The Root of Jesse

 

Do you remember, back in September when the Queen died, the official announcement told us that the King and Queen Consort would remain at Balmoral that night, and return to London the next day.
King Charles became King the instant his mother died, and when the time comes for him to die in his turn, his heir –
presumably the current Prince of Wales –
will instantly become King in his turn.

Our Royal Family’s line of succession is pretty secure just now;
all being well, we know who the next few Kings will be.
But it hasn’t always been so.
Sometimes, when a reigning monarch dies without an obvious heir, a more distant relation is invited to become King, as when the first Elizabeth died and the then James V of Scotland became also James I of England, thus moving from the Tudor to the Stuart dynasty.
And after Queen Anne died, the next available Protestant monarch became George I, instituting the Hanoverian dynasty.

But what has this to do with our Bible readings this morning?
Well, the Davidic dynasty was in extreme danger, when this was being written.
The Assyrians had already taken over Israel and were threatening Judah, where the Kings were still descended from David.
The descendents of Jesse –
you remember, that was the name of David’s father –
the descendents of Jesse are about to be cut off, the tree cut down.
All that remains is a stump.

But you have seen tree stumps, haven’t you?
When they have cut down a tree, or it has blown down in a storm, leaving nothing but a stump.
And, often, a shoot grows out of that stump, often many shoots, and sometimes a whole new tree.
And here, Isaiah sees the stump that is what the House of Jesse is reduced to, and a shoot coming out.
And that shoot will grow into a tree, and bear fruit –
a new King, about whom we are told:
“The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him –
    the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding,
    the Spirit of counsel and of might,
    the Spirit of the knowledge and fear of the Lord –
and he will delight in the fear of the Lord.”

Christians have, of course, traditionally seen this passage as referring to Jesus.
It does, of course, but there was probably a local application, too.
But I don’t know how the picture of what is often called “the peaceable kingdom” could have had a local application.
A picture of a garden, perhaps a second Eden, where predators and prey were together with no fear, although what the predators could have eaten escapes me, since most are obligate carnivores and do very badly on a plant-based diet.
A place where children could play happily in snake pits, and where there was no hatred or destruction.
A place filled with the knowledge of the Lord “as the waters cover the sea”.

I wonder if or when that can ever come true, or a version of it, this side of Heaven.
After all, we are in a very dark place in our world just now, what with war, the energy crisis, prices spiralling out of control.
We have been there before, of course, and no doubt we will go there again in future times, but when we have just emerged from a global pandemic –
and in fact, Covid-19 is still around, although mostly it’s not nearly as serious as it was two years ago –
when we are just getting back together, to be hit by the current crises, the Queen’s death, three Prime Ministers in as many months… where is our hope in all this?

Well, our hope is where it always was and always has been, in Jesus Christ.
St Paul reminds us that Christ came for all, no matter who we are,
no matter what we have done.
And the outworking of that is that through the endurance taught in the Scriptures –
for often and often they had to endure far worse than we do –
the endurance, Paul says, “through the endurance taught in the Scriptures and the encouragement they provide we might have hope.”

And our hope, he reminds us, is in Jesus.
And so we must accept everybody, no matter who they are,
because Christ has accepted us.
And Paul quotes from Isaiah, that the Root of Jesse will spring up, and bring hope to the Gentiles.
Jesus is our hope.

Mind you, when we turn to our Gospel reading for today,
John seems much more fiery and threatening.
But the point is, who is he threatening?
It was the religious leaders of the day, the Pharisees and Sadducees.
Now, you have to remember that these were good men, holy men, and by and large they really did try to live as they thought God wanted.

But they were very exclusive.
They were Children of Abraham, and precious few other people were.
They reckoned that if you were rich, God had blessed you, but the poor were quite outside the pale.
As for people like tax-collectors, who collaborated with the occupying powers, and who sometimes overcharged people by more than the necessary amount –
they were not paid, but expected to pay themselves out of the money they collected;
you can quite see the temptation to charge far more than absolutely necessary.
Zaccheus, you remember, promised to repay fourfold those whom he had defrauded. People like Samaritans, the neighbouring tribe who had a few theological differences with the Pharisees, they were out.
People who were eunuchs, like the Ethiopian eunuch we read about in Acts –
they were out.
As for prostitutes, well…. Plus you had to be very careful not to go near the Temple if you were unclean, too, and it was all too easy to become unclean accidentally.

Anyway, the Pharisees and Sadducees were convinced that they were better at being God’s people than anybody else was.
But John says they need to produce fruit in keeping with repentance.

John’s core message was “Repent and be baptised”;
we have often interpreted repentance to mean being sorry for our sins, but what it really means is turn right round and go God’s way, not yours.
If you own a satnav and you are driving somewhere and misinterpret the instructions,
that computer voice is apt to say “Turn around when possible”.
You are not turning round just to retrace your steps,
but to go the way you need to go to get to your destination.

