Sermon at Parish Mass, the Last Sunday after Trinity 2013

Ecclesiasticus 35:12-17

2 Timothy 4:6-8, 16-18

Luke 18:9-14

The Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector

We begin our parish Month of Prayer today and the gospel reading gives us a timely reminder of where we need to begin when we pray.

Jesus tells a parable in which two characters give us two different models of praying. And it is a parable directed, Jesus tells us, at those “who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt”. That is, those who define themselves over against other people, who is in and who is out, and you assure yourself that you are OK because you are not like everyone else.

The first model of praying: a Pharisee goes up to the temple to pray and “stands by himself, praying thus”. The sense of this in the Greek is that he is addressing himself as he prays, almost as though he was his own god. And indeed, this seems to be borne out in what he says, for he uses the word “I” four times in two sentences, congratulating himself on how good he is. And he does not actually address any request, or need, to God at all. His attention should be on God, but he only notices two things: himself, and the tax collector, whom he despises. 

The second model: the tax collector. Tax Collectors at the time of Jesus were extortioners and crooks, licensed by the foreign occupying power to collect taxes for Rome, and backed up by military force. They were so unpopular and hated that the Romans turned a blind eye to them collecting excessive profits for themselves, because otherwise they wouldn’t have found anyone to do the job. They were more like Mafia protection men than today’s honest and upright servants of Her Majesty’s Revenue.

So the tax collector stands at a distance - a contrast to the Pharisee who had gone boldly into the heart of the temple as though he owned it. The tax collector knows he has no right to be there. And he has nothing to bring to God, no righteousness to show off about. What does he say? The only thing he can say, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!”

Note that the Pharisee and the tax collector agree on one point, and they are right: the tax collector is a sinner. But the tax collector sees the truth that the Pharisee does not see: that righteousness can only be received as a gift, not claimed as a possession. And we can only receive a gift if we know that we have nothing to bring. We can receive if our hands are open and empty, but not if they are closed and grasping.

And so the tax collector goes to his home justified. That is, he is put right with God, he has received God’s righteousness as a free gift. He is in fact made one with God. But the poor Pharisee, alas, is not justified, not put right with God. He is at one, not with God, but only with himself, just as he was at the beginning of the story. For him nothing has changed. But for the tax collector, everything begins anew. He is in a living relationship with God which changes everything.

The place where we can begin to pray is the place where we recognise the truth about ourselves, and our need of God. We cannot justify ourselves. Self-justification is always about defining ourselves over against other people.  It means inhabiting a dualistic mindset, us against them, me against the world. 

Now that is the mindset that the tax collector had been inhabiting. You can’t live by robbery and extortion unless you somehow regard your victims as being different from you. You can only be violent towards someone if you stop seeing that they are essentially the same as you. 

But the tax collector by his repentance has stepped out from that world, has let go of all that. In great sorrow, he sees the truth of what he has been, and turns away from that and towards God. Repentance means turning around, taking a new direction. Even from a distance, even with his eyes cast down because he dare not look up. He know he has nothing to offer from what his life has been and can only cry out to God for mercy.

And mercy is granted. All who ask will receive, says Jesus. But to be able to receive, we must first let go of our pride and self-righteousness, of all our attempts to justify ourselves. The tax collector does this, and is justified by God. The Pharisee does not, and so makes himself unable to receive the gift that God wants to give to him, also.

Now this is a parable, and as we know parables are tricky and catch us out. It’s not so much that we read parables as that parables read us. So, when we read this story, where do we see ourselves, whom do we identify with? 

The snare for us, as we read this parable, is that it is so easy for a gift to become a possession. God has given us his righteousness, freely. But now it’s mine, hang on to it! Oh God (as I might say) I thank you that I am humble, that I realise that I am a sinner and in need of your mercy. In particular I thank you that I am not like that really smug self-righteous person over there, congratulating themselves on how good they are... 

Whoops! If we think like that, suddenly we’ve switched places in the parable, and maybe not even noticed. To repent means leaving behind the old way of thinking, the old way of being human, in which we define ourselves over against other people. But we see how persistent that way of being is, what a struggle it is to be free from it.

