Ash Wednesday 2022

 

Isaiah 58:1-12 and John 8:1-11

John’s Gospel is quite unlike those of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. It is centred not on Galilee but on Jerusalem, and on Jesus’ participation in the great annual cycle of Jewish pilgrim festivals; on his debates, at those festivals, with his fellow Jews concerning the interpretation of Torah, the Law or instruction for living given to the people by God through Moses. From early on (chapter five, of twenty-one) and recurring throughout, it is made clear that there are those, among his own people, who are so offended by Jesus that they seek to kill him. There is no hiding from this: what they conspire to do in the shadows, Jesus, and John, shine light on. Indeed, there is a clear contrast between light and darkness, day and night, and activities that pertain to one or the other, that runs throughout the gospel. And then there are the signs, by which Jesus reveals his glory; and the ‘I am’ sayings, by which the nature of God is revealed in the person of Jesus, through their perfect union. Jesus is clear and true, like the bright sunshine on a spring day, and we must decide what we will do in light of this.

Picture the scene. It is the day after the seven-day pilgrim festival of Booths. Jesus had attended the festival, arriving late and in secret, beginning to teach in the temple from the middle of the week to its culmination. He has spent the previous night sleeping in the makeshift pilgrim camp on the Mount of Olives, overlooking the temple. This morning, most of the pilgrims are heading home—some have already done so—but Jesus rises early and makes his way across the Kidron Valley and back into the temple as the new day begins. The day before, there had been a botched attempt to arrest him—an unholy alliance of elite Sadducees and populist Pharisees, frustrated by the concerns of the temple police not to incite a riot—followed by a debrief at which Nicodemus, a respected Pharisee and secret disciple of Jesus, insists that the Law does not judge people without first giving them a hearing, for which he is derided.

At least some of this, Jesus would be aware of. And yet he comes into the temple at first light, and everyone else who is also coming into the temple that morning gathers to him, and he sits down—the posture of calm authority—and begins to teach them. Unintimidated, he continues to do the very thing that provokes his enemies. And, again, they seek to disrupt him.

From behind the crowd, the sounds of a woman crying out, men shouting harshly in reply. Others are pushed aside, and a woman flung into the space that has opened in front of Jesus. She has, it is claimed, been caught in the very act of committing adultery. The law of Moses commands that such women be stoned. What does Jesus have to say about that?

It is, of course, a trap. An attempt to provoke moral outrage among the devout assembly of those who turn up at the temple early in the morning on the day after a seven-day festival. An attempt to force Jesus into trying to justify the indefensible, and so to turn the crowd against him, or at least divide them against one another. It is explicitly the opposite of Nicodemus’ stand: there is no evidence to support the headline. No man with whom this woman is alleged to have committed adultery, no hearing. This could be the media and social media of today, demanding our outrage, provoking us to feel morally superior, for we are not sinners, are we?

Notice the wisdom of Jesus. Invited to respond in the heat of the moment, in the absence of evidence, without due consideration, he simply refuses to play their game. Already seated on the ground, he stoops even lower. He does not gaze upon the woman as an object of scandal and titillation. He does not get in the face of his enemies, either. He gives himself space and time to breathe, to consider, to pray. He writes on the ground. And don’t you want to know what he wrote? But we are not told. It is not for us to know. We do not need to know. Our knowledge is always limited. It is not knowledge that will save us, but Jesus.

In his own time, Jesus straightens up—remaining seated—and simply states, ‘Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.’

Adultery is a serious business. It tears apart the fabric of society. It is not a trivial thing. There is no room in Jesus’ response for the lie that no one gets hurt so long as no one finds out, or that hurt caused another party by the actions of consenting adults is regrettable, but the relationship was clearly already doomed so finding out now rather than later is, if anything, a mercy. The law of Moses is clear on adultery—even if Jesus’ enemies are playing fast and loose with it here. If this woman is guilty of adultery, it is best that you get on with it and stone her. There is a foreshadowing here of Jesus’ own death, of his words to his betraying friend, ‘Do quickly what you are going to do’ (John 13:27).

On the other hand, if this woman is innocent of the charge against her, a threatened pawn to bait a trap, which of you wants to throw the first stone, to be the one responsible for shedding innocent blood? It is a matter of nerve, of who will back down first. The way forward, that brings us to the father-heart of God, or the path of destruction. The truth, or a lie. Life, or death. And one by one the accusers go away, beginning with the elders, with those who have known suffering, those whose hubris is modified by some awareness, at least, of the distance between themselves and God and their neighbour, and of the pain that results. Eventually, even the young guns back down. And Jesus, who has shown the woman the dignity of not gazing on her, shows these men—his enemies—the same dignity. He takes no delight in their humiliation, only in the truth. And so, his question is genuine: ‘Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?’ ‘No one, sir.’ she replies, and Jesus said, ‘Neither do I condemn you. Go your way, and from now on do not sin again.’

