Sermon at Parish Mass, All Saints Sunday 2016

Daniel 7:1-3, 15-18

Ephesians 1:11-23

Luke 6:20-31

What does it mean to be a saint? The word “saint” means “holy”, and God is holy, so saints are people who are like God, or who reflect something of God. And to reflect God we need to be focused on God and not on ourselves.

So saints reflect God. But they do that in the world as it is, which so often fails to reflect God. To be a saint, then, is to be a light in the darkened world. It is to be someone who makes a difference. Holiness lights up and transforms the world.

In today’s Gospel Jesus describes what it is like to be holy, and the darkened world that holiness illuminates and transforms. The oppressive power of the world seems to have the upper hand. But transformation is coming. Those who are rich have received their consolation, those who are full will be hungry, those who laugh will mourn and weep.

Whereas those who are hungry will be filled, as Mary proclaimed in her Magnificat at the beginning of Luke’s story. Those who mourn will laugh. And those who are hated, excluded and reviled are great in heaven – which doesn’t mean pie in the sky when you die, it means the reality of God’s kingdom lived out and enacted. It means the world transformed.

This is Luke’s “great reversal”, one of the great themes of his Gospel, an upside down world being turned the right way up at last.

Who are the saints, then? Who are the people who are to change the world? We might think of the well-known ones, Saint Peter, Our Lady, and so many others ancient and modern, whose feast days we celebrate through the year.

But today is the feast of all the saints. This not only means all those who are now in heaven, known to us and unknown. It also means the Church on earth. St Paul describes all ordinary Christians as “saints”. He regularly uses that word when writing to the church at Corinth, for example, and he doesn’t mean that they great examples of heroic virtue. In fact, he often criticizes them for their faults – in doctrine, discipline, and morals. But he still calls them saints.

Why? To be a saint means to be holy. And the whole Church is objectively holy, as we confess in the Creed: “one, holy, catholic and apostolic”. We are adopted in Christ by the grace of baptism, and so we are holy, children of God.

But we also need to grow into that grace of adoption throughout our lives. We are both objectively saints in Christ and called to become saints in our lives.

If that seems contradictory, think of an analogy.  Imagine a car, a clapped out old banger chugging along the road, with rusty body panels, a missing wing mirror, the engine keeps cutting out, and there are squirrels nesting under the bonnet. But it is undoubtedly a car. It is not a cake or a tree or a shade of purple. And by a process of repair and renewal it can become more fully the car that it already really is.

So it is with us. We are objectively saints, adopted in Christ, we are children of God. And by a process of repentance and the renewal of grace we can become more fully the saints that we are meant to be, and that we already are by God’s gift.

Objectively saints in Christ, we are being made saints in our lives as we are transformed into his image. And that transformation is also the seed, the catalyst, for the transformation of the world. The world is to become holy – that is, it is to reflect what God is like more and more – by means of people becoming holy as they live in the world.

Our reading from the book of Daniel speaks of this transformation. Daniel was written at a time when the Jewish people were threatened and persecuted. The four “beasts” that Daniel sees in his vision are four kingdoms that had oppressed the Jewish nation at various points in history. But the promise that Daniel receives is that the holy ones of the Most High – that is, the saints – “shall receive the kingdom and possess the kingdom for ever”.

And Paul writing in Ephesians sees that promise fulfilled in Christ. Christ has been raised from the dead by the power of God who, “seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places” – and again “heaven” is God’s rule lived out and enacted. Because of this Christ is “far above all rule and authority and power and dominion.”

God’s rule is perfectly enacted and lived in Christ, raised from the dead. The oppressive power of the world is conquered and overturned. This is an objective fact, in Christ. But as with our own transformation by grace, this objective truth has to become real as the world, too, is transformed.

What is the means of that transformation? Paul tells us, it is the Church. Christ is “head over all things for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all”.

Now the Church, of course, is both human and divine. And sometimes the human element is all too obvious, not yet transformed into the image of Christ that it is called to reflect. Part of the mystery of the Church is that it is holy with sinning members. Tomorrow marks the 499^th anniversary of Martin Luther initiating the Protestant Reformation, a reminder of how far the Church can stray from what it is called to be.

But the Church is nonetheless human society in the process of transformation, on the way to the Kingdom of God. We are knit together in one communion and fellowship, as the collect for All Saints Day says. It is the communion and fellowship of all who are poor and oppressed, of all who mourn and are excluded, of all who are holy because they reflect what God is like. It is all those who are being transformed by his grace, as they transform the world.

This vision of the Church is greater than the just visible Christian institution. Last week I was at a meeting of faith leaders at Muswell Hill Synagogue, and there was a Muslim woman there from the Bravanese community, wearing full hijab. We were discussing incidents of abuse and hatred; she said that, if someone were to abuse her for her race or religion, “I would pray for him; that might make him good, and it would then make me good, too”. What does Jesus say? “Bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.”

