Sermon at Parish Mass Advent 3 2025

 

Isaiah 35:1-10

James 5:7-10

Matthew 11:2-11

 

Of course, you can’t just choose the bits of the Bible you happen to like, and ignore the rest. You can’t just read your favourite passages about God being good, and kind and nice (although there’s a lot of that). You’ve got to accept the challenging uncomfortable bits as well. You’ve got to take the rough with the smooth.

All well and good. Except – in today’s Gospel reading, Jesus quotes the Bible, and leaves bits out.

The occasion is a question from John the Baptist. Last week, we met him in the wilderness, baptising people for repentance, being rather rude to the religious authorities, and full of warnings of fiery wrath. “The axe is laid at the root of the trees”, he said. “Every tree… that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.” John warns of the coming Messiah, who will burn the chaff “in unquenchable fire”. 

So it’s clear that John is expecting something quite radical, even violent. The Messiah is coming to punish wrongdoers. 

Move forward to today’s Gospel reading. Some time has passed, Jesus has embarked on his ministry, and meanwhile John has been thrown into prison. And he sends to ask Jesus, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?”

Why ask the question? Well, Jesus has been going round preaching the Kingdom of God, sure enough, but there is as yet no sign of any vengeance. No sign of the bad guys getting their comeuppance. John is wondering if he Jesus really can be the Messiah, as he doesn’t seem to be sticking to the script.

Well, Jesus doesn’t reply yes or no. He simply says to tell John what the messengers see and hear.  And this is where he quotes the Bible:

“The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.” That is actually a compilation of five passages from Isaiah about the coming of the Messiah. 

We heard one of the five passages this morning, in Isaiah 35, “the eyes of the blind shall be opened, the ears of the deaf unstopped, the lame shall leap like a deer and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy” But Jesus doesn’t quote everything that Isaiah says. The prophet goes on: “Here is your God, he will come with vengeance, with terrible recompense.” And there’s something like that in all five of the texts that Jesus refers to[1], both a promise of restoration and a promise of vengeance.

Jesus clearly understands what John’s question is about. By quoting those passages but leaving out those verses, by speaking of blessing but not of vengeance, Jesus is saying to John that, indeed, things are not turning out quite as he expected. 

You see, John expects wrath. Last week he warned the Pharisees, “who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” And as we saw last week, the word translated “wrath” in the Bible means desire that cannot be satisfied, generating a vicious spiral of insatiable craving: we cannot have what we desire, but that feeds our desire even more.

What Jesus exposes in the Gospels is that wrath, this insatiable desire is something we do to ourselves, because we are looking for the source of our life where it can’t be found. Jesus, however, shows us what God is like. God is love, self-giving, overflowing, utterly alive. God’s desire is to give himself. What Jesus wants us to do is to imitate the self-giving desire of God, instead of the insatiable, death dealing desires that humans imitate from one another. So it turns out as we read the Gospels that wrath is not inflicted on us by an avenging deity for resisting his will. Wrath describes what turning away from God’s life-giving desire does to us, what it is like to choose our own death-bound desires instead.

So the judgement that Jesus brings does not inflict wrath, it brings it to light. Wrath names the distance between what we are and what we are meant to be, and when Jesus is revealed to us we cannot but experience that distance as both a pain and a longing in ourselves.

Both a pain and a longing. Judgement shows us what we are, in order that we might become what we are meant to be. The purpose of God’s judgement is always salvation. So when Jesus quotes only the bits of the Bible about God restoring things as they are meant to be, he is not ignoring the parts about judgement. But he is correcting John the Baptist’s misunderstanding. Judgement is not God’s revenge, but is rather God showing us where we are, so that we might be brought back to where God wills us to be, for God’s will is always our highest good.

In Advent traditionally we reflect on the “four last things” – death, judgement, heaven and hell. They are bound together, facets of the great resolution when all things will be brought into the light of Christ. In Jesus, God has come near in judgement, but has come near to save us. His judgement exposes the truth about ourselves, but does this by revealing to us his own loving self-giving desire. Judgement therefore makes salvation possible, turning us in repentance from our death-bound desires, to God, in whom alone is the true source of life.

