Searching the Scriptures

The trouble with Luke's telling of the life of Jesus
is all the things he has to leave out!
Of all Jesus's childhood, adolescence and, indeed, young manhood,
we only get this tiny glimpse.
And there is so very much we don't know,
Which makes it very awkward, at times,
to know what to make of this glimpse of an adolescent Jesus,
such a tiny glimpse.

When my daughter was adolescent,
I spent a lot of time with this story!
It was so encouraging to know that Jesus, too, in his time,
had gone off to do his own thing without reference to his parents,
and when they had remonstrated, he was like
"You just don’t understand!"
And sometimes people said
"But, of course, it was different for Jesus!"
But was it?

You see, we know so very little.
All we are really told is that they went to Jerusalem every year for the
Passover, and that this year, Jesus was twelve.
And that is significant.
You see, from time immemorial, Jewish boys have become,
at the age of 13, a man.
They are required to keep the commandments,
and they may take their place in the synagogue,
taking their turns at reading the Scriptures.
Their presence helps to make up the "minyan", or quorum,
that is required before Jewish people can have a service.
And so on.
Nowadays, this transition is marked by a ceremony known as a Bar
Mitzvah, where the boy in question reads a passage of Scripture during a
special service in the synagogue, and makes a speech, and then there is
a bun-fight afterwards.
In Jesus' day they didn't do that, but the rising-13s would have expected
to be called upon to read the Scriptures in public any time after their 13m
birthdays.
So I am quite sure that those who taught the classes of 12-year-olds
really concentrated on the Scriptures,
to ensure that the boys knew their Bibles really thoroughly,
and would be able to make a good showing
whatever portion they were asked to read.

So Jesus, at 12, was engrossed in Bible Study.
And, for him, it became more than an interest,
more than something he had to Study at school
if he was to get good marks and avoid trouble.
It became a passion.
Now, here is where we get a little stuck,
because it simply isn't clear how much Jesus knew about who he was,
when he was 12.
We don’t know whether Mary and Joseph had told him anything about his
conception,
Or that Joseph was not his natural father.
We don’t know whether he knew there was anything special about him at
hope he didn’t.
I hope he had a really happy childhood,
quite untouched by these things.
And probably he did.

God, after ail, had chosen Mary to be his earthly mother,
and Joseph to act as "Dad" on purpose.
But nevertheless, as Jesus studied the Scriptures,
became engrossed in them.
God helped them become real to him.
And, of course, Jesus had endless questions.
I'm sure his parents did their best to answer him,
but perhaps they didn't know all that much themselves.
And his teachers, perhaps, didn’t have the time they would have liked to
answer his questions -
Or perhaps he wanted to go more deeply into these things than they
cared to do in an academic environment.
Who knows?
Once again, we are not told.
But we do know that when he reached Jerusalem that year,
he found all that, for then, he was seeking with the scribes in the Temple.
They knew.
They could answer his questions,
in the way that the folks back home in Nazareth could not.
They could deal with his objections,
listen to him,
wonder at his perspicacity at such a young age.

I hope the scribes didn’t laugh at him;
it's not clear from the text, but they might have.
But probably not, if his questions were sensible and to the point.

And Jesus, typically adolescent,
totally forgets about going home,
forgets that his parents will have kittens when they find he's not with
them,
forgets to wonder how he's going to get home,
Or even where he's going to sleep –
or, perhaps, thinks a vague mention of his plans was enough.
Anyway, Aunt Elizabeth and Uncle Zach will put him up, he’s quite sure.

And his parents thought he was with the company –
they would be travelling with a group of people, probably mostly from Nazareth.
It wasn’t just so safe to make that journey other than in a caravan of people, donkeys, merchants, and so on.
This gives us a glimpse that Jesus was, at that time, a normal human boy.
He was probably off with his friends –
they would tended to walk together, away from the grown-ups,
and then in the evening they’d all sit round one fire, singing, perhaps;
maybe a different parent each evening.
He’s fine, they thought.
He’s with the others.
And then they found he wasn’t…. panic!
So they went rushing back to Jerusalem –
not the safest thing to do on your own, but needs must. And there he was, safe and well.

No, his parents didn't understand;
of course they didn’t.
How could they?
It was, perhaps, the first glimpse they had had that he was somebody
very special.
Maybe Mary remembered the events surrounding his birth.
In any event, they were not aware of what he was talking about.
I expect they were livid with him, but then, that curious “I must be about my Father’s business” –
hurtful, to Joseph, but then, when have adolescent kids ever really thought about other people’s feelings?

Of course, later on, Jesus knew that searching the Scriptures was not
enough.
Remember what he said to the Pharisees:
search the scriptures because you think that in them you have
eternal life;
and it is they that testify on my behalf.
Yet you refuse to come to me to have life."
He knew that you needed more than just the words on the page –
but at twelve years old, this was what had intrigued him,
fascinated him,
to the point of ignoring anything else.

Jesus was fascinated by the Scriptures, but then – so what?
What has this got to say to us, this dark and dismal Christmas so unlike any other that we can remember?
Some of us may have teenage children or grandchildren and much of this story resonates with us!
But even if we don’t, it’s lovely to see that Jesus, growing up, was a normal human boy.
All too often, we forget that he was human, as well as divine.
The passage from the Epistle, which we didn’t read,
emphasises his divinity rather than his humanity:
“The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.
For in him all things were created:
things in heaven and on earth,
visible and invisible,
whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities;
all things have been created through him and for him. 
He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.
And he is the head of the body, the church;
he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy.
For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him,
and through him to reconcile to himself all things,
whether things on earth or things in heaven,
by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.”

Well, yes, but that passage, from Paul’s letter to the Colossians, emphasises that Jesus was divine.
He was.
He is.
But also human –
and this little glimpse of him growing up shows that.
It gives us a Jesus of flesh and blood, if you like;
a Jesus who played and sang with his friends,
who could get engrossed in a new interest to the exclusion of all else…
For me, it makes him more real, more approachable.
I hope it does for you, too.

I was interested to see that the story was paired with the reading we heard from Isaiah –
one of my favourite passages in the whole of Scripture!
And could anything be more appropriate for us right now?
“The desert and the parched land will be glad;
    the wilderness will rejoice and blossom.
Like the crocus, it will burst into bloom;
    it will rejoice greatly and shout for joy.
The glory of Lebanon will be given to it,
    the splendour of Carmel and Sharon;
they will see the glory of the Lord,
    the splendour of our God.”
and so on and so forth – wonderful words of comfort. It’s not now, it’s a one day, but one day…. One day. Maybe one day I will be able to hug my grandsons again. Maybe one day we’ll be able to travel. Maybe one day we will be able to sing “Joy to the World” and “Christians, awake!”

