Sermon at Parish Mass, Trinity 4 2017

Zechariah 9:9-12                    

Romans 7:15-25a                   

Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

“To what will I compare this generation?”, asks Jesus. The reason why he asks this is that he has just been speaking about John the Baptist, who was sent by God to prepare the way for the Messiah, but people refused to accept him. So Jesus cites a children’s game. “We played the flute and you didn’t dance, we wailed and you didn’t mourn.”

At that time John was in prison, at the mercy of the fickle and arbitrary Herod. And in fact John’s fate will be sealed by a child, Salome, dancing, as the flutes play; and when he is dead his disciples will mourn for him. So this children’s game in the market place has dark overtones that are about to unfold.

Play is a very important aspect of learning. Both the joyful things of life, and its darker side, can be acted out in play, in a way that is safe. Children learn about everything from weddings to conflict and death by acting them out in pretence. No-one gets harmed, so long as the game doesn’t get out of control. But the goal is good learning: how to live well, with regard for others, how to be safe, how to practice self-restraint, how to handle conflict non-destructively.

But games can go toxic, if we forget that they are games. “We played the flute and you didn’t dance, we wailed and you didn’t mourn.” In the society Jesus is criticising it has become a deadly serious game about identifying two groups, insiders and outsiders, those who keep the rules and those who don’t.

People have responded to John the Baptist and then to Jesus by opposition and rejection, because both John and Jesus haven’t followed the rules that society wanted them to follow. They proclaimed an alternative to the world as it was, but this can only be accessed by repentance. The hearers of the message need to change heart and direction. Human society has to give up the blame game, has to give up that destructive dynamic of us against them. But when that doesn’t fit with the game that people want to play, the prophets end up getting killed.

We have other games in our world. Politicians play games called “Twitter” and “Austerity”– and there seems to be an awful lot of the blame game in both of those. Within the church, there is a temptation to play a game called “Purity” – our flutes play the only tune that is allowed, you must dance to it or leave. It’s a game equally suited to certain conservatives who don’t want to recognise gay and transgender Christians, or to those liberals who see no room in the church for people who don’t accept the ordained ministry of women.

But there is hope. Jesus compares his generation to children, but then says that it is the Father’s gracious will to reveal himself to mere infants. Jesus is not dismissing his generation as hopeless, but rather saying that there is hope, so long as they understand that they are children.

To be children is to know that we need to learn. It is not so for the wise and intelligent. Those who think they have power and control have forgotten that they are, in fact, children. They think they know how the world is, and therefore they are not able to learn that the way the world is is wrong. Their games are acted out in deadly earnest. And when games go toxic the prophets, who inconveniently point out that the wise and intelligent are actually children who need to learn, get killed.

But we are not to learn from them. “Learn from me”, says Jesus. And we can learn from Jesus, because he is the One who reveals the Father. We cannot know God, except as God is revealed in Jesus. And we can know God in Jesus because he is the Word of God, the expression of the Father, the Second Person of the Trinity.

And here we have in Matthew a teaching of Jesus that sounds like it belongs in John, “All things have been handed over to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him”. But, as we saw a few weeks ago on Trinity Sunday, in fact the Trinity is there on every page of scripture, if we know how to look, that is, if we learn from Jesus.

We learn from Jesus because he is the One who reveals the Father. And what is the Father like? He is the One who hides himself from the wise and intelligent and reveals himself to infants, that is, in the society of Jesus’ time, to people of no account at all.

He is the One who draws to himself all those who are weary and carrying heavy burdens, and gives them rest. He is the One who is gentle and humble in heart. No wonder we have to be infants to learn that! The wise and intelligent cannot learn it, because they are too attached to the game that ends up killing the prophets.

But if we learn that we are children, then we can begin again.

Jesus reveals God to us, and enables us to share in God’s life. This alone can move us on beyond the deadly trap of blame and opposition. And this applies both with others and with ourselves. As St Paul says in today’s extract from Romans, “I do not do what I want, but the very thing I hate”. “I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, but I see in my members… the law of sin.” It’s almost as though Paul is saying, I played the flute and I wouldn’t dance.

But children can learn, children can be saved if we turn to the Lord and begin again to learn from him. “Who will rescue me from this body of death?”, says St Paul. “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!”.

Learning from Jesus is very simple, an easy yoke, a light burden, a child could do it. In fact, we have to be children in order to do it. If we think we know how the world is, if we think we are wise and intelligent, we will not find our way in. But if we will become like little children then we can begin to know the Father. Our games will not go toxic, and so will help us to learn from Jesus. This is what it means to repent. And if we do so we will find rest for our souls.

