Sermon Christmas 1/The Holy Family 2012

Images are copyright, but click here for a picture of "Our Mother"

1 Samuel 1:20-28

1 John 3:1-2, 21-end

Luke 2:41-end

Last year I went to the Grayson Perry exhibition at the British Museum. Among the artist’s works on display was a pair of sculptures called ‘Our Father’ and ‘Our Mother’. Made in cast iron, they depicted a man and a woman, leaning on sticks, each of them bent over beneath the weight of an enormous pile of baggage, loaded on to their backs and hanging off them all over.

The Father figure was laden with guns, grenades, tools, books, barbed wire and coffins. The Mother carried baskets of fruit and bread, water flasks, mixing bowls, religious icons, and a baby. Both of them, somewhere in their bundles, also carried a withered corpse - their own father and mother, who had themselves carried these burdens before.

Having lost my own parents some years ago I found that I was very moved by those sculptures. They seemed to me to be deeply compassionate; they told the truth, but without blame. None of us is born into a vacuum. We all inherit, in one way or another, the baggage that passes down the generations - the weight of expectations, hopes, success, failure, all the things that people can’t cope with or even name, all the limitations that come with our upbringing and that of our parents and grandparents. Now most families try to do their best with what has come down to them, but sadly we have to acknowledge, too, that families can also fail even to the extent of being wilfully cruel and abusive. 

But however good the human family is, however loving and caring, it can never be everything. It can never be quite the idyllic group dwelling in unity that is sometimes romantically imagined. Children, particularly, are always different - unique, unrepeatable individuals, never the same as their parents, always to an extent new, unknown and unknowable, surprising and strange. 

The process of discovering this can be painful and difficult, for both child and parents. Individuation is a necessary and healthy part of growing up, but it does mean discovering our separation, that we are not simply an extension of our parents. That our need for belonging, for completion, is one that our human family can never meet.

There is, as it were, a tragic dimension to the family, the dimension of inevitable separation and difference, of failure however hard we try, and the Bible pulls no punches in describing it. 

From Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel, through the Patriarchs and the Kings, the Biblical family is something that always seems to be going wrong. Stories like that of Samuel, Hannah and Elkanah that we heard today, where things seem to go right, are exceptions requiring Divine intervention. There are more dysfunctional relationships in the Bible than in even a Christmas episode of ‘East Enders’! And I do wonder sometimes if those Christians who make a lot of noise about ‘traditional family values’ have actually read the Bible. Indeed, the Swiss Protestant theologian Karl Barth, who certainly had read the Bible, once commented, “the idea of the family is of no interest at all for Christian theology”.

But then, in the fulness of time, God sent his Son. Born fully human, he shared our human life not in the abstract, but in all its particularity, in all its limitation. And so he was born, as he must be, into a human family. 

St Luke portrays that family with particular intimacy in his Gospel, and today, uniquely among the gospel writers, he gives us a glimpse, not of the baby Jesus, but of the adolescent. Jesus in today’s reading is twelve years of age, which was the age at which Jewish children assumed their own responsibilities under the law. We see Jesus at that symbolic point of individuation, his emergence from the shadow of his parents as his own proper person. That day, perhaps for the first time, Jesus seemed to his parents to be new, strange and unknown.

I expect many of us can remember a moment like that, in our teens. And if you haven’t got there yet, don’t worry - it’s alright! That time when we realise that we need to do and express our own thing, and the fussing and anxiety of parents or guardians seems to us to be focussed on a place, on a stage of life, that we are leaving behind. 

For many of us that might have marked the start of what are sometimes called the difficult years, of teenage rebellion in one form or another. This is really part of ordinary development, of emergence from childhood, as psychologists such as Carl Jung have described. But for Jesus, as soon as he appears as his own person, in his own right, his focus is not on himself, but on his Father. “Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?”. And of course this Father is not his human foster father Joseph, but God. 

Luke, in his description of the Holy Family, does what he often does. He gives us a ‘great reversal’ - the turning round and reordering of the world as Jesus comes to proclaim the Kingdom of God. The putting right of all that has gone wrong. So the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph seems to be the ‘traditional’ human family turned on its head. The most important person in this family, the person at the centre, is the child - who traditionally would have had no rights or position at all. The next most important, the one with a speaking role, and who ponders these things in her heart, is his mother - not, as might have been expected in a patriarchal society, his father. And Joseph seems to be the least important. In the gospels, he doesn’t actually get to say anything at all.

With the coming of Jesus, everything that has gone wrong in human society from the beginning is being turned round, and transformed into the Kingdom of God. And that includes the family. With the coming of Jesus, the tragic history of humanity is broken open, and a new beginning is made. 

Beyond the limitations of the human family, Jesus points to a new relationship, a new way of belonging. Humanity, re-created in Christ, is complete at last. “Call no-one on earth your father”, says Jesus elsewhere in the gospels, “for you have one Father, in heaven”. No human family, no human ‘other’ can complete us. No family or network of relationships can fulfil the need for belonging and unity to which we aspire, but cannot reach by ourselves, but only by grace.

Now of course it is right to affirm the goodness of human relationships and the family. When families work well they are communities of love, nurture and protection whose members remain committed to one another through good times and bad. Human relationships can reflect the goodness of God in creation. But they also point beyond themselves to something greater, which is one reason why the Church traditionally has regarded marriage as a sacrament - a sign mediating grace.

Jesus points us to God as our Father. Only in God do we find the ground and source of our being, the one ‘Other’ who completes us and makes us whole. Only in God can we truly name as brothers and sisters all our fellow human beings, because we discover that they belong to us, and we to them, to the extent to which we also discover ourselves in Christ. 

If we allow Christ to make us anew, through his grace, then we will enter his kingdom, which is the true human family at last: redeemed, made new, whole and complete, finding itself in one another and in God. And that is good news for all of us, whatever our family background may be, whatever life has been, whatever relationships and communities we are part of. Jesus offers a new beginning, a new way of being human. Not in some idealised world remote from the reality of our lives, but here and now, coming to meet us, turning the world around right where we are.

Sermon at Parish Mass, Advent III 2012

Zephaniah 3:14-18

Philippians 4:4-7

Luke 3:10-18

This year our parish has been helping with a food bank for the first time, in addition to our long established work with the night shelter. Food banks are part of a response to a growing need seen across our country; as benefits are cut and prices and rents rise, more and more people are finding that they can’t afford to eat. An article in the Evening Standard a couple of weeks ago highlighted this, there was one person who walked 12 miles to the food bank and 12 miles back to get food for their family, because they couldn’t afford even the bus fare. 

