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

Sunday 26 April 2015

Sermon Easter 4 2015

Acts 4.5-12
1 John 3.16-24
John 10.11-18

The Good Shepherd is a familiar image from art and hymns but perhaps we miss its earthiness, and the startling way that Jesus uses it. So let’s try to think about it afresh.
Think of the ways Jesus could have described himself, but didn’t: The Great Leader; The Motivational Team Builder; the Inspirational Manager. Those images from our own culture have us looking up to someone on a pedestal. But the Good Shepherd has us looking down to the earth, keeping low, where the sheep are, staying close, guiding them away from ditches or dragging them out when they fall in, getting messy. As Pope Francis has reminded us, the good shepherd smells of the sheep.
And, Jesus says, the Good Shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. Now that is not what shepherds normally do. It seems to be a reversal of normal human values – the sheep exist for the shepherd, don’t they? They are there to give their wool, their milk, their lives for the cooking pot, so that the shepherd might live. But the Good Shepherd knows no limits, he will give all for the sheep, even his very self, so that they might live! So this is a startling reversal, not what we should be expecting. But this is God loving the world so much that he gave himself, in the Person of his Son, so that whoever believes in him might have eternal life. And he does so as a shepherd, down with the sheep in the mess.
Jesus also says that the Good Shepherd stays with the sheep. He is not like the hired hand who runs away when danger threatens or the going gets difficult. Jesus stays with the sheep even to the point of giving his life so that the sheep might live.
When he gives this teaching Jesus looks outward, beyond the boundaries of Israel to the whole world. “I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.” Jesus says that he is the shepherd who will gather in the Gentiles too, all people, all nations, all sorts and conditions, into one flock, one redeemed people of God.
Jesus has promised that he will stay with the sheep, whatever happens, giving his life so that they might live. And by looking out to the other sheep who are not yet of this fold he extends that promise to all peoples and all times. And he sends his Church to continue his mission. The Good Shepherd is the abiding presence, the heart and living head, of his Church in every nation.
Jesus sends his Church out to all nations and all times to continue his mission. To be true to that mission the Church must be like him, like the Good Shepherd.
So the Church must stay with the sheep, and not run away. The Church is sent into all nations to be the living presence of Christ and his witnesses until the end of time. There are no exceptions or exclusions to the Church’s mission. It is, simply, world wide, world embracing. Places of violence where Christians are hated and killed are not exempt from that mission. Places where secular culture has grown cynical or indifferent to faith are not exempt. There is no culture or race or language, however different they may be from first century Palestine, where the remit of that mission does not run. There is no generation in which the Gospel is not to be proclaimed afresh.
That means that the church in every place has to be like a shepherd, rather than like a great manager on a pedestal. The Church needs to be earthy, low to the ground, humble – the word means “earthy” – close to the people whom God is calling to enter his kingdom, or they won’t hear the call! The Church must stay with the sheep, which means getting involved where the sheep are, not avoiding the mess, smelling of the sheep indeed.
Over the centuries the Church has evolved ways that are meant to help with this. The parish structure of the western church is part of that. The parish is simply a geographical area, drawn out on a map, and everyone of all faiths or none lives in one. The parish church is the church for the parish, that is for the place and everyone in it, of all sorts and conditions.
The parish is part of the way in which the Church stays with the people on the ground, imitating the Good Shepherd, not abandoning the sheep or running away.
So that is part of our mission, too, here in this local community. We the Church are to be here for the people among whom we are set. We are to be witnesses to the Good Shepherd so that all may be gathered into one fold.
We witness in practical ways, as St John says in today’s epistle: “Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action”. At today’s Annual Meeting we will look back over the last year and reflect on some of the ways we have sought to do that, and look ahead to some of the ways we will seek to do that in the year to come.
As we do so we need to remember that practical love arises from faith. The Church is the community of faith, the disciples of Jesus Christ. “And this is his commandment, that we should believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us.”

