Sermon at Parish Mass Trinity 10 2014

Isaiah 51:1-6

Romans 12:1-8

Matthew 16:13-20

If you’re thinking that the gospel reading we’ve just heard sounds a little bit familiar, you’d be right. This year we read through Matthew’s gospel at Sunday Mass and this is the point we’ve got to. But this passage is also the gospel for feasts of St Peter, so this is now the third time that we’ve heard it in two months.

But, rather than complaining about all the repeats that we’re getting in the pulpit these days, we can embrace this as an opportunity to take a closer look at what St Matthew is telling us here. Here, about half way through Matthew’s gospel, is the turning point, the dramatic moment when the pace and direction of the story changes. And Jesus begins by asking a crucial question in a very strange place.

Imagine if Nigel Farage wanted to ask his UKIP supporters what being British was all about, and he took them to Brussels to ask them. Or imagine Alex Salmond, the Scottish leader, bringing his people to London to ask them what Scottishness meant to them.

That might give us an idea of how unexpected and odd it is for Jesus to come into the district of Caesarea Philippi and ask the question, “who do people say the Son of Man is?”

Jesus has here taken the disciples to foreign territory, 35 miles north of Galilee. Caesarea Philippi was the regional headquarters of Roman government in Syria. It was a city for the Roman elite, built in a beautiful position by Philip II, one of the Herod family, who named it after Caesar, and himself: Caesarea Philippi, the Caesarea of Philip. It was a gentile city, pagan, not a comfortable place for devout Jews, and a constant reminder of the foreign occupation they were living under.

And it was loaded with religious associations. Pagan ones. The god Pan had been worshipped there from ancient times, the horned god of wild places and wild behaviour. A sanctuary had been built around a cave that made weird sounds caused by a constriction in an underground stream and thought to be the voice of Pan. The cliff face around this cave was dotted with shrines and statues. In the city itself was a great temple dedicated to the ‘divine’ Augustus Caesar, and monuments and inscriptions gave the Emperor titles such as “Son of God” and “Saviour”.

So this is a city of gods and political power. What are gods? They are what people worship, what we make sacrifices to. If you worship Caesar and the Roman Empire and the forces of nature as gods, then you are saying that these have the ultimate claim over human life and freedom. And these gods are unaccountable powers above such things as morality and law. You just have to endure what they inflict on you and hope that you can buy their favour by worshipping them.

So Caesarea Philippi proclaims that the Roman Empire, oppressive power, and elemental forces are gods. These are what matter, these rule human life, worship them.

So when Jesus chooses this place to ask, “who do people say the Son of Man is?”, it is a question loaded with significance. Can the disciples see that there is an alternative understanding of the world? Is Caesar the ultimate reality – or not?

And Peter gets it. ‘You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.’ Jesus is not just a teacher, a healer, or a good man. There were many such in the Roman Empire. No, Jesus is much more than that. He is the alternative to the world represented by Caesarea Philippi. If Jesus is Messiah and Saviour and Lord, then Caesar is not. If Jesus’ way of love and forgiveness and non-violence is the law, then the law of Caesar is not. If the true God creates all things in love and generosity, then it is him we must worship, and not the things he has created.

We are here at the turning point of the story, as Matthew’s gospel tells it. A turning point in the disciples’ understanding: Peter, for the first time, says who Jesus is. A turning point, too, in the journey. Caesarea Philippi is the northernmost point in Jesus’ travels. Here he turns back towards Jerusalem and begins the long journey that will end in rejection, the cross, death, and resurrection.

From now on the shadow of the cross is on every page of Matthew’s gospel. But so too is the light of the resurrection and Jesus’ victory over death itself. That victory will confirm that he is indeed Lord and Messiah, Son of God and Saviour. Caesar’s account of the world will fall and fade away before the triumph of the Risen Lord. But the disciples don’t yet understand this, as we will read next week. For them, the way to Jerusalem and the cross will be a path of obscurity and contradiction.

