Sermon at Parish Mass and Baptism Lent 2 2013

Genesis 15:5-12, 17-18

Philippians 3:17-4:1

Luke 9:28-36

In a short while we shall celebrate the baptism of Anna, and rejoice with her, and her family and godparents, as she is made a member of Christ’s church and born again through water and the Holy Spirit.

When Anna’s parents and godparents have made their declarations on her behalf about faith in Christ, I shall make the sign of the cross on Anna’s forehead, with these words:

Christ claims you for his own. 

Receive the sign of his cross.

Do not be ashamed to confess the faith of Christ crucified.

This recalls the words which Jesus spoke just before the passage set for today’s gospel reading. Jesus has just predicted his death and resurrection, to the bewilderment of his disciples, and says to them:

‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it. What does it profit them if they gain the whole world, but lose or forfeit themselves? Those who are ashamed of me and of my words, of them the Son of Man will be ashamed when he comes in his glory and the glory of the Father and of the holy angels.

It is after these words that Jesus takes his disciples up the mountain, and they see his glory, the light shining from him as he is transformed. They see the glory of the Father, the shekinah, the overshadowing cloud which had hovered over the Tabernacle in the days of Moses. And Jesus speaks with Moses and Elijah about his departure, the exodus which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. In other words, his death.

This revealing of glory on the holy mountain is the beginning of a journey. But it is a journey of contradiction - it is the journey with Jesus to Jerusalem and the cross. Beyond that, and only beyond that, lies the glory of the resurrection. As with Moses of old, this exodus is to accomplish the liberation of God’s people, liberation not from slavery in Egypt but from sin and death.

Even in this scene the death of Jesus is foreshadowed. On the night he is betrayed Jesus will take his disciples up another mountain, the Mount of Olives, to pray as he awaits his death. And there too the disciples will fall asleep, a sleep which is perhaps a symbol of their lack of spiritual perception. 

But the glory of Christ and the glory of the Father are revealed on the holy mountain today, before Jesus leads his disciples along the path of contradiction and suffering. 

In the Bible glory is about the reputation of God, about showing forth God’s nature. So the glory of Christ is a revelation of Divinity. It is not simply a dazzling vision, but something that will unfold its meaning through the path of suffering that Jesus is to take. God’s reputation, God’s glory, will be established in what is to follow, through darkness and the cross to the resurrection. 

That is the path of exodus, of liberation from sin and death. Humanity was created to share God’s life but through sin has turned away from God’s good purpose. Sin itself is a mystery, we do not know where it came from. We simply observe that humanity, from the dawn of consciousness, has preferred to be turned in on itself rather than being open to God. Humanity tends to prefer rivalry, violence, division, possessiveness, jealousy, lust - all those things that close us in on ourselves and shut us out from communion with God and one another. 

The way of the cross, which is the way by which we are liberated from all that, is simply this: God’s love entering into our unloveliness, to free us from ourselves and open us up once more to the love for which we were created. It is this which will re-establish God’s glory, God’s reputation, in his world. 

The great Christian thinker St Augustine of Hippo taught that evil was simply a deficiency, the taking away of good from what God has made. So sin and evil have the ugliness of something marred and damaged, whereas goodness is beautiful, and God is supremely beautiful. This concept of spiritual beauty is of great importance. It has nothing to do with the skin deep beauty of glossy magazines and advertisements. It is the profound beauty of the soul restored in the image of God, reflecting God’s glory. It is the beauty of holiness. It is the beauty of Christ transfigured on the holy mountain.

But in the world as it is, marred by sin and spiritual ugliness, the beauty of God is both revealed and hidden. The beauty of God attracts us to draw us along the way of contradiction, the path of liberation which leads through darkness to the cross and resurrection, to the true knowledge of God. In this week of his retirement some words of Pope Benedict seem particularly appropriate: “True knowledge is being struck by the arrow of beauty that wounds man: being touched by reality, by the personal presence of Christ himself.”

On the path of liberation the beauty of God is made known in the lives he is transforming, and particularly in the life of the Church, and wherever holiness and goodness appear as the true meaning of what it is to be human.

The beauty of the liturgy, of sacred art, architecture, music, helps to draw us into this inward encounter with the beauty of Christ, which, in life as it is, is always a path of contradiction, drawn by glory into darkness through to the resurrection. 