Not, do not commit adultery again, for this is never established. But do not sin again, for each one of us has fallen short in one way or another. Go your own way, and from now on do not sin again. Not someone else’s way, not avoiding someone else’s sin. It is your own sin that you must turn away from. Then again, being shown dignity and the removal of condemnation, Jesus believes that the woman can do this thing, can go on her way, and not sin again. Can choose to love God with heart and soul and mind and strength, and to love your neighbour as yourself—and can know what it is to be empowered to live this way. Jesus believes that this is possible, indeed imperative, for this woman. For me. For you. As Isaiah puts it,

‘Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer; you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am. If you remove the yoke from among you, the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil, if you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday. The Lord will guide you continually, and satisfy your needs in parched places, and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters never fail. Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in.’ (Isaiah 58:9-12)

Moral outrage feels good, in the moment. It does not last, which is why it must be endlessly stoked, against new victims, whether innocent or guilty. It feels good to be part of a tribe, who will stroke our ego and affirm us—until the moment that they turn on us. And yet, in denying the truth about ourselves, as much as the person or people in the target of our gaze, moral outrage dehumanises us all. In hiding ourselves for fear of being seen, the shame of being seen for who we really are and derided for it, we refuse the gift of the breath of life, and disintegrate. Flesh returning to dust, before our time. Hearts turning to stone. Moral outrage allows us to feel superior, even as we stand by and allow others to be robbed of life.

We can learn from Jesus, make the choice to act rather than react, to uphold truth, even to love our enemies as much as those we hold near to our hearts. But more than that, we must come to him, as those who believe that he is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing we possess life in his name. The kind of life that rebuilds ruins, repairs breaches in protective walls, restores streets people can live in—communities people want to be part of. The kind of life our sisters and brothers in Ukraine and Russia and around the world are praying and working for, blessed be the peacemakers.

This Lent we are invited once again to come and receive the imposition of ashes, the outward reminder of our dustiness, of our frail and beloved nature, potentially fruitful, potentially bringing forth weeds and briars, one with all humanity, reconciled to God by and with and in Jesus. We are invited to ‘Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return. Turn away from sin and be faithful to Christ.’ And then we are invited to go our way, free of condemnation, confident in God’s salvation, whatever may become of us, even should we die. Sent out, as signs of Jesus’ glory, bearers in our bodies of the good news.

It is early in the morning. The night, though dark, is passing. It cannot resist the light.

 

Second Sunday before Lent 2022

 

The Bible is a library of works, written from different perspectives, in diverse moments in history, and interpreted by faith communities that are, if anything, even more diverse and dispersed. One of the things that holds all this together, that provides unity to the diversity, is a shared commitment to the idea that everything we experience is, to borrow a phrase from John of the Apocalypse, an open door through which God’s reign is revealed.

The Old Testament reading this Sunday is Genesis 2:4b–9, 15–25. In it, God creates a human from the soil, plants a garden in the middle of which are the tree of life and the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and creates a second human, to be a deliverer, from one side of the first. I want to suggest, as I have done before, that this is not an explanation of human origins, but a late story that helps make sense of lived experience when parts of the Jewish community were returning from exile in Babylon, and others were not. I want to suggest that Eden represents Babylon; the man Adam represents the Neo-Babylonian empire, and their greatest king, Nebuchadnezzar II; the woman Eve represents the Achaemenid empire, founded by Cyrus the Great, who overthrew the Neo-Babylonians, restored the honour of Babylon’s traditional creator god and his servant, a talking dragon or serpent, and declared an edict allowing the Jews to return to Jerusalem. I want to suggest that the tree of life represents the Lord God, who accompanies his people into exile; and that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil represents the Jewish exiles, who know good from evil on account of having been given the Law. For as long as the kings of Babylon did not lay violent hands on the Jews living in their midst, they would know the Lord God’s blessing; but should they be tempted to consume the fruit of this tree, say in a fiery furnace or an enclosure of lions, the hand of the Lord would be against them. Meanwhile, the call of God’s people was to stay close to God, and to be present in the midst of the peoples to teach them right from wrong. Though Adam and Eve are evicted from the garden, the trees are not removed. Likewise, not all the exiles return to Jerusalem. Whether in Jerusalem or Babylon or Susa or Alexandria or Rome, wherever they may now find themselves, the call of God’s people was to stay close to God, and to be present in the midst of the peoples to teach them right from wrong.

