Sermon at Parish Mass Advent IV 2010

Isaiah 7:10-16

Romans 1:1-7

Matthew 1:18-end

Yesterday was a feast day which isn’t observed very much these days, the feast of the Expectation of the Blessed Virgin Mary. A week before Christmas, the Church as it were quickens the excitement by thinking about Mary looking forward to the imminent birth of Jesus.

That’s not all. Some old Church calendars listed the day as "S. Maria de la O", because (the Catholic Encyclopaedia tells us), ‘on that day the clerics in the choir after Vespers used to utter a loud and protracted "O", to express the longing of the universe for the coming of the Redeemer.’[1]

The whole creation has been waiting and longing from the beginning, for this, for the birth of the Son of God in human flesh.

We read today Matthew’s story about the conception of Jesus. Matthew is much briefer than Luke, we don’t have an annunciation scene, we are just told that Mary “was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit”. But Matthew and Luke agree in the essential points, which we shall affirm together in the Creed shortly, that “For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven, was incarnate from the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, and was made man”.

The Virgin Birth of Jesus is inescapably there, in the scriptures and the Creed. It’s part of our faith. But sometimes it seems to be almost an act of defiance to the modern age. Is not this something which militant atheists love to attack as irrational and unscientific? Where does the Y chromosome come from? Isn’t it something of a stumbling block to belief? Even Christian preachers and pundits sometimes seem embarrassed to affirm this article of faith.

Well, I think we need to ask why this matters. In Christian belief, God is the creator of all things, visible and invisible, and therefore creation is good. God looked at all that he had made and it was very good, as we read in Genesis. But creation has a purpose which it can’t achieve by itself. The cycles of birth and death, of growth and decay, are closed in on themselves. Ultimately, left to itself, everything ends in death and futility. But God intends something more. St Paul says in Romans:

The creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labour pains until now.

So the labour of Mary, in bringing to birth the Son of God, has this deep connection with the labour pains of the universe as it awaits its redemption, which is the fulfilment of its created purpose.

Again, in Colossians we read:

All things have been created through Christ and for Christ. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.

And in Ephesians we read of:

A plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in Christ, things in heaven and things on earth.

So nature awaits its fulfilment, its liberation from death and decay. And this is the work of the Holy Spirit in and through Christ. Just as in the beginning the Spirit of God hovered over the face of the deep, just as we are told in the psalm that God “sends forth his spirit and renews the face of the earth.”

Grace, the work of the Holy Spirit which is a free gift of God, perfects nature, bringing everything to fulfilment in Christ. Creation has been made for freedom, but cannot attain it without grace.

Nature down the ages has always been being perfected by grace, by the hidden work of the Holy Spirit. Everything in human life and culture which points to a goodness and truth that endures beyond death testifies to this. People have always been feeling their way towards God. More particularly, in the history of Israel God revealed himself in a definite way, through the law and the prophets, pointing to a future fulfilment of all creation in a personal relationship with a personal God, the coming of God’s kingdom of justice, love and peace. In all of that the Holy Spirit has been at work.

It is therefore entirely fitting that the birth of the Son of God, the coming of the Messiah through whom creation is to find its fulfilment, should be by a particular and unique act of the Holy Spirit, the culmination of all the work of the Spirit down the ages. Nature is perfected by grace, but here we have something more. As Newman puts it in his magnificent hymn:

And that a higher gift than grace
Should flesh and blood refine,
God's presence and His very Self,
And Essence all-divine

The fulfilment of all creation begins in the union of created nature with God himself, in the Incarnation of the Son of God in Jesus of Nazareth. This is therefore the supreme work of the Holy Spirit.

The Incarnation decisively breaks open the cycle of decay and death, and liberates creation to achieve its purpose in Christ. Therefore it is not only rational and fitting, but we might say even necessary, for the birth of Jesus to take place in a way which shows this to be true. The birth of Jesus from a virgin Mother is an interruption of the normal pattern of life doomed to decay and death, and shows that the liberation of the universe has begun.

So when we affirm in the Creed that the Son of God “was incarnate from the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary” we are not posing riddles about biology or indulging in something unscientific or irrational. We are making a statement that in the birth of Jesus creation begins to attain the freedom for which it was created. The new creation breaks into the old and a fulfilment begins which will take us beyond the knowledge of the senses to the life of God himself.