When the children of Israel were in the desert and started worshipping the Golden Calf, God was angry and threatened to wipe them all out and raise up a new tribe from Moses, but Moses begged him not to, and, in the old Authorised version, we are told “God repented” and didn’t wipe them out.
Well, obviously God has no need to repent in the sense of being sorry;
it just means he changed his mind up, and decided not to wipe them out, after all.

But the Pharisees and Sadducees couldn’t see John’s point at all.
They were interested in what he had to say,
but it didn’t actually apply to them, they thought.
But John said that their status as children of Abraham,
which they thought almost automatically made them right with God, didn’t make them special.
“God could raise up children of Abraham from these stones, if he wished!”

And then he speaks of the stump –
but in this case, the stump would be that of a tree cut down because it ceased to bear fruit.
Echoes here of Jesus in John’s gospel saying:
“I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener.
He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful.”

And talking of pruning, John the Baptist goes on to say that the One who will be coming after him, immeasurably greater, will have “his winnowing fork in his hand, and he will clear his threshing-floor, gathering his wheat into the barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”

And Isaiah, before he gets to his peaceable kingdom, tells us that Jesus “will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth;
    with the breath of his lips he will slay the wicked.”

It’s worrying, isn’t it?
I don’t know about you, but I find myself far more apt to feel that I’m not going to measure up.
I am terrified that I will be one of the branches, if not cut off, then at least severely pruned.

But, you know what?
I think I am worrying needlessly.
You see, I can’t –
and nor can you –
make myself into the person I was created to be.
It doesn’t matter how much willpower we have, we are never going to be who we were meant to be –
at least, not without Jesus.
In the passage I quoted earlier about Jesus being the true vine, he says that branches that bear no fruit will be pruned, certainly –
but he goes on to say that “If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit;
apart from me you can do nothing. If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers;
such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned.”

Of course, that leads me on to worrying that I am not remaining in him, but again, that’s a needless worry.
God has far more invested in our relationship than I do,
and I do know, when I think about it, that he will not let me fall out of the hollow of his hand!

I seem to have wandered away from the Root of Jesse a bit, but that’s okay.
The Root is still there.
It is still producing its shoots, the main branch being Jesus,
and our hope is still in Jesus.

What better words to end with than Paul’s benediction at the end of the passage from Romans that we heard read:
“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”

Hope.
Joy.
Peace.
May God fill each and every one of us with all of those!
Amen.

Getting Ready

 

So today is Advent Sunday.

It's the first Sunday in the Church's Year, and, of course, the first in the four-week cycle that brings us up to Christmas.
Christmas is definitely coming –
if you go by what the supermarkets do, it's been going on since late September!

It seems strange then, doesn't it, that the readings for this Sunday are about as un-Christmassy as you can get!
This from the Gospel we've just heard:

“For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark, and they knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away, so too will be the coming of the Son of Man.
Then two will be in the field; one will be taken and one will be left.
Two women will be grinding meal together; one will be taken and one will be left.
Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. ”

It's all about the end of the world!
The time when Jesus will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, as we say in the Creed.
Now, there are frequently scares that the end of the world is about to happen –
some cult or other claims to have deciphered an ancient text that tells us that it might occur on any given date –
about ten years ago, some people claimed an ancient Mayan calendar proved that the end of the world would happen on 21 December that year –
As you can see, it didn't!
And that was only one of a very long line of end-of-the-world stories which people have believed.
Sometimes they have even gone as far as to sell up all their possessions and to gather on a mountain-top,
and at least two groups committed mass suicide to make it easier for them to be found, or something.
I don't know exactly what....
Some Christians believe that they will be snatched away with no notice whatsoever, to the extent that a couple of them, worrying what would happen to their pets if they were taken very suddenly, have set up a site called After the Rapture Pet Care.
Apparently, some people who are either unbelievers or belong to another religion will undertake to take care of your dog or cat if you sign up.
This is, of course, in the USA, although I gather the idea started here as a joke.

People who believe in what they call the Rapture take it from this very reading, where it says that two people will be in the field and one will be taken and the other not....
but we don't know how much notice we get, if any!
It sounds to me rather more like the sort of pogroms where the dictator's army swoops down and takes people, chosen at random or not, away to imprisonment.

God is not like that, of course, but such things have happened throughout history.

Actually, the end of the world is a very difficult thing to think about
because it hasn’t happened yet!
The Bible shows us most clearly that the early church was convinced that it was something that would happen any minute now,
certainly in their lifetimes.
But here we are, two thousand years later,
and nothing has happened.
So most of us don’t really believe it will,
or if we do believe it, it isn’t a belief that’s in the forefront of our minds.
It doesn’t really affect the way we live.

But maybe it should.
Jesus said we don't know when it's going to happen.
Nobody knows.
He didn't know.
He assumed, I think, that it would be fairly soon after his death –
did anybody expect the Church to go on for another two thousand years after that?
Certainly his first followers expected His return any minute now.