The Kingdom of God, into which we are invited, is everything restored as it is meant be. And Hell describes what it is to continue to choose our own death-bound desires instead. And judgement is when all our veils and illusions are taken away and we see ourselves and all our actions as they really are in relation to their ultimate object, which is Christ. 

The call of Advent, as we heard on its first Sunday, is to awake. To become conscious and mindful of Christ. He is the coming Redeemer who restores all things. He is the Saviour who proclaims the forgiveness of sins. He is the ultimate object of all our choices and actions, in whose light we are judged. And he is the giver of eternal life, for in God alone is the source of life, the purpose of our existence, and our highest good. Therefore: repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.

---

[1] The references are: Isaiah 29:18 (“vengeance” verse 20); 35:5-6 (“vengeance” verse 4); 42:8, 17 (“vengeance” verse 13); 26:19 (“vengeance” verse 21); and 61:1 (“vengeance” part of verse 2).

Sermon at Parish Mass, Advent 2 2025

Isaiah 11:1-10

Romans 15:4-13

Matthew 3:1-12 

“In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea… [and] the people of Jerusalem and all Judea were going out to him.”

Nothing like this had been seen for centuries. The story of the prophets runs through the Hebrew scriptures, but ends with the Prophet Malachi, who signs off thus: “I will send you the prophet Elijah before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes. He will turn the hearts of parents to their children and the hearts of children to their parents, so that I will not come and strike the land with a curse.” 

And then – nothing. The authorized version of the Bible, the King James version, even puts at the bottom of that page, “The End of the Prophets”. For century after century, there were no more prophets, no words or visions from on high. The prophetic witness seemed to be complete.

And then John the Baptist came. Suddenly, after centuries of silence from heaven, here is John, looking like a prophet, acting like a prophet, speaking like a prophet. No wonder everyone is going out to see him.

So, how do you respond to a prophet? That depends, perhaps, on what you think prophets are for. And John has some rather harsh words for the Pharisees and Sadducees who have come out to see him. These were religious leaders, respected people, with position and influence in society. And yet they are greeted with, ‘You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit worthy of repentance. Do not presume to say to yourselves, “We have Abraham as our ancestor”.’

Do not presume to rely on your heritage, your traditions, or your membership of any particular privileged group. Prophets are there, throughout the Bible, to call people to repentance. That is, to turn back to God. And the message of the prophets is often particularly addressed to those who have power and privilege, to the leaders of the people. 

But instead of responding with personal repentance, the Pharisees and Sadducees in this scene seem to have quite a different attitude. They know that they are Jewish people, descendants of Abraham. And the Jewish people have prophets. It’s part of their heritage and identity that people like this will turn up. So they had better go out and see what is going on. 

But in their position of privilege and entitlement they go to see John in much the same way as they have gone to the zoo to see an exotic new animal. Something of interest. A diversion. Possibly something they might need to approve or disapprove of, in their official capacity as leaders of the people. But not something that is going to change them. 

And John says they have got it all wrong. Their heritage and traditions, their position of privilege, their identity with a certain group, “descendants of Abraham”, all that counts for nothing before God. What God seeks is genuine conversion of the heart, true repentance, turning back towards God. And it’s the same for everyone. Whether you are a respectable religious leader, or a notorious sinner (or indeed both, because that’s possible). You are all in the same boat, and the same response is needed: a radical change of heart. 

What brings this message of repentance into focus is John’s warning about feeling from wrath. The word translated “wrath” in our English Bibles is a closely related to desire. Wrath is craving that can never be satisfied, insatiable desire that eats us up and torments us. It is desire for what can never satisfy, for what is not God. It is desire rooted in rivalry, wanting what others have, trying to grab and hold on to what we feel we lack, leading to envy, violence, hatred and division. 

Repentance is the conversion of our desire. From wrath, the death-bound desire that closes us in on ourselves, we are called to turn around so we can imitate the desire of God which is open and generous, loving and life-giving. 

