Twenty-first Sunday after Trinity 2018

Isaiah 53:4-12 and Hebrews 5:1-10 and Mark 10:35-45

Why does a good God allow suffering? Why, in particular, does a good God allow undeserved suffering? Why does a good God stand by while children are buried alive, in the rubble of a war-zone or under a terrifying mud-slide? It isn’t fair! Or, closer to home, why stand by while people in older age are stripped from the inside by dementia, their family forced to watch? What sort of a God is that?

There are no easy answers to such questions. But that does not mean that there are no answers. Suffering raises big questions, and both suffering itself and the questions it raises deserve to be taken seriously. We are not faced with an unhelpful referendum choice between Simplistic Answers and Nothing to Say.

With that in mind, let us turn to Isaiah 53:11. The context is a prophetic vision of one described as the LORD’s servant. This servant is a personification of God’s faithful people and what they were experiencing at the hands of corrupt rulers and surrounding nations. It is a role Christians see as ultimately being taken-up and fully-expressed in the person of Jesus. And the verses we heard read out are all about the bodily experience of this servant. A body that is wounded, and crushed; covered in disfiguring bruises, and experiencing anguish. It is a body broken; even undergoing a violent death, due to ‘a perversion of justice’ (verse 8). If this is true of Jesus — and it was — then it is Jesus in solidarity with many others, in every generation. And verse 11 says, ‘The righteous one, my servant, shall make many righteous’.

To be righteous in the Hebrew scriptures is to embody justice. That is to say that verse 11 can be understood in this way: ‘the one who embodies justice, my servant, shall make many to embody justice’. Or, in other words, many who witness the undeserved suffering of this victim of injustice will be so sickened as to turn their backs on the way of injustice and take up the cause of embodying justice in their own lives, their actions, their habitual practices.

We might agree in principle that women, and children, and less-often but nonetheless also men should not suffer domestic violence; but we are unlikely to do something about what goes on behind closed doors. It is none of our business, nothing to do with us. Perhaps God allows suffering in the hope that being confronted with it might make us compassionate? Not that suffering is a necessary evil, to be tolerated; but that God consistently intends to redeem suffering by allowing it to be the instrument that breaks our hearts open. Selah*

Turn with me to Hebrews 5:8. The writer, speaking of Jesus, boldly declares, ‘Although he was a Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered’. Let’s unpack that. First, the word translated ‘obedience’ means ‘submission to what is heard’. That is, a response to(wards) someone speaking.

Second, the word translated ‘suffering’ means ‘to be acted upon in a certain way, either good or bad’. That is, to find ourselves in circumstances where we are dependent on other people because, for whatever reason, we lack the agency necessary for independent action.

(That is why in the old translations Jesus said ‘suffer the little children to come unto me’: do it for them, because they can’t do it for themselves. Children either suffer the actions of neglect or suffer the actions of love; and, either way, are shaped by what they suffer.)

In other words, the point being made here is not that God beat his wilful son until the child learnt to do what it was told [and I use ‘it’ intentionally, as beating anyone is dehumanising] but that through the experience of dependency on others, through loving embrace and painful rejection, Jesus learnt how to hear and to trust God.

We must listen to the testimony of sisters and brothers who tell us that their experience of suffering, their new-found, often unwanted, dependency on God and neighbours, has, indeed, done just that. Conversely, we might observe how easy it is to nether hear nor trust God or our neighbour when you have all the privilege, all the resources, to be both god and neighbour-enough to yourself. Selah

Suffering, then, has the potential to open our eyes to see and our ears to hear and our hearts to give ourselves to both God and our neighbour. And that might very well go some way to answering the question, why would a good God permit suffering, in a world where our eyes and ears and hearts are so closed.

Jesus said, ‘the Son of Man’ — that is, ‘the Mortal’, a favourite term by which he fully-identified with his sisters and brothers and invites them to identify with him — ‘came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many’ (Mark 10:45). Justice does not work at a theoretical level, but only when it is embodied, by all. I might like to believe that I am a good person, but who am I good for? Or, what good am I, in the world?

For as long as our definition of our goodness allows us to tolerate the human cost of the global arms trade, or of our insatiable lust for energy consumption, or of any of the injustices by which we try to keep suffering at arm’s length; for as long as we refuse to embrace our bodily frailty and all it might have to teach us; perhaps we ought to hold our tongue in God’s presence.

*Selah, Hebrew notation found in many of the Psalms; of uncertain meaning, but widely understood to mean Pause (and reflect on what has just been said before moving on).