Of course, in one sense Jesus has already returned through the coming of the Holy Spirit, indwelling each and every one of us as we give him permission.
But I don’t quite think this is what he is talking about here.
It is more about the end of the world.

What is clear from the Bible –
and from our own knowledge, too –
is that this world isn't designed to last forever;
it's not meant to be permanent.
Just ask the dinosaurs!
We don't know how it will end.
When I was a girl it was assumed it would end in the flames of a nuclear holocaust;
that particular fear lessened in 1989, but has now come back with a vengeance given what Putin has been threatening.
All we can do is pray this doesn’t happen –

but if it does, well… we will be with our dear Lord in heaven.

These days we think more in terms a major asteroid strike or, more probably, runaway global warming,

which the boffins seem to think has already started.
Or another pandemic.
We were fortunate in the recent one that the death toll, while horrendous, was still relatively low when you compare it to the fifty percent losses during the Black Death, and in other outbreaks of plague.
Our scientists worked so very hard to find an effective vaccine –

in fact, several effective vaccines –

and medical staff tried to find what treatment options worked best for those who had a really bad attack.
We did not, and will not die out because of Covid-19, but who knows whether another pandemic might be much worse?
What is clear, though, is that one day humanity will cease to exist on this planet.
We don't know how or when,
but we do know that God is in charge and will cope when it happens.

Whatever is going to happen, whenever it happens, we need to be ready.
Our readings today all reflect that.
Our Gospel reading sounds a bit disjointed, almost as though Matthew has collected odd bits of Jesus’ sayings.
But it still has a clear theme –
be ready, because you never know!

Some years ago there was an ad put out by the police, I think, saying that leaving your doors and windows open was absolutely inviting burglars to come in.
I don’t think Jesus could have seen that ad,
but the end of the gospel reading reminded me of it:
“if the owner of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming,
he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into.
Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.”

Okay, so we need to be ready.
Fair enough, but how?
How do you get ready,
how do you stay ready,
and above all, how do you go on being ready when nothing seems to happen?

I think the answer is also in the parallel with the thief in the night.
We make it a habit, don’t we,
of checking that our doors and windows are locked before we go out,
even on a short trip to Lidl or Tesco.
If we have our car, it’s automatic to check that we haven’t left anything visible, and that it is locked, before we leave it.
And we have insurance to cover us in case the worst happens anyway,
no matter how careful we’ve been.

Well, it’s the same, I think, in our Christian lives.
We can build good habits of prayer, of reading the Bible,
of fellowship and of coming to the Sacrament regularly.
These are what John Wesley called “The means of grace”,
and they are the building blocks of our Christian life.
They are as essential to our Christian life as food and drink are to our physical life.
But they are also habits that one can acquire or break.
You’re in the habit of locking your front door whenever you leave the house –
are you in the habit of contacting God every day, too?
You make sure you’ve shut your windows –
are you sure you take the Sacrament?
And so it goes on.

Parallels only work so far, of course,
especially because it’s not all down to us.
I know we sometimes talk as though it is,
and, of course, we are always free to say “No” to God –
though I do very much hope we won’t choose to do that.
But God has far more invested in the relationship than we do –
either that, or God is so far above us that he’s totally uninterested in us as individuals.
And we know that’s not true!
So it must be true that God is numbering every hair on our head,
and being far more interested in maintaining a relationship with us than we are with him.
We don’t have to do all the hard work.

Nevertheless, good habits are good habits,
and we need to acquire them!
And with God’s help, we can.
We don’t have to do it alone, because God indwells us,
through the Holy Spirit,
and enables us to actually want to read the Bible and pray, and worship, and take Communion, and so on.

We don’t often think about the end of times and the Last Judgement,
and that’s probably as it should be.
If we thought about it too much, we’d never get on with our lives,
and we’d end up being so heavenly-minded we’d be of no earthly use.
But we do need this annual reminder,
because we don’t want to end up living as if this life were all there is, either.
Obviously we don’t absolutely know that when we die,
we’ll go on with Jesus somewhere else.
It might just be wishful thinking on our part.
But that’s what faith is all about!
We can’t know, not really, but we can choose to believe it,
and to live accordingly.
And to work together with God to become the best we can possibly be.

And then, if, or perhaps when the unthinkable happens,
then we’ll be ready.
Are you ready?

Oh, one loose end –
in my parallel with burglar-proofing our houses,
I mentioned insurance.
Do we have insurance?
As Christians, yes, we do.
We have Jesus’ promise in John’s gospel:
“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.
Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.
Those who believe in him are not condemned;
but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God.”

Says it all, doesn’t it!

Job and Remembrance

 

“I know,” said Job, “that my Redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand upon the earth.

And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God.”

We are all very familiar with those words,

whether we know them from Handel’s Messiah

or from Martha’s reprise of them in John’s Gospel,

or even from this bit of the book of Job, which is where it came from originally.

It's a funny old story, isn't it, this story of Job.

