Sermon at Parish Mass Lent 2 2014

Genesis 12:1-4a

Romans 4:1-5, 13-17

John 3:1-17

We have just heard what some say is the most famous verse in the Bible. And indeed, if anyone were to say to me, “I’ve only got time to memorise one Bible quotation, which should I choose?”, I would recommend John Chapter 3 Verse 16:

“God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” 

But of course the Bible is more than just one verse, and Christianity is more than just a religion of the book. It is a religion of a Person: Jesus. That Person is God’s complete revelation of himself. It is that Person who speaks to us through the Bible with all its different kinds of writing from various times and situations. It is as though we see the face of Jesus throughout the Bible, but through a lattice of different kinds of style and workmanship.

So there is a lot in the Bible that leads up to the full revelation of God in Jesus, a lot that prepares the way. We see something of that in today’s readings, because there is a progression that runs through them.

In Genesis, going back to the dawn of human history, Abraham is called by God and believes. He is called to leave. To go on a journey, he knows not where. He is called from beyond, out of the society and the home that he has known. Even in today’s world his call might seem daunting, but to an ancient society it is incomprehensible apart from faith. It is almost taboo to leave your ancestral home. It is a call which truly comes from outside.

But here we see the beginnings of the Church. The Church, “ekklesia” in Greek, means those who are “called out”. The Church is the community formed by God’s call to come out of their old way of living and seek the new life that God offers. In the Church the call of Abraham continues.

Abraham has to leave behind more than just the place where he had lived to set out into the unknown. On that journey he finds he is also called to leave behind old ways of thinking. He is called to leave behind an idea of life bounded by death: although he and his wife are very old, God promises him children, indeed, he will have more descendants than the sand of the seashore. He is called to leave behind a culture of ritual violence, when the Lord intervenes to prevent the sacrifice of Abraham’s son Isaac. In all this Abraham has to follow in faith to a place he does not know. From a human perspective this is risky, even foolhardy. But it is God’s initiative and God proves himself faithful. When God calls, we can trust God and follow.

Now there was a promise made to Abraham, a promise of blessing. “In you all the families of the earth shall be blessed”. St Paul in the letter to the Romans tells us what this blessing is: grace through faith, available to everyone. Abraham’s descendants are all who live by faith, all those who have heard God’s call to leave behind what they know and follow in faith. Thus all the families of the earth are blessed in Abraham.

But what is the goal of this journey of faith? In our Gospel reading today Jesus tells Nicodemus, it is the life “from above”, the life of the Spirit.

There’s a pun in the Greek in what Jesus says, the phrase translated “born from above” can also mean “born again”.  And Nicodemus only gets the second meaning, being “born again”, and he doesn’t understand how that can happen. “Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?”

In terms of the life of the flesh, biological life, this is incomprehensible. But the “birth from above” that Jesus is talking about is the birth of the Spirit, a new kind of life altogether.

Eternal life is the life that God lives, life without limit, giving itself without ever being diminished. And this is what Jesus promises us. Eternal life is not biological life stretched out for ever. It is the very life of God given to us by his Spirit, raising us to union with him.

The life of the Spirit which blows where it wills reflects the journey of Abraham, go to a land that I will show you. The spirit brings freedom to follow in the adventure of faith. There is no map! And this life is offered to all, it is entirely God’s gift, given out of love for the world.

And the world stands utterly in need of that love, that gift of new life. The world is still in the place that Abraham left behind, fixated on sacrifice, violence and death. The world God loves is the world which is so centred on death that it will crucify the Lamb of God.

When Jesus is crucified it is as if the whole of human history draws together into a point at that moment. All the ways in which humanity has gone wrong from the beginning are there on Calvary, nailing the victim to the cross. And the victim nailed to the cross forgives his murderers, and in them everyone and everything. God in his love for the world gives himself on the cross, placing himself at the centre of our darkness and sin.

And having given himself to us in our darkness, he can also give himself to us as life. Jesus was raised from the dead, and our death-bound human culture was broken right open so that God’s new life could come flooding in. The theologian James Alison has written: “It was not just that God loved his son and so raised him up, but that the giving of the son and his raising up revealed God as love for us”.

When we say (with John’s Gospel) that the Lamb of God takes away the sins of the world, we don’t just mean that individual sins are forgiven. It is the whole human condition, everything that humanity has been from the beginning, that is caught up in God’s love, and forgiven and made new. A new beginning if offered to all: instead of being trapped in our death-bound desires, Jesus enables us to be caught up in the desire of God for the world, which is love.

Jesus is the completely transforming encounter with God who is love for us. In him humanity is called out of its old death-bound imagination to share the life of God.