Sermon at Parish Mass Ss Peter and Paul 2017

Zechariah 4.1-6a,10b-14

Acts 12:1-11

Matthew 16:13-19

On the Feast of Saint Peter and Saint Paul we always read that famous passage in Matthew where Peter recognizes Jesus as the Messiah and in return is given the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven. But of course that’s only half the story. The second part of this scene doesn’t reflect so well on Peter, but perhaps it’s considered impolite to drag that up on his feast day.

What happens immediately after Peter’s confession of faith is this (Matthew 16.21-23):

From that time on, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, ‘God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you.’ But he turned and said to Peter, ‘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.’

Does this mean that Jesus has now rejected Peter, having just moments before chosen him as “the rock”? Does this mean that Peter has thrown away his chance to be the chief of the Apostles? No indeed. God never takes back his call, however much we may get it wrong.

What has happened is that Peter has misheard what Jesus has said. As with us, so often we hear what we want to hear, not what is actually being said.

What Jesus has said is, “you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church”. But what Peter thinks has been said is, “you are Peter, and on this rock you will build your church”. Having recognized the Messiah, Peter thinks he has been put in charge of the Messiah project, and so intervenes when Jesus starts going off message.

But Peter is not in charge. Jesus is. And Peter is not to build the church, because Jesus will do that. And he will do it in his way, which is to say, God’s way, and not according to human thinking.

But Peter’s error doesn’t overturn his call by Jesus. Peter was always getting it wrong, concluding in the Gospels with his threefold denial of Jesus after he had been arrested. This does not mean that Jesus got it wrong when he named Peter as the rock. Part of what it means to say that Peter is the rock involves understanding how Jesus builds his church with weak, sinful, fallible human beings. Divine grace is not about denying who we are, but is about transforming who we are. In fact Divine grace is so transformative that way Peter gets it wrong again and again is intrinsic to the way in which the church is being built on him.

Part of what it means to be built as the church by Jesus is to learn how wrong we are. Peter the rock is not very strong or stable. The fact that the Church can be built on such a rock shows that it is Jesus who is building it, not Peter.

For Peter to be the rock, he has to learn to confess his sins. Confessing our sins is foundational to being the church. We might think of confession as something to get out of the way at the beginning of Mass, in the hope that we can spend the next hour before communion without being envious of our neighbour or irritated by our partner, and so on, and then go back to normal until the same time next week.

But no. The church is the people who confess their sins, because we are the people who confess that Jesus is our Saviour. Our sins, failures and weaknesses are the very stuff that God transforms by grace into the church. We bring our sins to church, not to forget about them, but to offer them to God as the raw material for his work of transformation.

By grace, a collection of sinners, precisely because they confess their sins, is transformed into the Church: one, holy, catholic and apostolic.

Confession of sin is not something we have to get out of the way before we can be apostolic witnesses, rather it is the apostolic witness in itself, part of what it means to be “one, holy catholic and apostolic”.

This is as true for the two Apostles we celebrate today as it is for us. Peter, who so often got it wrong, who denied Jesus three times the night he was arrested. That denial was not the end for Peter, rather it turned out to be the essential preparation for Jesus meeting him, risen from the dead, and asking him three times, “do you love me?” “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.” “Feed my sheep.” The ways in which Peter had tried and failed to build the church himself, all the ways he went wrong, were part in the end of the way in which Jesus built the church on him anyway.

And Paul, or Saul as he was originally, the violent fundamentalist persecuting the followers of Jesus, until he met the risen Lord on the road to Damascus and his whole world was shattered. He had in effect been trying to build God’s church or kingdom himself, in his own way. But grace came flooding in where Paul had striven for righteousness based on the law. Paul had been entirely wrong, and from then on he could do nothing but proclaim that grace in every nation. The way in which Paul went wrong was part of the way in which Jesus built the church through him anyway.

All four of the gospels speak of Peter’s denial of Jesus, it’s that important. The tale of Paul’s conversion is told three times in Acts, it’s that important. The discovery of our sin is the discovery of where God is meeting us in Jesus. The apostolic faith of course is a great edifice of doctrine, of creed and scripture, sacrament and order. But it begins with the confession of our sins. Because to confess our sins is to discover that Jesus is our Saviour. That is the apostolic faith, the witness of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul.

There are times when the human element of the Church seems very evident. Its sins and failures, all its attempts to take control and build the kingdom itself. All the ways in which it refuses the path of contradiction and suffering that Jesus calls it to follow. But Divine grace is so transformative that, rather than hindering God’s purposes, the very sins of the Church become the means by which Jesus builds the Church anyway. By hook or by crook, we become the people who confess our sins and so become the people who can tell, and live, the story of grace in the world. And so we are right to celebrate what Divine grace has done, not only for Peter and Paul, but for us too.