Do you know, nobody knows anything about it –

what you see is totally what you get!

Nobody knows who it was written, or when, or why,

or whether it is true history or a fictional story –

most probably the latter!

Apparently, The Book of Job is incredibly ancient, or parts of it are.

And so it makes it very difficult for us to understand.

We do realise, of course, that it was one of the earliest attempts someone made to rationalise why bad things happen to good people, but it still seems odd to us.

Just to remind you, the story first of all establishes Job as really rich, and then as a really holy type –

whenever his children have parties, which they seem to have done pretty frequently, he offers sacrifices to God just in case the parties were orgies!

And so on.

Then God says to Satan, hey, look at old Job, isn't he a super servant of mine, and Satan says, rather crossly, yeah, well, it's all right for him –

just look how you've blessed him.

Anybody would be a super servant like that.

You take all those blessings away from him, and see if he still serves you!

And that, of course, is just exactly what happens.

The children are all killed,

the crops are all destroyed,

the flocks and herds perish.

And Job still remains faithful to God:

“Naked I came from my mother's womb,

and naked shall I return there;

the Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away;

blessed be the name of the Lord.”

So then Satan says, well, all right, Job is still worshipping you,

but he still has his health, doesn't he?

I bet he would sing a very different tune if you let me take his health away!

So God says, well, okay, only you mustn't kill him.

And Job gets a plague of boils, which must have been really nasty –

painful, uncomfortable, itchy and making him feel rotten in himself as well.

Poor sod.

No wonder he ends up sitting on a dung-heap, scratching himself with a piece of broken china!

And his wife, who must have suffered just as much as Job, only of course women weren't really people in those days, she says “Curse God, and die!”

In other words, what do you have left to live for?

But Job refuses, although he does, with some justification, curse the day on which he was born.

Then you know the rest of the story, of course.

How the three "friends" come and try to persuade him to admit that he deserves all that had come upon him –

we've all had friends like that who try to make our various sufferings be our fault, and who try to poultice them with pious platitudes.

And Job insists that he is not at fault, and demands some answers from God!

Which, in the end, he gets.

But not totally satisfactory to our ears, although they really are the most glorious poetry.

Here's just a tiny bit:

“Do you give the horse its might?

Do you clothe its neck with mane?

Do you make it leap like the locust?

Its majestic snorting is terrible.

It paws violently, exults mightily;

it goes out to meet the weapons.

It laughs at fear, and is not dismayed;

it does not turn back from the sword.

Upon it rattle the quiver, the flashing spear, and the javelin.

With fierceness and rage it swallows the ground;

it cannot stand still at the sound of the trumpet.

When the trumpet sounds, it says "Aha!"

From a distance it smells the battle, the thunder of the captains, and the shouting.”

Wonderful stuff, and it goes on for about three chapters, talking of the natural world and its wonders, and how God is the author of them all.

If you ever want to rejoice in creation, read Job chapters 38, 39 and 40. Indeed, my father asked me to read Job 39 at his funeral, which I duly did, with a brief explanation. And we read it to him a couple of times as he lay dying. He especially loved the bit about the warhorse that I quoted above.

And at the end, Job repents "in dust and ashes", we are told, and then his riches are restored to him.

But would even more children and riches really make up for those seven children who were killed?

I doubt it, which is one of the reasons it’s probably a story, rather than actual history.

But even still, Job makes one of the central declarations of our faith:

“I know, that my Redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand upon the earth.

And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God.”

“In my flesh, I will see God.” I wonder how much comfort that verse really is, when your cities are being bombed and your energy supplies disrupted, your children’s education interrupted and maybe you are even forced to flee your country and depend on the kindness of strangers for a roof over your head.

As has been happening, as I’m sure you know, in Ukraine over the past few months and, although things seem to be going badly for Russia just now, there is no sign of an end, or even a ceasefire. Many of you may know, or know of, Ukrainian refugees who are in this country temporarily until things improve. My sister-in-law is giving house space to one family, and I believe they are great friends, but naturally the family wants to go home. The son has already gone – he wanted to go and fight, but I think he has been persuaded to finish his university course first. But there are plenty of others – I know a girl who needs a room to rent; she has a good job that she can do remotely, but can’t afford a flat at London prices on Ukrainian wages!

You know, in many ways we have been very lucky here in the UK. Yes, this war is bringing increased energy prices – and increased profiteering by the energy companies – but we don’t, yet, have to suffer bombs and foreign soldiers stamping around killing the men and raping the women on the slightest provocation. Not yet, and I pray God we never will.

We were blitzed once, still just about within living memory – you can still see the scars in many local roads, with 1950s housing next to the 19th-century stock that remains. I pray it will be the last time, and I pray our armed forces will never be required to go and bomb foreign cities, too.

