Catholic Contextual urban Theology, Mimetic Theory, Contemplative Prayer. And other random ramblings.

Monday 6 February 2012

Sermon at Parish Mass, 5th Sunday in Ordinary Time, 5th February 2012



Job 7:1-4, 6-7
1 Corinthians 9:16-19, 22-23
Mark 1:29-39
While the crowd was pressing in on Jesus and listening
to the word of God,
he was standing by the Lake of Gennesaret.
He saw two boats there alongside the lake;
the fishermen had disembarked and were washing their nets.
Getting into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon,
he asked him to put out a short distance from the shore.
Then he sat down and taught the crowds from the boat.
After he had finished speaking, he said to Simon,
“Put out into deep water and lower your nets for a catch.”
Simon said in reply,
“Master, we have worked hard all night and have caught nothing,
but at your command I will lower the nets.”
When they had done this, they caught a great number of fish
and their nets were tearing.
They signaled to their partners in the other boat
to come to help them.
They came and filled both boats
so that the boats were in danger of sinking.
When Simon Peter saw this, he fell at the knees of Jesus and said,
“Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man.”
For astonishment at the catch of fish they had made seized him
and all those with him,
and likewise James and John, the sons of Zebedee,
who were partners of Simon.
Jesus said to Simon, “Do not be afraid;
from now on you will be catching men.”
When they brought their boats to the shore,
they left everything and followed him.

Mary set out
and traveled to the hill country in haste
to a town of Judah,
where she entered the house of Zechariah
and greeted Elizabeth.
When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting,
the infant leaped in her womb,
and Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit,
cried out in a loud voice and said,
“Blessed are you among women,
and blessed is the fruit of your womb.
And how does this happen to me,
that the mother of my Lord should come to me?
For at the moment the sound of your greeting reached my ears,
the infant in my womb leaped for joy.
5 When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. 2Then he began to speak, and taught them, saying:
3 ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
4 ‘Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
5 ‘Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
6 ‘Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
7 ‘Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.
8 ‘Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
9 ‘Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.
10 ‘Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
11 ‘Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. 12Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