Our New Testament reading this Sunday is Revelation 4:1-11. John, in exile on the island of Patmos, is given a vision of the throne room of heaven. God is seated on a throne that reminds us of Mount Sinai, on which the Law was given; before which there is a sea, reminiscent of the Sea God parted to bring his people out from captivity in Egypt. Over the throne is a rainbow, symbol of God’s covenant with all creation. Around it there are twenty-four thrones and twenty-four elders, representing the tribes of Israel and the disciples, the people of Israel and the Church. Then there are four living creatures: a gigantic lion, a gigantic bull, a gigantic man, and a gigantic eagle; creatures common to the mythologies of the Greco-Roman empire. Think the Nemean lion and Cretan bull, first and seventh labours of Heracles. Think second-generation Titan (giant) Prometheus, punished by Zeus for favouring humans, chained to a rock, and condemned to have his regenerating liver eaten day after day by the eagle, emblem of Zeus, until at last, some say, Heracles rescued him. But in John’s vision, these archetypal Greco-Roman creatures are united in worshipping the God of the Jewish people, as ‘holy, holy, holy’ or perfectly set apart from all other gods and heroes, an entirely separate category of being, before all gods, above all gods, enduring beyond all gods. And, considering this, the call of God’s people — now incorporating Gentiles as well as Jews — is to worship God as creator of all things.

Our Gospel reading this Sunday is Luke 8:22-25. It is an episode in the life of Jesus and his disciples, and I have no doubt that it took place. But the question is, how does nearly drowning in a storm on the lake open a door onto heaven? By which I do not mean that death is a door to the afterlife, but how does this crisis reveal the reign of God in our daily lives?

I want to suggest that whenever we come across a boat in the Gospels, it represents the Church, the community Jesus builds starting with Simon Peter the fisherman and Andrew and James and John. Jesus comes to them in their everyday lives, and this is where he is revealed to them. This is where they come to believe that he is Master, and that they can trust him explicitly, with their very lives. The lake represents lived experience, which is at times calm and the place of a fruitful contribution to society, and at other times overwhelming in its chaos. And it can turn from one to the other very quickly, without warning. The lake is also the meeting-point between different cultures, which itself can be a cause of friction.

In this boat, Jesus is so completely at home that he, being tired, can fall asleep. There is an incredible level of trust and confidence in this, which, I would have to note, several of you would appear to share, dozing off during the sermon. Meanwhile, a strong wind rushes down from the surrounding hills, from the surrounding and at times conflicting cultures, and the waves rise up, and in the original Greek telling of this story what we are told is that the boat is filling up completely with water. There is in the telling a sense of completeness, of being filled as fulfilling. The sense that the boat is, in fact, intended to be filled to the brim with water. Which should be a disturbing thought, as it certainly was for the fishermen, who knew a thing or two about boats and about how important it is for the water to stay outside of the boat. But Jesus carries on sleeping. The boat does not, in fact, capsize or sink. The disciples draw near to Jesus — who is asleep — and as they draw near, they discover that Jesus has authority over the wind and the waves, that the wind and the waves listen to him and understand him and obey him. And I wonder whether it is simply the words Jesus says directly to them that the wind and the waves hear and obey, or whether they are already listening and understanding. Whether the wind and the waves hear Jesus’ breath, the rise and fall of his breast, and understand that he is sleeping, and know that whatever else may go on, this boat is not going down. The wind and the waves are for the benefit of the disciples, to reveal something to them.

The tree in the middle of the garden. The elders in the middle of the living creatures. The boat in the middle of the lake. Three images, three descriptions of God’s people in the middle of the peoples. And the boat does not sink. Indeed, the boat can take on board, can hold all the drama going on around it and still be the safest place to be, not because the boat is a good boat but because Jesus is in the boat.

Let me be clear. I know many people who have got out of the boat, who have walked away from the Church. Some of them have left on account of there being too much drama going on inside the boat, because of the way in which some of the other disciples, often led by Peter, have tried to contain the wind, or throw out the water bucket by bucket. Some have walked away from the faith of the Church on account of having experienced a shrill and faithless Church. Others have needed to find another boat in which to continue following Jesus, just as in the Gospels themselves we see other boats following Jesus. At the Minster we have recently started a new space for some who have been hurt by the Church in the past. To those who have walked away entirely, I would always support and encourage anyone leaving an abusive relationship, whether the abuser is an individual or a community. I confess that the Church has not always lived up to our calling, must repent and seek God’s forgiveness and the grace to amend our common life.

That important caveat said, the Church as universal community that bears witness to what God is doing in the world in and through the person of Jesus, the Church as it is called to be, the Church does not sink. When the storms blow over our lives, the Church holds us in the knowledge that Jesus is found trustworthy in our lived experience again and again across continents and down through the centuries. And again, today, we are encouraged to stay close to God, as God is revealed to us perfectly in Jesus. And through our worship to renew our trust and hope in him as the one through whom and for whom God has created all things and is reconciling all things. So may our worship be joyful. When the wind blows, may it fill our lungs to sing, and may the song be a lullaby to fear and a stirring tune to courage.

