1 Peter 3: 13-22 Last Encouragements


There are some strong traditions in the Bible of religious leaders making grand farewell speeches just before their departure. Moses famously gathered the Children of Israel, and read them the words of the Law before dying in the land of Moab. Joshua wrote statutes and ordinances in a book of the Law, and then set up a large stone in the sanctuary of the Lord, before he died at the age of 110. David gave some final advice to Solomon, before 'sleeping with his ancestors', as the 1st Book of Kings puts it. And of course Jesus gave some final words of command to his followers before he ascended into heaven.

Fortunately, I am not dying and I'm not expecting to ascend into heaven at any moment either. I'm just moving on to a new parish, and to new challenges. For those who haven't quite caught up with the detail, you might like to know that I'm off to North End, in Portsmouth, where I will take up the post of Team Rector. I shall be given charge of three churches, in one parish: St Mark's, St Francis' and St Nicholas. I shall have a team of three priests to work with - two Team Vicars, and a Curate. All of them, incidentally, happen to be women...which is going to make for an interesting dynamic! I'm sure they'll knock me into shape in pretty short order! (Incidentally, there was a fascinating item on the radio last week. Women callers were invited to ring into Chris Evans' show on Radio Two with what they considered to be messages that all men needed to hear from all women. My favourite was the one that went: "Men should realise that every week on the same day, the dustbins are collected ...and they shouldn't need reminding to put the rubbish out!")

So, there is a sense of finality about today, for me at least. This is the last Holy Communion service that I expect to preside at here at Warblington - and the last sermon I shall preach to an 8am congregation in this parish. So I've been contemplating what I might say to you, before I leave. What thoughts would I like to leave with you?

As it happens, our epistle reading for this morning - which comes straight out of the lectionary - is a fairly good place to start. The 1st letter of Peter is a letter which still has a lot of resonance for us. It is a letter to Christians who are suffering from all kinds of persecution, and one that encourages its readers to be steadfast in their faith...whatever the circumstances. It is a letter that can be read by Christians in all kinds of today's circumstances. Churches in developing countries or Muslim lands, where they are often a persecuted minority - they find that 1 Peter's readers were just like them...bearing witness to faith in the midst of suffering, and mis-understanding, and bullying, and even death. And for churches in the West, 1 Peter contains many clues as to how to live faithfully while Christendom fades, and while Christians begin to again feel like sojourners and aliens - foreigners in their own lands.

So let's look at what this letter of Peter has to say to all of us...especially those of us who are citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven, as well as residents of Warblington and Emsworth. The first sentence that strikes me out of the passage we read just now, is the statement "Do not fear what they fear" (1 Peter 3:14). Peter is saying to his readers, don't be sucked in by the fears of the people who have no faith, or who do not share yours. Don't be sucked in by the things that our society think are worth fearing...instead, by "sanctifiying Christ as Lord" (verse 15) make sure that you keep your heavenly perspective on things.

Our society is very good at fear...and at driving us down all sorts of blind alleys in a relentless quest to put things right. And as a result, society tends to throw out the baby with the bathwater time after time. Let me explain what I mean...by way of a few examples.

The chances of you or me being blown up by a terrorist bomb is infinitesimally small...a billion times less likely than the chance that we will die of a disease like cancer. And yet, as a society, we seem to be quite content for our Governments to spend billions and billions of pounds in a fruitless quest to 'root out the terrorists' - instead of spending our taxes on finding cures for the diseases that will kill us. Our society's obsession with terrorism teaches us to regard every one with a different skin tone, or accent, as a potential terrorist...and stops us making friends of the strangers we encounter.

Here's another example: the chances of any of our children being abducted, are, statistically speaking, infinitesimally small. If anything, less children are routinely abjucted now than at any time in our past. But our fear of the possibility of abduction means that our children are prevented from playing in the woods, or along the sea-shore, as we used to at their age.

I could go on. In almost all the areas of fear that our society has - fear of the stranger, fear of excessive immigration, fear of crime, fear of teenagers, fear of being poor, fear of the dark...in almost every area, the Bible offers us a completely different way of looking at things. Peter says, "Do not fear what they fear" - and in doing so echoes the much earlier writings of the prophet Isaiah. Here are his words, from hundreds of years before Peter: "...the Lord spoke thus to me...and warned me not to walk in the way of this people saying: Do not call conspiracy all that this people calls conspiracy, and do not fear what it fears, or be in dread. But the Lord of hosts, him you shall regard as holy."

