Sermon Epiphany 3 2014

Isaiah 9:1-4

1 Corinthians 1:10-18

Matthew 4:12-23

I hope you are all having a good Christmas! Because of course, while the world outside seems to think that Christmas ends on the 25th of December, the Church thinks that’s when it begins. And it goes on for 40 days, until the presentation of Jesus in the Temple, 40 days after he was born, which we shall celebrate next Sunday. 

As our Epiphany house reminds us, in this season we remember not only the birth of Jesus but also his naming, his Epiphany and the visit of the Magi, and his baptism in the Jordan. It is a season of beginnings and revelations: Jesus is revealed, shown to the world, in various ways.

Today is a beginning and a revelation, as Jesus appears and calls his first disciples. This is the beginning of the main section of Matthew’s Gospel, and it is a good time to read it, as through the year we too will follow Jesus and hear his teaching as the Gospel story unfolds.

Matthew’s Gospel was probably written in and for a group of Jewish Christians after the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70. They had had a tough time, they had experienced persecution and loss, marginalised by their own people and possibly rejected by their families for their belief in Jesus. And there is much in today’s reading, and throughout the Gospel, which would have had a particular resonance for them in their own situation. But it also speaks to us.

Jesus has chosen to begin his ministry, and call his first disciples, in Capernaum, on the shores of lake Galilee. This is a long way from Jerusalem,  the centre of religious and political power. And Matthew quotes Isaiah calling it “Galilee of the Gentiles”. Even in the time of Jesus it was a multicultural region, with people of different races and faiths living side by side. An important trading route - the “road by the sea” - ran through it from Syria to Egypt, bringing all kinds of different people and influences into the area. It is here in the melting pot of cultures, where boundaries are blurred and shifting, that Jesus chooses to begin his ministry. It is here that a great light shines, as Jesus begins his ministry with call to repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven has come near.

And he begins by calling people to follow him. Repentance means turning around, pointing our lives in a different direction. But Jesus says more: we must also follow. Repentance is not static, it’s a new way of living. It is precisely not carrying on as before. Like the Kingdom of Heaven, it is something happening, the new way in which life will unfold for those who follow Jesus. If the Kingdom of Heaven is happening where Jesus is, if the light is breaking in where Jesus is, then that is where we want to be. And he does not stand still. 

In this short story we see both the attraction of Jesus and the cost of following him. These four disciples immediately leave everything - boats, nets, family - to follow Jesus. Did they know what lay ahead? No! But Jesus called them, and that was enough. They leave what was familiar behind and launch out into the unknown. It is an act of faith. And the mere presence of Jesus has given them that faith. Faith is a living relationship with a living person, Jesus the Lord. It is believing and trusting, whatever the path ahead will hold, because Jesus walks with us. Faith is God’s gift in us when we sense his light shining, his call in our lives.

For these first disciples the path ahead will take them to Jerusalem, to betrayal and fear, to the cross and the empty tomb. They will be among the witnesses and preachers of the resurrection, because they have known and followed Jesus along the way. 

They knew, as Christians down the ages have known, that when Jesus enters your life and says “follow me” nothing is ever the same again. The cost may be great. For some it may entail rejection by family or society, or persecution. It may entail difficult decisions to stay faithful when everything around us seems to be pulling in the other direction. It may entail simple honesty about the hard facts of life like incurable illness and death, when many people don’t want to admit that such things happen, want to turn away from the risks of the future. But when we find in Jesus the fulness of life and peace everything else becomes relative. The gift of faith that he awakens in us enables us to step into a future that we don’t know or control, because the future into which we are heading is the future with Jesus in it.

Jesus says, “follow me”. He doesn’t say, “admire me”, or “like me on Facebook”, but “follow”. Join in with what I am doing. The first disciples are called for a purpose - that they may “fish for people”, which is what Jesus is doing. They are to spread the good news of the Kingdom and draw more people in, yet more followers, yet more disciples, yet more people to carry and spread the good news. The church down the ages begins here, on the shores of Galilee, and these four who first follow Jesus will become the uncounted millions in every century and nation.