Like the disciples, the turning point in our lives comes when we meet Jesus and realise who he is. If we look around us it might seem that Caesarea Philippi is everywhere. The prevailing assumptions of the world, the gods of our own day, are as loudly proclaimed as they were in any Roman temple.

What are those gods? As in Roman days, military might has never stopped trying to run the world, as both history and current events show. This is a god that demands endless human sacrifices, yet humanity keeps feeding it, not realising that it will never change its nature.

Wealth and prosperity can be things to serve the good of humanity, or they can be gods that we end up serving. The love of money leads to economic injustice and makes far more slaves than it makes millionaires.

Pan and his fellow divinities may have retreated into myth and fairy tale, but we still encounter what they once stood for, the powerful elemental desires that seem to rise unbidden from the depths of the subconscious: anger, pride, lust and the desire for possessions. Will we worship them? Are they our gods? People used to go to church to confess their sins. Some still do - hurrah! But today you can pay a ‘lifestyle coach’ to tell you that anything you want to do is fine. Autonomy and self-fulfilment may be the new names, but they are the same old gods.

But when we meet Jesus, the Risen Lord, when we realise who he is, then a completely new understanding of the world is opened to us. If Jesus is Lord, then Caesar – or his modern equivalent – is not. If Jesus is Saviour, then we can actually be saved. Which is good news, because we can never save ourselves, no matter how many gods we make to worship. When we meet Jesus, we discover that we can’t create ourselves, but are created in love by a power beyond us. And the creator and the redeemer are one in Jesus.

This is what St Paul is talking about in the letter to the Romans this morning. “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds.” That is to say, be open to the new reality that God reveals in Jesus.

Instead of the old understanding of the world, God’s love and forgiveness and generosity are revealed as the ultimate truth, the defining reality of our existence. And this is offered to us freely, it’s ours for the taking! Jesus meets us and says to each one of us, “who do you say that I am?” And if we turn to him in faith and believe that he is Messiah and Lord, then that is the turning point of our lives. Because he will save us from the old order of sin and death and lead us into freedom in God’s new reality of love and forgiveness and eternal life.

Sermon at Parish Mass The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary 2014

Revelation 11:19-12:6,10

Galatians 4:4-7

Luke 1:46-55

Be careful, this is a trick question: what does a magnifying glass do?

Of course, a magnifying glass doesn’t make things bigger, but enlarges our vision of what it focuses on. It enables us to see more.

Today Mary proclaims “my soul magnifies the Lord”. The Magnificat, that song of praise so familiar at evening prayer and choral evensong.

Mary in her great hymn of praise does not make God bigger, which would be absurd, but enlarges our vision. She is focussed on God, and so enables us to see more.

How does she do this? What can we learn from Mary?

Firstly, she knows the scriptures. She knows God’s promises and that he will do what he has promised, he will come to save Israel and through Israel the whole world. Her hymn of praise is modelled on the song of Hannah in 1 Samuel. Hannah was a devout and righteous woman who could not have children until she prayed in the temple, and then she conceived and bore a son, the prophet Samuel who grew up to guide and judge God’s people.

And Mary is focussed only on God’s promises. She believes without hesitation. She doesn’t look on her own situation and doubt because of it. A girl or young woman, perhaps about 14, in a disregarded backwater town in a corner of the world under Roman authority. She doesn’t consider that and think, “well, this isn’t very likely, is it?” God has promised to save his people, he has sent the angel to announce that he is going to do this now, through her, and that is enough. She believes.

So this is the first thing that Mary teaches the Church today. She knows the scriptures. She knows that the story of God’s salvation is being worked out through history. She knows that she is part of that story, and she believes that the promises made by the Lord will be fulfilled. Mary is faithful because God is faithful. So, too, the Church is called to believe and be faithful.

Secondly, the great theme of Mary’s song is praise and thanksgiving. She rejoices, she exults, she magnifies. As the Magnificat rings out we can almost hear Mary jumping for joy.