I don’t know quite how mother-in-law jokes became such a stock in trade of British humour. Les Dawson was one of the great exponents; they are part of our culture. But perhaps they have them in other cultures as well.
Anyway it shouldn’t be a surprise that there’s a mother-in-law joke that goes with this gospel reading. Simon Peter must really have loved Jesus, if he carried on being his disciple even after he healed his mother-in-law. Ba-boom.
Jokes aside, though, we might on hearing this reading experience another response which also reflects our culture. “The fever left her and she began to wait on them.” We might think, how typical, the men are all standing around being important, and the women are left to do the serving.
But that would be to mis-read the gospel, because service, in fact, is absolutely central to what it means to be a disciple of Jesus. Simon’s mother-in-law, in this passage, is being presented as the model Christian disciple. In fact the word used for her service is “diakonein” – deaconing. The word does simply mean waiting at tables, but by the time Mark’s gospel was written it was also being used of a distinctive category of public Christian ministry, the ordained diaconate. So this does indicate a representative kind of Christian discipleship. And Simon’s mother-in-law is presented as the model disciple in contrast to the men, who haven’t yet understood what Christian discipleship is about.
Look at who is there: James and John. They appear later in the gospel, in the scene in chapter 10 where Jesus says, “anyone who wants to be great among you must be your servant, and anyone who wants to be first among you must be the slave of all. For the Son of Man himself did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
And Jesus said that because James and John wanted to have seats at the right and left hand of Jesus in his glory. They wanted the power and the status. Jesus had to teach them that that wasn’t what it meant to be a disciple of his.
But Simon’s mother-in-law understands this straight away, and that is something to do with her being touched and healed by Jesus. Jesus “helped her up”, in fact he “raised” her in Greek, and the word has connotations of resurrection. Jesus shares his life with his disciples, so that those who follow him start to reflect his life. That life is the power and love of God come into the world.
But the world is run on very different lines from those shown to us by Jesus. The world is run by a power which is based on rivalry, domination, conflict and violence. The love and power of God, come into this world, does not mimic those powers; indeed it cannot, because then it would be just another rival in the same old system.
No; the love and power of God, come into the world, takes the form of service, of becoming a slave, of giving love’s life as a ransom for many.
It’s difficult for us to grasp how revolutionary that is. In the Greek and Roman worlds servants and slaves were a lower form of life, and you aspired to be the person who was served. Humility was regarded as shameful. Or consider that rather gloomy reading from Job we heard this morning. That Old Testament voice sees nothing good in being a slave. The fact that humility and service are now considered praiseworthy, the fact that people are uneasy around arrogance and shows of power, tells us something of how the Christian gospel has worked its way into the mindset of Western European civilisation.  It was not so anywhere before the Gospel was preached; it still is not so in cultures untouched by Christian influence – think of China and Japan, for example.
We have seen first hand this last week something of the legacy of Christian teaching in our culture, in the visit of Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall. They are two people who do indeed have power and status, but who have dedicated their lives to serving the community. Many of us were touched and moved to witness the real care and concern that they showed, and the encouragement that they gave us, for the Christian service that our churches offer to those in need and the wider community.
And of course Prince Charles is following the example of his mother, who explicitly understands her position as Queen to be one of Christian discipleship and service. Tomorrow is the 60th anniversary of the death of King George VI, a man who was thrust into that position of service unexpectedly, at a very dark time just before the outbreak of the war. The film “The King’s Speech” brought home to us how much personal suffering that involved for him. But he did not shrink from it. And neither did his daughter.
This jubilee year is going to be a great opportunity to celebrate the service of our Queen over so many years – a service she shows no sign of relinquishing. But it is also an opportunity to restate what it means to be a Christian disciple, with a celebration of the great public example that the Queen gives. That is an inspiration to us all.
But for us as well as for the Queen, it all comes from Jesus. Like Simon’s mother-in-law, it is the experience of being touched and healed and forgiven by Jesus, that experience of being “raised” by him, which makes us his disciples. Jesus reverses our priorities. We become servant disciples because Jesus serves us, he ministers to us. It is through his grace that we enter his risen life, and it is through living with his life that we become servants too.
This works itself out in practice in our parish in so many ways. The night shelter; our welcome to visitors; our work with the Community Centre, with London Citizens and St Pancras hospital. Just a few examples of many.
The media spotlight has passed from us as the Royal couple go their way to support other initiatives, other forms of service to communities elsewhere. But we continue to bring to bear the light and life of Christ here where we are called to be the servants and disciples of Christ, making known his love in the world.

Sermon at Parish Mass, 4th Sunday of Epiphany 2012


Deuteronomy 18:15-20
1 Corinthians 7:32-35
Mark 1:21-28

Which teachers do you most remember from school? There’s one I remember for whom I’m particularly grateful. There was a time when I was falling a bit behind, and that can be a dangerous trap for a child to be caught in. Your feeling of self-esteem and capability can plummet, and then your performance does too, so you feel even worse. It’s a vicious circle. But this teacher noticed. And quietly, without fuss, without showing me up in front of the other boys, he helped me, gave up his time, coached me – in his own subject and others – and helped me get back on track. Good teachers don’t just tell you things you need to know, they change your life.

Teaching is about so much more than imparting information. It’s about growth, development, and transformation. Good teaching is relational, and helps you to grow by opening you to the truth.

The people in today’s Gospel reading are said to be astonished by the teaching of Jesus, it makes a deep impression on them. This is interesting as Mark doesn’t actually tell us what Jesus has taught. All we have is its result, given in a symmetric sequence of the kind that Mark likes: the people are impressed, a man described as possessed by an unclean spirit is delivered, and the people are impressed again.

It is as though the presence of Jesus is in itself his teaching. It is his presence which is transformative, which opens people to the truth. This is because Jesus is not imparting truth as an abstract concept, rather he is the truth in person. To be taught by Jesus is to enter into relationship with him, to be opened to the truth.

The reading we heard from Deuteronomy is important for understanding this. Moses promises the people of Israel that God will send them a prophet like himself who will teach them everything that God commands. The prophet like Moses is not any old prophet. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and the others aren’t in the same league. The prophet who will be like Moses is unique, just as Moses uniquely delivered the law to the people on Sinai, so this new prophet will uniquely make known everything that God teaches.