The Kingdom is at hand, and therefore we must repent. The Kingdom changes our priorities, the way we live in the world and with one another, the way we live towards God. We cannot rely on having Abraham as an ancestor, or on any other kind of heritage or group or cultural identity. In fact, the desire of God draws us beyond all those distinctions, gathering into one new humanity both Jew and Gentile, all races, cultures and nations, as Saint Paul insists, repeatedly, in the passage from Romans today. 

This message of God’s radical inclusion has always faced opposition, which can be subtle and insidious. This week a rally organized by far-right activists is planned in London, ostensibly to assert the Christian character of this country, but what they stand for is very far from the teaching of Christ, really about promoting fear of the other and a false religion of hatred and division. This is the desire that can never be satisfied, that the Bible calls wrath, because it turns us in on our own identities and rivalries and not outwards towards God. 

Christians should not be surprised that things like this happen, nor should we be taken in by them. Saint Paul, in 2 Corinthians, warns of false apostles and deceitful preachers sowing conflict, and says that even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light.

Do not presume to say, “we have Abraham for an ancestor”, for God can raise up children for Abraham from these stones. Do not presume to say, “this is a Christian nation”, for God can, and does, raise up Christians from the stony ground of every nation. Heritage, culture and group identity count for nothing without true repentance from the heart. It is our repentance, the conversion of our desire, that draws us into God’s desire. God’s desire that leads us away from rivalry and conflict, and into God’s movement, the movement to gather all people together in one new reality in Christ.

John bears a message for God’s people. He proclaims the coming Messiah, although he does not yet see the mysterious and contradictory way the Messiah will live his vocation, taking him to the cross. John is the forerunner, but of something he cannot yet imagine, as we shall see in next week’s Gospel reading.

But his message remains, and it remains valid for all God’s people. The Kingdom of God is at hand, repent! Our death-bound desires, turned in our themselves, need to be converted to God’s desire, God’s overflowing, generous and self-giving love. And this is how we, like John, prepare the way for the Lord, and for his Kingdom, in our lives, in our society, and in our world.

Sermon at Parish Mass, Advent 1 2025

 

Isaiah 2:1-5

Romans 13:1-end

Matthew 24:36-44

 

You may experience a sense of deja vu on hearing that Gospel reading. Didn’t Luke say something similar two weeks ago? Well, yes, he did. But now we are in a new church year, in which we will read through Matthew’s Gospel on most Sundays. Nevertheless, we start near the end of Matthew, in the equivalent place where we left off Luke.

As with Luke, this section of the gospel is called “apocalypse”, which means “unveiling”, seeing what is going on behind the scenes of the world. We are told to be watchful for something unknown and unexpected. What we are going to see is not what we expect. That something is the “coming of the Son of Man”, which brings both judgement and salvation. 

Judgement that will bring to light things hidden in darkness. John’s Gospel says that the light has come into the world, but people preferred darkness to light because their deeds were evil. If you’re not expecting the light, if you are not watching for it, you will act as though you can keep on hiding and covering things up. But the light will come, and the truth will be exposed.

And the coming of the Son of Man will bring salvation because everything will be brought into the light. Reward, then, for those who have been faithful and watchful. Redemption for those who have been the victims of the deeds of darkness.

This season is Advent, a Latin word which means “the coming”. The keynote of this time is one of penitence, sobriety, and prayer. This is a bit counter-cultural in a world already busy with Christmas shopping and decked with fairy lights, but it is a fitting preparation for the feast of Christmas. There is a character in Advent, in the chill nights when you look up at the glittering stars, that makes you catch your breath. A stillness and a waiting. Something new is coming.

The coming of the Son of Man is something that appears in various ways throughout the ministry of Jesus. His birth in Bethlehem, his baptism in the Jordan, his arrival in Jerusalem in triumph, his lifting up from the earth on the cross. In unknown and unexpected ways, Jesus enters the scene for judgement and salvation. 

Salvation for the outcasts, the sinners, the excluded and unclean. Judgement for the powerful, the content, those who were sure of themselves.

But all that is the prelude for the most unexpected coming of the Son of Man. When all was over, finally and definitively, when the victim was dead and buried and tidied away. What could be more unknown than that the victim should rise from the dead? And what could be more unexpected than that the victim should return, not to seek revenge on those who had betrayed and killed him, but to forgive them? Indeed, to empower them to go and spread his forgiveness throughout the world.