We are encouraged by this letter to stop taking our cue from public opinion, but to take our lead from Jesus. We are encouraged to follow in the footsteps of the Lord who, as Peter says in verse 18, "was put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit" and who, in verse 22, "has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God". This is the same Jesus, now risen and glorified, who reached out to Samaritans and Romans - who were the enemies of the Jews, and the immigrants of his day. This is the Jesus who was unafraid to touch the sick and the poor; who did not fear what society feared.

So this is my final sermon to you - the final encouragement I would offer: never forget whose children you are. Never forget who purchased your salvation by his blood. Never forget that you are citizens of heaven, who also happen to live on earth. To quote St Paul, from his letter to the Romans, "Do not be conformed to the standards of this world. Rather, be transformed by the renewing of your mind."

The call of Jesus, which I shall try to follow in North End, and which I hope you will try to follow here after I'm gone, is to go on, continuously, being transformed and transforming. You have been called to be a son or daughter of God - and brother or sister of Christ. He offers you an entirely different way of looking at the world...and he calls you to be part of the world's transformation...to be salt and light to the world.

Jesus offers us a way of trust, instead of fear. He offers us the security of eternity with him, rather than the transient security of owning stuff here on earth. He offers us the way of peace, instead of war. He offers us the way of love, instead of hate. He offers us the way of forgiveness instead of resentment and bitterness. He offers us the way of life instead of death.

This, as I've often said from this pulpit, is the heart of the topsy-turvy Kingdom of God. We serve a King who rides on a donkey. A Lord who was born in a stable, the dead-man who came to life. Just about anything that our world considers normal and desirable...wealth, fame, safety, are all shown up by the light of the topsy turvy gospel to be the hollow shams that they are. He who seeks wealth will lose it. It will be taken from him on the day he dies. She who seeks fame will be destroyed by it...hounded from morning until night by public opinion. He who seeks safety will end up closing himself off from every other human being behind gated communities and security cameras - and will grow in bitter resentment towards every one, every nation, every foreigner who he sees as a threat to his illusion of safety.

But she who seeks love, will find it - in Jesus, and among his people. He who seeks to give things away, will receive a hundredfold in return in terms of the sense of peace and fulfillment that can only come when we hold onto things lightly. She who seeks to give herself to others will receive back friendship and companionship that will last for eternity.

So that's it - my parting shot. Do not fear what they fear. Be transformed, and be transforming.

And may God bless you all, richly and without measure. For ever.

Amen

The Emmaus Road (Luke 24:13-35)

Have you heard the story of the mother who asked her small child whether he knew the name of God's son?
"Yes," said the boy, "its Andy".
"Andy?" replied the Mother. "Where did you get that idea?".
"From the son they taught us in Sunday School" replied the boy. "He lives, He Lives, Christ Jesus lives today, Andy walks with me, Andy talks with me along life's narrow way"

I wonder how many of you remember that song. It was certainly popular when I was a lad - I think we sang it at every beach mission I ever attended down at Western Super Mud, where I was born. And I used to get dragged along to various Summer playschemes at Baptist churches - where it was rather popular too.

But that declaration of 'He Lives!" was something that the two disciples on the road to Emmaus were not yet able to say. Their state of mind was rather different - to say the least. They had just witnessed the most dramatic week of Jesus' life - a week which had started with so much promise, as Jesus road into Jerusalem on a donkey, hailed as the coming Messiah. But just a week later, Jesus was dead. All the hopes of these two disciples were dashed. I wonder how they felt. Confused? Hopeless?

I wonder how we feel when things don't go according to our plans?

Another question that this story raises is 'Why were the disciples heading off to Emmaus at all?' After all, the rest of Jesus' disciples were staying in the city, confused and afraid, hiding from the authorities. Why weren't these two followers of Jesus with the rest of his disciples?

