Second Sunday of Easter 2022

 

Second Sunday of Easter 2022

John 20:19-31

[1] Twice in this passage we are told that the doors were shut closed. The word door is not only a literal description but was also used as a metaphor for an opportunity. The disciples have missed the opportunity to encounter the risen Jesus. Mary Magdalene alone has seen the Lord. Simon Peter and the other disciple who ran with him to the empty tomb missed it because they went home. The other disciples didn’t even go. And now Thomas has missed the opportunity yet again. He has really blown it.

[2] We are told that the doors were locked because of fear. These Galileans were afraid of the Judeans who had handed Jesus over to the Romans. The Judeans had done so out of fear of the Galileans. Not long before, some ill-prepared Galileans had revolted against Rome, and the Romans had crucified thousands all along the road to Jerusalem. Not just the rebels themselves, but innocent civilians, a show of military might. And now, again, Galileans were stirring, filling Jerusalem with dangerous talk. Better that one man die and the people be spared. But what can break this crushing cycle?

[3] Jesus stands among them and gives them the key that unlocks fear. That key is forgiveness: If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained. The word translated sins is that term from archery of missing the mark, a metaphor for failings. The contrasting words to forgive and to retain are taken from the ownership of slaves: to release a slave and send them away free, or to hold on to control over their lives. How often do we seek to control the lives of others out of fear that they might let us down?

[4] Thomas has missed the opportunity, again. And he insists that he will not believe unless he is able to send out his arm, his hand, his outstretched finger, and find the mark made by the nails, the mark made by the spear. Unless he literally find the mark. Thomas is not prepared to believe unless he can do so perfectly, without failure. Note that Jesus does not tell him that this is unnecessary, indeed impossible. Jesus meets Thomas where Thomas is, gives him the opportunity—that he thought he had missed—to hit the mark; and it is in this grace-filled moment that Thomas realizes that he does not need to perform, to achieve. All he needs is Jesus.

[5] The person or persons writing it down add this: it is not possible to record everything that Jesus did. It is not possible to hit the mark every time. We had to accept that a lot fell short. But our hope is that what we did manage to write down might serve this purpose: that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Son whom the Father sent into the world, and that as you believe you may know life in all its fullness, in him.

Are you living with regret, believing that you have missed your opportunity?

What fears constrain your life? Whom, or what circumstances, do you need to exercise control over? Whom, or what circumstances, do you find hard to let go of?

Do you, like Thomas, need to be beyond reproach, putting on a perfect mask in front of others, overcompensating for failures in the past?

Jesus comes and stands in our midst, here, in this room, and says, Peace be with you. Peace be with you. Receive the Holy Spirit. Peace be with you.

 

Third Sunday of Lent 2022

 

The Gospel passage set for this Third Sunday of Lent (Luke 13:1-9) feels incredibly fresh and current. Jesus receives report of innocent people cut down in a supposedly safe place, murdered while at prayer, on the orders of a political leader. The latest representative of a superpower bullying a small neighbour, a land he sees not as an independent nation but as a province of his own empire; making it clear, your god and your faith cannot save you: in fact, your wrongful beliefs only prevent you from receiving the benevolence of the Pax Romana, the stability ensured by Roman rule.

Why did this happen, the people are left asking? Surely these Galileans must have been unrighteous, their secret sinfulness exposed, for God would not allow the righteous to perish. No, Jesus responds, these were not offenders: this is how politics works. It imposes its benefits, by violence if necessary. And sooner or later, it always finds violence necessary. Put your hope in the power of politics to liberate lives, and in the end, you will be obliterated.

It is the same, Jesus says, with the market. If politics is concerned with violence, the market is concerned with money, at any cost. And here, Jesus reminds them of a tower that had collapsed, after corners had been cut in its construction, to maximise profit. Eighteen innocent people had died when it fell. Not because they were under the judgement of God, but because Mammon is a cruel god. Put your hope in the power of the market to liberate lives, and in the end, you will be obliterated.