The path of discipleship means following, learning, being subject to a discipline. It’s like being in training. If you want to be a footballer, it is not enough simply to go to football matches and watch. If you want to be an artist, you need to do more than go to art galleries and look at the pictures.

To be a disciple means to learn, to be attentive, to practice. It means to make mistakes. These four disciples, like the others who come later, get it wrong. Often. They mistake the purposes of Jesus. They want the places of power. They turn away from the cross. Peter will deny that he knows Jesus at all.

Jesus knows this, perfectly well, and calls them anyway. Just as he knows us. To follow Jesus is to be on a journey, not to arrive instantly at the destination. But it is a journey in which grace is constantly working on us and transforming us. We learn from every failure. Every sin forgiven deepens our love and gratitude and joy. The tale of our halting progress along the way is the tale of the triumphs of grace.

Like the story of the disciples, the story of our following Jesus is one that is properly seen from its end rather than from its beginning. Just as the Gospel can only be understood, and indeed was only written, because of the resurrection. Because faith in Jesus, risen and glorified, means faith in the work of his grace in us, a work which he will bring to completion. As the first letter of John says:

Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.

So we do not lose faith, and we do not lose heart. Jesus calls us to follow him. His call draws us in to his life and his light, and gives us the promise that he will not give up on us. It is his path that we are following, he walks with us on the way, and we can trust him to the end.

Sermon at Parish Mass Epiphany 2 2014

Isaiah 49:1-7

1 Corinthians 1:1-9

John 1:29-42

“Here is the Lamb of God”, says John the Baptist. That is to us a very familiar phrase in the Mass and in Christian art and hymns. But perhaps our familiarity stops us seeing how startling that phrase is. We need to abandon what may be our modern conceptions. When we hear “Lamb” we are not meant to think ‘fluffy cute’, but sacrificial victim. That is, an animal destined for a ritual killing.

What was sacrifice about? Partly it was to do with feasting and celebration, meat was a rare and expensive food that most people only ate on religious festivals. And partly it was an offering from what you own as an acknowledgement of your dependence on God. We have banknotes or standing orders for our giving, but in ancient societies livestock were currency.

But also, and here is the key to sacrifice, it is a small contained act of ritual violence intended to ward off greater and uncontrolled violence. A bit like a vaccination, a weakened dose of a dangerous bug protects you from its full effects. Animal sacrifice probably replaced earlier and almost forgotten human sacrifices, as hinted in the story of Abraham and Isaac.

Such stories may have their obscure origin in the lynching of a human victim by a group that came together, all against one. The killing produced a cohesion in their group that made it seem like a miraculous sacred act. The gods must have been pleased by it, their anger averted. And each group, united round a killing, formed the nucleus of each new society as it developed. The anthropologist René Girard calls this the “founding murder” – the heart of violence deeply buried in all societies.

So the lamb is a sacrificial image. It connects to the deeply buried dark side of human nature. But Jesus is different. He is the Lamb of God. This indicates, not sacrifice in the old way, but its reverse. Jesus is not the victim humans offer to God to defuse his anger or turn away his violence. Instead, Jesus is the lamb that God offers to us. Sacrifice becomes self-giving love.

And the Lamb of God takes away the sin of the world. Not sins, you notice, but sin: the general state in which we find ourselves, the heart of darkness in all human society. Jesus opens to us a new way of living: the life of God himself. God is light and in him is no darkness at all. It is humanity, not God, which demands sacrifices. It is God who frees us from sacrifice by freely giving us himself.

The Jewish scriptures have an ambivalent attitude towards sacrifice. Some strands see it as being essential to the religion of Israel. Originally there were many altars and places of sacrifice, later reduced to one in Jerusalem, and closely regulated for example in Leviticus. But other strands consider sacrifice to be of no value. The prophet Amos says that God has not asked for sacrifices but for ethical living and justice for the poor. And Psalm 40, which we heard this morning, says, “Sacrifice and offering you do not desire… Burnt-offering and sin-offering you have not required”. And it is this strand of teaching that Jesus seems consistently to approve and reinforce.