 

The Collect (prayer) for the Second Sunday before Lent:

Almighty God,
you have created the heavens and the earth
and made us in your own image:
teach us to discern your hand in all your works
and your likeness in all your children;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who with you and the Holy Spirit reigns supreme over all things,
now and for ever.
Amen.

 

Fourth Sunday before Lent 2022

 

Luke 5:1-11

Our Gospel reading today is taken from Luke chapter 5. We are in a part of Luke’s Gospel—that is, his presentation of the good news concerning Jesus—where Luke is giving us a broad and general sense of Jesus’ Galilean ministry. He gathers up accounts from eyewitnesses, like scooping up fish in a net: ‘Once while…’ ‘once, when…’ ‘one day, while…’ ‘one sabbath while…’ ‘on another sabbath…’ ‘Now during those days…’ (5:1, 12, 17; 6:1, 6).

There is also, here, a sense of movement, out from. Jesus is driven out of Nazareth, up on the hillside, and went down to Capernaum, on the lakeside (4:28-31). There, Jesus sends out, or away, an unclean demon from a man in the synagogue (4:31-37), and a fever, from Simon’s mother-in-law (4:38-41). Jesus himself then goes out, first into a deserted place, and then to the surrounding towns (4:42-44). And in our Gospel passage for today, Jesus takes his stand on the shore of the lake; but, even having taken his stand, is taken hold of, and pushed back, out, must seek temporary shelter in Simon’s empty boat. Jesus asks Simon to ‘put out a little way from the shore,’ and then to ‘Put out into the deep water’—and Peter pleads with Jesus to go away from him, before leaving everything and following Jesus. So, there is an outward movement at play here, in relation to many of the characters we are encountering.

Alongside this, there is a recurring theme of Jesus’ engagement with sinners. Simon asks Jesus to go away from him because he, Simon, is a sinful man. But Jesus does not go away. Instead, he responds, ‘Do not be afraid.’ Or, to a paralysed man, by saying, ‘Friend, your sins are forgiven you’ (5:17-26). Or to the tax collectors and sinners by eating and drinking with them (5:27-31). Those describing themselves, or being described by others, as ‘sinners’ are understood by all to fall short of what God expects of us. But Jesus’ response, in keeping with his mission ‘to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour’ (4:18, 19) suggests that God does not share this assessment at all. That sense of falling short is not of God. Rather, the Spirit of the Lord has anointed Jesus to bring release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, freedom for the oppressed. That sense of falling short of God’s expectations holds us captive, distorts our vision—of ourselves, and others—and empowers oppression. Jesus calls Simon to leave it all behind—his disappointment and frustration over an entire night’s fishing without anything to show for it; his sense of being overwhelmed and of personal inadequacy in the face of a large catch; his shame—to leave it all behind and follow him.

Much of what Simon is doing in these verses is familiar. He knows what it is to put in a shift at work with nothing to show for it, not because he falls short as a fisherman but because work—even work we are good at, even work we are committed to—is often boring and frustrating. He knows what it is to do the repetitive work of cleaning his nets, and he knows what it is to be interrupted in his work by someone who wants to ask something of him or borrow something from him. These things are familiar to Simon, and familiar to us.

And when Jesus asks Simon to do overtime, to put in back-to-back shifts, Simon calls him ‘Master.’ The word, Epistata, means, the one who has legal ownership, and, as such, is fully authorised to give commands. Simon is saying, ‘Jesus, my boat is your boat, my nets are your nets; this lake is your lake; this day, at the end of a long night, is your day.’ As we (sometimes) proclaim when we gather-up the offerings of the people, ‘All things come from you, and of your own do we give you.’ The work that contributes to my sense of identity, of perceived worth or lack of worth. My means of production, or contribution to society. My life is yours.

What, then, might the Spirit of God want to say to the people of God in this place on this day? Are you worn out, tired, weary to the bone? Are you frustrated, or disappointed, or even ashamed of who you think that you are or how you feel that you have, or may yet, let others down? Do you feel out-of-your depth, in any part of your life? Whether it is in relation to work, or family, or illness, or growing old, I know that you do; that, one way or another, we can relate to Simon, as he listens to Jesus while washing his nets.

It is striking that it is the empty boat, the empty net, the empty lake that Jesus takes and transforms. Things and places and circumstances and people who appear to fall short of our expectations turn out to be the very things and places and circumstances and people that God-with-us is looking for. ‘Do not be afraid,’ Jesus says. This may not be what you expected life would look like, but this is where we are. Where we are; and I am Master.

We are only a month into 2022 and already it is clear that the year ahead is going to stretch us beyond our resources. Yet the good news is that it is also the year of the Lord’s favour. In Jesus, always the year of the Lord’s favour. Lay down your hopes and fears and follow him.

 

 

Third Sunday of Epiphany 2022

 

I am a lover of stories. More than that, I am a lover of storytelling. Not only stories themselves, but how they are told, whether in novels or cinema or in our own everyday lives.

