The Treasurer

“Here is some water.
What is to keep me from being baptised?”

This is an odd little story, the one we heard from Acts, isn't it?
I wonder who these people were,
what they were doing,
and, above all, why it matters to us this morning.

Well, finding out who these people are is probably the least difficult part of it.
The man was, we are told, a eunuch who held a high post in the government of the Queen of Ethiopia.
Now, we do know a little about her
her official title was Candace, or Kandake, or even Kentake
nobody is really sure,
but if you know somebody called Candace,
that's where the name comes from.
Anyway, this one was called Amanitore, apparently,
and her royal palace of Jebel Barkal in the Sudan
is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Her tomb is also in the Sudan, in a place called Meroë.
Confusingly, the area that our Bibles call “Ethiopia” or “Kush” is actually in what is now Sudan,
and present-day Ethiopia was then the Kingdom of the Axumites!
Anyway, the Queen isn't important, except that you should understand that she was a ruler in her own right, not just a regent
Amanitore, for instance, was co-ruler with Natakamani,
who may have been her husband, but was more probably her son.
The Candaces were very powerful, and could order their sons to end their rule by committing suicide if necessary.
So a senior treasury official in her government would be a pretty high mucky-muck back then.

We know rather more about his employer, though, than we do about the treasury official himself.
He might not even have been a Kushite, which is the more proper term for Ethiopians back then –
the word “Ethiop” in Greek basically just means someone from sub-Saharan Africa.
He probably was a eunuch, though;
many people in positions of authority were, in those days, rather like in the Middle Ages in this country they were usually in holy orders of some kind.
Basically they were people who were celibate, for whatever reason, so as not to have divided loyalties between their job and their families –
with all the stuff one hears about work-life balance,
and the sort of hours people who work for American companies are expected to put in, maybe they had a point!
Although, of course, the people in the Middle Ages were voluntarily celibate, which our friend could not have been.
He was probably a slave, or at least born into slavery,
and brought up to eventually get this high and trustworthy position.
There is, of course, plenty of form for this –
look at Joseph, who was sold into slavery in Egypt but ended up as a hugely influential administrator in Pharoah's court.

And the same was true for this man.
We don't know his name, which is unfortunate as I don't like to keep referring to him as “The Eunuch” as though it were the most important thing about him, so let's call him “The Treasurer”.
He was probably born into slavery, maybe into a family who belonged to the Ethiopian court, and raised from an early age to serve the Royal Family.
I have no idea what sort of education he would have had,
but he obviously was an educated man;
he could read, which was not very usual in that day and age,
and what is more, he could read Greek or Hebrew, I am not sure which,
but neither could have been his first language.

And when we meet him, he has just been to Jerusalem to worship God.
Again, I have no idea how he became what's called a God-fearer, a non-Jew who worships God without converting to Judaism,
but he could not have been a convert, or proselyte as they were known, because he was a eunuch,
and the Old Testament forbids anybody mutilated in that way to enter the Temple.
And now he is on his way home –
he must have been a pretty high-up official to have been allowed to go on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, don't you think?

I wonder whether he bought his copy of the Book of Isaiah during his visit?
I don't know whether it was in the Greek translation known as the Septuagint, or whether he had been able to read Hebrew and buy one of the Hebrew versions.
Jewish men could all read, because they were expected to read the Scriptures in their services,
but elsewhere the skill was not that common long before printing was even thought of,
when all manuscripts had to be copied by hand.
So a copy of the book of Isaiah would have been very valuable.
And he had one, and was reading it during his journey, but not really understanding what he read, and doubtless wishing for someone to come and explain it to him.

That someone turned out to be Philip the Evangelist.
Now, this isn't the Apostle Philip, the one who tends to be partnered with Bartholomew in the lists of apostles;
he's a different Philip.
We first meet this one early in the Book of Acts,
when the gathering of believers is getting a bit large, and the Jewish and Greek believers are squabbling over the distribution of food.
Philip and seven other people were appointed deacons to sort it out for them.
Philip would have been Greek –
it's a Greek name –
but he might also have been Jewish,
since he was fairly obviously resident in Jerusalem around then.

He, incidentally, is the chap who ends up with four daughters who prophesy who entertains St Paul on his way back to Jerusalem later on in Acts.

But for now, he is wanted on the old road between Jerusalem and Gaza and, prompted by the Holy Spirit, he goes there and walks alongside the Treasurer in his carriage –
I expect the horse was only going at walking pace.
Back then, the concept of reading to yourself was, I believe, unknown, and everybody always read aloud, even if only under their breath,
so he would soon have known what the Treasurer was reading, and was intrigued:

“Do you understand what you're reading?”
This man, an obvious foreigner, someone who obviously wasn't Jewish, probably didn't know the traditions at all
what on earth was he finding in the book?

And the Treasurer admits that yes, actually, he is a bit lost.... and Philip explains it all, and explains about how the prophet was referring to Jesus, which of course meant explaining all about Jesus.
And so the Ethiopian challenges him:
“Okay, there's some water.
Any reason I shouldn't be baptised?”

He couldn't be accepted in the Temple as a Jew –
would these followers of the Way –
they were barely called “Christians” yet –
would they accept the likes of him, or was this going to be another disappointment?
I can hear a challenge in his voice, can't you?
The Authorised version, which some of you may still like to read, claims he made a profession of faith,
but apparently that's not in the earliest manuscripts available and has been left out of more recent translations.

“Why can't I be baptised?”
Well, there was no good reason.
Jesus loved him and died for him, and Philip knew that, so he baptised him.
And then left the new young Christian to cope as best he could, while the Holy Spirit took Philip off to the next thing.

