Ninth Sunday after Trinity 2021

 

Ninth Sunday after Trinity 2021

Lectionary readings: 2 Samuel 11:26-12:13 and Ephesians 4:1-16 and John 6:24-35

Today’s Gospel reading records a conversation between Jesus and some of those who, the day before, had experienced the feeding of about 5,000 adult men and an unspecified number of women and children. Jesus tells them not to work to produce the meal that gets destroyed, but instead to work for the meal that is lasting, that does not come to an end. This meal is understood, by all, to be at the initiative of God.

Therefore, the crowd ask Jesus, What must we construct to perform this work of God? That is, what are the ingredients, and what is the recipe, for this meal? Jesus responds, The way to create this meal is to believe in me. That is, I am the head chef. They reply, What is the distinguishing mark of the meal you serve, by which we will know that you are the head chef? What is your signature dish?

Jesus responds, My signature dish is bread, bread that comes down from heaven and gives life to the world. Bread that satisfies the hunger and thirst of humanity.

This exchange is paired with a passage from Paul’s letter to the Church at Ephesus, the community from where the whole of the Roman province of Asia Minor heard the gospel. In it, Paul speaks of the one who descended from heaven and who is distributed through and to others. The distinguishing marks of this signature dish are apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers, combined to create something nutritious and nourishing, a meal that sustains and is itself sustained.

This is what it looks like to work to create the heavenly meal on earth. This is the Church, not only as a community that shares a meal—the body and blood of Jesus experienced in the bread and wine of the Eucharist, or Holy Communion—but also, the Church as a meal, for the world.

This is a meal as the hospitality of many different cultures, not just one;

meal as bringing people together in good faith, over which enemies may become friends, and friends become allies;

meal as celebration of life in all its goodness;

meal as comfort food, and medicine, for the hurting and heart-sick;

meal as a life-skill passed down from one generation to another, with faithful improvisation.

This is the Church as a meal, as a metaphor and as a core practice for communal living that transforms the world.

In our Old Testament reading from the life of David, when God sends the prophet Nathan to confront the king with his sin, Nathan does so by telling the story of a meal, in which a rich man, unwilling to offer hospitality that cost him anything, took and served up the poor man’s lamb. In his response to the tale, David passes judgement on himself.

Meals are risky. The author of the Letter to the Hebrews encourages the practice of hospitality because, in so doing, some have entertained angels unawares. In the pages of Scripture, when angels are fed, it is a sign that God is about to do something, to intervene, to act in the world, for judgement and deliverance. As we seek to learn from one another, in the diversity of our life experiences, and to discern together God’s will, meals are both a helpful metaphor and a helpful practice.

With the apostles, we dare to enter worlds very different from our own experience, worlds with different textures and flavours.

With the prophets, we dare to admit our own hypocrisy, repent and return to God.

With the evangelists, we dare to create space to celebrate the love that makes life good.

With the pastors, we dare to feed the hungry and honour the heartbroken, whoever they might be.

With the teachers, we dare to discern meaning and curate wisdom for living life well.

As we seek to grow together in Christ, what might happen if we simply prepared meals and ate together more?

 

Eighth Sunday after Trinity 2021

 

Eighth Sunday after Trinity 2021

Lectionary readings: 2 Samuel 11:1-15 and Ephesians 3:14-21 and John 6:1-21

 

Over the summer months we are taking a deep dive into what it means to be human, and how to live in love and faith, in the context of changing understandings of human identity, changing patterns in relationships and families, changing sexual attitudes and activity. These are everyday bodily matters, of everyday flesh-and-blood lives, to which if our faith means anything at all, it must surely have a bearing.

This week, I have been reading a book written by a friend of mine, an Australian woman, Mandy Smith. The book is entitled Unfettered: Imagining a Childlike Faith beyond the Baggage of Western Culture. The author shares her story of rediscovering what Jesus meant when he said that unless you become like a little child, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. She sees childlikeness as a genuine alternative to the false choice between ‘the anxiety of adultish hyperengagement (we’d better fix this) or … the despair of childish disengagement (we’re beyond hope).’ (p. 5) She writes: ‘I propose that a way forward can be found in Jesus’ surprising invitation to the kingdom through childlikeness. Here’s why: 1. Children identify and engage as whole (thinking, feeling, sensing, embodied, relational) selves. 2. Children know how to engage without taking on full responsibility.’ (p. 3)

Our Old Testament reading today is the sordid tale of king David raping the wife of a friend and then having that friend murdered in order to cover his tracks. This is, I would suggest, adult behaviour—or what, evoking ‘childish’ behaviour, Smith coins ‘adultish.’ Not that every adult commits adultery, or murder, but representationally adult in several ways. First, David is not present, where we expect him to be present. The natural thing for a king to be doing in the springtime was leading his army into battle, but instead, he engages in restless distraction. Children live in the now, adults fret over the past and the future. Second, David experiences, and surrenders to, the urge to possess what he sees. It is not enough to note beauty in the world and enjoy it for its own sake, far less thanking God for the beauty he has given to another. Children do not need to possess; adults do. It is learned behaviour we are shaped into. Third, as soon as he has taken what he saw, David no longer wants it, discards the woman, for his appetite is satisfied only for a moment. Fourth, when things take an unplanned turn—the woman conceives—David attempts to solve the problem, by increasingly desperate means, ultimately writing a death warrant for an innocent man who has been his faithful friend and servant through bad times as well as good.

