Christmas Night 2023

 

Lectionary readings: Isaiah 52:7-10 and John 1:1-14

Here is the news, news of great joy: Your God reigns!

What does that reign look like? It looks like life, breaking out, all over the place, in every place that had become a wasteland. New life, come into being.

Come into being, in the deserted places of our lives. Yours, and mine. For here is the Christmas miracle: just as the Son of God came into the world not by the will of man but by the will of God, so we are born anew, children of God—sisters and brothers—not by biological means but by the will of God.

Now, I said that the Son of God did not come into the world by the will of man, and I meant man specifically, not human. For human will was involved, in cooperation, in partnership, with God’s will: and that was the will of his mother, Mary. Mary said ‘yes’ to God, believed that God could transform her empty womb into a cradle of life—into the Cradle of Life. That Life which gives life to me, to you.

This Christmas Night, I wonder, what is the new life that God desires to bring to birth in me, in you? What deserted place does God want to fill, to bursting, life that will grow until it cannot be contained, but breaks out for the blessing of the world? Perhaps in this very moment, you have felt this Life kick you, from inside, as if to say, “I’m here and I am on the way!”

Impossible, you say? But wait: Your God reigns!

 

Fourth Sunday of Advent 2023

Luke 1:26-38

‘In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.’

Genesis 1.1-5, Authorised (King James) Version

When God sends the angel Gabriel to Mariam, to Mary, we read, ‘she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be.’

The Greek word translated ‘much perplexed’ is diatarassó which means ‘agitated’ or ‘acutely distressed’ and conveys an intense to-and-fro between thoughts and emotions.

The Greek word translated ‘pondered’ is dialogizomai which means ‘going back and forth, in order to evaluate something,’ in a way that, typically, leads to a confused conclusion.

Mary is churned up, like the waters that cover the formless earth.

Which is interesting, because while the root of her name is generally thought to be the Hebrew for ‘rebelliousness’—which fits well in light of her defiant Song, the Magnificat; and may go some way to explain why so many Jewish women born under Roman occupation were given the name—St Jerome records another origin story, that Mariam means ‘drop of the sea.’ A microcosm of the great deep.

Mary is agitated, distressed, not by what Gabriel has been sent to tell her, nor even (unlike Zechariah, or the shepherds) by the angel himself, but by his greeting.

God comes to create anew, the first Day. Like the earth of old, Mary’s womb is empty; indeed, like the earth of old, it has become futile, for she has dedicated her life to God, giving up the possibility of bearing children. As with the waters of old, Mary is deep, and her face is covered with darkness, with confusion. And, as with the earth of old, the Spirit of God is moving over her, as an eagle hovers over her chicks, to bring forth the Day. God is brooding, sheltering, bringing forth.

Mary is amazing, not because she has it all together, but because she responds to God’s word. And the mystery of that ‘Yes!’ is that God has a human mother. That God becomes human, shares in our nature, that we might share in the divine nature. The mystery of that ‘Yes!’ is that it births not only the Christ, but also the Church, the new humanity. The mystery of that ‘Yes!’ is that it births not only the new humanity, but the new earth. Because, in Christ, through Mary, God is making all things new.

If the depths and the riches of that mystery doesn’t leave you churned up, you must be dead!

But here is something. As God moved upon the face of the waters, and as God came upon Mary, so God comes, moving over the chaos of your life and mine, the waste places, our emptiness. We don’t need to strive harder, to be a better person, to be acceptable to God, or worthy to be called by him. We don’t need to tame our tides, that ebb and flow, or drown our questions, ignore our fears, mask our distress, or dial ourselves down. But we can choose to say, “Here I am, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”

That is enough. And who can say what light and life will break out from within us, that has long sat chained in darkness? Who can say what will unfold, in you and through you, for the good of the world, and to the glory of God?

 

Remembrance Sunday 2023

 

Lectionary readings: 1 Thessalonians 4.13-18 and Matthew 25.1-13

We think of this life as light, and death as darkness, the extinguishing of light. But in fact, it is the other way round. This life is dark – just think about the rollcall of conflict in the world. When Jesus returns, we will be brought into the banqueting room, into light and warmth and joy.