Jesus, the Lamb of God, identifies himself with all the victims of human violence in all its forms from the beginning. In the book of Revelation, that great symbolic vision of the reality behind earthly events, he is called “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world”. It is as though he takes into himself the dark heart and violence of all human society from the beginning, and overcomes it. And the Lamb who was slain is seen on the throne of God, living for ever. The Lamb of God is identified with God, for only God can take away sin. The risen victim changes how we see all victims, and reveals where God is really at work in the world.

In taking away the sin of the world Jesus saves us from the false unity created by violence, the unity of the group gathered against its victim. And he opens to us the true unity and life which he shares with the Father. Real unity, real life, is found in God.

This is the deep meaning of the encounter between Jesus and his first disciples in today’s Gospel reading. They ask Jesus, “where are you staying?” And Jesus replies, “come and see”. And “they came and saw where he was staying, and they remained with him that day”.

As usual in John’s Gospel there is more going on here than meets the eye. The key to this is the word, “remain”, “stay”, or “abide” – John uses the same Greek word for all. “Abiding” in John’s Gospel means being rooted, centred, solidly and persistently staying. Where you abide is where you are real.

Through John’s Gospel Jesus leads the disciples deeper into this teaching: where he truly abides is in the Father. And the Father abides in him, and the Holy Spirit in both. And the disciples themselves, and therefore we, are invited to abide in Jesus in God. “They remained with him that day.”

This is where our true life is to be found. Abiding in Jesus in God. And it is an invitation not only to life, but also to unity. Not the false unity of the violent group, but the true unity that is God’s gift. This invitation is extended to all. So Andrew, when he has been drawn to Jesus, goes and finds his brother Simon and brings him to Jesus, too.

The Benedictine monk Sebastian Moore has pointed out that the way that Andrew and the other disciple follow Jesus, as soon as they see him, reads almost as though they had fallen in love. Love at first sight! And indeed they have. But it is not a jealous and possessive love. It is love that spreads, love that wants to draw others in, to abide in the unity of the Father.

In this week of prayer for Christian unity we need to remember that the unity we seek can be found only by abiding in Jesus in God, and by drawing others to the love which has caught hold of us.

We celebrate the Eucharist as the sacrament of the unity of the Church, and indeed it is that. The Eucharist brings into being what it signifies, the Body of Christ. But we do so in a divided church in which not all Christians are able to recognise each other’s eucharist. We need to feel the pain of that division, and to work to overcome it. But we also need to remember that unity is God’s gift, and is found in God. It is not our construction. If we begin by tinkering with different structures to try to make them fit together, we won’t get anywhere. We have to begin in prayer, by seeking the unity in the heart of God, which is our true life. When we get that right, the structures will sort out themselves.

Nevertheless, even in a divided church the Eucharist is a sign and foretaste of the unity to which it points. At its heart is the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world. It is God’s self-giving love that draws us together in unity. Here our abiding in God, in Jesus, is truly renewed, even if we must wait in this in-between time for the full visible unity of the Church to appear.

And this is not only about the unity of the Church, but about the unity of humanity as well, as we saw last week. The Eucharist reconnects and renews the world. The world Jesus came to save from sin, the world to which he sends us. The world in which we are to be bear the love of God for our neighbour, for the stranger in the street, for the lonely, for the needy, for the oppressed.

Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. And we, like the first disciples, are sent to that world to draw others in, to abide in unity with Jesus in the life and love of God.

Sermon The Baptism of Christ 2014

The Baptism of Christ - Juan Sánchez Cotán

Isaiah 42:1-9

Acts 10:34-43

Matthew 3:13-end

On Friday morning I thinking about today’s sermon while on my way into the parish on the Overground, which has, in places, a wonderful view over London. You can see for miles. The sun was about to rise, the sky was glowing in shades of peach and gold, and there were all the streets and houses, churches, mosques and temples, tower blocks and skyscrapers, stretching off into the distance. London.