Actually, we don't know much about these two. We know, from the story, that one of them is called Clopas - but we are not given a clue as to who the other was. Perhaps he was actually a she - Mrs Clopas perhaps. But why were they traveling? Escape, perhaps. The American theologian Frederick Buechner interprets Emmaus as,

'...the place we go in order to escape - a bar, a movie, wherever it is we throw up our hands and say "Let the whole...thing go hang. It makes no difference anyway." Emmaus might be buying a new suit, or a new car, or smoking more cigarettes than you really want, or reading a second rate novel or even writing one...Emmaus is whatever we do or wherever we go to make ourselves forget that the world holds nothing sacred: that even the wisest and bravest and loveliest decay and die; that even the noblest ideas that men have had - ideas about love and freedom and justice - have always in time been twisted out of shape by selfish men for selfish ends.' (Buechner, quoted in New Interpreter's Bible, Vol IX, page 482)

I wonder if we feel a bit like that sometimes too. Especially when we watch the news, and we hear of the latest manouvres of the politicians, or the latest terrorist outrage, or the latest arrest of a paeodophile, or the new violence on the streets of Baghdad, or even the graffiti and drunkeness on our own streets. It makes us want to escape doesn't it? To throw up our hands with Frederick Buechner and say "Let the whole thing go hang!". It makes us want to close the front door, pull up the draw-bridge, put on a movie, dig the garden, go on holiday, turn the music up loud - anything to shut out the world that we feel we can do nothing about.

Into that sort of despair, the despair of the disciples on the road and our despair too, Jesus comes.

To the Emmaus disciples, Jesus begins to unravel the story for them. Calling on the ancient Hebrew scriptures, he reminds them of all the promises of what we call the Old Testament - about how necessary is was "that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory" (v.26). As any of us who have tried to study it know, the Old Testament is a curious set of documents. There are many aspects of it that are hard to grasp - or which appear to paint a rather different picture of God than the one that Jesus definitively showed us. But whatever the difficulties, there is a clear message running through the whole thing - a message which another of the Church's older hymns speaks of: "God is working his purpose out, as year succeeds to year."

This then is the God who comes alongside us. He doesn't impose himself on us, but he walks with us, teaching us, encouraging us - pointing out to us how much he is in evidence in the world (how much of history is His Story). But he doesn't force himself on us. He awaits our invitation to enter. "Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice, and opens the door, I will enter in and eat with him" (Rev. 3:20). This is not the God of Islam - who demands submission from his creatures. Neither is it the God of some of the more strange parts of the Old Testament (the Jewish Bible) - who demands obedience. This is the God who waits for our invitation - and then, when our hearts are ready to receive him, willingly comes alongside us.

The other thing that Jesus did on the Road to Emmaus is to demonstrate, very graphically - for all time - how he operates. Notice, if you will, how Jesus appears on the road, walking alongside the disciples, but he is initially not recognised by them. Quite why he is not recognised, the Bible doesn't tell us - except with the words "their eyes were kept from recognising him". But something is going on here. Throughout the while of their encounter with Jesus, he slowly reveals himself to the disciples. First he walks along with them, then he discusses events with them. Then he interprets those events. Then he eats with them. And only finally, in the breaking of the bread, is he recognised. Then he disappears.

This then is also the God who is not easily recognised, and whose actual felt-presence can be fleeting. Jesus warned his own disciples, prior to his death, that they should be very careful about trying to pin him down. He warned them that many people would have their own very human ideas of what Jesus would be like. In Matthew 24 he tells them not to believe those people who say "Look, here he is!". "So if anyone tells you, 'There he is, out in the desert,' do not go out; or, 'Here he is, in the inner rooms,' do not believe it". (Matt 24:26).

The Emmaus disciples had some pretty wrong ideas about Jesus. They expected him to be a Messiah who would lead the Jewish nation in an uprising against the Romans. They say to Jesus (in verse 21) "...we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel". They had their own very particular ideas of what Jesus should be like and what he should do.

And I wonder if we do that sometimes too? I wonder if we are guilty of making God in our own image. But the Emmaus story teaches us that just when we think we've got God all nicely sewn up - when we are content with how things are, and the way we worship him, and what we think he thinks about every topic... then we must expect to be surprised by Jesus. He will come into situations when we least expect him. He will appear sometimes fleetingly - just touching our lives. Perhaps through Scripture, or through a sermon, or through a time of prayer, or through another person. Prompting us to move on, or to keep going. When, as Frederick Buechner suggests, we are tempted to hide from the world, to escape the awfulness - we should not be surprised to find Jesus drawing us out, back into the world, to become his hands and feet to a dying planet.