Questions to consider:

What first-hand experience of suffering have you known?

What, if anything, has suffering taught you?

How, and for whom, might you more fully embody justice in the world?

Twenty-first Sunday after Trinity 2018 (St Nicholas)

8.00 am at St Nicholas

Job 38:1-7, 34-41 and Mark 10:35-45

James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came forward to him and said to him, ‘Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.’ And he said to them, ‘What is it you want me to do for you?’ And they said to him, ‘Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.’

What does glory look like?

The LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind: ‘Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?’ In other words, the absence of divine skill results in darkness; or, at least, in a dimming, a diminishing. And yet it would appear that the possession of divine skill comes with a deeper darkness, of an altogether richer quality. A darkness in which the morning stars sing together. A darkness across which lightning flashes, and young lions hunt.

God is sovereign, over the world, its peoples, the heavenly beings. The King of the Universe, who creates and sustains life, possesses a weight of glory we cannot stand up under.

In our Gospel passage today, James and John want in on the glory. After all, they are known as the Sons of Thunder, and thunder goes with lightning in the darkened sky. But Jesus cannot grant their request, because it is not in his gift to appoint his right- and left-hand man in glory.

We know who they are, but they don’t even get their names recorded for posterity. That is the upside-down nature of divine glory. But they do appear, later in the Gospel. Listen closely, or you’ll miss them:

It was nine o’clock in the morning when they crucified him. The inscription of the charge against him read, ‘The King of the Jews.’ And with him they crucified two bandits, one on his right and one on his left. Those who passed by derided him, shaking their heads and saying, ‘Aha! You who would destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself, and come down from the cross!’ In the same way the chief priests, along with the scribes, were also mocking him among themselves and saying, ‘He saved others; he cannot save himself. Let the Messiah, the King of Israel, come down from the cross now, so that we may see and believe.’ Those who were crucified with him also taunted him.

When it was noon, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon. At three o’clock Jesus cried out with a loud voice, ‘Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?’ which means, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ When some of the bystanders heard it, they said, ‘Listen, he is calling for Elijah.’ And someone ran, filled a sponge with sour wine, put it on a stick, and gave it to him to drink, saying, ‘Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to take him down.’ Then Jesus gave a loud cry and breathed his last. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. Now when the centurion, who stood facing him, saw that in this way he breathed his last, he said, ‘Truly this man was God’s Son!’

Mark 15:25-39

Human words without knowledge, bringing with them a darkness, or dimming of the light. And in that darkness, a greater, deeper, richer darkness at work: the thick darkness that surrounds and attends God, in which skill is at work to bring-about something breath-taking.

What does glory look like?

For those who have eyes to see it, the glory of God is a man hung on an executioners’ scaffold, with two bandits for company.

Harvest Festival 2018

Harvest Festival 2018

Joel 2:21-27 and 1 Timothy 6:6-10 and Matthew 6:25-33

Today we mark our Harvest Festival. Within the Church of England this can be marked on any Sunday in the autumn, to fit with local variation in the bringing-in of the harvest. Being set in an urban centre, we are a step removed from combine harvesters; yet today is an appropriate day to focus on the land, given the key report delivered by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change six days ago. The report urges deep rapid change, involving all of us, and empowering all of us to make a difference. That is fitting for a faith community, who occupy the territory between cosmos and ethos, between the world as it is and the world as it could be, the world we shape into being by our customs. But in order to step into the unknown, we need to recall from where we have come.

Those of you who were here last Sunday will recall that as we considered passages relating to marriage and divorce I spoke about the ancient Jewish wedding vows. These were rooted in the law of Moses; and are known to us from archaeological records. Husbands promised to provide their wives with food and cloth; and wives promised to turn these into meals and clothes. Each promised to give and receive conjugal love, which includes but is more than sexual intercourse. And wives promised to be sexually faithful to their husbands, though men were permitted to take more than one wife.

As chance would have it (‘chance’ because Harvest, with its set readings, can be marked on any Sunday in the autumn) our readings today are all concerned with food and clothing. Jesus taught that we should not worry about what we shall eat or what we shall wear, but trust God to provide. Paul wrote to Timothy about the benefits of an economics of contentment concerning food and clothing, and the dangers of an economics of greed. Joel explicitly addresses food; and implicitly addresses clothing in declaring, and re-stating for emphasis, that never again will the people be put to shame; shame, for the Israelites, relating to public nakedness, that which is good in intimate privacy being exposed before strangers.