Sermon at Parish Mass, Trinity II 2017

The Prophet Jeremiah, Michelangelo, the Sistine Chapel 

Jeremiah 20.7-13                    

Romans 6.1b-11                     

Matthew 10.24-39

Today’s readings are not exactly a recruiting campaign that would win a PR company any awards.

Jeremiah, enticed by the Lord – or perhaps “seduced” – has become a laughing stock, the words he must speak a reproach and derision all day long. St Paul says that “all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death”. And Jesus says that his disciples can expect to be maligned, even killed, and will find themselves at the centre of a storm of division and conflict. God, it seems, does not promise anyone an easy ride.

And yet Jesus says, “do not be afraid”. Do not be afraid, even, of those who can kill the body but cannot kill the soul. There is a lot about fear in today’s readings. Jeremiah says that “terror is all around”. Yet he speaks anyway, confident that the Lord who has given him the words to speak will also deliver his life.

What we are most afraid of tells us about our attachments, our priorities. What we most fear is the loss of what we are most attached to. Jesus tells us that we should be least willing to lose God, the giver of life, rather than the life that God gives. For what God has given once, God can give again.

This is part of what St Paul means when he says that we have been baptised into the death of Jesus, in order that we might be united with him in his resurrection. Those who follow Jesus are not to be afraid of death because, being identified with Jesus through baptism, they have already died. 

This is just as well, because those who are identified with Jesus will find, like him, that they are the centre of conflict, opposition, and division.  He has come to bring not peace but a sword. What does this mean? Surely Jesus preaches non-violence? Indeed he does, but that in itself is the cause of division.

Jesus speaks in a society that is ordered and controlled by fear and violence. Death is ever present as the ultimate social control. You upset the established order at your own mortal peril.

So what are you to do in such a world? Well you can accept that it is as it is, and be afraid as others are, and keep your head down. Nothing will get any better, but you might survive, even if you never actually really live.

Or you can oppose it in its own currency. Set violence against violence. How many revolutions, intent on creating a better world, have ended up simply replicating the old order of oppression under a new name?

Or you can choose a different society, a new way of being human, which is not controlled by fear, violence or death. This new society has as its deepest trust and enduring hope not any human construct or mechanism of control, but God, the Lord and giver of life. This society, which is called the kingdom of God, is what Jesus has come to preach. By its very non-violence, by its radical trust in God who cannot be killed, it stands as a reproach and a threat to all human societies ordered by fear and death. No wonder it is opposed.

Jesus is not himself the cause of division, rather he uncovers it. Division and violence have always been at the heart of being human. Even the family displays this. Jesus warns that he has come “to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law”. It sounds like an episode of the Jeremy Kyle show, but it is simply saying what being human has always been like.

This is not something outside ourselves, it is part of our story, part of what the Church calls “original sin”, common to all humanity. Attachment to the family, instead of God, risks simply trapping us in the old way of being human. I do wonder if those preachers who go on about the importance of marriage and the family have ever actually read the gospels. The family, as the smallest unit of human society, needs to be redeemed just as much as does a city or an empire. The Kingdom of God establishes a new family, whose principle of being is God’s self-giving love, and that is where our true identity is to be found.

Fear violence and division are still present in our world today. Even for people like us, who have the great blessing of living in a free and democratic society, that basic human mechanism of scapegoating and casting out is ever present. The peace and order of society are fragile. Where there is disagreement, we need to express it well, but with respect, and not demonise those with whom we disagree. In many ways our country is deeply divided, and needs healing. Today the Archbishop of Canterbury is advising the Prime Minister to set up a cross party committee on Brexit, in his words “to draw the poison out of the debate”. It is indeed troubling if negotiations that will deeply affect everyone in the country are being conducted in a spirit of acrimony and rivalry, instead of seeking the common good.

Similar things apply in our workplaces and family and personal relationships. The values of God’s kingdom teach us not to be attached to ourselves and our own interests, but to model the love of God by loving one another. The teaching of Jesus, again and again, is to give way to one another, serve one another, live out sacrificial love instead of dominating control.

To do this is simply to remember our identity with Jesus in his death and resurrection. This is absolutely true for all Christians through their baptism, but that sacramental reality is lived out in many ways. For many believers in the world today their identity with Jesus may actually mean persecution and death, and we must never forget that we are one with them in our prayers, even if not in our sufferings. And we will all die, one way or another. Our conformity to Christ will be perfected in the death of our bodies, even as it is also shown forth in the many metaphorical deaths and times of suffering that will come our way before then.

In all this, Jesus says do not worry. Do not be more attached to life than you are to God, the giver of life. For those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for the sake of Jesus will find it.