And the picture at the end of that passage, of the redeemed walking across the desert highway, singing as they go –
perhaps that was what Jesus experienced walking to Jerusalem with his friends and family.
And one day, we will, too. Amen.

 

St Nicholas

 

I hate to tell you, but I’m not going to preach on today’s readings! Instead, for reasons that will become clear in a bit, I’m going to tell you a story.

Once upon a time, long, long ago, in a – well, not in a galaxy far away, as this story takes place on this earth, but certainly in a country far away, a little boy was born. No, not Jesus of Nazareth – this birth took place a couple of hundred years later, and the little boy grew up to be one of Jesus’ followers. He was born in the city of Patara, in what is now Turkey, and you will remember from your reading in Acts that this was one of the places that St Paul visited during his travels, so it’s quite probable that his parents or grandparents were either converted by St Paul, or by the church he established there. His parents were rich, by the standards of their day, and when they died when the boy was quite young, he inherited all their money. But because he loved Jesus, he didn’t think it right to keep the money for himself, and began to give it away to the poor and needy in the area.

He dedicated his whole life to God, and was made Bishop of Myra while still a young man. One famous story about him tells of a poor man with three daughters, whom he could not hope to marry off as he had nothing to give for their dowries, something that was considered vital back in the day. And the future for unmarried women back then was bleak – slavery was probably the best option. So this young Bishop, anonymously, threw three purses of gold, one for each daughter, through the window of their house, and the purses landed in the shoes the girls had put to dry by the fire.

There are lots of other stories about this man – some probably legendary, as when three theological students, traveling on their way to study in Athens were robbed and murdered by wicked innkeeper, who hid their remains in a large pickling tub. It so happened that the bishop, traveling along the same route, stopped at this very inn. In the night he dreamed of the crime, got up, and summoned the innkeeper. As he prayed earnestly to God the three boys were restored to life and wholeness.

There are several stories of his calming storms for sailors, and one story tells how during a famine in Myra, the bishop worked desperately hard to find grain to feed the people. He learned that ships bound for Alexandria with cargos of wheat had anchored in Andriaki, the harbor for Myra. The good bishop asked the captain to sell some of the grain from each ship to relieve the people's suffering. The captain said he could not because the cargo was "meted and measured." He must deliver every bit and would have to answer for any shortage. The Bishop assured the captain there would be no problems when the grain was delivered. Finally, reluctantly, the captain agreed to take one hundred bushels of grain from each ship. The grain was unloaded and the ships continued on their way.

When they arrived and the grain was unloaded, it weighed exactly the same as when it was put on board. As the story was told, all the emperor's ministers worshiped and praised God with thanksgiving for God's faithful servant!

Back in Myra, the Bishop distributed grain to everyone in Lycia and no one was hungry. The grain lasted for two years, until the famine ended. There was even enough grain to provide seed for a good harvest.

The Bishop, of course, was made a saint when he died. And the stories of his miracles didn’t stop coming. One very early story tells how the townspeople of Myra were celebrating the good saint on the eve of his feast day when a band of Arab pirates from Crete came into the district. They stole treasures from the church to take away as booty. As they were leaving town, they snatched a young boy, Basilios, to make into a slave. The emir, or ruler, selected Basilios to be his personal cupbearer, as not knowing the language, Basilios would not understand what the king said to those around him. So, for the next year Basilios waited on the king, bringing his wine in a beautiful golden cup. For Basilios' parents, devastated at the loss of their only child, the year passed slowly, filled with grief. As the saint’s next feast day approached, Basilios' mother would not join in the festivity, as it was now a day of tragedy. However, she was persuaded to have a simple observance at home – with quiet prayers for Basilios' safekeeping. Meanwhile, as Basilios was fulfilling his tasks serving the emir, he was suddenly whisked up and away. The saint appeared to the terrified boy, blessed him, and set him down at his home back in Myra. Imagine the joy and wonderment when Basilios amazingly appeared before his parents, still holding the king's golden cup!

This man became the patron saint of children, and the patron saint of sailors, too. And as the years and centuries passed, he was revered in Christian countries all over the world, both Orthodox and Catholic. In the 11th century his remains were moved from Myra, now called Demre, which was under Moslem rule, to a town in Italy called Bari, where he is venerated to this day. Nuns started to give poor children little gifts of food – oranges and nuts, mostly – on his feast day. And his cult spread right across Christendom.

You will notice that I haven’t said his name! Who knows who I have been talking about? Yes, St Nicholas, Bishop of Myra. And now, these days, transmogrified into Santa Claus.

Today is his feast day, which is why I’ve been telling you his story, but, of course we associate him more with Christmas. Although in many European countries, children would have put their shoes outside their bedroom doors last night for St Nicholas to fill with small gifts. A few years ago, Robert and I went to the Christmas markets in Cologne on St Nicholas’ Day, and there was St Nicholas on the public transport network there, giving sweets to children (with their parents’ permission, of course); we saw him doing it!

But the association with Christmas came about because of the Protestant reformation – seriously! If you were Protestant, you didn’t revere saints, so you couldn’t possibly have St Nicholas giving you oranges and nuts on his feast day!

Here in England, with our gift for religious compromise, our folk traditions changed to include Father Christmas and yule logs and things, but in many Protestant countries, particularly the USA, Christmas Day was considered “just another day”. But it seems that German colonists brought the St Nicholas tradition to the USA, and gradually he became the “jolly elf” of the famous poem.

And, of course, the illustrations for the Coca-Cola advertisements began to settle his image as the fat old man we know today. A far cry, really, from a young Bishop in ancient Turkey!

But what, you may ask, has this got to do with us?

How does it affect us on this second Sunday of Advent in this pandemic year, when many of us won’t be able to celebrate Christmas as we usually do?

It’s going to be a strange, sad Christmas for many this year. Okay, some people will be glad not to have to socialise or perhaps even more glad to have an excuse not to have to invite their family to eat and drink too much, but for many people it will be a real hardship. We’ll hate not being allowed to sing carols, I expect – I know I shall, and belting them out in the shower really doesn’t count! Nor does singing on Zoom, as it distorts so!