This week, the vicarage-dwellers watched Encanto, Disney’s 60th feature-length animation. Set in Columbia and inspired by the magical realism of much Latin American storytelling, Encanto tells the story of the family Madrigal, three generations who live together in a sentient house at the heart of a hidden village, presided over by their matriarch Abuela, Grandmother. For two generations, each member of the family has been bestowed a magical gift as a child. One has precognition; another, the ability to endow food with healing power; another can control the weather, to an extent, though her strong emotions can create unwanted downpours. One has enhanced hearing; another can shape-shift their form; another can converse with animals. One has super-human strength; another can summon flowers into being. And one, Mirabel Madrigal, did not receive any magical gift. However, it is Mirabel who sees their home cracking apart, the magic dying; and it is Mirabel who must save them all, by helping them to confront those things that they have tried to suppress for many years.

As Mirabel persists, the family secrets are brought into the light. Her older sister, Luisa, the one with superhuman strength, carries an enormous burden of anxiety, that her value is only in her talent, and should it fail, who then would she be? And Mirabel and Luisa’s older sister, Isabela, the one who makes everything pretty with flowers, resents the burden of beauty and perceived perfection, secretly wishing to be able to express all her emotions in a diversity of plant forms, resentful of Mirabel who is free from the burden of expectation, unaware of Mirabel’s burden of expectation to serve the village without a gift of her own. In the Madrigal’s world, image, how we are perceived, is everything; uncertainty and ambiguity are dangerous, to be pushed away. Abuela Alma is so frightened of losing the miracle that has been given her family that she controls everything. She is admired by the villagers and loved by her family, but over time she has become a toxic presence, her actions, however well-intentioned, threatening the very thing she is fighting to preserve: the future for her family, in their enchanted home.

I must confess that I did not enjoy this film. It was far too close to the bone. It told the story of many a local church congregation, where love blinds us to controlling behaviour, where duty becomes weaponised, and where we struggle with giftedness and identity.

This Sunday in our churches we hear again the words that Paul wrote to a household in Corinth (1 Corinthians 12:12-31a). He speaks of bodies and of gifts. Our bodies are interconnected, inter-dependent, and, in the case of a Christian community, express the body of Christ in our neighbourhood. Each has a role to play, each is worthy of honour and respect, if one suffers then all suffer. And Paul will continue, describing how love holds this household together, building and where necessary repairing a roof to shelter all, a house where the whole extended multigenerational family can live together (1 Corinthians 12:31b-13:13).

It is easy to see the body in 1 Corinthians 12 as a metaphor, but it is more than that. We are bodily creatures, bodies (and not just disembodied lives) entwined together, and that is why there are limits to Covid isolating, and to relating to one another virtually, through a screen. Both of those things are good gifts—indeed, life-saving—but beyond a certain point they shape us in unhelpful ways. We are bodily creatures, and Jesus is both our model and our life. Jesus, who experienced hunger and thirst, the need to sleep, to rest; Jesus, whose body was wiped by his mother in infancy and in death, whose body touched and was touched by others in healing ways, whose body was tortured, whose body experienced dying and death and whose body was raised from the dead in bodily form.

Our bodies carry our biography, from the face of our mother or father that looks out at us when we look in the mirror thanks to the genes they passed on, to the scars and burns and liver spots on our hands, to the tension we feel when the present moment pulls us without warning into the past. And our bodies need to know the healing power of love in the past, where we can return through accompanied memory (for memory is a shared construction) as well as in the present, through forgiveness and reconciliation. Our bodies can also experience future-healing, faith giving certainty to what we hope for, and the foretaste now of what will be one day.

By the end of Mirabel’s quest, her gift is made manifest to her family, the gift of reconciliation. Family members reconciled in their relationship with themselves—I can be weak as well as strong; cacti are as wonderful as roses—and to one another where they had become estranged. And the family are reconciled to the village, who come to help, possessing no magical gifts but being many, and knowing what it is to work together to bless others. One body, many parts. May we, as a local church, discover afresh what it is to be embodied, to be touched as well as to touch, to be healed and to heal, to discover Christ in our midst. Amen.

 

Second Sunday of Epiphany 2022

 

The Gospel set for this Second Sunday of Epiphany is John 2:1-11, the account of Jesus turning water into wine at a wedding in Cana in Galilee.

 

The water in question is contained in stone water-jars used for Jewish rites of purification. Broadly speaking there are two kinds of purification rite involving water. Some involve submerging the whole body in ‘living’ water, that is, in a public pool or a stone bath fed by a stream (cf. the baptism of Jesus in the river Jordan). For example, pilgrims would undertake such a rite in public pools before entering the Temple, and this is how and where 3,000 people were baptised at the first Pentecost festival after Jesus had been raised from the dead.