In this week before Christmas we rejoice that our redemption has begun in Christ, and we look forward to the fulfilment of all things in him. Mary’s longing for the birth of Christ gives voice to the birth-pangs of all creation, its yearning for God who is its creator and redeemer. In that yearning we, too, join, looking forward with unclouded hope to the day when Christ will be all in all.

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[1] http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05712a.htm

Sermon at Parish Mass Advent III 2010

St Pancras Old Church

Isaiah 35:1-10

James 5:7-10

Matthew 11:2-11

“Lucia believed in God in much the same way as she believed in Australia, for she had no doubts whatever as to the existence of either, and she went to church on Sunday in much the same spirit as she would look at a kangaroo in the Zoological Gardens, for kangaroos came from Australia.”

That's from one of EF Benson’s delightful Mapp and Lucia books, Queen Lucia. Lucia is a snob and a social climber of great accomplishment, but it seems she could only cope with a God who kept a proper distance and didn’t make any inconvenient demands.

Not so John the Baptist. He was a prophet, like the prophets of old, and as we heard last week a bit of a fire and brimstone preacher, saying to the Pharisees and Sadducees, “you brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” He saw himself as preparing the way for the Messiah, God’s anointed deliverer, who would gather his chosen ones but, in John’s words, “burn the chaff with unquenchable fire”.

Time passes, and John has been imprisoned for making outspoken comments about Herod. He’s heard about what Jesus was doing, but curiously this seems to make him doubt whether Jesus really is the Messiah after all.  So he sends a message to ask, “are you the one who is to come?” Jesus does not give him a direct answer. He simply lists for him the things he has been doing over again, the things that John has already heard about:

The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.

This in fact summarises the miracles that Jesus worked in the previous section of Matthew’s gospel, in chapters 8 and 9 there are stories in which Jesus does all of these things. So why does John doubt?

Perhaps he doubts because this is not quite what he expects the Messiah to be doing. As we’ve seen John expects wrath, fire, punishment. And not without reason, because the Bible seemed to say that’s what he should expect.

The way that Jesus lists his miracles in fact refers to five different texts from the Prophet Isaiah which give the signs which will mark the coming of the Messiah. We heard one of them this morning from Isaiah 35, “the eyes of the blind shall be opened, the ears of the deaf unstopped, the lame shall leap like a deer and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy”.

But in each of these texts as Isaiah gives them the sign of healing and restoration is coupled with a promise of punishment and vengeance. Evildoers are going to get their comeuppance. So we had this morning “Here is your God, he will come with vengeance, with terrible recompense.” And there’s something like that in all five of the texts that Jesus references[1].

But Jesus only quotes the bits about healing and restoration. Now John knows the Bible. He knows that Jesus is giving some of the signs of the Messiah. But not all of them. The punishment of the wicked doesn’t seem to be happening. So can this really be the Messiah?

Jesus doesn’t say yes or no. He simply says, “blessed is anyone who takes no offence at me”. Actually in Greek it’s “blessed is the one who is not scandalised in me”. The concept of scandal runs right through the New Testament. Skandalon means an obstacle, a stumbling block, a snare, a trap. But it also has a mysterious attractive power. It has a kind of magnetic force that you can’t get away from, like something in your path that you can’t avoid bumping into. Jesus is saying that in what he is doing, in how he is proclaiming the Kingdom, people will respond to him like that.

The greatest scandal in the Gospels is the cross. That the Messiah should end up rejected, lynched by a mob, refusing to save himself, forgiving his murderers. That is a stumbling block, an obstacle to faith, if you expect God to descend with military might and destroy the wicked. As St Paul says in 1 Corinthians,

We proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling-block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.

In the Gospels nobody’s response to Jesus is ever neutral. They respond either with rejection or with faith. People are drawn to Jesus willy-nilly, and find in him either a stumbling block they can’t get round, or the corner stone and solid ground of God’s salvation. Either way, they can’t avoid the choice. You can’t treat Jesus like a kangaroo in the zoo, you can’t take him or leave him as you please. Lucia’s safe tame God is not an option.

To come up against Jesus is to be brought to the point where we must choose. Rejection, or faith. Stumbling block, or corner stone.