So, the Emmaus story, perhaps above all, is a story of what God, in Jesus, is like. He is not the God who forces us to do anything. Not the God of submission and obedience - but the God of invitation and love. He doesn't manipulate the world around us. Everything that happens is not the 'Will of God' - or Allah. There is much in this world which is obviously and definitely contrary to the will of God. His is a story of a God who creates human beings with free will - the free will to even nail their God to a tree. But also the free will to respond to the creator's love with love of our own. And the free will to stand up and say "I will not be defeated by the powers of evil. I will not seek the escape of the Emmaus road...I will not bury my head in the sand. But I will stand up, inspired by God, driven by the example of Christ, strengthened by the Spirit, and I will make a difference in the world."

Let us in conclusion, remember the words of two great thinkers, Edmund Burke and St Ignatious Loyola (1491-1556). First Burke, who said "The only thing necessary for triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing". And finally, Ignatious, whose famous prayer you may like to pray with me in closing...

"Teach me to serve you as you deserve;
To give and not to count the cost,
To fight and not to heed the wounds,
To toil and not to seek for rest,
To labour and not to ask for any reward,
Save that of knowing that I do your will"

Amen

The Familiarity of the Resurrection

Sermon for Warblington: Easter Sunday 2008

For those of us brought up in the Church, the word Resurrection has an easy familiarity. But I think it may be helpful for us to understand how the story of the Resurrection would have been heard by the people of the time. For them, the separation between the world of the dead, and the world of the living, was absolute.

If they believed in any kind of resurrection, (and many, including the Sadducees, did not) it was only the resurrection of the dead who were to be judged at the end of time (as in the vision of Daniel). For Greeks and Romans, the dead, if they survived at all, lived in their own world, a shadowy place, where they were condemned to a sort of half-life of yearning and sadness.

So the news that someone had been raised from the dead, and had been walking around among the living, would have been profoundly disturbing. The idea created a rupture in all that the ancient world believed about life and death. This was an earthquake in the established order of things - and grasping that helps us to understand the element of the gospel stories that speak of terror and amazement - not least when St Matthew relates how at the moment of crucifixion the bodies of many holy people were raised to life, and of how they went into the city and appeared to many people.

But why might resurrection be such a problem? Well, to begin to grasp that we need to understand the value of life to the ancient world. Life was amazingly cheap. Ancient empires grew and survived by assuming that enormous quantities of human lives were expendable and unimportant; those who fell victim to the system just disappeared.

That was especially true for those who were crucified. Crucifixion victims were usually thrown out onto the city’s rubbish dump, to be consumed by wild animals. There was no sense of dignity in death - especially for those who had opposed the empire. This is very different to how we, today, dispose of the bodies of even the most horrific murderers. We still allow them the dignity of a proper burial.

We forget so readily what Christianity brought into the world; we are so used to it that we take it for granted. In the ancient world there was absolutely no assumption that every life is precious. Fathers had the right to kill their children in certain circumstances. Masters could kill their slaves at a whim. Crowds flocked to arenas to see prisoners of war, or criminals, slaughter each other in the name of entertainment. And when someone was dead, they were dead - few people, even philosophers, spent much time worrying about what happened next.

But the message of the resurrection overturned that world view - it challenged it to the core. Suddenly, God had demonstrated that death was not the end. This was no longer a theory, at the margins of philosophical debate - God, through Jesus, had demonstrated a reality. Jesus announced, by his resurrection, that every life is precious to God. There are no disposable people in the Kingdom of God. Physical death was not the end of our relationship with God, or with each other.

Thankfully, we here in England don’t live under the kind of Empire which treats life so cheaply. But we need to be on our guard. A quick survey of the last hundred years should tell us to watch out. The cheapness of life of the two world wars - on all sides. The mass killings of the Soviet Union, or the revolutionary years in China. We think of Rwanda, of Cambodia, and of the Irish 'troubles', the Balkans and Darfur. We see just how cheap life is to the suicide bomber, or, for that matter, the world powers who shrug their shoulders at what they so clinically call 'collateral damage'.

So the resurrection, as well as being a sign of hope, also stands in judgement over us. We must ask ourselves whether we too treat life with the same callous cheapness. We might think of those who die alone and unloved in our own society - the old person with no family (or forgotten by their family), the homeless addict, the mentally disturbed who are isolated from normal human contact. But the good news of Easter tells us to rejoice for such people too - for even if we forget them, God does not. His offer of New Life comes to all - as Peter discovered, to Gentile as well as Jew, to clean and unclean. Every life is valued by God.