But I find it comforting to know that even the secular side of Christmas has its roots in Christianity. Father Christmas was a devout Christian! And he is going to come this year – our politicians have said so!

Similarly it is comforting to know that we are loved by God. Isaiah, as we heard earlier, reminds us that

God, like a good shepherd, takes care of his people.
    He gathers them like lambs in his arms.
    He holds them close, while their mothers walk beside him.

I don’t know about you, but this year I really need to be reminded of God’s love. Emmanuel means “God with us”, and whatever happens, whatever we can or can’t do this year, we know God will be with us.

So as we prepare for our scaled-down Christmas, and continue with whatever Advent observance we have undertaken, let’s remember that even Santa Claus worshipped the God who is with us. Amen.

The Coming King

Preached via Zoom during lockdown.

So, Advent.

In a normal year people would starting to celebrate Christmas already –
the shops would have had their decorations up since the beginning of last month, or even earlier,

and the round of office parties, works celebrations, school festivities would be starting any day now.
And the endless tapes of carols and Christmas songs that would be played in the shops, I should think they’d drive the shop assistants mad!

But in a normal year, here in Church, Christmas wouldn’t have started yet,

and wouldn’t for another four weeks.  In fact, it still hasn’t, and still won’t,

because right now we are celebrating Advent, and it seems to be another penitential time, like Lent.

Were we allowed public worship, those churches that have different colours for the seasons would have brought out the purple hangings, and many would have no flowers except for an Advent wreath.

But not this year, when we are still in lockdown until, at the soonest, the end of this week, when shops where we might be doing our Christmas shopping are closed, where we can’t even meet in person to worship.  I’d even trimmed some masks in purple –the colour for Lent and Advent –specially!!!  I hope I’ll be able to use them before Christmas, but who knows?

But, even this year, Advent is really a season of hope.  We look forward to “the last day when Christ shall come again” to establish the Kingdom on earth.  We also look back to those who’ve been part of God’s story, including John the Baptist and Jesus’ Mother, Mary.

Today, though, our readings are about the coming King.  Our first reading, from the prophet Isaiah, tells how the prophet, and perhaps the people for whom he was speaking, longed and longed to see God in action.

“Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down,

that the mountains would tremble before you!

As when fire sets twigs ablaze and causes water to boil,

come down to make your name known to your enemies

and cause the nations to quake before you!”

I think we can probably all identify with that this year!

Scholars think that this part of Isaiah was written very late, after the people of Judah had returned from exile. They would have remembered the stories of the wonderful things God had done in the olden days, in the days of Abraham and Sarah, of Isaac and Jacob, of Moses, and of David the King – and then, they would have looked round and said “But hey, why isn’t any of this happening today?”

They reckoned the answer must be because they were so sinful.

“You come to the help of those who gladly do right,

who remember your ways.

But when we continued to sin against them,

you were angry.

How then can we be saved?

All of us have become like one who is unclean,

and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags;

we all shrivel up like a leaf,

and like the wind our sins sweep us away.

No-one calls on your name

or strives to lay hold of you;

for you have hidden your face from us

and made us waste away because of our sins.”

It does sound very much as though the prophet were longing for God, but somehow couldn’t find him, in the mists of human sinfulness and this world’s total abandonment of God.

One of the interesting things about this pandemic is how it has begun to bring people back to God.  It’s too early to tell whether it will last – after all,

“God and the Doctor we alike adore

But only when in danger, not before;

The danger o'er, both are alike requited,

God is forgotten, and the Doctor slighted.”

Nevertheless, you got people watching streamed services who wouldn’t normally go to Church; I believe All Souls, Langham Place, had a vast international congregation during the first lockdown.  And I have noticed that many YouTube services, those from my daughter’s church, for instance, or my mother’s, get many more views than they ever get congregations on a Sunday!  So God is definitely doing something during this time; exactly what, I don’t know, and what God is saying about how to be church in the 21^st century, I also don’t know – but I suspect we must think about this, and not just go back to “same old, same old” when restrictions are lifted, hopefully before this time next year.

Isaiah longed and longed to see God at work, feeling quite sure that God had abandoned his people.

Of course, as it turned out, God hadn’t abandoned his people at all! Jesus came to this earth, lived among us, and died for us, and Isaiah’s people now knew the remedy for their sin.  But Jesus himself tells us, in our second reading, that his coming to live in Palestine as a human being isn’t the end of the story, either.

Somehow, someday, he will come back again. He obviously doesn’t know all that much about it while he is on earth, and rather discourages us from speculation as to when or how. But he draws pictures for us:

“The sun will be darkened,

and the moon will not give its light;

the stars will fall from the sky,

and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.

“At that time men will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory.

And he will send his angels and gather his elect from the four winds,

from the ends of the earth to the ends of the heavens.”

But elsewhere he tells us that even when there are plagues and wars and rumours of war, we mustn’t assume he is going to return imminently.

Mind you, today, as at no other time in history,

communications are such that if Jesus were to come back,

we’d know about it almost as soon as it happened –

look how quickly news spreads around the world these days.

Half the time you hear about it on Facebook or Twitter before the BBC has even picked up on it. 

Although that is very often fake news,

people either posting misleading information or genuine misunderstandings.

But Jesus' return would be something totally unmistakable.

But lots of generations before ours have thought that Jesus might come back any minute now,

from the overthrow of the Temple in 70 AD,

through the various plagues and pandemics,

wars and invasions,

right down to this current pandemic.

And Christians throughout history have lived their lives expecting him to come home.

We have remembered Jesus’ warnings about being prepared for him to come, but He hasn’t come.  And we get to the stage where we, too, cry with Isaiah:

“Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down,

that the mountains would tremble before you!”

 

Like Isaiah, we long and long to see God come and intervene in this world, and wish that He would hurry up.  And that’s perfectly natural, of course.  Some folk have even got to the stage of believing it won’t happen, and have given up on God completely.  But Jesus said it will happen, and one has to assume He knew what he was talking about.

But that doesn’t mean that we can blame God – if You had come back before now, this wouldn’t have happened. Every generation has been able to say that to God, and it’s not made a blind bit of difference.  So maybe there’s something else.

You see, in one way, Jesus has come back.

Do you remember what happened on the Day of Pentecost, in that upper room? God’s Holy Spirit descended on those gathered there,looking like tongues of fire, and with a noise like a rushing mighty wind, and the disciples were empowered to talk about Jesus.