And then Jesus told a parable. Of a man who owned a vineyard, and who had planted a fig tree in it. After three fruitless years, he decided to cut his losses and instructed his gardener to cut the tree down: not only was there no harvest of figs, but the tree was taking up space that prevented the soil from being fruitful in some other way. However, the gardener pleads for a stay of execution, while he excavate all around the tree and fill the channel with animal dung and leave it one more year. If then, there was still no fruit, cut down the tree.

This is such a beautiful illustration of repentance or changing our mind because of having been with someone. Consider this dynamic at play between the man and his gardener. The vineyard owner sees no fruit, over not one but three years, and determines that the tree must go. His gardener makes a counterproposal. Perhaps the man does not know much about horticulture; after all, that is what he employs a gardener for. A young tree can take several years to produce fruit, and perhaps the gardener does not expect a harvest for another year. But the gardener does not simply dismiss the vineyard owner’s concern; instead, he sees it as an opportunity, and takes the time to teach him the ways of the garden. The job isn’t done when you have planted the tree, it is only just begun. Fig trees do well when their roots are contained or somewhat restricted, and they need an annual mulch of well-rotted manure, not to mention pinching-out half of the growing tips each summer and pruning dead or weak branches each winter. “Here, sir: let me show you how to dig out a channel all around the roots and pack it round with a wall of manure. And if there is no fruit next year, I’ll show you how to cut down the tree yourself. Full circle, from planting to uprooting.”

And, having been with the gardener, the owner changes his mind. He turns away from the political solution, to go in with summary execution; and from the market solution, to replace something failing with something more profitable. And instead, he embraces patience, which is not to do nothing and hope for a different outcome, but to put in the hard work of partnering with God.

Everything in this parable speaks of interdependence. The owner depends on the gardener, and the gardener on the owner. The tree and the soil and the manure are all connected. Animals eat plants for nutrition, and what they cannot process and absorb is dug back into the ground to be nutrition for plants. Life is interconnected, and interdependent. Life comes from the soil and returns to it again. And parables, likewise, work in this way: we are the man (the adam) who owns the vineyard, and the gardener (the Adam) and the vineyard itself and the fig tree within it. And Jesus is the master storyteller weaving all things and every element together.

Lent is the season of repentance, the annual mulching, the sitting together in the dirt with dust and dung stuck to our foreheads, sweat carving rivulets through the muck, arms aching from honest labour, trusting in a harvest in due course of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Or else we can carry on regardless, business as usual. And a year from now, what will the continuation be?

 

Second Sunday of Lent 2022

 

Lectionary readings: Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18 and Philippians 3:17-4:1 and Luke 13:31-35

The Season of Lent is a time when we are invited to learn again how to be God’s people, or what it looks like to be fully human within God’s family. And learning involves unlearning, involves putting down burdens we have picked up that we have no business collecting. Burdens such as shame and humiliation.

Shame is what we feel when we feel bad about who we are. That is different from guilt, which is what our conscience feels when we have done something wrong that has impaired our relationships. We address guilt by confession, repentance, penance, and forgiveness: that is by owning up, coming back (to God, and where appropriate—and it is not always appropriate—to the person we have wronged), making amends (where that is possible), and receiving a fresh start (sometimes this must have conditions placed upon it). But shame is something we feel about ourselves, not our actions. Abraham feels shame, because he is unable to produce an heir, unable to give his wife children. There is shame at play, too, in our Gospel reading: we can’t be certain of the motive of the group of Pharisees, but it is likely that some of them wanted to see Jesus safe and felt shame at their powerlessness in face of Herod.

Shame is when we feel that we are not good enough, for others, not good enough to be acceptable to God. And shame can cause us to not have self-compassion, which in turn can stop us from having compassion for others. Shame prevents us from being able to respond to God’s commandment that we love our neighbour as (or in the same way we love) ourselves. And that can lead to actions or inaction that result in guilt. But shame itself is not guilt. It is not addressed through repentance, but through cleansing, through being washed away by the God who, in Jesus, removes his cloak and stoops down to wash our feet.

