Sermon Easter 5 2016

Acts 14:21-27

Revelation 121:1-5

John 13:31-35

Today’s Gospel reading takes us back to Maundy Thursday and the Last Supper, where Jesus gave his new commandment - love one another as I have loved you.

This is Jesus’s programme of love, his revolution. It is the means by which he will create a new society, a new heaven and earth. And at the heart of it is not our effort to love, but the discovery that we are loved, in spite of, and even in the middle of, all the ways in which we have sinned – love one another as I have loved you, says Jesus. The new commandment makes everything new, for it is the discovery of ourselves in a new story that we had never imagined, the story of God’s gratuitous, generous love.

The theologian James Alison calls this revolution “the subversion from within of the story of this world”. What is that story? Human society from the beginning has tended to define itself over against some excluded person or people: they are not like us; we know that we must be alright because they, the outsiders, are different from us. This is a false security based on accusation and casting out, enacted in fear, hatred and violence.

Jesus’ programme of love is the opposite of that, he establishes a new identity founded on the generous love of God who includes all alike, both us and the people we want to cast out. He himself enacts “the subversion from within of the story of this world” by putting himself in the place of the excluded victim. In his death, human society does what it has always done. In his resurrection Jesus offers, not revenge, but forgiveness, a new beginning, a new creation. This is why we read this passage from the Last Supper in Eastertide: the resurrection is Jesus’ revolution of love, promised that night, erupting into the world and changing everything. 

Our three readings today present us with three stages in that revolution. In the Gospel it is announced to a small group of disciples, huddled in an upper room in fear of the authorities who are out to get them. And indeed one has already opted out of the revolution, preferring the old way of violence to the new way of love.

In the reading from the Acts of the Apostles we move forward, and a great boundary of inclusion and exclusion, that between Jews and gentiles, is faced and overcome. This is a crucial moment in the development of the church, and for a first century Jew who hasn’t imagined anything like it it is a huge step, so it is no wonder that Peter needs some extraordinary persuasion.

First his vision, repeated three times, of the sheet full of all kind of unclean animals that he is commanded to eat. It is interesting that God chooses to do it this way. Of all the ways God might have persuaded Peter, he gives him a vision of things that disgust him. Peter has never eaten anything unclean, and now he is presented with a sheet full of revolting creepy-crawlies and reptiles. It’s like a heavenly bush-tucker trial. But Peter has to face this because disgust and revulsion are closely bound up with the old story of humanity, of establishing our own security by casting out other people.

Peter has to leave his disgust behind. And when he does so, he finds nothing disgusting at all, but the miracle of Gentiles believing in God and filled with the Holy Spirit. And the even greater miracle, that Peter realizes that he is just the same as them: “the Holy Spirit fell upon them just as it had upon us at the beginning”.  This is Peter’s discovery, not only of the Gentiles’ inclusion in God’s gratuitous generosity and love, but of his own inclusion with them – the people he has been excluding, the people he has been disgusted by. It changes for him the whole basis on which he belongs in God’s love and mercy, too. The new commandment of love comes to fruition for Peter here.

In the reading from Revelation we see the final fulfilment of Jesus’ revolution of love: the new heaven and the new earth, human society reborn and made new in the discovery that we are loved. It is a society with no boundaries, without inclusion or exclusion, because it exists not on the basis of anything we do but is simply founded on God’s generous and limitless love. We do not build this new society, so we cannot draw any boundaries round it. It comes down from heaven, from God, as sheer unmerited gift. It is the City founded and built by God, as the letter to the Hebrews says.

The new commandment of loving one another with the love of God is where the new creation begins. It is where the old order of sin and accusation, of violence and casting out, begins to pass away, as human lives are transformed and made new by Jesus.

To be a follower of Jesus is to enter into something new, a new story. A new way of belonging, which finds us, in the end, in the City of God, the New Jerusalem in the new creation. And in that city all of human life will be transformed and made new by the love of God.

To be a follower of Jesus is to be on the way, which is to acknowledge that we not there yet. As we follow Jesus to the new creation there will be many new beginnings. But there will also be a sharing in the pain of the world as it is now, for the world is deeply resistant to the love which wishes to transform it. The day after Jesus gave his new commandment of love, he was crucified, and died, and was buried. The love of God, in the world as it is, was made known in the innocent victim, the one who was rejected and cast out and killed. But that was also “the subversion from within of the story of this world”, for it enabled the new creation to be revealed in the resurrection.

Today’s readings encourage us on our way to the heavenly City. Their central message is grace: the discovery of ourselves in the new story of God’s love. This is sheer gift, merited not by us but by Jesus, and given to us. We are to abide in that love, for it is his love with which we are to love one another, and so make known his love in the world.

It is that good news, faithfully preached, faithfully lived, that will open the door of faith to others and bring both us and them into the new way of belonging, the new human story, founded and built on the free and generous love of God, made known in Jesus Christ.