The fact that we need things like food banks and night shelters may come as a surprise to many. I’m sure that among our congregations there is a broader understanding and a spirit of Christian solidarity, but I wonder how many in society at large will understand what it is like to lack the basic necessities of life, in London in 2012. Those who are in need of this kind of assistance are not necessarily obvious at all. They could be friends, neighbours, church members. They may very well have homes, and be well dressed, but still be in need of help. Can we see those who are in need in our midst? Can we see what to do?

Today in the gospel the people ask John the Baptist, “what then should we do?” John has just announced the coming of the Lord to redeem Israel, “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight”. And the people realise that this means they need to do something. They need to respond to this good news. John is the last of the prophets, and like the prophets of old his message is that God is coming to his people with judgement and salvation. Judgement, to expose and bring to light what is wrong, so that the people might repent, and turn to the Lord once again, and be saved.

John the Baptist is the last of the prophets, the voice crying in the wilderness, and because he is a prophet he sees what is wrong with the society in which he lives, and proclaims a message of repentance. 

Notice who he is proclaiming the message to. People who have two coats - that is to say, people who have more than they really need. Tax collectors, who raised money for the Romans but were in the habit of charging higher than the official rates to line their own pockets. Soldiers, who clearly at this time extorted money by threats. 

John is not saying to those who are already poor, “be content with what you have”, rather, he is speaking to those who have been causing poverty by their own greed. He is calling them to renounce their greed. His call to repentance is very much about how people’s actions impact on the community. In Luke sin is never an individual private thing, it is always bound up with how we live in the world, how our choices affect and shape the society around us.

And notice, too, that the people have come to John to hear his message, even though he's all the way out in the wilderness - he hasn’t gone to them. There is something attractive about John’s message of repentance. It is indeed good news, even though it means giving up greed and excessive riches. There is something much better on offer. Forgiveness of sins, a new beginning, a fresh start. And this is to prepare the way of the Lord, to open the way for God’s kingdom to come in.

This is the whole movement of Luke’s story, as he tells it in his Gospel and in Acts. Jesus is the Lord and Messiah who has come to restore his people Israel, and through Israel to bring all people, all nations, home into God’s kingdom. And the way into God’s kingdom is repentance for the forgiveness of sins. Repentance means turning away from everything that builds a society contrary to God’s will, oppression and alienation, robbery and extortion, injustice and exploitation. Repentance means aligning ourselves instead with God’s purposes and learning to reflect his righteousness in the world.

That call, that good news, is for us too. Luke knows how to tell a good story. At the beginning of his gospel the people ask John the Baptist, “what then must we do?” And at the beginning of Luke’s second book, the Acts of the Apostles, the same question is asked to Peter on the day of Pentecost, “what must we do?” and the answer is the same: “repent, and be baptised, every one of you”. The story of the Church, like the story of Jesus, begins with the call to repent. 

Advent, this season of self-examination and preparation, is a good time to reflect on that. In what ways do we need to repent? Are our choices, our actions, helping to build a just society in which all can take part? Or are we helping to exclude others, to keep them in poverty and deprivation? Luke tells us to look to the poor and dispossessed, those on the margins, because that is where God’s attention is, too. 

Now that call to repentance is something we need to hear for ourselves. There is a temptation to think that all the injustice and exploitation in the world is caused by other people - the bankers have been blamed for a lot in the last few years. Well, if you are a banker you do need to hear the message of repentance, but so do we. 

So do I. If I buy some coffee or a shirt which are really cheap because they have been made with exploited labour in some other part of the world, do I not need to repent? Do I not need to see what I am doing, and turn around? The sobering edge of the Advent message is that we need to hear God’s judgement in our lives if we are also to receive his salvation.

Things like food banks and winter night shelters are not just isolated charity projects, unconnected with the rest of life. Yes, part of our response to the gospel, our repentance, consists of helping those in need according to our ability. This is right and good. But we also need to see that these things are symptoms of something in the world that runs deeply contrary to God’s purposes. When some people are hugely affluent there simply shouldn’t be people who are starving. But there are. The Gospel calls us to examine the causes of injustice, as well as dealing with its consequences. 

Christ comes to us with the command to model God’s righteousness in a world which tends deeply to resist that righteousness. The Gospel calls us to conversion, to repentance for the forgiveness of sins, not only for our own sakes, but so that God’s kingdom can spread in the world. And that is the true way to prepare for the coming of Christ, and the feast of Christmas. As someone is said once to have prayed, “O Lord, convert the world - and begin with me.” That’s a good prayer for Advent. Amen.

Sermon at Parish Mass, Christ the King 2012

Daniel 7:13-14

Revelation 1:5-8

John 18:33-37

What are kings for? What do they do? If we’re asked that we might think perhaps of our own United Kingdom. It’s been a good year for our monarchy, with the celebrations of the diamond jubilee, our own visit from Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall, and signs that the monarchy is more popular than ever.

Of course, ours is a constitutional monarchy in a parliamentary democracy. It wasn’t always so. This year has also seen the discovery of what may well be the remains of Richard III, killed at the battle of Bosworth Field in the deadly struggle between two rival dynasties, the Plantagenets and the Tudors. Those were days when Kings had real political power, which could be arbitrary, capricious and cruel. 

And it was much the same in Biblical times, as Jesus himself tells us in today’s gospel reading. This is a scene of contrasts, Pilate and Jesus standing for two completely different understandings of power. Pilate represents the earthly power, that of the Emperor, by whose authority Jesus in the end will be put to death. But Jesus reveals the power of God; he is the Word of the Father come to reveal God to the world.

Jesus says, “If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.” Jesus says instead that his purpose is “to testify to the truth” and that “Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to [his] voice”. Although it doesn’t seem obvious, somehow, the kingdom of God is not to be found in exercising power but in entering the truth.

This takes us back to chapter 8 in John’s Gospel, where Jesus talks about his mission to make known the truth and about the world’s failure to understand. To a group who rejected his teaching he said:

You are from your father the devil, and you choose to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him... But because I tell the truth, you do not believe me. Whoever is from God hears the words of God. The reason you do not hear them is that you are not from God.

No wonder that Pilate, in reply to Jesus in today’s gospel, says, dismissively, “what is truth?” 

Jesus teaches us that the kingdoms of this world are characterised by people defining themselves in opposition to other people, setting themselves over against other groups, and seeking to maintain that division by violence. They depend on regarding your so-called “enemy” as somehow fundamentally different from you: someone who is disposable. It is your enemy, not you, who is the cause of your trouble, the source of the violence you suffer. He must be eliminated! And your enemy may well think the same about you.