And we know from history, and from our own experience, that God the Holy Spirit still comes to us, still fills us, still empowers us.

One of the purposes of these so-called penitential seasons is to give us space to examine ourselves and see if we have drifted away from God, to come back and to ask to be filled anew with the Holy Spirit. Then we are empowered to live our lives as Jesus would wish.  We don't have to struggle and strain and strive to “get it right” by our own efforts. God himself is within us, enabling us from the inside. Jesus doesn’t just provide us with an example to follow, but actually enables us to do it, by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

All of us will face the end of the world one day.  It might be the global end of the world, that Jesus talks about, or it might just be the end of our personal world. Until this year, we expected, here in the West, to live out our life span to the end, and many of us, I am sure, will do just that, pandemic or no pandemic.  But we can’t rely on that.

You never know when terrorists will attack – or even muggers, or just a plain accident.  We can’t see round corners; we don’t know what will happen tomorrow.

None of us foresaw this pandemic, which has taken so many lives – although, it has to be said, far fewer than in most previous pandemics.  The Black Death, after all, is thought to have killed over half the population of Britain, which makes the 0.08% of the population who have so far died of Covid-19 look like peanuts!

Although, of course, each and every one of those who has died has probably left their family devastated, we must never forget that they are individuals, not numbers. They are people who God loved, and knew, and cared for.

But whether it is tomorrow, or twenty, thirty, forty or fifty years from now, whether of Covid-19, of an accident, or of “frailty of old age”, which is what they put on my father’s death certificate, one day each and every one of us will die, and then, at last, we will meet Jesus face to face.  And we need to be ready.  We need to know that we have lived as God wants us to live – and when we’ve screwed up, as we always do and always will, we’ve come back to God and asked forgiveness and asked God to renew us and refill us with his Holy Spirit.

We can only live one day at a time, but each day should, I hope, be bringing us nearer to the coming of the King.
Amen.

The Great Commandments

 I did actually leave a little more time between the prayer at the start and launching into it than can be heard on the recording - this is because I made a nonsense of the recording and had to concatenate the prayer and the main sermon, and cut it just too fine!!!

Today is called Bible Sunday, largely because of the Collect for the Day, which, when I was young, used to be the Collect for the second Sunday in Advent, but has since been moved!

“Blessed Lord, who caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning:
help us so to hear them,
to read, mark, learn and inwardly digest them
that, through patience, and the comfort of your holy word,

help us so to hear them,
to read, mark, learn and inwardly digest them
that, through patience, and the comfort of your holy word,

we may embrace and for ever hold fast the hope of everlasting life,” and so on.

I had to learn it off by heart as a schoolgirl!

I wonder, if you were asked,
what you would think was the most important rule in the Bible?
Some people would be horrified at the thought that any one rule could be more important than another,
as they would say that all the Bible is the inspired Word of God and we need to obey all of it –
and then they don’t, being perfectly happy to wear polycotton clothes or eat bacon and oysters.
Other people would pounce on their own pet hate, finding justification for it somewhere in the Bible, even if it is a bit of a stretch –
gay marriage, for instance,
or abortion,
or divorce,
Sunday trading or sex before marriage.

Still others would try to use the Bible to justify their political worldview, whether far right, far left, or somewhere in between.
Or to place perhaps undue emphasis on social justice,
or homelessness, or poverty.
But in our Gospel reading, when Jesus was asked what the most important rule in the Bible was, he replied that it was to love God, one’s neighbour, and oneself.
Love, for Jesus, was the most important thing.

Now, you know as well as I do that you’re apt to find whatever you look for in the Bible.
If you want to find a picture of God as determined to send people to hell at all costs, and only grudgingly accepting those who trust Jesus,
then it’s easy enough to find that.
If, on the other hand, you want to find a God who moves heaven and earth to save people, any excuse will do not to condemn someone,
then it’s easy enough to find that, too.
We have to accept that our reading of the Bible is always going to be flawed, we’re always going to read it through the lens of our own prejudice, our own experience, our own political viewpoint.
Or, if we read with the help of a daily commentary,
of that commentator’s prejudice, experience, political viewpoint, and so on.

But Jesus said that the greatest commandment is love.
Love God, love your neighbour, love yourself. Anything else is subordinate to that.

So what is he talking about, and how do we do it?
Our English language lets us down here, unusually.
Normally, as it has both Latin and German roots,
we have several synonyms for most words, words that mean the same thing, like illness, sickness and disease,
to name the one that is on top of most people’s minds just now.
But when it comes to love, it lets us down,
as we only have the one word that has to cover an awful lot of meanings,
from loving God down to loving cheese on toast,
including loving
our families,
our friends,
our pets,
our old teddy-bear,
our hobbies
and the person we're in love with!

In Greece they managed better, and had several different words!
There is “storge”, or affection,
the kind of love you feel for your child or your parents
then there is “eros”,
which is romantic love
“philia”, which is friendship,
and “agape”, which is divine love,
and this is the word that is used in this passage,
and is actually only found in the New Testament.

It is also, as you may or may not know, the word that St Paul used in that lovely chapter in 1 Corinthians,
when he talks of the nature of that sort of love:
“Love is patient;
love is kind;
love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude.
It does not insist on its own way;
it is not irritable or resentful;
it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth.
It bears all things,
believes all things,
hopes all things,
endures all things.
Love never ends.”

One of the interesting things is that when Jesus reinstates St Peter after he has denied him, you remember, by the lakeside,
when he says to him “Simon, son of John, do you love me?”
he uses the word “agape”.
Peter can’t quite manage that, so he, when he replies
“Lord, you know that I love you”,
he uses the word “philia”
in other words, “Lord, you know I’m your friend”.
Then when Jesus again asks him, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?”,
he again uses the word “agape”,
and Peter again replies using the word “Philia”.

And then the third time, Jesus himself uses the word “philia” –
which is why Simon Peter was so hurt.
He’s already said twice that he is Jesus’ friend,
why does he have to say it a third time?

Simon Peter found that committing himself to agape love,
to God’s love,
was pretty much impossible.
I’m not surprised, are you?

Let’s look at it again:
“Love is patient;
love is kind;
love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude.
It does not insist on its own way;
it is not irritable or resentful;
it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth.
It bears all things,
believes all things,
hopes all things,
endures all things.
Love never ends.”

This is the sort of love that Jesus was talking about, when he told us to love God with all of our being, and to love our neighbours as ourselves.
We need to be centred on God, not on ourselves.