And all of this is bundled together in an image that Jesus also used, and which we repeat in the Creed, that he will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end. 

This looks forward to a final fulfilment. At the end of the Gospel, after the resurrection, Jesus ascends into heaven in the cloud of God’s glory, and the disciples are told that they will see him come again in the same way. Which is to say, that Jesus, the risen victim, is the supreme power that rules creation, and there is a day when he will be revealed as the origin and end of all things. 

The world can be re-imagined in hope, because the way that things always were turns out not to be the final truth. Condemnation, violence and casting out are not the principles behind the universe, although the human race has been living up to now as though they were.

The final coming of Jesus in glory to judge the living and the dead is apocalypse, that is, unveiling. It will be the moment of universal seeing, when the truth that Jesus is Lord will be known and realised in all things. But this truth is already established in heaven and is breaking in to the here and now. 

This therefore means that hope is not displaced to some remote end point that we aren’t at yet - whether that be millions of years from now or the day after tomorrow. For the coming of the Son of Man is the way in which God is redeeming the world, here and now. And, as in the lifetime of Jesus, it is experienced by many people in many ways. 

For us, as for those in the time of Jesus, hope is the rupture in the system. Hope is what happens when things don’t carry on as they always have, the new and unexpected thing breaking in where human life seemed hopelessly death-bound and lost. We cannot save ourselves, for salvation is God’s initiative, God’s interruption and disruption of how life has been up to now. 

So we are called to be watchful for the coming of the Son of Man. The unknown and unexpected breaking in to our lives. The sudden fissure in our hearts, letting in the light from which we might shrink, for it brings judgement, but which also brings healing and forgiveness. Brought into God’s light the truth about ourselves is no longer told as judgement and condemnation but as part of God’s bigger story of mercy and love. So too are the ruptures in the world where forgiveness, reconciliation and peace suddenly break out where before there seemed no hope. 

Watch, therefore, for the signs of the Kingdom. Signs that Jesus the risen victim is the Lord. Signs that the one who was cast out and killed is on the throne of the universe, to judge and to save, to forgive and to heal. Watch and stay awake, because if we think that everything is always going to be the same we will not see the unexpected place where the Lord breaks in, the unknown way in which he is making known his Kingdom. 

“Salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; the night is far gone, the day is near. Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armour of light.”

Sermon at Parish Mass and Baptism, Christ the King 2025

Jeremiah 23:1-6

Colossians 1:11-20

Luke 23:33-43

On the Feast of Christ the King, we are confronted with two radically different ideas of what a king is. They are both there in today’s Gospel reading.

There is the Kingdom that people can see, in that scene on Calvary, the Kingdom of Caesar, the Roman Empire, by whose authority Jesus and the men with him are being put to death. There are soldiers of that kingdom everywhere, banners with the Roman eagle, public violence used as a tool of social control. Rome is a kingdom of violence and oppression, where might is right. 

But there is another Kingdom here, too. It is the Kingdom of God, preached by Jesus, who now hangs on a Roman cross. This is the kingdom of peace, not violence; the kingdom where the oppressed are set free, the excluded brought back in, the untouchable are embraced. Where those who have nothing to offer are promised paradise. The Kingdom of God is founded on love, mercy and grace.

When we say that Christ is King, we don’t just mean that Christ is the ruler instead of earthly authorities like Caesar. We also mean that Christ rules in a completely different way. His kingdom is not founded on violence and fear, but on truth and life, holiness and grace, justice, love and peace. 

One person in this scene understands this, and faith opens his heart. We often think of this person as the “good thief”, but the word Luke uses simply means an evildoer. It’s quite non-specific. He could be anyone. He could be one of us. Which is perhaps the point. He, who has nothing to offer, has faith in Jesus, “Jesus, remember me, when you come into your kingdom.” And he is promised paradise. The first to enter the Kingdom of Jesus, the first of the countless multitude down the ages who have responded to Him in faith, and who are enlarging his Kingdom from day to day.

And what faith, the gift of God, to say to a dying man, “remember me when you come in to your kingdom”. Those words can only be spoken out of faith in the resurrection. They only make sense if God will raise Jesus from the dead to a new life which he can then share with those who believe in him. 