It is a strange story, and I know I've spent rather a long time on it, but it intrigues me.
You can't help comparing it with the story of Cornelius,
a couple of chapters later.
Cornelius, too, is an outsider, a member of the Army of Occupation, a Gentile
but he, too, loves God and wants to know more.
And Peter is sent to help him, although Jewish Peter needed a lot more persuading than Greek Philip to go and help.
And again, it is clear that God approves, and Cornelius and his household are baptised.

The thing is, this was an age when the Church was gaining new converts every day –
three thousand in one day, we're told, after Pentecost.
How come these two are picked out as special?

I think it's because they are special.
These are the outsiders, the misfits.
They aren't your average Jewish person in the Holy Land of those days.
Cornelius is a member of the hated Roman army;
but at least he lives in Caesarea and might have been expected to pick up one or two ideas about local culture and so on.
But the Treasurer?
He is not only a Gentile, but of a completely different race, and a different sexuality.
A total and utter outsider, in fact.

But he is accepted!
That's the whole point, isn't it?
There was nothing to stop him being baptised.
The Holy Spirit made it quite clear to Philip that this man was loved, accepted and forgiven and could be baptised with the contents of his water-flask!

How difficult we make it, sometimes.
We agonise over who is a Christian and who isn't.
We wonder what behaviour might put people right away from God.
And sometimes we cut ourselves off from God by persisting in behaviour, or patterns of thought, that we know God doesn't like, and we aren't comfortable in God's company.
And yet God makes it so simple:
“Here is some water.
What is to keep me from being baptised?”
And the answer, so far as God is concerned, is “Nothing”.
Anybody, anybody at all, who stretches out a tentative hand, even a tentative finger, to God is gathered up and welcomed into his Kingdom.
I don't know what happens when it's people like Professor Alice Roberts or David Attenborough who really don't want God to exist –
I suppose that when people say “No, thank you!” to God,
God respects their wishes, even if that means He is deprived of their company, which He so wanted and longed for.

The Treasurer, the Ethiopian Eunuch, was the most complete outsider, from the point of view of the first Christians, that it was possible to imagine.
And yet God accepted him and welcomed him, and he went on his way rejoicing.
We aren't told what happened to him.
Was he able to meet up with other Christians?
Was he able to keep in touch with the early Christian communities and learn more about early Christian thinking?
We don't know.
We aren't told anything more about him –
but then, I don't suppose Philip ever heard any more.
Our Gospel reading minded us that unless you abide in Jesus you wither away
or perhaps more properly that your faith does –
and perhaps that happened to him.
We will never know.
But perhaps he did abide in Jesus.
Perhaps, even without fellowship and teaching and the Sacrament and the other Means of Grace we find so important,
perhaps he still went on following Jesus as best he knew how.
I hope he did.
Maybe his relationship with God would have been purer and stronger than ours is, because there wouldn't have been anybody to tell him that he was doing it all wrong.

“Here is some water.
What is to keep me from being baptised?”
We have, I think, all been baptised;
possibly as babies or perhaps when we were older –
but what keeps us from entering into the full relationship with God that this implies?
My friends, if there is something between you and God, put it down now,
come back to God and rest and rejoice in Him.
There are no outsiders in God's kingdom –
everybody is welcome, and that includes you, and that includes me!
Amen.

And as soon as we started the next hymn I realised what I should have said, so said it before the notices - because God loves and accepts absolutely anybody, we need to love and accept them, too. I didn't have time to unpack this, but if I preach this sermon again, I'll be sure to work it in! 

Mr Moneybags and the Big Issue Seller

 

An old friend, revisited.

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 really smart car to his offices in the City, or perhaps in 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 homeless people and beggars,
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,
‘‘Remember, my son, that in your lifetime you were given all the good things, while Lazarus got all the bad things.
But now he is enjoying himself here, while you are in pain.
Besides all that, there is a deep pit lying between us,
so that those who want to cross over from here to you cannot do so,
nor can anyone cross over to us from where you are.’’
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!

---oo0oo---

Jesus had a lot to say about money, and our relationship with it
didn’t he?
And about our relationship with other people, too, for that matter.
Do you remember the story he told about the sheep and the goats?
This was when he reckoned that at the Last Judgement it would be those who had cared for Jesus in the persons of the sick, the prisoners, the hungry and, yes, the Big Issue sellers who would be welcomed into heaven, and those who had ignored him, in those guises, would not.
“For whoever does it unto the least of one of these, does it unto Me”, he said.

It must have come as a shock to Jesus’ hearers.
They had been taught that if you were rich and successful, it meant that God favoured you, and if not, not.
I am always rather amused when I read Matthew’s version of the Beatitudes and compare them with Luke’s –
Luke says, frankly, “Blessed are you when you are hungry, or thirsty, or poor”, but then, he was a Gentile and didn’t have the background that Matthew, a Jew, had.
Matthew can only bring himself to write “Blessed are you when you are poor in spirit, or when you hunger and thirst after righteousness.”
For him, still, poverty is not a sign of God’s favour, but rather the reverse.

Even today, you know, there are those who preach prosperity, they preach that if you are God’s person you will be rich and healthy.
But that isn’t necessarily the case.
Jesus never said that!
Okay, so he healed the sick, but he had a great deal to say about the right attitude to possessions and to other people.

It’s in this sort of area, isn’t it, where what we say we believe comes up smack bang against what we really believe.
We discover, as we study what Jesus really had to say, that being His person isn’t just a matter of believing certain things, it’s about being in a relationship with Him, and about letting him transform us into being a certain kind of person.
It’s no good believing, says St James, if that faith doesn’t transmute itself into actions.
And this seems to be what Jesus says, too.