So that is our task as a parish church. Believe in Jesus Christ. Love one another. Love the people among whom we are set. Stay with them, especially in the rough and dangerous and messy places of life. Stay close so that all may hear of the love of God in Jesus. Stay close so that all may come to believe in Jesus Christ, who is the heart and living head of the community that reaches out to them in his name.

Sermon Easter 3 2015

Acts 3.12-19
1 John 3.1-7
Luke 24.36b-48

That was from St Luke’s Gospel, but we’ve actually had two readings from Luke this morning, as the Acts of the Apostles is also by him. But, in sequence, Acts comes after the Gospel. So this morning, we need to begin with the Gospel, and then go forward to what the two other New Testament readings have to say to us.
So we begin with Luke’s Gospel, and a ghost. Or, at least, that is what the disciples think. “They were startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost.”
Why did they think that? Well, because most of humanity would have thought that at the time. As would many people today if they saw someone they knew to be dead standing in front of them. Many people are prepared to believe in ghosts, and ghost stories generally hinge on revenge or unfulfilled business.
So it’s not surprising that the disciples are terrified. These disciples had run away and hidden when Jesus was arrested, for fear that they would be caught up in his fate. They had failed to stand up for him or utter a word in his defence. They had deserted Jesus and left him to be handed over to the mob and killed as a public spectacle.
But Jesus has not come for revenge. He has come to bring peace to his disciples. He has come to free them from an imagination closed in by death. He shows them his hands and his feet – the marks of crucifixion. Jesus is showing them quite clearly that he was killed, and that he has conquered death.
Human life, which had been bounded in by death and fear, is suddenly blown open. Suddenly the ultimate reality is not death, but the deathless boundless life of God. And because Jesus lives from the deathless life of God, therefore he has conquered death.
The death of Jesus is not cancelled out by the resurrection. It’s not as though he was saying, it’s alright, I’ve got better, or it didn’t really happen. The crucial thing is that his death did really happen. He shows them his hands and his feet, the marks of his violent death, as trophies. In Jesus, not only human life, but human death, violent death, is taken into the life of God and transformed, raised up into something new and glorious.
The resurrection is an act of creation, as free and gratuitous as the creation of the universe in the beginning. Only the Creator can do this, and in Jesus the Creator and the Redeemer are one.
The resurrection of Jesus opens the minds of the disciples. In God there is no death, and that changes everything. It changes the way we understand the scriptures. The risen crucified one shows us what the scriptures mean. The death and resurrection of the Messiah is not something gone wrong in God’s plan that has been subsequently fixed. Rather, it is absolutely central to the way God is saving us from an imagination bounded by death and a life focussed on violence and revenge.
And Jesus says to the disciples, you are witnesses of these things. And he commands them to proclaim repentance and forgiveness of sins to all nations. This new life is not something simply shown to us, it is something to be shared.
And so we cut to the passage we heard from Acts. Fifty days later, the Apostles are empowered by the gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, and they are “witnesses of these things”, as Jesus said, beginning in Jerusalem.
Peter, their spokesman, addresses the people of Jerusalem and tells them what he and the apostles have themselves come to realise: that they have “rejected the Holy and Righteous One and … killed the Author of life, whom God raised from the dead”. But, he says, “friends, you acted in ignorance… in this way God fulfilled what he had foretold through all the prophets, that his Messiah would suffer”.
Peter is able to bear witness to this because it is his story too. He is the one who denied Jesus three times. He, and the other apostles, right up to the death of Jesus, simply could not imagine that the Messiah would suffer. Their death-bound imaginations could only conceive of a violent Messiah driving out the enemies of Israel. And this was because they could not conceive of a God in whom there is no death.
The resurrection of Jesus has changed all that. Peter bears witness to the new deathless imagination of God. God is inexhaustible life and love, ever pouring himself out without being diminished, bringing life out of death and new creation out of destruction. As Acts goes on, the message spreads. First Peter, then Paul, go to the Gentiles, who also are drawn into the new life of the resurrection.
Beyond the boundaries of Israel, it is the whole of humanity that has been in bondage to sin and death, unable to conceive of the truly vivacious loving-kindness and generosity of God until they meet God at last, the author of life, in the victim raised from the dead.
This is truly a revolution, and it is the only revolution that is good news for all. God has come to meet us in Jesus. Through repentance, that is, through turning round, changing our imagination, we can enter the new understanding of God in whom there is no death. Because God is the true source of our life, there is no need any more to be afraid of death, for even death cannot separate us from God. Indeed, like the wounds of Jesus, our death itself will be raised up and made glorious in the new life of the resurrection.
This is the vision that is set before us. And we in our generation carry on the witness of the Apostles in the world. The resurrection is like a rock thrown into a still pond, the waves spreading outwards as scripture tells the story, from the women at the tomb, to the eleven in the upper room, to the crowd of Jerusalem, then out through and beyond Israel into all the world.
We celebrate that, and meet Jesus anew, in the Eucharist every week. Here Jesus gives his body and blood, his flesh for the life of the world. Gifts of one who died, but who is now alive in the glory of the Father, and who therefore gives himself continually without ever being diminished. Here at the altar above all we enter into the redeemed imagination of God in whom there is no death.
We do this as a community of faith, a gathered minority. The world outside is not indeed without faith, there are people of many faiths, and many more whose faith is present in their longings and yearnings and inklings of something greater and beyond. In our world we bear witness with all and for all to the fullness of faith and life to be found in Jesus Christ.
What will it be like when finally that message, the good news of God in whom there is no death, is all in all? We cannot imagine. As St John says in the second reading today, “Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.”