And this too is the principal and greatest part of the prayer of the church: praise and thanksgiving, shot through with joy. Our central act of worship is the Eucharist, which means “thanksgiving”, and the Eucharistic prayer sums up the praise and thanksgiving of the Church for all that God has done. And this note, this theme, should carry over into all our life of prayer, corporately and privately. We don’t often hear Cranmer’s general thanksgiving these days but it is a wonderful prayer to use in our daily life:

“We bless thee for our creation, preservation, and all the blessings of this life; but above all, for thine inestimable love in the redemption of the world by our Lord Jesus Christ; for the means of grace, and for the hope of glory.”

A spirit of gratitude and a spirit of joy go together, by them we lift up the world and ourselves to God.

And note that Mary has no false humility about her praise, no wallowing or grovelling: “Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed; for the Mighty One has done great things for me”. And he has! What great things! Greater than any creature before or since, chosen and prepared to be the mother of the saviour, exalted far above the cherubim and more glorious than the seraphim.

We do not magnify the Lord by diminishing his works. There is a strand of Christianity which fears that we will not make enough of God if we pay too much attention to the things God has done. But Mary teaches us otherwise, and Catholic Christianity understands this, in all its branches, Eastern and Roman and Anglican. We do not make God greater by belittling his works. So we do make a big deal of Mary, and the saints, and the sacraments. And by doing so we magnify the Lord, because these are his works, the great things he has done.

So the life of the Church, taught by Mary, is filled with joy and praise and thanksgiving, and magnifies the Lord in his works, looking out to the world he is saving and looking for the signs of his kingdom so that our praises will be increased more and more.

Thirdly, Mary teaches us to look for the signs of God’s Kingdom appearing in our midst. And she tells us that it will be a revolution:

He has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.

He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,

and lifted up the lowly;

he has filled the hungry with good things,

and sent the rich away empty.

This is not any old revolution. There have been many human revolutions through history. We know the world is broken, and we long for it to be fixed. But somehow human beings by themselves seem incapable of doing so. Human revolutions tend to end up not fixing the system but just replacing the people who are in charge.

Melvyn Bragg has been presenting a series on the television about famous radicals. One programme was about Thomas Paine, the author of “The Rights of Man”, who got very enthusiastic about the American Revolution and wrote “We have it in our power to begin the world over again”. Bless his heart, but the subsequent history of the United States doesn’t really bear him out on that one. No human power can begin the world again. Only the Holy Spirit of God, the Creator Spirit who hovered over the deep in the beginning, can re-create the world.

And that revolution, the one revolution we need and long for, has begun. When the Creator Spirit overshadowed Mary so that she became the God-Bearer, the new world, the Kingdom of God, began in her.

It is through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit that the revolution begins, and takes root, and spreads. The inner transformation of the Kingdom of God begins in us when we put down the mighty Ego and instead humbly find our true identity in God. It begins when we feed our hungry souls with the word of the Kingdom which is repentance and justice and peace, and stop feeding ourselves with possessions which never satisfy. And from that inner transformation the Kingdom spreads into the world, so that all God’s children can be caught up and freed in the one revolution that actually will begin the world again.

So, three things that Mary teaches the Church in her great hymn of praise:

Firstly, know the scriptures. Know that humanity has a story and that God is acting in that story to save us. Know his promises and believe that they will be fulfilled.

Secondly, praise and thanksgiving, exultation and joy should be the chief note of the Church’s life. Rejoice in the Lord always, says St Paul. And rejoice in his works, for by doing so we do not diminish the Lord but magnify him.

Thirdly, expect the revolution! God’s kingdom is at hand, the transformation of the world by his Holy Spirit which begins in our hearts. This world of sin and strife and violence is not the final reality, and God is acting through his Church as he acted through Mary to bring about his new creation of righteousness and peace. No wonder we have cause, with Mary, to rejoice.  