It’s no good saying you believe in Jesus, and ignoring the very people Jesus wants you to look after –
the dispossessed, the refugees, the downtrodden, the marginalized, the exploited.
It’s not easy, I know.
We do hesitate to give money because of the very real possibility it might be spent on drugs or drink.
The other day I bought a sandwich for the beggar sitting outside Lidl on Acre Lane, and when I came out with it, she had gone!
But there are other ways of giving.
There are various charities we can give to,
or even lend a helping had at.
Brixton Hill’s foodbank on Wednesdays always needs donations, and volunteers, too, for that matter – contact Rev Kristen or my Robert to find out more.
Of course, one can even buy the Big Issue!

Seriously, though, we need to take this sort of thing seriously.
Quite apart from anything else, our very salvation may depend on it.
We say that salvation is by faith, and so it is –
but what is faith if it doesn’t actually cost us anything?
What is faith if it is mere lip-service?

And anyway, what sort of picture are we giving to the world if we just talk the talk, and don’t walk the walk?
Do you remember Eliza Doolittle, in My Fair Lady, exclaiming “Don’t talk of love, show me!”
I reckon the world is saying that to the Church right now.
Don’t let’s just talk about Jesus, let’s show people that he is risen and alive and dwelling within us by the power of his Holy Spirit.
The best way to cultivate a right attitude to money, people and spiritual things is to see the “beggar outside our gate” –
quite literally the Big Issue seller, if you like, but basically anybody who is not like ourselves.
Although, mind you, the other day I bought a sandwich for the beggar sitting outside Lidl and when I cam out she’d gone, so I was left with a sandwich I didn’t want!
You can’t win, sometimes.
But mostly they are thankful for the odd sandwich or pasty or similar.
And we must remember that it could have been us….

The miracle is that the more loosely we hold our possessions, the more we enjoy them,
the more we serve the needs of others, the more we value them, and the more we listen to God’s words, the more we value ourselves.
And, of course, the more we are able to show people Who Jesus Is, and that he is alive today.
Amen.

Butterflies and Resurrection

 

I bet you’re wondering why I asked for that last reading! And maybe why I have quite so many butterfly brooches on a dress which also has butterflies on it!

Well, you see, for me, butterflies mean Easter.
Our very hungry caterpillar ate and ate and grew and grew until it was time for him to become a pupa, and after two weeks, he emerged as a beautiful butterfly.

But, you see, pupating isn’t just a matter of hibernating, like a dormouse or bear;
to become a butterfly, caterpillars have to be completely remade.
While they are in the pupa, all their bits dissolve away,
and are remade from scratch, from the material that is there.
It’s not just a matter of rearranging what is there,
it’s a matter of total breakdown and starting again.
The caterpillar more-or-less has to die before it can become a butterfly.
If you were to open up a pupa a few days after the caterpillar had made it –
which please don’t –
you would just find sort of goo.

That is seriously scary.
Especially as something of the same sort of thing happened to Jesus,
before he was raised from death,
and may well happen to us, too.
We will be remade and raised in some kind of spiritual body, so St Paul says.

I’ve brought us some chocolate butterflies this morning, rather than eggs – although eggs are also a symbol of resurrection.
We eat our breakfast eggs and enjoy them,
but if an egg is fertilised and incubated, it goes on to hatch out into a bird –
the bird grows from scratch inside the egg,
but then has to peck its way out, or it will perish.

Would you children like to give the butterflies out?
One to everybody –
I’ve also got jelly sweets in my bag if anybody would prefer one.
That’s right.
You can keep any leftovers, but give them to your grown-up to look after until after the service is over.

I love the Bible readings they give us today. Particularly the story from John’s gospel. John isn’t known for personal glimpses the way the other gospels are, but this whole account sounds as though it was taken from a very early source –
you know, of course, that the gospels were not written down for several decades after the Resurrection,
but obviously took their material from earlier works, either written or oral.
Perhaps John himself, or even Mary Magdalen, told this story!

It’s the details –
Mary, coming early in the morning, probably around 5 am,
to finish embalming the body, and finding it not there.
And she runs to tell the others, and Peter and John come, and look inside,
and they see that, although there is obviously no body in there,
the actual grave clothes in which it had been wound are still there,
with the headpiece separate.
You couldn’t actually do that without disturbing them, surely?

Peter and John head off back to the others,
but Mary stays, still in tears,
because she needs to be by the body, or at least by the tomb,
to get her grieving done.
And when a man, whom she assumes is the gardener, asks her what’s wrong, she says again, “Where is he?
Have you moved him?
Where did you put him?
Please tell me, please?”

And then the man suddenly says, in that well-known, familiar, much-loved voice:
“Mary!”

And Mary takes another look.
She blinks.
She rubs her eyes.
She pinches herself.
No, she’s not dreaming.
It really, really is!
“Oh, my dearest Lord!” she cries, and flings herself into his arms.

We’re not told how long they spent hugging, talking, explaining and weeping in each other’s arms,
but eventually Jesus gently explains that,
although he’s perfectly alive, and that this is a really real body one can hug,
he won’t be around on earth forever,
but will ascend to the Father.
He can’t stop with Mary for now, but she should go back
and tell the others all about it.
And so, we are told, she does.

So Peter and Mary both knew, from their own knowledge,
that Jesus was raised from the dead in a physical body they could hug,
and walk and talk with,
and eat and drink with.
We know from some other accounts that there were some differences
and not everybody recognised him at first,
which isn’t too improbable when you think how difficult it is, sometimes, to recognise people out of context –
if you meet your hairdresser in the street, for instance.

And if you thought Jesus was dead and buried,
how very difficult to recognise him when he came and walked along with you,
as he did with Cleopas and his wife that same evening.

So all right.
But then, why does it matter?
It is something that happened two thousand years ago, isn’t it?
Long ago in history.

