Ninth Sunday after Trinity 2018

2 Kings 4:42-44 and Ephesians 3:14-21 and John 6:1-21

To be a disciple of Jesus is to learn to see and to act differently, to see and act as Jesus does. It is a process, and one in which our teacher regularly tests us in order to help us grow. Jesus tests Philip, asking ‘Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?’ and he tests us in the same way today, in a week where the stockpiling of food and medicines has been in the news.

Set alongside our Gospel passage we heard Paul’s prayer that the saints in Ephesus and in every place may have the power to comprehend what is the breadth and length and height and depth of the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge. It is a prayer that cannot contain itself but spills out in praise to God who is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we ask or imagine. But how can we comprehend something so expansive? How are we empowered to do that?

It struck me afresh as I sat with our Gospel reading in preparation for today that both the crowd and the disciples try to grasp hold of Jesus – and fail. The crowd want to take him by force and make him king (or at least Tetrarch of Galilee and Perea in place of Herod Antipas). But their imagination is not expansive enough. The disciples wanted to take him into the boat, because his walking on the water terrified them; but immediately reach land instead. Whatever Jesus has in mind is, as Paul would have it, abundantly far more than all we can ask and imagine, whether we identify with the crowd who want to recruit Jesus to their cause or the disciples who have been recruited by Jesus to his.

To comprehend love is not to contain or control love. Indeed, the moment we attempt to contain or control love, we show that we have not comprehended love at all.

How, then, might we comprehend love? Perhaps our Gospel reading gives us a clue. After the crowd have eaten their fill, Jesus instructs the disciples to gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost. The Greek word for ‘left over’ means ‘that which is over and above’. The ‘left overs’ does make straightforward sense; but ‘that which is over and above’ carries a deeper sense: this wasn’t a miscalculation, an over-catering, a waste of food: it was a demonstration of the abundantly-more-than-we-can-ask-or-imagine.

And that which is over and above, abundantly more than we can ask or imagine, is gathered up in twelve baskets. Specifically, these were small baskets, of a standardised size used in the buying and selling of grain; a standard measure that safeguarded trust and enabled confidence. They were an agreed shared value.

What enables us to comprehend things invisible, like love, and glory, and faith; like hope, and peace, and grace, and mystery, and wisdom? What enables us to speak of community, or of the future – things no one has ever seen? What enables us to speak of the strengths and limitations of how we organise ourselves, work with others, view one another? These things depend in part on shared values. As Barak Obama said just the other day in a speech to mark the centenary of Nelson Mandela’s birth, facts are facts and lies are lies, and cooperation is dependent on recognising a certain baseline of objective truths. You don’t mess with the size of the basket; and if you do, everybody agrees that you are in the wrong.

But a standardised container is only part of the answer. We come to comprehend love by gathering up the fragments left over by love – and by recognising that the fragments represent not the totality, that must be hoarded because we might not have enough, but the over-and-above that which already filled us. So, how about we have a go at gathering up some fragments?

Within the Minster community, in no particular order, we come across fragments of God’s love in the sharing of a sign of Peace;

we come across fragments of God’s love in receiving tokens of the broken body of Christ in our hands and on our lips;

we come across fragments of God’s love in the people who slip into this building throughout the week to sit, heads bowed in prayer; to light a candle, or pin a prayer request on the board;

we come across fragments of God’s love in the noticing who isn’t here today and feeling the weight of their absence, and in the visiting of the elderly and infirm;

we come across fragments of God’s love in the smiles of our Iranian brothers and sisters;

we come across fragments of God’s love in the dependable familiarity of our liturgy;

we come across fragments of God’s love in the coming-together of different generations and in the diversity of our skin-colour and nationality; our lived-experience and point-of-view;

we come across fragments of God’s love in the children and grandchildren who are at home here week by week, and in the welcoming of other families over the summer;

we come across fragments of God’s love in the stories of Jesus we hear again whenever we come together;

we come across fragments of God’s love in every wedding, baptism, and funeral;

we come across fragments of God’s love in the singing of the choir and the ringing of the bells; the dusting of the pews and the welcome on the door; the anointing with oil for healing and the serving of refreshments;

we come across fragments of God’s love in the beauty of the Sunderland sunrise and sunset, of our beaches, and the horizon where sea meets sky.