In our Gospel reading we hear John’s account of the feeding of a crowd of about five thousand adult men, and afterward of Jesus walking on the water. It is a passage marked by bodies, and by appetite. The crowd has an insatiable appetite for signs, without making the connection to what they point to; an appetite for food, perhaps with a carelessness that leaves twelve baskets of waste; an appetite for a form of liberty, won and maintained by coercive force: ‘they were about to come and take him by force to make him king’—and even the disciples are caught up in this approach, ‘Then they wanted to take him into the boat’ against his will, the boat, instead, immediately reaching the land towards which they had been heading.

Philip sees the problem, the impossibility of satisfying such insatiable, adultish appetites. He moves rapidly from anxious adultish problem-solving to childish despair. But the adult is disarmed by the innocence of a child, a boy who offers up his packed lunch. It is obvious to a child that you feed the hungry, not the appetite. If you are hungry, and I am not, have my food: “Here you are, mister!” It is a whole response, not separating thought from feeling, self from neighbour. Nor does the boy harbour delusions of grandeur, that he can feed five thousand with his lunch: that is not his responsibility; he plays his part, and trusts that it is enough, that someone else will take it up. It is a child’s response.

Jesus’ response is also childlike, as it always is in the Gospels. First [here I am drawing on Smith citing Hans Urs von Balthasar, pp. 35, 36], he trusts in the goodness of the Father, knowing he can do nothing by himself, only join in with what the Father is doing. Second, dependent on his Father, aware of his need—for Jesus gets hungry too—he is thankful for the Father’s provision. He took the bread and gave thanks for it. Third, in childlike humility and gratitude, Jesus shares with others, five thousand of them. Fourth, he lives in the fullness of the moment. We’re told that these events took place near to the Passover festival, the annual commemoration of the exodus from slavery in Egypt. The first Passover meal was eaten standing up, coat on, ready to flee into the night. But on this mountain, Jesus makes the people sit down, rest, eat at leisure: discover satisfaction with who you are, who you are with, what you have. Not ‘know your place!’ within the exploitative rules of the world; but, find your place, in God’s good rule.

What Jesus asks of the crowd, who press after him, is that they share a picnic together. That they feel the grass beneath their feet, tickling their arms as they lie down in the warmth of the sun. That they feel the ground pressing back against their hips, forcing them to shift their pose, their bodies searching for comfort, for a best fit. That they laugh at the way the grass stains skin green, as if drawing on us, human canvas. That they take bread in their hands and tear it and pass it, making sure that no-one is left out, while the little ones wriggle and dance and trust that there is food for their hunger and grass to soften their fall. That they become childlike, for, unless you become like a little child, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. What Jesus asks of the disciples, who have just had their contracted adult horizons expanded again to that wonder children know in the world without needing to possess what they behold, is that they get in the boat. But even now, it is not long before they are rowing against the wind, straining against where it would carry them, while Jesus goes for a walk in God’s kingdom with such innocence it hardly matters whether it is grass or water beneath his feet. Oh disciples, you cannot enter the kingdom by the grasping means of the empire!

Last Sunday afternoon, we had a picnic for the families who come to Messy Church. A first step back, after eighteen months unable to gather-together. We didn’t advertise it wider than the regular crowd, a crowd of about thirty rather than about five thousand. But it was good. Really good. Perhaps this summer we need to picnic more. Or even go outside to receive communion bread in our hands. Perhaps in such small steps, our bodies will teach us what we knew once before and need to rediscover, to be more fully human.

After all, as Paul knew, and dared to proclaim to the church in Ephesus, Christ dwells in our hearts, makes himself at home in our bodies, in God’s love fleshed-out in the breadth of our hipline, the length of arms stretched wide to invite embrace, the head-shaking height of children who have grown so much—how much!?—over the past eighteen months, and in the deep-seated response of unruly emotion. Childlike, whole, made to be filled with all the fullness of God.