Well yes, it is.
But it is also central to our faith.
St Paul says, in his letter to the Corinthians,
that if Christ hasn’t been raised, then he –
Paul –
is a fraud,
our sins are not forgiven,
and we might as well eat our chocolate at home!

As it is, because Christ has been raised, our sins are forgiven!
And we can have life, abundant life.
And, it appears, that just as Christ was raised,
so shall we be raised from death –
our bodies will obviously wear out or rust out one day no matter what we do,
and while we may be given “notice to quit”, as it were,
it may happen very suddenly.
But we believe that because Christ was raised,
so we, too, shall be raised to eternal life with him.
And we will be changed.

Christ has been raised, and we will be raised.

And we believe, too, that because Christ was raised,
we can be filled with his Holy Spirit,
just as the disciples were on that long-ago day of Pentecost.
So we don’t have to face going through the transformation that will occur all by ourselves;
the Holy Spirit will be with us, strengthening us and enabling us to cope.
Not just when we have died, but here, now, today.
As we allow the risen Christ more and more access to us, through the Holy Spirit,
we will be changed and grown more and more into the person God created us to be.

Hallelujah! Christ is risen. Amen.

Patrick and Butterflies

 A talk in two parts at All Age Worship.  Not that anybody there was under 50, but they seem to have enjoyed it and got something from it.

I do apologise for the appalling coughing fit I was struck with at the end of the first part of the sermon!  No idea what got to me, but something did.  I should fast forward past that point, were I you!

Once upon a time, long, long ago, a boy was born in a small town in Scotland. His name was Maewyn Succat. For the first sixteen years of his life he grew up in a happy and stable family, but when he was sixteen, something dreadful happened! Pirates raided his village, and carried Maewin, and probably other boys, too, off into slavery in Ireland.

And for six whole years, Maewin had to belong to someone else, not free to be his own person. He was very lonely, so he turned to God for help, and learnt to love God and to pray pretty much constantly, listening to God and chatting to him.

After six years, though, Maewin was able to escape to France, where he spent many years studying and learning what the great Christian fathers had thought and taught about Jesus. Sometime during those years he was baptised, and took the name we know him by best: Patrick. He was ordained a priest, and then made a Bishop, and then God called him to go back to Ireland – the place where he had been a slave, remember? And he went, and spent the next 30 years or so telling the people of Ireland about God, and about Jesus. He died on 17 March in the year 462, and is buried in the grounds of Down Cathedral. And every year, we celebrate him on 17 March. In America they even dye their rivers green, and their beer! And some of us – me included – like to wear something green, just because.

But there’s more to celebrating St Patrick than that! Patrick trusted God, and wrote a lovely prayer, now turned into a rather long hymn. I quoted four lines right at the start of the service, and here is another verse.

I bind unto myself today
The power of God to hold and lead,
His eye to watch, his might to stay,
His ear to hearken to my need.
The wisdom of my God to teach,
His hand to guide, his shield to ward,
The word of God to give me speech,
His heavenly host to be my guard.

Patrick trusted God, and looked after God’s people in Ireland. We are going to sing a hymn reminding us to look after God’s people wherever we find them. “Brother, sister, let me serve you”. It’s number 611 if you want to use the hymn book.

---oo0oo---

Apart from St Patrick, today is all about butterflies!
First of all, we are going to watch a video,
telling us a story you know very well –
you probably remember it being read to you, or perhaps you read it to younger brothers and sisters, or to your own children.



So the caterpillar became a beautiful butterfly.
But before he became a butterfly, there was an intermediate stage.
He built a cocoon around himself.
He became a pupa.

That isn’t just a matter of hibernating, like a dormouse or bear;
to become a butterfly, caterpillars have to be completely remade. 
While they are in the pupa, all their bits dissolve away,
and are made from scratch, from the material that is there. 
It’s not just a matter of rearranging what is there,
it’s a matter of total breakdown and starting again.
The caterpillar more-or-less has to die before it can become a butterfly.

That's really scary.
But it's also very appropriate as we enter the season called Passiontide.
Jesus said, “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies,
it remains just a single grain;
but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”

Jesus knows that he is going to die.
He is dreading it. He was, after all, human.
We wouldn’t like it if we knew we were to be put to death tomorrow.
I once dreamed that I was going to be executed, and I can’t tell you how frightened I was!
I was so relieved to wake up and find that it was all a dream.

The farmers were sowing their fields.
Jesus knew, perhaps, that he would not live to see the crops grow.
But he knew that they would grow.
And, more importantly, he knew that they would not grow if they were not sown,
if they remained in their basket, they might germinate,
but they would rot away almost at once.
Or, if they were kept in very dry conditions, they might remain viable for years, but nothing would happen.

The seeds had to die.

The birds, at that time and in that place, were building their nests and laying their eggs.
But the eggs couldn’t remain as eggs –
they would addle and be no good to anybody.
The young birds had to grow inside the eggs,
and then they must force their way out or they would die.

Jesus could see the caterpillars that were hatching from the eggs laid last year.
He knew, I expect, that they had to become pupae before they could be butterflies.

Someone he knew had had a baby lately;
Jesus remembered this:
“When a woman is in labour, she has pain, because her hour has come.
But when her child is born, she no longer remembers the anguish because of the joy of having brought a human being into the world.”

Jesus saw all this and knew that from seeming dissolution, God brought new life.
He knew that he would have to die, so that new life could come.

Perhaps at that stage he didn’t really know how this would happen.
He knew that it must happen, but not how it would.

We know that God raised Jesus from death, and because of that, we have eternal life.
But that didn't stop it being really scary for Jesus.
You remember how he spent all night in the park, praying that God would make him not have to go through with it.
But he had to, and he knew he had to.
Because if he hadn’t died, he could not have been raised from the dead, and could not have made us right with God.
I expect St Patrick was very scared when he was sold into slavery.
We know that he was very lonely, so he learnt to pray, and turned to God for comfort.
And then, when he was able to leave Ireland and go to France,
that must have been scary, too.
However much he hated Ireland, change is always scary,
and he didn’t know what France was going to be like.
And I should think he was even more apprehensive when God asked him to go back to Ireland and bring the Good News of Jesus to the people there.

