Fifth Sunday of Lent 2021

 

‘The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the Lord. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, ‘Know the Lord’, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.’

Jeremiah 31:31-34

 

‘Now among those who went up to worship at the festival were some Greeks. They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and said to him, ‘Sir, we wish to see Jesus.’ Philip went and told Andrew; then Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus. Jesus answered them, ‘The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honour.

‘Now my soul is troubled. And what should I say—“Father, save me from this hour”? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name.’ Then a voice came from heaven, ‘I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.’ The crowd standing there heard it and said that it was thunder. Others said, ‘An angel has spoken to him.’ Jesus answered, ‘This voice has come for your sake, not for mine. Now is the judgement of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.’ He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die.’

John 12:20-33

Question: do you long for people to know God? to come into a relationship with Jesus?

Perhaps you do, but you just don’t know how that might happen. After all, most of our neighbours have better things to do with their Sunday mornings than to gather in this place. Or maybe you don’t. Maybe it has never crossed your mind that you should. After all, faith is a very personal thing; God might not be everyone’s thing, and even for those who do believe in a god or gods, Jesus might not be their cup of tea, or salvation. Or perhaps you yourself are still searching, longing for more of God, of Jesus, in your life? After all, the world we knew has been violently shaken of late, from Brexit to Coronavirus to BLM to the storming of the US Capitol, calling into question all manner of beliefs and assumptions about how we order our world.

In our Gospel reading we meet some Greeks, who had come to the Passover festival in Jerusalem. To the memorial of the triumph of the Jewish god over the gods of ancient Egypt. On the surface, nothing to do with Greeks. But here they were, spiritual seekers, for whom the values and answers to life’s big questions they were raised within no longer satisfied, no longer scratched where they itched. So here they are, in Jerusalem, quite likely somewhat overwhelmed by the crowds of pilgrims.

And somewhere in that crowd, they happen to meet Philip. They discover that they have something in common: he has a Greek name. Perhaps he has a Greek parent, or his parents admired Greek culture; we don’t know. But there is a connection, perhaps a pre-existing connection. And they ask him a question: ‘Sir, we wish to see Jesus.’

‘Sir, we wish to see Jesus.’ It seems strangely polite, very formal. Dear Sir or Madam, I am writing to request…

That word ‘sir.’ The Greek is kyrie, Lord. Lord, we wish to see Jesus. Lord is the title by which Jesus himself is addressed. Lord, we wish to see Jesus. That word ‘see.’ The Greek word conveys the sense, we wish to experience for ourselves.

In other words, when they see Philip, they see Jesus…and want to experience Jesus for themselves.

When they see Philip, they see Jesus…and want to experience Jesus for themselves.

Question: what aspect of Jesus do people see in you; in me? and, how do we bring them to experience that for themselves?

Perhaps people see Jesus, when they see me, in how I walk into the unknown or scary future, unafraid. In how we carry ourselves in the light of that diagnosis, or unwelcome change in circumstance. Perhaps they see Jesus in my commitment to justice, for the most marginalised, ignored, silenced. Perhaps they see Jesus in the way I bring good news, not naïve optimism but encouragement, counter to the seeming addiction to bad news. Perhaps they see Jesus in my being a loving presence in their lives. Perhaps they see Jesus in the way I invest what I have learned in the lives of others.

For any one of us, they won’t see all there is to see of Jesus in us alone—that takes a community, a church. And some people will see nothing of Jesus in me, with which they connect, but might see something in you. Again, it takes a community: that is why Philip went to Andrew, and Andrew and Philip went to Jesus. But there will be someone, or some several people, who see something of Jesus in my life, and in your life, at the very time and place they themselves are going through some moment of crisis and opportunity.

And if we have any longing to see that happen, or if we want to grow that longing, whether for the very first time or because we knew it in the past but it has grown cold, if we long to see people move from seeing Jesus in us to experiencing Jesus for themselves, we do well to join with Jesus’ own prayer, ‘Father, glorify your name,’ Father, glorify your name in and through my life today, in and through my trials and sufferings.

Father, glorify your name, in whatever hour you have brought me to. That is a soul-troubling prayer: one that stirs us where our hearts have grown cold, towards God, towards our neighbour; where our minds have turned inward; where our strength has run dry. ‘Father, glorify your name’ is a prayer that will always be answered, ‘I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.’