And I had an impression of the millions of people who live in our city, beginning a new day. London is called a global city, its population is drawn from every nation and race and culture. But I wondered how much we are really one city, is there really one united community, or are there many communities which exist alongside each other but never meet? Tensions and divisions are often evident, as the reaction to the Mark Duggan inquest shows, or the fact that we run a drop-in for homeless people in a city of such wealth. Our city surely yearns, reaches out, for something better

With those thoughts I glanced down from the view to the book I had been reading, and saw these words: “Fundamentally the Gospel is obsessed with the idea of the unity of human society”. Those are the words of French priest Eugène Masure, quoted in Henri de Lubac’s great book “Catholicism”, a book which had a great influence on the Second Vatican Council, reviving the social dimension of the Gospel in catholic thinking and helping the Church to turn out towards the world once again. “Fundamentally the Gospel is obsessed with the idea of the unity of human society”. 

And indeed that is true. The gospels, just like the law and the prophets in the Old Testament, are about the salvation of a people. Not isolated individuals, but people collectively brought into a community of righteousness, peace and justice, under God’s rule. The gospels call this the “Kingdom of God”. 

So when John the Baptist starts preaching and baptising in the river Jordan, Matthew tells us that the “people of Jerusalem and all Judea were going out to him”. And this coveys the sense of the whole population descending on John, a vast multitude. 

What were they going out to do? They were going out to be baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. And they were a diverse lot, too. This is the scene in the Gospel where John criticises the Pharisees and Sadducees going out to him as a “brood of vipers”!

So we have a picture of a great crowd of individuals, very diverse, each with their own burden of sin, some small, some great, going down to confess their sins. They sense that in this action, somehow, a new beginning will be possible. That forgiveness will open the way to something new, something better, not simply for them as individuals but for them as that great mass of humanity, as a people. 

So all these individuals go down into the water, confessing their sins. But what comes up out of the water is Christ. It is only Jesus who is described as emerging from the water, as if that is what matters for him, whereas for everyone else what matters is to go down into it.

And it is as Jesus emerges from the water that there comes the great revelation, the voice from heaven, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”

And Jesus, as the Gospels and St Paul tell us, is the new creation, humanity made new, the “new Adam”. “Adam” meaning, originally, the whole human race, rather than just one individual. And the Spirit is seen over the head of Jesus, just as the Spirit hovered over the waters at the beginning, to bring creation to birth. 

So what goes down into the water is fallen humanity - sinful, divided against itself, isolated individuals struggling against themselves and each other. And what rises up from the water is humanity restored, recreated, united: Christ the new Adam, the Son, the Beloved.

Humanity in the beginning was created for unity, not for division. Human nature, created as Genesis tells us in the image of God, is one nature with many persons, just as God is one Divine nature in three Persons. But because of the fall the essential unity of humanity is not apparent to us. Sin has introduced division, enmity, and the illusion that we are separate and isolated, each a world to ourselves.

But in Christ the sin and division of humanity are overcome. He is the Son of Man, and in him the essential unity of humanity is restored. And he is also the Son of God, the Divine joined with the human in one person. Because Christ is human, all human nature is principle is one with him. And because he is Divine, all human nature, in principle, is deified. 

Humanity has therefore a great and two-fold dignity, founded on Christ. We are created, like everything in the universe, and Christ is the Word through whom all things exist. His descent into the waters of the Jordan is the Word immersing himself in creation and making all things holy. And we are human, we share the nature that the Word took to himself in the incarnation, and raised to the Divine. This is true in principle of the whole of humanity, which is why Christianity has such a profound reverence for the sanctity of human life. 

But this truth needs to awaken and come to life in each human person. The Spirit waits to bring to birth the new humanity, the revelation of Christ, in us. To discover our essential unity in Christ, and to share in his Divine nature, requires faith, an awakening of consciousness and a turning towards the Lord. It requires, in fact, repentance, which means turning around, turning to God and away from sin and division. 

The unity of human society found in the Gospel is not based on social engineering or any human initiative. Attempts to create an artificial unity in human society always fail, and can become demonic, as witness, for example, Nazi Germany or the Cultural Revolution in China. True unity is found in Christ, and is the creation of God’s Spirit. Christ is God’s new humanity, the new Adam, in which we are invited to find our own true humanity. And he is God’s Divinity joined to our nature, in which we are invited to share. 