But Patrick did what God asked him to do.
He said “Goodbye” to his old life;
he died to it, if you like, and went bravely ahead into the new life God was calling him to.

Jesus did what God asked him to do.
We are just beginning the season called Passiontide, when we think about how Jesus went forward to his death, and through death to the glorious resurrection we will be celebrating on Easter Day.

But what does it mean for us?
Are we facing any changes in our lives?
Life is full of change, isn’t it?
Some changes are gradual, others sudden.
Some –
many, perhaps, are expected;
others come out of the blue.
But even the expected changes can be frightening –
it’s scary to move out of your parents’ home and live on your own for the first time, for instance.
And growing old is most definitely not for wimps!
But we know we have to grow and change;
we can’t stagnate, any more than an egg can stay and egg,
or a caterpillar not transform into a butterfly.
But the joy of it is, Jesus was there first!

Here, again, is St Patrick:
Christ be with me, Christ within me,
Christ behind me, Christ before me,
Christ beside me, Christ to win me,
Christ to comfort and restore me,
Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ in quiet, Christ in danger,
Christ in hearts of all that love me,
Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.

As we face changes and new growth in our lives, let’s pray that we learn to recognise Christ in all around us, as Patrick tried to do. Amen.

What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth?

We don't always remember this in our day and age, but Jesus was a Jew. This seems obvious when I say it, but we don't often think through the implications of it. And one of the implications is that every Sabbath day, he went to worship at the local synagogue, wherever he found himself. Normally at home in Nazareth, but when he was on the road, he went local.  The picture above is of a synagogue in Capernaum which is thought to be slightly later than the one in Jesus' day, but still on the same site.

And here, in Mark's Gospel, Jesus is at the very beginning of his ministry. Mark tells us that he has been baptised, and then gone into the desert to think through the implications of this, to work out what it means to be “God's beloved Son, in whom he is well pleased.” He was tempted, and learnt what was and was not the right thing to do with his divine power.

And then John, his cousin, was put in prison and Jesus knew the time had come to start his own ministry in good earnest. He came out of the desert, and picked up Andrew and Peter and one or two others – we know from John's gospel that Andrew and Peter had been followers of John before this – and then, on the Sabbath, he finds himself in Capernaum, about 20 miles as the crow flies from his home town of Nazareth. So they all go to the synagogue there.

Now, one of the things about synagogue worship was that – is that, I should say, as I understand it is much the same today – is that you don't have to have a trained preacher up there, but almost any adult – adult males, in many synagogues, but some welcome women, too – can get up on his hind legs and expound the Scriptures. And visitors were very often asked to read the Scripture passage for the day as a way of honouring them, and it was quite “done” to comment on it. You might remember Jesus goes home to Nazareth at one stage and is asked to read the Scriptures there, with rather disastrous results. But not on this occasion.

What happens here, though is equally unexpected. Someone with an evil spirit is there, and the evil spirit recognises Jesus, and causes its host to cry out, interrupting whatever Jesus was saying or reading, to cry out: “What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth?”

“What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth?”

It's a good question, isn't it? What does Jesus want with us? Why does he come, interrupting our nice, peaceful church services? Why does he come, interrupting our nice, peaceful lives? What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth?

Of course, the answer is going to be different for each and every one of us. And yet there are some universal truths.

Firstly, I think, he answers “I want you to let me love you.”

To let him love us. That sounds as though it ought to be a no-brainer, but in fact, it can be very difficult to allow ourselves to be loved. And we tend not to look at it that way round, anyway. We think it's our business to love God – I am not quite sure what we think God's business is, but we don't always expect him to love us. And yet, how can we love unless he loved us first?

There's a story you may have heard before, told by the theologian and writer Gerard Hughes, in which he describes an image of God that many of us may have grown up with; a God who demanded our love and attention, and threatened us with eternal damnation if he didn't get it. And we ended up telling God how much we loved him, while secretly hating him and all he stood for, but terrified of not appearing to love him, because of the eternal damnation. We weren't told, or if we were told, we didn't hear, the first bit, which is that God loves us! God loves us so much that he knows quite well we can't possibly love him first. “We love, because He first loved us,” we are told. His love comes first. We need to let him love us. That's the first answer to the question, “What do you want of us, Jesus of Nazareth?”

“I want you to let me love you.”

And the second answer is “I want you to let me heal you.”

Healing. It's a bit of a vexed question, isn't it? We know that healings happened in the Scriptures, and we know that they can and do happen today, but we rarely seem to see any. We do see miraculous physical healings now and again, and we thank God for them as, indeed, we thank God when people are healed through modern medicine. But our bodies are going to wear out or rust out one day, whatever we do. We aren't designed to live forever on this earth, in these bodies, and they will eventually come to the end of their usefulness to us. But Scripture teaches that we will be raised from death in a new body, so it makes sense to me that the parts of us that make us “us”, if you like, are the parts that need healed. Our emotions, our personality, our memories. Things that have screwed us up in our pasts, that we find hard to get beyond. I believe Jesus always heals us when we ask, but we usually get the healing we really need, not necessarily the one we thought we wanted!

Also, while our language differentiates between healing and forgiveness, Jesus doesn't seem to so much. Remember the paralysed bloke whose friends let him down through the roof? Jesus' first words to him were “Your sins are forgiven!” which was what healed him. We need to be forgiven our sins, we need to be healed of being a sinner, if you like. We need to be changed into someone who can love God, and who can step away from sin – and we'll never do that without Jesus, let me tell you. We need to be healed so that we can become the person God created us to be. “I want you to let me heal you.”