Today is the day we remember those servicemen and women who have given their lives in the service of their country. I don’t know about you, but I do know that I lost at least three relatives in the First War, two of whom have no known grave but are commemorated on the various memorials in and around Arras. The third one has a grave – my brother has just visited it and sent me photographs – in a tiny cemetery literally in the middle of nowhere, about two kilometres from the main road! And my father, and one of my grandfathers, saw service in the Second World War, too. I’m sure your families may have similar stories to tell, of people who served their country in this way. And, of course, not just those in the armed forces, but those who risked their lives bringing desperately-needed provisions across seas studded with enemy submarines, or who were dropped “behind the lines” to help the Resistance movements. And the countless millions whose lives were simply interrupted by the way – evacuated to safe areas, or directed to jobs that helped the “war effort”, such as making munitions or working on the land. All these we remember, too.

There are those who say that Remembrance services glorify war.
I think not.
They are not easy, of course.
For those who have been involved in war,
whether actively or by default because their whole country was,
they bring back all sorts of memories.
For those who have not been involved, they can seem irrelevant.

Many Christians, too, think that all fighting and killing is wrong,
and refuse to join the armed forces, even in a time of conscription.
I’m inclined to agree, I have to admit, but for one thing –
do we really want our armed forces to be places where God is not honoured?
That’s the big problem with Christian pacifism –
it leaves the armed forces very vulnerable.

We must, of course, do all we can to bring peace.
But almost more important is to bring hope.
To bring the good news that
Job, and then Jesus proclaimed.
“I KNOW that my Redeemer lives.”
“God IS the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob.”

We all find the concept of eternal life enormously comforting, of course.
You may well have known people who have died very suddenly; I know I have.
We may have known people who have been the victims of terrorist attacks, or just the random shootings and stabbings that seem to have happened far too often recently.
And we wonder, as Job must have done, where God is in all this.
Job, we are told, never lost faith –
but many people did when they saw the horrors of war.

But if God grants people eternal life,
if this life is not all there is,
if the best bit is still to come,
then death isn’t a total, unmitigated disaster.
Of course it is a disaster.
Of course we hurt, and ache, and grieve, and miss the person who has gone.
But we can know they haven’t gone forever, and it does help!

“In my flesh I shall see God.” It may not be much comfort when God seems far away and the enemy near, but it is something to hold on to in times of trial.

I certainly believe in eternal life!
Some preachers will say that God limits those who can get into heaven to those who have professed faith in Jesus,
but I think it is rather we who exclude ourselves than God who excludes us.
People who are seriously anti-God,
seriously anti-faith,
wouldn’t be comfortable in eternal life, would they?

God is a God of love, a God who delights in us,

who loves each and every one of us so much that Jesus came to die so that we can have eternal life.
“I KNOW that my Redeemer lives and that in the end he will stand upon the earth.
And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God.”

What Belongs to God

Sadly, I messed up the recording for this service!

I don’t know about you, but since the pandemic began I’ve hardly ever paid cash for anything.
I tend to use contactless payment via my phone, and even in places like France or Germany, which were far slower off the mark to adopt contactless payments, most places now accept cards.
But cash is still there, and for some things you have to use it.

And we’re used to our coins, aren’t we –
we barely even notice that they have a picture of the Queen on one side, and a few odd remarks in Latin printed round the picture.  The first coins featuring King Charles are to be issued next month, I understand, starting with a 50p piece.  

Our coins basically say Elizabeth, and will say Charles.
and then DG, which means by God’s grace;
Reg, short for Regina, means Queen or Rex, which means King,
and FD means Defender of the Faith –
a title, ironically, given to Henry the Eighth when he wrote a book supporting the Pope against the Protestant Reformation,

long before he wanted to divorce Katherine of Aragon and had to leave the Catholic church.

When I was a little girl, though, before decimalisation, coins were even more interesting, as they didn’t all have pictures of the Queen on –
the old shillings, sixpences, florins and half-crowns had often been issued during the reign of George the Sixth and pennies were often even older –

it was not unusual to find a penny that had been issued during the reign of Queen Victoria, even!
We didn’t have pound coins back then;

they were always banknotes
and there was also a banknote for what we now know as 50p, but was then called ten shillings.
It was quite a lot of money back in the day
a useful amount for visiting godfathers to tip one!

My father used to make us guess the date on a coin,
based on which reign it was, and if we were right we got to keep it

Not that we ever were right, so it was a fairly safe game for him,

but it made sure we knew the dates of 20th-century monarchs!

Different countries have different things on their coins, of course;

if you look at Euro coins, they have a different design on one side depending on which country issued them:

the German ones have a picture of the Brandenburg gate, or a stylised eagle;

the Irish ones have a harp.

Those Euro countries which are monarchies have a picture of their monarch on them,

and the Vatican City ones have a picture of the Pope!

This convention, of showing the monarch on your coins, dates back thousands of years, and was well-known in Jesus’ day.

But unfortunately, this raised a problem for Jesus and his contemporaries,

as the Roman coins in current use all showed a picture of the Emperor,

and the wording round the side said something like “Son of a god”, meaning that the Emperor was thought to be divine.