 

The other kind of purification rite involved pouring water from a cup dipped into a larger vessel, and it is these vessels that play a role in the Gospel story today. As it happens, in this home the jars were made of (non-porous) stone, which, according to ritual practice—and unlike more readily available (porous) clay jars—is not contaminated by contact with ritual impurity. These large stone jars were an expensive outlay, the choice of a family to whom purity observance was not only desirable but essential, and it is likely that this was a priestly home, possibly even relatives of Jesus on his mother’s side.

 

These rites are not about washing for hygiene purposes, and, crucially, neither are they about making us (or an attempt to make us) acceptable before God: that is the error of legalism, which Jesus confronted; not the failure of Law, which Jesus came to fulfil not abolish. These rites are gifts given by God to God’s ancient chosen people, gifts for enabling life to be experienced fully, in all its fullness. Indeed, they are life-giving. They are given as moments of pausing, within the course of the natural rhythms of life, to rediscover that, “Huh, I have a body!” This is incredibly important for those of us shaped by the so-called ‘Enlightenment’ and the Cartesian idea, “I think, therefore I am.”

 

There are Jewish water-purification rites relating to the menstrual cycle, not because women are a contaminating presence but because they have a body that experiences cycles to be attended to, not only on a practical level; cycles that connect them deeply to all creation. There are Jewish water-purification rites relating to eating bread, inviting us to pause and wonder at our hand, and the intimate connection between labour and food. There are rites of cleansing when laying out the dead, to remind us of the gift of a living, breathing body, for we bring nothing into the world and will take nothing with us when we leave it; and rites of cleansing before a priest declares a blessing, to remind us that a blessing is not merely words but a physical thing, a hand stretched out, air passing through a voice-box, matter connecting with matter in ways that matter.

 

It is this water in these stone jars that Jesus transforms into wine. The jars and the water and the wine are all gifts. Every part of this episode is gift. It isn’t that the wine is better than the water (though it is better than the wine already consumed). It isn’t that Jesus is superseding anything here.

 

This episode ties in with the collect for this Sunday, that declares:

Almighty God,
in Christ you make all things new:
transform the poverty of our nature by the riches of your grace
and in the renewal of our lives
make known your heavenly glory ...

 

The phrase ‘the poverty of our nature’ is a recognition that we do not make ourselves—do not summon ourselves into being by our own power and authority—but receive our life as a contingent gift, wondrous, deeply connected to others. Yet, as if this were not wondrous enough, what is already gift is transformed into another—a different—gift ‘by the riches of [God’s] grace’—that is, through the act of another gift-giving. This is grace upon grace.

 

You are a gift, and that gift is embodied. That body will age, and experience limitations, and is intended to become thoroughly inter-dependent with others, who are themselves also gifts who enjoy the gift of life. The gift you are is a gift that will undergo transformation, many times over, as your personal story is woven into the big story God is co-authoring with humanity. Like the servants and the steward, we will both know and not know what it is that has happened, for it is a mystery, not to be explained but to be entered. Like the disciples, we will be given a glimpse of Jesus’ glory, and are encouraged to respond by affirming our belief in him. The occasion of our transformation may be a running out of some resource, as the wine ran out; or the abundance of a resource, as the water filled the jars to the brim. The ebb and flow of our lives is full of endings and beginnings. In all things, may Jesus be glorified.

 

We need regular, recurring moments that bring us back to this truth, to the gifted nature of life, not as an intellectual idea but as a lived experience. Today, we hold the One whose presence graces us in our outstretched palm; we place him on our tongue; and as we go from here our bodies—our stomachs and our bloodstream—assimilate him in us, as we are in him. We come, in these Covid times, receiving the body and blood of Christ in one kind, the bread; looking for the day when we shall drink the new wine of the kingdom together again; and the day when we shall eat and drink at the heavenly banquet, the marriage feast of the Lamb and the Bride, the consummated union of Christ and the Church. And today, as every time we participate in this moment, in the Dismissal our transformed lives are drawn out and carried and served to the world, to be found good, declared good, revealing Jesus. Amen.

 

Baptism of Christ 2022

 

Lectionary readings Isaiah 43:1-7 and Luke 3.15–17, 21–22

First, a few notes on the readings. Then, a few thoughts on what it might mean for us today.

From the Old Testament reading, ‘But now thus says the LORD, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you.’ (Isaiah 43.1–2)

There are two obvious places where the descendants of Jacob pass through water without even getting wet. First, they pass through the parted waters of the Sea of Reeds, pursued by the chariots of the army of Egypt. And the LORD is with them. Then, a generation later, they pass through the temporarily held back river Jordan into the Promised Land, where they will face the soldier-giants who are garrisoned at Jericho. And they are not overwhelmed.