It is because God raised Jesus from the dead, that we know he really is a king. Not in the way of the world, whose kings base their authority on violence and fear. Jesus is King, because he receives his Kingdom of life and peace and justice as a gift from his Father. The God in whom there is no violence or death has vindicated Jesus as King of all creation.

And this enables us to understand not just Jesus, but ourselves. Our story is transformed by his story, our life and death by his life and death and resurrection. The presence of the crucified and risen victim enables us to re-imagine the world. The Kingdom of God is something that God gives to us entirely freely, when we have nothing of our own to bring. Like the dying criminal, we discover that the loss of the life we have lived according to the world’s standards enables us to receive the gift of true life from Jesus, and to enter the Kingdom which is God’s free gift.

This is the meaning of the sacrament of Baptism which we shall celebrate shortly. Just as Jesus passed through the deep waters of death, so in our baptism we too die with Christ, who washes our sins away, and rise with him to new and eternal life. The font is both a tomb and a womb. The tomb of sin and death, and the womb that gives birth to eternal life.

That life is freely offered to all. Like the dying criminal, we too can respond to Jesus in faith. No matter what our life has been up to now. Jesus is the Saviour, bringing forgiveness and new birth, liberating us from the past. 

Our true, eternal, life is God’s gift in his Kingdom and therefore will never be taken away. The kingdoms of the world, governed by violence and death, will not triumph. Jesus, their victim, is risen from the dead, and is the true and eternal King. In the Book of Revelation a shout goes up in heaven: “The Kingdom of the world has become the Kingdom of our Lord and his Christ, and he will reign for ever and ever.”

We began with the contrast between the Roman Empire and the Kingdom of Christ. Something quite remarkable happened when the Roman Empire accepted, or adapted itself to, Christianity.

In the heart of Rome, the imperial city, founded on might and power and clear boundaries of who was included and who was not, there stands a baptistery, built in the fifth Century, where all the people of Rome who were coming to Christ were baptized. Where all the people who came to Christ, Emperors and slaves, citizens and foreigners, sinners and scoundrels, all were made one and made equal in their new life in Christ. An inscription runs around the baptismal pool, proclaiming, in the heart of Rome, that here stands the gateway to another and different Kingdom, one that will never pass away. It says this:

“Here is born in Spirit-soaked fertility a brood predestined to Another City, begotten by God’s blowing and borne upon this torrent by the Church their Virgin Mother. Reborn in these depths, they reach for Heaven’s kingdom, the born but once unrecognizable by felicity. 

“This pool is life that floods the world; the wounds of Christ its awesome source. Sinner sink beneath this sacred surf that swallows age and spits up youth. Sinner here scour sin away down to innocence, for they know no enmity who are by one Font, one Spirit, and one Faith made one. Sinner shudder not at sin’s kinds and number: for those born here are holy.”

 

Sermon at Parish Mass Trinity 15 2025

Amos 6:1a, 4-7

1 Timothy 6:6-19

Luke 16:19-end

 

“If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.”

The gospels, from beginning to end, are the story of the Resurrection of Jesus. They would not have been written if the first disciples had not had the experience of Jesus, crucified and raised from the dead. Everything in them was written in that light. And they were written, some 40 to 60 years after the Resurrection, because the risen Lord was still a living experience transforming the lives of believers. People were still meeting Jesus and finding their lives changed by that encounter. Therefore, what he said and did in his lifetime mattered, and needed to be written down.

The experience of the Risen Lord was and is the most important fact in the life of the Church. The Church which wrote the gospels, and the Church which reads them. That’s us. For us, as for Christians in every age, meeting the risen Lord changes everything.

It changes where we see God at work. Not in the centres of power and wealth, but in the outcast, in the marginalised, in the victim who was rejected, cast out, crucified, buried. And who was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father. God is at work where the world thinks everything is over and done with, worthless, finished, and forgotten.