According to Jesus, this is founded on a lie, on the rejection of the truth. And that truth is first of all the good news about God. “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” This is the truth to which Jesus bears witness. The purpose of creation, of human existence, is love, and the good news about God is love which will not compromise with half measures, love that longs to share the life of God with all people. All people. We are all in this together, all equally in need of knowing that love and receiving that life. 

So there can be no over against other people, no division or violence, in the Kingdom of God. God is light and in him is no darkness at all. Those who see the light, who hear the truth, and respond to it, enter that Kingdom. They leave behind the old way of being human, which was founded on a lie, and enter God’s truth. 

And it is that truth to which Jesus bears witness in this scene, most acutely, most personally. Because Jesus is the innocent victim who stands for all human victims, all people who have ever been seen as “the enemy”. Jesus is the enemy! He must be - look at how all the people are rioting and demanding his death. And so Pilate sees him as disposable, different, not the same as him, and hands Jesus over to death. In his unjust judgement Pilate rejects the truth and enacts what the kingdoms of this world are like. And in his acceptance of suffering and death out of love for the world, Jesus enacts the Kingdom of God, the Kingdom of the truth.

Pilate rejects the truth of the person before him, and so fails to see the truth of God. But those who receive the truth which Jesus speaks become children of God. They become witnesses who testify to the truth. They enter his kingdom and live according to the new way of love, leaving behind the old way of division, of defining ourselves over against others.

That of course is not always easy, particularly when people disagree about things which they think are very important. The past week has seen the Church of England in crisis over the rejection by General Synod of legislation that would have enabled women to become bishops. For the most part the speeches in Synod itself were thoughtful and respectful, resisting the temptation to caricature opposing views, wanting to find consensus and a shared way forward. 

But that can’t be said of much of the reaction that has followed. There has been a huge emotion dump as this process that has taken so much energy and care over 12 years has collapsed. That emotional energy has got to go somewhere, and it is understandable that some people are hurting and angry, while others are relieved. But there has been much unhelpful and unedifying commentary, knee-jerk reactions, pinning of blame, name calling, and caricaturing of others. 

That will not help find a way forward for our church. But more seriously, if we fail to recognise one another in the truth of our identity as beloved children of God, then we are in danger of slipping back into the old way of being human, the way of the kingdoms of this world.

As the Church of England seeks to find a way forward it is important that we do so with a profound attention and respect for the truth of the other person. The truth that the person who disagrees with me is nevertheless caught up with me in God’s embrace, and that we are called together to bear witness to the truth of God’s patient, transforming love. There is no-one who is “the enemy”. 

That doesn’t offer any instant answer or easy solution. But the church is not called to reflect the values of the world, with its oppositional politics and imposed conformity. The church is not called to be “relevant” or “credible” in terms that the world might want to impose. God’s kingdom is not of this kind. Our task is to bear witness to the truth. Because although God’s kingdom is not from this world, it is for the world. It is the kingdom of Jesus Christ, who, because God so loved the world, was sent into the world, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. And that truth is something to which we can all bear witness.

Sermon, Parish Mass, All Saints 2012

Revelation 7:2-4, 9-14

1 John 3:1-3

Matthew 5:1-12

What kind of city would you like to live in? A week ago the Camden New Journal was much taken up with the “Wheelie Bin Rebellion”; the front page and the letter writers highlighting the resistance of some borough residents to having wheelie bins for waste disposal in their front gardens.

On a rather different level, the Evening Standard has been running a “Ladder for London” campaign which aims to get disengaged and disadvantaged young adults into employment though apprenticeship schemes, young people who would otherwise be unemployed and lacking in opportunities.

Both stories are linked in a way, in that they are both about the kind of society that we would like to live in. Is the space in which we live enjoyable? Is it beautiful? Does it work, practically? Who is able to participate in the communities we build? And who is left outside?

Today we heard the beatitudes: Jesus’ description of a society that that he calls “blessed”.  To be blessed is to be in tune with God’s purpose in creation. You are blessed if you inhabit the world in a way that reflects what God is like. And, according to Jesus, it is the victims, those on the margins, those who live precariously, those who take risks for peace and justice, those are the ones who are blessed, who reflect what God is like. 

Now, the prevailing power structures of the world say something quite different: happy are the strong, the powerful, the rich, the successful. The world says it’s the winners, not the losers, who determine what society is like. You’re happy if you climb to the top of the heap, and never mind those you’ve trampled underfoot on the way. 

Jesus preaches something radically different. In a world which is fallen and distorted by sin, a society which reflects what God is like is bound to appear as a contrast, as a protest, against the way things are. A stumbling block to be rejected. Just as Jesus can only do the Father’s will and reveal his love, in the world as it is, on the cross.

But the society described in the beatitudes, which is such a sign of contradiction to the world as it is, is nothing less than the Kingdom of God and the Communion of Saints. This is the great truth which we celebrate today. The Communion of Saints is human society made holy - that’s what the word “saint”means. It is human society perfectly reflecting what God is like. It is humanity sharing the Divine nature. 

Jesus, in theological language, is God incarnate. Jesus is the meeting point, the face of God turned towards humanity, and the face of humanity turned towards God. And Jesus shows us God as Trinity. God is the Son finding himself in the Father and the Father knowing himself in the Son and both delighting in one another in the self-giving love of the Holy Spirit.

And because humanity is made in the image of God, we can only reflect what God is like in communion, in society. We only find our true selves in mutual love and self-giving, each to the other, reflecting the life of the Holy Trinity. 

In the beatitudes Jesus calls us to enter into and reflect that life by repenting of our individualism, our self-assertion and self-aggrandisement. We can only find our true selves by turning our attention away from ourselves to God, and finding ourselves in God in one another.  

So, blessed are the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, those who hunger and thirst for what is right, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, the persecuted. Blessed, because they are finding themselves in God, in one another. Blessed, because they are entering God’s Kingdom, and becoming the Communion of Saints. 

And this vision of Jesus has very little to do with religion. Jesus nowhere says, “blessed are the churchgoers” or “blessed are the devout”. Instead, the beatitudes are about what it really means to be human. They are the blueprint for being human as God intended in creation. Because to be fully and truly human is to be holy, to be in the Communion of Saints. 

Jesus’ vision of society is more than just human beings getting along with one another. It is not a naïve humanitarian dream. Human society ordered as it should be is founded and rooted in God. Human relationships become transfigured in the light of God the Holy Trinity. True society, is what happens when we acknowledge our need of one another and recognise and receive each other as we find ourselves in God. 

The beatitudes express this perfectly: “blessed” and “happy” mean the same thing.  True happiness, true blessedness, lie in becoming perfectly what God has created us to be. As St Irenaeus said, the glory of God is humanity fully alive.