In that gladness, the Easter message should stir us to turn our eyes and look for those likeliest to be forgotten - and to ask where our duty and service lies.

But there is another dimension of the Easter story I'd like us to consider. Each time we celebrate Holy Communion - as we shall this morning - we pray “with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven”. In doing so, we affirm our membership of the body of Christ throughout the ages - those now alive on earth, and those now in heaven - like the thief crucified with Jesus - awaiting the final resurrection and judgement - and the promise of life everlasting in a new heaven and a new earth.

In the days of the death squads in El Salvador, the churches there developed a very dramatic way of celebrating their faith, their hope in the resurrection, and their belief in the communion of saints. At the liturgy, someone would read out the names of those who had been killed, or ‘disappeared’, and for each name, someone would call out from the congregation - “Presente” - “Here”.

“With angels and archangels”... and with the butchered of Rwanda, or Iraq, or the Balkans or those lost in the Tsunami or Kashmiri earthquake; with the young woman dead under Southsea Pier after an overdose, and the childless widow with Alzheimers in the Springfield Nursing Home; and our own loved ones who have gone before us into heaven; all are “Presente” - with the whole company of heaven, those whom God longs to receive, in his mercy, and because of Christ.

“With angels and archangels”...and of course, with Christ our Lord, the firstborn from the dead, who leaves no human soul in anonymity and oblivion, but gives to all the dignity of a name and a presence. He is risen; he is not here; he is present everywhere and available to all. He is risen: “presente”!

So, in closing, what might this good news of Easter, and perhaps this re-awakened sense of the preciousness of life, have to say to us?

Let us rejoice that we belong to a God who holds us in his hands - who offers eternal life to each one of us which, in St Peter’s words will “turn to him and do what is right” (Acts 10).

Let us rejoice in the fellowship of all the saints - remembering that they too are ‘presente’.

Let us learn from their examples, and hear their judgement on the way we lead our lives.

Let us also, though, hear the judgement of Easter that we too should not hold any human life to be cheap.

Let us, in the words of the Peace, ‘pursue all that makes for peace and builds up our common life’.

Let us resist the dehumanising forces which are all around us - those that disregard the weak in our society, or who callously take the life of those who stand in the way of the expansion of empire. This is not the way of the Resurrection. Jesus said, “I have come so that you may have life, and have it to the full”.

Let us live as people who hear, receive, believe and live as Resurrection People!

Alleluiah! Christ is Risen!

Why the Resurrection Matters

Why the Resurrection Matters.

Sunrise Service Sermon

I expect most of have seen the BBC’s version of “The Passion” over this weekend. For those of you who haven’t yet - and who might be planning to use the new BBC iPlayer! - I think I should warn you...it is rather bloody!

There’s been a rash of rather bloody crucifixion films in the last few years. The most notable, of course, was Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ”. You’ve got to have a pretty strong stomach to watch that one, I can tell you.

When that film was released, it was touted as “the greatest evangelistic opportunity in 2000 years”. Many no doubt well- meaning Christians thought that if they could just get their friends to come and see it, they would be instantly converted by seeing what Jesus went through for us on the cross. But...actually...there hasn’t been an explosion in church membership. I wonder why that is.

Whether through film, paintings, or statues, the graphic details of crucifixion - , primarily seem to be about making us feel sorry for Jesus. The underlying thought seems to be that we sort of owe it to him to follow him, because of what he did for us.

Of course, the fact that Jesus, the Son of God, died at all dramatically demonstrates the depth and meaning of his sacrifice. It does us no harm to remember who Jesus is. He is the Alpha and Omega. The Beginning and the End. He is the one who has the power to make all things new...and who promises a new heaven and a new earth. C.S. Lewis spent some time in his book, Mere Christianity, thinking about what it meant for Jesus to come and live as a human being. He wrote: “The Eternal being who knows everything and who created the whole universe, became not only a man, but (before that) a baby, and before that a foetus inside a woman’s body. If you want to get the hang of it, think how you would like to become a slug.”

But if it wasn’t for Easter...these remarkable actions on the part of God would quite probably have gone unknown, and un-remarked by the rest of humanity. Jesus wasn’t the first man to die in a horribly painful way...and he wasn’t the last. His disciples knew that, and the historical records of the time - the Gospels - tell us that after his death they thought that the whole thing was over. They hid in an upper room - terrified.