And that is the meaning of the parable in today’s Gospel. The story of a heedless rich man and a pious poor man, and how their situations are reversed by God’s judgement after death, was a well-known moral fable at the time of Jesus. But Jesus changes it. In his story, Lazarus is not obviously religious. It is his poverty and need, not his piety, that we are to notice. And then comes the twist in the tale: “neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.” We see that this parable needs to be read, like the whole of the Gospel, in the light of the Resurrection. Because Jesus is, pre-eminently, the one who rose from the dead. 

The Resurrection changes how we understand God. The humble and meek are indeed lifted up, raised even from the death that human violence inflicted. The resurrection is God’s judgement on a society which survives by creating victims. But it is also God’s inauguration of a new society, of his kingdom. The old order of sin and death gives way as God exposes and reverses the extent to which we have been complicit in it. 

Jesus, like Lazarus, was counted as nothing by the world which rejected him and put him to death. The rich man simply didn’t see Lazarus when he was alive, or if he did just assumed that he was getting what he deserved. The rich man is someone who does not understand what God is like. Even in the afterlife of this parable, which is the truth about Lazarus and the rich man seen in the God’s light, he thinks that Lazarus is someone who can be ordered to come to him, like a slave, with a drink of water.

Today in our great city, it is too easy to ignore those who are on the margins. The poor, the homeless, the hungry, those with no opportunities, victims of people trafficking and modern slavery. Those who are excluded tend to become invisible. And in this one world, our global home, how easy it is not to see those who suffer from war, poverty and injustice, in our relentless exposure to calamitous news from distant places.

But for us who believe in the Risen Lord, who are being transformed by the power of his risen life, we cannot let our brothers and sisters be invisible. We cannot turn away. Because that would be to turn away from where God is at work, from those whom God most values. For the face of Jesus, the outcast and the Risen Lord, shines out most clearly in our brothers and sisters who are on the margins and most in need.

On the last two Sundays we have had two feast days, which meant that we departed from the readings from Luke’s Gospel set for those two weeks. But in fact the readings for those feast days, and for today, have a common message, which has even developed in a coherent way. 

On Holy Cross Day, we saw that the saving work of Jesus, in his death and resurrection, reconciles humanity with God and with one another, creating one new humanity in which there is no distinction of race, nationality or culture. On Saint Matthew’s Day, we saw that even people of the same race and nation, bitterly divided by politics and social position, could find a new unity, a new belonging together, in Jesus. 

Today, the story of the rich man and Lazarus teaches us to notice those who also belong, but whom we would not see, unless Jesus were walking with us on the path of discipleship, showing us his presence in those most marginalized and most in need. Our vision and understanding are enlarged to embrace all of humanity. All are called into the new reality of God’s kingdom. 

It is true that problems of exclusion and marginalization can have complex roots and we cannot ourselves personally solve all of them. But we can give of our surplus to those agencies that have the means to help. And we can build a better world by being citizens who see, and draw attention to, Jesus in the most excluded. Because the first in the Kingdom will be Lazarus and all the marginalized and ignored ones of the world, who in fact show Jesus to us most truly. Then even those who are comfortable and secure can find a place at the table alongside them, through God’s mercy, through learning to see.

The Church always looks to Jesus, and is constantly being taught by him, the risen Lord, the living reality in our lives. Jesus risen from the dead alone undoes the sinful ordering of human society and makes new life possible for everyone – for the poor and dispossessed at our gates, and even, if they can but believe, for the rich and powerful. Because, through God’s infinite love, the gate of mercy stands open even for them.

Sermon for the Feast of Saint Matthew, 21st September 2025

Proverbs 3.13–18

2 Corinthians 4.1–6

Matthew 9.9–13

 

Saint Bede, known as the Venerable Bede, was one of the great jewels of northern English monasticism in the seventh and eighth centuries. He wrote commentaries, histories and sermons, and had this to say about Saint Matthew in today’s Gospel reading:

“Jesus saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax office, and he said to him: Follow me. Jesus saw Matthew, not merely in the usual sense, but more significantly with his merciful understanding of men… He saw the tax collector and, because he saw him through the eyes of mercy and chose him, he said to him: Follow me.”