So Jesus does not say to John the Baptist, yes I am the Messiah. It is up to John to choose how he responds. But Jesus does say, blessed are you if you do not find in me a stumbling block. Blessed are you if your response is faith, not rejection[2].

The cross is not the only scandal in the Gospels. Jesus heals on the Sabbath. He criticises the religious authorities. He teaches in strange parables which reveal to us our own inner stumbling blocks, our own scandal.

And now in this time of Advent we are preparing for Christmas. Bethlehem has its own share of scandal, too. God revealed to us in the muck and mess of chaotic human lives. God coming to live with his people in the midst of upheaval caused by the arbitrary dictates of an occupying Imperial power. God born in improvised accommodation, dispossessed, vulnerable, marginalised.

And that is what we are preparing to celebrate. Every year we come up against the scandal of Christmas. And every year we are invited to renew our response of faith in the God who did not stay remote from us but came to share our human life as it actually is.

The season of Christmas parties and shopping is in full swing, and I wonder how much that really reflects the good news that God has drawn near to us in Jesus. I don't know if you've seen the "Christmas Tree" in St Pancras Station. It consists entirely of Champagne bottles, piled up in a great pyramid, with a sign in front saying that anyone found tampering with the Christmas Tree will be prosecuted. And a very merry Christmas to you, too.

Now there's nothing wrong with a party, and Champagne is nice, but I don't need a whole tree full of it. When pleasure becomes anaesthesia it can also be a denial that there is anything of value in our lives as they are. And that is to avoid the place where God comes to meet us, in life as it is, in our own situation whatever we are dealing with, amid our failure and mess and falling apart and making do.

But Christmas says that’s exactly where God meets us. And blessed are those who are not scandalised in Jesus. Blessed are those who find in him good news for the poor, healing for the sick, new life for the dead. Blessed are those who find in Jesus the Messiah, the Saviour, the hope of all the world.

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[1] The references are: Isaiah 29:18 (“vengeance” verse 20); 35:5-6 (“vengeance” verse 4); 42:8, 17 (“vengeance” verse 13); 26:19 (“vengeance” verse 21); and 61:1 (“vengeance” part of verse 2).

[2] After preaching this it occurred to me that this may explain verse 11, “the least in the Kingdom of heaven is greater than” John the Baptist: at this moment John is still poised on the cusp of choice, has still to accept Jesus definitively as the Messiah. In fact, the Gospels do not tell us how John responded after this scene at all, or what choice he made. It is left to the Tradition of the Church to tell us that John’s beheading was an act of martyrdom, of witness to the truth.

Vigilate, Eversholt Street

The ordinary time is over.

Trumpet blast of ice wind, needle sharp
Grey bricks bare trees thrill to the

Deep sounding
Shard shivering
Silence shouting

Word too immense for any thing.

First and Last.

The ordinary time is over.

Anglican Covenant - Updates

I have had a couple of very thoughtful and helpful responses to my post below at More Than a Via Media:

First response: Covenant, Catholicity and Eucharist

Second response: Covenant, Catholicity and Instruments of Communion

This has also been picked up by Fr Dan Martins at Living Church here.

Anglican Covenant

Is the Anglican Covenant Catholic?

In November General Synod will be asked to approve a draft Act of Synod adopting the Anglican Communion Covenant. This is being presented primarily as a way of dealing with disputes and living together as a family of churches. But it is also an ecclesiological statement; it expresses a particular understanding of what it is to be the church, of what “church” and “communion” mean. As the Covenant text makes clear, accepting the Covenant entails accepting this understanding of the church. But is it an understanding that Anglican Catholics can recognise and accept?

As John Riches has pointed out[1], the Covenant, like the Windsor Report before it, draws on different and sometimes conflicting ecclesiologies. So its vision of what the Church is, and consequently what communion is, is incoherent. Above all, it is the lack of a clear Eucharistic ecclesiology, and the prevalence of other views which owe much to the Reformation, which is a serious obstacle for anyone approaching the Covenant from a Catholic perspective.