In other words, all three of our readings today take up the image of marriage as one of the key ways Scripture speaks of the relationship between God and his people (and while God is neither male nor female; yet is presented to us in both male and female terms; in this context God is ‘he’ and his people, both men and women, are ‘she’).

Let’s take a closer look at Joel. After eighty years as a united kingdom under David and Solomon, things fell apart. The northern tribes, henceforth known as Israel, made their capital at Samaria; while Jerusalem continued as the capital of Judah. From this point on, God is described as the husband of two sisters, drawing on the personal history of the patriarch Jacob who loved Rachel but first found himself married, not by his will or intent, to her sister Leah. ‘Sister’ Israel is depicted as being serially unfaithful, taking other gods as lovers. Yahweh repeatedly sends prophets to broker a reconciliation; but eventually divorces Israel, setting her free to be united to some other god.

‘Sister’ Judah is almost as unfaithful; she does, on occasion, respond to Yahweh’s overtures of reconciliation, but it never seems to last. They are a couple estranged, and the prophetic marriage counsellors warn Judah that, unless she abandons her lovers, she will find herself, like her sister to the north, divorced by Yahweh and sent away from the land. Joel writes to the community centred on Jerusalem, though we really aren’t sure where in that sorry sequence of events to locate him. To a people who are wondering whether they are an abandoned wife, wondering whether they should divorce Yahweh for failing to provide food and cloth for their bodies, Joel writes, you have not been abandoned. Centuries later, with the land occupied by the Romans and their pantheon of gods, Jesus declares the same thing.

Why were the people in Joel’s day thinking that Yahweh had abandoned them? Well, they were experiencing an environmental catastrophe. Already impacted by a long drought, they had yet again experienced the meagre crop that had grown stripped bare by locust swarms. The very land itself left naked, paraded naked before the surrounding nations, and their gods. A matter of national shame, as well as of hunger. Insult added to injury.

Joel sees environmental catastrophe as a wake-up call, that exposes not God’s failing but the unfaithfulness of God’s people. It is the cry of the land, crying out to God, a deep longing for the people to repent and return.

Environmental catastrophe has always been part of human experience, the experience of not being in control, not masters of our own destiny. But in our day, the level of catastrophe, its global scope and sustained nature, clearly brought about by (global and sustained) human action, is of a scale unprecedented in human history. It is a wake-up call not simply for a community and a region, but for humanity, for each and every one of us.

We need to embrace a culture change; and this is where Christians of all people ought to be a prophetic voice in our communities, embodying an alternative model of lifestyle. I want to focus on those ancient marriage vows relating to food and clothing, because all three of our readings today do so. As our husband, God has promised to provide us with the food and the cloth we need. As God’s wife, we are responsible for how we use those resources, for how we create meals and clothes.

These are hugely important environmental factors. In relation to our food practices, large-scale deforestation in order to clear land for cattle (and, vegans note, water-hungry avocadoes), and the extensive use of grain for beef rather than for direct consumption; along with air miles connected to our rejection of seasonal harvests; contribute to soil erosion, air pollution, plastic waste, and the unsustainability of feeding the world’s growing population. In relation to our clothing practices, the disposability of the fashion industry, and the demand for the water-hungry crop cotton, consumes vast amounts of water and energy; and, moreover, keeps women and children in the slavery of sweatshops. You may have seen that in a relatively short span of years, the Aral Sea has been all-but drained dry; the Caspian Sea also shrinking dramatically.

But what can we do!? In fact, both as consumers in a materialistic culture and as the bride of Christ, we are more empowered than we imagine. As a body, Jesus has given us everything we need to respond faithfully. There are particular members of our congregation who are real assets to us and to the wider community in this regard. There’s Jim, with his expertise in growing vegetables on his allotment. There’s Angela, and Kath, with their expertise as seamstresses, making, and indeed repairing, clothes. I can’t think of a better-fitting visual-aid than Angela currently making what will soon be unveiled as Vicki’s wedding dress. But these are just the tip of the iceberg (lettuce). And then there is our monthly Craft and Vintage Fair, organised by Heather, providing space for sellers of locally produced foods, of rolls of cotton, of vintage pre-loved coats and accessories, of beautiful gifts made from found objects. There is something far more missional to those Saturdays than we might realise.