Holiness has nothing to do with the self-absorbed self-realisation that the world pursues. It is nothing to do with being rich, or full, or powerful. Holiness is, rather, about finding our true selves by forgetting ourselves in Christ. By being absorbed in his gaze, and transformed into his image, we become who we truly are.

And our poverty will then be blessed by his riches, our mourning transformed into resurrection, the outsiders brought into the centre, the humble lifted high. Because All Saints Day is about us being made holy, and therefore about everything being made holy, and the world being transformed into the Kingdom of God.

Sermon at Parish Mass the Last Sunday after Trinity 2016

Ecclesiasticus 35:12-17

2 Timothy 4:6-8, 16-18

Luke 18:9-14

Whenever we read the Bible as believing people we are trying to draw together two worlds. There is the world in which the passage was written, and the meaning it has in that context. And then there is the world in which we are reading it, our own context can be very different. How do we apply that meaning to this context?

Today’s Gospel reading is a case in point. It assumes a world that is in many ways different from the one in which we find ourselves.

Jesus tells a story about two men, a Pharisee and a tax collector. And although the point of the story is to make a contrast between them, in fact they have many things in common. The story is set in the Temple. You might like to imagine a picture of the scene framed by the Temple buildings. This is not neutral ground. It is sacred space. Sacred architecture is about expressing the presence of God in the world.

And both of the men go up to the Temple to pray. So this story supposes a movement, an orientation of society towards God. Both of these men believe in God, and both believe that God is righteous and demands righteousness in his world.

The difference between them is how they think that righteousness can be achieved. The Pharisee tells God about his religious achievements – fasting and paying tithes – and congratulates himself because he thinks this makes him better than thieves, rogues and adulterers.

The tax collector can’t do that. Tax collectors were collaborators with the Roman oppressors, often corrupt, and hated by the people. He knows he has no righteousness that he can boast about. All he can say is “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!”

But he is the one who goes home justified. Because he, in the depth of his need, has understood that God is merciful. And he sees himself truthfully. He sees how ridiculous it would be for him to treat God as an equal – which is what the Pharisee has done. “You and me, God, we’re alright, we are, not like other people…”

The tax collector knows he can’t do that. Unlike the Pharisee, he has understood that righteousness can only be God’s gift, and not our achievement. He has approached God with nothing to offer, seeking mercy. And mercy has been given to him. He has received God’s righteousness as a free gift.

But the Pharisee hasn’t asked God for anything, and therefore he hasn’t received anything. He, too, needs the mercy of God, not least for his presumption in relying on his own achievements, which compared to the righteousness of God are nothing at all. But because he does not see his own sin, his heart is not open to God’s mercy.

There is a clear message in this story for people who have faith. God is merciful. That is at the heart of our faith. Pope Francis has said “Mercy is the name of our God!”. Our righteousness is God’s gift, our merits are his mercies. For the good things we achieve we must thank the Holy Spirit directing and inspiring us; and we must confess our sin, ever more fully as we progress in the path of faith, and our need for constant repentance. We must never tire of asking of God’s mercy, and we must never look down on other people who are in need of God’s mercy too.

But reading this story in our own context we are, as it were, looking at the picture from outside. That framework of the Temple, of sacred space, is increasingly different from the world we live in.

The idea that there is a God, and that God is righteous and demands righteousness in his world, is now a strange idea to many. Is it right that is should be expressed or allowed in public debate? Faith now has to coexist with many different accounts of the world and its meaning, including a culture which seems to say that the world has no meaning, and we may do whatever we can get away with doing.

A candidate for the US presidency boasts about not paying income tax, claiming “that makes me smart”. There was a time when a sense of right and wrong would at least have shamed people into not saying that in public, even if they thought it privately.

Or in our own country in this last week, we have seen some really spiteful coverage of the refugee crisis in some parts of the press, fueling hatred for those fleeing the horror and atrocity of war. Those who claim that, higher than national interest, there is a moral imperative to care for those in need, are subjected to abuse in tabloid headlines.

In a world like that, faith has to tell a different story. We need to put back the frame of sacred space around society, not to make everyone religious, but to say that everyone has a place, everyone has value, in the world God has made.

And within that framework, we need to tell the story of mercy: the Creator is good, loving and merciful, and the creation should reflect that. Human society, as the thinking and speaking part of creation, has an orientation towards God, an inner call to go up to the temple and pray. And that call is especially for those who have gone most astray and are most in need of mercy.

The love, mercy and goodness of God have come into our world in person, in Jesus Christ. In his life and teaching, he shows humanity how it should live. Through his death and resurrection he has opened to all the gates of mercy, so that all may receive God’s righteousness as a free gift. And righteousness is not simply about being right with God as individuals. It is also about all of society reflecting what God is like.

Our call as ambassadors of Jesus Christ then is not just to reach out to individuals who may want to become Christians and join us on the path of faith. It is also about transforming society for all, so that greed and hatred and violence give way to love and mercy and righteousness. But we do so as recipients of mercy ourselves, as tax collectors and not as Pharisees.

