who is running for the Methodist charity All We Can this morning, but that’s beside the point – we probably donated something to one of the various charities helping Ukrainian refugees, for instance, and there are other global crises when giving money to the relevant relief organisation is the right thing to do. But at times it seems everybody wants a piece of the action! And when whatever the latest crisis is is happening at the other side of the world, it’s awfully difficult to remain engaged. These are not people we know, they are just people on the telly.

And yet God loves each and every one of them, just as He loves each and every one of us. And you can be very sure that, if you are wanted to be a neighbour to one of them, God will let you know. And also, give you the gifts you need to be able to be that neighbour! Amen.

Church Anniversary

 

It was, apparently, 65 years ago, in March 1957, that the foundation stones of this building were laid. I am not sure when the actual first service was held in the building, but I imagine it must have been in 1958 or 1959. A very long time ago! But I am told that the reading from John’s Gospel that we have just heard was used at that service, specifically focussing on verse 36: “Look, here is the Lamb of God!”

“Look, here is the Lamb of God!”

I wonder, if someone were to ask you what you meant by church, how you would answer? Most people who don’t go to church would probably say “That building on Brixton Hill”, or something similar. We, who belong to a church, would be more likely to say “The people of God”. We would probably talk of Brixton Hill Church and its buildings, rather than Brixton Hill Church and its people.

Mind you, having said that, buildings are not unimportant. Yes, we’ve learnt how to manage without, during the pandemic – but it’s not the same! And I don’t know if you’ve ever visited a really old church – I know some of the former King’s Acre people visited my family’s 13th-century church in Sussex a few years ago. I’m going to be preaching there in a couple of weeks and am really looking forward to it. Anyway, the point is, in a really old church, or a Cathedral, especially in those chapels in a Cathedral that have been set aside for private prayer, you get the feeling that it has been “prayed in” over the years. You become aware of God’s presence in the building. Perhaps you do here – I know I do, sometimes.

Of course, any building requires a great deal of upkeep – Cathedrals have, sadly, had to start charging people who only want to look round, rather than attend public worship, because they cost so much to maintain. Even a relatively modern building like this one takes a great deal of maintenance – Robert has been having an awful time lately chivvying the builders who have been repairing it, just ask him!

But most of us would, I think, agree that while a church meets in a building; the church is more than the building. Much more. People talk, of course, about “going into the Church” when they mean getting ordained, or, occasionally, entering religious life as a nun or monk. But basically we are the Church.

The Girls’ Brigade used to sing

“I am the Church,

you are the Church,

we are the Church together.

All who follow Jesus,

all around the world,

we are the Church together”.

And they were not wrong. We, God’s people met here, this morning, or following on the Livestream, we are the Church. Well, we are part of the Church!

And what we are part of is known as the Church Militant – the Church here on earth, fighting against evil. The larger part is known as the Church Triumphant, the saints in glory. The ones who fought the good fight, kept the faith, and who lived and died as God’s people.

Of course, the Church here on earth is far from perfect. Never has been. Even back in the 1^st century AD St Paul was having to write to the Church at Philippi and tell two of the women there, Euodia and Syntyche – or U-Odious and Soon-Touchy, as I have heard them called – to try to resolve their differences and to work together, and asked others in the church to try to help them do so. And, as we heard in our first reading, St Peter found it necessary to remind his readers that they should “Rid themselves, therefore, of all malice, and all guile, insincerity, envy, and all slander.”

Church squabbles are nothing new! As our own history will soon tell us, if we look back – and I’m not going to go into any details, you know them as well as I do!

But although we are far from perfect, we know that the Church is also a place where Jesus is. The Church is also a place where Jesus is. “Look,” said John the Baptist, “There is the Lamb of God.” As I just said, in many, if not most, churches you can come in and feel that this is a place that has been prayed in, a place where God has been at work, a place where God is. It is a place of healing, a place of power. A place where, as St Peter reminds us, we are being built into “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people.”

That’s pretty amazing, right? But then, there are people, we know, who feel that just attending public worship on a Sunday morning is enough, they don’t feel any need to take it further. I hope that’s not you – for you have, I promise you, nothing to lose by saying “Yes” to Jesus, to deciding to be God’s person, to deciding that what you say and do here on a Sunday should carry over and be part of who you are during the week, too. Truly, you have nothing to lose and everything to gain!

So we know that the Church is God’s people meeting together – or even not meeting together, for we remain God’s people during the week, when we are apart. We know, too, that the Church is a place where Jesus is, where we can say “Look, here is the Lamb of God”. At least, I hope and pray that this is as true of us as it is of many, if not most, Churches.

But there is another definition of “Church” that I’d like us to look at this morning, and that is, “The Church is the only organisation that exists primarily for the benefit of those who are not its members.”

“The Church is the only organisation that exists primarily for the benefit of those who are not its members.”

Sometimes we’re apt to treat the Church as though it were our own private club, a place where we meet our friends, a place where we receive the spiritual food we need, a place where we can worship God in the way that most appeals to us, and so on. In other words, it’s all about us! And, of course, in many ways it’s always going to be like that. We are inherently selfish creatures, and God has provided us with our churches for our own comfort and renewal. But nevertheless, it is still true that we should be looking outward, rather than inward. We should be reaching out into the community, loving people into the Kingdom of God – as, indeed, I think we are doing with our youth work and our Pop-In club, although much of our community work has been lost during the pandemic. But God will build it up again.

And you note that I said God will build it up again – we are not required to do it without help. St Peter reminds us that we are being built into a holy nation, God’s own people, not just for our own benefit – although I am sure that, too – but also “in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvellous light.”

“In order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvellous light.”

Jesus reminded us that when the Spirit came, we would be his witnesses throughout the world. Not that we could be, or that we ought to be, but that we would be. And so we are. If we are truly God’s people, then we are his witnesses, whether we’re here in Church, or out shopping, or at work or school. I know that, many years ago now, when I first encountered people who were consciously Christian, I really wanted them to like me. Quite the wrong reason for “inviting Jesus into your heart”, as we called it, but hey. Jesus is bigger than our wrong reasons! These young people – for we all were young then, very young – probably had no idea how attractive they were, but Jesus knew!

So, anyway. The Church is more than its buildings, nice though they are. The Church is more than professional Christians – clergy and so on. The Church is more than its people. The Church, too, is more than a base for reaching out into the community. All of these things are true. All of these things are part of being Church. But I would suggest that the main definition of Church, the one we want to look to on this Anniversary Sunday, is that it is a place where Jesus is. Jesus told us that where two or three are gathered in his name, he is there in the midst of us. And that is Church. A place where, I hope, we can look up and see the Lamb of God. Amen!

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