Every Sunday Mass is like the mountain of transfiguration, the beauty of God revealed in the liturgy, in the transformation of material things which are the outward signs of inward grace. But every Lord’s day is followed by the week of daily life, descending to the plain with its crosses and contradictions, when the glory of God sometimes breaks through and sometimes is hidden in darkness.

So too the pattern of our lives, from baptism to death and the resurrection into eternal life. Baptism itself is a sign of dying and rising with Christ, a sign of contradiction and of liberation. It is also a spiritual washing away of sin restoring the beauty which reflects the beauty of God. This is so for all, both adults and children, for Christ is redeeming the whole of humanity, in which all share one common human nature. Christ draws all to himself.

Saint Augustine, on his conversion to Christian faith in his adult life, wrote these words:

Late have I loved you, 

O Beauty ever ancient, ever new, 

late have I loved you!  

You were within me, but I was outside, 

and it was there that I searched for you.  

In my unloveliness I plunged into the lovely things which you created.  

You were with me, but I was not with you.  

Created things kept me from you; 

yet if they had not been in you they would not have been at all.  

You called, you shouted, and you broke through my deafness.  

You flashed, you shone, and you dispelled my blindness.  

You breathed your fragrance on me; 

I drew in breath and now I pant for you.  

I have tasted you, now I hunger and thirst for more.  

You touched me, and I burned for your peace.

As we baptise Anna today let us pray that the beauty of God may shine on her, and on all of us, as he draws us to himself and transforms us by his holiness, now and for ever. Amen.

Sermon Lent 1 2013

Deuteronomy 26:4-10

Romans 10:8-13

Luke 4:1-13

There’s been a lot of testing going on this week, mainly of beefburgers, ready made lasagne, and the like. Testing means examining something to find out what it really is, in this case beef or horse. And when today’s gospel says that Jesus was “tempted” by the devil, that means the same sort of thing. The tempting of the devil is not just trying to induce Jesus to do something he shouldn’t, it’s also finding out who he really is, by the way he responds to the temptation. Is he the Son of God, or not?

What comes just before this scene of temptation in the desert is Jesus’ baptism in the river Jordan, when the voice from heaven had announced, “You are my Son, the Beloved, with you I am well pleased”. And then Jesus, filled with the Holy Spirit, was led by the Spirit in the wilderness. So this going into the desert to be tested is part of his calling, part of what the Father wants him to. Not a diversion from it, but how it begins to be worked out. 

Jesus, as well as being Son of God, is also Son of Man, the representative human. The ways in which he is tested are common to humanity, and he undergoes these temptations on our behalf. Jesus, says the letter to the Hebrews, was “in every respect tested as we are, yet without sin”. So these are representative temptations, of the representative human - Jesus is tested, as all of humanity is, in particular ways.

What these temptations have in common is that in all of them the Devil presents a false idea of God (and therefore of being the Son of God), to see if Jesus will fall for it.

The first temptation, command this stone to become bread. This is the temptation to self-sufficiency, I have all I need, I provide all I require, I’m in control, I’m not going to let go, I don’t need anyone else. It is the temptation to put ourselves at the centre, to make a god of our ego. 

But in truth it is God who is at the centre, God first, not me first. God creates and provides, and gives our being, entirely out of his own generosity. Everything we have is gift. So we don’t need to grasp and control. We do need to recognise our dependence. Letting go means opening my hands so that God can hold me, an act of faith and trust and worship. 

I was very moved this week by Pope Benedict’s unexpected resignation, and I’m sure christians from many different churches will feel the same. How easy in that position to buy in to the personality cult, to think that everything depends on you, that you must carry on at all costs. And what courage and humility and faith it must have needed to say, I can’t do this any more, you need to find someone else. But what an example of faithful, Christian, letting go. We of course don’t have such a burden to carry, but we can nevertheless be taken over by the ownership and control of what we have. Lent, the wilderness, is a place where we can examine ourselves, find out where we need to stop holding on, so that God can hold us.

The second temptation, the offer of all the kingdoms of the world. And in fact in Luke’s version this probably means the Roman Empire, because Luke is very conscious and critical of the political realities of his day. This is the temptation to see the way the world runs as god, the supreme truth, the way that life should be ordered. Violence, injustice, oppression, exclusion, might is right. And Luke simply assumes that the devil does actually run the political structures of the world. The devil personifies all that is destructive, the spiritual personality of the empire.