Sermon at Parish Mass Trinity 8 2014

1 Kings 19:9, 11-13

Romans 9:1-5

Matthew 14:22-33

What are you doing here, Elijah? That is a question we reflected on in our month of prayer with last year. But in fact the answer, in this story, is easy. Elijah is on Mount Horeb because the angel of the Lord has guided him there, and given him food for the journey, even though he was despondent and wanted to die. Elijah is where he is because that is where God wants him to be. But Elijah has to discover God’s purpose for himself.

So too the disciples in their little boat, far from land, in a storm. They might well have asked “what are we doing here?”. The answer is not difficult. They are there because that is where Jesus has told them to be. But they haven’t yet realised what his purpose is.

Into that scene of darkness and trouble comes the extraordinary, the unknown: Jesus walking towards them on the lake. And the response of the disciples is that they must be seeing a ghost, and they cry out in fear.

For the disciples at that moment, the greatest reality that they can think of is death. So that must be the explanation. Death ends everything, so death must govern everything, being even more powerful than the raging of the sea. So a figure walking on the water must be a ghost.

It’s as though they have forgotten what came just before, which was the feeding of the five thousand. As we heard last week, that story speaks of a new exodus. The people of God followed Jesus into the desert just as the children of Israel followed Moses out of Egypt. They were fed with the food that Jesus gave, without limit, just as the Israelites were fed with manna in the wilderness.

The feeding of the five thousand, and Jesus walking on the lake, belong together. Both stories are about God’s new work of salvation in Jesus, the new exodus of the people of God: not from slavery in Egypt, but from the slavery of sin and death.

That’s what the disciples, at this point, haven’t realised. Jesus is leading his people out from sin and death. Therefore the figure walking on the water can have nothing to do with death. It is not a ghost, but the Lord of life, the conqueror of death. Like Moses, his path is across the sea, the sea that so often in the scriptures represents the forces of chaos and destruction. Unlike Moses, he doesn’t divide the waters to walk through, but walks on top of the waves. There is something greater than Moses here.

Jesus walks on the waters. In the beginning, says Genesis, the Spirit of God moved on the face of the deep to bring creation into being. The Book of Job says that “God… alone stretched out the heavens and trampled the waves of the Sea”. The Prophet Habbakuk, in a hymn of praise to the power of the Lord, says “You trampled the sea with your horses, churning the mighty waters.”

Indeed there is something greater than Moses here. It is God alone who walks on the waters, but now Jesus does so too. Jesus is doing what God does. Jesus says as much in the greeting he gives to his disciples. Our translation this morning says, “Take heart! It is I!”, but in the Greek he actually says “Be of good cheer! I am!”. Jesus uses the Divine name, the name of Yahweh, I Am Who I Am, to greet his disciples. And their response was the response that we rightly give to God alone: they worshipped him. The leader of the new exodus is God himself, the Word made flesh in Jesus.

Sometimes being a Christian can feel comforting and reassuring. Like the five thousand fed by Jesus with the loaves and fishes, we are conscious of the great family of the Church throughout the world, knowing that we are fed by Jesus and have more than enough. At other times we may feel more like that little group in the boat. Alone, battling in the dark, making no headway against the storms.

But whichever situation we might most identify with, what matters is that we are following Jesus, and that God is in Jesus to save us from sin and death. That is the ultimate reality, and we can trust ourselves to that entirely and totally, whatever happens.

The Church is often called to be far from the shore in a little boat. Sometimes its members will even be called to leave the security of the boat and step out onto the waves. The one thing that we can count on is that God is in Jesus, and he has come to save us. Our task is not to be in a safe or comfortable place, but to follow Jesus in witness and worship. “What are you doing here?” If we are in the place that Jesus wills us to be, that is enough, and he is enough for us.

The troubles that come to us, even if they are slight, can be discouraging. Here, being a parish in the Church of England, we are custodians of a historic building, and historic buildings from time to time throw a wobbly and present their custodians with unexpected repair works, as ours has recently done. We might think this is the last thing we need!