You might remember how the earliest Christians were persecuted for refusing to say that the Emperor was Lord, as to them, only Jesus was Lord? Well, similarly, the Jews couldn’t say that the Emperor was God, and, rather like Muslims, they were forbidden to have images of people, either.

So the Roman coins carried a double whammy for them.

They got round it by having their own coins to be used in the Temple –

hence the moneychangers that Jesus threw out, because they were giving such a rotten rate of exchange.

But for everyday use, of course, they were stuck with the Roman coins.

And taxes, like the poll tax, had to be paid in Roman coinage.

You might remember the episode where Jesus tells Peter to catch a fish,

and it has swallowed a coin that will do for both of their taxes.

But that was then, and this is now.

Now, Jesus is in the Temple when they come to him –

in the holy place, where you must use the Jewish coins or not spend money. “They”, in this case, are not only the Pharisees,

who were out to trap Jesus by any means possible,

but also the Herodians, who actually supported the puppet-king, Herod.

The question is a total trick question, of course.

They come up to Jesus, smarming him and pointing out that they know he doesn’t take sides –

so should they pay their poll tax, or not?

If he says, yes you must, then he’ll be accused of saying it’s okay for people to have coins with forbidden images;

it’s okay to be Romanised;

it’s okay to collaborate with the occupying power.

And if he says, no don’t, then he’ll be accused of trying to incite rebellion or terrorism.

So Jesus asks for a coin.

I expect it was the Herodians who produced one –

the Pharisees would probably not have admitted to having one in their pockets, even if they did.

And he asks whose image –

eikon, the word is –

whose image is on the coin?

And they said, puzzled, the Emperor’s of course, whose else would it be?

And we all know what he said next:

Give to the Emperor what belongs to the Emperor;

give to God what belongs to God.

It’s kind of difficult, at this distance, to know what he meant.

Was he saying we need to keep our Christian life separate from the rest of life?

God forbid, and I mean that!

If our commitment to God means anything at all,

it should be informing all we do, whether we are at worship on Sunday

or at work on Monday

or out at the pub on a Friday!

There is a crying need for Christians in all walks of life;

whether we are called to be plumbers or politicians,

bankers or builders,

retired or redundant!

Wherever we find ourselves, we are God’s people,

and our lives and values and morals and behaviour need to reflect that.

So what is Jesus saying?

It’s about more than paying taxes or not paying them.

It’s not about whether we support our government or whether we don’t.

We know from Paul’s letters that in the best of all worlds,

Christians should pay their taxes and live quietly under the radar,

exercising their democratic right to vote and not taking part in violent overthrow of a legitimate government.

Doesn’t always work like that, of course, but by and large.

Maybe the clue is in that word image - eikon.

For are we not told that we are made in the image of God?

If our picture were on a coin,

it would say round the side “A child of God”–

not, as for the emperors, meaning that we are gods ourselves,

but meaning, quite literally, that we are God’s beloved children.

Sure, sometimes God’s image gets marred and spoilt, when we go astray. I’ve seen coins that have been buried in the earth for years,

and they go all tarnished,

and sometimes, if they’ve been there for centuries, they build up an accretion of gunk round them to the point that you can’t possibly tell what they are.

But even that gunk can be cleaned off, with care –

do you remember those ads where the man dipped a penny into some cleaner or other, and it came up bright and sparkling?

Maybe Jesus is saying that this is not an issue to divide people –

Caesar gets what belongs to him, which is the coin,

and God gets what belongs to him, which is us!

No need to choose –

you don’t have to be either a quisling or a resistance worker.

We don’t separate what belongs to Caesar from what belongs to God –

we give ourselves to God, and the rest follows!

Is it, then, about possibly owing a small amount of money in tax,

but owing God a far greater amount –

our very being?

Yes, that is definitely part of it.

It was, I think, fifty-one years ago last month that I first consciously said “Yes” to God;

and yes, that does make me feel old!

But the more I go on with God, the more it seems not only possible, but also sensible.

You see, God created us in His image and likeness,

and not only that, but God redeemed us through Jesus,

and empowers us, by the Holy Spirit.

So yes, we do owe God our very being –

we are created by him, and without him we wouldn't exist.

It's not so much that we owe him the duty of giving ourselves back to him –

we do, of course, but we know that!

It's more about not being able to fulfil our potential on our own.

We are made in God's image, but unless we allow God to indwell that image,

to empower it,

we will never really fulfil our potential as human beings.

So we owe it to ourselves, almost as much as we owe it to God,

to say “Yes” to him, to open ourselves to Him.

So we are made in God's image, and as such we owe it to both God and to ourselves to give ourselves back to God.

But we also owe it to God and to ourselves to make sure that our image reflects God.

We owe it to God and to ourselves to make sure our image reflects God.

There's a wonderful book by an author called Georgette Heyer,

I don't know if people read her much these days,

but this book is called “These Old Shades”, and in it, one of the characters –

a child –

is taken to Versailles and sees the king, and her rather sleepy reaction at the end of the evening is, “He is just like on the coins!”

