Sermon at Parish Mass Sunday next before Lent 2017

Exodus 24.12-18

2 Peter 1.16-21

Matthew 17.1-9

For the last few weeks we have been following Jesus through the Sermon on the Mount, but the Sunday before Lent we go with him to a different mountain.

We are further along the Gospel story here. Jesus is about to start his last journey to Jerusalem, and a dramatic scene has just taken place. Peter has confessed Jesus to be the Messiah, and Jesus has confirmed him in this faith. But Peter has then intervened to try and stop Jesus saying what seems to him nonsense, that the Messiah must suffer and be killed and rise again. That earns Peter the sharp rebuke from Jesus: “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling-block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”

In spite of this it is immediately after this scene that Jesus takes Peter, James and John with him up the mountain. Jesus has not rejected Peter, but Peter needs to learn how to set his mind on divine things rather than human things. And he can only learn that from Jesus.

There is comfort and reassurance in that for us, and for all disciples. Jesus has called us to follow him, and he never takes back his call. Even when we get it wrong, even when we set our minds on human things rather than divine things, Jesus still calls us to follow. But we need to learn from him how to convert our minds, so that they can be set on divine things instead. We need, in fact, to learn how to see the glory of God in Jesus who was rejected and crucified.

There are two possible sites for the transfiguration. One is Mount Hermon, above Caesarea Philippi, the place where Peter made his confession of faith. Caesarea Philippi was a pagan place, a center of worship of the nature god Pan, and a mountain resort where the wealthy Roman elite had their holiday homes.

The other possible site is Mount Tabor, further south, but it still fits within the time frame of the story. It is a striking conical mountain that rises abruptly from the valley of Jezreel, also known as Megiddo, or Armageddon. Many battles were fought beneath that mountain in ancient times, so that the name became a byword for conflict and war. From the summit of Tabor you can see the Horns of Hattin, a sinister looking rock formation where the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem was defeated by Saladin in 1187 - and the locals still talk about it. it’s impossible to look at the scene below without thinking of all the violence that has unfolded there.

So whichever mountain was the actual site of the transfiguration, it is a place of sharp contrasts. On the mountain Jesus appears in glory, supported by Moses and Elijah. The whole of God’s revelation to Israel is there in those three figures: the law and the prophets, but in the middle, in the superior place, stands Jesus, the Messiah, the Law in Person revealed on the holy mountain.

Down below, in contrast to the divine light revealed on the mountain, there is spiritual darkness. Whether it is the darkness of ignorance and unbelief, the worship of created things exemplified by luxurious but pagan Caesarea Philippi, or whether it is the darkness of violence symbolized so potently by the plain of Armageddon.

This is why the voice of the Father is heard, as it was at the baptism of Jesus, declaring him to be his beloved Son. But on this occasion the voice adds a command: “listen to him!”

That command is needed, because to listen to Jesus involves a choice – between the light on the mountain, and the spiritual darkness below. There is an alternative voice, that tells us that the Messiah must not suffer, that the kingdom of God can come about in the same way as the kingdoms of this world, through seizing power, through violence and casting out. This was the voice of Peter, in the scene before, and he has to learn, as must we, that this is not the Father’s way, that this is to think of human things and not divine things.

Peter and the disciples must follow the Messiah in the school of suffering, along the way of the Cross. That is the way to learn divine things, to be trained to see the light of glory in the crucified Messiah. It is no easy road. The disciples will stumble on it, and fail in the test many more times. Indeed these three, Peter, James and John, will be called apart by Jesus again in the Garden of Gethsemane, the night before Good Friday. Then, they will be overcome by sleep, not so much the weariness of the body as the sleep of the soul, the inability to see what God is doing as Jesus voluntarily undergoes his passion and death for the salvation of the world.

But they will see, when Jesus is raised from the dead. The risen Messiah will open their minds to understand the scriptures. The old human ways of thinking will give way as their minds are transformed to understand divine things. But that is the end of a long path of repentance, of continually turning away from the darkness and towards the light, of letting themselves be transformed by the renewing of their minds, as St Paul puts it in Romans.

Lent is a journey of transformation and repentance, a time when we draw back from unnecessary things to learn to depend on God alone once more. It is a time of training and testing, so we can learn to distinguish between the light on the mountain and the spiritual darkness we are called to reject, and be strengthened to choose the light. It is a time when the path of rejection, humiliation and suffering reveals itself to be the one path through the kingdoms of this world that leads us to the glory of the Father in the crucified and risen Messiah. Lent is a season of grace, of learning divine things in place of human things.

Our Lent programme at St Peter’s this year will focus on what it means for us to flourish as a church. For us, as for any disciples of Jesus, this can only be found by following the path of transformation, by learning to see the glory of the cross. We will look at different aspects of that each Sunday at the Parish Mass.

We will do this because a church can only flourish the way that Jesus flourishes, by following the Father’s will. Which means seeing through and rejecting the alternative paths of power, domination and control. It is about centering ourselves on Jesus, and learning from him. Lent calls us to attend to the Father’s voice, and to do what he says: “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!”