 

Sixth Sunday after Trinity 2021

Lectionary readings: Ephesians 1:3-14 and Mark 6:14-29

 

The Herodian dynasty was incredibly complicated, and extremely murky. On the death of Rome’s vassal king Herod ‘the Great’ in 4 BC, his kingdom was divided between three of his sons, and his only sister. Herod Archaelus—son of Herod the Great and his fourth wife, Malthace—became Ethnarch of Judea; but he was so poor a ruler that the Romans deposed him in AD 6, sending him off into exile in Gaul and turning Judea into a Roman province overseen by a Roman governor. Herod the Great’s sister, Salome I, became Tetrarch of Jamnia, Azotus and Phasaelis, until her death in AD 10, when her territory was folded-into direct Roman rule. Herod Antipas—the full brother to Herod Archaelus—became Tetrarch of Galilee and Perea, where he ruled until he was sent into exile in Spain in AD 39 by Emperor Caligula. Philip—the son of Herod the Great and his fifth wife, Cleopatra of Jerusalem; half-brother to Archaelus and Antipas—became Tetrarch of Gaulantis, Batanaea, Trachonitis and Auranitis, lasting until his death in AD 34.

It is Herod Antipas, Tetrarch of Galilee and Perea, who we find in our Gospel reading today. He had married Phasaelis, daughter of King Aretas IV of Nabatea (yes, Phasaelis is the same name as part of Salome I’s territory, a name given in honour of Phasael, a brother of Salome and Herod the Great—their mother being a Nabatean). But later, while on a trip to Rome where he stayed with his half-brother Herod II—son of Herod the Great and his third wife, Mariamne II (in his Gospel, Mark wrongly names Herod II as Philip)—Antipas fell in love with Herodias, the wife of Herod II—and granddaughter of Herod the Great and his second wife, Mariamne I. Herod the Great had executed his second wife, Mariamne I, and their two sons Alexander and Aristobulus IV for allegedly conspiring to murder him. Aristobulus IV was Herodias’ father, and his death left her an orphan while still a minor. Herod the Great engaged her to her half-uncle, Herod II. This displeased Herod the Great’s eldest son, Antipater II, son of Herod’s first wife, Doris; Doris and Antipater having been exiled when Herod married Mariamne but recalled when Mariamne and her two sons were executed. Therefore, Herod demoted Herod II to second in succession, behind a restored Antipater; only to have Antipater executed soon after, for allegedly plotting to poison his father; moving Herod II briefly back to the front of the succession line; only to write him out of his will, just days before Herod’s death, on account of Herod II’s mother, Mariamne II, having known about the poison plot of Antipater, son of Doris, and yet not having brought it to her husband’s attention. Fortunately for Herod II, he had been living in Rome, and in this way avoided his father’s tendency to have his sons executed.

Herodias, last seen married-off to her half-uncle Herod II, divorced her husband in order to marry her other half-uncle, Herod Antipas. And he had to divorce his own wife, Phasaelis, an act that provoked his father-in-law, King Aretas IV of Nabatea, to declare war—a war that Herod lost, despite dragging in his Roman allies. But first, Aretas had to secure the safe return of his daughter, the exchange taking place at the frontier fortress of Machaerus. According to the historian Josephus, it was also here, on the border of their two territories, that Herod flexed his muscles by hosting himself a birthday party—it would have made more sense to host such a party, for Galilean dignitaries, at his capital, Tiberias—a party at which his step-daughter, Salome (named for her great-great-aunt) (this Salome would later be married to her step-father’s half-brother, Philip—from where Mark’s confusion might arise) performed seductively, and in return he promised her anything, up to half his kingdom (though, technically, it wasn’t a kingdom). And her mother, Herodias, who herself witnessed the execution of her father and uncle and grandmother as a young girl, calls for more blood, the head of John the baptizer, an influential figure vocal in his disapproval of her second marriage.

John was no fool in warning Antipas against this relationship. Eventually his patron, the Emperor Tiberius (for whom he had named his Galilean capital, Tiberias), died in suspicious circumstances, to be replaced by Caligula. Caligula was an old friend of Antipas’ nephew, Herodias’ brother Herod Agrippa, and Agrippa made a land-grab move against Antipas, resulting in Antipas and Herodias being sent into exile in Spain.

I did warn you that it was incredibly complicated, and extremely murky. What contrast, our reading from Paul’s letter to the church at Ephesus! Listen again:

‘Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, just as he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love. He destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace that he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace that he lavished on us. With all wisdom and insight he has made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure that he set forth in Christ, as a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth. In Christ we have also obtained an inheritance, having been destined according to the purpose of him who accomplishes all things according to his counsel and will, so that we, who were the first to set our hope on Christ, might live for the praise of his glory. In him you also, when you had heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and had believed in him, were marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit; this is the pledge of our inheritance towards redemption as God’s own people, to the praise of his glory.’ (Ephesians 1:3-14)

These short verses are full of Father God’s plan that we should have an inheritance as adopted children within the kingdom of heaven, bestowed upon us in love. Not calling for our blood, where we have betrayed God, but bringing about our redemption even through the undoing, the transformation, of human violence through the power of forgiveness. A will—an intention set out, and to be honoured—that will not be re-written, but that is for the fullness of time; not dividing a kingdom into lesser authority but gathering up the entire cosmos in Jesus. Not a paranoid, filicidal ruler; but a wise, generous king who establishes a people, and gives them not what they ask—up to half of his kingdom—but more than we could ask or imagine, the Holy Spirit, God’s active life-bringing presence in the world. Mystery made known!