To be clear: I am not talking about becoming an apocalyptic cult, keeping the long-life food we have gathered today for the food banks so that we can hunker in a bunker and sit out the coming Armageddon. I am not even talking about projects we might do collectively: of turning the Minster grounds over to bee hives and vegetable beds; or filling the vestry with sewing machines. There is no end to the ideas of things we could do together; and we need to be both pragmatic and content with our lot, seeing things through well before chasing shiny new possibilities.

No, what I hope that I am doing is to highlight some of the ways in which some of us are already living out that faithfulness to God, to the world God loves, and to our neighbours — things we might not even think of as being faith-full. Honouring unsung heroes. What I hope that I am doing is helping us think about the other ways we are living prophetically, and, perhaps, kickstarting lots of conversations. What I hope that I am doing is weaving together stories, ancient and new — no, not new: now — that help us to live from the cosmos that is vanishing to the ethos of the kingdom of God that Jesus tells us to strive for, and specifically as it relates to food and clothing.

The world as we know it is passing. This is a hopeful thing, not because the earth does not matter but because it matters so very much. We are called to take Jesus’ outstretched hand, and step into the future together, without fear, without shame. So, let us celebrate together, with gladness and rejoicing. And, though we have known what it is to be in need as well as in plenty, may we yet bring in a great harvest, to the glory of God.

Nineteenth Sunday after Trinity 2018

Genesis 2:18-24 and Hebrews 1:1-4, 2:5-12 and Mark 10:2-16

You wait ages for a bus to come along, and then two come along at once. Today’s lectionary readings feel like that, big passages conveying big ideas. I want to focus on Genesis 2 and Mark 10, and their related thoughts on marriage and divorce. I need to say from the outset that both passages have been badly translated and interpreted in the English language (among others), resulting in a lot of damage. We will need to do some digging to unearth them and understand them.

First, then, Genesis 2. This is the second of the two ‘creation stories’ with which the Bible opens. And in our English translations, it reads like this: the male human being is alone, and this is not good. He needs an assistant. Principally, he needs an assistant in the work of being fruitful and multiplying (see chapter 1), someone to have babies, and then raise them, while the man does something more, manly. God puts him to sleep and removes a rib, a small and non-essential part, and from it makes the female human being. She’ll do nicely.

But the Hebrew reads somewhat differently. It does not begin with a male human being at all, but with an undifferentiated creature made from the earth, or earthling. God recognises that something is missing, and God’s conclusion is that the earthling needs an ezer kenegedu. The word ezer, usually translated ‘helper’ in English, is a word most often used about God, in relation to the people of Israel. It carries the sense of being a warrior, one who comes to our aid, who delivers us from our enemies. It carries the sense of surrounding and cherishing and fighting for another. And here, God pairs ezer with kenegedu, a word that carries the sense of ‘corresponding’, of standing side-by-side, like the two banks of a river, or, sometimes, of stepping forward in front of another. In other words, what the earthling needs is a corresponding warrior, who will fight by its side against the elemental chaos that seeks to overwhelm God’s creation; someone who will step forward for us, and us for them.

And so, God rocks the earthling to sleep; takes it; breaks it in two; and in this moment, in this action, male and female are created. This breaking in two results in difference, and in recognition: recognising ourselves in someone different-and-yet-the-same. There is a radical equality between the two corresponding warriors, between the male and the female; and they each share in the likeness of the ezer God (something restored to men and women in Jesus, who restores our place as the reflection of God’s glory and the imprint of God’s very being).

And for this reason, we are told, a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh. Breaking, and uniting. It is a paradox we affirm, a mystery we experience, in every Eucharist, at that moment when the priest breaks the bread, saying, ‘We break this bread to share in the body of Christ’ and we all respond, ‘Though we are many, we are one body, because we all share in one bread’.

With these things in mind, let us turn to Mark 10. And the first thing that I want to say is that this isn’t about divorce. It is about a group of people trying to trap Jesus, and Jesus getting the better of them. Divorce is permitted throughout the Bible, under particular conditions, relating to failure to uphold marriage vows (see Exodus 21:10-11 and Deuteronomy 24:1-4 and 1 Corinthians 7). Jewish couples promised to feed, clothe, share conjugal love, and be faithful to each other. The man agreed to provide food and cloth. The woman agreed to cook and sew. They both agreed to share conjugal love. Either the man or the woman could divorce the other for breaking these vows — which, as principle, or case law, cover abuse or neglect — but only the injured party could enact divorce. The injured party could choose to forgive, or divorce: they held the power to attempt to save the marriage or to release both parties from it. And with the certificate of divorce came the right to remarry.