This is apparent from the beginning. The Introduction to the Covenant Text, which is said to have “authority in understanding the purpose of the Covenant” (Covenant 4.1.1) sets out its theological frame of reference. So paragraph 1 describes our calling into communion as a gift of God, a participation in the Life of the Trinity, and cites The Church of the Triune God (CTG) in support. So far so good. But then the Introduction makes no mention at all of the Eucharist – in a document setting out what communion means and how it is effected! One might ask what happened to CTG’s central thesis that it is the Eucharist which “reveals and realises the gift of trinitarian communion given to the Church by the Holy Spirit”[2]. Likewise ARCIC’s Church as Communion[3] occasionally appears in the Covenant, but with the complete omission of its emphasis that it is the Eucharist which is constitutive of the Church. These are important documents, agreed by Anglicans, about the nature of the Church’s communion; and yet the Covenant, whilst borrowing from them in passing (and not always with a citation), ignores their central message completely. (There also incidentally seems to be an odd bit of process theology in the statement that the life of the Holy Trinity “shapes and displays itself” through the church.)

So if the Eucharist does not make the Church, does not establish communion, what does? The Introduction lays heavy emphasis on the covenants of the Old and New Testaments. Significantly, this includes the first mention of baptism, and it is the new covenant of Christ into which we are said to be baptised, rather than His body. True, paragraph 3 of the Introduction does state that the universal Church is Christ’s Body, but in the context of common life and mutual responsibility, of the working out of covenant.

John Riches argues there is a strong thread of Reformation ecclesiology running through the Anglican Covenant. In classic Reformed theology the true Church is invisible; it is the believer’s personal relationship with Christ which is foundational to belonging to this Church; the local, visible, institutions which serve this Church are human constructs whose members may or may not be among the saved, and so need clear membership criteria to ensure as far as possible that only true believers get in. And the language of covenant – a covenant constructed by human beings – is not far away from such a view. This has to be the theology of the Anglican Covenant of course, because it is at heart a document about how to tell when people don’t belong to the visible institution, and only a Reformation ecclesiology can do this with sufficient clarity.

So, in the Introduction, the covenants established by God in Scripture segue seamlessly into the covenant which we are now to make together to maintain our communion. No qualification or explanation is supplied to let us know if we should understand the word “covenant” differently in this case. What is proposed is a functional structure that one has to opt into, if, that is, the existing members approve the applicant’s doctrinal and moral worthiness. It is church imagined as something that human beings construct in the service of the Gospel.

This is, indeed, what evangelicals have been campaigning for. Oliver O’Donovan, for example, in 2006 envisaged a “communion” where “Christians are not admitted as Christians by other Christians, only recognized as Christians on the basis of the Holy Spirit’s work in them” and the Archbishop of Canterbury’s role is “to give voice and effect to judgements the churches have reached about the work of the Holy Spirit in their midst, to speak and act on behalf of their common mutual recognition”[4]. There’s no room there for the catholic principle of recognising people as Christians (even if not very good ones) on the basis of their common baptism.

The Covenant is also marked by a continual confusion between the local and universal meanings of “church”. The Anglican Communion is, we are told in the Preamble (citing Revelation 7:9), “people of God drawn from ‘every nation, tribe, people and language’”. That seems rather universal, even eschatological. Likewise, 3.2.3 tells us that new and controversial matters “need to be tested by shared discernment in the life of the Church”; and that’s “Church” in the proper case, without qualification, even though what is being talked about is Anglican, that is local, churches. But as Anglicans we can claim to be no more than the historic local churches of the British Isles and their more recent descendants elsewhere in the world. As such we do indeed share a common life in which we belong to each other. But that common life must not be confused with that of the universal Church of which we are but part.

Vatican II’s understanding of local churches is, “legitimate local congregations of the faithful united with their pastors” sharing the Apostolic ministry and celebrating the one Eucharist (Lumen Gentium) [5]. The universal Church is present in all local churches but is more than the sum of its parts; it is, foundationally, a Divine reality which the local churches receive and participate in, not something constructed from below. In the Covenant this ought to follow on from the Trinitarian basis of communion mentioned in the Introduction, but the connection fails to be made.