“What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth?”

“I want you to let me love you.

I want you to let me heal you.

And I want you to let me fill you with the Holy Spirit!”

To be filled with God's Holy Spirit. According to the Bible, this isn't an optional extra, it's an absolutely central part of being a Christian. Remember the believers at Antioch, who were asked whether they'd received the Holy Spirit when they were baptised, and they were like, “You what? What's the Holy Spirit?” and Paul had to re-explain the Gospel to them. It turned out they'd only got as far as John's baptism of repentance, not the baptism into a new life with Christ. So far as Paul is concerned, receiving the Holy Spirit is an absolutely central part of being a Christian.

Makes sense, really, when you think about it. Because if we are filled with the Holy Spirit, we are filled with God Himself, and can be loved and healed and made whole, and God Himself can direct our lives, never forcing, never compelling, but always asking and reminding us, and enabling us. We need to be filled with God's Holy Spirit if we are to grow and change into the people God designed us to be.

“What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth?”

Of course, at that time the question was inappropriate, as was the follow-on of: “I know who you are, the holy one of God!” because Jesus was only just at the start of his ministry. He wasn't ready to become universally known, and anyway, he could sense that that which asked the questions had no interest in wishing him well. So he did the only possible thing, which was to command the evil spirit to come out of its host, which it did, and when the host recovered, all was well. But, of course, stories like this spread around, and Mark tells us that Jesus' fame in the area began to grow.

“What do you want of us, Jesus of Nazareth?” The question still resonates down the years, and I think the answers are still the same as ever: “I want you to let me love you. I want you to let me heal you. I want you to let me fill you with the Holy Spirit.” What is your answer? What is mine?

Will you let Jesus love you? Will you let Jesus heal you? Will you let Jesus fill you with his Holy Spirit? Amen.

Samuel

 

The story of Samuel in the Temple is an old friend, isn’t it?
I was amazed, when I came to have another look at it,
that it was actually a much darker story than I remembered.
We all know the bit about Samuel waking up in the night and thinking Eli has called him,
and Eli eventually clicking that God was trying to speak to Samuel....
but what is the context?
And what, actually, did God want to say?

It all started, of course, with Samuel’s mother, whose name was Hannah.
She was married to a man called Elkanah, and, in fact, she was his senior wife.
But her great sadness was that she had no children,
and her co-wife, called Penninah, did.
Elkanah actually loved Hannah more than he loved Penninah,
and although I don’t suppose he minded for his own sake that she had no children, he minded for her sake.

And, we are told, whenever Elkanah went to the Temple to make sacrifices, he gave Hannah a double portion.
And one day, Hannah, in the Temple, is just overcome by the misery of it all,
and pours out her heart to God –
I’m sure you’ve been there and done that;
I know I have.
And Eli, the priest, thought she was drunk, seeing her mumbling away like that.

It was rather a bad time in Israel’s history.
I don’t know if it ever occurred to you –
it hadn’t to me until quite recently –
but this is not the Temple in Jerusalem that Jesus would have known;
the first Temple in Jerusalem wouldn’t be built until the reign of King Solomon, about seventy or eighty years in the future.
This Temple was in Shiloh, and really, it was the place where the Ark of the Covenant resided.
And Eli is the priest in the Temple.
Now, back then, being a priest was something that only certain families could do;
and if your father was a priest, you usually were, too.
It’s actually only within quite recent history that what you do with your life isn’t determined by what your father did –
and isn't it the case that people are finding it increasingly hard to get a better education than their parents, and perhaps do different things?
Anyway, back then, you followed in your father’s profession,
and if your father was a priest, as Eli was, then you would expect to be one, too.

Unfortunately, Eli’s sons were not really priestly material.
They abused the office dreadfully –
taking parts of the sacrifices that were meant to be burnt for God alone,
sleeping with the women who served at the entrance to the temple.
I don’t think these women were prostitutes –
temple prostitution was definitely a part of some religions in the area,
but I don’t think it ever was part of Judaism.
These women would have been servants to Eli and his family, I expect,
and considered that service as part of their devotion to God.
And perhaps, too, they helped people who had come to make sacrifices and so on.
Whatever, Hophni and Phineas, Eli’s sons, shouldn’t have been sleeping with them,
and they shouldn’t have been disrespecting the sacrifices, either.

There had been a prophecy that the Lord would not honour Eli’s family any more, and that Hophni and Phineas would both die on the same day,
and a different family would take over the priesthood.
Eli had tried to tell his sons that their behaviour was unacceptable, but they hadn’t listened, and one rather gets the impression that he had given up on them.
He was not a young man, by any manner of means.

And now he had this child to bring up, Samuel, first-born of the Hannah whom he had accused of being drunk.
Hannah had lent her first-born child to the Lord “as long as he lives”,
since God had finally granted her request and sent her children –
unlike some of the other childless women in the Bible,
people like Sarah or Elisabeth,
God gave her more than one child in the end.
So Samuel, her first-born, was lent to God, and grew up in the Temple.

I had always somehow imagined the Temple as being very like
the Temple in Jerusalem, but, of course, it can’t have been.
It was probably just an ordinary house, but with the main room reserved for the altar of the Lord and the Ark of the Covenant.
Samuel sleeps in there, you notice, and Eli has his own room at the back somewhere.
And I imagine Hophni and Phineas have rooms of their own, too.

I do think that the first verse of our reading is one of the saddest there is;
“The word of the Lord was rare in those days;
visions were not widespread.”
“The word of the Lord was rare in those days;
visions were not widespread.”
It sounds like a very bleak time, doesn’t it?