But of course righteousness is God’s gift and not our effort! The struggle is never an attempt to justify ourselves or make ourselves righteous. Rather, it is a continual turning towards God with open and empty hands, to receive from him the gift, always the free gift, of being made righteous. The gift of unity with God which is at the same time the gift of unity with all humanity. 

As we leave behind the illusion of self-justification we realise our fundamental identity with everyone else. The “everyone else” that we thought we were different from. We are just the same as the whole struggling sinful human race. We, along with everyone else, depend entirely on God’s grace and mercy. Our justification, which is God’s gift, frees us from the old way of thinking and at the same time fills us with profound compassion for the whole of humanity and indeed all of creation. When we are caught up in God’s love, which embraces everyone, our hearts are opened to see all humanity as our brothers and sisters.

This then is what prayer does. We turn to the Lord in humility and repentance, crying out “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” And God fills us with his mercy, forgives our sins, and restores us to union with him. We are justified by his grace. And, being freed from our sin, we discover that the whole of humanity is there with us in the place of our prayer. There are no outsiders any more, and so our prayer reaches out and embraces all with the same love and embrace with which God has reached us. The end of our prayer is the discovery of our union with God and all creation, to dwell in God’s love for ever and not to cease praying and striving for all our brothers and sisters and all that God has made. 

Saint Isaac the Syrian, one of the great jewels of the Eastern Church, summed up this spirit of prayer as follows:

What is a merciful heart? It is a heart on fire for the whole of creation, for humanity, for the birds, for the animals, for demons, and for all that exists... By the strong and vehement mercy that grips such a person’s heart, and by such great compassion, the heart is humbled and one cannot bear to hear or to see any injury or slight sorrow in any in creation. For this reason, such a person offers up tearful prayer continually even for irrational beasts, for the enemies of the truth, and for those who harm her or him, that they be protected and receive mercy.

Even so, Lord, teach us to pray. Amen.

Sermon at Parish Mass Trinity 21 2013

Genesis 32:22-31

2 Timothy 3:14-4:5

Luke 18:1-8

The Parable of the Unjust Judge and the Persistent Widow

Some years ago I saw a cartoon, probably in a magazine, which has stuck in my mind. Picture it in your minds. The scene was a doctor’s consulting room, and either side of the consulting desk were two figures. On one side a large studious middle-aged professional-looking man in a suit and glasses, and on the other a petite young woman, fashionably dressed and nicely made-up. And the caption read: 

Patient: Doctor, I’m worried about my weight.

Doctor: Don’t worry, it’s quite normal to put on a few pounds for men of your age.

I laughed because it had caught me out. I’d already subconsciously assigned the roles: the man in the suit and glasses must be the doctor, the young woman must be the patient over-anxious about her weight. I’d imposed my somewhat sexist and ageist assumptions on the story, and consequently misread it.

We need to bear that in mind when we read parables, because parables like that cartoon have an in-built tendency to catch us out. The assumptions we bring to our reading of them can trip us up, and expose where we need to think again. Someone once said it’s not so much that we read parables but that parables read us.

So, bearing that in mind, how are we to read today’s parable of the widow and the unjust judge?

This is, we are told, a parable about the need to pray and not lose heart. So we might imagine that the widow who persists in going to the judge to seek justice is a model for us praying to God. But the problem with that is that the judge in the story is unjust. He is a distant figure who doesn't care about the widow, and only gives in to her in the end because he finds her bothersome, and fears that in the end she will wear him out. Or an alternative translation of the Greek is that he fears she will give him a black eye - images of handbags at dawn!

I wonder if that isn’t how we often think of God. A distant figure, remote, uncaring, who needs to be persuaded to like us, cajoled into granting us favours.  But, lest we think that, Jesus contrasts the behaviour of the unjust judge with that of God, who, he says, will grant justice to his chosen ones, and quickly. So, then, how are we to read these two figures of the unjust judge and the widow? To understand it we need to understand its context - where it comes in Luke’s story of Jesus. Who is Jesus speaking to, and why? What does this follow on from?