The Communion of Saints is the mutual recognition that God is the ground of our being. It is seeing the ultimate truth about one another, and in that seeing there is blessedness. This is the beatific vision, the “blessed” vision. In that Communion the veil is parted and the dualities of our earth-bound sight fade away. Time and eternity, earth and heaven, no longer stand apart. The living and those we call dead are bound to one another in one communion and fellowship in Christ our Lord. We have a foretaste of this in the Eucharist, this astonishing action in which all the saints in heaven and earth in every age are truly one, worshipping with the angels and archangels, breaking one bread, becoming what we receive, one body, in Christ. 

Eternity and time intersect on the altar, and worshippers on earth stand in the sanctuary in heaven. And glimpses of glory overflow and appear wherever in this world the Kingdom of God is becoming real, wherever human society begins to reflect the life of God. And, most often, those glimpses will be not where we expect, but on the margins, among the dispossessed and the ignored, among the poor and the meek whom we so easily fail to see. This should not surprise us - Jesus has told us this is where the Kingdom is happening!  But so often still it does.

Last week, at the end of a busy day in the parish, visiting, celebrating Mass, praying with people, I got on the bus to begin my journey home, thinking, I rather suspect, “oh well, that’s a day well spent, now I can have a well earned gin and tonic”. A dishevelled man was sitting on the bus, drinking from a can of beer, quite possibly going nowhere where he could relax or be comfortable.  He saw my collar, and this touched off some deep vein of hurt and alienation. He started swearing and shouting at me. For the first time in the day I felt quite helpless. His rage was directed, I suppose, at what he saw as authority and privilege and being at the centre of things instead of on the edge. And I realised how much I had been unconsciously assuming those things myself. It can be uncomfortable but very teaching to see yourself as others see you.

I had no idea how to respond, and stood there mute, looking away. He gradually quietened down, and as I was getting off the bus, I glanced in his direction. The man sitting next to him, who looked nearly as careworn as he did, had taken his hand and was gently massaging his fingers, and my man with the beer can was leaning against him and, I think, crying. 

And that was where I saw the Communion of Saints, that day. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

Sermon at Parish Mass, St Margaret’s Leytonstone, Trinity 19 2012

Amos 5:6-7, 10-15

Hebrews 4:12-end

Mark 10:17-31

What do you give a man who has everything? Well, the shops are already filling with their stock for Christmas and the advertisers will soon be urging us to part with more of our cash for this or that present that we must give, or perhaps this or that thing that we want ourselves, and have to get someone else to give to us. And sadly some families will get seriously into debt to buy things they don’t need.

What do you give a man who has everything? The man who kneels before Jesus in today’s gospel seems to be a man who has everything. He is rich, he has many possessions. Besides that, he has kept the whole law from his youth onwards. He has everything he needs, he has ticked every box. He is the perfect “self-made man”.

And yet for some reason he feels impelled to run up to Jesus and kneel before him. And he asks, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”. Eternal life is the life that God lives, the life of the Holy Trinity which is complete openness to the other, overflowing in love and generosity, giving, not grasping, entirely free from acquisitiveness, rivalry and envy. Perhaps this man, in the presence of Jesus, has suddenly caught a glimpse of what the life of God is like, and has seen the contrast with his own life of self-made self-sufficiency. Despite his seeming to possess everything and to have achieved everything, he senses that somewhere there is a huge gap, a deep longing and a desperate need. And it is to Jesus that he feels he must turn.

And Jesus, we are told, looked at him and loved him, though there is a sharp irony in his response. “There is one thing you lack”, he says - to the man who has everything. And the one thing he lacks is - that he has everything! “Sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then, come, follow me.”

The one thing he lacked was to stop grasping onto what he imagined was his own, his self-constructed image built up through endless acquisition of possessions and spiritual achievement. The one thing he lacked was the ability to receive as a gift the life that God wanted to share with him. What do you give the man who has everything? It’s a trick question. You can’t give him anything, because he’s stopped being able to receive.

This encounter comes just after the scene in last week’s gospel where Jesus welcomed the little children and said “whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will not enter it”. And now, in contrast, we have today’s scene with the rich man who is unable to receive the kingdom, because he has too many possessions. 

The contrast is between being able to receive to the Kingdom of God as a gift, and hanging on to all the acquisitiveness and cravings and illusions that we accumulate and label as “mine”. We can only receive the Kingdom as children because little children simply receive. They have nothing to bargain with, and know perfectly well that life comes to them entirely gratuitously and not by their own making.

To put it more simply, it is a contrast of desires. On the one hand our own disordered desires, cravings, compulsions and the addictions which are always outpacing our ability to satisfy them, desires which close us in on ourselves. And on the other the desire of God, which is the giving of himself in complete openness, generosity and freedom. 

God’s desire is life which rises continually from the very source of life, pouring itself out without ever being exhausted. God’s desire is realised in Jesus, who is God’s own gift of himself, God’s own image of himself, God’s own life so completely and perfectly poured out, without diminishing its source, that he is God himself, the Son eternally born of the eternal Father. Jesus is God’s desire entirely realised in a human life, and a human life entirely realised in God. 

If we learn to desire as God desires, then we will leave behind the disordered, death-bound desires that close us in on ourselves. By no longer grasping onto the false life that we think we can create for ourselves, we will come in free and generous openness to the life of God, receiving that life as a gift and not grasping it as “mine”.  

So the call that Jesus gives to the rich man, in one way or another, is the call to us too: to give up everything, so that we might have treasure in heaven. It is the call to repentance, which is not so much saying we are sorry as the complete turning around of our lives, re-ordering our lives according to God. It is the call to the conversion of desire. To leave behind our old disordered desires which close us in on ourselves, and to be open instead to the entirely gratuitous life of God which is given to us in Jesus. 

The Archbishop of Canterbury spoke about this last week when he addressed the Synod of Bishops in Rome for the 50th anniversary of the Second Vatican Council. He reminded the bishops of the remarkable revival in those 50 years, and the urgent need, of contemplative prayer for all Christians. 

Contemplative prayer is nothing complicated. It is the prayer of the heart in stillness and silence. It is prayer which is simply focussed on loving attention to God who alone can draw us out from our closed-in selves. It is God alone who can expose and convert our corrupted desires. It is God alone who can draw us into his own desiring, the perfect outpouring of the self to the other that is shown to us in Jesus. It is God alone who will remake us in the image of Christ, which is God’s own image of himself.