But the God of Jesus is the God who liberates, who is on the side of the victims of the world and its political structures. The Kingdom of God stands over against the Empires of this world. So we don’t have to collude with oppressive power and we can be called to make a stand against it - including in politics. Whoever says that the Church should keep out of politics hasn’t begun to take the Bible seriously. But also in the workplace, in the home, in our relationships - and recognising also the ways in which we ourselves oppress and exclude.

The third temptation is the most subtle: throw yourself down from the temple, and God will send his angels to protect you. This is the most subtle false idea of god, because it seems to be talking about God. But actually the god who is being suggested here is a god of control, a god on demand, a god who does what we want. This is a spiritual power that we can manipulate - so although the devil talks about “god”, look who is still at the centre - me and my demands. 

The true God does not intervene on demand to arrange the universe according to our whims. The true God allows us our freedom, because he has created us in love, to be free to love. The true God is not a controller, but a lover. His will is our greatest good and our peace. In abandonment to Divine providence we will find all we need. But we have to be free to choose his will, to say, as Jesus will say in Gethsemane, not my will but thine. And there is our true freedom - the freedom to love. 

Today there is so much idolatry even among Christians  - the prosperity gospel and miracle cults abound on the fringes of Christianity, but even in the mainstream churches Christians can be bewildered when they pray for something that seems to them to be good and it doesn’t happen. In God’s will is our peace, and our prayer is first of all aligning ourselves with that will: Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done - before we ask for our daily bread.

Jesus passes the tests. He recognises, and refuses, the false ideas of god presented to him. And therefore he is truly the Son of the true God. Jesus in these temptations represents humanity, and in him we are adopted as sons and daughters of God. We too are called to struggle with the same temptations, because we follow the path of Jesus, which is the way of being truly human. Unlike Jesus, we do not always pass the test. We are not without sin, but through forgiveness and grace we are called to continual conversion, to turn away from these false gods to the one true God.

Times of wilderness and testing do not mean that God has abandoned us. Jesus was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, and sometimes in our lives the Spirit will bring us to a place where all that is familiar and comfortable and safe seems to have been taken away. But this is so that the Spirit can free us from false gods and lead us to depend more faithfully and trustingly on our loving heavenly Father. And the abstinences and disciplines of this season of Lent can help make a space for this too, so that as far as we are able within the duties of our life we follow that path into the wilderness during these 40 days.

Lent is a time for the wilderness, for silence, space, prayer, self-examination. For the purification of the heart from false gods so that we can find our true peace and lasting joy in the true God who creates us, and loves us, and saves us.

Sermon Epiphany 3 2013

Isaiah 62:1-5

1 Corinthians 12:4-11

John 2:1-12

I think I must have first seen the Wizard of Oz in the cinema, rather than on the television at home. My reason for thinking this is that when I was little we only had a small black and white telly, and one of the great features of the Wizard of Oz is the use of technicolor. The opening sequences in Kansas are in black and white until the storm comes and Dorothy gets carried off by the twister. Then she opens the door of her house and steps out into a wonderful colour landscape. She has arrived in Oz! That’s still a stirring effect when we see it now, but in 1939 it could have been the first colour film that many people had seen. Imagine the impact then. “Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas any more.”

Well today we have heard the Oz moment from John’s Gospel, the wedding at Cana. When Jesus reveals his glory it is as if a whole new dimension appears, like seeing the world in colour for the first time.

This is the third of the gospels of Epiphany, which relate in different ways the manifestation of God in Jesus. From Matthew’s gospel we had the story of the Magi following the star to find Jesus, the one who is born to be king. From Luke we heard the story of the baptism of Jesus, when heaven was opened, the Holy Spirit came down in the form of a dove, and the voice from heaven declared that Jesus was his beloved Son. And today we have the story of the marriage feast at Cana in Galilee, the first of the signs that Jesus gives in John’s gospel.

All of these stories are about the revelation of God in Jesus. “Epiphany” means “manifestation”, it is about something going public, being seen. And all of these stories, in one way or another, point to what lies ahead in the story of Jesus. They show that the glory of God will be made known in Jesus above all in his suffering, death and resurrection. Epiphany points to the cross and the empty tomb.

So when the Magi came to Jesus, they gave him gold because he was a king, frankincense because he was God, and myrrh. Myrrh for embalming and burial, the spices of Good Friday already mingling with the incense of adoration of the Christ child.

And when Jesus was baptised by John, he went down into the waters of the Jordan and was raised up again, a figure of his death and resurrection, just as is our own baptism in the waters of the font.