David, in our reading from the Old Testament (2 Samuel 6:1-5, 12b-19) saw it from a long way off and rejoiced. John ushered it in, and even ushering him out (Mark 6:14-29), the Herodians could not hold it back. If you are a Christian—if you turn to Christ as Saviour and submit your life to him as Lord—then this adoption as a child of God is the foundation of your identity, on which all other constituent parts—gender, sexuality, relationship status, ethnicity, nationality, education, vocation—indeed, every other facet—either rise or fall. It is foundational, from before the foundation of the world. This status—recipients of grace—is not something we have to defend against others, nor scheme to secure. It is freely bestowed, in accordance with divine good pleasure, with the delight the Father has in his children. It is a sharing of blessing, from the Father to the children and the children to the Father, blessing that characterises heaven, and transforms earth as it is in heaven. What a contrast, with the way of the world, the self-serving way exemplified by Herod but entirely recognisable today. In God’s mercy, may we resist such distortion of our souls, to the end of our days; and, instead, participate in God’s boundless love, to the praise of his glory.

 

Fifth Sunday after Trinity 2021

Fifth Sunday after Trinity 2021

Lectionary readings: 2 Samuel 5:1-5, 9-10 and 2 Corinthians 12:2-10 and Mark 6:1-13

This week, the governing body of the Methodist Church voted to permit same-sex marriages, by 254 in favour with 46 against. The legislation comes out of many years of at times painful conversation, and includes provision, through a freedom-of-conscience clause, for those ministers who oppose the move. But, of course, the conversation is not ended: such conversations must continue if covenant relationship is to be sustained; and some Methodists may choose to leave instead of continuing on together. And, of course, this wide-ranging conversation is one that the Church, in all her denominations and traditions, is needing to have; and an ongoing conversation in the Church of England.

This summer, and over the autumn, we are responding to the request of the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, that we engage with Living in Love and Faith: Christian teaching and learning about identity, sexuality, relationships and marriage. We shall really get into it in the early autumn, with the help of the Living in Love and Faith course; but the most significant thing of this teaching and learning is that it is built around listening to one another, and together discerning what the Spirit of God is saying to the Bride of Christ, the Church. Not top-down—though it is a facilitated process—but in the midst. And as we reflect on our readings this week, I hope to draw out some principles concerning learning together.

Our reading from the Old Testament is a record of David becoming king, after the death of Saul. This was by no means a given, no fait accompli. There were certainly different camps, and undoubtedly those who wanted to see which way the wind would blow and then want to make sure they were seen in step with the direction of travel. And yet, in a time of existential crisis, all the tribes come together, and recognise that the Lord has made David the shepherd of his people, and that they were David’s flesh and bone. For us, as the Church, we believe that Jesus, the descendent of David, is our shepherd and our king; and that we, the Church, who share in his flesh and his blood, are the very mystical body of our Christ, our deliverer. There is both something unique about the one around whom we gather, and something participatory about the experience. As we gather to discern the nature of the rule of Jesus over our shared lives, we, also, should expect such discernment to be corporate, speaking and listening together.

And then, a small detail: when David occupied the Jebusite stronghold to create his new capital, he built from the Millo inwards. The Millo, archaeologists suggest, is a large, stepped stone structure, on which a massive royal palace was built. The Millo, then, is an outward sign of an inward grace: for, as the body of Christ comes together, the rule of Christ is extended in, and through, our lives.

Our reading from the Gospel parallels this. At the start, Jesus is teaching, with his disciples gathered to him. His neighbours ask, ‘From where does this man get his authority? We know his people; they’re just ordinary people. This man is a carpenter, not a rabbi, not a miracle-worker.’ And, indeed, in the face of their unbelief, Jesus was limited in what he was able to do. He moves on, moves beyond the familiar; and he sends out the twelve, his followers, giving them authority to do the things that Jesus has been doing. The mind of Christ, the mission of God through Jesus, dispersed. They are to go in vulnerability, and they should expect to experience both welcome and rejection.

Where they experience welcome, they are to stay, as a liberating, healing presence. Where they experience rejection, they are to keep moving on, shaking the dust off their feet. In biblical imagination, human beings are dust, stirred-up, animated by the wind of God’s breath or Spirit. Jesus says to his disciples, act this out: stir up the dust with your feet, then let it settle; let them know, the Spirit came to animate you, but you have chosen the stillness of death instead.