Sermon at Parish Mass, Second Sunday before Lent 2017

Genesis 1:1-2:3

Romans 8:18-25

Matthew 6:25-34

That was a bit of a marathon first reading this morning, but once in a while it is worth hearing in full. The first chapter of Genesis is a masterpiece of writing, meant to be read aloud of course, or even sung. It is a ballad, an epic saga. The poetry of it comes through in the repeating rhythm of God calling things into being in their order, seeing that everything is good, then the evening, then the morning, then the next day.

This is the first of two creation stories in Genesis. The second is the one about Adam and Eve and the garden and the snake, a different story from a different source. But the Holy Spirit who guided the formation of scripture, and who guides the Church in reading it, ensured that we had both stories. This is to make sure we get the point: the creation stories in Genesis are not scientific accounts of how things came to be, but are about why things are, what their meaning is, and what it is to be human in the world.

A key theme that both stories have in common would have been more obvious to their first audience than to us. And that is that there are no gods. There is God of course, the absolute, who exists in himself without cause. And then there are things. Such as the sun and moon, trees, creeping animals and people. God causes the things to come into being. But God and the things remain completely distinct. God is not a thing, and the things are not gods.

In the age in which the Genesis stories were composed, that was radical thinking. To most ancient cultures the sun, moon and stars were gods, and the world itself was full of gods who controlled the waters, the seasons, the fruitfulness of the earth, and so on.

Israel received a different story. God is not a thing, and the things are not gods. In fact there weren’t any gods, because the things that the nations around called “gods” were only things, after all. And God, the God who called to Israel, turned out to be not one of the gods, either, but wholly different from them.

The forces of nature, the celestial bodies, were called into being by God. They had no power or existence of their own, but only what God had given them. They were good and useful things, doubtless, but only things. To worship them, as the nations did, was therefore to make a fundamental mistake. What we worship is what we set our hearts on, and we should set our hearts only on God, the source of all being. The source of our own being, as well as that of the useful and good things that God gives us.

Now that is a roundabout way of getting to today’s Gospel reading. “Do not worry”, says Jesus. “Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.”

After last week’s troubling and difficult extract from the Sermon on the Mount, we seem to have moved on to calmer waters, a more reassuring place. But in fact the background to these sayings of Jesus is still trouble and difficulty, as he reminds us at the end: “tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today”.

Nevertheless the message of Jesus is one of reassurance, if only we will trust God. As with the creation stories in Genesis, the message is clear: God alone is the source of all being, God alone is to be worshipped and trusted. We are not to worry about things, because things are not gods. Things cannot save us, and we should not worship them.

The Gentiles, says Jesus, strive for all these things. That is, the nations that have to yet come to know the one true God, and who still imagine that things are gods. They set their hearts on things, and worship them. Do not be like them. Your heavenly Father knows what you need.

Gods, remember, are what we worship, what we set our hearts on. If we set our hearts on uncertain, transient things, as the nations do, we are always going to be anxious about them, restless until we have made our things secure. Except we can’t make things secure, because they are only things that come and go. It is the one true God who alone is eternal, who alone is the source of all that we need. 

Idols, you see, will never give us security. The teaching of Jesus, like the teaching of Genesis this morning, is that things are not gods. They are useful, but do not worship them, for they cannot save us. And if we are anxious, if we are striving like the Gentiles to secure created things, then perhaps that is because we are worshipping them. Perhaps we have made idols of them.

Jesus calls us to examine our hearts, to see what they are set on. Where do our anxieties come from? What are the secret idolatries that we need to uncover and repent of?

Now of course there is such a thing as duty, and the responsibilities that come to us in life. We do need to make prudent provision for those, indeed prudence is one of the cardinal virtues. That is not idolatry, so long as we do not set our hearts on created things, but only make proper use of them.

What Jesus warns us against is inordinate attachment to created things. That is the root of idolatry. If we make created things the object of our worship then they will be the source of our anxiety. Because we will be seeking salvation in things that cannot save.

I was wondering while preparing this sermon where my own anxieties were. For a parish priest, the growth of the church, attendance at Sunday Mass, balancing the books, are all matters of proper prudent care – but can also be areas of anxiety if we set our hearts on them, instead of on God. Others of us might think about the mortgage or the rent, the welfare or education of our children, our next job, our health, the health of our loved ones. All of these are matters of proper prudent care, but God alone can save us, and it is God alone that we must set our hearts on.

Things are not gods, things cannot save us. God alone can do that. This is our lasting hope and sure confidence. Genesis teaches us the foundational truth that God is the Creator, but he was a Creator veiled in mystery, wholly other than the things of creation. Jesus uncovers the face of the Creator. In Jesus, we see that God is whoever it is that Jesus calls Father, and God is whoever it is who raised Jesus from the dead.

These three truths are the foundation of our hope and our sure salvation: God is the Creator, God is our Father, and God raised Jesus from the dead. If these three things are true – and we believe that they are – then our hope is secure, and ultimately there really is nothing at all to worry about. 