When I say this life is dark, I’m not advocating a counsel of despair. Darkness is one way of describing evil and the pain it causes – if your home has been destroyed by rockets, you are living through dark days. But the dark can also be magical. That’s when the stars are visible, and – if you are lucky – you might even catch a glimpse of the Northern Lights. And dark can describe mystery, the way in which even those closest and dearest to us can be a mystery to us at times, without in any way diminishing love.

And when I proclaim the Christian hope that death is the door into light and life, I am not advocating that we give up on the gift of this dark world. Death remains a tragedy for those who are left behind. I am simply saying that death is not something we should fear or see as bringing life – true life – to an end. I am saying that however good the present can be, something greater waits for us. Think of it like this: people sometimes say, ‘Your school days are the best days of your life.’ I really hope not. I hope that your school days are happy; but I’d hate for the rest of your life to be an anticlimax. Think of this world as our collective school days, and the world to come as the rest of our lives.

How, then, should we wait in the darkness of the world? In the parable Jesus told, that we heard again today, some of the bridesmaids came prepared, and some did not. It is as if they knew the Scouting motto, Be Prepared. They had thought about their kit and made certain it was in working order. They brought lamps, and they brought flasks of oil.

Baptism is the occasion on which we become a member of the Church. At every baptism, we give the person who has just joined the Church a candle, lit from the Paschal Candle, the large candle that reminds us that Jesus is the Light of the world. Our candle is a reminder that we are called to be a light in the world. Candles only really make a difference the darker it gets. As we wait for Jesus, think how your life can make a difference, lighting the way for others, or easing their stress, or helping them celebrate.

But the bridesmaids didn’t have candles, they had oil lamps – and flasks of oil. Oil is a symbol of the Holy Spirit, the Giver and Sustainer of Life, God in us, empowering us. The wise bridesmaids told the foolish bridesmaids, whose oil had run out, to go to the dealers. After midnight! God the Father and Jesus pour out the Spirit on our lives, so we can ‘Shine as a light in the world to the glory of God the Father.’ As we wait for Jesus, we ensure that our flasks are regularly topped up by coming to God, in worship, on a regular basis.

That is what today is about. First we acknowledge the darkness; then we entrust those who live in darkness and those who now live in light to God, who rules over the night and the Day; and then we respond in hope and commitment, to strive for all that makes for peace, heal the wounds of war, and work for a just future for all humanity – as dependent on God in this as an oil lamp is to oil.

 

Fourth Sunday before Advent 2023 (or All Saints' translated from 01 November)

 

Lectionary readings: Revelation 7:9-17 and Matthew 5:1-12

I am a parent. Not everyone is, of course, by any means, but many people are, and I often hear parents say things like, “I don’t really mind what my children do in life,” – that is, what their gifts or passions might be, or how they might put those to work – “as long as they are happy.” And I think that this bears some consideration. They clearly cannot mean, ‘I want my children to experience an unbroken state of happiness,” because the state of happiness is always a temporary condition, in response to pleasant circumstances. We surely want our children to have such experiences; but we also know that they will also experience anger – and in the face of injustice, rightly so – and grief and a host of other responses to life that make us human; and we will want them to become the kind of adult who can feel and recognise and regulate and respond well to the whole spectrum of emotions. So, when we say that we want our children to be happy, I think – I hope – we are talking about trait happiness, or the predisposition of personality towards happiness; possessing the kind of character that faces adversity with the underlying belief that all shall be well, at least in time.

Another way of putting this, then, might be to say, “as long as they are secure.” And the question arises, if we want our children to be happy, to be secure, how best can we equip them for that?

Jesus spoke about how we can nurture the enviable personality trait of happiness – in Greek, makarios – often translated as blessèd.

The kind of people whom he identifies as being happy people might surprise you: those who are poor in spirit, who mourn, who are meek, who hunger and thirst for righteousness, who are merciful, pure in heart, peacemakers, persecuted for righteousness’ sake, reviled, and slandered. We might want our children to be some of those things – peacemakers, for example – but we probably shy away from hoping that our children will be reviled. And what does ‘poor in spirit’ or ‘meek’ even mean?