Well if we look in chapter 17 of Luke we see that, just before Jesus tells this parable, he has been telling the pharisees and the disciples about the coming of the Kingdom of God and the rejection of the Son of Man. The Son of Man, Jesus says, will be revealed like a flash of lightning when the Kingdom of God is made manifest. But first he must endure much suffering and be rejected by this generation, that is, by the pharisees and religious authorities. And he talks about his final vindication, like the lightning flash that lights up the sky from one side to the other. 

It is after saying these things that he tells this parable of the widow and the unjust judge. So perhaps this gives us a different perspective on this story. 

Widows at the time of Jesus were vulnerable figures, with no father or husband to protect them or earn a living they were dependent on other people and could not defend themselves against injustice. 

And Jesus himself is on his way to Jerusalem where he will be placed in a similar position of vulnerability. He will be a prisoner, unable to defend himself, sentenced to death by unjust judges. 

But Jesus says that God, unlike the unjust judge, will give justice to his chosen ones - who are they? Well, “Chosen one” is a title, and it belong to Jesus. At the Transfiguration, at the start of the journey to Jerusalem, Jesus was revealed in glory, like a flash of lightning, and a voice from the cloud said “this is my Son, my Chosen, listen to him!”

So Jesus is the vulnerable figure, rejected by unjust judges, but he is also the Chosen one who will be vindicated by God. The Resurrection was like a flash of lightning illuminating the consciousness of the disciples, showing them where God’s justice really was happening, in Jesus. Showing them that he truly was God’s Chosen one, the Messiah and Lord. 

So this message has particular significance for the disciples at this moment. Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem to be betrayed and rejected, and it will seem as though everything has gone wrong. But they must still pray continually and not give up. At the heart of their prayer they need to hold the faith that God is working his justice in Jesus, even when it seems as though everything has been hopelessly lost. And they must not be like the unjust judge who did not care, or like “this generation” which rejected Jesus because he did not fit their demands of what the Messiah should be like.

And this is true for us also. The heart of our prayer, as Jesus teaches us,  is, “Thy will be done”. And that may not correspond with our list of things that we want God to do for us, even if we think they are good. But the will of God is always for our highest good. In the will of God alone is our peace and our justice. Our wrestling with God in prayer can be our struggle to find ourselves in the place of God's will for us.

And at the heart of our prayer, praying “Thy will be done”, is Jesus. For he himself prays that prayer continually to the Father. And when we pray, we are joining with him in his eternal prayer. So our prayer needs to be a continual attention to Christ the Lord, for he is present in our hearts by faith, and through him God is doing his will and working his justice.

What is God’s justice? It is God putting everything to rights, everything as it should be: bringing judgement, vindicating the victims, forgiving sins, bringing about peace and reconciliation between humanity and God and between human beings. And we see this in three ways. 

Firstly, it is Jesus himself: he is the Law in person. Moses brought the ten commandments on stone tablets down from the Holy Mountain, but Jesus comes down from heaven and is himself the Law, God’s will and justice perfectly lived out in a human life.

Secondly, God’s justice is his judgement revealed in Jesus. Those who act unjustly, who reject Jesus in himself or in any of his brothers and sisters, the victims of the world, are revealed for what they truly are when the one they rejected is vindicated by God. The lightning flash of the Resurrection reveals our sin, but brings it into God’s light so that we can repent and be healed.

Thirdly, God’s justice is our justification: the free pardon of our sins, and the gift of God’s eternal life, which is given in Jesus. 

To pray continually is to be continually attentive to Christ, keeping our hearts turned towards him whatever the circumstances of life. It is to discover the true secret of our life, Christ present in our hearts through faith, and to say with St Paul in Galatians, “it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me”.  It is to align our will with the will of God who works his justice through Christ in us, and through us in the world. 

This is not a bad preparation for our Month of Prayer which begins next week. This will give us an opportunity to attend to Christ, to focus once more on his life in us, to listen deeply to what he may want to say to us. It will be an opportunity once more to hear and follow his call, both as individual disciples and as the Church in this place. But it is also a reminder that we are called to pray, not just for a month, but always, centred on Christ, attentive to his presence in our lives that we might be transformed by his justice.