When it comes to the structures of discernment and discipline proposed by the Covenant the local seems to be imitating the universal with the new centralised mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion. Are we here looking at other “communions” with envy? If so, we are making a basic mistake about Anglican ecclesiology. The Roman Curia has a universal competence precisely because Roman ecclesiology is universal: the Catholic Church subsists in the Roman. Likewise the Orthodox can have firm structures of discernment and discipline because they claim to be the universal Church and so, collectively, know the mind of the Church. Anglicans can make no such claim. So are we trying to imitate something we are not with this incipient quasi-Papalism? Or is it rather a local Protestant understanding of the church, a human club with membership rules, mapped globally?

As John Riches says, the Covenant and its predecessor the Windsor Report, “drink from diverse wells and the result is a mingling of ecclesiologies which sit quite uneasily alongside each other. The call for the strengthening of the so-called ‘Instruments’ [of Communion]… receives very uncertain support from the ecclesiological reflections which are offered here. In the end, most support comes from those traditions endebted (sic) to the Continental Reformation and there to its more radical wing.”[6]

The Covenant is a confused document. It incoherently references different ecclesiologies, but its overwhelming tenor and direction is Protestant. The statement in 2.1.2 that Anglican churches have been “reshaped” by the Reformation is a worrying clue to this. In May 2008 Cardinal Kasper called on the Anglican Communion to decide whether it belonged to the church of the first millennium or to the Protestant Reformation. The repercussions of the possible answers to that are of course very much still with us. But the Covenant, insofar as it is clear at all, points to an answer which Catholics will find very difficult to accept.

Matthew Duckett

matthew_duckett@yahoo.co.uk

November 5 2010

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[1] J Riches, “Talking Points from Books”, The Expository Times, 2008; 119; 417. See also NT Wright’s reply in 119; 469 and Riches’ reply to Wright in 119; 521.

[2] The Church of the Triune God - The Cyprus Agreed Statement of the International Commission for Anglican - Orthodox Theological Dialogue, Anglican Consultative Council 2006, para 12.

[3] http://www.prounione.urbe.it/dia-int/arcic/doc/e_arcicII_communion.html

[4] O O’Donovan, A Conversation Waiting to Begin – the Churches and the Gay Controversy, SCM Press 2009, p 23

[5] See also Cardinal Ratzinger’s lucid exposition of the Ecclesiology of Vatican II,

[6] J Riches, Op. Cit., 420

Letter in the Church Times, 29 October 2010

Sir,

That the Diocese of Sydney persists in permitting deacons to “administer the Lord’s Supper”, even after this has been declared unconstitutional, will surprise no-one. For decades the usual teaching in Sydney has viewed sacraments merely as acted preaching, a subordinate adjunct to the ministry of the word. Indeed D Broughton Knox, principal of Moore College 1959-85, taught that water baptism was only an “apostolic custom” which might be replaced, for example, by converts giving their testimony (Selected Works, Volume II: Church and Ministry [Sydney: Matthias Media, 2003]). A friend in Sydney has told me of churches where this teaching appears to have been put into practice.

The stated reason for allowing deacons to “administer” the Eucharist is Sydney’s practice of restricting presbyteral ordination to rectors of parishes. This, it is claimed, is Biblical. But the New Testament describes local churches in which there were presbyters, plural. They can’t all have been the one in charge, so must have shared in the presidency and pastoral care of the community. This in plain common sense must have included the weekly synaxis and breaking of bread as its principal act. Likewise presbyters, plural, are to be called for if anyone is sick (James 5:14). The presbyterate in the New Testament is a collegial ministry of word and sacrament in which there is room for complementary roles. For Sydney, however, it is monarchical, and mainly about designating the man with the power.

For Anglicans faithful to universal tradition, a “Eucharist” presided by a deacon is no more than a simulated sacrament. Sadly this is now all that is on offer to Anglicans in Sydney’s hospitals and prisons, since chaplains can’t be priests. Even the dying can have no guarantee of receiving the “last and most necessary Viaticum” mandated by the Council of Nicea (Canon 13). Much has been said about the unconstitutional nature of Sydney’s actions, but little, as far as I know, about the spiritual harm that may result.

You report Archdeacon Narrelle Jarrett as saying, “it is a tragedy that deacons cannot fulfil the full sacramental ministry”. No; the tragedy is that Sydney refuses to give priestly ordination to those who need it for their ministry. It is a tragedy entirely caused by the revisionist and unscriptural theology of ministry which Sydney has embraced.