I think that Jesus is describing what today is called operating from a secure attachment to God as our caregiver, enabling us to feel secure in the face the losses and threats we all experience in life, whether bereavement or conflict or injustice or malicious false report.

Now, there is a large body of research into happiness that suggests that our default underlying level of happiness or unhappiness in life is fairly stable and significantly shaped by hereditary factors, by the underlying happiness or unhappiness of our parents and our early childhood experience. There are good neurological reasons behind this. Children are remarkably resourceful. We seek happiness, or security, from our caregivers. If they are able to provide us with a secure base, from which we can explore the world and to which we can return to receive comfort when we experience distress, then we learn the right balance of self-reliance and reliance on others. If, for whatever reason, our caregivers are unable to provide us with a secure base, we find the strategies that provide us with some form of connection, that meet our need for comfort or recognition. Again, research shows two main strategies, anxiety, and avoidance: that is, overly reliant on others to manage our emotions, or overly self-reliant. We work out what works – for example, in some families, keeping rules results in reward while breaking rules results in punishment, and so we learn to keep the rules; in other families, we learn to pay attention to social cues, to micro changes in someone’s facial expression – and our brains train themselves to prioritise these things and ignore other things. And later in life, we find ourselves reacting to other people in ways that follow these scripts.

So, we might relate to God as someone whom we can coexist with if we keep the rules; or as someone whose response to us is unpredictable, and we are never sure whether we are acceptable or if we are a nuisance.

How we view God will, in turn, affect how we view trouble. If we believe that, as long as we keep the rules, we will avoid getting into trouble, and yet trouble comes looking for us, we may be predisposed to blaming ourselves: somehow, perhaps even in a way we aren’t aware of, we have offended God and rightly brought down his wrath against us. Or perhaps, if you were raised in a legalistic household in which you never felt approval, you have come to believe that no matter how hard you try to keep the rules, you can never be acceptable to God. Or, then again, perhaps you rebel against God, because breaking the rules will at least result in attention, even if that attention is harsh, and attention is better than being ignored.

If, on the other hand, we grew up in an unpredictable environment, say with an alcoholic father or a drug-addicted mother, when trouble finds us, we may be predisposed to blaming God, who we perceive as unpredictable, capable of love but also of outbursts of anger. Our survival tactics kick in, and we stay away from God until he has sobered up, fend for ourselves, or try to appease. Perhaps we see ourselves as a martyr, that as long as God is punishing us, however unjustly, someone else we love is spared.

But what served us well, or kept us safe, in the past does not necessarily serve us well today. Moreover, it might not align well with the freedom God desires for us to live in. For example, we might withdraw from people because (so we believe) doing so protects us from the pain of losing them; but God wants us to know love, and to experience being comforted – or, consoled – when we inevitably experience loss.

The good news is that our underlying level of happiness is fairly stable, but not fixed: it really is possible to experience change and growth throughout the whole of our lives. If you are, by personality, an anxious or an avoidant person, you don’t have to stay that way. Jesus calls us to follow him, to take responsibility to respond to him, to learn from him, to repent – which means a change of mind – and believe – which means to walk out a new way of being in the world.

Which brings us back to the Beatitudes, the list of those who are blessed, or happy, or secure. Except that now I want to draw our attention from the word makarios, blessed, to the word hoti, translated ‘for,’ or, ‘Why? Because…’ These people are not secure because of their circumstances; they can be secure, in the face of disturbing or unsettling circumstances, because of God’s dependable character. God, who rules over the skies and the earth and the realm of the dead, who holds together past, present, and future, who is the very source of life, of consolation, of strength-under-control, of justice, of compassion, of innocence, of peace, who catches us up into this glorious goodness that makes all things well.

One of the disciples sitting on the mountainside listening to Jesus speak is a young boy called John, who has only recently started out on learning from Jesus. Decades later, as an old man, exiled from his community by the Roman empire, this same John has another apocalypse, or revelation of what is really going on behind the scenes, behind the way in which the world appears to run. He sees a multitude, all of whom have come out from tribulation, from circumstances in which they were without options, who have been rescued from destruction into God’s safety, preservation, welfare. Whose needs are met, and whose tears are erased. Our reading from The Revelation to John and our reading from The Gospel According to Matthew are the same revelation, seen from two different points – childhood, and old age – with a lifetime of experience between. Everything John has known has proven the Beatitudes to be true; nothing he has seen has invalidated their claims. And that, of course, is what they are: an invitation to discover what God is like, how truly good God is.

