Sermon at Parish Mass Trinity 8 2015

2 Kings 4.42-44

Ephesians 2:3:14-21

John 6.1-21

Tabgha is a beautiful place. Located on the north shore of the lake of Galilee, a Benedictine monastery nestles in acres of lush tropical gardens, filled with bougainvillea and hibiscus blooms, shaded by stately trees, watered by clear springs that come bubbling up from the ground.

It wasn’t always like that. Until the 1930s it was a wild bit of scrubland, visited perhaps by the occasional lonely goatherd but no-one else. Then the German Benedictines bought the site to turn it into a place of prayer and study. But when they were digging for the foundations they were astounded to find a large intact mosaic floor, amid the remains of an ancient building.

By chance or by providence, the Benedictines had found the long lost Church of the Multiplication, built when the Romans still ruled Palestine to commemorate the feeding of the five thousand, the episode in the Gospels that we have just heard. Today a plain modern church stands on those ancient foundations, and pilgrims are welcomed from all over the world.

But there is something odd about the Church. It is in the wrong place. It’s less than a mile from the site of Capernaum, at the time of the Romans a major town and fishing port on the lakeside. It’s also right beside something else that the Benedictines found buried under their field – a major road, nothing less than the “Way of the Sea”, the ancient trade route that once linked the north and south of the Mediterranean world.

The Gospels say that the feeding of the five thousand happened in a remote place, nowhere near a town or a road. That’s why there was a crisis about feeding the people. The Romans who built the church must have known this. So why did they build it there?

The answer, I think, lies in the story itself, in the Gospels. In John’s account, which we heard today, the focus is more on Jesus and his intentions. But in Mark we see more the reaction of the disciples. They look at the crowd of people and say, “This is a deserted place, and the hour is now very late; send them away so that they may go… and buy something for themselves to eat.”

The disciples have a problem, and they want to send the people away because they think the solution lies elsewhere. But Jesus shows them that they are to feed the people right there, where they are. The people are in the right place for Jesus to act, but the disciples want them to be somewhere else. They need to learn that their task is to minister to the people where the people are.

So when the Romans came to build the church that commemorated this miracle three hundred years later, they didn’t build it in the remote place where it had happened, where there was no-one. Instead, they built it where the people were, by the town, next to the highway, possibly the busiest place on the lake.

But there is another odd thing about the Church of the Multiplication. It is a detail in the mosaic of the loaves and fishes. There are two fishes, to be sure. But how many loaves are there? Well, there are four. All the gospels say that there were five loaves. So where’s the other one?

Well this isn’t a mistake. That mosaic is right in front of the altar used to celebrate the Eucharist. And the fifth loaf is on the altar, and on every altar where the Eucharist is celebrated, in every church in the world. Because the feeding of the multitude continues. In the Eucharist Jesus feeds us with himself, the living bread. He is never diminished, there is always enough to feed everyone.

For Christians from the beginning the connection between the feeding of the five thousand and the Eucharist was obvious. The language in the Greek texts of the gospels is full of Eucharistic overtones. The mosaic in the Church of the Multiplication confirms this.

Jesus longs to give his life so that all may live, and he has founded his Church to be the means through which that life flows out to the world, to the vast multitude of humanity, in every time and place.

So there are two things to take away from today’s Gospel reading: the Church needs to be where the people are, and the Eucharist is the heart of the Church’s life and mission.

The Church of England historically has been quite good at being where the people are. Everyone lives in a parish and has a parish church that they can go to. But the fact is today that most people don’t. The population of our parish is about 6,000 and if just two percent of them turned up on a Sunday morning it would be standing room only.

The Church of England also recognizes that the Eucharist is at the heart of our mission. By Canon Law, there must be a celebration of the Eucharist in every parish on every Sunday. That’s why our Sunday service is called the “Parish Mass” – it’s the celebration required by law for the parish.

But most of the parish are not here. That is why we need to reimagine our presence with and for the people, for the needs of our own day. So alongside traditional parishes the Church is encouraging fresh expressions and missional communities, to be more deliberately out there with the people, reaching out to those who are not yet attracted by traditional forms of worship.

And traditional parishes like ours are very good at welcoming people. But we also need to be intentional in reaching out and inviting people. We do that in various ways, for example by leafleting the parish before Christmas and Easter. But we also need to do it personally. We are all ambassadors for Jesus Christ! This year “Back to Church Sunday” falls on 20 September. What would it be like if every one of us here invited one person we know to come with us to church on that day?