But how do we do that?
After all, most people manage pretty well without God, and even those of us who try to be God’s people spend vast swathes of time doing other things,
sleeping, for one, or cooking, or working….
We are, of course, still God’s people while doing all those things,
but it’s not often at the forefront of our minds!

Jesus said we need to love God, our neighbour and ourselves.
St John equates loving God with loving our neighbour,
saying, basically, you can’t have one without the other.
“Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God
everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.
Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.
God's love was revealed among us in this way:
God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him.
In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us
and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.
Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another.”

And a bit later on, he says
“Those who say, `I love God', and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars
for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen,
cannot love God whom they have not seen.
The commandment we have from him is this:
those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.”

But then, just to get us even more confused, he says
­“Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God,
and everyone who loves the parent loves the child.
By this we know that we love the children of God,
when we love God and obey his commandments.”

So for John, loving God and loving our neighbour,
our brothers and sisters,
are one and the same thing.

And, indeed, that God's love for us is first and foremost –
our love for God is just a response to that.

And I think he's probably right.
But it's not always easy, is it?

Again, I dare say we would find it easier if we were more aligned with God.
The trouble is, quite apart from anything else,
our human loves can be so desperately flawed.

You might think that there is nothing more wonderful than the love between parents and children
but how easily that love can turn into wanting to dominate the child,
to dictate how they should live,
what they should do,
which university they should attend;
which career they should follow;
and so on, often up to and including the type of person they would like them to marry….

And I don’t need to spell out just how easily romantic love can go wrong,
do I?

As for friendship, you would have thought it would be difficult for that to go wrong.
People tend to be friends because of shared interests
Robert and I have a great many very dear friends with whom we would not otherwise have anything in common, apart from our love of skating.
That is the thing that we are friends about.

But sometimes friendship can be more about excluding the other person, not including them.
Particularly among children, of course, but it can happen among adults.

Sadly, we see it a lot in the churches –
we exclude those who, perhaps, are not of the same denomination as we are, or don’t worship God in quite the same way.
Or perhaps we are Evangelical and they are not, or vice versa, so we tend to be sniffy about their way of being a Christian, and exclude them.

As I said at the beginning, we all read the Bible through the lens of our own prejudices,
and we are apt to exclude those who don’t read it quite the same way we do.

But if Love is the most important commandment in the Bible, then we mustn’t exclude anybody, for whatever reason.  Not even if they hold views we find abhorrent.

I don’t know about you, but I found it really difficult when Donald Trump was taken ill with Covid-19 the other week –
how do you pray for someone you are required to love,
but whose policies and values you really don’t like?
In the end, I just said “Oh well, God, you sort it out!”
because it was far too difficult to pray the way I knew I ought….
I sometimes have to resort to that when it comes to praying for our own Government, too!

We are told the most important thing is to love God, our neighbour and ourselves.
Now loving ourselves is, very often, the most difficult bit.
It's all too easy to have the wrong kind of self-love,
the kind that says “Me, me, me” all the time and demands its own way –
the absolute opposite, in fact, of the love that St Paul speaks about in 1 Corinthians.
You can't love your neighbour –
or God, either, for that matter –
if you are full of that sort of self-love.

But then there is the equal and opposite problem –
we don't value ourselves enough.
We don't really like ourselves, we have a big problem with self-image,
we are not what the French call “comfortable in our own skins”.

And often it is the people who appear most self-absorbed,
most unable to love others,
who are the most wounded inside,
and who are totally not comfortable with themselves.
And again, it is only through the love of God,
and by the power of the Holy Spirit,
that we can be made whole,
and thus enabled to love ourselves and other people, as we should.

So really, it's all one –
we love, because God first loved us
we can't love God without also loving our neighbours
we can't love our neighbours unless we love ourselves –
or, at the very least, have a healthy self-image,
which amounts to the same thing
and we can't love ourselves unless we are aware that God loves us!

So the important thing, as it always is,
is to be open to God's love more and more
to continue to be God's person
and to continue to be open to be being made more and more the person God designed us to be.
To be open to a different interpretation of the Bible to the one we grew up with.
To know that if we get love right, the rest will fall into place.
To know that be fully human is to be fully God's person.
Amen.

As we forgive...

 

I have to admit that the gospel passage set for today is not one of my favourites. I find it gives a very odd picture of God, as though God is only waiting for us to feel the slightest bit of resentment against someone as an excuse not to forgive us.

Well, that isn't like the God I know, so why did Jesus tell this story? We know from elsewhere, the Lord's prayer, for instance, that we need to forgive before we are forgiven, but why? What difference does it make to us?

Well, let's look at the story in context.

The story comes in a selection of Jesus' teaching, including the story of the lost sheep, and the bit where Jesus says what to do if someone sins against you. You may have thought about this last week: first of all you talk to them privately, then if they won't listen, you take someone else along for moral support, then you take the matter to the church, and if all else fails, you, quote, treat him as though he were a pagan or tax collector, unquote. Although given how Jesus was prone to treat pagans and tax collectors, loving them into the Kingdom of God, I don’t think he actually meant to shun them!

But then Peter comes along, probably in a tearing rage, and wants to know how many times you have to forgive someone. I wonder who'd been getting on his nerves! It sounds like someone had. And Jesus says, not just seven times, the way the Jewish law says, but uncountable times. Seventy times seven; you'd lose count long before you got that far. And then he tells this story.

So, what does this story mean?

I think we are supposed to see ourselves as the person who owed the king a fortune, and the other servant is someone who has hurt or upset us in some way. I suppose that Jesus is saying that no matter how much someone else may offend us or hurt us, it's nothing compared with how much we need God's forgiveness.

But then, what is forgiveness? In this context, it is described as letting someone off a debt. But, like everything to do with Christianity, there is a lot more to it than that. It is more than just allowing us not to pay the penalty for what we have done wrong. It has to do with healing and reinstatement and generally being made whole.

Because sin isn't so much about what we do – although that too, of course - but also about who we are. Let's face it, most of us here today would not go out and deliberately commit a dreadful sin, or not most of the time, anyway. But we know that deep down we are not whole. We are not perfect. We need God's grace, and his healing, and his love if we are to come anywhere near being the person he designed us to be.

For me, confession isn't so much a matter of saying "I'm sorry," but more a matter of facing up to who I am: yes I am the kind of person who would do this; no I'm not perfect; yes, I do need Jesus. And, of course, so does everyone else.