Sermon Easter 4 2016

Acts 9.36-43

Revelation 7.9-17

John 10.22-30

Last week I went to see a famous sculpture of the Good Shepherd in the Vatican Museums. This is an outstanding work of Christian art from the 3^rd or 4^th Century, and I’m pleased that I finally got to see it - the last time I went to the Vatican Museums, 28 years ago, the particular section it was in was closed for restoration.

Photographs don’t really do this sculpture justice, although I’ve included one of mine in the news sheet this week. Walking around the Good Shepherd you can see how the sculptor has managed to convey strength, poise and calm stillness. The Shepherd has big strong hands and a firm grip, holding the sheep securely by its front and back legs. The sheep looks frightened and fidgety but it isn’t going anywhere except on the shoulders of the shepherd.

The Shepherd’s head is raised, turned towards the sheep. The lips slightly opened. He appears to be speaking, words of reassurance. It’s alright, I’ve got hold of you. Trust me. I believe whoever sculpted this had in mind the words we heard in today’s gospel reading: “My sheep hear my voice… No one will snatch them out of my hand.”

This sculpture wasn’t originally free standing, as we see it today, but was originally part of a frieze of figures along the front of a sarcophagus, a funeral monument. There are many examples of such sarcophagi in the Vatican Museums from those early centuries of Christianity. They feature many images: Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden, Christ multiplying the bread and fishes, changing water into wine at Cana, the raising of Lazarus: but the most common figure is the Good Shepherd carrying the sheep.

The fact that this is a funeral figure suggests to me that the sculptor also had in mind the beautiful words from the 23^rd Psalm that we heard this morning, 

“Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil; for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me”.

We might call this art naïve, but it is fresh, beautiful and full of faith. Those early Christians speak to us through the monuments they left behind. In the face of death, they believed and trusted in the Good Shepherd. “My sheep hear my voice… No one will snatch them out of my hand.”

And death in the Roman Empire was always close at hand, especially if you were a Christian. Before the conversion of Constantine in 310 being a follower of Jesus was very risky. Periodic persecutions resulted in the arrest, torture and public execution of countless people, adults and children, just because of their faith.

The Book of Revelation, that we heard part of this morning, was probably written against the background of Nero’s persecution around the year 64. He found it convenient to blame the Christians for a great fire that had burned down part of Rome, and thousands were put to death in cruel spectacles as public entertainment. But to the eye of faith these helpless victims were the citizens of heaven. In John’s vision in Revelation they are the “great multitude… standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands.”

Being a Christian in Rome was not a comfortable or safe option. But it was Christians in those circumstances who produced the beautiful image of Christ the Good Shepherd, promising his sheep eternal life, and holding on tight, making sure that no-one can snatch them out of his hand.

And why is it that no-one can snatch his sheep out of Jesus’ hands? Jesus tells us it is because he and the Father are one, and the Father is greater than anyone.

In today’s reading Jesus was speaking to the Jews, and by that John means the religious authorities, at the festival of the Dedication. This commemorated the rededication of he temple in Jerusalem after it had been desecrated by a foreign invader in the 3^rd Century BC. The festival of Dedication celebrated the temple as a visible sign of God’s presence among his people. Access to God was guaranteed through the building where God was present to hear prayers and to forgive. In a figurative sense, God and the temple were one because God identified himself with that visible building.

But Jesus says that there is another and surer way to God, and that is himself. He and the Father are one, not by a temporary identification that can be undone, but by nature. Temples can be destroyed and desecrated, as had already happened. But Jesus as God’s Son remains for ever, and whoever comes to him comes to the Father also, and can be sure of being held securely, and saved for eternal life, because no-one is greater than the Father, and no-one can snatch the sheep out of his hands.

We in Western Europe in the 21^st Century are in a fortunate position. We are unlikely to face actual persecution for our faith. But other forms of adversity are bound to come our way. Serious illness affecting us or people we love. The loss of jobs or homes. Debt and financial hardship. Troubles in family and relationships. There will be times when it seems as though everything is coming at us at once, and we wonder how we will cope.

And then, of course, sooner or later we will all face the business of dying and death. But nothing worse can happen to us than happened to those who were persecuted and killed for their faith, the great multitude standing before the throne of God and the Lamb. Nothing worse can happen to us than happened to the early Christians who left behind the beautiful image of the Good Shepherd, whose voice speaks to us as it spoke to them, who holds us securely in his hands just as he held them.

For them, and for us, what matters above all is a living relationship with Jesus Christ our risen Lord. Jesus, who is himself the way, the truth and the life, opens for us a sure and certain way to the Father, and nothing in life or death can snatch us out of his hands. Jesus is both fully human, one with us in life and death, and fully Divine, the Son who is one with the Father from all ages, and therefore is able to give eternal life to whoever he chooses.

When the storms of life are about us, when death is at last approaching, his presence will not fail us. He speaks to us, and to all who are drawn to him. When we follow him we are following in the one sure way to the Father, the path to union with God in whom is eternal life. And that hope will hold us in the darkest night and the toughest times. “My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand.”

Sermon Easter 2 2016

Acts 5.27-32

Revelation 1.4-8

John 20:19-31

Here we are, Christians, meeting for worship on the first day of the week, as Christians do throughout the world. But why? The first Christians were Jews whose day of worship was the Sabbath, that is, Saturday, the seventh day. When and how did Christians start worshipping on the first day?