November begins with All Saints’ Day, when we remember the many children, women and men who have discovered these things to be true in challenging circumstances down through the centuries; followed by All Souls’ Day, when we remember those sisters and brothers in the faith who demonstrated these truths to us, personally, in and through their living and dying. Today we are invited to repent and believe, to unlearn the false ideas we have held about God and to lean into a fuller knowledge, whether for the first time or the seventy-seventh. Come and see, that the Lord is good! ‘Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honour and power and might be to our God for ever and ever! Amen.’

 

Twentieth Sunday after Trinity 2023

 

Lectionary readings: Exodus 33.12-23 and Matthew 22.15-22

Through September and October, we have been journeying through the book of Exodus and asking how do we, as the people of God, stand before God on holy ground? We might reframe that question like this: what kind of church do we need to be? The church, in this nation, has experienced a long period of decline. But historically, the church in this nation has experienced cycles of growth and decline, waxing and waning fortunes. Christianity has been found wanting and abandoned; only to be rediscovered again when alternatives have failed to deliver. So, what kind of church do we need to be in our time of decline and in order to be ready when the tide turns again? This was the theme when the clergy of Durham Diocese gathered together for their annual study day on Monday gone. Together our guest speaker invited us to reflect on our calling to be a pilgrim people, a priestly people, and a prophetic people. It seems to me that these three themes are found in our readings today, and so I want to share them with you.

To stand on holy ground is to be a pilgrim people. Moses asks God, ‘Show me your ways.’ That is, show me your road, your journey. He knows that he has been called to lead the people up, to ascend to where God is; and he asks to know the road. This is the language of union with God or being formed by God into the likeness of Christ. It points us to Jesus: when Thomas asked, ‘How can we know the way to the Father?’ Jesus declared, ‘I am the Way.’ And God says to Moses, ‘My presence—literally, my face or faces—will go with you and I will bring you to the place where you will settle.’

God always calls us out from wherever we have settled, in this world, to be strangers and pilgrims, citizens of the kingdom of heaven under the lordship of Jesus, living away from home, longing to return one day. That is why God sends us internationals—students, and workers, and asylum-seekers; people who are not especially welcome in England—to remind us of who we are. And God is revealed among us as reflected in the faces of those we journey with, in black and white faces, young and old faces, male and female faces. We are not English or South African people who happen to be Christians, but Christians who happen to be English or South African, or from wherever else it may be.

And we are a parish church. The word ‘parish’ comes from the Greek word for ‘strangers,’ for those who live outside the walls of the house or the city: we are a church for those who live beyond the walls of the church, for outsiders. We seek the welfare of the society among whom we live, but our first loyalty is to the kingdom of heaven, of which we are also ambassadors. And so, at times the Church will both affirm and challenge government, just as this week Mr Biden has both affirmed and challenged Mr Netanyahu. When the Church is critical of government, people say the Church should stay out of politics; they tend not to say that when the Church affirms government, but there we are. To stand on holy ground, as pilgrims, is to welcome the stranger, the alien from another land, among us—and to take a stand against xenophobia and racism.

To stand on holy ground is also to be a priestly people. We are a royal priesthood. The priestly role is a representative one. Humanity is called to bless the earth, to care for all God’s creation. The Church is called to bless humanity, so humanity as a whole can better fulfil its calling. And within our tradition, some are called to be priests to the Church, to bless the Church so that the Church as a whole can better fulfil her calling to bless humanity to bless creation. Listen to this quote from the sociologist Stefan Paas:

“The minority situation of the church is not first a problem but rather a privilege and a calling. If I go to church as the only one from my street or my family, I do this also on behalf of my street or my family. To be a Christian at that moment means to be a priest on behalf of those who live in my neighbourhood, to offer sacrifices on behalf of the family. Parents go to represent their children, children to represent their parents, neighbours to represent each other.”