Our Gospel reading is the account of Jesus’ baptism in the river Jordan, passing through the waters, submerged perhaps, but not overwhelmed. ‘And’ we are told, ‘a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”’ This verse, and this voice, is repeating Psalm 2:7, ‘I will tell of the decree of the LORD: He said to me, “You are my son; today I have begotten you.’ Jesus’ baptism is explicitly his coronation, the restoration of the throne the LORD had given to David and sworn to uphold for ever. Even should David’s sons prove unfaithful and so be removed, the LORD would restore the throne to one of his descendants. This is that.

Psalm 2 is a coronation psalm. It opens with the nations surrounding Jerusalem plotting against her. In response, the LORD sets His chosen king on the throne on His holy hill, to sit in judgement over the surrounding nations, to rule over them as a heritage and to crush all rebellion. Therefore, the kings of those nations are advised to submit themselves as vassals, to serve the LORD’s appointed king and not conspire against him. The psalm concludes, ‘Happy are all who take refuge in him.’ So we have the reading from Isaiah 43, with its water and indirect but clear reference to the Egyptians and the Canaanites, and the reading from Luke 3, with its coronation declaration (and John the baptizer’s reference to the threshing floor which is also a symbol for judgement over nations), and Psalm 2 tying them together.

The implication is a direct challenge to the emperor in Rome and to his proxy rulers in Judea and Samaria and Galilee. It is a challenge that will bring Jesus from passing through the waters of baptism to passing through the waters of death—and out the other side, in his resurrection, neither abandoned by God (though it will look that way for a moment) nor overwhelmed by death. It is a proclamation that will be fulfilled when a Roman emperor, Constantine, embraces Christianity (thoroughly imperfectly, as do we all; and guaranteeing religious freedom for other faiths, as embracing Christianity always does). It is a proclamation that will also be fulfilled by a Church made up of men, women and children drawn from every nation under heaven.

What, then, has this to do with us? I want to begin where Psalm 2 ends, with ‘Happy are all who take refuge in him.’ Experiencing happiness is an essential part of wellbeing, and it tends to be circumstantial. We aren’t happy all the time, and neither should we be, for we are made to experience all the emotions, and to grow to emotional maturity. Happiness is circumstantial, has to do with recognising those moments when we have all that we need for this moment. Gratitude helps us appreciate what we have been given, that brings meaning to our lives and connects us to other people. And happy are those who take refuge in Jesus, the king in the middle of the waters.

It is often said, by those who reject faith, including prominent and influential humanists in the culture around us, that a god who could spare us from suffering and does not do so is not a god before whom we should prostrate ourselves. And it is true that God does not promise to spare us from suffering. Instead, God has promised to be with us in our suffering—in those experiences that open us to empathy and compassion and to justice and commitment to others—and, in time, to redeem us, to rescue and restore us.

Emotions are not, for the most part, mutually exclusive, and so we can find ourselves experiencing the grief of bereavement or the anger of frustration at our inability to rescue someone we love from the anxiety that grips them and at the same time know the happiness that comes from an awareness of Jesus alongside us. Sometimes our eyes are opened to see that, and to see meaning in that, just as at Jesus’ baptism the heavens were torn open and the Holy Spirit descended in the form of a dove, for those with eyes to see. The questions I want to offer you today are, where do you feel (or fear) the waters rising? And, in those circumstances, what say you of this Jesus?

 

Second Sunday of Christmas 2022

 

Second Sunday of Christmas 2022

Lectionary readings: Jeremiah 31:7-14 and Ephesians 1:3-14 and John 1:10-18

We are still in the Season of Christmas, and Christmas is a time for the telling of wonderful stories. On the last day of 2021, my family and I made a trip to the cinema to see Steven Spielberg’s new version of West Side Story. Given that it was first staged on Broadway in 1957, and first adapted for the big screen in 1961, I am going to assume at least an awareness of this classic tale, based on Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, translating the action to the mid-1950s turf wars between White and Puerto Rican gangs in New York’s Upper West Side. Theirs is not only a contested territory, but also a condemned one, the working-class slum housing being cleared to make way for gentrification. Everything about West Side Story is wonderful, from Leonard Bernstein’s music to Stephen Sondheim’s words to Jerome Robbins’ choreography, and Spielberg’s retelling successfully walks the line between knowing irony and adoring tribute in pinpointing the location to the very blocks demolished to create the Lincoln Centre, home to the New York Philharmonic, Metropolitan Opera, and New York City Ballet, among other resident arts organizations.

The Jets are the last remaining working-class Whites in the neighborhood, and they feel abandoned by their own community, those who have upped and left for a better life elsewhere and by the city authorities who, in the 1950s, were carving up established-but-poor neighborhoods to create landscaped parks and parkways for automobiles. These are the demonized poor, and they know it.