Yours sincerely,

The Revd Matthew Duckett

Sermon at Parish Mass and Baptism, 19th Sunday after Trinity 2010

Sermon at Parish Mass and Baptism, 19th Sunday after Trinity 2010 (St Pancras Old Church)

2 Kings 5:14-17

2 Timothy 2:8-13

Luke 17:11-19

Babette’s Feast is a film and a story set in a bleak area of Denmark in the 19^th century. Babette, a refugee from revolutionary upheavals in Paris, arrives in a small and very religious community where she takes up work as cook to two elderly spinster sisters, the daughters of the local protestant pastor.

Over many years she gains their trust and respect. Then one day she learns that she has won a large sum of money on a lottery ticket in France. Rather than return to her old life, she spends the entire winnings on a feast for the villagers. Unbeknown to them, Babette used to be the head chef in one of the finest restaurants in Paris.

The feast she provides is sumptuous and extravagant, full of rare delicacies and fine wine. The villagers are shocked as they see the preparations, fearing that such luxury will be a sinful indulgence of the flesh. They decide that they will have to eat the meal out of politeness, but are determined that they will not take any pleasure in it or even speak about it.

But it doesn’t work. Babette's feast is just too good. As they eat and drink together, they can’t help enjoy the feast. The pinched narrowness of their respectable, fearful religion gives way. A community that had survived by everyone remaining in their proper place rediscovers itself in love and openness. The diners are redeemed by the unexpected joy of a life rich beyond their imagining.

In today’s Gospel reading something similar happens. Ten lepers ask Jesus for healing, nine of them Jews and one a Samaritan. Lepers in Biblical times were outcasts from their communities, shunned by religious laws which decreed that they were unclean. Curiously this brings the Jews and the Samaritan together in a way they wouldn’t have been otherwise. Jews and Samaritans ordinarily regarded each other as outcasts, because of their religious differences. But now they are all outcasts together from their own communities.

Then they are healed by Jesus, as they had asked. What happens then? Well, Jesus has told them to show themselves to the priests. The Jewish law said that if you had been cured of leprosy you had to be examined by a priest who would certify that you were once again ritually pure, so you could rejoin your community. And this is exactly what the Jewish former lepers do.

But not the Samaritan. He couldn’t show himself to a Jewish priest; even if he was no longer a leper he would still have been an outcast Samaritan. Perhaps he might have shown himself to a Samaritan priest instead. But he does not. Instead, he turns back to Jesus, praising God in a loud voice, and falls at his feet. The Samaritan ignores the religious law, breaks through its restrictions, and finds in Jesus what really matters, God’s love and redemption.

It looks as though the Samaritan is disobeying Jesus, by not going off and showing himself to a priest. But in fact he has found in Jesus the one true priest who offers salvation, healing and wholeness to all.

The Jewish lepers had a choice. They could have made the same response as the Samaritan. They could have realised that in Jesus God was breaking open all the sacred boundaries and religious laws which had made them victims for so long, outsiders to their own people. But instead they chose to go back into that system, now that they could be on the inside again and return to their safe but narrow existence. They were ritually clean, back on the right side of the religious law, but missing out on the fullness of life and joy which made the Samaritan shout with praise.

Jesus himself was to end up an outsider to the religious law. Condemned to death for religious reasons, he was hanged on a tree which the law said meant you were under God’s curse. But the veil of the temple, the veil of religious law and sacred boundary, was torn in two when he died. And from the tomb where his body was laid new life has sprung up for all people. Life and love beyond our imagining, God surprising us with joy, breaking in to us from outside all the boundaries we draw to keep ourselves safe.

Religious laws and purity codes can take many forms, and some may not seem to have anything to do with religion. But distinctions of social class, race, and nationalism are really part of the same mechanism when they draw boundaries through human society and create outsiders and victims. Jesus shows the nullity of all these sacred boundaries.

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

Today we give thanks and praise to God as we celebrate this Eucharist, and in as fine a voice as we can manage I hope. Today the risen victim, Jesus our Master and our Priest, comes to us once more in bread and wine. Today Mia will be made a partaker, with us, of Christ’s death and resurrection through the waters of baptism.

In Christ there is no-one who is unclean, no-one who is an outsider. The light of the resurrection shines on our lives and calls us to follow Christ and to shine as lights in the world today and all the days of our life.