The life that Jesus lives is the life offered to all. The innocent victim of our human violence has been raised to the glory of the Father, and in him all victims, and all victimisers, are called to leave behind their sins and enter into the deathless life of God. To this we are witnesses, in all nations and all times. To this we are witnesses, here and now.

Sermon Easter 2 2015


Acts 4:32-35
1 John 1.1-2.2
John 20:19-31

Poor Thomas, I think posterity has been unkind to him. We are used, of course, to calling him “doubting Thomas” as though he was the only disciple who ever had any doubts. Let’s put him into context.
The whole of John’s Gospel from the empty tomb onwards is about journeying into faith, and describes the particular journeys made by various disciples. So we have the beloved disciple, who entered the empty tomb and we are told, “he saw and believed”.
And then Mary Magdalene, whose journey is from grief, through clinging on to the past, into faith, as she meets Jesus in the garden.
And then a whole group of disciples together in the upper room who were locked in fear until the risen Lord appeared to them, and then “they rejoiced”.
In the final chapter of John we read Peter’s story, the one who had denied Jesus three times and is brought back into faith by a threefold affirmation of love.
So Thomas’ story is part of this pattern of people moving into a living faith in the living Lord, and leaving behind whatever had been holding them back from that.
So what is holding Thomas back? What is the obstacle to faith that he has to overcome?
Perhaps it is that Thomas is unable to imagine a world not bounded by death. Already we have had a hint of this. When Jesus told the disciples that their friend Lazarus was dead, but he was “going to wake him”, Thomas could make no sense of this. His comment at the time was “let us go too, and die with him”. You can almost see the shrug of the shoulders, what is the point of chasing after dead men?
Now Thomas says, “‘Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”
So it is still death that is the obstacle to belief for Thomas. And specifically the death of someone who was supposed to be the Messiah. The idea that someone who ended up on a Roman cross could really be God’s chosen anointed leader, the one who would save his people and inaugurate a new reality of life and freedom under God’s rule. Well, that Thomas could not believe. His imagination was bounded by death. Death ends everything, so it ends any hope that Jesus could be the Messiah, and therefore that there could be any hope. Following Jesus had all been a waste of time, as he had long suspected.
And yet Thomas, like all the other disciples, is in the end able to move beyond his stumbling block and into faith. And for Thomas as for all of them what makes the difference is meeting the risen Lord. He is not able to move himself on from unbelief to faith. By himself, he is stuck. So Jesus comes to him where he is. And that changes everything.
Faith emerges in these stories as a living relationship with the living Lord. It is that living relationship that transforms Thomas and all the others. You notice how Thomas’ response of faith does not mirror his initial problem. He begins with a problem of how someone who has failed and been killed could possibly be the Messiah.