This is God’s gift to us. We do not need to strive for it, we cannot earn it. It is offered to everyone, no exceptions, whoever you are and whatever your life has been. The new life of the Spirit is “from above”, from beyond us. God’s call comes to us to leave behind our old way of living and to follow in faith. And all we have to do is believe his promise. The land that he will show us is eternal life, the life that God lives, his love given for us and to us so that we might love eternally. God’s promise did not fail for Abraham, it did not fail for Jesus. It will not fail for us.

We, the Church called out from the world, are part of that same call, that same story, that same promise. God is faithful. He keeps his promises. And he so loved the world, and you, and me, that he gave his only Son, so that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

Sermon Lent 1 2014

Genesis 2.15-17; 3.1-7

Romans 5.12-19

Matthew 4.1-11

Today Jesus is driven by the Spirit into the wilderness. This is just after his baptism, when the spirit descended like a dove and the voice from heaven proclaimed that Jesus was God’s Son, the Beloved. And immediately that same Spirit, the Spirit of God, drives Jesus into the wilderness. This is a place where there is nothing, where security and comfort are taken away. But this is God’s doing, because Jesus must depend entirely on God. This alone is the path of liberation that he follows, for and on behalf of all humanity.

The forty days that Jesus spends in the wilderness recall the forty years that Israel wandered after they were freed from Egypt. They too were brought out by the Spirit of God into the wilderness, liberated from their slavery, but leaving behind its security - the fleshpots, the onions and leeks that they hankered after. In the insecurity and uncertainty of the wilderness Israel wanted wanted food on demand, gods they could see and control, the golden calf that Aaron made. They failed the test. But Jesus now goes out into the wilderness in solidarity with Israel, and all humanity. He does not fail, and so is proved to be God’s Son.

In the wilderness there is nothing. Or at least, nothing comforting. There are stones. Vast empty spaces. Silence. God is in the wilderness, but God is not a thing. God simply is; we might say the wilderness is in God as much as God is in it. God is not something we can comprehend of control, not like the golden calf of the Israelites. 

The Devil also is in the wilderness, but the Devil has no existence of his own. The Devil is an absence, a parasite trying to suck in and destroy what is good. If all created things are good, then whatever is evil has no positive existence of its own, but is a diminution of the good that ought to have been. It may seem strange to say that the Devil doesn’t really exist, because the Devil is certainly real, and powerful. The Devil is like the vacuum that drives a hurricane: low pressure, an absence, at its centre, draws in the air from round about with destructive effects. 

But because the Devil only exists as a parasite on what is good, the Devil is deceitful. He has to present his absence, his furious emptiness, as an alternative good, to try to seduce humanity from what is truly good, which is God alone.

So in these temptations the Devil presents a false idea of God (and therefore of being the Son of God), to see if Jesus will fall for it.

The first temptation, command this stone to become bread. This is the temptation to self-sufficiency, I have all I need, I provide all I require, I’m in control, I’m not going to let go, I don’t need anyone else. It is the temptation to put ourselves at the centre, to make a god of our ego. 

But in truth it is God who is at the centre, God first, not me first. God creates and provides, and gives our being, entirely out of his own generosity. Everything we have is gift. So we don’t need to grasp and control. We do need to recognise our dependence. Letting go means opening my hands so that God can hold me, an act of faith and trust and worship. 

How easy it is to be taken over by the ownership and control of what we have or what we do. Lent, the wilderness, is a place where we can examine ourselves, and find out where we need to stop holding on, so that God can hold us.

The second temptation is subtle and cunning: throw yourself down from the temple, and God will send his angels to protect you. This is the most subtle false idea of god, because it seems to be talking about God. But actually the god who is being suggested here is a god of control, a god on demand, a god who does what we want. Like those golden calves of the Israelites. This is a spiritual power that we can manipulate - so although the devil talks about “god”, look who is still at the centre - me and my demands. 

The true God does not intervene on demand to arrange the universe according to our whims. The true God allows us our freedom, because he has created us in love, to be free to love. The true God is not a controller, but a lover. His will is our greatest good and our peace. In abandonment to Divine providence we will find all we need. But we have to be free to choose his will, to say, as Jesus will say in Gethsemane, not my will but yours. And there is our true freedom - the freedom to love. 

Today there is so much idolatry even among Christians  - the prosperity gospel and miracle cults abound on the fringes of Christianity, but even in the mainstream churches Christians can be bewildered when they pray for something that seems to them to be good and it doesn’t happen. In God’s will is our peace, and our prayer is first of all aligning ourselves with that will: Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done - before we ask for our daily bread. 

The third temptation, the offer of all the kingdoms of the world. This is the temptation to see the way the world runs as god, the supreme truth, the way that life should be ordered. Violence, injustice, oppression, exclusion, might is right. All of those echoing in fact the emptiness, the fury, of the Devil himself. The temptation is to accept this political reality of the world as the final truth. 