Now we’re all Church of England, and we’re rightly wary of the kind of forced awkwardness of missionaries ringing people’s doorbells to try to turn everyone else into copies of themselves.  But that’s not the idea. A real invitation respects the person being invited. And friendship makes invitation easier. If we are known to be Christians in our daily lives, then faith will crop up in our conversations with our friends, quite naturally. And it should be natural for us, as ambassadors for Jesus Christ, to respond to interest with invitation. “Come and see”, said Philip to Nathanael in John’s Gospel. And another disciple was won for Christ.

The commandment of Christ, the mission we have received, is always urging the church onwards. We can never be content to stand still. Part of that mission is to do this, to celebrate the Mass, in memory of him, and we do, and will continue to do so. But we are also to be present in the world to make new disciples, to bring new people to the fullness of the life of Christ that he longs to share with all.

That is what we are called to, every one of us. Rooted in the Eucharist, present in the world, both welcoming and inviting those who have not yet discovered the rich feast that Jesus gives, the bread of life, his flesh for the life of the world.

Sermon at Parish Mass Trinity 5 2015

Ezekiel 2.1-5

2 Corinthians 12.2-10

Mark 6.1-13

As often happens in the gospels, Jesus proves to be a divisive figure. Whenever he appears, he disturbs the status quo. Some believe and accept him, others reject him. So he provokes a strong reaction, for or against. He is a scandalous figure. Scandals both attract and repel, but you can’t remain neutral to them. A scandal is something that we can’t leave alone. And scandal runs through the gospels, from the birth of Jesus among outsiders at Bethlehem to his death on a Roman Cross. Scandal is there today, though concealed by the translation: “And they took offence at him”. Really, its says they were scandalised in him.

The crowd in his home town reject Jesus, but not because they don’t see his wisdom or deeds of power. Then they would just have ignored him, he would have made no impact on them. No, they do see what he is doing, “Where did this man get all this”, they ask, whence come this wisdom and these deeds of power? They see, but they reject what they see, because it does not fit in with their preconceptions, their idea of what the Messiah must be like. They know him, they think. “Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary?” This is just an ordinary unremarkable man. This sort of man cannot be one who does such deeds, who has such wisdom, so they are scandalised by the contradiction and reject him.

To accept Jesus needs faith. Faith is needed to see that this scandalous figure, the outsider, the reject, is in truth the Son of God, the Messiah. Faith alone enables us to move beyond scandal to acceptance. And it is faith that opens the way to a living relationship with Jesus Christ, in which we find ourselves entering the Kingdom of God.

So we see in this passage a contrast between the people of Nazareth, who do not have faith and reject Jesus, and the disciples, the “twelve”, who do have faith and follow him.

The mission of Jesus is risky. There is no guaranteed outcome. He does not force people’s belief or acceptance. Faith is a gift from God, not something human beings construct, and certainly not something we can enforce. And what is true of the mission of Jesus is true of his disciples, too.

The twelve have seen his rejection by the people of Nazareth, and his amazement at their lack of faith. They know that this preaching of the Kingdom is a precarious business, with no certain outcome. And, once they know that, Jesus sends them out to take the same risk, to face the same possibility of rejection and unbelief.

So the disciples go out in pairs, to support each other. But they must take nothing with them and be totally dependent for the necessities of life on how they are received. No gimmicks, no dependence on human strength or ingenuity, no guarantee of success. Like St Paul in today’s second reading they are sent out in weakness.

But they are sent out in weakness precisely so that the Divine power may be revealed in them. It is because of their poverty before the world that they are able to proclaim repentance, cast out demons, and heal the sick. It is because they associate themselves with the scandal of Jesus, because they take on his risk of rejection, that their ministry bears fruit and faith in Jesus spreads.

The disciples have made themselves poor and weak in their ministry, so that when faith does appear it is clearly seen to be a gift from God, and not something that they have produced by being impressive. When they are small enough to leave room for God to act, then faith can appear.

The Church continues the mission of Jesus and must reflect him. The Church, if it is to be true to the mission it has received, must stand before the world exposed to the risk of crisis, scandal and rejection. In poverty and littleness the Church leaves room for God to act and faith to grow.