But when he has seen the Lord, he does not say, “oh, that’s alright then, you’ve solved that for me.” No; he says, “my Lord and my God.” His profession of faith is not a response to his previous problem; it is an expression of a new relationship. Thomas’ faith is in a different place from his doubt. He has found in the risen Lord the one he loves, serves and worships; because of that, he has moved on past the stumbling block. He has met Jesus, risen from the dead. Therefore, Jesus is the Messiah, therefore the path of suffering and death he has followed must have been part of what the Messiah is and does.
You can’t get round a stumbling block. You can only get over it by being raised to a new level of understanding and consciousness. By being raised to new life in the living relationship with the living Lord. And the Lord in his love and mercy and forgiveness gives us more than we could ever have imagined.
Because of his doubt, Thomas is closer to the Lord than he has ever been before. Indeed, he is closer than he would have been had he never doubted. His doubt, his failure to understand, his resistance to the way God works, all these have actually helped to bring him closer to Jesus than he would have been otherwise. Thomas receives the astounding invitation, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side.”
With what intimacy Jesus reaches out to him! Thomas alone of all the disciples places his hand in Jesus’ side, from which blood and water had flowed on the cross, the sacramental tide of baptism and the Eucharist giving birth to the Church. Thomas is drawn closest of all to that source of grace and mercy and love, and not in spite of his doubts, but precisely because he is the one who has doubted. The heart of Jesus, from which poured blood and water, is the source of all mercy. And those who have the greatest need are drawn closest to that heart, and know it best.
This is how the love and mercy of God work. God takes our sins and failures and transforms them into grace, so that had we not sinned we would never have known the greatness of his love. In his resurrection appearances Jesus bears out the teaching he gave in his life, that he has not come to call the righteous but sinners, and those love much who have been forgiven much. It was the prodigal son, and not the dutiful stay-at-home one, who knew how much his father loved him.
Thomas, in meeting the risen Lord, finds himself loved and forgiven in ways he could never have imagined. This is not a grudging second chance, but the discovery that he is loved in precisely the way that his sin and failure need. His new relationship with the Lord is made possible by the very ways in which he has failed.
That love and mercy are held out to us as well. We too are called, with our stumbling blocks and sins and failures, to meet the Lord who opens his heart to us, his heart that pours out grace and love and mercy without limit. And this is not in spite of our sins, but because of them. The Franciscan Richard Rohr has written:
Sin and salvation are correlative terms. Salvation is not sin perfectly avoided, as the ego would prefer; but in fact, salvation is sin turned on its head and used in our favour. That is how transformative divine love is.

The resurrection of Christ is mercy for all. Everything is made new. His loving heart is open to all to draw near. Because of that, with Thomas, we too can move from failure and sin into a new and living relationship with Christ. Christ comes to meet us in the place of our sin to raise us up to a new relationship we could never have imagined. Because of that, we too can say, with Thomas, “my Lord and my God”.

Sermon at the Easter Vigil 2015


Genesis 1:1-2:4a
Genesis 22:1-18
Exodus 14:10-end, 15:20-21
Romans 6:3-11
Mark 16:1-8