When we are open to receiving God’s life as a gift freely poured out for us, then we will find that we are open to receiving everything else as a gift as well. Contemplative attention to God bears fruit in a contemplative habit of life. In being freed from our self-centred desires we are able to see, and rejoice in, the gratuitous generosity of the whole of creation. Even, as Jesus today tells us, in this life, in this age. 

The Trappist monk Basil Pennington had lived for many years with his order in voluntary poverty, hard work and contemplative prayer. Then in 1973 he had the opportunity to spend some time on Mount Athos, the Greek Orthodox monastic centre. 

In his notes Fr Basil speaks of how, for him, his life of renunciation opened him up to receiving everything as a gift. Everything he experienced, the natural beauty, the hospitality of the monks, came to him with a fresh intensity and richness because they were a free gift from the abundance of God, and not anything that he had to grasp or possess. He felt he was receiving the “hundredfold” reward that Jesus promises in today’s gospel.

We cannot free ourselves from our disordered desires by simply trying to drive them away. Because that is still to focus the attention on ourselves, on something we are trying to achieve. We can only be free from our desires by not looking at ourselves any more but at God, and allowing him to covert us, to remake us in his image.

That is true all the time, and not only as we approach the Christmas shopping season. But it is a timely reminder. Before you make your Christmas lists, may I suggest you make time for contemplative prayer, silent meditation, if it is not already part of your pattern of life. Ten or twenty minutes every day is not much, compared to the time we spend on the internet or watching television. There are meditation groups which people can join, but really there is nothing to it.

Sit still, be relaxed but attentive, let go of any noise and bustle that may be going on, and repeat a simple prayer such as the Jesus prayer to still the mind and descend into the heart. “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, be merciful to me, a sinner.” And in the silence of the heart, be attentive to God revealing himself, forming in you his own image, who is Jesus, in whom alone we find our true life. 

What do you give the man who has everything? Nothing, because he is no longer able to receive. What do you give a child, who is simply open to receive what is given? The Kingdom of God.

Sermon at Parish Mass, St Mary’s Somers Town, Trinity 18 2012

Genesis 2:18-24

Hebrews 2:9-11

Mark 10:2-16

The parish where I live in east London has a fete every summer, with cakes, teas, tombola, and all the usual things going on in the churchyard and garden round the church. The sound system and music have been provided for years by a member of the congregation whose repertoire includes Agadoo, the Birdie Song, and all the Country and Western classics of the most pessimistic and despairing variety. 

One year, by co-incidence, a wedding blessing took place in the church at the same time as the fete. And at the end the happy couple emerged from church to be greeted by Dolly Parton blaring out of the loudspeakers with, “D-I-V-O-R-C-E”...

Sometimes I think that the Church, when speaking on matters of personal relationships and morality, gets into loudspeaker mode: booming out things that we think we need to say to people without bothering to listen or to get alongside. 

We, as followers of Jesus Christ, carry his good news for the world. But passages like today’s Gospel can seem difficult. Jesus says some quite clear and uncompromising things about divorce. Now that’s not an abstraction. Divorce is a real issue affecting many people both inside and outside the church. Real people, in churches up and down the country, our brothers and sisters, listening to the gospel with us today, and perhaps finding it rather painful. The gospel is not best preached from loudspeakers.

But the gospel is good news nonetheless. And today’s gospel reading is, at least, good news about marriage. But, more deeply, it is good news about being human, about God’s purpose in creating humanity. That is good news for everyone, married or not. But to understand how it is good news, we need to look more closely at the context in which Jesus gives this teaching, and what he is responding to. 

The place where this encounter happens, according to Mark’s Gospel, is “the region of Judea beyond the Jordan”. That is, it is the same place that Jesus went to be tempted by the Devil for forty days. And the same word is used of what the Pharisees do, they ask him a question “to test him”, just as the Devil did. 

Now this testing, the question that the Pharisees put to Jesus, is not really an attempt to get to the truth about something. The Pharisees think they already know the answer, they are just trying to catch Jesus out to find some basis of accusing him, as they do on a number of other occasions. 

They ask if it is against the law for a man to divorce his wife. The Pharisees think they know the answer to that because the Bible says that men can divorce their wives: Deuteronomy 24:1-4. But Jesus replies that this actually isn’t a commandment from God - although it’s in the Bible - it is just a concession to human weakness. 

Jesus has a radically different approach to the Bible than the Pharisees, and indeed than some Christians of our own day. You can’t simply come up with the answer to difficult questions by quoting isolated Bible texts. You need instead to understand the big picture, the big story that the Bible tells. That means looking at what is true “from the beginning”, as Jesus says, the truth of human beings in creation.

Now, “in the beginning”, in Hebrew thought, doesn’t just mean something that happened a long time ago. It means something that is foundationally true, an underlying principle.

So Jesus reminds the Pharisees that “from the beginning” God made human beings male and female, but not so that they could remain for ever separate. No, human beings are created to seek unity. According to the extract from Genesis that we heard this morning, Adam, who represents the human race, was initially alone. But then, to provide a companion, God performed that operation with the rib, and drew out from Adam a new, separate identity. Adam, humanity, was divided into two individuals, male and female. Divided not to remain alone, but to seek unity. To seek to return into one body which is no longer alone but now a new reality, a true communion of distinct persons. 

Here we are at the heart of what Jesus is teaching. The purpose of marriage is the purpose of being human. It is to seek unity, a return into one body, one new human nature, a true communion in which our individuality is not lost but fulfilled. 

Jesus presents here a high and beautiful ideal of marriage, of unity founded on mutual love. This contrasts with the idea current at the time, when marriage was seen more as a convenient arrangement to do with property. Marriages were arranged by negotiation between families - the men of the families - and the wife was seen as her husband’s property. So divorce was allowed - by men - in much the same way that you might decide to sell your house or other property and move to a new one.

Deeper than this contrast of ideas about marriage, we have a contrast of desire. The Pharisees’ approach to Jesus is motivated by a desire for rivalry, for accusation, for defining themselves over against Jesus. It is a desire for division. “Us against him.” But Jesus presents a model of desire in marriage which is a desire for unity. And that desire for unity, says Jesus, is what is true “from the beginning”, in God’s purpose in creation. Marriage is about the conversion of desire, from division to unity, through mutual self-giving and belonging. An end which can only really be served by faithfulness and life long commitment.

Now although Jesus holds up marriage as his example, the union of different persons in one body is an idea that runs through the whole of the New Testament, and it is called the Church. 

The Church is a body - the Body of Christ. Those who are baptized into Christ, the New Adam, are united in him in his renewed humanity. In the Church all humanity is being remade by grace in one Body as a communion of distinct persons, the image of God the Holy Trinity. In the Church our desire is being converted from disorder and division into unity. The New Testament teaching about the Church is so close to Jesus’ teaching about marriage that St Paul in Ephesians calls the union of husband and wife “the mystery of Christ and the Church”.