But the God of Jesus is the God who liberates, who is on the side of the victims of the world and its political structures. The Kingdom of God stands over against the Empires of this world. So we don’t have to collude with oppressive power and we can be called to make a stand against it - including in politics. Whoever says that the Church should keep out of politics hasn’t begun to take the Bible seriously. But also in the workplace, in the home, in our relationships - and recognising also the ways in which we ourselves oppress and exclude.

Jesus passes the tests. He recognises, and refuses, the false ideas of god presented to him. And therefore he is truly the Son of the true God. Jesus in these temptations represents humanity, and in him we are adopted as sons and daughters of God. We too are called to struggle with the same temptations, because we follow the path of Jesus, which is the way of being truly human. Unlike Jesus, we do not always pass the test. We are not without sin, but through forgiveness and grace we are called to continual conversion, to turn away from these false gods to the one true God.

Lenten fasting and abstinence is to help us learn to depend on God once again. Prayer is vital, rediscovering our hunger for God in our hearts. Without prayer fasting and abstinence are worse than useless, because they will simply focus our attention on ourselves, on what we are achieving. The discipline of Lent is about letting go of our self-obsession and desire for control so that we can learn to be God’s children once again.

Sermon at Parish Mass Sunday next before Lent 2014

Exodus 24.12-18

2 Peter 1.16-21

Matthew 17.1-9

Last week I noticed via Facebook that a friend had gone to the Canary Islands. How lovely, I thought, imagining sun, sea, and leisurely hours on the beach. Then he posted a picture of himself in hiking boots surrounded by rocks, snow and ice. The picture was captioned: “Pico del Teide (12,198 ft)”. He’d gone there to climb a volcano on Tenerife.

Well mountains do have an attraction, and sadly there aren’t many in London - Muswell Hill doesn’t really count. But I have to say that my preferred way of appreciating a mountain, such as those in northern Italy, is from a lakeside terrace, as it’s coming up to dinner time, with a glass of Prosecco in my hand, or maybe an Aperol spritz, watching the distant peaks change colour from white to pink to purple as the sun goes down. 

Mountains have always been objects of contemplation. With its roots deep in the earth, and its peak touching heaven, the mountain is a symbol of the human soul seeking union with God. Mountains have always been important holy places, lifted up above the ordinary, places of encounter with the Divine.

And today we have another Gospel reading set on a mountain. The Church chooses the Sunday Mass readings for us, so that we read them in common with all our brothers and sisters who are gathering today to celebrate the Eucharist. And we always have the Transfiguration gospel on the Sunday before Lent.

We do this because it is the start of a journey, the journey we will follow through Lent, the last journey of Jesus to Jerusalem, to his betrayal, his death and burial, and his resurrection. As it happens the Gospel readings for the last few weeks have also been set on a mountain, as we have been hearing about the sermon on the mount. Today’s is a different mountain, and comes much later in the story of Jesus, but it is connected with the earlier one. Both the sermon on the mount and the Transfiguration are about revelation. They are about God showing himself in Jesus, in different ways. 

In the sermon on the mount we see Jesus as the new lawgiver, like Moses of old. But Jesus is the law in person; as well as being the messenger, he is himself the message. He lives out what God is like, and calls people to him to become his disciples, so that they can live with his life too. God is revealed in and through a human life.

But on the mountain of transfiguration the veils are parted, and God shines through. The disciples see the uncreated light, the light which is God, shining from the face of Jesus. They see the cloud overshadowing him, the cloud of God’s glory which in the time of Moses had appeared over the ark of the covenant in the wilderness.

But this scene of glory comes just after a much more dark and troubling scene. What comes before is told in Matthew chapter 16: “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.”

St Peter then had failed to understand, and tried to dissuade Jesus from a path that must have seemed madness. And again and again, on the path to Jerusalem, the disciples will not understand the way that Jesus is leading them. It is a path of darkness and contradiction. It is the journey with Jesus to Jerusalem, to rejection and the cross. At the end of that journey the disciples will desert Jesus and run away. Beyond that, and only beyond that, lies the glory of the resurrection. 

Today that path is illuminated by the glory of God revealed in Jesus. At the end, the glory of the resurrection will shine forth. But, in between, there is the path of darkness and contradiction. And this is the path that Jesus must take, the path that the disciples must follow.

Today, he says to them, “do not be afraid”, just as he will say after he has been raised from the dead. Do not be afraid. The path of darkness and contradiction is none other than the way of life and peace. The way of the cross is the way of glory. 

And Jesus touches them as he says this. As if to say, I’m real, I’m human. Like you. This real solid human nature, which belongs to Jesus and his disciples, is being transformed by the indwelling presence of God. This human nature which will suffer and die will also be raised to the glory of the Father.