“When the sabbath was over”, Mark tells us, “Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him”
When the Sabbath was over. This statement may seem to be just a matter of fact, a signpost in the story telling us that it was now the next day, and so the women, who being observant Jews could not do such work on the Sabbath, were now able to go to the tomb.
But Mark doesn’t waste words. And the Sabbath, in his gospel, is loaded with meaning. It is mentioned eleven times, and most of them are occasions of dispute and division. Jesus heals on the Sabbath, outraging the religious authorities. His disciples, being hungry, plucked ears of corn on the Sabbath and ate them, again prompting condemnation.
But Jesus in his actions had been pointing to what the Sabbath should be, its true meaning. The Sabbath, the seventh day, is about creation completed, and God delighting in what he has made. And so it is also about our creation being completed, about us joining in God’s delight. “The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the Sabbath”, says Jesus.
But instead it had become an oppressive institution. People must stay sick on the Sabbath and not be healed, must stay hungry and not eat, because the Sabbath had become about forbidding things, instead of being about making space for delight in creation completed. The Sabbath had become an obstacle in the way, preventing people from entering the fullness of life that God intended for them.
But now, says Mark, the Sabbath is over. The oppressive institution is ended, the obstacle in the way has been removed.
And that is not the only obstacle. “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?”, ask the women. They have been following Jesus, on the way of discipleship. But it seems that way has now come to a dead end. Their journey to the tomb is only to perform the last charitable offices for a dead body, to embalm, to fix forever among the dead the end of their hopes and dreams.
But then they looked up. In the Greek it’s the same word used when Jesus heals blind people and we’re told they “saw again”. The women saw again, and saw that the stone, which was very large, had already been rolled back. The obstacle in the way, which nothing in their imagination could move, was gone.
Beyond all hope and imagination, the way before them lay open, where they thought it had ended in death. They saw again, and by God’s own gracious action, unthought of and unhoped for, the way of discipleship lies open before them.
In the empty tomb, they are greeted by a young man, robed in white, sitting on the right side, the side of authority. Other gospel writers talk about angels. But Mark says, a young man. There’s one other young man in Mark’s Gospel, we meet him in the Garden of Gethsemane:
All of them deserted him and fled. A certain young man was following him, wearing nothing but a linen cloth. They caught hold of him, but he left the linen cloth and ran off naked.
That young man was an image of desertion and failure. A disciple who has left the path of following Jesus, and so lost everything. But the young man in the tomb – or perhaps he is the same young man – is clothed in a white robe, the sign of martyrdom, of witness to Jesus Christ. He proclaims with confidence that Jesus is risen. He is an image of discipleship regained, of human failure overcome in God’s generous new creation.
To underline this, he delivers a message to the women: “go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him”. All the disciples had deserted Jesus and fled. Peter, above all, had denied him three times. The message is for them: the dead end they thought they had reached is not the end after all, but a new beginning.
The women flee in terror, saying nothing. This is thought to be the original ending of Mark’s Gospel. There are some accounts of resurrection appearances after this, but most scholars think they were added later. Be that as it may, the women’s action seems to leave us hanging in suspense.
But look again. Jesus has gone ahead of them, they must follow. Where? To Galilee, where Mark’s story had begun, where the disciples were first called. There, they will see him.
But we should not think that the story has come full circle, and we are just starting over again. The Sabbath is over. The seventh day has passed, and in its place is not the first day of the weekly round that repeats itself endlessly but goes nowhere. Jesus, instead, has stepped out into the eighth day, the day outside time, the day of eternity. What the Sabbath foreshadowed has arrived: God’s new creation, the perfection of delight in all he has made, which we are called to enter, following Jesus.
He has gone ahead of you to Galilee, you will see him there. Discipleship is a path that we must follow, not a way of standing still. For if we stand still, we will not see Jesus. We cannot remain where we are. Jesus always goes on ahead of the Church. If Mark’s Gospel originally had no resurrection appearances, this may be why. He has gone ahead of you. You will see him there.
Jesus is not trapped in the winding sheets of a tomb, or in the pages of a book, or within the boundaries of an institution. Yes, he speaks to us in the Scriptures, but they are our pilgrim’s guide. Yes, he is present in the Eucharist, but that is the wayfarer’s bread, to strengthen us for our journey. Yes, his church is his living body in the world, present in every time and place, but never pinning him down to our time and culture and understanding.

The Sabbath is over. The stone has been rolled away. All obstacles in the path have been removed. He has gone ahead of us into the eighth day, the day of the new creation. We must follow him; we will see him there.