Samuel, we are told, did not know the Lord.
He didn’t know the Lord.
This in spite of ministering in the Temple daily.
He wasn’t able to offer sacrifices, of course –
he was not, and couldn’t ever be, a priest, as he came from the wrong tribe.
But he would have helped Eli get things ready,
he would perhaps have made the responses.
He would certainly have known what it was all about.
But he did not know the Lord, in those days.
The word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him.

So when God calls him in the night, he has no idea what is happening,
and thinks that Eli is in need of help.
And it isn’t until the second or third time that Eli realises what is happening, either.
But once he does, Eli explains that it might be that God is wanting to speak to Samuel, and he should say “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening!”

And then what?
No message of hope or encouragement such as anybody would want to hear.
In fact, quite the reverse:

“See, I am about to do something in Israel that will make both ears of anyone who hears of it tingle.
On that day I will fulfil against Eli all that I have spoken concerning his house, from beginning to end.
For I have told him that I am about to punish his house forever,
for the iniquity that he knew, because his sons were blaspheming God,
and he did not restrain them.
Therefore I swear to the house of Eli that the iniquity of Eli’s house shall not be expiated by sacrifice or offering forever.”

There will be no escape for Eli;
he could, and should, have stopped his sons from being blasphemous,
from disrespecting the offerings of God’s people,
from sleeping with the temple servants.
I get the feeling Eli has rather given up, don’t you?
When Samuel tells him what the Lord has said, his reaction is simply,
“It is the Lord;
let him do what seems good to him.”
And in the end, just to round off the story, both sons were killed in a battle against the Philistines,
and Eli died of a heart attack or something very similar that same day.
And the Philistines captured the Ark of the Covenant.

All very nasty –
not one of the nicer stories in the Bible, I don’t think.
But what does it say to us?
What do we have in common with these people at the end of the Bronze Age, or early Iron Age, I’m not quite sure which they are?

The thing is, of course, we do have rather too much in common with them.
This is a time when the Word of God is not heard too much in our land.
It is a time when churches, and, indeed, synagogues and mosques, too, are disrespected;
synagogues and mosques even have to have security at the entrance, just for when people are coming to worship.
Thank goodness that isn’t yet the case with our churches, and pray God it will never be.
But even ministers and priests have been known to abuse their position – I have not heard of any rabbis or imams doing so, but I shouldn't be in the least surprised.

I suppose that there is nothing new;
every age has probably said the same of itself.
We know that we are, naturally, sinners, and unless God help us we shall continue to sin.

Samuel served in the Temple but he didn’t, then, know God.
Eli had given up;
Hophni and Phineas set him a poor example.
It must have been confusing for Samuel –
what was it all about?
And then when God did finally speak to him,
it wasn’t a comforting message of cheer and strength,
but a reminder that God’s judgement on the whole shrine and the priestly family who ran it was going to happen.

But good things came from it, too.
Samuel became known and respected as a prophet and as a judge in Israel.
He couldn’t be a priest, as he was from the wrong tribe,
but he could be, and was, a prophet who was widely respected and loved.
It was he who anointed Saul as king, and then David.

So there is hope, even in the cloudiest, stormiest days.
The temple of Shiloh was abandoned, and the Ark never returned there.
But the Ark did return, and eventually the Temple was built in Jerusalem.
Samuel became one of the most famous prophets of them all.

Samuel said “Yes” to God.
He was willing to hear God’s message,
no matter how unpleasant it had to be,
no matter how traumatic.
He was willing to hear, and he was willing to speak it out.
And so God used him to establish the Kings of Israel and then of Judah –
perhaps not the most successful monarchy ever,
but from King David’s line came, of course, Jesus.

It is never totally dark.
God ended Eli’s family’s service to him, yes;
but the Temple endured, and was eventually rebuilt in Jerusalem,
bigger and better than before.
The Ark of the Covenant was taken into captivity –
but it came back, and remained in the Temple until it was no longer needed, as God made a new covenant with us.

When we go through difficult times,
and I think we all do, whether as individuals,
as churches,
or as a society,
it’s good to think back on this story.
God may be bringing one thing to an end;
but a new thing will, invariably, follow, just as spring follows winter.

The difficult thing, of course, is going on trusting Him when all does seem dark, when we can’t see how things are going to work out.
It's been terribly dark just lately, hasn't it, with the wars in Ukraine and Israel threatening our own world.
But remember Paul’s letter to the Romans, chapter 8;
“And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.”
I do think that we can ask to see how God is going to work a bad situation for good;
it’s amazing how that can and does happen.
Perhaps one day we will see the good that God has worked out of the war between Russia and Ukraine.
Perhaps one day we will see the good that God has worked out of the conflict between Israel and Hamas.

And we need, like Samuel, to listen to God, and to do what He asks of us, no matter how difficult.
Are you willing to do this for God?
Am I willing?
It isn’t easy, is it?

Thanks be to God that we need do none of this in our own strength, but in the power of the Holy Spirit, who strengthens us.
Amen!

Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh

 

What a very odd story this is, about the wise men coming to Jesus.
For a start, you only find it in Matthew's gospel, and not in Luke's.
To carry on with, it's quite difficult to reconcile the course of events in Matthew with those in Luke –
for instance, Luke seems to think that the family go straight back to Nazareth, stopping off at Jerusalem on the way to present Jesus in the temple,
whereas Matthew seems to think they lived in Bethlehem all the time,
fled to Egypt to escape Herod's vengeance after the wise men's visit,
and only then settled in Nazareth.

I don't suppose it matters much, really, though, because we have also got an incredible amount of tradition mixed up with the stories –
the ox and the ass in the stable, for instance;
you don't find those in either gospel account.
Nor, in the one we have just heard read, were there three wise men!
It doesn't say how many there were.
Tradition, of course, has made of them kings;
Caspar, Melchior and Balthazar.
But that's not what the Bible says.