Sermon at Parish Mass, Third Sunday before Lent 2017

Ecclesiasticus 15.15-20

1 Corinthians 3.1-9

Matthew 5.21-37

Last week I attended a seminar on modern Russia. One of the problems that society has to deal with is the fake news carried by official outlets – from stories that make Vladimir Putin out to be a kind of superhero, to conspiracy theories about other nations. The speaker at our seminar had asked somebody sensible in Russian media whether the people really believed these stories.

“What you have to understand”, he was told, “is that we don’t have truth any more, we have narrative”. In other words, decide the story you want to tell, and then selectively choose the “facts” to fit.

Now that happens quite a lot, and not just in Russia. Getting at the truth can be hard work. It can be sacrificial, requiring us to question and abandon our own ideas and principles. It’s much easier just to tell the story we want to tell, that reinforces our own position.

And this can happen too when it comes to reading the Bible. The truth is hard work. Today’s Gospel reading, for instance, is hard work. It makes tough reading. It seems too demanding. Depending on what’s happened to you in your life, it might even seem oppressive, a message of rejection. But if it seems like that, ask yourself, is this really the truth, or have I been told a narrative of rejection that just uses texts like this as proof of a foregone conclusion?

Jesus’ teaching about divorce, for example. Jesus is here addressing a totally patriarchal society. Women were treated as the property of men, to be disposed of as they pleased. Jesus is talking to the men in this passage. He is telling them that this isn’t good enough. You must not treat women as property. You must not abuse or exploit women, even in your minds. The thoughts and intentions of your hearts have to be completely converted, to see women as equals, persons as fully endowed with human dignity as you are yourselves.

This was revolutionary teaching. But how often has it been subverted, how often have these texts against the oppression of women been used as a pretext for oppression? “If a man commits adultery, it’s the woman’s fault for tempting him” – but, hang on, Jesus says the evil intention arises from the man’s heart. “You mustn’t leave your husband, even if you’re in an abusive marriage” – but, hang on, Jesus is telling men that a true understanding of marriage is completely incompatible with abuse.

Likewise the teaching about hell. Hell is mentioned 12 times in the New Testament, three of them in today’s reading. But let go of everything you thought you knew about Hell. “Hell” here translates the place name “Gehenna”, which is not a mythical underworld of eternal punishment, but a real rubbish dump outside Jerusalem, a sort of landfill site, where fires were often burning.

It was an unclean place, associated in ancient times with human sacrifice. It was a place of ritual violence and casting out. The Messiah calls us into the path of truth, which is his way of radical non-violence. But to follow him we need to recognize our deep complicity in violence, scapegoating and casting out, especially of those who are different from us. Hell, Gehenna, is a metaphor for the condition Jesus finds us in, and from which he wishes to save us. But how often, instead, has the idea of hell been used to terrorise and abuse people who are different, exactly the kind of scapegoating that Jesus warns us against?

When the Bible starts being used like that, we don’t have truth any more, but narrative. The story that people want to tell is being told, to reinforce their ideas and prejudices. That is, after all, so much easier than searching for the truth.

Now the truth is indeed radical and demanding, absolutely so. As we saw last week, the Sermon on the Mount presents us with the Law of the Messiah, a law greater, more demanding, more all-encompassing, than the law of Moses. It seems impossible to keep, until we understand that it is Jesus himself who keeps and enacts this law. He is “the Law in person”. The standard of total integrity, faithfulness and truth is his standard. And we are called into union with God in Christ, so that his righteousness may be ours. What we cannot do unaided Christ does for us, so that in him we may be presented as an acceptable offering to the Father.

Sometimes the church does not seem to have moved on much from the situation St Paul is addressing in his letter to the Corinthians today – infants in Christ, not yet “spiritual” people. They have their easy narratives, “I belong to Paul”, “I belong to Apollos”, but have not begun the hard work of attending to the truth that both Paul and Apollos proclaimed.

General Synod meets this week, and we will doubtless hear in the news about the House of Bishops’ report on sexuality and marriage. Now I am a dyed in the wool Catholic, and deeply inclined to regard whatever bishops say with great respect. But it has to be said that this particular report doesn’t seem to have been received well. Many thoughtful people of different theological positions have criticized it, including, this morning, fourteen retired bishops, and there is a move for Synod to decline to accept it.

I think what becomes of it will depend on whether it is perceived as a distorting narrative, or as a quest for the truth.

According to its critics, the report’s narrative seems mainly to be about how difficult it is for the poor bishops to hold everyone together. The quest for truth, the truth of people of different sexualities created in the image of God, is a harder task, and one that the report seems to avoid. So please do pray for our Synod members this week, for discernment and wisdom, of course, but also for boldness and commitment in the quest for truth.

This applies to all of us, of course. The passage from Deuteronomy with which we began today contains the famous words, “I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life.” That is not a referendum question, a tick box exercise. It is not a choice between two different easy narratives. It is an invitation, a summons, into the truth, into the long work of engagement and transformation. Jesus says it is a narrow gate and a hard road that leads to life. But in Christ that summons into the truth is already fulfilled, and in him we too embark on that journey. Choose life. Choose the truth.