As I'm sure you know, most people who commit crimes seem to do so out of their own inadequacy. That doesn't excuse them, or anything, but it does help to explain it. Because we, too, are inadequate people, although possibly less inadequate than someone who goes round knocking old women on the head.

Everyone needs God. You do, I do, those who attack people simply because of the colour of their skin do. Because it is only through God that we can become whole people. And, just as we need to accept ourselves for who we are, so we need to accept other people for who they are. In fact more so, because while we can decide we need to change, and we can do something about ourselves, with God's help, we cannot make that decision for others. Other people must make their own decision. We can't force someone else to become a Christian, or to stop drinking, or lose weight, or come off drugs, or anything else. We can, of course, ensure they do no harm to others, and we can offer them opportunities to change, but we can't force them to.

You remember the story of the Prodigal son, I expect. The son who asked for his share of inheritance and went into the world to have some fun, and when he was in the gutter decided to go home again. And the father ran to meet him, and put on a massive celebration for him, and had obviously been longing and longing and longing for his son to come home again.

But the father couldn't make the son come home. He had to wait until the son chose to come home of his own free will. What's more, the son had to accept that his father wanted him home again. He could have said "Well, no, I don't deserve all this," and rushed off to live in the stables, behaving like a servant, although his father wanted to treat him as the son he was. The son had to receive his father's forgiveness, just as we do.

And don't forget, either, the elder brother, who simply couldn't join in the celebrations because he couldn't forgive his brother. How dare they celebrate for that lousy rotter! I don't know whether he was crosser with his father for having a party, or with his brother for daring to come home. I feel sorry for him, because he allowed his bitterness to spoil what could have been a good time.

And that is exactly what happens to us when we do not forgive one another. We allow our bitterness to spoil what could have been a good time with God.

So how do we forgive others? Sometimes it just doesn't seem possible that we can ever manage to forgive someone. But we must, or we can't make any further progress in our journey towards wholeness. Well, the only way I have ever found that works is to pray about it. God is a terrific person to pour all your bitterness and anger out on to. God can take it. And if you are really honest with him about your feelings, some surprising things can happen. You might find, for instance, that it isn't really the other person you are angry with, it is you. Or perhaps it's God himself you need to forgive, and that can be difficult, too.

I remember, years ago, being very angry with God after someone I loved had died in an accident – God could have prevented the accident, God could have healed her, and so on. I remember saying to someone that I hoped I managed to work through my grief soon because it would be nice to be able to pray about something else for a change!

The thing is, when we come to God and admit we are angry, or hurt, or upset, by someone or something that has happened, God doesn't tell us that we mustn't feel like that, or that we are very wrong to feel like that, or even that this isn't how we're really feeling. God isn't like that. God enters into our pain, and shares it. Oh, it might be pointed out that you are indulging in a fit of self-pity, if that's what is happening – all too easy, don't you agree! – but he does sympathise and he does listen.

And as we go on praying, something happens. We let go of the self-pity – that is always the first to go – and we gradually work through the anger, and the pain, and the sorrow, and, next thing we know, we have forgiven whoever it was we needed to forgive.

The acid test for me is if I can ask God to bless someone who hurt me, and mean it. And could I see them at a Communion service and wish them God's peace? It's surprising how often I can, if I have prayed.

So, then. We need to forgive other people, we need to forgive ourselves, and occasionally we need to forgive God himself before we can receive God's forgiveness. It isn't that God won't forgive us - heavens, God's forgiveness is as constant and unremitting as all of God's character – it is that we can't receive God's forgiveness if we are full of bitterness and pain and anger. There's no room to let God in if we are too busy holding on to our own feelings.

The debtor, in Jesus' story, hadn't really grasped what the King had done for him. He hadn't hauled in that he had been forgiven his debt. He went on acting as though nothing had happened, which is why he required his debtor to pay him back. He was too busy focussing on his own feelings, and hadn't really grasped that he was now free from debt, his burden had rolled away, so he should help other people lose their burdens.

It's only really when we are prepared to put our own feelings down that there is room for God to act. I remind you, too, that in our first reading Paul tells us not to be snooty about our brothers and sisters who are Christians in a different way from us, or who have scruples about things that we don't have scruples about, like sex or divorce, or same sex marriage, for instance. "Who are you to pass judgement on servants of another? It is before their own lord that they stand or fall. And they will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make them stand." In other words, what they do is none of our business, and we need not to judge them.

Basically, when it comes to other people, we must put down our own feelings and think of theirs. And that way, we make room for God to act.

So, is there anyone you need to forgive this morning? Do you need to forgive yourself? Do you need to forgive God?

You may have noticed that we haven't had a prayer of penitence yet. We're going to, now. Let's take a few moments of quietness, and then I'll lead us in prayer.

In peace, let us pray to the Lord.

Being Together

 I expect you know that the Gospels were only written down about 50 or 60 years after Jesus’ death. A lot of things happened during those years, of course, and although we know how accurate oral transmission can be, there are a few places where it looks as though an extraneous passage got inserted. I don’t quite mean extraneous, I don’t think – but a passage attributed to Jesus that perhaps wasn’t what he actually said, but what the early Church thought he ought to have said. And part of the passage we heard just now is, I think, one of those passages, mostly because it talks about the Church, a gathering of Christians – and such a thing didn’t exist in Jesus’ day. But whatever, it got into our Bibles, so we need to read it and learn from it.

It does seem, at first reading, extraordinary, though. We know from elsewhere that Jesus tells us never to put limits on our forgiveness. We know we must forgive, or it’s impossible for us to receive God’s forgiveness, we block ourselves off from it.

And we are told never to judge. We’re told to sort out what’s wrong with ourselves first – you remember how Jesus graphically told us to remove the very large log from our own eyes before we could possibly deal with the tiny speck that bothered us in someone else’s.

But we are human. No matter how much we want to love our neighbours as ourselves, it’s difficult. It’s easy enough to love suffering humanity en masse, to send a text to a certain number to give three pounds towards relieving some kind of community suffering somewhere else. It’s easy enough to throw an extra box of tea-bags into the food bank box at Tesco’s, or to donate to the Brixton soup kitchen. It’s even relatively easy to do small things to lower your carbon footprint – to take reusable produce bags to the supermarket, to be scrupulous about recycling, and so on.