Nonetheless, the kingdom of God is extended, as the followers of Jesus step out in faith and exercise their delegated authority, calling for repentance, a change of direction in step with God’s will. Discerning the way forward together, on the way, together. Enabling freedom for those who are demonised, and therapeutic healing for those who have endured long-term malaise.

In our New Testament reading, from the Corinthian correspondence, Paul takes us on a little further. The context is that some other followers of Jesus are discrediting Paul’s teaching, and indeed his character, to his friends. It is something that he clearly found painful. He wrestled with getting caught up in arguments with them, over personal experience; and seems to come down on holding personal experience as important, for sustaining one’s own relationship with God, without placing too much weight on it. Indeed, Paul implies, that disagreement is used by God to curb our own excesses.

Three times, Paul says, he asked Jesus to remove the thorn in his flesh. This is often taken to refer to a physical ailment, but it seems to me more likely to be a reference to Numbers 33:55 (‘But if you do not drive out the inhabitants of the land from before you, then those whom you let remain shall be as barbs in your eyes and thorns in your sides; they shall trouble you in the land where you are settling.’) and Joshua 23:13 (‘know assuredly that the Lord your God will not continue to drive out these nations before you; but they shall be a snare and a trap for you, a scourge on your sides, and thorns in your eyes, until you perish from this good land that the Lord your God has given you.’) In other words, ‘God, please remove from me this group who follow me around, undermining the work I believe that you have called me to!’ But the Lord answered Paul, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.’

How, then, might this help us learn together, concerning matters on which we might disagree—perhaps passionately? Firstly, our personal experience matters, but more for our own sake than as a weapon with which to win an argument. We should share our experience with humility, and hear the experiences of other people with wonder at the mystery of our union with God, which is in Christ. We should seek to know one another as ‘a person in Christ.’ Including those who see things very differently. For all we know, these persons in Christ are given to us, a person in Christ, because we need one another, because the truth is not in my ‘me’ or in their ‘me’ but holds us. For all we know, one size does not fit all, and the discernment we seek is of a platform large enough to extend the royal palace of heaven, to draw us inwards, deeper into the divine mystery.

That vision does not remove us from discomfort, but holds us in the place of weakness—even torment, at times—a sufficient grace, for me, for you, for each one of us, in which vulnerability the power of God to transform all is made perfect. In learning together, we are not seeking the right answer, but the shepherd-king, the carpenter-prophet, bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh, whom we thought we knew, but had failed to honour.

As we commit to learning together, let us commit to doing so to the best of our ability, listening attentively, and choosing to honour one another, that we might grow together into the fulness of Christ, in love, and peace, and joy, and wisdom. And when the dust settles, may it signify a welcome rest on our pilgrimage, not the departure of God without us. Amen.

 

Fourth Sunday after Trinity 2021, 10.30 a.m. service

Lectionary readings: 2 Corinthians 8:7-24 and Mark 5:21-43

You may recall that I spoke recently about the Church of England’s desire to explore ‘Christian teaching and learning about identity, sexuality, relationships and marriage,’ under the banner heading Living in Love and Faith, and that this would inform my preaching over the summer months, and that we would be running the five-session Living in Love and Faith course as a way of considering these issues together. Well, the Prime Minister’s announcement pushing back a full lifting of current Covid-19 restrictions deep into July has meant that we will now have to look to the early autumn to run the course; but the rest still stands. And this morning I want to draw on our texts to consider the complex nature of the quality of our relationships.

I want to begin with the Gospel, where we meet a woman who has bled from her womb for twelve years, not in menstrual cycles, but continuously and without ceasing. Nobody knew why. The physicians did not understand her body. They acted upon her, some perhaps with great sympathy and care, others, perhaps, with coldness; but not least because they acted upon her rather than with her, her investment resulted in no profit, only greater loss. Her condition is not simply physical, but one of social isolation. She is not welcome within the wider community, for fear that they will be contaminated by her presence, that they or their daughters might catch her disease. And after twelve years of unwelcome, this freak is now also penniless. No husband, no children, no prospects. And then, she heard that Jesus was in town. And hearing, she risks everything, pushing her way through the crowd that has come out in welcome—not of her, never for her—to touch the hem of his cloak. That, she knows, is enough for her, to be made well.