According to the New Testament, this seems to have happened straight away, as soon as Jesus had risen from the dead. The first Christians, being Jews, didn’t stop going to the synagogue or the Temple on the Sabbath, but they also started meeting in their homes to “break bread”, that is to celebrate the Eucharist, on the first day of the week as well. The Acts of the Apostles mentions this a number of times.

This practice was new, and yet it was at once accepted by all the believers, without question, and has persisted ever since, in all branches of Christianity throughout the world, even now that most Christians are not Jews and do not observe the Sabbath. Meeting for the Eucharist on the first day of the week is our weekly memorial of the resurrection, and testifies to the life-changing impact that the resurrection had on the first Christians.

The significance of the first day of the week is underlined in today’s Gospel reading. Jesus appears to the disciples on the first day of the week, the day his tomb was found empty, and a second time, exactly a week later.

The Gospels were written, primarily, not for private study, but to be read aloud in the assembly of the faithful, gathered for the Eucharist on the first day of the week. So the passage we heard today must have had a particular resonance with the community of disciples for whom this gospel was first written. It’s as though John is showing them the start of the weekly pattern that they were continuing.

Four things are drawn together in this reading: Sunday, the weekly memorial of the resurrection; the Eucharist, which is implied through the setting in the upper room; a life changing encounter with the risen Lord; and the sending of the disciples on their mission. And at the heart of that all is Jesus himself, risen from the dead.

It is meeting the risen Lord that enables the disciples to believe. The object of our faith is not an event in the past, however strong the evidence for it, but a living person, Jesus Christ, risen today, present in his church today, bringing people to faith today, changing lives today. That is why arguing from evidence doesn’t tend to lead people to faith. The disciples had tried that on Thomas and he hadn’t believed them. It was meeting the risen Lord that brought him to faith. Faith is a living relationship with the living Lord.

What the risen Lord says and does changes everything. “Peace be with you”, he says. Peace! Would the disciples have expected that greeting from the one they had betrayed and abandoned to death? But that is what he says.

And Jesus shows them his wounds. He does this, first of all, to show that it really is him. This is not a ghost, or a lookalike, or an illusion.

But his showing of his wounds means more than that. The wounds of Jesus are the marks both of our sin and of our forgiveness. Our sin, which put Jesus on the cross, is imprinted on his risen body for ever. But now he is risen from the dead those wounds have become the marks of love. Our sin has been turned round by the resurrection, transformed into love and forgiveness. Through the resurrection God gives us back our sins as grace.

See how this changes the story, for those first disciples and for us! They had thought that the end of the story was death, defeat, failure. Sin had fought with Jesus and won – apparently. That indeed has been the story of humanity from the beginning, sin and death have always had the final word.

But the resurrection of Jesus blows all that open, turns it completely around. Now, the end of the story is not death, but glorious new life. Now, the story of our sins is turned on its head and told in our favour, every sin forgiven a new story of Divine love and mercy triumphant, every wound on the risen body of Jesus a glorious trophy adored by the angels and destined to be the wonder and praise of redeemed humanity for ever.

But not content with forgiving the disciples, great as that gift is, Jesus breathes on them the gift of the Holy Spirit. Now even his dying breath on the cross is transformed by the resurrection into a new gift, the living breath of God himself to raise humanity to share in the life of God.

And he sends them. “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” This group of sinners, transformed and turned around by the creative love of God, now becomes part of the movement of God into the world that was begun in Jesus. A movement sent into all the world to spread God’s forgiveness, mercy and love to all.

On the first day of the week, Jesus came and stood among them. And through that living encounter with the risen Lord the disciples were transformed, forgiven, caught up into the life of God and sent into the world.

This was the start of the weekly pattern in which we now live, meeting the risen Lord on the first day of the week. As for that first group of disciples, so with us and with all Christians throughout the world.

The Eucharist which we celebrate Sunday by Sunday is both the memorial of Christ’s death and the breaking through of his risen life. Under the forms of bread and wine we too touch his wounds, the marks of our sin, the evidence against us turned round by the resurrection into the evidence of God’s love for us. This is my body given for you. In the breaking of the bread Christ once more stands among us, gives us his peace, and sends us into the world to continue his movement of mercy, forgiveness and love.

The resurrection has erupted into the world, and every Mass we celebrate is part of that continuing transformation. Today we meet Jesus, and he sends us, as he sent his first disciples, to bring his love and forgiveness to the world.

The word “Mass” actually means “sending”, from the dismissal at the end. Here, in the Eucharist, is the life and heart of our mission, our sending. This is the summit and source of the Church’s life. This is our weekly meeting with the risen Lord at which he raises us from death, gives us his forgiveness and peace, and catches us up into his movement of love into the world.

This is indeed the first day of the week, for meeting Jesus at the beginning of the week enables us to live the rest of the week for Jesus, in Jesus, bearing the good news of his love, forgiveness and mercy to all whom we meet.