The fourth grounds for divorce was failure to be faithful, or adultery. Because polygamy was accepted by the ancient Israelites (albeit with legal protection for the wives), only a husband and not a wife could enact divorce on the grounds of adultery. But, as with the other grounds for divorce, he could only do so if he were the wronged party. However, by the time of Jesus, things had changed.

Around a generation before Jesus, there were two famous rabbis, rivals to each other, named Hillel and Shammai. Hillel claimed a linguistic loophole in Deuteronomy 24:1. The text speaks of divorce on the grounds of finding, after taking a wife, erwat dabar ‘anything [dabar] of, or any cause of, sexual immorality’ in her [or, in the Greek translation of the Old Testament, άσχήμον πραγμα, an ‘unpresentable matter, thing, or deed’]. Hillel argued that if this simply meant ‘sexual immorality’ then the ‘any cause of’ [or the Greek ‘pragma’] was superfluous, and so it should be interpreted as referring to two grounds for divorce: adultery, and a catch-all ‘any other grounds’. Shammai disagreed: however worded, the intent was plainly and simply ‘adultery’. End of.

By the time of Jesus, men divorcing their wives for any (i.e. spurious) reason was massively on the rise, with a corresponding fall in women being able to access divorce on legitimate biblical grounds. The justice of divorce had been eroded.

So that is the background. Some Pharisees came to trap Jesus and demanded an unguarded comment from him. They asked, ‘is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?’ Well, yes: it is there in the law of Moses, and so by definition it is lawful. The law cannot be unlawful. Clearly, they are asking about Deuteronomy 24:1, the one grounds for divorce that only a man could enact, and not a wronged wife. Matthew’s account of the same incident is even clearer recording the question as, ‘is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any cause?’ (Matthew 19:3). This is one of the biggest and most divisive arguments of Jesus’ day. Like speaking out for Remain or Brexit in the UK today, they are confident that however Jesus answers this question, at best he will lose half of his support base. It is a trap. Nothing more, nothing less.

Jesus sidesteps the trap and lets them get caught in their own snare. He takes them back to our first reading, to Genesis 2, where two become one flesh. And he adds, ‘therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate’. Not, it cannot be separated; but, it ought not to be separated. But nonetheless Jesus’ words are odd. He walks them into the story of God breaking the man and the woman apart, and says, what God has joined together, let no one separate. It is a paradox. It is an unresolvable matter.

Jesus goes on to affirm the principle that divorce on the grounds of Deuteronomy 24:1 should (as with those grounds cited in Exodus 21:10-11) be available to wives and not just to husbands; and that women who abuse Deuteronomy 24:1 by enacting it when they are not the wronged party are as liable before God as the men who were abusing it. Radical equality.

Marriage and divorce are matters of debate as much in our day as in Jesus’ day, and both inside and beyond the Church. Jesus, and later Paul, both affirm marriage; but also affirm a vision of community where you do not have to be married in order to be whole, to be cherished and fought for. Jesus, and later Paul, both uphold divorce, as a necessary mechanism for justice for those who are wronged; while taking a stand against the damage caused by easy, self-centred divorce. However necessary, divorce is always a tragedy and never the first resort. In the Old Testament, God even describes himself as a husband who, having taken-back his serially-unfaithful wife, Israel, many times has finally written-out a certificate of divorce, releasing her; and, therefore, cannot take her back. For this reason, God ‘hates divorce’, not because it is categorically wrong but because of the pain that relationship-breakdown causes.

We speak of holy things. Of human beings and our longing not to be alone. Of radical equality between the sexes, not always recognised, not always affirmed. Of our need to be broken open, not by the harsh realities of the world but by an ezer God who breaks us out of ourselves in order that we might flourish. Not long after challenging the Pharisees for their hardness of heart, Jesus had to challenge his disciples for their own sternness. He did so by taking little children up in his arms, girls and boys who would grow up to be women and men; and blessing them, before they spilt back out, to populate the kingdom of God.

So, come to the table, you who are married and you who are unmarried; you who long to be married and you who long to be released from marriage; you who are divorced, re-married, widowed, never-been-married. You who are separated from your wife or husband by geography and global politics. You who have been hurt and you who, having caused hurt, have repented. You who are brothers and sisters of Jesus, children of God being brought through suffering to glory. You, the Church, who are both the body of Christ and the bride of Christ. Come and experience again the mystery of being broken and being made one. And what God has joined together, let no one separate.