What happens next transforms everything. Firstly, we are told that immediately, the ‘fountain of her blood’ was ‘parched.’ That is, her most painful experience, the cause of her rejection by the community, is transformed into a foretelling of, and mystical communion with, Jesus on the cross, the Son of Man and Son of God who cried out “I thirst!” as his blood flowed for the healing of the world. And secondly, we are told, that she ‘came to know,’ ‘in the body’ [that was hers], ‘that she was healed of her affliction.’ The word for ‘body’ is used both for the physical body and for the Church as mystical body of Christ. The word for ‘disease’ is taken from the scourge of leather thongs embedded with pieces of metal used to punish criminals, used to describe the kinds of condition that carry a tortuous level of pain, and public humiliation. In other words, what is revealed to us by and with and in this woman is that healing is (meant) to be found through participation in the life of the Church. When Jesus declares back to the woman what has taken place, he replaces a word for healing with a word for salvation, for being brought into divine safety from the penalty and power of sin. Through her faith—her active trust, even at personal cost, demonstrating great vulnerability—this woman is seen, for who see is, a Daughter of Abraham, a full member of the family, for the first time in many long years. If the Church is not a place of such finding wholeness, whatever else it might be, it is not the Church.

This story is juxtaposed with that of Jairus’ daughter, a little girl of twelve years old, who dies before Jesus can get to her. And the crowd gathered at her home laugh when Jesus says that she is only sleeping. For they know that things are simply the way that they are, and that you cannot change them, however hard and sad that might be, however much you wish it were different—for there is no doubt that there is considerable and deep-felt emotion going on here, commotion, weeping and wailing. And Jesus responds, We’ll see. Life is given back, relationship restored, not a continuation of what was previously, but a transformation for all involved. And this made-new family is constituted around a table, in the sharing of a meal. Again, the Church, hidden in plain sight in the text, as (mistaken) potential custodians of a lost past or (taken) potential witnesses to the inbreaking future.

With all that in mind, I want to turn to Paul’s exhortation to the church in Corinth. The original context is concerned with the raising of financial support for distribution as there was need. And that in itself is a challenge for us today, who, as a congregation, contribute around half of what we have been asked to contribute towards supporting our sisters and brothers in local churches across our Diocese. But our lens over this summer relates to ‘Christian teaching and learning about identity, sexuality, relationships and marriage,’ under the banner heading Living in Love and Faith, and there are principles that can be applied.

Firstly, we are neither self-sufficient nor solely self-determining, as an identifiable gathered community or as individuals. It is not what we say about ourselves, the narratives we tell, that matters, so much as how we are experienced by other people in relationship. This is true of those who say, ‘I am generous,’ but do not actually give generously. It is true of those who say, ‘I chose how I will identify, and be identified publicly’—and it is true of those who dismiss those who make such claims. Within the Church, we are invited and challenged to recognise that we find our truest self, and our healed relationship with others, in Jesus, and as part of his broken body.

To this end, we must be open to one another, in as much as we are able, and not accusing one another over the extent to which we are unable. But self-sufficiency and self-determinism are so embedded in us, and we are all less wise, more easily deceived, than we care to acknowledge. This is why our hearts—‘the genuineness of your love’—must be tested, again and again. This is also why our life must be seen, not hidden—open, proved—just as Jesus insisted that the woman who touched his cloak be seen by the crowd, and by his disciples, and that their own assumptions and prejudices also be seen, for what they are, in the light of her faith.

‘All around us we see changing understandings of human identity, changing patterns of relationships and families, changing sexual attitudes and activity. What does it mean for followers of Jesus to walk in love, faith and holiness today?’ (from the Welcome to the Living in Love and Faith course). As proof of our love, and following the self-giving example of our Lord Jesus Christ, and Paul’s advice to the church in Corinth, let us not only exercise generosity, according to our means, but also administer generosity, according to the needs of different communities, different people. May we be eager for the wellbeing and full participation of others, as Titus was; and may we become known for proclaiming good news.

 

Fourth Sunday after Trinity 2021, 8.00 a.m. service

Lectionary readings: 2 Samuel 1:1, 17-27 and Mark 5:21-43

You may recall that I spoke recently about the Church of England’s desire to explore ‘Christian teaching and learning about identity, sexuality, relationships and marriage,’ under the banner heading Living in Love and Faith, and that this would inform my preaching over the summer months, and that we would be running the five-session Living in Love and Faith course as a way of considering these issues together. Well, the Prime Minister’s announcement pushing back a full lifting of current Covid-19 restrictions deep into July has meant that we will now have to look to the early autumn to run the course; but the rest still stands. And this morning I want to draw on our texts to consider the complex nature of the quality of our relationships.

I want to begin with the Gospel, where we meet a woman who has bled from her womb for twelve years, not in menstrual cycles, but continuously and without ceasing. Nobody knew why. The physicians did not understand her body. They acted upon her, some perhaps with great sympathy and care, others, perhaps, with coldness; but not least because they acted upon her rather than with her, her investment resulted in no profit, only greater loss. Her condition is not simply physical, but one of social isolation. She is not welcome within the wider community, for fear that they will be contaminated by her presence, that they or their daughters might catch her disease. And after twelve years of unwelcome, this freak is now also penniless. No husband, no children, no prospects. And then, she heard that Jesus was in town. And hearing, she risks everything, pushing her way through the crowd that has come out in welcome—not of her, never for her—to touch the hem of his cloak. That, she knows, is enough for her, to be made well.