And it is only tradition that identifies gold with kingship,
frankincense with divinity, or godhead,
and myrrh with death.
But seeing as we all have our own mental image of the Nativity stories,
it doesn't matter very much.
It wouldn't really be a Christmas crib without donkeys and oxen, would it?
And it's a lot easier to depict Eastern potentates than Zoroastrian astrologers, or whatever they really were.
And if we see gold, frankincense and myrrh as equivalent to kingship, godhead and death –
well, why not?
It helps us remember a bit Who Jesus is,
and anything that does that is always helpful.

I have heard people comment that the wise men might have given more useful gifts, but, in fact, back in the day what they gave would have been very useful.
After all, gold is always useful, and when the Holy Family had to flee into Egypt, as Matthew tells us they did,
they would have needed gold to help cover their expenses.
And although you can get both frankincense and myrrh very cheaply in Brixton these days –
Brixton Wholefoods usually has them in their spice jars –
back in the day they were very rich and rare.
And useful.
Frankincense isn't just about saying that Jesus is divine,
it's also very calming and soothing,
and it helps to heal chest infections and coughs.
You can either burn it as incense –
and it is an essential component of the incense that some Christians like to burn in worship –
or you can buy the essential oil and dilute it to massage yourself with.
It's also used in face creams for its anti-ageing properties.

Myrrh, too –
rarer than rare, back then –
is very healing.
When I was growing up, there was always a little bottle of tincture of myrrh in the medicine cabinet in case anybody had toothache –
tasted vile, but did the trick.
It's still a component part of some toothpastes, even today.
And I believe it can be used to heal skin irritations, things like that –
not the toothpaste, of course, but the essential oil, or a cream containing it!
And, as we know, it was used in embalming the dead, and it's seen as symbolic of death.

So you see they would have been useful gifts, as well as symbolic.

But why does it matter?
What is it all about?

Partly, of course, it is about giving to Jesus.
The kings, or wise men, or whatever they were, brought gold, frankincense and myrrh to the one "Born to be King of the Jews",
even though they were not themselves Jewish.
Three of the most valuable commodities in the ancient world,
and not only valuable, but very useful, too.
I don't know what we would think of as the three most valuable commodities of today - probably something like platinum and uranium and petrol, which, except for the last, wouldn't be quite so useful!
Nor quite so symbolic, either –
the tradition of kingship, divinity and death may be only a tradition, not biblical, but it is very powerful.

But then, that's not really what's wanted today, is it?
What God wants of us today is –
well, basically, nothing less than all of us.
Not just our money, not just our time, but our whole selves.
And that's scary!
Next week, Rev’d Rita will be leading you in the Covenant service, when we recommit ourselves to being God's person in the year to come.
Again, scary!

Very scary.
But the thing is, that's actually only part of the Epiphany.
The posh name for it is “The manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles”.
The Gentiles.
And, when you come to think about it, the Magi couldn't really have been more outsiders if they'd tried with both hands!
They were, it is thought, some kind of astrologers, diviners,
just exactly the sort of person Jews were forbidden to be.
They came from the East, probably from present-day Iraq or Iran,
not countries with whom Israel has ever had a peaceful and friendly relationship!

The people to whom God chose to make himself known in the person of the infant Jesus were outsiders.
Rank outsiders.
Apparently not just the Magi,
but also the shepherds whom Luke tells us about were total outsiders,
far from the comfortable religious establishment of the day.

And again and again we see this in the New Testament, don't we?
It's the outsiders who get special mention,
the tax-gatherers,
the prostitutes,
the quislings,
the terrorists,
the members of the occupying power.

Even after the Ascension, it is still the outsiders who get special mention –
Cornelius, for instance, or the Ethiopian treasury official.

And us.

What the story of the Epiphany tells us is that we are loved.
Loved to the uttermost.
No matter who we are, what background we come from,
and whether we love God or whether we don't.
We are still loved.
Don't ever believe the fundamentalist groups who want to tell you that God hates Muslims, or gay people, or whoever –
it's simply not true.
Even if you were to say “Oh, bother this for a game of soldiers,
I'm never going near a church again!”
God would still love you.
Even if you were to go out and murder someone in cold blood,
or order your army to attack innocent people.

God might hate it that you did that, but God would still love you.
God might, or might not, have approved of the way the Magi worshipped him, but
he still loved them, and caused their journey and their gifts to be recorded in history.

I don't know if that makes it any easier to give ourselves to God or not.
It's difficult, isn't it?
And I think sometimes we stress about it unnecessarily.
We are always going to get it wrong.
That stands to reason.
We are, after all, only human, and the whole point of the Incarnation, of Jesus becoming a human being, was so that we could make mistakes and get it wrong and it wouldn't matter too much.
After all, salvation was God's idea, not ours.

We sometimes forget that, don't we?
We tend to live as though we have to get it right, or we won't be Jesus' people any longer.
But that's not so.
After all, what are we saved by?
What Jesus did for us on the Cross, or by our own faith?
I rather think it is what Jesus did for us that saves us!

But then, if we are saved by what Jesus did for us, why bother?
Why give expensive and valuable gifts,
like gold, and frankincense and myrrh,
or even our own selves?
Isn't the answer because Jesus is worth it?
Those of us who are parents know something of what it must have cost God to send his only son to earth as a helpless human baby.
We may even glimpse, sometimes, something of what Jesus must have lost, limiting himself to a human body.
Jesus is definitely worth all we can give to him, and then some!
And, more than that, Jesus makes it worth our while giving to him!
Because we are loved, because Jesus loved us enough to give up his whole life for us, then anything we can give is accepted with love, with joy, and is transformed into something greater.
Amen.