The light of God’s glory has shone from Jesus, but that light illuminates the cross. The cross can only be understood in that light. God’s glory shines from Jesus on the mount of Transfiguration. But the cross too is a “mountain experience”, the symbolic mountain of Calvary where God’s glory is revealed in the form of submission to suffering and death. 

To unite us with God, God has united himself with our humanity. To free us from sin, Jesus suffers the consequences of sin. To raise us to new life, Jesus is raised to the glory of the Father. 

Humanity was created to share God’s life but through sin has turned away from God’s good purpose. Sin itself is a mystery, we do not know where it came from. We simply observe that humanity, from the dawn of consciousness, has preferred to be turned in on itself rather than being open to God. Humanity tends to prefer rivalry, violence, division, possessiveness, jealousy, lust - all those things that close us in on ourselves and shut us out from communion with God and one another. 

The way of the cross, which is the way by which we are liberated from all that, is simply this: God’s love entering into our unloveliness, to free us from ourselves and open us up once more to the love for which we were created. Love which is the glory of God transforming our human nature. 

The uncreated light transfigures our mortal bodies, changing us into the likeness of Christ. But this can only happen by the way of the cross, the way by which we renounce ourselves and willingly follow Christ on the path of self-emptying, self-denial and self-sacrifice. That path is symbolised by the Lent we will shortly begin, which will conclude in Jerusalem, at the cross and the empty tomb. 

But it is also the pattern of our lives, marked on us by our baptism. Like those first disciples, we do not always understand, we do not always get it right, but we follow. We follow because we have caught a glimpse of God’s glory in the face of Jesus Christ. We follow because we have seen something of what God’s loveliness is, transforming our unloveliness into his image. We have seen how different life could be if we live for Christ and not for ourselves. We follow him even along the path of darkness and contradiction that may mark much of our lives, because it is none other than the way of life and peace. By following Jesus we are joined with him in his death and his resurrection, so that we might come to share his glory. 

Sermon at Parish Mass, Second Sunday before Lent 2014

Genesis 1:1-2:3
Romans 8:18-25
Matthew 6:24-34

Well it’s all very well, saying “don’t worry, don’t be anxious”, but which of us can really live like that? Perhaps we might think that maybe, once in a while, we can live like that, in our summer holidays, possibly, if we have any. Or perhaps one day we might win the lottery or the premium bonds, and then, finally, we’ll be able to sit back and not have a care in the world.

That is one way to read today’s part of the sermon on the mount, as an invitation to escapism. But Jesus himself seems to be saying something more rooted in reality. Each day, he tells us, will have trouble enough of its own. 

As we have been seeing over the last few weeks, there are always two ways of hearing the sermon on the mount, and if we hear it directed to ourselves as an instruction on how to behave, then we are mis-hearing it. The sermon on the mount describes Jesus, and describes the community that Jesus draws to himself and transforms into his image. The key to understanding the sermon on the mount is to look to Jesus and see him.

Jesus is not someone who is free from trouble and sorrow. Far from it. He has known and will know hardship and adversity, the opposition of the religious authorities, the misunderstanding of his disciples. He will in the end be rejected and condemned and handed over to death. We need to see that it is the Man of Sorrows, the one who will follow the path of suffering to the cross, who says to us, “do not be anxious”. And the same is true too of the community of his disciples. 

It is generally true in every age that the Church will be a sign of contradiction, misunderstood, marginalised, and in some times and places rejected and persecuted. This was probably the situation of the community in which Matthew’s gospel was written. This was a community of Jewish Christians, weathering the storm after the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70, rejected and persecuted by the mainstream religious authorities of their day. So it was particularly important for them to record these sayings of Jesus, do not be anxious, your heavenly Father knows your needs, whatever may be going on seek first his Kingdom and his righteousness. 

The community of Jesus can live this way because Jesus describes a deep trust and faith in God in his creation. The creation stories in Genesis, the first of which we heard this morning, describe creation embodying God’s generosity, abundance and goodness. Everything is gift, therefore we cannot grasp and possess but must receive. Whatever adversities may come our way the basic giftedness of our being cannot be taken away, for it is from God. Whereas attempts to construct ourselves, which is what wealth is about, are built on a very shaky foundation, a foundation that we cannot trust - ourselves.

And God is always, in every moment, the creator.  Genesis says “in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth”, and in the Hebrew this means more than just what happened at the start. “In the beginning” means “that which is true in principle”. The ongoing principle of the universe’s existence is that it is created. God is holding everything in being, giving existence from his inexhaustible generosity, from moment to moment.

Faith in God the creator means that even in adversity and suffering, even in the face of death, we can still trust in God’s generous love to give what we need. As St Paul says in today’s extract from Romans, the whole creation will be set free from its bondage to decay, glory will be revealed.