“God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him”, says St John. And we too must look on the world as the Father looks on the world, with the eyes of mercy. The Father’s desire is that the world will reflect his righteousness, and righteousness, in his mercy, is his gift in Jesus Christ, for all who have hearts open to receive it.

Sermon at Parish Mass, Trinity 21 2016

Exodus 17:8-13

2 Timothy 3:14-4:2

Luke 18:1-8

Beware! Watch out! Disaster is looming! You’ve got to know how to deal with it when it happens! No, I’m not talking about Brexit, or the rise of Donald Trump, or even the national shortage of Marmite. I am talking about today’s Gospel reading.

 “Jesus told his disciples a parable about the need to pray continually and never lose heart.” To understand why Jesus gives this teaching at this point we need to understand where we are in the story that Luke tells in his Gospel.

So, Jesus at this point is walking to Jerusalem with his disicples. It is, in fact, his last journey, at the end of which he will be killed. He has tried to explain this to the disicples already, but they have not understood him.  Just before he gives this teaching on prayer, he has warned them again in very unsettling terms:

“The days are coming when you will long to see one of the days of the Son of Man, and you will not see it… he must endure much suffering and be rejected by this generation… where the corpse is, there the vultures will gather.”

This must have been bewildering and upsetting for the disciples to hear. Something terrible is going to happen, the disciples will be overtaken by disaster – but they don’t understand. So Jesus tells them about the need to pray continually and never lose heart.

This parable is enigmatic and puzzling. It is a story of an unjust lazy judge and a persistent widow. We might initially think perhaps that the judge stands for God, but his corrupt behaviour suggests otherwise. So maybe it’s the widow who is meant to be like God in this parable, continually knocking on the doors of our hard hearts and saying, “I want justice, what are you going to do about it?”. Or perhaps we are meant to keep in mind both God as judge and God as the demander of justice.

And we might bear in mind the literal Greek translation of what the judge thinks the widow will do: “Because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not finally come and slap me in the face!”

What we do get from this parable is the need for persistence.  The parable ends with justice - eventually. But the widow has to keep on demanding it, and must not lose heart and give up. This parable is about staying faithful in those times when justice seems mysteriously absent.

Jesus is going to be betrayed and killed. He will undergo suffering that is utterly undeserved and completely unfair. And it is as he warns of this that Jesus says to his disciples, be persistent in prayer, do not lose heart, stay faithful.

Suffering happens. The Bible is clear and completely realistic about that. And suffering happens to good people as well as bad (as if we could make such a distinction). Things that are utterly undeserved and unfair happen, and we don’t know why. There are times when, like the lazy judge, God seems to be absent. Our life is turned upside down, our world is thrown into chaos, what we thought we could depend on is taken away from us. And it seems as though heaven is deaf to our cries.

It’s really important to know that the Bible acknowledges that. Not just in today’s Gospel reading but in lots of places. Many of the psalms are lamentations and complaints against God – why is this happening to me?, the psalmist cries. The book of Job is a long study of the sufferings of an innocent man, and his complaints to God.

And yet the Bible does not give us an explanation, or an easy answer. Our complaints are allowed, they are understood. But they are cries of lament addressed, very often, into silence. Sometimes people say, well, when we see everything we will understand it was all for our good. But actually the Bible doesn’t allow us to say even that. The response to human suffering, so often, is darkness and silence.

But the darkness and silence are not empty. This is where we need to be persistent in prayer and stay faithful. God is there. God hears. As Tolstoy once said, God sees the truth, but waits. Most of all, God is there in the darkness and silence of the cross.

It is against the backdrop of his own coming suffering that Jesus warns the disciples to pray continually and never lose heart. God is present in the darkness and silence that Jesus is about to enter. God in Jesus is enduring everything that it is to be human, including death. And God is acting even in the darkness and silence to bring about a new justice, the Kingdom of God revealed in the resurrection.

Therefore, pray continually, be persistent, never lose heart. God is acting, even if he seems to delay.

Persistence in prayer is a matter of habit. It’s not just firing off a quick plea for help, and then giving up because there seems to be no answer. Prayer is something we have to train ourselves to do, so it becomes second nature.  The essence of prayer is persistent attention to God, waiting on God, especially in the times of darkness and silence when God seems absent.

We can’t be saying prayers all the time of course, we have other things to do. But whatever we are doing our hearts can still be attentive and watchful, centred on God in the present moment, in the task we are doing.

We need time set aside each day for verbal prayer and refelection on scripture. But that is not the whole of our prayer. Verbal prayer helps to develop the habit of attention to God that can then permeate our whole lives whatever we are doing. And whatever the circumstances are.

That way we can be persistent in prayer even in the midst of suffering and turmoil, even in the times of darkness and silence and absence. Because God is working in the darkness and the silence, and he will grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night.