And this perhaps is why marriage is called a sacrament, although it is a way of life common to all religions and none, because for Christians it is a sign pointing to the new reality of the Church which we enter by grace.

Of course, not everyone is married, and marriage isn’t the only way of life for Christians, or the only way of seeking unity in Christ. We enter the Church by baptism, not by marriage. For those who are “single” - though that is such an inadequate word - friendships, extended families and neighbours are true and valid expressions of human community. Then there is the celibate life lived in community, that of monks and nuns, which is recognised and blessed by the Church because it too is a sign of unity in the Body of Christ, enacted through lives of simplicity and prayer.

Today the church, like Martha, seems to be anxious about many things: the rise in cohabitation, civil partnerships, and what is essential to our understanding of marriage and sexuality. Nevertheless, beyond these things, the foundational reality remains the one new humanity that God has established in Christ, the end that we must keep in view. Marriage stands as a sign of that reality, of the faithfulness and commitment of Christ to his Church. But the Church is for all people, in all kinds of relationships, and the call to all of us is to seek unity in Christ through faithful self giving, mutual belonging, and the conversion of desire from division to unity.

Whatever people’s circumstances and personal relationships, for Christians all boundaries of “singleness” and isolation, all categories of difference, are overcome in the Church, which is the community of the Eucharist, the sacrament of unity in the Body of Christ.

In the Eucharist we receive by grace our belonging together and our unity in Christ.  That is our purpose in creation, and what God has made possible for us in Christ. Our life as a church community should reflect that in the way we welcome all people, of all states of life. We are one in Christ, one body, partakers of one bread, the sacrament and sign of the unity of all things in Christ, which is our good news.

Sermon at Parish Mass Trinity 17 2012

Numbers 11:25-29

James 5:1-6

Mark 9:38-48

I wonder how many people here like solving sudoku puzzles. I don’t do them very often, but on a long journey they are a useful way of passing the time whilst keeping the brain cells stimulated.

If you’re as good at sudoku as me, you’ll be familiar with that sinking feeling, usually when you’ve filled in most of the grid, that it just isn’t going to work out. Somewhere back along the line you’ve put one wrong number in a cell, and that makes everything else wrong, too. There’s nothing for it but to undo the whole thing, go back to the beginning and start again.

In today’s gospel reading the disciples are trying to solve the puzzle of Jesus. Who is he? What is he about? They think they’ve got the answer, but actually somewhere back along the line they’ve got something basically wrong, and that makes the whole of their understanding of Jesus wrong. There is nothing for it but to go back and undo the first mistake, and start again.

They think they’ve got the answer, because about a chapter back in Mark - two Sundays ago in our readings - Jesus had asked them who they thought he was, and Peter had said, “you are the Messiah”. And he was right, but he didn’t understand what that meant. He thought the Messiah was about power and control and imposing God’s kingdom by force. 

But Jesus tried to teach him that instead the Messiah must be rejected and suffer, and be put to death, and rise again. None of which Peter understood. And when he tried to talk sense into Jesus he earned the stinging rebuke, “get behind me, Satan!”. Peter, he said, had to stop thinking in a human way and start thinking in God’s way. 

But as they carried on their journey up to Jerusalem, it didn’t get any better. They saw the glory of Jesus revealed on the Mount of Transfiguration, but then Jesus had told them a second time that he was going to be betrayed, and killed, and would rise again. And they had no idea what he was talking about. Blank. Not a clue. 

So then the disciples started arguing which of them was the greatest. They were still inside that mindset of power and control and imposition. So Jesus took a little child, someone without any power or control, no position in society, unable to impose anything. And Jesus said, if you welcome this little child, you welcome me. This is what I’m about. This is the imagination you need to get inside to understand the Messiah. 

But, as we heard today, still they don’t get it. “Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.” They’re still thinking in terms of power and control, and therefore rivalry and fear. They think that when Jesus imposes his Kingdom, they are going to be his inner circle, his right hand men. So they can’t have anyone else threatening that position. 

But Jesus says, simply, don’t stop them. “Whoever is not against us is for us.” There simply is no need, no place, for rivalry and fear in God’s kingdom. Because God’s kingdom is about love being made known in a world which is deeply resistant to love. It is therefore about love being made known in the excluded, the powerless, in the victim of human rivalry and fear and control. It is about love made known in a Man on a cross. 

Now to the disciples, and to anyone who is still thinking the way the world thinks, that is a contradiction and a scandal. And scandal is the big theme that runs through today’s Gospel reading, and indeed through most of the New Testament.

Scandal, skandalon in Greek, crops up all the time, though we aren’t always aware of it because it’s translated in a number of ways: scandal, stumbling-block, offence, obstacle, and sometimes as “sin”. The image is of a block of stone in your path that you fall over or can’t get round, but at the same time that you can’t leave alone. It worries away at you. And the big scandal of the New Testament is the crucified Messiah, a seeming contradiction which is an obstacle to faith for those who can’t understand it. St Paul says in 1 Corinthians “We proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling-block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.”

Jesus does not want the disciples to avoid the approaching scandal. The scandal that the Messiah, the saviour of Israel, is going to end up on a Roman cross. But they still want to think that there isn’t a scandal. So he confronts them directly with what seems to be very scandalous teaching: 

If any of you put a stumbling-block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea. If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off... And if your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off... And if your eye causes you to stumble, tear it out...

This saying of Jesus is really quite shocking. And it is meant to be. But it is not really about hands and feet and eyes so much as about the scandal itself, the stumbling block. And there’s irony in it, because if your foot or your eye caused you to stumble, you wouldn’t exactly cure the problem by cutting it off or tearing it out.  

Jesus is trying to focus the eyes of the disciples on the scandal, the stumbling block, that they are trying to avoid. They are still thinking of the Messiah in earthly terms, of power and control and fear, and that is an obstacle for them. They need to unlearn that, to go back to the beginning of the puzzle and start again, and learn that God’s kingdom is quite other from what they had thought. They need to learn that God’s kingdom will be brought in by a Messiah who will be rejected, and killed, and will rise from the dead.

In the end, they still don’t get it, and they still won’t understand, right up to Good Friday itself, when the betrayal and crucifixion of Jesus will finally completely shatter their whole conception of what God and his Kingdom are about. And it was only once everything they thought they believed had been taken away from them, that they could start from the beginning again. 