I wonder whether anybody would recognise God after having seen us.

Would they say, “He's just like on the coins”?

The thing is, we do mar God's image in us –

I mentioned earlier how coins can be so covered in the gunk of ages as to be unrecognisable.

But coins can be cleaned, renewed, restored....

Our prayer of confession today was one of the alternate Anglican ones, which I have always loved for the words “We have wounded your love and marred your image in us.”

“We have wounded your love and marred your image in us.”

This, for me, reflects the fact that we are made in God's image, and that sometimes that image gets distorted.

I am well aware that this sort of thing is apt to make us all feel guilty, apt to make us feel we must be terrible Christians, and so on.

But that's so not what I want to do here.

After all, there are plenty of other ways of distorting God's image –

look at the Pharisees, for instance, who tried to turn God into a set of rules and regulations.

Or in our own day, look at some of the more extreme Christian sects in the USA.....

Yet all of those are following God to the best of their ability.

Yes, they have got things tragically wrong.

Yes, they are distorting, marring, God's image in them.

But they are not, I think, any more evil than you or I are.

And God will, I pray, help them find their way back.

Because that, in the end, is what God is all about.

God minds far more about our relationship with him than we do!

We wander off, we get lost, marring God's image in us,

distorting Christianity into something very much less than it is –

oh yes, I've been there and done that –

and yet, every time, the Good Shepherd pulls on his coat and wellies, grabs his crook, and goes looking for us to bring us back into the fold.

We don't have to do it ourselves.

Indeed, it's when we try that the distortions are apt to happen.

We just need to be open to allowing God to keep us clean and polished and ready for action!

The coins that bear the emperor's image on them need to be given to the emperor.

But the coins that bear God's image –

we ourselves, each and every one of us who names the name of Christ as Saviour and as Lord –

those coins need to be given to God, reflecting His glory, and allowing Him to work in our lives to make us more and more like Him, and more and more the people He designed us to be.

Amen.

Mr Moneybags and the Big Issue seller

 

Once upon a time, there was a really big city gent, known as Mr Moneybags.
You might have seen him, dressed in an Armani suit,
with a Philippe Patek watch on his wrist,
being driven through Brixton in a top-of-the-range Lexus, or perhaps a Tesla, to his offices in the City, or Canary Wharf.
Mr Moneybags did a great deal for charity;
he always gave a handsome cheque to Children in Need and Comic Relief, and quite often got himself on the telly giving the cheque to the prettiest presenter.

But in private he thought that the people who needed help from organisations like Comic Relief were losers.
Actually, anybody who earned less than a six-figure salary was a loser, he thought.
He despised his five brothers,
three ex-wives,
ten children,
twenty-five grandchildren
and the hordes of mistresses,
secretaries,
assistants
gofers
and general flunkies
who surrounded him –
and they knew it, too.
Especially, though, he despised the homeless people,
who he thought really only needed to pull themselves together,
to snap out of it,
to get a life.

Particularly, he despised the Big Issue seller
who he used occasionally to come across in the car-park.
He would usually buy a copy, because, after all, one has to do one’s bit, but once in the car would ring Security and get the chap removed.

Laz, they called him, this particular Big Issue seller.
Not that Mr Moneybags knew or cared what he was called.
I’m not quite sure how Laz had ended up on the streets,
selling the Big Issue
or even outright begging.
It might have been drugs, or drink,
or perhaps he was just one of those unfortunate people who simply can’t cope with jobs and mortgages and families
and the other details of everyday life that most of us manage to take in our stride.
But there you are, whatever the reason,
Laz was one of those people.
He was rather a nice person, when you got to know him;
always had a friendly word for everybody,
could make you laugh when you were down,
knew the way to places someone might want to go, that sort of thing.

But what he wasn’t good at was looking after himself,
keeping hospital appointments,
taking medication,
that sort of thing.
And so, one morning, he just didn’t wake up,
and his body was found huddled in his bed at the hostel.
They couldn’t find any relations to take charge of it,
so he was buried at the council’s expense, very quietly, with only the hostel warden there.
But the warden always said, then and ever afterwards,
that he had seen angels come to take Laz to heaven.

At about the same time, Mr Moneybags became ill.
Cancer, they said.
Smoking, they muttered.
Drinking too much….
Rich food….
So sorry, there was very little they could do.
Now, of course, Mr Moneybags wasn’t about to accept this,
and saw specialist after specialist,
and, as he became iller and more desperate, quack after quack.
He tried special diets,
herbal remedies;
he tried coffee enemas,
injections of monkey glands,
you name it, he tried it.
But nothing worked and, as happens to all of us in the end, he died.