But how much we resist that! How much we want to avoid rejection, and devise all sorts of human schemes to impress and get people on side, to avoid scandalising them! But a church that depends on itself withers away. It preaches itself instead of Jesus. St Paul tells us, the gospels tell us, again and again, that human strength is weakness for the Gospel. When we try to make ourselves big, when the Church makes itself the message, when we try to manage the risks and avoid the scandal, then we leave no room for God. If it becomes all about us, then the world will just see us and not Jesus.

It is in our human weakness, in littleness and risk, that God’s power is revealed. In early times the Church was known as the “mystery of the moon”, the mysterium lunae. Just as the moon has no light of its own but shines only by reflecting the sun, so the Church shines only by reflecting Jesus. A church that is obsessed with itself and its own image obscures and traps the gospel, and fails to show Jesus to the world.

Pope Francis, just before his election, had this to say about the present crisis in the Church, as he saw it, and much of what he said about his own church can apply to the Church of England, too. In the book of Revelation Jesus says, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock”. We usually read that as Jesus trying to get in to our own closed hearts, and that is not wrong. But there is also the closed door of the self-obsessed church, on which Jesus is knocking trying to get out to the world that needs him.

Let us therefore not be afraid of risk and weakness. The Church is so anxious at the moment about so many things, wanting to be big and impressive, in denial of the risk of rejection, eaten up by the fear of scandal. But Jesus still speaks to us and calls us to stop obsessing about ourselves, to follow him in his way and reflect his light.

If we are to reflect Jesus, and not ourselves, then we must be attentive to him. God gives us the assurance of faith that by our baptism we are adopted in Christ as children of God. This sets us free to focus on Jesus and not on ourselves. We will reflect Jesus if we listen to his voice speaking in the scriptures, and walk with him in the gospels. We will shine with his light in the world if we draw close to him and are fed by him frequently in the Blessed Sacrament.

As disciples of Jesus we must reflect him and not ourselves, and not be worried about ourselves. The path of risk and weakness and littleness is the path of the gospel. The path of identifying with Jesus the scandal is the path of the gospel. Only that, and no substitute that we can devise, will make Jesus visible, open people’s hearts to faith, and draw them into God’s kingdom.

Sermon at Parish Mass Trinity 3 2015

Job 38.1-11

2 Corinthians 6.1-13

Mark 4.35-41

It’s not every day that a member of the PCC sends me a Papal encyclical to read. So when that happened last week I knew it must be something important, and it is. Pope Francis’ latest encyclical, Laudato Si, is addressed to all people on the care of our common home, the earth. In it he addresses not only climate change but also pollution, water, sustainability, biodiversity, and the huge imbalance between poor and rich nations.

This is not simply politics or social commentary. His argument is rooted in Jewish and Christian belief in the Creator. And he begins, and ends, with praise to God. The title of the Encyclical, Laudato Si, “praise be to you”, is the beginning of St Francis’ beautiful hymn to the creator.

Belief in God as Creator means that we recognise both the goodness of creation and its limits. The creation is not God and is not limitless. Knowing this prevents us from working ourselves to death or exhausting the earth. The institutions of the Sabbath and the Jubilee year in the Old Testament embodied this. A proper balance is needed, work and production balanced with rest and return.

Yet many of us in the world today, particularly in the richer nations, are carrying on as if the earth was inexhaustible. Our consumer culture has led us to expect instant satisfaction of every desire. Our throwaway society is littering the earth with rubbish and harmful pollutants. We burn fossil fuels as though they will last forever, and exploit the resources of earth and ocean as fast as we can. Meanwhile the poor, who are the majority of the people on earth, experience its fragility most keenly. Failed harvests might mean nothing more than higher coffee prices for us, but spell destitution for a farmer in the two-thirds world.

But to treat the earth like this is to act as though we were gods. It is to forget the absolute distinction between creation and creator. And it has consequences. If we do not sustain the earth, then the earth will not sustain us. In the Second Book of Chronicles the reason given for the Jewish people’s 70 year exile in Babylon is that their land had to catch up with all the Sabbaths it had missed. Judah had not lived in harmony with creation, so their land lay barren and desolate for 70 years.

Pope Francis in his Encyclical draws attention to the urgency of the crisis facing all of humanity. He is not alone. Last week leaders of the main faith communities in Britain joined together to launch a call for urgent action at the forthcoming international climate change talks in December. As the Pope and our own church leaders remind us, how we care for the earth is not peripheral or optional, it is a core part of our faith.