How do we bring those people into that personal experience of Jesus for themselves? First and fore-most by connecting them to other followers and friends of Jesus, both those we know personally and the stories of our sisters and brothers down the centuries and around the globe. Introducing friends to friends. We do not need to wait until we think we have all the answers to life’s questions, or have triumphed over our sufferings. God has chosen to glorify his name and draw people to Jesus through simple, trusting, faithfulness.

But don’t assume that personal experience of Jesus will look the same, for them, as it has done for you. Philip had three years of being one of Jesus’ disciples in Galilee and Judea that the Greeks who arrive days before his death, burial, and resurrection would never have. Theirs would be, instead, a man dying an unimaginable death, and a Pentecost experience of the Holy Spirit poured out. Even Philip and Andrew’s relationship with Jesus would look entirely different to what they had known and loved, just days from then. As we emerge from the tomb of coronavirus lockdown, God’s intention is that everything is transformed, not superficially, not simply business-as-usual on-site but now also available on-line, but as fundamental a transformation as the grain that dies in order to bear much fruit.

That is where Jesus is heading, whether we come along or not. But there are Greeks wishing to see Jesus. Will you pray for them? Father, glorify your name.

 

Mothering Sunday 2021

Mothering Sunday 2021

Lectionary readings:

‘Now a man from the house of Levi went and married a Levite woman. The woman conceived and bore a son; and when she saw that he was a fine baby, she hid him for three months. When she could hide him no longer she got a papyrus basket for him, and plastered it with bitumen and pitch; she put the child in it and placed it among the reeds on the bank of the river. His sister stood at a distance, to see what would happen to him.

‘The daughter of Pharaoh came down to bathe at the river, while her attendants walked beside the river. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her maid to bring it. When she opened it, she saw the child. He was crying, and she took pity on him. ‘This must be one of the Hebrews’ children,’ she said. Then his sister said to Pharaoh’s daughter, ‘Shall I go and get you a nurse from the Hebrew women to nurse the child for you?’ Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, ‘Yes.’ So the girl went and called the child’s mother. Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, ‘Take this child and nurse it for me, and I will give you your wages.’ So the woman took the child and nursed it. When the child grew up, she brought him to Pharaoh’s daughter, and she took him as her son. She named him Moses, ‘because’, she said, ‘I drew him out of the water.’

Exodus 2:1-10

 

‘Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all consolation, who consoles us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to console those who are in any affliction with the consolation with which we ourselves are consoled by God. For just as the sufferings of Christ are abundant for us, so also our consolation is abundant through Christ. If we are being afflicted, it is for your consolation and salvation; if we are being consoled, it is for your consolation, which you experience when you patiently endure the same sufferings that we are also suffering. Our hope for you is unshaken; for we know that as you share in our sufferings, so also you share in our consolation.’

2 Corinthians 1:3-7

 

‘And the child’s father and mother were amazed at what was being said about him. Then Simeon blessed them and said to his mother Mary, ‘This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed—and a sword will pierce your own soul too.’

Luke 2:33-35

 

This Sunday is both Mothers’ Day and Mothering Sunday. The day on which we remember, before God, our experience of motherhood and of the Church as our mother in God. And that inevitably requires of us, as a community, to do careful work, honouring one another in our multi-storied personal histories, forgiving one another where necessary. Today is a day for more than a bunch of daffodils, or any other token gestures.

 

Our Gospel reading highlights for us the reality that motherhood is costly, that what sons and daughters experience—even from the very outset—affects and may well wound mothers deeply. It should not surprise us when mothers respond in reaction to their deep wounds; nor should we ever take for granted the miracle of mothers loving from the place of healed and beautified wounds. It is costly, also, for mother church to witness our children leave, too often a sign opposed by us, revealing our inner thoughts to be out of step with the Spirit.

 

Our reading from Paul’s second extant letter to the church in Corinth speaks eloquently of affliction and suffering and consolation. These things, also, are pertinent to Mothers’ Day and Mothering Sunday. ‘Affliction,’ here, relates to that internal pressure that holds us where we feel trapped, without options or choices. That would relate to so much of our collective experience of motherhood, from standing by a child whose actions we cannot condone; to feeling tied to a mother who for whatever complex reasons was unable to care for us; from overwhelming guilt or shame at believing yourself to have been a bad mother, or perceived as such; to the deeply unsettling and often isolating lived experience of infertility. ‘Suffering’ relates to that which is done to us, for good or for ill, such as the complicated dance by which the child who was dependent on you becomes the adult on whose care you are increasingly dependent in old age. In such real-world afflictions and sufferings, the consolation and salvation of God is worked out, as God in Christ draws close by the Holy Spirit, encouraging us, rescuing us from ourselves. Consolation: God draws close alongside us, and draws us deeper into the transforming presence of love.