Another experience, related to shame, is humiliation. Humiliation is what we feel when we are belittled in the presence of others, and for reasons that we believe are unjust. Shame is where we feel that we are unworthy; humiliation is the burning sensation when we feel that we are worthy but discover that others do not think we are. Abraham is humiliated when he lays out a corridor of sacrificed animals as God instructs him, and the birds of prey come down and try to have their fill of the carcasses. Again, in our Gospel reading, it is possible that some of the Pharisees wanted to see Jesus run from Herod, to mock him for being a coward. (It is clear in the Gospels that the Pharisees as a group include those who are for Jesus and those who are against him.) Humiliation is where an awkward teenage boy asks a girl to go to the prom with him, and she not only turns him down, but everyone finds out and laughs at his expense. And humiliation is dangerous. Research shows that the thing high school shooters in the USA have in common is that they had experienced humiliation. Clearly, not everyone who is humiliated turns to violence, but humiliation is very often a key step on that path. That is why the mocking of Mr Trump on social media for having tiny hands, or of Mr Putin for being a closeted gay man, contributes to a spiral of violence against others. And yes, Jesus calls Herod a fox, but that is not humiliation: he is not laughing at or belittling him for being sly, he is calling him out on account of his actions.

Shame and humiliation are both experiences you can likely relate to. And God wants to set you free.

Our other reading today is from Paul’s letter to the church in Philippi. In Philippi, Paul had planted a church in the household of the city gaoler after Paul and his mission partner had been beaten in public and imprisoned without trial and then prevented the gaoler from completing suicide when an earthquake compromised the jail and the gaoler mistakenly assumed that his prisoners had escaped. Paul experienced humiliation and the gaoler experienced shame. Now, later, writing under house-arrest in another city, Paul writes:

‘… our citizenship is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ. He will transform the body of our humiliation so that it may be conformed to the body of his glory …’

Now, the term ‘transformation’ refers to a change in form or outward appearance, in how we are perceived, by others as well as by ourselves; and the term ‘conform,’ here, refers (not to an outward uniformity, but) to sharing the same inner, essential identity or nature. An acorn transforms into an oak tree because an acorn conforms to an oak.

We have already thought about humiliation, and Paul contrasts our body of humiliation with Christ’s glorious body. ‘Glory’ refers to the intrinsic, inherent value or positive worth of God’s nature.

He will transform the body of our humiliation so that it may be conformed to the body of his glory.

Humiliation is destructive. It is never transformative, in a positive sense, because it does not conform us to God’s glory; for it is not in the nature of God to humiliate anyone. The failure to recognise this is behind so much abuse meted out at the hands of the Church, such as when humiliation has been used by teaching orders of nuns as a tool to (a false, external) conformity among pupils. Instead, God takes on our humiliation, and our shame, and extends glory to us in return. This is what is taking place in the reading from the life of Abraham, where the Lord instructs him to lay out a corridor of blood. From what we can tell, this was the ritual by which two kings entered into a covenant agreement, each standing at either end of the animal sacrifices and passing between them, exchanging places, and returning to their own place again, to symbolise that what is mine is yours and what is yours is mine. God the Creator takes Abraham’s low sperm count and exchanges it for more descendants than the stars of the sky or the grains of sand on the seashore.

And in the Gospels, Jesus, tortured, mocked, hung naked on a public execution scaffold as a lesson for others to learn not to step out of place (those who come from Galilee are inferior to those based in Jerusalem) takes up the body of our humiliation into God. And in so doing, the body of humiliation is fundamentally changed from the inside out. For his body is revealed to share in God’s glory, to be, in its essential nature, good and worthy of praise. That transforms how we see the outside, streaked with blood and sweat and faeces, and radiant. As we gaze on this body, the divine presence is made manifest among us: the God who is fully, unashamedly human. And Jesus saves those who hope in him, in precisely this way: as we say when we commit bodies to be cremated, ‘earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust: in sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our frail bodies that they may be conformed to his glorious body, who died, was buried, and rose again for us. To him be glory for ever.’ This eternal life, this life of divine quality, already exists, now. We share in the divine nature that Jesus fully shares: as he is the Son of God, so we, too, are sons and daughters, children, of God.