Jesus saw the tax collector through the eyes of mercy and chose him. Most people at the time of Jesus would not have looked at tax collectors with mercy. They were collaborators with the occupying Roman empire, collecting, or extorting, money for far-off Rome, backed up by Roman military force, and often adding their own mark-up to what they collected. Many people hated them with a passion. When we hear in the Gospels the phrase, “tax collectors and sinners”, as we did today, that is all the bad people lumped together. 

There were opponents of collaborators and tax collectors. People like the Zealots, a fierce political movement of religious nationalism that sought to incite the Jewish people to revolt and drive out the foreign Roman invaders. The threat of violence was never far away, and could be brutally repressed.

Obviously Zealots and tax collectors wouldn’t be seen in each other’s company. Except, when we read the lists of the Apostles, we see, amongst the others, Matthew the tax collector, and Simon the Zealot. 

It would seem that the only thing that these people had in common was that Jesus had looked at them through the eyes of mercy, and chosen them. That look, and that choice, was so powerful that it drew the first disciples immediately to Jesus, no matter who they were. No matter that they then found themselves, by the choice of Jesus, in the company of others, equally chosen, whom they would never normally have associated with.

The choice of Jesus creates a new reality in which irreconcilable opponents, even enemies, suddenly find themselves united. The attraction of Jesus overcomes every human division.

Last week, on Holy Cross Day, we noted that the Cross is the sign of reconciliation: the saving work of Jesus who reconciles humanity with God, and with one another. Our enmity is overcome, and one new humanity is created in Christ in which there is no barrier or race or nation or culture.

On St Matthew’s Day, we see people of the same race and nation who are nevertheless radically divided by their different social and political positions. And these too are drawn together in unity in the new reality created by Jesus.

And this is the beginning of a movement that is meant to spread. As Saint Bede says, further, on today’s Gospel:

“ ‘As he sat at table in the house, behold many tax collectors and sinners came and sat down with Jesus and his disciples.’ This conversion of one tax collector gave many men, those from his own profession and other sinners, an example of repentance and pardon. Notice also the happy and true anticipation of his future status as apostle and teacher of the nations. No sooner was he converted than Matthew drew after him a whole crowd of sinners along the same road to salvation.”

As we have often noted, the Church is not a club for good people, it is the community of forgiven people. The task of the Church is to draw after us a whole crowd of other sinners along the same road to salvation. 

And in this new community, following the way of salvation, all are united. All races, nations and cultures are drawn together in one new humanity in Christ. And the polarity of different political and social positions is also overcome, because Jesus looks on us all with the eyes of mercy and chooses us. The Church is therefore not only the community of forgiven people, it is also the union of people who are not like each other, not like me, except for this one thing: that Jesus has looked at us through the eyes of mercy and chosen us.

We live in a world which seems to be becoming increasingly polarised and divided. The echo chambers of social media amplify their own messages and drown out anything else. In this toxic environment disagreement is not far away from enmity, and violent speech gives rise to violent actions. 

In this world the Church needs to be a visible sign of reconciliation and unity. A sign that Jesus looks at every person through the eyes of mercy and chooses them. And therefore chooses them, and me, and all of us, to belong to a new reality in which our divisions are overcome. 

Of course, the Church must also be a sign of truth in a world that is forgetting how to tell the truth, for we follow Him who is the way, the truth and the life. The Church must challenge false narratives that undermine the God-given humanity and dignity of every person. The Church must call out and stand against messages of fear, hatred and exclusion.

But this also means recognising the truth of the person who is different from me, who radically disagrees with me. Not necessarily the truth of what they say, for the Gospel sets out a clear law of love that is contradicted by those who preach hate. But, certainly, we must recognise the truth of who they are, the dignity of human persons made in the image of God. People upon whom Jesus looks with the eyes of mercy, and chooses them. Just as he looks upon me and chooses me. And so gives us to each other, in the new belonging that he creates, and which it is the Church’s task to live and proclaim.

The Cross, the Banner of Another Country

 

Andrea di Bartolo (1360-1428) - The Resurrection. Walters Art Museum, Wikimedia Commons 

Sermon Holy Cross Day 2025

Numbers 21.4-9

Philippians 2.6-11

John 3.13-17

 

The Cross is known universally as the Christian symbol. It appears publically on churches throughout the world (although ours is awaiting replacement). Many Christians wear a small cross, or have one in their home. We make the sign of the cross on ourselves in our prayers. 