Sermon at Parish Mass Trinity 20 2013

2 Kings 5:1-3,7-15c

1 Timothy 2:8-15

Luke 17:11-19

There are a number of incidents related in the gospels where Jesus heals lepers. They are all remarkable, but this one is unique. 

Leprosy in Biblical times covered a range of disfiguring diseases, all of which made their sufferers outcasts from their communities. If you were a leper you were shunned by religious laws which decreed that you were unclean, unholy, untouchable. You had to live a segregated existence outside of any town or village. If anyone came near you, you had to shout out a warning that they must not approach. How dreadful that was. Speech, communication, is central to human society, to building communities. But of you were a leper the only communication you were allowed with the society that had cast you out was to shout a warning to keep away. You had ceased to be someone who could participate in society.

In most of the stories where Jesus heals a leper he is approached by an individual, one person who asks for healing. And Jesus responds by touching. A very important and indeed scandalous gesture, touching the untouchable. This should have made the holy Rabbi unclean, but instead the reverse happened. Healing and power flows from Jesus, making whole, making clean.

But this story is different. Here there is not one leper, but ten. Curiously one of them is a Samaritan, and we are left to suppose that the other nine are Jews. Now Jews and Samaritans, of course, as represented in the gospels, did not mix. They regarded each other as outcasts, each thinking the other followed a heretical version of their ancestral religion. But here is a group of ten people, Jews and a Samaritan, who are all outcasts from their own communities because of their leprosy. 

Jesus we are told was “going through the region between Samaria and Galilee”. Samaria where the Samaritans lived, Galilee where the Jews lived. Jesus is in an uncertain, unboundaried area, a no-man’s land between these regions where people lived apart. This is where the lepers are, cast out into no-man’s land, which ironically has brought them together. Outside their home structures of exclusion, which they had once been part of, they are able to form a new community, of sorts, which sets aside the old differences.

And Jesus is travelling in that marginal outside place, on his way to Jerusalem, where he will become the outcast, hanged on a tree outside the city on Good Friday.

So in this marginal outside place, this no-man’s land, the lepers ask Jesus, the Master, to have mercy on them. And they are healed, all ten of them. What happens then? Well, Jesus has told them to show themselves to the priests. The Jewish law said that if you had been cured of leprosy you had to be examined by a priest who would certify that you were once again ritually pure, so you could rejoin your community. And this is exactly what the Jewish former lepers do. 

But not the Samaritan. He couldn’t show himself to a Jewish priest; even if he was no longer a leper he would still have been an outcast Samaritan. Perhaps he might have shown himself to a Samaritan priest instead. But he does not. Instead, he turns back to Jesus, praising God in a loud voice, and falls at his feet, giving thanks.  

It looks as though the Samaritan is disobeying Jesus, by not going off and showing himself to a priest. But in fact he has found in Jesus the one true priest who offers salvation, healing and wholeness to all. His response breaks through all the purity codes and religious laws, all the mechanisms of exclusion and casting out. He has found something greater. A new way of belonging, founded only on God’s love reaching out to us and to all in Jesus. A new way of living, founded on praise and thanksgiving rather than on formality and obligation.

The Jewish lepers had a choice. They could have made the same response as the Samaritan. They could have realised that in Jesus God was breaking open all the sacred boundaries and religious laws which had made them victims for so long, outsiders to their own people.  But instead they chose to go back into that system, now that they could be on the inside again and return to their old existence. They were ritually clean, back on the right side of the religious law. That was the easy option for them, not available to the Samaritan. But by going back to the old ways they are missing out on the fullness of life and joy which made the Samaritan shout with praise. 

For the Samaritan, the discovery of God coming to meet us in Jesus changed everything. A life of exclusion was transformed into a life of thanksgiving and praise. Thanksgiving, gratitude, in particular is at the core of a life which is turned outward towards the other, and above all to God. Thanksgiving acknowledges that we receive everything we have and are from God. We face outward, not inward, in joy and praise.