But, we might wonder, how is the wedding at Cana hinting at the death of Jesus? There doesn’t seem to be an obvious link. But John is such a good storyteller. The scenes in John’s gospel are like panels in an altarpiece, little pictures full of detail and meaning, which if you see them all at once you can see how the details and imagery connect from one scene to another, bringing out new depths of meaning. 

So, the story of Cana begins, “on the third day”, which immediately is a hint of the resurrection “on the third day” that is yet to come. “And the Mother of Jesus was there.” The Mother of Jesus appears twice in John’s gospel: here in this scene, and at the cross. Jesus says, “my hour has not yet come”. In John’s gospel, the “hour” of Jesus always refers to the crucifixion, which is seen as the fulfilment of everything that Jesus has come to do, Jesus reigning from the cross, pouring out his life, his spirit, into creation. So, too, at Cana we are told that Jesus “revealed his glory”; and in John the glorification of Jesus, like the hour of Jesus, is the cross. 

So in this scene at Cana the glory of Jesus points forward to his death and resurrection. But it also looks to the context of Jewish belief in which this story is told. That is the world which awaits the glory of Jesus. There were six stone waters jars for the Jewish rites of purification. These represent all the promises and hope of Israel, God’s promise that he would purify his people and make them his own. And in fact the jars are of such a size that they would normally be found in the temple, rather than a private home. But they are empty; Jesus commands them to be filled. The law does not need to be abolished, but filled up, transformed, with the glory and grace of God which is what the law anticipates. The ten commandments are not out of date! But they are there in anticipation of grace: if you live in expectation that God will fill you with his Spirit, then of course you will repent of killing, and stealing, and adultery, and so on, because God wants you to be like him, and God is not like that. John has already told us this in his prologue: “the law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.”

This is what Jesus has come to do: to restore and complete the work of creation, to fulfil the law so that it overflows into grace, to pour out God’s glory into the world. All of this Jesus will achieve through his death and resurrection, and it is foreshadowed in this wedding feast. 

So Jesus gives this sign of transformation and glory, the water becomes wine. The wine of the new creation, the good wine which has been kept until the last, the wine which transforms this wedding feast. 

What are weddings about? Well, amid all the celebration and feasting, the one essential thing that a wedding is about is union, the union of bride and groom. But where are the bride and groom in this story? They seem to be conspicuous by their absence. But the prophets in the Old Testament spoke about the wedding feast of the kingdom of God, which is also about union: the union of heaven and earth, of God and humanity, God’s spirit poured out into creation making all things new. 

And Jesus himself is the bridegroom, John the Baptist calls him that. So here, at Cana, Jesus appears as the Lord come to marry his people, his bride, Israel to whom whom he was betrothed of old, Israel now expanded to include all believers of all races and nations. “Jesus revealed his glory, and his disciples believed in him.”

And that is the feast to which we are called. Jesus has come to fill up our old vessels of water with the new wine of his kingdom. He has come to pour out his spirit into creation, making all things new. He has come to celebrate the marriage of God and humanity, of heaven and earth. And we are called to this feast of union with God, to be filled with his transforming glory. From Bethlehem to Calvary, from our birth to our death, God’s glory is present in Jesus to transform the world.

Now I’m sure most of us can easily identify areas of our lives which are not filled to overflowing with the glory of God. But this work of transformation is a gift of God to us, not something that we have to achieve ourselves. It is grace, God’s free gift.

That grace is given to us, and the feast of the kingdom is anticipated, in Baptism and the Eucharist, through which God’s transforming power enters our lives under sacramental signs. The new wine of Cana recalls the water and blood that poured out from the side of Jesus on the cross, the tide of sacramental grace which is making all creation new. God’s glory fills up to overflowing the ordinary things of life, bread, wine, water, human lives, transforming them with his presence and his very self. 

The grace of our baptism endures throughout our life, God’s action joining us once and for all to Jesus in his death and resurrection. But the Eucharist brings new grace every week, every day. It is the feast of transformation in which bread and wine, our life and our labour, are transformed by Christ, filled with his presence, made new. Today, as in every Mass, that grace is poured out to fill and transform our lives. One of the Collects for the Epiphany season expresses this very well. It is a good prayer to use in preparation for the Eucharist:

Almighty God,

in Christ you make all things new:

transform the poverty of our nature by the riches of your grace,

and in the renewal of our lives

make known your heavenly glory;

through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord. Amen.