But the fact of the Resurrection...the fact that Jesus shrugged off death, and rose from the tomb, had an incredibly dramatic effect. It transformed the lives of Jesus’ friends, and from there it transformed lives throughout the whole world.

It is sometimes said that it doesn’t really matter whether or not we believe in the Resurrection. Some people have suggested that Jesus didn’t actually rise from the dead...it was just that his presence with the disciples seemed to live on with them, after his death. Some people suggest that Jesus was only alive in the sense that any dead person is alive to us...in our memories. But I don’t think that interpretation matches the facts.

First of all, people don’t give up their own lives for a memory. We know that many - if not all - of the disciples were persecuted, hated, tried and martyred for their assertion...their absolute certainty...that Jesus had got up from the grave. They could not deny what they had seen with their own eyes...no matter how much they were threatened and beaten. Now in these days we know that people will give their lives for religious dogma - for what they’ve been brainwashed with by the mad mullahs of Al Quaida. But the sacrifice of the Disciples was something quite different. For them to have denied that they had seen Jesus rise from the dead, would have been like us having to deny that grass is green.

Secondly, if Jesus had not risen from the dead, why didn’t the Roman or Jewish authorities simply produce his body to disprove it? That would have quickly stopped the resurrection rumour in its tracks. But there was no body to produce.

Jesus calls us to follow him, not only because he died for our sins...not because we feel grateful to him (although of course we should). The message of Easter is that Jesus calls us to follow him because he lives!

As one of us, Jesus not only died, but was raised from the dead and now lives with the Father. And he says that he wants to share his joy and his life with us. Jesus isn’t looking for our sympathy; he’s inviting us to get involved. He’s looking for us to join his followers in proclaiming that there is another way than the way of war and violence and hate, of greed and consumerism and poverty. And he’s inviting us, ultimately, to come home to the love of our heavenly Father. That’s why he died...to give us life, and to call us home. Not to illicit our pity.

So it does matter what we believe. If we believe that Jesus only lived in his disciples’ memories...then he died there too - when they died. And our faith is based on nothing more than a vague wishfulness - a totally unproveable hypothesis that maybe God exists, and maybe we have somewhere to go after we die.

If, on the other hand - as all the evidence suggests - he really rose from the dead, still lives today, and calls us to life and to heaven...then that is worth something. That is a truth worth hanging on to. That is a fact worth telling our neighbours about. That is something worth celebrating.

Alleluiah...Christ is Risen!

Matthew 21: “The Stones Cry Out”

Palm Sunday. "Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!" We hear these words, we sing these songs but I wonder if we understand the impact of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem on the people of his time? This day marked the end of the beginning of Jesus’ ministry and the beginning of his end. He was moving into the final week of his earthly ministry - a climactic moment. It did not just happen - Jesus planned eveything very carefully. He had even arranged for a donkey to ride on, and had agreed a coded message with the owner - so that when the Disciples turned up and took the donkey, the owner wouldn't complain.

It was very important for Jesus that he should arrive in the city on a donkey. He knew the prophecy from the ancient book of Zechariah,

‘Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion!

Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem!

Lo, your king comes to you;

Triumphant and victorious is he,

Humble and riding on a donkey

On a colt, the foal of a donkey’

Jesus’ actions were an unmistakeable claim to be the Messiah, God’s messenger to the world. Jesus normally walked everywhere. This is the only time we see Jesus travelling other than on foot. That is why the people pulled branches from the trees and shouted ‘hosanna’. This is why they threw their garments on the ground to welcome the King of Kings into the holy city. This is why they began to sing the psalm of praise, Psalm 118 that pilgrims always sang on the way to Jerusalem: a song of victory, a hymn of praise to the God who defeats all his foes and establishes his kingdom:

'Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.

...With boughs in hand, join in the festal procession

up to the horns of the altar!'

But what did his disciples understand by all of this? Throughout the Gospel records we see Jesus struggling to help his disciples understand the sort of kingdom that he had come to usher in. But some of his disciples, even on Palm Sunday, still harboured ideas of Jesus coming to overthrow the Romans and to restore the power of the Jewish State. Whatever Jesus said, whatever Jesus did – it seemed that his disciples couldn't free themselves from some very human notions of power and victory.

Palm Sunday is all about power – the power of God – about the power of God which is of a different order to the powers of this world. You see, God’s power is not like the power of Caesar or of Napoleon or of the USA just multiplied. God’s power is not like that.