And they began again when the risen Christ came to them, forgiveness and love triumphant beyond the worst that the world could do. They began again, this time with the new imagination of God transforming their minds, their lives, and, through them, beginning the transformation of the world.

We too are called to that path of radical transformation, of beginning again in God’s Kingdom. Like the disciples, we too need to be alert for the scandal we are trying to avoid. Scandal can mean many things: stumbling-block, obstacle, offence, sin. What is there in our own lives which is an obstacle to our coming to Jesus, to us giving ourselves totally to him? Where are we still following the way the world thinks, the way of power, control and fear? Where is it that we still need to be liberated by the fearless, deathless love of God?

This affects not only ourselves but others too. Sin has an effect in the community. “Take care that you do not cause one of these little ones to stumble.” What we do can become an obstacle preventing others from coming to Jesus. Greed keeps others poor, deprives them of the necessities of life. Anger leads to violence, both physical and emotional. Lust erodes faithfulness in families and relationships. 

Jesus calls us to turn to him, whatever our stumbling blocks, our scandals and sins. Jesus calls us to repent and be forgiven. And in that forgiveness, that embrace of God’s love, to find our minds transformed as we leave behind the way the world thinks, trapped in power and control and fear, and are set free into the unlimited, deathless, utterly vivacious love of God.

Sermon at Parish Mass, St Mary's Somers Town, Trinity 11 2012

Proverbs 9:1-6

Ephesians 5:15-20

John 6:51-58

“This may be a wicked age, but your lives should redeem it.”

The Letter to the Ephesians over the last few weeks has been painting a picture of contrasts: the new life of believers in Christ contrasted with the old life of sin and corruption. In the past they were dead in their sins but now have been saved and raised to new life in Christ. Therefore, believers must leave aside their old way of living: lies, anger, theft, evil talk, immorality. These things no longer have any place in the life of those who are in Christ.

Throughout Ephesians, Paul also contrasts the present age and the age to come.  These are not simply periods of history, like the space age or the iron age, but represent two very contrasting ways of living and being, two opposed value systems, two different and incompatible imaginations. 

This present age is what we might call the age of sin, governed by envy, rivalry, violence and death. The age to come is the age of God’s Kingdom. It is the age when God’s rule will be manifested in the world. It is the age in which love, justice and peace will be all in all. It is the age which the Bible compares to a great feast, of super-abundant, never-failing rich food and fine wine. 

These two ages are not however consecutive periods of history. The age to come, the age of God’s rule, is not something that will come about only after this present age of sin and death is over. The Biblical picture is much richer than that. The age to come in fact is a reality which is already present. In Ephesians 3 Paul says this is a mystery “hidden from ages in God” and now brought to light in Christ. 

The age to come entered the world in Jesus, because Jesus is God’s kingdom, God’s rule, in person. The preaching of Jesus was not abstract teaching, but what he was himself enacting: forgiveness, healing, the restoration of human society through the renunciation of envy and greed. These things characterise the age to come. The Kingdom of God, said Jesus, is among you - already. Let those who have eyes to see, see. 

And of course this present age would have none of it and put him to death. But Jesus was raised from the dead because God’s Kingdom is triumphant and is the final word on human sin. 

Christ has conquered, and the age to come is already present for those who are in Christ. Christ is risen, and those who are in Christ are raised with him into his Kingdom. In Christ we share in the life of the resurrection, which is the life of God in whom there is no death.

So we could call this present age the age of death, because death is what defines its imagination. Resources are limited, life is short, so grasp what you can while you can, before you die. And this leads us only into envy and rivalry and violence. The age of death ends in death.

And we could call the age to come the age of the resurrection. It is the age of limitless life, which we do not have to grasp at because it is a gift from the never failing generosity of God our loving Father. It is life entirely without death, without rivalry, without violence, because it is the life that God lives. The age of the resurrection has no end.

But the heart of Paul’s message in Ephesians is that if we are reborn in Christ we are already beginning to live in the age of the resurrection, even in the midst of this passing age of death. 

That contrast requires, as Paul says, the radical reordering of our lives. It requires, in fact, repentance, turning around. We are to redeem the age by living according to the age to come whilst still in this passing age.

This is nothing less than a collision of worlds. As Paul repeatedly says, it requires lifelong discipline. Christ has freed us from this passing age of death, but it still retains a powerful allure. The world is very attached to the imagination of death, as we see only too well every time we turn on the news. 

Nevertheless, to redeem the age is to transform the world. It is to make the age of the resurrection more concrete, more visible, in the midst of the age of death. The gospel message is not escape from this evil world to a heaven somewhere else, after we die. The gospel message is transformation of this world, the redeeming of the age. We are to live our lives according to the resurrection here and now.

This is where any true theology of liberation begins: Christ is risen, bringing the age of the resurrection to light in the midst of the age of death. We should not be surprised if the gospel often speaks most powerfully to those who are the victims of the age of death, the oppressed and downtrodden of the earth. After all, Christ’s resurrection is foreshadowed in the Exodus, the liberation of slaves from Egypt. And whether in the favelas of Brazil, or in South Africa under Apartheid, or in the slums here in the time of Father Jellicoe, Christian lives lived according to the Gospel redeem the age. 

Christian life is of course life lived in the Church. St Paul is absolutely clear that if we are in Christ then we are one body, one new humanity, in Christ. That being one body in Christ is expressed and made real though the sacramental life that Christ has given us. We are made one body through Baptism and the Eucharist. Through those sacraments we receive the life of the age to come. As Jesus says in today’s gospel, “He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood lives in me, and I live in him. As I, who am sent by the living Father, myself draw life from the Father, so whoever eats me will draw life from me.”

And of course to many of those who listened this was incomprehensible and offensive language. “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” The words of Jesus provoke a violent reaction. But this too is about the collision of worlds. It is about the age of death failing to understand the age of resurrection. Because if your imagination is bounded by death, then talk about eating flesh and drinking blood can only sound like cannibalism. Someone can only give his flesh to eat if he’s dead. And that does not lead to more life but less. 

But if you are in Christ, and beginning to live in the age of the resurrection, then indeed the flesh and blood of Christ are the source of limitless life, the life he draws from the living Father, and which he pours out to us continually without being diminished. In the Eucharist we are fed with the boundless, limitless life of the resurrection. 

And when and where do we celebrate the Eucharist? Not in heaven, but on earth. In the midst of this passing age, the age of death, we feed on the flesh and blood of Christ, the life of the age to come. The Eucharist is the sacrament of the Church, and the Church is the sacrament of the transformation of the world, the new humanity, living from the deathless life of God.