But this fades into insignificance compared with the real horrors faced by Christians and other religious minorities in northern Iraq, hundreds of thousands of them now forced to flee in the face of threatened massacres, their churches desecrated, their homes stolen from them, many already killed. That is something that we will not have to face. The worst we can expect as the Church in modern Britain is probably just to be ignored and marginalised as irrelevant. But we remember that we are one in Christ with our brothers and sisters in the violent and dark places of the earth, and we hold them in our prayers.

Although we are unlikely to face anything so extreme, there are other ways in which we can feel like those disciples in the boat, struggling on in the dark, making no progress, alone and afraid. At times we may, like Peter, feel that the waves are rising up around us, and we are sinking.

The storms and waves that surround us might be those of anxiety or illness, grief or weariness. It matters not. However dark the night, however far out from shore we may seem to be, Jesus is with us. As with his people of old, he is God, leading us into freedom, mighty to save. In whatever situation we are in, he says to us, “I am! Do not be afraid!”. His hand reaches out to save us. His presence is the one thing we need, our one task is to follow him.

Jesus does not tell us to stay safe, or to be careful, or to look after our comfort. He tells us to follow him. He has chosen us to be his witnesses, and that is all we need.

Last week the Patriarch of Antioch, the leader of one of the Churches under such terrible attack in northern Iraq, issued a statement asking for international aid. He said this was “not out of fear or weakness, but because we believe that we are the salt of this land and the witnesses of the Resurrection till eternity.”

I thought that was an extraordinary statement of Christian faith: the task of the Church is to be the witness of the Resurrection till eternity, even in the midst of murder and mayhem and the loss of everything. Even just to say that, in such a situation, is itself a powerful witness to the Resurrection

“What are you doing here?” That’s easy. Our task is to be witnesses to the Resurrection to eternity, whatever may be going on. The one who calls to us is not a ghost, but the Lord of Life, the Risen One, the Saviour. God has come to us in Jesus to save us, and that is the greatest reality, the ultimate truth, triumphing over all the powers of death and leading his people to eternal life. 

Sermon at Parish Mass Trinity 7 2014

Isaiah 55:1-5

Romans 9:1-5

Matthew 14:13-21

In the little town of Cannero on Lake Maggiore there is a piazza behind the town hall that has been decorated with frescoes depicting significant events in the history of the town. There is the great flood which swept away the old parish church one day in 1829. There is the freeing of the serfs in the middle ages. There is the building of the Malpaga castles on rocks out on the lake, now picturesque ruins but once the base of marauding local warlords.

In a remote community like Cannero, which doesn’t change much over the years, story and identity are intertwined. This doesn’t mean that the identity of the local people is stuck in the past. The freeing of the serfs reminds them that they are free today. The ruins of the castles are reminders that freedom can’t be taken for granted. The parish church moved on to a new place, literally, after the floods.

Here, too, on Colney Hatch Lane, story and identity go together, even though ours is a much more mobile and changing community. Tomorrow is the centenary of Britain’s entry into the First World War, and our war memorial is a visible reminder of the cost of that war here, so many young men who went to the front never to return. Tomorrow their names will be read, at Mass, in this their parish church. Because, although none of us was alive 100 years ago, we are part of the same church community that began praying for them back then and hasn’t stopped praying for them since. The church has its own role in being the custodian of local story and identity, in holding the memory of a place, all the more so in places of great social mobility and change. But, like the people of Cannero, this doesn’t mean that we are stuck in the past. We tell the story of what has gone tragically wrong because we believe in a greater story of hope and redemption.

The stories in the Bible are like that. They are about the identity of a people, their collective memory. When we read the Old Testament we are reading the story of God’s providence and care which formed the Jewish people, those who were rescued from slavery in Egypt and received God’s revelation through the law and the prophets.

The early Christians continued telling those stories in their own gatherings, discovering new meanings in the light of Jesus. They also added their own stories, memories of the life of Jesus and his teachings, and the teaching of those who were closest to him in his earthly life. The Gospels, like the earlier Jewish scriptures, were written to be read aloud at the gathering of the people.