What happens next transforms everything. Firstly, we are told that immediately, the ‘fountain of her blood’ was ‘parched.’ That is, her most painful experience, the cause of her rejection by the community, is transformed into a foretelling of, and mystical communion with, Jesus on the cross, the Son of Man and Son of God who cried out “I thirst!” as his blood flowed for the healing of the world. And secondly, we are told, that she ‘came to know,’ ‘in the body’ [that was hers], ‘that she was healed of her affliction.’ The word for ‘body’ is used both for the physical body and for the Church as mystical body of Christ. The word for ‘disease’ is taken from the scourge of leather thongs embedded with pieces of metal used to punish criminals, used to describe the kinds of condition that carry a tortuous level of pain, and public humiliation. In other words, what is revealed to us by and with and in this woman is that healing is (meant) to be found through participation in the life of the Church. When Jesus declares back to the woman what has taken place, he replaces a word for healing with a word for salvation, for being brought into divine safety from the penalty and power of sin. Through her faith—her active trust, even at personal cost, demonstrating great vulnerability—this woman is seen, for who see is, a Daughter of Abraham, a full member of the family, for the first time in many long years. If the Church is not a place of such finding wholeness, whatever else it might be, it is not the Church.

This story is juxtaposed with that of Jairus’ daughter, a little girl of twelve years old, who dies before Jesus can get to her. And the crowd gathered at her home laugh when Jesus says that she is only sleeping. For they know that things are simply the way that they are, and that you cannot change them, however hard and sad that might be, however much you wish it were different—for there is no doubt that there is considerable and deep-felt emotion going on here, commotion, weeping and wailing. And Jesus responds, We’ll see. Life is given back, relationship restored, not a continuation of what was previously, but a transformation for all involved. And this made-new family is constituted around a table, in the sharing of a meal. Again, the Church, hidden in plain sight in the text, as (mistaken) potential custodians of a lost past or (taken) potential witnesses to the inbreaking future.

With all of that in mind, I want to turn to David’s lament for Saul and Jonathan, The Song of the Bow (or, possibly, ‘difficult things’: so, the text can be read, ‘He ordered that The Song of the Bow be taught to the people of Judah; it is written in the Book of Jashar’ or ‘He ordered that difficult things be taught to the people of Judah; it is written in the Book of Jashar’ and of course, bow skill requires mastery of a difficult thing, as does lament). Here, also, is a blood-soaked text, women clothed with flowing crimson, and a lost child, a community in mourning. Here, too, are professional mourners ordered to be silent, and a mystery to be handed on. David sings, ‘Saul and Jonathan, beloved and lovely! In life and in death they were not divided;’ Saul, who sought to kill David, on more than one occasion. Saul and Jonathan, who were all-but-estranged, the father having tried to kill his own son on more than one occasion.

And yet, David is not ashamed to own Saul, as much as his friend Jonathan. Those whom we love, in a variety of ways, give themselves to us, complete with complex family histories. Those of us who help families navigate funerals know just how much diplomacy can be required, how much pain held inside, as much as shared before onlookers. And yet, there is more than diplomacy going on here; there is at least the potential for the relationships between David and Saul and Jonathan to be transformed, in the next world if not in this—and for others to embrace healing before it is too late. Jonathan’s bow and the sword of Saul might yet pierce our hard hearts for good.

David exposes his own heart, his anguish over Jonathan’s death: ‘I am distressed for you, my brother Jonathan; greatly beloved were you to me; your love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women.’ Concerning complex relationships, some have argued that this verse reveals a homoerotic relationship between the two men. I find that unconvincing, and, indeed, unnecessary to the case for affirming same-sex relationships. What I do see in David’s history is the complexity of sexual relationships between men and women; and of friendship—including its limits and its betrayals—between men. As we reflect on the quality of relationships within (or, indeed, outside of) the life of the Church, can we say that we have friendships of the depth and intimacy of that between David and Jonathan? Or do we shy away?

It is, David laments, death that defiles, and scorns a place as well as a people; and love that covers over a multitude of sins, of shortcomings and compromise and even wilful hostility. In the midst of battle, even the mighty end up fallen, no longer anointed by God (words worth heeding before we march into culture wars). But as the mightiest Prince of all, and Lover of our Soul, lay slain, the weapons of war perished! And in teaching this song, there is hope.

So, may we learn to lament, and, through our tears, to see Jesus, to see one another, to see ourselves, anew.

 

Second Sunday after Trinity 2021

 

Second Sunday after Trinity 2021

Lectionary readings: 1 Samuel 15:34-16:13; 2 Corinthians 5:6-10, 14-17; Mark 4:26-34.