It is no accident that the central act of Christian worship, the Mass, is also called the Eucharist, the Thanksgiving. The Church from the earliest times has set the memorial of Christ’s death, the consecration and offering of his Body and Blood, in the heart of a great prayer of thanksgiving. Thanksgiving for creation, for life, for grace, for God’s unfailing love. Above all thanksgiving that God gives us his very self in Jesus and feeds us with his life.

The Eucharist, the Mass, is the “source and summit of the Christian life”, in the words of Vatican II. It is the heart of the new way of living that Jesus makes possible. Living not for ourselves but towards God in praise and thanksgiving. Living without barriers of exclusion. Living for others, to welcome the outsiders home.

To live so is to live in peace. We are all familiar with the words often used in the blessing at the end of Mass, "The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in the knowledge and love of God". That is part of a quotation from St Paul's Letter to the Philippians, but in full it is this:

Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

If our spiritual life is narrow and formal, if we try to be righteous by following rules, we will not know peace. Because that is to make it all depend on us, and what use are we? True peace comes from being open to God, turning to the Lord in praise and thanksgiving, with our hearts open so that we can receive the peace and love with which he longs to fill us. And then we can follow wherever he leads.

To live from the Eucharist is to allow ourselves to be led by the Spirit into that no-man’s land where there are no boundaries, where all can be welcomed. This is a risky journey! Do we perhaps prefer our safe comfort zone where we know we are on the inside, and never mind those outside? Or will we let ourselves be transformed by praise and thanksgiving? Can we discover that the journey in the wilderness is actually the adventure of God’s love, breaking the rules and overflowing the boundaries in all directions?

In Jesus all the systems of fear and exclusion break down, and with them the narrow but safe existence which we thought was what God wanted. God, it turns out, is not some thing to be afraid of but some one who loves us, and that love surprises us with joy, transforms our lives beyond our imagining.

In Christ there is no-one who is unclean, no-one who is an outsider. The kingdom he is bringing overturns all those old ways of living based on fear and casting out. Today in this Eucharist, and every day, he calls us to live in thanksgiving and praise, turned to him from whom we receive life, being, grace, salvation, and love. 

Sermon at Parish Mass Harvest Thanksgiving 2013

Deuteronomy 26:1-11

Philippians 4:4-9

John 6:25-35

Our first reading today, from Deuteronomy, is an order of service, rather like the ones we have in our hands this morning. There are things that we say and sing together, prayers, answers and responses. And so there are in Deuteronomy. It is a liturgy which tells a story, calling to mind the history of Israel. It dates from around the 6th Century BC when the worship of the temple in Jerusalem had become quite formal and codified. And it is of course a harvest thanksgiving, which is what we are doing too.

But the harvest thanksgiving in Deuteronomy is in a very specific context. It is not thanksgiving for the fruits of the earth in general, or prayer for all human labour. It is a thanksgiving linked intimately to the land, the ground, the earth. And in Deuteronomy it is specifically the earth of Israel, the land of promise. The land that the Jewish people had entered and settled in after a history of exile and affliction. 

So it is a land of promise, and its fruits are part of God’s providence, the fruits that you enjoy when you are where you truly belong, deeply rooted on your own soil. And that frames the questions in this liturgy. Where did you come from? When did you come here? And the answer is made, “A wandering Aramean was my ancestor; he went down into Egypt and lived there as an alien... The Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm... and he brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey. So now I bring the first of the fruit of the ground that you, O Lord, have given me.”

And this is very much in the background when Jesus teaches the crowds in John’s Gospel, in the reading that we heard just now. But Jesus gives a different perspective. This scene is just after the feeding of the five thousand, and Jesus is asked, “When did you come here?”, which sounds a bit like the question from that harvest liturgy in Deuteronomy. But Jesus does not give the old response. Instead he tells them not to work for the food that perishes. 