His funeral wasn’t very well-attended, either.
Funny, that –
you’d have thought that more of his
five brothers,
three ex-wives,
ten children,
twenty-five grandchildren
and the hordes of mistresses,
secretaries,
assistants
gofers
and general flunkies
might have wanted to be there.
But no.
In the end, only the ones to whom he had left most of his money were there,
and a slew of reporters,
hoping to hear that the company was in trouble.
Which, incidentally, it wasn’t –
whatever else Mr Moneybags may have been,
he was a superb businessman, and the company he founded continues to grow and flourish to this very day.

Anyway, there they were,
Mr Moneybags and Laz the Big Issue seller, both dead.
But, as is the way of things,
it was only their bodies which had died.
Mr Moneybags found himself unceremoniously told to sit on a hot bench in the sun, and wait there.
And he waited, and waited, and waited, and waited,
getting hotter and hotter,
thirstier and thirstier.
And he could see the Big Issue seller, whom he recognised,
being welcomed and fed and made comfortable by someone who could only be Abraham, the Patriarch.
After a bit, he’d had enough.
“Abraham,” he called out, “Couldn’t you send that Big Issue seller to bring me a glass of water, I’m horrendously thirsty?”

And you know the rest of the story.
Abraham said, not ungently,
‘Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things,
while Lazarus received bad things,
but now he is comforted here and you are in agony.
And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been fixed,
so that those who want to go from here to you cannot,
nor can anyone cross over from there to us.’
And he pointed out that Mr Moneybags’ five brothers,
three ex-wives,
ten children,
twenty-five grandchildren
and the hordes of mistresses,
secretaries,
assistants
gofers
and general flunkies
wouldn’t listen to Laz if he were to go back and tell them –
they really knew it already, thanks to Moses and the Prophets.
You note, incidentally, that Mr Moneybags didn’t ask if he could go back!

I think this story must have come as a huge shock to Jesus’ hearers. You see, back in the day, wealth was seen as a sign of God’s blessing – look how Abraham and Isaac became rich, or look at Job! Job quite believed God had abandoned him when his riches were taken away from him, but at the end, they were restored tenfold.

But by and large, if you were rich, God had blessed you; if you weren’t, then not. However, and this is a huge however, if you were rich, you were obligated to look after the poor. You weren’t to use your position to make matters worse for the poor; quite the reverse, you were expected to do what you could to alleviate their poverty. The prophet Amos, in our first reading, is warning his readers, painting a picture of rich people who were supposed to be using their wealth to tend to the welfare of God’s people, they were using it for their own comfort; sleeping on raised beds of wood inlaid with ivory at a time when most people slept on mats on the floor; eating veal and lamb at a time when most people at little to no meat; basically not giving a stuff about what happened to the poor as long as they had their own comforts!

Just like the rich man in our story. Basically, what he, and the people against whom Amos fulminates, were not doing was allowing God to transform them. They were proud. C S Lewis pointed out that pride is a terrible sin because “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.”

The rich man was proud. He thought himself better than Lazarus, and spent his time – well, not all of his time, but you know what I mean – looking down on him. So he couldn’t be looking up at God and allowing God to change him. He couldn’t be looking up at God and knowing that God was immeasurably greater than he was. He may or may not have paid lip-service to God – he probably did. But it was only lip-service as, indeed, his ordering the kitchen to give the scraps to Lazarus was.

It’s easy to pay lip-service, isn’t it? And much harder to be really involved. We can’t do it of ourselves, of course; we have to allow God into our lives to change us and grow us and transform us into the people he created us to be. And we can’t do that if we are busy looking down on other people – not necessarily the beggar outside the supermarket or the homeless man outside the Tube station, but, for instance, if we see somebody making a mess of a job, whether as a volunteer or in paid work, and we think how much better we could do it. Or if we see someone doing or thinking something we wouldn’t do or think, and again, we think how much better we are for not doing that.

Do you remember the Pharisee, in another story Jesus told, who thanked God that he wasn’t like the tax-collector in the next pew? “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! For me, it’s one of the most difficult things, not being pleased with myself for not being like someone I may or may not privately think isn’t doing a great job.

But that makes me like the Pharisee in Jesus’ story, like the rich man in today’s story. And while I am looking down on the tax collector or the beggar, I’m not looking up to God. And it’s only by looking up to God that I can stop looking down on the tax collector or beggar.

It’s one of those circular things, isn’t it? The more we can look up to God, the less we are able to look down on other people. And the less we look down on them, the more we are able to see them as people like us. Had the rich man really seen the beggar, he might not have treated him as a brother, but he might have told his people to see to it that he had warm clothes and a place to sleep, and a good meal each day – and maybe, as his self-esteem increased, even a job of some kind, assuming the beggar could hold down a job in the first place. But no, he just allowed him to be fed on scraps and otherwise ignored him.

We need to give thanks, not that we are better than this rich man, because we aren’t. St Paul says, “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!”

It is only through Jesus that we can be delivered from sin, and death, and only through him that we can become truly the people we were meant to be! Which you know, of course – I know you do – but it bears repeating every so often! Amen.

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.