[Stefan Paas, Pilgrims and Priests: Christian Mission in a Post-Christian Society, p.213f]

I am your priest, and I pray for you, but we—you—are a priestly people. We come before God representing our neighbours, our representative worship pointing to the day when every knee shall bow, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. Nonetheless it is worth asking, how might we become more fully representative? Moses said to God, ‘Show me your glory.’ And God replied, ‘I will, but you cannot see my face.’ But God had already said, ‘My face, or faces, will go with you.’ The glory of God is reflected in our faces—in your face and my face—but what we see reflected there is God’s back. What we see, reflected in one another’s faces, is where God is going ahead of us. The glory of God we see in the oldest faces here is the bounty of wisdom, and as we grow older we will meet God there waiting for us. The glory of God we see in the youngest faces is the bounty of wonder, and energy, and adventure, for God remains childlike while we grow old. So, if there are too few younger representatives of our parish present with us, we see something of God’s glory but whole other aspects of God’s glory are hidden from us. Yet, the future God is leading us into continues beyond our generation, and so we should expect to see God’s glory reflected in the faces of children. Their presence renews us. To stand on holy ground, representing our neighbours before God, and seeking to be more fully representative, is to ask, who is missing? and what must we do differently, to make room for them, to be the place where god’s glory is revealed?

Lastly, to stand on holy ground is to be a prophetic people. Moses says, ‘Show me your ways’ and ‘show me your glory’. Jesus says to those trying to trap him, ‘Show me the coin used for the tax.’  The coin reveals the ways and the glory of the emperor: Roman roads carving up an empire, the fruit of the earth and work of human hands pouring into Rome. In this worldview the human is first and foremost an economic unit, a slave to the market. The same view prevails today. Our education system is designed to form future economic units to replace the ones that get discarded at the end of their productive working life. Foreigners are viewed as coming here to steal our jobs. Jesus recognises that we live in this world but insists that we are not of it. That we are to view humanity as bearing God’s likeness, of pointing to God’s ways and God’s glory.

To stand on holy ground is to view work as a holy calling, the way in which we, as members of the Church, bless humanity, and as members of humanity, bless the whole creation. To see people not primarily as economic units, but as creative partners in God’s good activity in the world. To see children not as future workforce but as given as gift to the world with their own vocation, which we might help them to discover. To see those who are retired, or disabled, or who choose to step out of full-time employment for a season to raise a family or care for a family member, or for whom life is overwhelming to the extent that they cannot participate in the game of being model citizens, not as a drain on society but as those who reveal something of the glory of God among us. To stand on holy ground is to take a prophetic stance, declaring in word and action that human beings have inherent value. This is why, for example, we are to take Safeguarding seriously, nurturing an environment where all, including and especially the most vulnerable, can flourish as fully as possible, free from harm, rescued from exploitation.

How do we, as the people of God, stand before God on holy ground? Or what kind of church do we need to be? We are called to be a pilgrim people, a priestly people, a prophetic people. As we seek to walk these roads, we shall witness God’s glory, and witnessing God’s glory, we shall be changed. We shall be changed, and a way made in the wilderness, for others to travel, to come to know Jesus for themselves. Amen.

 

Nineteenth Sunday after Trinity 2023

 

Lectionary readings: Exodus 32.1-14 and Matthew 22.1-14

I want to suggest that Jesus is the key to our reading the Bible. That every part of the written Word points us to the incarnate Word, and that the incarnate Word is the lens through which we must interpret the written Word. I recognise that this might be called a logical fallacy, being a circular argument; but then, I don’t believe that logic is well-equipped to handle transrational experiences such as love or death or God or suffering. The Church proclaims that Jesus is the alpha and the omega; the beginning and the end; the initiation, and the completion. I want to bear this in mind today.