We have only one common home, the earth, just as the disciples in the boat had only one boat. If we sink our common home we are all lost. Like the disciples, humanity is in danger because creation is out of balance. So, like the disciples, we need to have faith in the creator. We need to look to Jesus. He is both human and divine perfectly united in one person. He is in himself creation and Creator in harmony. He is the Word of creation through whom all things exist, the “reason why” of the universe, made flesh and come among us.

And this is shown powerfully as he restores harmony to creation by his word. The winds and the waves obey him, and the terrified disciples on the boat are saved.

In Jesus we see that the Creator and the Redeemer are one. Too often we tend to spiritualise the idea of redemption. Our souls will go to heaven when we die so what happens to this earth doesn’t matter. But that is not the teaching of the New Testament. Jesus is the Redeemer of the world, the cosmic Saviour, the Lord of all creation.

To be in harmony with creation we must begin by being in harmony with the Creator. In Jesus, that harmony is restored, and the world is reconciled to God. And this issues in our lives in worship, which is not just what we do in church but how we live our lives.

Pope Francis in his encyclical calls on legislators and politicians to do far more to tackle the environmental crisis. But he also calls ordinary people, everyone, to a new lifestyle, what he calls “ecological conversion” in our daily habits. The consumer choices we make, how we use energy, deliberately choosing to live within our limits. Simple daily things that everyone can do. Turn off unnecessary lights. Put on more or less clothing according to the temperature, before we switch on the heating or air conditioning.

If we do things like these we automatically start living more in tune with creation, which means living more in harmony with the Creator. As Pope Francis points out, this is rooted in a contemplative outlook that comes from faith, we are “conscious of the bonds with which the Father has linked us with all beings.” This in turn engenders solidarity with the whole human race, especially the poorest and most disadvantaged, who are most exposed to the effects of environmental crisis.

We need to recover the balance and harmony of Creation. We need to pursue a path of ecological conversion, so that how we worship is joined up with how we live our daily lives.

The times are urgent. Humanity is in danger, the passengers on this little boat, floating through space, are threatened by catastrophes of many kinds. We need to cry out to the Lord, “Teacher, save us, or we perish!” And we need to learn from him how he is redeeming creation, and how we are to take our part in that work of redemption.

Pope Francis concludes his encyclical with a prayer, which seems a good way to conclude this sermon as well.

Father, we praise you with all your creatures.

They came forth from your all-powerful hand;

they are yours, filled with your presence and your tender love.

Praise be to you!

Son of God, Jesus,

through you all things were made.

You were formed in the womb of Mary our Mother,

you became part of this earth,

and you gazed upon this world with human eyes.

Today you are alive in every creature in your risen glory.

Praise be to you!

Holy Spirit, by your light

you guide this world towards the Father’s love

and accompany creation as it groans in travail.

You also dwell in our hearts and you inspire us to do what is good.

Praise be to you!

Triune Lord,

wondrous community of infinite love, teach us to contemplate you

in the beauty of the universe,

for all things speak of you.

Awaken our praise and thankfulness

for every being that you have made.

Give us the grace to feel profoundly joined to everything that is.

God of love, show us our place in this world

as channels of your love

for all the creatures of this earth,

for not one of them is forgotten in your sight.

Enlighten those who possess power and money

that they may avoid the sin of indifference,

that they may love the common good, advance the weak,

and care for this world in which we live.

The poor and the earth are crying out.

O Lord, seize us with your power and light,

help us to protect all life,

to prepare for a better future,

for the coming of your Kingdom of justice, peace, love and beauty.

Praise be to you! Amen.

Sermon at Parish Mass Trinity 2 2015

Ezekiel 17:22-24

2 Corinthians 5:6-17

Mark 4:26-34

Well here we are enjoying the delights of June in England. And, hurrah, we have a green Sunday at last, the colour of life and growing things. And even if it is a bit cloudy it’s still a busy time of year in the garden. Some of us might watch programmes like Gardener’s World to give us inspiration and remind us of the tasks that need doing.

But if we tuned in to Gardener’s World one Friday and Monty Don told us that this was the weekend for sowing dandelions in our lawn, or nettles in our lettuce bed, we might wonder if he’d caught a touch of the sun. If there had been any.