That is the point made in one of the crucial moments of Jesus Christ Superstar - the Rock Opera. Jesus and his followers are seen arriving in Jerusalem. Simon the Zealot is urging Jesus to go ahead and get the crowd to follow him to get rid of the Romans. Simon declares. ‘You’ll get the power and the glory for ever and ever and ever.’ And do you know what Jesus replies? Very gently, against all the noise of Simon the Zealot, he sings,’ Neither you, Simon, nor the fifty thousand, nor the Romans, nor the Jews; nor Judas; nor the twelve, nor the priests, nor the scribes nor doomed Jerusalem itself, understand what power is; understand what glory is; understand at all.’

You see - God’s power is shown through Jesus and through his self-giving and sacrifice, and suffering. Jesus Christ and him crucified; that is the power and wisdom of God. As St Paul said, "the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God". (1 Cor 1:18). It's a different order of power that works not through violence and victory but through love, service and sacrifice.

But you know - it is possible for us to see both those kinds of power at work today. On the one hand, we can see the power of violence and victory - as we see armies marching against each other around the planet, as we see selfish companies and individuals grabbing all the riches and wealth that they can, as we see man's inhumanity to man continuing to spread around the world. But we can see the other kind of power as well.

Every time that someone stands up against the violence and greed. Every time someone reaches out a hand to help another human being. Every time a hospital is opened, or a school is started, or a refugee is fed or given a tent - that's the power of God at work...showing us that there is another way...the way of love, service and sacrifice. And actually - I think - if you were to count up all the people in the world who are involved with education, healing, loving their families, relieving poverty, serving their church or their local community, or working for reconcilliation - and then counted up all the people who are money grabbing war-mongers...you know I think we'd see, pretty quickly, that God's power is very much in evidence. I think you'd see really who is reigning on Earth.

We hear about the atrocities - the terrorist bombs, the famine and poverty - because they are real, and they are horrible. But what we don't hear about is the day to day normality that most people actually live with. God is the God of normality. He delights in the simple loving acts of families, and communities and churches all over the world. He delights in those communities around the world who are not obsessed with grabbing power, and working every hour He sends to buy the latest gadget, or the bigger house - those communities, instead, who take just what they need from the land, and spend the rest of their time pursuing friendship and art and community. His power is found there. He is there.

That's why we can sing, with such joy, that Jesus Reigns over all the Earth! Because although we hear more about the bad stuff in the world - the reality is that God is alive...and 'God is working his purpose out as year succeeds to year.'

When Jesus rode into Jerusalem, on that first Palm Sunday, he was profoundly misunderstood. But the power of God that he was embracing and sustaining and sending forth throughout that first Holy Week has continued to shape and affect lives all around the world ever since. The power of God is not about war and conquest, its about love and sacrifice. The power of God is not about gaining wealth, its about gaining simplicity.

If only we could really get hold of that message in our modern, consumer-society! We live in a society which is raping the earth of all its resources. We are on a road that is leading to disaster. Every conflict that our world has ever seen has been ultimately about human notions of power...the power to control the earth's resources...the power to impose my ideas over yours...the power to fill my pockets with gold, while yours are empty.

But Jesus' idea of power is absolutely the opposite to those kinds of notions. Jesus says "God's power is found in love, in serving others, in forgiveness and sacrifice." Unless we repent, and turn away from our selfish, power-grabbing, war-mongering, planet-raping, pleasure-seeking, wealth-hunting way of life...then quite simply, there will be no hope for us.

Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem on a donkey brought him closer to the Cross. The people looked for victory and hailed their hero – many would not have been there if they had known what lay ahead - and indeed they had fled by the time it became clear what was to happen.

And as ever the Pharisees are there, going along on the edge of the crowd, watching everything. They become anxious about what will happen if the authorities in Jerusalem think that this is a messianic demonstration going on. They shout across to Jesus, ‘tell your disciples to stop all this noise and celebration’ and Jesus replies, ‘if they were silent, even the stones would shout out.’

From Jesus’ point of view a great celebration is what there should be, because he is coming to his final act in bringing God’s salvation to the world. Yes, even the stones would cry out if people were silent.

For our point of view - the point of view of those who know not only the story of Palm Sunday but of Good Friday and of Easter, this is a call to cry out in celebration. We are called to be living stones, building up the house and kingdom of God in our time.