In our Gospel reading today, I want to suggest that Jesus tells this parable as a corrective to popular expectation concerning the Messiah. I want to suggest that the son for whom the king throws a wedding banquet is the Messiah of their expectation; that the servants are the people of Israel, and perhaps the political-cultural-religious leaders of the people; that the invited guests are the surrounding nations, called to recognise the heir to the throne of king David, but either indifferent or openly hostile; and that the fate that befalls them is the expected overthrow of the armies of Rome. I want to suggest that, as a corrective, Jesus presents himself as the man who appears, unnoticed, centre-stage, who confounds expectation (refusing to wear a wedding gown is culturally offensive; Jesus repeatedly offends scribes, priests and Pharisees, who ultimately plot to have him killed), is interrogated by the ruler but remains silent, and who is bound and taken outside the walls to the place of despair and impotent anger, the place of public execution. I want to suggest that Jesus reveals to us that God rejects violence as a justifiable means to any end; and that, by fully identifying with us in our deep grief, God, in and through Jesus, fashions light from darkness, life from death, glory from suffering, hope from despair.

But we are journeying through the book of Exodus, and asking what does it have to teach us about how to stand on holy ground? So, how does this Jesus help us to understand, and respond to, the strange and disturbing conversation between God and Moses?

First, let’s consider the context. God has brought the people out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, and to his holy mountain. There, he has spoken, ten words that call into being life. One of those words concerns the people as living images (or icons, or idols) of their God, an ardent God of steadfast love, who observes the impact of the iniquity of one generation on the lives of the generations that follow them, but who himself fashions kindness to countless thousands who, in turn, observe his love for them. These ten words are followed by further instruction, and then God calls Moses up the mountain to meet with him alone. It has been forty days and forty nights (recalling the time Noah spent in the ark) since anyone has seen Moses, while God gives him detailed instructions regarding the construction, dedication, and use of the tabernacle—the place where God will dwell in the midst of the people and meet with them—and the consecration of priests to oversee this space. This consecration involves burnt offerings, whose pleasing aroma will rise before the Lord God.

Seemingly abandoned, and growing anxious, the people call on Moses’ brother, Aaron, to fashion idols for them, visible images of gods who will lead them. This is a clear departure from the words spoken by God in their hearing, the very kind of decision-making that results in negative consequences for several generations, though in no way negating God’s activity to fashion kindness in their lives.

It is at this point that God—who observes such things—speaks to Moses, saying, “Now let me alone, so that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them; and of you I will make a great nation.”

At this point, one might accuse God of setting the people up to fail. I do think that God is testing the people; but I don’t think the nature of the testing has anything to do with failure and punishment. Any good teacher will assess their class, to ascertain what they have understood; where the group as a whole, or given individuals, need further instruction, or even a different approach. Seen in this light, God, Moses, and the people, discover that the people are yet to learn how to see God reflected in their neighbour, in one another—they think they need some other image. This needs closer attention. If we can see Jesus in the bread and wine, but not in one another, our learning is incomplete.

What are we to make of ‘wrath’? It is a word that has only appeared once before in the story, in the context of God’s care for the resident alien, the widow and the orphan (Exodus 22:21-24), a care the people are to share, remembering that they themselves were aliens in Egypt. The word is rooted in the word for ‘nostril,’ and the sense of smell is more strongly attached to memory than any of our other senses. Wrath, then, appears to be concerned with taking a deep breath in through the nose, and being reminded of something by the smell, by the kindling of a sensation in the nostrils. It should be remembered that God has just spent forty days and forty nights instructing Moses concerning the burning of fragrant incense and of roasting meat.

This burning wrath will ‘consume’ the people. The word, which does not occur in exactly this form anywhere else, can mean accomplished, completed, finished. It resonates with Jesus’ words on the cross, “It is finished!” It has to do with process, and a coming through something, in continuity and transformation, as perhaps, for example, grieving well brings us through bereavement to new life beyond loss.

Might we read Exodus 32:10 in this way: that God tells Moses to go from him, carrying his instructions, acting with urgency, that incense and fat smoke might rise, filling God’s nostrils, establishing a deep memory—for the people, as well as for God—and bringing the people to completion as a great nation, in some way fashioned from Moses?

Moses’ immediate response is to plead for his people. It is clear that he sees something terrible in the experience of God’s wrath, fears that the completion it brings will amount to annihilation rather than consummation. This is an understandable reaction—even if it blots out the memory of the bush that burned but was not consumed, trees always symbolising people in biblical imagery, in this case the presence of God in the midst of his people—but it does not necessarily make Moses a reliable witness in this moment. (None of us are fully reliable witnesses.) Nonetheless his heart for his people is revealed, and this is consoling to God, who takes up this compassion as raw material in fashioning the kindness he has promised in response to human failure.