The food that comes from the land, the earth, even from the land of Israel, it seems is not the most important thing. Because it is food that perishes. Every year, you must sow new seed, reap a new harvest, in order to feed yourself. But even then you are feeding a body which is mortal, formed from the earth, and it too will perish when its time comes. 

No, there is another food, not food that perishes, not earthly, but heavenly, and that is what Jesus has come to bring. That indeed is the meaning of the miracle of the loaves and fishes feeding those thousands of people. It is a sign of something new entering the world, but the crowd can only think in the old way, of the the bread they need for this life that is passing away. The bread that God gives does not come from the earth, from the land, but from heaven. It nourishes for eternal life, the life that God lives.

In the Greek of John’s gospel two different words are used for life, and they mean very different things. Psyche, which for John means the life of the body, earthly life which is passing away, and zoe, which is always used by John of the life which God lives, the life which Jesus brings and gives to his disciples. Now in English those tend to get translated as “life” and “eternal life”. 

The problem with that is that we can think that “eternal life” is just like the life of the body, earthly life, only indefinitely prolonged. But that is not what it means. It is something different altogether, a new kind of life which can only be received “from above”, from God. The life that God lives is life without limit, endlessly rising up from the creator like an inexhaustible spring, always new, and yet always entirely present in the eternal “now”. Not the life of the earth indefinitely prolonged, but the life of the Spirit. And it is this life that Jesus gives.

And yet, we are bodies formed of the earth. How are we to receive this new life? Jesus says, I am the bread of life, the bread that I shall give is my flesh for the life of the world. Eat my flesh, drink my blood, and this will be for you Spirit and life.

These words of Jesus cause scandal and are incomprehensible if seen only from the perspective of earthly life. Eating flesh and drinking blood are revolting from that perspective - signs of death, not of life. But in the life of the Spirit, these words speak of the risen Lord giving himself to us without limit, feeding us without being diminished or consumed, because what he gives is not earthly life, but the life of God.

The Eucharist we celebrate joins the life of the earth with that of the Spirit, raising it to God. Like the incarnation, where mortal human nature was joined to the Divine nature and taken into God. There is nothing more earthy than the stuff we need for the Eucharist. Wheat grown from the soil, watered by the rain, ripened by the sun, then harvested by human labour, ground and baked into bread. Grapes carefully tended, ancient root stocks deep in the earth bearing clusters of sweet fruit, gathered, crushed, fermented, strained, laid down to age and mellow.

In the Eucharist, by the power of the Spirit, this earthy nourishment of our earthy bodies is transformed, filled with the Divine and life-giving presence of Jesus. Beneath the appearances of bread and wine we truly receive the Body and Blood of the Lord, the Bread of Life who comes down from heaven. Through it we are nourished by the Spirit, so that eternal life, the life of God, takes root and grows in us.

Earthly life is good, blessed by God in creation, which is why we must care for the earth, protect its resources, ensure equitable distribution. This is why we must feed the hungry and care for those in need. 

But earthly life is not all there is. In itself it is passing away, bound to death and decay. But it awaits the new creation, when all will be transformed by the indwelling Spirit of God. In the New Testament the harvest of crops is used as a metaphor for the harvest at the end of time, when all will be gathered into God’s Kingdom. 

But it would be a mistake to think of that world as something that will only happen later, after this present life or this present universe has passed away. The life of the Spirit, the life of God’s kingdom, is already present to us now. We glimpse that presence in our hearts and in the world as the Holy Spirit dwells in us and transforms us, opening the gates of our perception. We taste the life of the Kingdom in the Eucharist.

The kingdom of God is present already, growing in secret like a hidden seed buried in the ground of our hearts. Nourished by the bread of heaven and by the life giving water of the Spirit, that seed will grow and bear fruit to eternal life. 

So we give thanks for this earthly harvest, the fruit of human labour, these gifts we offer from the abundance with which God has blessed us, so that our brothers and sisters can eat.

But we also give thanks for the gift of the Spirit, of the Bread come down from heaven which nourishes us to eternal life. We give thanks for the harvest of God’s kingdom, of which these gifts are a sign, which even now is growing in secret, and which will be fully revealed in the life of the world to come.