And each of these is just a fragment, left-overs of the miracle of love. Small in themselves but pushing back where fear and self-interest would hem-in our breadth and length and height and depth. Another way to understand gathering fragments is counting our blessings. Counting our blessings may be a small thing, a dismissively simple thing; but in a society contemplating stockpiling resources, it is a deeply subversive thing. Counting our blessings makes that which is more abundant that we can ask or imagine comprehensible. What begins as a discipline can become a habit, a disposition that increases our thankfulness and opens us up to even more wonder – and Paul’s prayer becomes fulfilled in our lives, to the glory of God.

In a world shaped more by worry than by wonder, more by fear than faith, that is Good News. So, throughout the week ahead, gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost. You’ll be amazed at how many are fed and satisfied.

Eighth Sunday after Trinity 2018

Ephesians 2:11-22 and Mark 6:30-34, 53-56

I have recently returned from spending eleven days taking part in a clergy consultation at St George’s House within the walls of Windsor Castle. Each morning and afternoon, we gathered in St George’s Chapel to take part in the daily round of worship. Since the royal wedding, they have seen a marked increase in visitor numbers; and it was quite surreal to go about our deliberations in a private space within the castle, separated from thousands of tourists by a thin metal chain running across an archway.

We were there to wrestle with how we might more confidently engage in public conversations about God in the context of the challenges facing us as a society today, including healthcare, Brexit, democracy in a ‘post-truth’ Information Age, the activity of organised criminal gangs, and environmental crises.

Underlying all we reflected on was the use of language: how we speak about God. One of the ‘alternative facts’ being promoted at large is the belief that Science and Religion are fundamentally opposed, and that Science provides us with a superior way of talking about life, the universe and everything. That is, of course, a theoretical approach that ignores the inconvenient empirical evidence of those engaged in scientific work who hold religious convictions. But one of the many things that scientific language and religious language have in common is that they both turn to metaphor in order to make sense and pass on meaning.

A metaphor is a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to an object or action to which it is not literally applicable. Metaphors engage us emotionally and help us to understand complex ideas; but they also powerfully shape how we respond to complex issues. To give a scientific example, one of the most significant areas of biological research involves gene mapping. Mapping is a cartographic metaphor, one that emphasises discovery and pioneering, noble endeavour. It sounds better than gene colonialism (and masks ethical concerns about pharmaceutical companies copyrighting our genetic makeup). On the subject of genetics, Richard Dawkins wrote a book titled The Selfish Gene – another metaphor. Genes aren’t selfish; but it suggests something very different from The Cooperative Gene…

At Windsor we listened to an environmentalist speak of how her team have built a platform in the cloud: not an observation deck in the mist-enshrouded rainforest canopy, but a metaphorical description of storing and sharing information. We were told that we have a window to address global warming; and need to significantly reduce our carbon footprint. Metaphor.

Paul turned to metaphor to speak of how God, in and through Jesus, was bringing Jews and Gentiles together. He tells the churches of Asia Minor that they were strangers and aliens but have become citizens. He speaks of a dividing wall being demolished and a temple being built – neither the Jewish temple in Jerusalem nor the temple of Artemis in Ephesus, but something new.

For some, being a stranger and alien is not only a metaphor but also literally true. It is literally true for quite a few of our congregation at Sunderland Minster. And we live in a world where there are literal walls, or at least fences: dividing Israelis from Palestinians; potentially dividing Americans from Mexicans.

But if you are a Christian, of non-Jewish descent, you are someone who was a stranger and alien, and who has been given citizenship. Note this is not a comparison, not a simile. We were not like strangers and aliens (our Gospel reading this morning employed a simile to describe people as being ‘like sheep without a shepherd’). We were strangers and aliens, without hope in the world. An exilic metaphor of longing for a new beginning. And then – because it doesn’t end there – an architectural metaphor, of these immigrants having something of value to contribute that transforms the receiving culture. And that has to shape how we view asylum-seekers and immigrants, Christian or otherwise. It has to shape how we participate in public discourse around these areas, in a society driven to rushing about so that it has no time to rest and to reflect. Metaphor can pre-dispose us to fear, as in front page headlines proclaiming a tsunami of foreigners heading towards us. But metaphor can also open our hearts and minds towards others.