Now, don’t get me wrong, all these are good and right and proper things to be doing, and we should probably all do them more than we actually do. But they are all relatively easy – the difficult bit comes when we have to start interacting with other people, and loving them.  “To love the world to me’s no chore. My problem is that lot next door!” That’s when we’re apt to forget to be loving, when we are apt to go our own way, when we’re apt to hurt people, most probably totally unintentionally. The careless word, the accidental insult – or even, sadly, the intentional one.

Now, obviously, if we realise we’ve hurt someone, the thing to do is to apologise at once. Sometimes there are times when we don’t really want to apologise – they started it, it was their fault. Well, even if it is, we are the ones who need to apologise, if only because it makes us bigger than them…. Well, perhaps not for that reason, but you know what I mean.

But what if it is they who hurt you? The human thing to do is to hit out and hurt them back, but we’re not supposed to do that, and with God’s help we won’t. This passage tells us what to do – first, go and explain what has gone wrong, and if they agree and apologise, all is well and no harm done. Then you take a couple of friends along to witness that you had a problem and to try and help you be reconciled, and then, finally, take it to the church. The church, note – not the world! And then, the passage says, if they still won’t listen, let them be to you as a tax gatherer or a gentile. Which, on first reading, sounds as if you should shun them completely, which was how Jewish people of the time behaved towards them.

But Jesus didn’t, did he? Remember the story of Levi, who was a tax collector, and Jesus called him to become one of the disciples. Remember Zaccheus, who resolved to pay back anybody he had cheated after Jesus loved and forgave him and went to eat with him. Remember how many times he talked with, and healed, Gentiles, non-Jews, people who observant Jews would have nothing to do with.

So what is the church to do with those who won’t see that they’ve hurt someone, or if they do see it, don’t care? From Jesus’ example, it looks as though we have to go on loving them, trusting them, and caring for them. Heaven, as one paraphrase puts it, will back us up. Obviously, there are very rare occasions when steps have to be taken, if a child or a vulnerable adult is at risk, for example, but mostly things can be put right without that. And even when steps do have to be taken – and the Methodist church has systems in place to organise such steps, so our safeguarding people know what to do – we still have a duty to love and care for the perpetrator.

Now, the next part of the passage is really not easy to understand. If, says Jesus, or the Church speaking in Jesus’ name, two or three agree on anything in prayer, it will be granted. But we know that, with the best will in the world, this doesn’t always happen. We have all seen times when our prayers, far from being answered, appear to have gone no further than the ceiling. But then again, were we only looking for one answer to our prayer? Were we telling God what to do, as, I don’t know about you, but I find I’m rather apt to. Were we just talking at God, and not trying to listen, trying to be part of what God is doing in the world? All too easily done, I’m afraid.

But the final sentence – ah, now that brings hope. “For where two or three come together in my name, I am there with them.”

You see, in the Jewish faith, you need what’s called a minyan, a minimum of ten people – in many traditions, ten men, not people. If there are only nine of you, you can’t go ahead with the service. But not for we Christians. We know that even if there are only a couple of us, Jesus will be there with us and enabling our worship.

And that, in these strange times, is very comforting. We haven’t been able to meet together for worship for so long – I was supposed to be coming to you on March the 29^th of this year, but of course I couldn’t. Couldn’t have, anyway, as I was ill with this wretched virus and couldn’t even get out of bed at that stage! And now it is September, five months later, and at last I can be with you. But we are still restricted, and if the pandemic gets worse again, we may well be stopped from meeting again for a time. But even if we have to restrict ourselves to our so-called “bubbles”, we know that Jesus will be there with us.

I noticed, didn’t you, how much God was there during the worst of the pandemic. The ministers of the various denominations, and often the congregation, too, worked so very hard to stream services so that we could join in from home. We sometimes watched three services in one day – the one David and his cohorts put on from the Southwark and Deptford circuit, then I very often watched the service my mother’s church put out – especially if my mother or sister were reading the lesson – and a couple of times watched the service from my daughter’s church, as she was terribly clever about mixing the choir’s solo singing so it sounded like the choir, and once one of my grandsons was leading the Lord’s Prayer. And I know there were many, many other services we could have watched – and an awful lot of people did, people who perhaps wouldn’t have dreamt of going to church under normal circumstances.

And there were – and still are – Zoom fellowship meetings, and on other platforms, people have met for worship from many different countries around the world. It is amazing how God has kept his people together in these difficult times. I do wonder, don’t you, what this is saying about being Church, not just in the middle of a pandemic, but going forward. Many churches, I think, will continue to stream their services as a matter of course. Many more will consider having their various committee meetings on Zoom, which, quite apart from anything else, means you don’t have to rush through your supper and have indigestion, and the meetings finish much earlier!

But, and of course there’s a but, because there’s always a but, this is reserved for those who have the technology to join in – not everybody has broadband at home, or unlimited data on their phones. In some countries, even having a phone would be a privilege. We say “This is where God was in the pandemic”, and I think that’s true – but we also have to remember those places where they really did have to rely on just their immediate families for fellowship, as there was no other option. And we know that, even if it was just a husband and wife together, Jesus was there with them. As he is with us now, and will be whenever two or three of us meet in worship. Amen.

Waving or Drowning

Unfortunately the recording stopped half-way through; I have no idea why.  There is, however, an extremely poor video here; I can't hear a word I'm saying, but that might be my headphones....But oh, it was good to be back in the pulpit after so long! 

These are two very familiar stories we've heard read this morning, aren't they?  The story of Joseph and his – I was going to say his technicolour dreamcoat, but that's Andrew Lloyd Webber, not the Bible!  And the story of Jesus walking on the water, which is the one episode that people who know nothing of Jesus seem to know about.

That story is particularly familiar to those of us who’ve been part of the Zoom worship, since we did a meditation on it the other week.

So anyway, Joseph.  Talk about dysfunctional families – his was the very worst.  His father, Jacob, had been a liar and a cheat, as had his maternal grandfather.  And Joseph himself was the spoilt favourite –his father had two wives, you may remember, Rachel, whom he loved, and Leah, whom he didn't but was tricked into marrying anyway.  He also had a couple of kids by Leah's and Rachel's maids, Bilhah and Zilpah, but Rachel, the beloved wife, had had trouble conceiving, so Joseph and his full brother Benjamin were very precious, especially as Rachel had died having Benjamin.

He, it seems, was still too young to take much part in the story at this stage, but Joseph was well old enough to help his brothers – and, we are told, to spy on them and sneak on them to his father.  And stupid enough to boast of self-important dreams.