The Cross also appears on the flags of a number of nations and institutions that have a Christian heritage. We saw the Flag of St George and the Union Flag quite a lot yesterday. There was the usual exuberant celebration of the Last Night of the Proms, where clearly everyone is welcome under these waving banners. Rather more troublingly, we also saw flags, and indeed crosses, carried through our streets in an anti-immigration protest in an attempt to claim Christianity as some kind of cultural identity badge, with apparently no understanding of Christian teaching. The Church is one over all the earth, and Christian identity can never be conflated with any particular race or nation. 

What we now call the Flag of St George, a red cross on a white background, appeared in the Middle Ages, long after the historical Saint George, when it began to be used as a flag by a number of countries, of which England was a relatively late arrival. At around the same time, it appeared in art in depictions of the Resurrection, as a banner held aloft by the risen Christ. 

This gives us a clue to its symbolic meaning. The red cross, the colour of blood, symbolises the passion of Christ, his death, and the white stands for the new life of his resurrection. So, carried by the risen Christ, it is a symbol of the Paschal Mystery, the victory of the Cross through his death and resurrection.

This is the heart of the Christian faith, summarised in Philippians this morning. Christ has emptied himself to share our humanity, even to death, and therefore has been raised to the glory of God. It was necessary that the Messiah should suffer and so enter into his glory. Because God in Christ has shared our death, death has been defeated, and the resurrection revealed. Humanity, united with Christ, is raised with him.

The pattern of dying and rising is the shape of the Christian faith, and is imprinted on us by our baptism, in which indeed we are marked with the sign of the Cross. We died and were buried with Christ in the waters of the font, so that we might be raised with him to eternal life. 

The grace we received in the font at our baptism is renewed in our life from day to day. Yet we cannot avoid the Cross, we are marked with it. There is no resurrection without death. Repentance, the conversion of life to which we are called, is a continual dying to self that we might live to God. The sufferings and sorrows of life are not avoided or cancelled out by the resurrection, but are transformed, the light of the resurrection shines through the Cross.

The Cross is both the sign of reconciliation, and the mark of its cost. Reconciliation between humanity and God, first of all, and therefore also the reconciliation of all divided humanity. Colossians says “through Christ God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross”.  Ephesians says, “He is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us”. 

How the cross saves and reconciles us is a mystery, which is not a puzzle to be solved but rather a truth whose meaning can never be exhausted. In the Cross, we see the infinite love and mercy of God, who alone can save us, meeting the depths of human sin and division and need and the disaster of death, and overcoming them.

And this is for everyone. Colossians says, it is the reconciliation of all things. The Gospel says it is the lifting up of the Son of Man, so that “everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life”. The Cross reconciles us with God and with one another, creating one new humanity in which there are no boundaries of race, nation or culture. 

We should not therefore be ashamed of the Cross. What if some people misuse it as a symbol of culture wars or toxic nationalism? Christians know better, and it is our symbol. Here we have no abiding city, but we seek the City that is to come, as Hebrews says. Whatever flag may fly over us in our exile here on earth, the Church unites, in one, people of every race, nation and culture. And we look to the Cross as the banner of another country, in which we have our true citizenship, the City of God in which all peoples will be gathered into one new humanity in Christ. 

The Cross is the sign of Christ, the sign of salvation. It is God’s hope breaking through into human tragedy. It is death defeated and the resurrection revealed. It is the sign of reconciliation that overcomes all barriers of race and nation and culture. The Cross proclaims to all people, as Ephesians says: “You are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and… members of the household of God.”

As Christians, we will best honour the sign of the Cross by living according to what it means. In lives of sacrificial self-giving love. In reconciling, because we have been reconciled. In welcoming, because we have been welcomed. In forgiving, because we have been forgiven. In faith that the worst this world can do can never equal God’s power to bring new life and hope. By always being ready to point to that hope amid the dreadful wreckage of human sin and death. It is through lives marked by the Sign of the Cross that we will best lift high the Cross, and the love of Christ proclaim, in a world that stands so much in need of that love.