For Christians the path of repentance to new life and unity in Christ is shown above all in Baptism. Our Christian life begins with the summons to the water of new birth, with the expression of faith and the promise of repentance. Whether we made those promises ourselves or they were made on our behalf, they are the faith and promise of the people of God that we joined at that moment. Baptism makes us one with Christ, and all who are in Christ are together the people of God. Through the waters of the font we die to sin and division and are reborn to unity and newness of life in Christ. 

But the waters of baptism do not cut us off from the rest of the human race. They express the movement to which all human beings are called by their very humanity: the turning of repentance, the descent into the waters which represent all seeking after God, the quest of all humanity to find salvation. Even when that is not expressed through Christian faith in the sacrament of baptism, the inner spiritual reality can still be present. 

The Church has always said that the desire for baptism is sufficient when the sacrament itself is lacking, even if that desire is implicit. This implies a generous view of the world, reflecting the generosity of God. Christ is not confined to Christianity, but Christianity points to Christ as the fulfilment of all human destiny. Whenever anyone turns towards the Lord however he may be experienced, wherever there is a desire for new birth into a redeemed humanity: there too we may see some facet of the great diversity of people going down into the water. So many individuals, from all races and cultures and nations, divided and fallen, confessing their sins, but raised up in Christ to a redeemed united humanity, and in him participating in the Divine nature.

Because the words from heaven are spoken of Christ, and therefore of all humanity as found and redeemed in Christ: “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” Because the Holy Sprit, in hovering over Christ, broods over the whole of the new humanity being brought to birth in him, creating in us new depths of the Spirit filled with Divine light and reflecting back to God his image, the revelation of his Son, as it is being recreated and restored in us.

Sermon Epiphany 2014

Isaiah 60:1-6

Ephesians 3:2-3a, 5-6

Matthew 2:1-12

When I was a little boy, I am told on reliable authority, I used to sing “We three kings of holly and tar”. I suppose I didn’t know what the word “orient” meant, and holly was clearly something to do with Christmas, so I put it in the carol. Where the tar came from I have no idea.

We might wonder as well why we sing of three kings as well, since the story that Matthew gives us doesn’t say that the mysterious visitors from the east were kings, or that there were three of them. Matthew just says that they were Magi, magoi in Greek, without explaining what that means. He says that they came, literally, from “the land of the sunrise”, which is poetic, but doesn’t actually locate them anywhere. The land of the sunrise is like the end of the rainbow: however far east you travel, it’s always further still. 

So these Magi, these visitors from the land of the sunrise, are quite mysterious. They must have been wise, scholarly, well versed in astronomy, and with the means to undertake a long journey carrying expensive gifts.  They could have been priests or astrologers from Persia or Babylon. But they could equally have come from almost anywhere else. And perhaps that’s the point. The Magi represent the whole gentile world, the whole world outside Judaism, with all its richness, learning, and wisdom. All human intuitions and insights into the truth are there.

Quite early on the tradition of the Church amplified the story of the Magi to make this point. In art, we usually see them as men of three different races, representing the three known continents of the time: Europe, Asia and Africa. Quite often, too, one is old, one young, and one middle aged. They were assigned exotic sounding names - in Western tradition those that stuck were Caspar, Melchior and Balthasar, but other parts of the church have different names. The Magi are very inclusive! The very mystery that surrounds them makes them universal. 

But these outsiders to Judaism receive a sign from heaven calling them in to the heart of all that the law and the covenant mean, into the heart of God’s revelation of himself. They represent all the longings and insights of every culture and race, converging on Jesus. They are drawn out of themselves by the mystery of Christ’s birth, only to find themselves on the inside after all, at the heart of the mystery that called to them from afar.

Matthew’s Gospel is in many ways the most “Jewish” of the gospels, always taking care to show how the coming of Jesus is in accordance with Jewish belief and the holy scriptures, emphasising continuity and connection. But this does not mean that Matthew takes an exclusivist approach to faith. He is quite clear that the salvation that God has promised to Israel is not just for them but for all nations and races. He sees in Jesus the fulfilment of prophesies such as we heard from Isaiah this morning, that “Nations shall come to your light, and kings to your dawning brightness”. 