The focus of Jesus is on his Father. He looks constantly to the generous love that will not let him go. So, too, the community of Jesus looks to the Father. Its focus is not on itself. The community of Jesus is a community which is so forgetful of itself that it can be generous. And when it is, its generosity shows what God is like. As Jesus says earlier in the sermon on the mount, let your light shine before others so that they may give glory to your Father in heaven. This saying is paradoxical, because you can only reveal God’s love and generosity in what you do if your focus is not on what you do. It only happens when you have stopped being concerned with yourself because your focus is on God.

Now the Church, which is the community of Jesus, does not always do this very well. Last week, for instance, the House of Bishops issued some pastoral guidance on same sex marriage, in which many things were said in a negative way. Services of blessing are not allowed, people who want prayers must be asked about why they are disobeying the Church’s teaching, the clergy may not enter these new civil marriages. I’m sure it wasn’t the intention of the bishops, but the negative tone of this document has given to some the impression of a Church obsessed with its own internal concerns, so inward-looking and consumed with anxiety that it has stopped speaking a language that the world can hear. 

But we take heart because we see in the gospels that the disciples themselves were always doing this. They were so often caught up in their own concerns and anxieties. There isn’t enough bread for all these people, send them away. Our boat is sinking! Which one of us is the greatest? Can we have the best seats in the Kingdom? 

But Jesus does not abandon his disciples and continues to draw them to him, to form them into his image. His patience with those who are so slow to let go of themselves and trust in him is in itself a showing forth of God’s loving generosity. The attraction of Jesus is so compelling and so beautiful that it can overcome even the self-obsession of his disciples. 

And when the focus of the Church is on Jesus and not on itself then our light shines before the world as his people once again. And in fact the Church mostly does do this, even if it sometimes manages to give the opposite impression. From the network of winter shelters for the homeless, which churches run all across London, to the monks standing in the line of fire in the Ukraine to try to prevent violence, with nothing to protect them except the Gospel they serve, which is the living alternative to a world consumed by violence and sin. 

The love of God in Jesus is in fact constantly shown in his community as we reach out the marginalised, show God’s love to those whom the world forgets, and show that we are prepared to risk everything for the Kingdom. The community of Jesus is a community which is so forgetful of itself that it can be generous. And so, even with the failures and frailties of its members, it becomes the means of showing God’s generous love to the world.

Sermon at Parish Mass, Third Sunday before Lent 2014

Ecclesiasticus 15.15-20
1 Corinthians 3.1-9
Matthew 5.21-37

If you look at a scene through binoculars the wrong way round then you will see it all wrong. Everything will seem impossibly remote and difficult to discern. But look the right way round and everything is clear. Everything is brought near, into focus, the proportions and perspective are right.

The sermon on the mount continues. And as we heard last week, we need to see it the right way round. We need to see that scene on the mountain correctly. If we think that Jesus is setting out a code of conduct that we must follow, so that we can qualify to be his disciples, we will be getting it the wrong way round. The demands will seem impossibly remote and unattainable. Perhaps, even, impossible for ordinary human beings to observe. How can you never be angry? How can you never even look at someone with lust? 

But if we see it the right way round, we see the sermon on the mount describing Jesus. He is the law in person. His life enacts what God is like. And the sermon on the mount describes how his disciples will live, if they reflect the God revealed in Jesus. Those who are drawn to Jesus will start to live as he lives, because they will start to reflect his light.

We heard last week how the disciples of Jesus were drawn to him, attracted to him, as he went up the mountain and began to teach them. In the Old Testament Moses went up Mount Sinai to receive the Law, the ten commandments that he was to pass on to the people of Israel. And now Jesus, on the mountain, is revealed as both the lawgiver and the law in person. In place of stone tablets, there is the living revelation of God.

Today’s extract brings out the parallel between Jesus and Moses even more closely, because Jesus quotes some of the ten commandments to his disciples. But Jesus does so to draw out a deeper meaning. The commandments are not to be understood as a code of conduct imposed on us from outside. They describe the community that Jesus draws to himself, and transforms into his image. This is what a community looks like when it lives from the life of God revealed in Jesus. 

And what Jesus is actually doing is to make us look within, to look into our hearts, where our motivations and our desires arise. The ten commandments are not wrong or out of date. But they are more than a matter of behaving because we’re told to. They are more than external constraints. How we live reveals the desires of our hearts. So the external action of murder begins with anger in our hearts. The external action of adultery begins with lust in our hearts. But if our hearts desire differently we will live differently.

A commandment seen as an external constraint is like a flood bank on a river. It might hold in excessive waters for a while, but will fail in the end. A river bursts its banks because there is too much water at its source. If it is swollen and engorged where it arises, it will break free of its constraints downstream. But if the source changes, if it is not excessive, then the river will keep flowing in the right course all the way.