If I am honest, I don’t think I have ever felt entirely at home in my body. Not because I do not believe the body matters; I do. I hold no truck with a pseudo-spirituality that views the body as of less value than the soul. Nor is it that I feel trapped in the wrong body; though I appreciate that that is the experience of some, including people I know. Rather, it is in part because, in my body, I live with dyspraxia—it is hard to be at ease in/with a body when that body has to work so damn hard to process things that neurotypical bodies take for granted. And it is in part because my body is not mine alone. My shared DNA, in particular as it shapes the contours of my face, is an embodied reminder of a web of relationships, past and present, storied with pain as well as joy and wonder, open wounds as well as old familiar scars. When I look in the mirror, I see too many ghosts, of the living as well as the dead, bodies I am apart from in the body.

There is, then, a longing, not for a day when I shall be freed from the body, but for a day when every wound shall be glorious, in the likeness of the wounds of my risen Lord. Every scar, a history of unfolding, enfolding, grace. But for now, in those ways I rejoice over my body and in those ways I weep over my body, I make it my aim to please him.

It comes down to a matter of heart, the seat of our desire to know God as we are well known to God, and of the will to present my body, on a daily basis, in God’s service. My body, as it is: its strength and weaknesses, in sickness and in health. ‘For the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.’ (1 Samuel 16:7b; cf. 2 Cor 5:12)

In our Gospel reading, we hear again two parables of physical transformation, culminating in fruitfulness and purpose. The seed that sprouts, producing first a stalk, then the head, then the full grain to be harvested. And the smallest seed, that grows up to be the largest—and most vigorous—of shrubs. The one to the farmer’s joy; the other, to the farmer’s consternation.

The seed was not made by God to remain in the form of a seed, but to pursue its response to the gift of life. The sower observes the mystery of life, transformed; and also the wider mystery of creation. Day and night do not so much follow one another in an endless dance as change their outward form through unfolding stages of dawn and dusk.

All bodies change through time, whether they simply age from baby to child to youth to adult to maturity and the fading grandeur of decline and eventual decay, or whether the process involves multiple medical procedures, shaping the body to better the purposes of its heart. Whether my body, or bodies with more complex histories, each as well known to God.

The Church has understood itself in bodily terms, as the body of Christ, and lives with the tension of being a body, not wholly at ease in her own skin. But we are seeking to be more at home in the body, by faith, until we see Christ face to face. More at home with our various constituent bodies, both our own—as it transforms—and those of our sisters and brothers, cisgender and transgender, presently able-bodied (enabled bodies) and for now dis-abled. We are seeking to boast about, and enable, one another's hearts, not pass judgement on outward appearances. And in this, we shall need the grace of God, and forgiveness.

Over the course of this year, the national Church has asked that, in our local and regional expressions, we think more deeply about what it means to be human and how to live in love and faith. ‘All around us we see changing understandings of human identity, changing patterns of relationships and families, changing sexual attitudes and activity. What does it mean for followers of Jesus to walk in love, faith and holiness today?’ (from the Welcome to the Living in love and Faith course). Under the banner ‘Living in Love and Faith’ we are being invited to explore: what does it mean to learn together as followers of Jesus Christ?; how does our identity in Christ relate to sex and gender?; what kinds of relationships does God call us to?; where do our bodies and sex fit in to all of this?; and, how do diversity and difference affect our life together as a church?

These are not academic debates, let alone political correctness—or, conversely, a railing against society—but issues that deeply affect the lives of our neighbours, our families, and friends—our own lives—and that have a profound impact on the witness and welcome of the Church. Who is excluded and overlooked? What values we hold to be self-evident or dear might God reject? Where might the Spirit of God want to pour healing oil on troubled hearts and minds? How might we pursue that for which God has created us?

Over the course of the summer months, I shall be touching on these issues—of what it means to be human and how to live in love and faith—in our sermons; and plans are coming together to run the Living in Love and Faith course, as a safe space to explore them further. To watch, and to wonder. To undergo transformation, together. Perhaps, as we saw the prophet Samuel do in our Old Testament reading, to grieve things lost. Perhaps, as we also saw Samuel do, to prophetically anoint the future. Look out for further information and how to take part over the coming weeks. Or get a head start here:

https://www.churchofengland.org/resources/living-love-and-faith

 

‘But the Lord said to Samuel, ‘Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.’’ (1 Sam 16:7)

 

‘From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view [Greek: according to the flesh], we know him no longer in that way. So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!’ (2 Cor 5:16, 17)

 

‘He also said, ‘The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come.’

‘He also said, ‘With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.’

‘With many such parables he spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it; he did not speak to them except in parables, but he explained everything in private to his disciples.’ (Mark 4:26-34)