In those days science, religion and philosophy were not separate disciplines. All were together a quest for truth. The story of the Magi tells us that truth, fully realised, leads us to Christ, who is God’s complete revelation of himself. All truth is from God, and leads back to God. But the fact that all truth is from God means that the Church can and does affirm all that is true in science, religion, and culture. All truth is on the way to the fulness of truth. There is something of Christ manifested wherever human endeavour seeks the truth.

But this does mean that science, philosophy, religion, all the aspects of human culture, have a proper calling. They are not random and meaningless pastimes. They are to seek after and serve the truth. The Magi represent that calling to seek the truth; their journey to seek Christ is a pattern for the inner journey of all humanity, which is to seek the Lord in spirit and truth. 

But the calling to seek the truth depends on human freedom, and so it is a calling that can fail. Not all Magi find the truth. Besides the Magi in today’s story, there is another one in the Acts of the Apostles, called Bar-Jesus, whose practice of magic leads him to oppose the preaching of the Gospel and brings him into conflict with St Paul.  

Then there is King Herod. He was in fact a very cultured man, of great learning and achievements. But he refused to see the truth of Christ and instead reacted in fear and envy of someone who he thought was a threat to his power. The Magi came to him and asked after the new-born “King of the Jews”, which was Herod’s own title. Herod could have sought the new insight to truth, the new meaning of kingship, that this unexpected visit offered him, but instead he rejected the truth and turned to violence and murder. So we see the shadow of the Cross in this Epiphany scene, a foreshadowing of Jesus’ own violent death. 

The truth to which the Magi are led is a God who reveals himself in order to suffer and die. He has come to endure the consequences of humanity turning away from the truth. But he does so in order to lead humanity back to the truth, which is himself. 

The quest for truth culminates in faith, which is not about accumulating facts, but is entering into communion. Truth leads us to a person, to Christ. It is in relationship with him that we find our own truth spoken, our own self fully known. This is the mystery which is at the heart of all human seeking after truth. And the mystery that we can also turn away from, and fail to find.

Science and culture seek the truth, but it is not enough for them to be simply utilitarian. They must seek a deeper truth than mere facts and figures, or passing fashions. So if science says that we may do whatever we can do, such as make hybrid animal/human embryos, or more lethal chemical weapons, then it is failing to see the innate truth and dignity of the human person. It is failing to see that human knowledge and skill should serve humanity, and not destroy it, and therefore it is failing in its vocation to seek the truth. 

Or when the art world presents meaningless absurdities to a cynically inflated art market, it has turned away from its own vocation to seek and to mediate the truth which all art, in some way or other, should reflect as an expression of the human spirit.

Religion, also, can turn aside from the quest for truth. God is the mystery who calls us out of ourselves to find our selves in him. But the rigid certainties of fundamentalism, or all too easy accommodations with power and privilege, can turn us aside from that path. And these are things that disfigure all religions. Really these are idols, things that we can hold on to and possess, in place of the true God who wishes to possess us so that we can find our true freedom.

The place of Christians in the public arena is not to insist that everything must have a veneer of religion, or that everyone must believe as we do. Far from it. But we do believe in the fundamental vocation of human beings to seek the truth, and that all truth is from God, wherever it may be found. So Christians are among those who recognise the primacy of the truth for all, and the dignity of human culture in seeking and serving the truth, wherever it may be found and wherever it may lead us. 

And that applies not only in the public forum, but also in our personal relationships, in families, communities and the workplace. If anyone is abused or exploited, or bullied or ignored, then it is the fundamental truth of that human person that is endangered. We cease to see the truth of the person before us: their absolute dignity, created in the image of God. And we place an obstacle for them in the path of the truth, which is their path as much as ours, and whose ultimate end is the love of God revealed in Christ.

The end of our seeking is not more and more facts. Truth is not facts, though facts can lead us to the truth. Truth, in the end, is found in relationship, in communion. Truth is found when we find ourselves in God. The end of our journey, like that of the Magi, is worship, the offering of our lives and selves as we discover the truth of our being in God. 

That is the fundamental calling of all human beings, and of all human culture. And in serving that calling, for ourselves and for others, we are serving Christ in the world that reflects and embodies his truth, and where all who seek may find the path that leads to him.