It's not too surprising that his brothers hated him, is it?  Obviously, he didn't deserve to be killed, but human nature is what it is, and the brothers were a long way from home and saw an opportunity to be rid of him.  At least Reuben, and later Judah, didn't go along with having him killed, although they did sell him to the Ishmaelites who were coming along.

Joseph has a lot of growing up to do, and we all know the story of what happened and how, in the end, he was able to forgive his brothers and help save them from famine.

Let's leave him for the minute, though, and go on to this story of Jesus walking on the water.

This is the thing that everybody knows about Jesus, that he walked on water, and even those who don't realise that the Jesus who walked on water is the same Jesus whose birth is celebrated at Christmas know “walking on water” as some kind of metaphor for the divine.

But there's more to the story than that, just as there is more to Jesus than someone walking on water!  Jesus didn't go much for spectacular displays of his divine power – that wasn't what he was about at all.In fact, you may remember that he refused to be tempted in that way when he was being tempted in the wilderness.  He mostly kept who he was to himself, until the right time came.

And now it was the right time to join the disciples.

If you were here last week, you may remember that he had just heard of his cousin John’s death, but any attempt to get away for a bit to come to terms with it was foiled by the crowds, who came after him.  And he had compassion on them, we are told, and healed their sick, and then fed them with what looked like no more than a small boy’s packed lunch.

But he really did both need and want some time alone with God.  He had told his disciples to go on ahead while he stayed behind to pray, and at some time in the wee small hours he was ready to join them.  They should have been at the far side of the lake by now, but they were up against a contrary wind.  I've never been to the Sea of Galilee, but I'm told by those who have that the storms can blow up very suddenly, and the disciples, although experienced fishermen, were struggling slightly.

And then, here is Jesus, walking towards them on the water.  Most of them are terrified, except for Peter, who says, “Lord, if that's really you, order me to come out on the water to you!”

And Jesus tells him to come, and he comes, and then he finds he really is walking on the water, and panics.  Peter is a strong swimmer, he didn't really need to panic, but in the dark and the cold and the confusion.... well, Jesus grabs him and they get into the boat – and then suddenly it's calm and quiet.

Now, I don't know any more than you do whether this is a true story or not.  It almost sounds as though it was a dream; or perhaps it was a legend that got into the story of Jesus at an early stage.  Or perhaps it really did happen.  At this distance, it doesn't matter; what does matter is that the story got into our Bibles, and so God means us to learn from it!

But what?  What can we learn from either this story or the story of Joseph?  What is God saying to us in the middle of this pandemic, when our worship is not what we are used to, when we are a little unsure about even meeting together for worship in the first place?

Joseph must have wondered where God was in all this.  His life had been turned upside down in a matter of moments, from being the favoured, and favourite son, to being a slave.  He must have wondered where God was.

And similarly, Peter.  Peter is the one who wobbles between enormous faith – “Lord, tell me to come to you across the water!”– and then doubt and panic.  We know he is prone to panic – look how he denies Jesus at the end.  And he, too, must have sometimes wondered where God was, whether it was all a nonsense….

But we have seen God in this pandemic, you know.  We have seen how people who wouldn’t dream of going to church have been watching streamed services.  We have seen how some churches have picked up multinational congregations, almost, it seems, without trying.  Even at our own Zoom service, the other week,  R and I were in the Alps,and then there was a friend of G’s from New York and H and Y in Ghana…. And we were one, together, in worship.

We have seen, too, how people have scrambled to learn how to use modern social media to stay in touch, to worship together.  Think of the hundreds of thousands of ordinary clergy who have made a huge effort – and many are still making it – to get a worship service on YouTube each week, or even more often, for their own congregations and others.  And the many ordinary people who have learnt to record themselves leading prayer or reading Scripture, ideally without getting the giggles – my mother, who was one of them, said that was the most difficult part.

Oh yes, God has been there, and God has been doing extraordinary things with His Church.

Thinking about it, it’s not really a question of “Where is God in all this”?  We have seen God’s hand at work in so many different ways during this pandemic.  We have learnt that there are many different ways of being Church, not just gathering on Sundays, although that, too….

So the big question is, what next?  The pandemic is very far from over, and we may be closed down again at any time.  I know Kristin has been talking of restarting our Zoom worship meetings in September for the sake of those who still don’t feel able to come to Church.

I don’t know what the answer is.  I don’t know what God has planned for us in either the immediate or the long-term future.

But I do know that we need to be available for him to work through us.  Most of us, perhaps all of us, are available to him, of course, whether it’s about ringing up friends who still aren’t comfortable going out, or getting shopping for people, or sitting with those who have been bereaved, or those who have worked so hard to get the church as safe as it possibly can be for public worship.  But the thing is, whatever the future holds, we need to be allowing God to transform us even more fully into the people we were designed to be.

God couldn't use either Joseph or Peter as they were.  Joseph had to grow up and stop being an immature brat. As you probably remember, we're told that he was accused of rape and left to languish in prison for several years, during which time he did grow up, and became an invaluable administratorand was thus able to help organise famine relief when it became clear that there was to be a massive famine.  He matured enough to forgive his family, and to help them all settle in Egypt where, for several generations, they were happy and comfortable.

And God couldn't really use Peter the way he was, either.  Peter was transformed, of course by the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.  Not that he would claim to be perfect, even then, but he became someone God could use.

I'm not sure how much, if anything, Joseph knew of God, other than as the sender of dreams.  His transformation was a slow and painful process.  Ours may be, too – but I'm sure of one thing, and that is that the more we are open to God, the more we commit ourselves to being God's person, the more honest we can be with ourselves and with God about how chaotic our lives are and how badly we get things wrong, then the easier it is for God to transform us.

And it’s not just during a crisis like this one. Remember the old saying:

“God and the Doctor we alike adore
But only when in danger, not before;
The danger o'er, both are alike requited,
God is forgotten, and the Doctor slighted.”

We don’t want to be among those who have called on God in this crisis and then go and forget Him as soon as it’s over.  Not that I think any of us would do that – but maybe some of those who are just learning to value worship services, just learning to pray, might need our help to remain God’s people once life gets back to whatever passes for normal.

Of course, we don't have to wait for that transformation to have fully happened before God can use us!  We can still be used, ready or not.   And God does use us, sometimes, often even, without our knowledge.  But never, I think, without our consent.

Amen.