 

But I want to return to our reading from the Old Testament, because it tells for us a story, of motherhood. It is, of course, the story of the birth and infancy of Moses, born at a time of genocide. Moses’ people were living in Egypt, shepherds taken from the flock and conscripted into service as builders of an empire—and, inexplicably, the more they are oppressed, the more God blesses them. Still, they are treated increasingly harshly, to the point of a governing edict instructing the midwives, Shiphrah and Puah, that they should kill Israelite boys as they were being born, and claim they were stillborn. At great personal risk, the midwives defied Pharaoh. Moses is born to Jochebed, who initially hides her son at home, and when that is no longer possible, waterproofs a basket and entrusts him to the Nile, and the watchful eye of his seven-year-old sister, Miriam. Makes for him a basket of reeds, and hides him among the reeds from which she made the basket: that is a pleasing detail. When he is discovered, by an Egyptian princess and her maid, Miriam offers to find a Hebrew wet nurse, and the Egyptian agrees. It is clear that this is women’s work: that Jochebed and Miriam and the daughter of Pharaoh all know exactly what it is that they are doing, for this boy-child with multiple mothers, one who was delivered of him through broken amniotic waters and another who drew him out of the water of the Nile and of the chaos of genocide that threatened to overwhelm life. There is a clear understanding in which the women are complicit, a pragmatic arrangement on the side of justice. But it is also true that human family arrangements are often complex, as complex a story as this one.

 

Question: what do you need to let go of, today, that you have kept inside for as long as you are able without the sound of crying and the furtive hiding giving you away? What do you need to turn over to God, to hold for you?

 

That longing, that fragile hope, which has grown within us, cannot be ignored, or abandoned, cannot just be pushed out to die. After all, it was given life by God. Even when our circumstances, our history and our present, have been overwhelming, God is at work, to raise up those who have fallen, to bring good out from evil. And yet, key to Moses’ survival was a container woven of papyrus reeds, woven of flexible strands, bound tightly together, in love, to form an ark on the waters.

 

We are yet to know what the long-term impact of the past twelve months will be, on our communities, on the lives of our neighbours, their children, and grandchildren. But we know enough to know that the local church must be an ark, within which we can entrust them, and their hopes and dreams, to God’s care. We must attend to making that ark waterproof, through careful Safeguarding principles and practices. But, fundamentally, we must weave our lives together, as a tight-knit, hopeful, loving, adopted family of God. Where we have failed to do that, we must repent and believe, must learn again to be God’s people. It is interesting to note that this is often done best mediated by a shared activity, that occupies the hands and opens up room to talk. A craft-based approach, the passing on of skills, may be key to rebuilding robust community beyond the pandemic.

 

But there is a stage even before basket-making, and that is cutting and gathering-up reeds. If we are to weave a community together, it starts with prayer, as an act of noticing with God. Each school, each class, a reed bed; each teacher and each child, a reed, at least in our imagination, whether we know them by name or not. Each home, each shop, each public park, each nursing home, each hospital, a reed bed. In this way, we increase our capacity, to receive God’s love and to enfold others into that care; for if we cannot prayerfully imagine any given part of the community gathered in, we will not see them gathered in. In this way, we learn where the reeds grow, that are ready for harvesting, that are good for basket-making. It is an observable brain phenomenon that for many of us, our imagination has shrunk in lockdown, and our prayers with it. Let us encourage one another to flex our prayers again.

 

On Mothers’ Day and Mothering Sunday, we bring out our baskets, perhaps attend to any necessary repairs, give thanks for the good things that they have cradled over the years. And we look to the future, with unshaken hope, to new baskets, to more people discovering what it is to be consoled by the God of all consolation, in which we share, together. May the Spirit of God birth something new in us today. Amen.

 

Third Sunday of Lent 2021

 

Third Sunday of Lent 2021

 

‘For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written,

‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.’

Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling-block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.’

1 Corinthians 1:18-25

 

‘The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money-changers seated at their tables. Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables. He told those who were selling the doves, ‘Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a market-place!’ His disciples remembered that it was written, ‘Zeal for your house will consume me.’ The Jews then said to him, ‘What sign can you show us for doing this?’ Jesus answered them, ‘Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.’ The Jews then said, ‘This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?’ But he was speaking of the temple of his body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this; and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.