This is not to remove passing judgement on wrongdoing from the nature of God, or negative consequence from human action; nor even to seek to wash over troubling passages in the Bible, of which there are many; but to seek to take seriously Jesus as the fullest revelation of God—to whom all scripture points and through who we read all scripture—and his rejection of violence as a means to an end. It is to de-couple ‘wrath’ from ‘shock and awe,’ and ask whether, instead, it has more to do with grief and the need—even, and perhaps especially, for God—for consolation.

What, then, does this have to do with us?

Our first response to people who find life overwhelming, who are seeking to fashion a life that works from whatever means they have to hand, should be one of compassion. When Jesus saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, for they were like sheep, lost without a shepherd. Wherever we are, we find ourselves standing on holy ground when we show compassion towards others.

Arising from this compassion, we should both go to them, and go to God. We should pray for them, and teach them to come to God, who observes the mess we make, for ourselves and our families, but is committed to fashioning goodness and kindness in our lives. Prayer should be an act of memory—the memory of a community, and the perpetual creating of new memories—the testimony of God’s goodness and mercy, the hope on which we stand. An act of navigating loss and disorientation—at times, prayer will have no words—and coming, in time, to a fresh experience of steadfast love. Again, if we are to learn how to stand on holy ground, we are going to have to learn how to pray.

Life is messy, at times very messy. But God does not write us off, happy to start again with someone else. God journeys with us our whole pilgrimage through this world, and we reflect God’s suffering and glory. May we be strengthened to stand before the Lord today, without fear and with great joy. Amen.

 

Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity 2023

 

Lectionary readings: Exodus 20.1–20 and Philippians 3.4–14 and Matthew 21.33–46

I wonder what comes to mind when you hear mention of the Ten Commandments? Perhaps you’ve known them used as a blunt weapon for exercising control, wielded by Catholic nuns in schools or American Evangelicals in the public square? Perhaps they give rise to unwelcome feelings of inadequacy or failure, a sense of shame? Perhaps you believe them to be obsolete, a fossil record from another age? Is it even conceivable that they might be words of life?

There’s a God whose story is told in the Bible, whose name is Yahweh, which means ‘I call into being.’ We first meet this God in the first verse of the first book of the Bible, when they ‘call into being’ ‘the heavens and the earth,’ fashioning worlds of Sky and Earth and Sea. In response, all life unfolds, watched over by appointed guardians, until it fills every vast open space and tiny nook and cranny, complete with catastrophe and failure, mutation, and imaginative leaps along the way. Dinosaurs and dung beetles, pygmy shrews and kangaroos, penguins and pandas, crocodiles and condors, humpbacked whales, and woolly mammoths. This company loving God calls into being angelic beings [gods] and human beings and invites all creation to participate in the miracle of life. But not everything, not everyone, does so choose, at least not consistently.

After many adventures, with many friends, this God appears to Moses. Moses is a trauma survivor trying to rebuild a life, complete with catastrophe and imaginative leaps along the way. Yahweh convinces him to join forces and return to Egypt, to his beginnings, to liberate Moses’ people from the pantheon of Egyptian gods to whom they lived in bondage. And having mounted a successful operation to free them, this God introduces himself to the people. ‘I am Yahweh, the one who calls you into being.’

Whenever God speaks, it is to call something into being, to shape the world in a particular way, so that life can flourish. The ‘Ten Words,’ or Commandments, are words of life, continually calling a people—the people of [this] God—into being. They underwrite a moral universe and are also permissive invitations to respond, complete with those catastrophes and imaginative leaps along the way, already noted above.

The first word establishes an enduring freedom from the fear of a return to debt bondage. [This is the most common form of slavery in the world today, experienced by over 8 million people.] Yahweh, who has rescued this people in the immediate past, proclaims that the day will not come to pass when some other god will recapture them. Literally, Yahweh—who is eternal—will not live to see it. Even when Yahweh does later hand the people over to other gods, as the consequence of their unfaithfulness, terms are clearly stated and upheld—a seventy-year-long exile. If we were to trust this first word, if we were to seek to be shaped by it, we would reject the path of seeking to control others, would reject manipulation as a legitimate use of whatever power we have in the world. We might find ourselves on such a trajectory, but we would turn around, turn back. Even if we did not, life, as God has decreed it, would turn us back, eventually.