Of course, Paul’s primary concern is not that the Roman empire should be persuaded by the efforts of the saints in Ephesus. His focus is on another city – not beyond this world, but in its very midst – whose members are being transformed by Christ, their ruler. It is a transformation that involved, first, the breath-taking, costly dismantling of the wall that divides: hostility having been put to death on the cross – its very moment of apparent triumph – so that we are no longer under its power; so that now, where before we focused on the outward differences, we see in one another the family-likeness of God and of each other as sisters and brothers.

Second, it is a transformation that involves being built together spiritually into a dwelling-place for God (note: a dismantling that has been accomplished, and a building project that is ongoing). Now the Hebrew scriptures we know as the Old Testament are clear: God’s dwelling-place is in the heavens, and even they cannot contain God; but it was a metaphorical reality that God’s dwelling-place was the temple in Jerusalem, and if prayer to God was addressed there, from anywhere, God would receive it and enter-into correspondence. A postal metaphor, perhaps. The temple of Artemis functioned in a similar way, where the goddess of (among other things) hunting and child-birth could be petitioned, so both Jew and Gentile would recognise this. If we, then, are being built into a dwelling-place for God, not only does every stone have its place but we exist for our neighbours, carrying their petitions to God and God’s reply to them. And that reply always begins with a proclamation of peace, grounded in the person of Christ.

This incorporation with and in Christ has the power to transform the whole world. But it is so far beyond the scope of regular language to grasp, only metaphor can begin to communicate its wonder and our awe. It cannot be fully explained, but it can be responded to at the deep level of being human (like sheep; but not sheep). We cannot stop Jesus from getting away, but we might touch even the fringe of his cloak, and that is enough to be healed.

Fifth Sunday after Trinity 2018

Lamentations 3:22-33 and 2 Corinthians 8:7-24 and Mark 5:21-43

I want this morning to focus on Lamentations, in part because it is a gem of a book and in part because it has become unfamiliar: a lost treasure. The Lamentations are a collection of five poems written in response to the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonian empire in 587 BC. The Babylonians had besieged Jerusalem, on and off, for twenty years; culminating in a lengthy siege that prevented food from entering the city, until people were dying in the streets, pressed so hard that cannibalism was on the table at least as a serious option. After the fall, the ruling class were carried off into exile in Babylon to the east, while many others fled to Egypt to the south. It was the very undoing of the Great Story that began with the Call of Abraham (way out east) and pivoted on the Exodus out of the land of Egypt. It was a disaster we cannot imagine, not because there is nothing comparable going on in the world today, but because we have hardened our hearts to the images on our tv screens.

This took place almost 400 years after king David, who was known as a writer of psalms. And among his most famous psalms, then as now, was the one we know as the twenty-third. Here, David, who had looked after his father’s sheep as a young boy, took up the rhythms of the flock as a metaphor for human life. Just as the sheep were under the care of their shepherd, so were God’s people under God’s care. The shepherd sought out pasture for the sheep, leading them along the right paths in search of grass. When the low winter pasture wore thin, the high summer meadow beckoned, the flat table-top hills covered with wild flowers like a banquet table spread with the finest of fare.

The journey was steep, up narrow paths along the edge of the wadi or channel cut by flash floods in the spring rains. Moreover, hungry predators hid in the rocks — lions and bears. The sheep couldn’t see them; but could smell them. And yet they followed the shepherd on the path because he carried a crook, to press against their flank and steer them away from the drop; and a club for driving back predators.

At the end of the trail, the shepherd would run his hand over the sheep, parting the wool in search of cuts and sores picked up on the way, pouring on healing oil where needed, before sending the sheep out into the meadow. By day, the shepherd would keep a look-out for predators; and by night he would bring the sheep into the safety of the pen, sleeping in the entrance as a human gate in order to protect them.