John 2:13-22

 

 

In our Gospel reading today, we find Jesus in the temple in Jerusalem. The temple Jesus knew was not so much a building as a complex made up of successive spaces, a journey into God’s presence. The outermost space was known as the Court of the Gentiles, a space open to anyone. A place for enquirers to draw near, to pray to the god they had heard of but had not been raised to know. But at pain of death, gentiles were not permitted beyond a partition wall. Only Jews could enter the middle court, or Court of the Women, a large space that was home for various activities, including: the temple treasury; storerooms for essential supplies; provision for the fulfilling of vows made to God; provision for lepers—usually excluded from society—to draw near to God; the public reading of scripture; and activities relating to certain festivals. Beyond again was the Court of Israel, a space open to Jewish males and itself part of the Court of the Priests, where the round of ritual sacrifices was made. At the heart of the Court of the Priests was the Sanctuary building, itself a succession of spaces from vestibule to Holy place to the Holy of Holies, a space where only the High Priest could go, and then only once a year.

These successive spaces were not, exactly, mandated by scripture, so much as a cultural interpretation and application of the instructions found in scripture for approaching God. We have our own architecture: our narthex and our baptistry; our nave and our chancel, the chancel itself sub-divided by the altar rail; our sacristy and our Lady Chapel. We have our own flow through spaces, public and private, from birth to death, from earth to heaven and back again, sent out into the world to proclaim the good news afresh in every generation. Each space has its place and its purpose, and we note the disruption of the pandemic: most of the chairs have been cleared out from the nave, their temporary home blocking-off the baptistry; the Lady Chapel, a space so meaningful to so many of us, has been out-of-bounds for a year now. These spaces work for us, and we have had to find ways to ‘make do,’ such as my relocation from the high altar to the chancel step…

And in our reading this morning, Jesus is in the Court of the Gentiles, a space provided for the outsiders to pray. But this space has become a permanent market, where goods and services are exchanged. Here you could enquire as to what animal you needed for a particular offering, and then buy the animal, certified unblemished, addressing all of the risk of bringing your sacrifice with you. But first, you needed to exchange your money. The universal Roman currency was not acceptable to the temple authorities, due to its low silver content. But the Romans did not permit the Jews to mint their own coins; so, the temple authorities had secured an arrangement by which they could use Tyrian coins, which had a high silver content, but which bore the image of the Canaanite god Baal, or Beelzebub. I guess you choose which hill you are prepared to die on, and which compromise you are prepared to live with. Money changers, animal wranglers; in this market you could also buy tours of the temple complex (various levels of access), and souvenirs to enable you to take the encounter with God home with you—with proceeds going towards running costs. None of these things are bad things. Indeed, the system worked acceptably well enough for those for whom it worked; but it did so at a cost. And the largest cost was borne by outsiders who wanted to come and take part, by those who were not part of the congregation of Israel, who were forced to fit in where they could, and be grateful.

In the other Gospel accounts, Jesus disrupts this space at the very end of his ministry; but in John’s Gospel, he does so at the very outset. His first public act is to disrupt the status quo. He ‘causes a scene,’ behaving in such a way that demands the social contract of Acceptable Behaviour in a Given Setting be restored: I can almost see the veins throbbing in the necks of those looking on, apoplectic. And I wonder, how would Jesus kick off, make a scene, in this place? What ways of doing things, that work for us, make it hard for those who are beyond the congregation to draw near to God, in this place? What, for that matter, distracts us from hearing Jesus speak, and responding with faithful obedience?

The past year has been extremely disruptive to our patterns of worship. It might even feel like we have been driven out, that all the familiar tables, the patterns and structures that help us approach God with confidence, have been tipped over. Coming back into this space, and finding it not the familiar space we long for, may be less than comforting. And yet, in all this, Jesus comes to us with both invitation and challenge. The invitation is no less than to see his body raised up in God’s new beginning, the resurrection life of the Church. The challenge is that we will need to let go of our preconceptions, and die to a past that was beautiful in its time. Now is not a moment to restore things just as they were, but to recognise Jesus in our midst—the one in whom the partition wall between Jew and Gentile, between insiders and outsiders, has been torn down. Now is the time to take up our cross and die to self, to embrace the foolishness and the weakness of God—stumbling-block though that is to those of us who are ‘the new Israel.’

Perhaps, with the best will in the world, we overcomplicate it all. Perhaps we just need to throw the doors open, and invite everyone we meet to come in; not offering answers to life’s unanswerable questions, but room within the mystery of divine love.