It would be a strange thing to tell us to plant weeds in our carefully cultivated gardens or window boxes. But that is the story that Jesus tells us today. Someone sows a mustard seed. And you have to ask why. The mustard plant that grows in the Holy Land is an invasive weed. You want to keep it out of your garden or your field, because it would quickly take over. It’s not something that anyone would grow on purpose.

And yet, in the parable, someone sows a mustard seed. Stranger still, it grows into the biggest shrub of all and all the birds of the air shelter under its branches. Well, mustard isn’t that big, really. It’s a thin straggly plant about six feet high, and wouldn’t provide much shade for anything.

So we enter the mysterious parallel universe of parables. Jesus speaks a lot of the time in parables, especially when he is talking about the Kingdom of God. The parables are like windows into a new and different reality where things are not what we are used to. And this is because the Kingdom of God is not what we are used to. Parables challenge our perception and our priorities. They invite us to enter a deepened awareness, a new consciousness, of something that Jesus is holding out to us but we can’t grasp in terms of life as we know it.

What is the Kingdom of God? It is God’s rule of justice and peace, of love and generosity, becoming real in our lives and in the world. It is our lives and the world becoming what God created them to be.

In Jesus the Kingdom of God has entered the world. He, in his person, in his life, is God’s rule lived out and shown to the world. The Kingdom begins in him, and all who follow him will enter the kingdom with him.

We know that the Kingdom of God has become real in Jesus, not only because he tells us, not only because he lived it every moment in everything he did, but also because the Father raised him from the dead. The death of Jesus may have seemed like the violent kingdom of the world triumphing over the Kingdom of God, but the resurrection turns that defeat into victory. In God there is no death, and the resurrection reveals the kingdom of God in which death has no dominion.

It is that reality which undergirds the whole gospel. The resurrection, the life of God breaking in to the world in the place of rejection and defeat, is the key to understanding everything in the gospels and indeed everything in the Bible.

Which is I think why a number of the parables are about sowing seed, with its resonances of death, burial and resurrection. Jesus himself makes this link in John’s Gospel, where speaking about his death he says, “unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”

So it’s significant that in this parable of the mustard seed it is a weed that is sown. The disregarded plant from the wasteland that you wouldn’t want in your garden becomes an image of Jesus who was despised and rejected. The rubbish seed that no-one wants is thrown into the ground. And, miraculously, it rises, and becomes a great tree, giving shelter to all creatures. Just as Jesus, raised from the dead, becomes the one in whom all will find their true life and true home.

In Jesus God’s kingdom has become real in the world. In his resurrection the Kingdom has triumphed in the place of violence and rejection and defeat. The discarded seed has become the Kingdom of God.

But the Kingdom of God, like the seed hidden in the earth, grows in secret. It is God’s gift, and we need to train ourselves to become aware of it. People rejected Jesus because they couldn’t see that in him God’s Kingdom was walking on the earth.

The Kingdom also grows in us, mysteriously, and in secret. It grows in us as the image of Christ is formed in us, as we are transformed into him by grace. That is God’s doing, not ours. We prepare the soil, the ground of our hearts, by repenting and turning towards God. We nourish the ground with prayer and sacrament, as rain and sunshine nurture the earth. But the Kingdom itself, Christ in us, is God’s gift. The growth comes from him, and often is secret and unobserved. It will bear its fruit in due time. One lesson of that is that we are not to worry about our spiritual growth, or try to assess our progress. We open ourselves to God in repentance, prayer and sacrament, and leave the rest to him.

The Kingdom also grows in the world. And in the world, as in our hearts, it is often unseen. The Kingdom always begins on the edges, in the place of rejection and defeat, among the poor, the marginalised, the ignored. Because that is where the Kingdom has entered the world in Jesus.

So the Church needs to look to the margins, to the hidden places, to the poor and despised and rejected, because that is where God’s Kingdom is happening. That is where God’s reign of peace and justice, of love and generosity, is becoming real in the world.

So when we pray, as Jesus taught us, “Thy Kingdom come”, we are praying for that reality of God’s rule and God’s life to take root and fill the world. And we are praying for the image of Christ to be formed in us and grow in us. And if that growth is often hidden and secret, both in us and in the world, we still pray in faith awaiting the day, in God’s time, when the fruits of the kingdom will appear in all its fullness, and Christ will be all in all.