Well we can’t do much to change the amount of water flowing into the Thames and other rivers at the moment. But the desires of our hearts are different. If we draw near to Jesus, if we are attracted to him as his disciples, then we will find the desires of our hearts beginning to be transformed. Jesus reveals what God is like. Jesus makes it possible to desire as God desires. And in this part of the sermon on the mount he is asking us to look within and ask what it is that we most deeply desire.

Human beings from the beginning have tended to desire in rivalrous and violent ways. Desire is infectious: we learn what is desirable by seeing what other people desire, so we come to desire it too. And that can bring us into conflict with the other person who desires the same thing. This is why the ten commandments include a command against coveting: desiring what your neighbour has. Lust and adultery are just a particular case of the same thing, in the area of sexual desire. And murder begins with the anger we feel when we are prevented from having what we desire, because someone else has it instead.

The same applies to Jesus’ teaching on marriage and divorce. In 1st Century Jewish society men had the right to divorce their wives, but not the other way round. This would often leave the divorced woman in a very precarious situation, with little means of support, while the man was free to find a new wife. Desire which is conditional and dispensable, desire which I can change if I feel like it, does not reflect at heart the love and faithfulness of God.

So also Jesus’ teaching on swearing oaths. Why do we swear oaths, for example in court, or to the bishop? Is it not because there is an assumed mistrust of human speech and integrity? We can’t be assumed to be telling the truth unless we’re constrained. But Jesus says, let your yes be yes and your no no. If your heart is truthful, then your speaking will be also. Nothing more is needed. Get it right at source and everything that flows out from the source will be right too.

Jesus’ teaching on the ten commandments shows us what really needs to happen: our desire needs to be converted at source, in our hearts. We need to imitate, not the rivalrous desires of humanity, but the generous and self-giving desire of God. And it is the attractiveness of God that makes this possible. The disciples drew close to Jesus, just as we do. They gathered to him because they felt the attraction of God’s love and desire revealed in him. 

The disciples in the Gospels are described as though they were in love with Jesus. When he calls them by the lakeside, they leave everything behind and follow him. They gather round him on the mountain, thirsting for his words, and more for his presence. He is like a magnetic force of attraction, a tremendous desire, God’s desire, calling them to him. But God’s desire is all love, all generosity, all self-giving. There is no trace of rivalry or violence or envy in God’s desiring. He loves all humanity and longs for all humanity to come to him, the source. He longs for us to abandon our death-bound desires and be caught up instead in his desire, which is the desire to give and expend himself in love.

If we are in love with Jesus, then he lives within us, and he is changing our hearts. We begin to imitate his desire, his love, in place of all the rivalrous and violent desires that have been driving us up to now. The love of God will change our hearts so that they become a source of love welling up within us like pure clear water. And we will be transformed more and more into the image of Christ which is the Church, the people who live according to his life, and who show forth his love in the world.

Sermon at Parish Mass, Fourth Sunday before Lent 2014

The Mount of the Beatitudes

Isaiah 58.1-9a; 
1 Corinthians 2.1-12; 
Matthew 5.1,13-20

That gospel reading was part of the beginning of the sermon on the mount, which occupies three chapters in Matthew. The fact that this key teaching of Jesus happens on a mountain is significant. In the Old Testament Moses received the Law on Mount Sinai. So now Jesus, the new and greater Moses, also gives his law on the mountain. 

But there is a key difference between Moses and Jesus. Moses was the messenger. He had the law given to him, words for him to carry down on stone tablets. But Jesus appears on the mountain as the law in person. He is himself both the messenger and the message. 

In the sermon he gives what are called the beatitudes: the “blessed are you” sayings. “Blessed are the peacemakers, blessed are the meek, the pure in heart, those who mourn, those who are persecuted”, and so on. And those sayings describe Jesus. He models the law he preaches. In place of a written law on stone tablets there is a person. The law is no longer instructions from a distance - behave this way because I say so. In Jesus it is seen that the law is what God is like, revealed in person. The person and the teaching of Jesus cannot be separated. 

And Jesus draws his disciples to him on the mountain. They gather to him as he is revealed as the law in person. He takes his seat - the position of teaching authority - and teaches them. And says to them these astonishing words:

You are the salt of the earth... You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hidden... let your light shine before others.

We might perhaps expect Jesus to say something like this of himself. Indeed in John’s Gospel he does, “I am the light of the world”. But here he also says the same thing about his disciples. “You are the light of the world.”

Those who go to Jesus up the mountain are drawn to him by some great power of attraction. This is part of the great revelation of God in Jesus. God is attractive! His love and light draw people to him, when he is revealed in person. 