An important thread running through the Gospels is that Jesus is this new prophet, the prophet like Moses who discloses the whole purpose of God. This is why we can see so many parallels between Jesus and Moses – but in all of them Jesus exceeds what Moses did. Moses divided the waters and walked through them, Jesus walks on them. Moses fed the people in the desert with manna that lasted a day, Jesus feeds the five thousand in a desert place and tells the disciples to keep what remains, pointing to the Eucharist, the food which endures to eternal life.

And where Moses delivered the law, the Torah, on Mount Sinai, written on stone tablets, Jesus is presented as the law in person. The Torah of the Messiah is not instructions you have to learn, it is a person with whom you need to be in relationship.

So in today’s Gospel reading we have the teaching of Jesus, which is astonishing, and different from the teaching of the scribes, because it is an encounter with a living person.

At the centre of this encounter, in which the teaching of Jesus is Jesus himself, we have the healing of the man described as possessed by an unclean spirit. This is not talk we are used to, but it is clearly of vital importance in this story.

Now in fact only Matthew, Mark and Luke in the whole Bible talk about people being “possessed’ in this way, and they are saying something important about the powers which hold human beings in bondage. Matthew, Mark and Luke are concerned to show the Kingdom of God breaking in to, and putting right, a human society which is radically disordered by powers which are actively opposed to that Kingdom. There is both a social and a cosmic dimension to these stories of possession. They reveal something about what is wrong beneath the surface of human society.

The two great oppressive social powers at work in first century Judea, as it is portrayed in the gospels, were the occupying Romans and the Temple. The Romans were unclean gentiles who ruled by keeping everyone in their place, often very brutally. The Temple had failed to be a house of prayer for all nations and had become a centre of power and privilege, amassing ever more money, wealth and prestige to feed its insatiable sacrificial cult, crushing the poor and excluding the supposedly imperfect and unclean. So you have these two oppressive forces bearing down on people from different directions.

In an oppressed society, who speaks? Who dares say what is wrong? It is often voices from the edge, and often distorted voices, which nevertheless speak something of the truth. In the Gospels, those who are described as possessed seem to have something of this function. The spirits of possession are described as “unclean”, meaning that they speak from a place of ritual impurity. They speak from a place where people are not allowed to participate in what human society is meant to be. Through being “demonised” these people personify the powers of oppression which harm society as a whole.

So it is very significant that Jesus heals people who are described as possessed, and that this happens as a result of his teaching. Jesus restores human society to what God intends it to be by defeating the cosmic powers of evil. And he does this because he is the truth, the full revelation of God, in person.

Today we don’t tend to talk about people literally being possessed by demons. But we can still be disturbed by voices from the edge, distorted voices perhaps, which nonetheless tell us something of what is wrong under the surface of things.

I was thinking this week of the Occupy Protest outside St Paul’s. Could we perhaps see them as people who have been “possessed”, captivated, fixated, by the way in which the giant corporations seem to have the whole of human life under subjugation?

Or consider the way in which tabloid headlines or lazy statements by politicians can demonise people. This week in relation to the Government’s cap on benefits we heard talk of “scroungers” and the “feckless”.  But the rich can be scapegoated as well, as Sir Philip Hampton, the chairman of RBS, now deprived of his bonus, may be reflecting. There is something far more fundamental than individual greed at work here. The desire to exclude, to draw boundaries and say those people over there are not like me, is part of the deep flaw that runs through our natures, that the Church calls sin.

The brokenness of human society needs to be healed and forgiven. And that is what Jesus does, in the world today, in and through his Church. This requires our own healing and forgiveness. Today as in the first Century it is through relationship with Jesus that we are opened to the truth. It is in him that we recognise our complicity with the powers of oppression precisely as we are being freed from them ourselves. Sin is what we are leaving behind.

For us and for the world, today as in the first century, the good news is Jesus. His teaching is himself. He is the truth in person, the truth of the love of God for every person, the truth that he excludes no-one, the truth he wills to be known in the right ordering and flourishing of all human society.