The second word establishes steadfast love as the way Yahweh will reconcile all creation, across space and time, including the realm of the dead, even in the face of rebellion. Love is the way, and love wins, in the end. A people seeking to be shaped by this word are empowered to be living images of this god of steadfast love: hearing, seeing, speaking, acting in and for love.

The third word establishes the absolute refusal to weaponize God against our neighbour. A people shaped by this word are freed to love the Other, those who look different and live differently to us, those whom we might otherwise fear. My God, do we need to embrace this word today.

The fourth word establishes delight in regular rest from labour, a delight that reveals God as King over creation and history. A people shaped by this word are set free and empowered to be strengthened by joy. When I was growing up, in a nation misshaped by austere religion, Sundays dragged on like long Covid. Where I live these days, they are, perhaps, a day in search of a purpose. What might it feel like, not to hold out for the weekend in a way that devalues the rest of the week, but to set apart one day in seven to revel in God’s sheer goodness?

The fifth word establishes human participation in God’s glory. For mortal creatures, this results in a weight, or heaviness, that increases over time: so, there is a dignity, or gravitas, to aging. The fifth word sets the people free from idolising youth or fearing old age; frees the young to cherish the old, and the old to continue to share with the young the life they gave them in the first place.

The sixth word negates murder. Unlawful killings occur; but they will not have the final word. This God commits to calling light from darkness, hope from despair, life from even unlawful death. Moses himself is a murderer, in his past: this word takes that burden up and transforms it, so that Moses can be one who brings life to many. This word so fully establishes the world that even when ‘the Word took on flesh,’ and was murdered—an act that is both deicide and genocide—the murder of God and of humanity is negated in the resurrected Christ.

The seventh word negates adultery. Infidelity occurs, with unoriginal repetition, pulling a community into psychological and material chaos; yet, here again, God declares that infidelity will not have the final word, for God commits to negate it, to call healthy relationships into being, again and again. This word, then—like all the others—is grace to those who stumble, good news to the poor in spirit.

The eighth word negates loss—whether of property, as in theft, or persons, as in kidnapping—by stealth. Stealth catches us out, when we least expect it; but this, too, however tragic, however great a violation, will not have the final word.

The ninth word negates deception, false testimony. It reveals a principle we have already seen in this people’s history. Joseph was sold into slavery, his brothers deceiving their father that he was dead. This Joseph was later thrown in prison, the victim of false testimony. Yet from such hopeless circumstances, God called into being the feeding of an empire through seven years of famine.

The tenth word negates false desire. We stumble down the road of laying claim, in our heart, to what has been given to another; but, sooner or later, we are confronted by God, who transforms our desire, so we are more able than before to love rightly. To treasure what has been given to us, and to value what has been given to others without needing to possess those gifts for ourselves.

The ten words really are words of life, re-ordering the universe, establishing a world that is truly as its Creator intended. And yet we only have to look around to see that even (sometimes, it feels, especially) those who claim to believe in the God who established such a world don’t live as if it were possible, let alone the real world.

The people said to Moses, ‘You speak to us, and we will listen; but do not let God speak to us, or we will die.’ And they were right. If we even hear God speak, we will experience death—which is why so many of us do not wish to hear God speak today. But all that will die is all that needs to die, to be returned to earth, that life might reemerge.

This is why the church-planter Paul speaks of the treasures of the Law being incomplete until they find their fulfilment in Christ Jesus, his Lord; why he regards his entire history—personal and corporate—as manure; why he longs to share in Christ’s death and resurrection; as his life, and the life of the household of God, unfolds, to fill the Roman Empire and beyond, from the sea of slaves to the small corners occupied by freemen and the elite, spreading to every continent, century, and  culture.

And, yes, we’ve found ourselves lost in catastrophes, needing imaginative leaps. But what God has called into being cannot be undone. God is not done with us yet. Love wins, in the end.