And those who are drawn to the light shining from Jesus reflect that light. They, too, begin to show what God is like. And they show it in a way that the world can’t help but notice. The light of the world. The salt of the earth. A city built on a hill that cannot be hidden. 

This is the Church, the people that Jesus calls and draws to himself. The first Israel was formed around the law revealed on Sinai. The Church of Jesus is the new Israel, not a denial of the old but the original Israel expanded to embrace all nations, formed by the revelation of God in Jesus, drawing all people to himself.

This is the key to understanding the sermon on the mount. The sermon is not a set of ethical instructions: live like this and you will become a follower of Jesus. It is the other way round. Those who are attracted by Jesus and drawn to him will begin to reflect his light and therefore will live like Jesus lives. The sermon describes how Jesus lives, and how his Church will live. 

So the Church of Jesus, also, cannot be separated from the person and work of Jesus. The three go together, drawing their life from the inexhaustible well which is the communion of Jesus with the Father, God’s revelation of himself in person. The first disciples drew near to Jesus on the mountain and were transformed into his image. In the same way disciples today draw near to Jesus, on the mountain of prayer, and above all in the Eucharist where we touch and receive his living self, the summit and source of the Church’s life.

The Church cannot be cut off from Jesus and still be the Church. As Jesus says in St John’s Gospel, I am the vine, you are the branches, abide in me, for cut off from me you can do nothing. The source of the Church’s life is not itself; it is Jesus. 

Now it is all too true, and tragic, that sin and failure in the institution of the Church can obscure this truth. But nevertheless the divine source of the Church’s life remains, even when buried is the all too human mess. And the Church is, necessarily, visible. It is not an idea or an aspiration, but a concrete reality, an actual people making a difference in the world. Jesus names his Church the salt of the earth, the light of the world, a city built on a hill which cannot be hidden. 

If you are drawn to Jesus and follow him, then you are going to be that light and salt and city too. You can’t be an invisible follower of Jesus! You can't be a follower of Jesus and not make a difference!

To take two examples from events this last week. At Stratford Magistrates’ Court five Christian peace activists were on trial. They had been arrested after praying and protesting outside the arms fair held at the Excel exhibition centre last year. Various international arms dealers had set up their stalls selling their wares and wanted to get on with making a killing, so to speak. And these Christians were getting in the way. So they were arrested. Two firms at the fair were as it happens selling illegal torture equipment, but they were not arrested. In court the activists were accused of such terrible activities as “shouting loudly in a religious manner”. Fortunately the magistrates showed sense and discretion and acquitted them.

Another event last week was the sixty-second anniversary of the Queen’s accession. The Queen has spoken many times of her understanding of her role as one of service, often making the point that as Christ came to serve so his followers must do the same. We may be used to such language, but we shouldn’t forget how radically different that idea was when Jesus first taught it. “Whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first must be the willing slave of all.” Yet here is a ruler, not ashamed to own that she is a Christian and to speak of her role as one of service. 

In both of those very different examples we see Christians taking their faith seriously, being visibly different and making a real difference in the world.

Today over coffee after Mass we begin our ‘big conversation’, seeking the views of all our members on our mission as a church as we prepare to renew our Mission Action Plan. What it may mean for us at this time and in this place to be the salt of the earth, the light of the world, a city built on a hill which cannot be hidden. We’ll be exploring this under the headings of Capital Vision 2020, the Diocese of London’s mission programme, which is about being confident, compassionate and creative in our discipleship. 

But we need to get this the right way round! If we don’t it will just be a box ticking exercise to help fill the diocesan filing cabinets. Everything we do flows from Jesus. It is because he draws us to him, and we respond to his call, that we reflect his light. Our mission is his life flowing through us into the world. 

At the end of last year we spent some time reflecting on the call of Jesus to us in our month of prayer, returning to that source of our life and our mission. Now we turn our gaze outwards to the world, not to turn our backs on Jesus but to share his light and life with others. But we can only do so by remaining deeply rooted in him. Our life is his life, or it is no life. Our light is his light, or it is no light. 

But rooted in Jesus, drawing our life from him, staying close to him, we will explore and discover what it means in this community, at this time, to be his Church. Which is the particular way in which we are called to be the salt of the earth, the light of the world, a city built on a hill which cannot be hidden.

Sermon at Parish Mass, The Presentation of the Lord 2014

Malachi 3:1-5
Hebrews 2:14-end

Luke 2:22-40

Although we are in the year of Matthew, today we have a little detour into Luke, as it is only Luke, the custodian of the childhood of Jesus, who gives us this story of the presentation in the temple, forty days after Jesus was born.