Our participation in the Eucharist calls us to live with the same openness and generosity that God shows to us. We are to be open to the life of God, which is limitless, and to leave aside our old life of sin, which ends only in death. And the generosity of God is infectious. By being forgiven, we become forgiving. By being liberated, we become liberators, co-workers with Christ in his transformation of the world. 

This is why the gospel of the resurrection is, necessarily, a social gospel, a gospel of liberation. If we live according to the resurrection then we must oppose injustice, oppression and violence in the world around us. Anything which destroys or diminishes humanity does not belong in the age to come, and we are already beginning to live in that age even in the midst of this present age.

“This may be a wicked age”, says Paul, “but your lives should redeem it.”

Sermon at Parish Mass and Baptism Trinity 7 2012

Jeremiah 23:1-6

Ephesians 2:13-18

Mark 6:30-34

“He had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd.”

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m very much a town person, unfamiliar with the ways of the countryside, although of course acknowledging like all of us our dependence on farming and agriculture. 

But the image of sheep is a very familiar one to all of us in the Bible. It is an image of the people of God, and in the Old Testament that meant the people of Israel. Sheep go around in flocks, they are not isolated individuals, so this tells us that the people of God belong together. Unity is part of what it means to belong to God as his people.

But sheep also need quite a bit of looking after. They need a shepherd to keep them together and stop them from wandering off. And they also need to be protected from predators and thieves. Sheep are not terribly resourceful. They are dependent, and need to be able to trust their shepherd. They need a good shepherd.

In the Old Testament, the metaphor of a shepherd is used of God himself: God watches over and looks after his people. But the Kings and rulers of Israel were regarded as holding their authority from God, and so they also were described as shepherds of the people. They ruled on behalf of God, and had the duty to guide the people in the right ways, to keep them together, and to protect them from aggressors. 

But sadly, and often, the people of Israel didn’t have good shepherds. As in this morning’s reading from Jeremiah. The prophet is speaking just before the people of Judah were invaded by Babylon and carried off into exile. The kings of Judah have behaved stupidly and selfishly, they have not listened to the prophets, they have not seen the threat coming and have not responded appropriately. So the people are doomed. They are going to be scattered and driven away like a flock of sheep without a shepherd.

But, Jeremiah says, there is still hope. God has not forgotten his people. In the future he will give his people shepherds who will look after them, and more than that, a mysterious figure, “the Righteous Branch of David”, the Messiah, God’s anointed ruler. And the scattered people of God will once again be gathered together and live in safety.

So when in the Gospels we have references to sheep and shepherds all of that is in the background. Jesus sees the people and has compassion for them because they were like sheep without a shepherd. This is the scattered people of God, at the mercy of predators, not knowing what way to turn, and they are waiting for what Jeremiah promised: the Good Shepherd, the Righteous Branch of David, who will restore God’s people. 

And the gospel writer is saying that the Good Shepherd has now come. In Jesus, God is bringing his people back together in unity and guiding and protecting them. Which is why the first thing that Jesus does is to start teaching them. As in the Old Testament, the sheep have wandered off because they haven’t been taught the ways of the Lord, the paths of righteousness and peace. And it is Jesus who announces the Good News of God, to draw his people back together into God’s Kingdom.

The image of Jesus as shepherd runs through the gospel reading this morning. We can see it when the apostles gather round Jesus to tell him about all they’ve been doing. And when he wants them to come away and rest a while we’re reminded of Psalm 23, “The Lord is my shepherd... fresh and green are the pastures where he gives me repose, near restful waters he leads me to revive my drooping spirit”.

Jesus is not like the kings of ancient Israel, who ruled on behalf of God, but mostly not very well. Jesus is enacting Psalm 23 in which the Lord is my shepherd. He is fulfilling Jeremiah who promised that the future shepherd of God’s people will be “The Lord our Righteousness”. So Jesus is not a substitute shepherd, he is the Lord himself restoring his people.

Sheep are pretty helpless, really. So in Jesus, God is taking the initiative to gather his sheep back to himself, to guide them gently into pastures where they can rest, to guide them under God’s rule, into God’s kingdom.

And the sheep that Jesus has come to gather are not only the ancient people of Israel. As our reading from the letter to the Ephesians tells us, in Jesus God has drawn into one both Jew and Gentile. Jesus has broken down all the divisions which keep human beings apart, making one new humanity and creating peace. God’s choice of the people of Israel has never been taken away, his promises to Israel have never been cancelled. But, through Jesus, that choice and those promises have been extended to all people. 

This morning we celebrate the sacrament of Baptism, welcoming William as the latest member of God’s people in his church. Baptism is the sign of dying and rising with Christ. It is the sign by which we become part of the one new humanity which Jesus has created, overcoming all divisions.

And it is Jesus himself who does this. It is Jesus who works through the sacraments of his Church. We cannot make ourselves members of God’s people; Jesus the Good Shepherd seeks us out and joins us to his flock. Which is why we baptise children, who aren’t yet old enough to understand, because for all of us what matters is that God has chosen us and made us part of his redeemed people.

Most of us, probably, don’t remember our baptism. But we do know that we are baptised. We know that Christ has claimed us for his own. And he never takes back his choice.

We do not make ourselves members of the people of God. It doesn’t depend on us. And our faith, our relationship with Christ, is not an individual thing or a private hobby. We are members of a people. We, like sheep, are gathered together in unity by Christ our Good Shepherd. 

And the promise of God, for us, as well as for William, is that he will guide and protect us and bring us into his Kingdom. That Kingdom is righteousness and peace for all people, in which all divisions and injustice have been overcome. It is the new humanity, made one in the body of Christ. Through Baptism and the Eucharist that new humanity becomes real in us, in our lives, and in the world. This is what Christ does for us, for William, and for all his people. And in Christ we have a sure and certain hope.

This is why we study his teachings, not just as individuals but when we come together to celebrate the Eucharist. Christ teaches us as a people, guiding us through the scriptures into the ways of God’s kingdom of justice and peace. Jesus is the good shepherd who teaches his people the good news of God. And because there is one flock of Christ, one new humanity, we need also to reflect on the insights of our brothers and sisters elsewhere in the world. For example, Christians praying alongside other faith communities in India, or struggling against injustice in the Philippines, have their own insights to share into how Christ is leading all his people.

And we make those teachings real in our lives, and carry them into the world, spreading the good news of God’s kingdom. Now we don’t follow the teachings of Christ to try and earn God’s favour. We are not trying to make the grade as the people of God. God in Jesus has already chosen us and made us part of his people. That is his free act of grace, and he will not take back his choice. So we can truly say, with William and all God’s people, that the Lord is our shepherd, and that he guides us along the right pathways for his name’s sake.