On the first day of every week, the day that Jesus rose from the dead, his followers gathered to do what he had commanded, celebrating the Eucharist, and telling the stories that told them who they were.

The Eucharist is about remembering, re-membering, that is the opposite of dismembering, putting a body back together again, keeping the parts together in a living whole. We become what we receive, the Body of Christ, the people of God whom Jesus has called and established. We hear our story and it becomes our story by us hearing it. The feeding of the five thousand, which we heard this morning, is part of that story. And it has much to tell us about who we are.

It recalls the exodus from Egypt, God’s deliverance of the Jewish people from slavery. When the Israelites left Egypt they were led by Moses into the desert, the wilderness of Sinai. And in the feeding of the five thousand Jesus goes out into a desert, followed by the crowd. Jesus is like Moses, leading God’s people out into a new exodus.

Matthew’s Gospel places the feeding of the five thousand just after a contrasting scene – Herod’s banquet, and the murder of John the Baptist. Herod in his castle held a banquet to celebrate his birthday, surrounded by his fawning and fearful yes-men, people whose place depended on his favour. In spite of the material wealth they enjoyed they were really slaves, dependant on Herod for their position but also slaves to their own ambition and envy. Not one of them dared raise his voice to protest at Herod’s injustice when he ordered John the Baptist to be killed. But as we move to the feeding of the five thousand in the desert that scene of slavery and fear is left behind. The story moves on and the people of God move out.

While Herod kills, Jesus heals. While Herod keeps people in their place by fear, Jesus establishes a community of trust and openness – everyone sits down together to eat, all sorts and conditions. While Herod demonstrates his power by holding a banquet for people who already have enough to eat, but dare not refuse, Jesus simply feeds people who need to be fed.

The feeding of the five thousand also has obvious references to the Eucharist. In the desert, Jesus took bread, blessed it, broke it, and gave it to the disciples –the same words as are used at the last supper.

And just as in the Eucharist, there is more than enough, and no-one goes hungry. The miracle of the loaves and fishes points to the greater miracle of the Eucharist, in which Jesus continually feeds his people with himself and is never diminished.

The Last Supper, when Jesus instituted the Eucharist, was a Passover, a meal enacting and re-telling the Exodus, making real in the present God’s saving acts for his people of old.

So, too, the Eucharist enacts, re-tells, makes real, God’s saving acts in Jesus. His death and resurrection are our liberation from sin and death, and our entry into new life. The Eucharist enacts the new exodus, in which we follow Jesus into freedom.

But the Eucharist is not a destination. It is a departure, the Passover of the Lord, the bread of exodus for the people of God as they leave behind the old order of sin and death and journey towards God’s kingdom. The Eucharist is a foretaste of the banquet in the Kingdom of God, when God will be all in all.

Today we re-hear the story of our identity, the story of God’s saving work in Jesus, and we re-member our place in the people he has claimed for his own.

But that crowd in the desert wasn’t a select few. It was an enormous multitude, everyone and anyone, all sorts and conditions. Everyone has a place in the story of salvation which we hold and tell. Everyone is called by Jesus out of the old order of sin and death and into new life in him.

The journey that Jesus calls us on is the journey to the Kingdom of God.  To be on that journey means leaving behind the old order of sin and death, the fleshpots of Egypt or the banquets of Herod, whatever those may be for us. Those places where security is founded on fear, and fear stops us embracing the risk of freedom, generosity and love.

Jesus calls us out, like Moses, to the desert place, where we have nothing to depend on except what he will give us in his own limitless generosity. This is a journey of faith and trust. There is no road map. It is an unpredictable adventure. We have no control over our companions on the way. Jesus will ask us to sit down with whoever we find ourselves next to, and be fed. But with them we will find ourselves on the journey to a life that we will never find if we stay in the place of secure but deadly slavery.