And there is much going on in this reading. The aged prophets Simeon and Anna are as it were representatives of Israel, faithfully waiting down the centuries for the promises of the Lord to be fulfilled. And today they see that promise, in person, entering the Temple. Jesus is both God’s presence in person, and the messenger of the covenant, suddenly coming to his temple, as the prophecy from Malachi foretold.

And Simeon responds in the beautiful hymn of praise which used to be so very well known, in the days when most parishes had choral evensong: the Nunc Dimittis. “Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace: according to Thy word”. 

Our modern translation sounds a bit more technical: “Master, now you are dismissing your slave in peace, according to your word”. Because in Greek it is “slave”, not “servant”, and this rather technical language uncovers the meaning. This is a formula spoken when a slave has been set free - which was quite a regular piece of business in the first century.

So the appearance of Jesus causes Simeon to proclaim that he has been set free from slavery, that is, he has been redeemed. This is one of St Luke’s “reversals”, as Jesus has been brought to the Temple for his own redemption. As part of the law of Moses, all first born sons were to be redeemed, bought back, from the Lord. This was to remind the people of Israel that they were set free from slavery in Egypt by the Lord, and that freedom is God’s gift.

So Jesus has come, under the law, to receive in a figurative sense his own freedom from slavery as a son of Israel. But once he is there he is revealed as the one who will bring about that freedom for others.

There is another reversal here also. Mary and Joseph have come to offer a sacrifice according to the Law of Moses - a pair of turtle doves or two young pigeons, which was the option allowed for the poor, in place of a lamb. But that sacrifice gives way to the greater offering, which is God’s offering of himself. Jesus himself is as it were offered to God in the Temple, just as God has given himself for the world in the coming of his Son.

This is the new “sacrifice of atonement” which our reading from Hebrews talks about, reconciling humanity and God. This is not a sacrifice inflicted on someone or something else, like the old sacrifices were. It is the Son freely offering himself to the Father, pouring himself out in love, just as God has emptied himself to take the form of a servant, being born in our human nature. 

When Jesus is presented in the Temple our human nature is presented with him, because he is both Divine and human in one person. Humanity is taken into the Divine outpouring of love of the persons of the Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And this presentation of Jesus as a child prefigures a greater and later return to the Father. In the death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus our human nature is definitively and for ever taken into the life of God.

So the light of God shines in Jesus as he is presented to the Father. This light brings freedom from slavery, liberation from sin and death. It illuminates the types and shadows of older forms of worship, showing their meaning in the full light of God’s presence as he suddenly appears in his temple. 

And this light is not only for Israel. Simeon proclaims that Jesus is the Light for revelation to the Gentiles. According to the prophet Isaiah God’s light would one day shine from Israel and reach to the ends of the earth, to gather all peoples in to God’s kingdom of justice and peace. And Simeon proclaims that this is happening here and now with Jesus.

But the light of God does not only bring liberation. It also causes division: “‘This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed”. Why is this? It is because “the inner thoughts of many will be revealed”. The light shines in a sinful world. Jesus brings conflict because atonement - being reconciled with God - means becoming like God by accepting and reflecting his self-giving love. Which means rejecting self-will, the assertion of the self over against others, hatred, violence, envy. Which is how the world tends to run, but doesn’t really want that to be seen for what it is.

For those who stay faithful to the light this brings suffering and sorrow. Mary is told “a sword will pierce your own soul too”. She who stands in the Temple today is destined to be the sorrowful mother standing at the foot of the cross. She will receive the dead body of her Son in her arms, when finally the work of love is done in the only way it can be in a world that is deeply resistant to love. 

The light of Christ is like a double edged sword: it cuts both ways. It shows the path to liberation, to reconciliation with God. But it also reveals the fallen nature of humanity and the ugliness of sin. Once the light has come you cannot remain neutral. Once you see yourself in the light of Christ you face the choice to turn to him or to turn away. 

But Jesus has come as the Saviour. The Lord has entered his temple, the light for revelation to the Gentiles and the glory of his people Israel. A light that will not be put out. 

Jesus has come to redeem humanity from the slavery of sin and death. He has come with God’s gift of forgiveness, breaking the chains that have held humanity captive down the ages. He has come that the light and glory of God may shine in the hearts of all. He has come that all may forsake their sins and dwell in the love of God. We celebrate the coming of that light today. 

We know that following the light of Christ means that we must be prepared, like Jesus, to be a sign of contradiction in the world. We know that must be prepared, like Mary, for the suffering that may come when we commit ourselves to love come what may, whether the world wants to accept that love or not. But we know also that the light of Christ is the true light of liberation and freedom, that he is the way by which we, with all the world, are called to enter in to the life and love of God. So we do not need to be afraid to follow Jesus, and today as we celebrate the coming of his light we renew our decision to turn to him and open our hearts to that light, the light of God’s love shining in the darkness of the world.