In him, our bodies are glorious, share in and reflect the nature of God. Our black and our white bodies. Our male and our female, and non-binary, bodies. Our youthful and our elderly bodies. Our LGBTQ and our straight, cis bodies. Our Ukrainian and our Russian bodies. Our body of humiliation, transformed, not by humiliation but by being conformed to the body of his glory. And that changes how we perceive our neighbour when we look upon them, and how we perceive ourselves. God, we need to experience this saving grace in our lives today.

The Season of Lent is a time when we are invited to learn again how to be God’s people, or what it looks like to be fully human within God’s family. If you have been carrying the mire of shame or the burning of humiliation, Jesus comes to cleanse and to heal. To cast out demons, today and tomorrow. If you would like that, if you would like to say yes to that process of transformation—and it is a process—then I would love to pray for you today, and to anoint you with oil of Chrism, the symbol of our sharing in Christ’s glory.

 

First Sunday of Lent 2022

 

Lectionary readings: Deuteronomy 26:1-11 and Romans 10:8-13 and Luke 4:1-13.

Jesus is in the wilderness. He has been there for forty days and nights, reading and mediating on the Book of the Law, which we know as Deuteronomy, Moses’ great exposition of the covenant between God and the people of Israel on the eve of their entry into the land God had promised to Abraham’s descendants. Forty days reflecting on the covenant faithfulness that bears the fruit of life, and covenant-breaking infidelity that bears the fruit of death. Savouring the taste of the sweet and the sensation of the bitter on the tongue. And after forty days, he still hungers. He knows that this is nourishment for his understanding and his very being. And after forty days, one of the angels is sent to test him.

The first test is to turn a stone into bread. Jesus passes the test, not by transforming a stone into a loaf, but by reciting Deuteronomy chapter 8, a passage where Moses speaks of how God trained his children in dependence in the wilderness, by feeding them manna from heaven. And once they were settled in a fertile land, they were not to forget, not to allow themselves to be seduced by the idea that the abundant food they enjoyed was somehow no less than they deserved. It remains a vital lesson, for those of us who simply need to say the word and our weekly groceries are delivered at our door.

(It is salutary to see women and children pouring out of Ukraine; to see crowds of people turning up at the central railway station in Berlin to offer strangers room in their homes. We have seen nothing like that in our nation since the evacuation of women and children to the countryside, 1.5 million in the first three days of September 1939, with subsequent waves in 1940. Those who know what it is to be dependent on such provision do not quickly forget. But, eventually, over time, we do.)

Here is a question: How do you turn a stone into bread? The answer: You don’t.

In the New Testament reading set for today, Paul writes to the house churches in Rome that ‘if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.’ Immediately beforehand, he quotes from 2 Esdras (a book found in the Apocrypha, Jewish writings from between our Old and New Testaments; Paul quotes from 2 Esdras often, and here he references chapter 4, which concerns the limits of human knowledge) applying the reference to Jesus (as Paul does when he quotes from the Hebrew Bible, our Old Testament).

Paul’s purpose is to highlight the proper place of human beings as those called to live trusting in the wisdom of God and in dependence on the goodness of God. This, Paul proclaims, is for the Gentile peoples as much as for the Jews, and for the Jews as much as for the Gentiles.

How do you turn a stone into bread? You don’t. It is not our efforts, but God alone who changes death—represented by the great stone rolled across Jesus’ tomb—into life—fulfilling Jesus’ claim, ‘I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.’ (John 6:35). The stone does not become a loaf but is exchanged for a loaf. The gift of life. Will you receive that gift, for the first time or the fortieth (-plus) time, today?

The Extended Preface to the Eucharistic Prayer in the Season of Lent includes these words:

‘…For in these forty days
you lead us into the desert of repentance
that through a pilgrimage of prayer and discipline
we may grow in grace
and learn to be your people once again.
Through fasting, prayer and acts of service
you bring us back to your generous heart.
Through study of your holy word
you open our eyes to your presence in the world
and free our hands to welcome others
into the radiant splendour of your love.’

May it be so. Amen.

 

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.