The Sharks are the latest in a long line of immigrants, arrived from Puerto Rico. The Free Associated State—or, Commonwealth—of Puerto Rico is an unincorporated territory of the United States. Her people have been US citizens since 1917, but that doesn’t make them equal in the eyes of the Jets. The Sharks represent yet another community who have upped and left in hope of a better life elsewhere, only to find life hard in different ways, and salt in the wounds of the Jets who refuse to leave their native island behind but who feel it being taken from them. Scapegoats, to be sacrificed.

Within and around the Jets we meet Riff, trying to hold his world together as it falls apart; his best friend and former-Jet Tony, trying to move on from a life that was heading in the wrong direction, but still tied to his community; and Anybody’s, born a girl, identifying as a boy, rejected by her family, desperately wanting to be accepted and find a new home, a new family, within the Jets. When you’re a Jet, | You’re a Jet all the way | From your first cigarette | To your last dyin’ day. | When you’re a Jet, | If the spit hits the fan, | You got brothers around, | You’re a family man. | You’re never alone, | You’re never disconnected. | You’re home with your own— | When company’s expected, | You’re well protected!

Within and around the Sharks we meet Bernardo, a hard-scrabble fighter with a fearsome reputation; his lover Anita, longing for a better life in America and worried that Bernardo will jeopardise that; and Maria, Bernardo’s little sister, stifled by his over-protection and dreaming of her future. When Maria and Tony meet, sparks will fly. And all around them, everything is set up for there to be only losers, and no victors, in a fight for life that cannot be won. And yet, the dream remains. There’s a place for us, | Somewhere a place for us. | Peace and quiet and open air | Wait for us, somewhere. | There’s a time for us, | Some day a time for us, | Time together with time to spare, | Time to learn, time to care. | Some day, | Somewhere, | We’ll find a new way of living, | We’ll find a way of forgiving. | Somewhere, | Somewhere…

The themes and issues explored in West Side Story are timeless. Writing from the rubble of a Jerusalem that had been swallowed up by the Neo-Babylonian Empire, most of its prominent citizens having been relocated to Babylon, the prophet Jeremiah helps his community imagine a world in which their identity and future are secured, not through their own efforts but through the covenant-loyalty of the Lord. On his account, their mourning will turn to joy: he will comfort them and exchange their deep and complex sorrow for gladness.

Or think of Paul of Tarsus, a first-century Roman citizen of Jewish heritage, writing to a Christian community made up of two distinct ethnic and cultural communities living alongside one another in the city of Ephesus (where ‘Gentile’ is as umbrella a term as ‘White,’ and ‘Jew’ as un/welcome as ‘Puerto Rican’). Paul reframes Jeremiah’s themes of identity and a future in terms of adoption and an inheritance, and adds a new theme, that this is achieved through the shed blood of Jesus, the one caught in the crossfire of our enmity and striving for what we cannot hold on to.

And in our Gospel reading, John pushes the boundaries in his overture to the Life of Jesus, foreshadowing questions of whether this Jesus will be received into community or not accepted; and whether community is formed and sustained by rules (spoken and unspoken) or by grace and truth found in seeing the invisible God made visible in the face of this ‘Other’ whose coming into our world changes everything. Today, the world was just an address, | A place for me to live in, | No better than all right, | But here you are | And what was just a world is a star | Tonight!

It isn’t hard to see the appeal of the Jets. To believe our community to be let down by those in authority, in the Church and in wider society. Even the face of the Church, here in Sunderland, is increasingly Brown or Black, not White. Increasingly immigrant, not native-born. And if the future is presented as shiny, it may be hard to see where we fit in to that picture—even as those whom we imagine we are being moved aside in favour of wonder how long they must wait until they are seen as equals. It is easy to think that we must do whatever it takes to hold on to what is left to us, however far it may have fallen from glory. And yet, as Jesus put it, those who strive to save their lives always end up losing their lives—and not only their own lives, but the lives of those they love. Then, of course, there are those who see their only hope in establishing a rival gang of their own: the Church or the neighbourhood might go down, but we won’t go down with it! And then there are those who long to be a Jet, or a Shark, and are denied…

We are still in the Season of Christmas, and Christmas is a time for the telling of wonderful stories. Stories in which communities struggle with questions of identity—what makes them who they are—and the impossible possibility of a future—what that could look like and how it might be secured. Stories in which these things are, ultimately, given, received, experienced through grace. Stories in which those who find themselves on the margins, pushed out, unwelcome, come to discover family, a place of belonging. (That one is being written all the time and remains to be written.) Stories of tragedy transformed into Somewhere for the Anybody’s. Stories of grace and truth, and the invisible God made visible in the face of Jesus and in the eyes of his sisters and brothers. Stories that point us back to him, again and again, the light that shines in the darkness—of the world, and the Church, and of our hearts—and is not overwhelmed by it but shines all the brighter. Stories that never grow old, and that we never outgrow needing to hear. In God’s mercy, may they help us to walk in Christ’s light and dwell in his love that we may know the fullness of his joy throughout the year ahead. Amen.