That is the story of the twenty-third psalm. And, of course, it isn’t about sheep but about a people, and their long history of being led by God. How God had taken a people down to Egypt when there was famine in Canaan; had provided for them under Joseph (of technicolour dream coat fame); how the provision there had eventually worn thin under a new Pharaoh; and how the Lord had led them out and through the wilderness, watched over by the shepherd Moses; and brought them into a land flowing with milk and honey. How that land had been contested many times, and how God had raised up judges and later kings to lead the people through adversity into freedom when they cried out for a deliverer.

But the kings that came after David were bad shepherds, almost to a man. And eventually, God had had enough.

I tell you this because the third poem, the one at the very heart of Lamentations, contains a breath-taking inversion of the twenty-third psalm. The writer says of God, ‘I expected protection, but you have beaten me with your club. I expected to be brought through the dark valley, but you have taken me there to ambush me. I expected your healing hand over me, but you have broken my bones and made my flesh waste away. You have blocked my ways and made my paths crooked. Far from delivering me from the lion and the bear, you, o God, have become the bear and the lion, carrying me away and tearing me to pieces. Instead of a banquet table honouring me in front of my disgraced enemies, you have filled me with bitterness and made me the laughing stock of my enemies. Where I expected that you would restore my soul, my soul is bereft of peace; and where I proclaimed that I shall be in want of no good thing, all I had hoped for from you, Lord, is gone. In place of still waters, tears flowing without ceasing. In place of the sheep pen, the pit of death.’

The twenty-third psalm is in the Bible; but so is Lamentations chapter 3.

The twenty-third psalm speaks truthfully about our experience of life; as does Lamentations chapter 3. This is how it feels at times, and that needs expression.

And it is in this context that we hear the words that were read out this morning. It is in this context that the writer calls to mind the character of Yahweh, the Lord:

a God of never-ceasing, abundant steadfast love (verses 22, 32); of mercy (22); of faithfulness (23); of goodness (25); of compassion (32).

You see, there is a difference between our perception of God — however seriously we need to take that — and what God has revealed to us in word and action.

Life is very complex, and, at times, incredibly messy. And there are easy answers that fall short of that complexity, that sound wise but are in fact simplistic. This is equally true of the clichés of religious faith and the clichés of those who reject God. And then, on the other hand, there is the hard-won response of true simplicity, that lies on the far side of the complexity and mess. Simple does not mean easy: it takes effort to keep returning to the self-disclosure God has shared with us:

‘The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, yet by no means clearing the guilty, but visiting the iniquity of the parents upon the children and the children’s children to the third and fourth generation.’ (Exodus 34:6, 7)

The unfaithfulness of the people had consequences not only for themselves but for their children and grandchildren. We recognise that in the complexity of our own society, and of the world we live in today. But the Lord does not abandon us for ever (indeed, the power of God’s love exceeds that of our folly as a thousand exceeds three and four). There is hope: that, if we consent, God will walk alongside us, will train us in the ways of righteousness as an experienced ox trains the young ox it is yoked with. Another agricultural image from this poem, from the part we heard read out.

Of course, we also heard two other passages read out today. How do they relate together? Might I suggest they do so in this way:

Jesus points us to the Lord in the miracles we saw in our Gospel reading, in the face of a complex world in which some people live with chronic illness and children die;

and Paul points us to the Lord in seeking to raise support for a community hit by famine.

For some, these contexts are reasons to turn our back and walk away. But as a community of faith we are called to look to God in the real world. And if we are going to do that, Lamentations is a resource within our faith tradition that will greatly help us, a treasure in our possession we might need to rediscover that we even have. You’ll find it more-or-less at the very middle of the Bible, and I commend it to you. And if my recommendation is not enough, might I add that of Jesus? When the Romans were threatening to destroy Jerusalem all over again (they finally did this in AD 70) Jesus turned to this very passage from Lamentations 3 and the image of bearing the yoke to proclaim that, yes, indeed, God has not forgotten us (see Matthew 11:25-30). And in a world that falls apart around us on a fairly regular basis, that might just be good news.