And so as we share today in the last supper of bread and wine, let us recall the new age that Jesus came to usher in, an age not based on military power or might but on suffering and service, love and obedience. And let us commit ourselves anew to being people of his Kingdom - people who embrace his way of living...the way of self-sacrifice and love.

As a sign of that commitment, I'm going to ask you to make a gesture this morning. When you come to the rail, to receive the sustaining power of the body and blood of Jesus, we are going to offer you a Palm Cross. After you have received the bread and the wine, please reach out and deliberately take that cross, as a sign that you are taking up the challenge that Jesus offers us. Take that cross home with you - and put it in a prominent place. Let it be a reminder, throughout the rest of this year, of the fundamentally different way of life that Jesus calls each one of us to embrace. Not the way of power, and wealth, and consumerism. The way of love, of self-sacrifice, of simplicity, and of peace.

Amen

Ezekiel 37: Dry Bones or New Life

We've all heard, and probably sung, the song 'Dem bones Dem bones Dem dry bones'. Its a lot of fun. 'The toe bone's connected to the foot bone, the foot bone's connected to the ankle bone'...and so on. But what's it actually all about? What is the meaning of this ancient story of Ezekiel's vision there for? Why has it been passed on to us, down the centuries?

Let's think a little about the context in which it was written. Now forgive me if I tell you things you already know - but I usually find that there are at least some people in every congregation whose knowledge of Jewish history is a little vague! And why shouldn't it be? It's not something that we are taught very often nowadays.

The book of Ezekiel was written during the period known as the Exile. About 600 years before Christ, the nation was conquered by the Babylonians, and most of the leadership, the wealthier Jews, royalty and the priesthood were taken to Babylon - in modern day Iraq. According to the Scriptures of the time, this was a punishment from God, for a nation that had stopped worshipping the true God, and turned instead to other Gods. For about 70 years, the cream of Jewish society languished in Babylon - slaves to the Babylonians.

It's from that period that we get the great laments like Psalm 137..."By the rivers of Babylon we sat down, and we wept when we remembered Zion" (Zion is of course the name of the mountain on which the city of Jerusalem is built.) It's also from that period that we get books like Daniel - with its tales of Jewish men serving in the Babylonian courts. It is also, incidentally, the period in which scholars believe that the Law of Moses - the first five books of the Bible - were substantially edited and expanded into the form we have today.

So let's put ourselves in the position of the Exiles. Here we are, thousands of miles from home - strangers in a strange land, singing sad songs of longing for Zion. We are homesick for our ancestral lands. We believe that God has sent us here as a punishment for the disobedience of the whole nation. And so, naturally enough, we begin to think about how we can please God enough to allow him to change our circumstances, and send us back home.

In such an atmosphere, two things tend to happen. The first is that priests start to insist on greater adherance to the Law - and so, as scholars tell us, they set about codifying and editing the collection of laws which had been handed down...seeking to establish laws that will change people's behaviour...so that they will please God. It was out of that process that the Pharisees arose. By the time of Jesus, when the nation was once again under occupation, the Pharisees believed that if the whole nation could keep all of the religious laws for just one day, then God would rescue them from their oppressors. That's why they got so upset when they saw Jesus treating their laws with such disdain.

The second thing that tends to happen in these kind of circumstances is that visionaries arise - prophets...who tell people that they need to trust in God...for God is at work and on the move. So, in the book of Daniel for example, we see visions of how the various nations surrounding Israel will be defeated, and how the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah will be re-established. And that is the theme that the prophet Ezekiel is also pursuing...

At the very start of his book, Ezekiel tells how he saw what calls 'visions of God'. But we might actually turn that phrase around, and say that what he was seeing was 'God's vision'. In other words, through his visions, Ezekiel was being given a 'God's eye view' of events...looking at things from God's perspective. In his great vision of chapter 37 - the story we heard just now - Ezekiel looks across the valley and sees dry bones scattered all around. As he learns later in his dialogue with God, these bones represent the people of Israel - who have been lamenting to God that they are like dry bones...as good as dead.

But God's perspective is different from theirs. He doesn't just exist in the moment...God is not limited by time and space as we are. He hears the complaints of the Israelites...but he also sees into their future...a future in which the nation of Israel will be restored in Jerusalem. So, through Ezekiel, he promises them, in verse 12, "I will bring you back to the land of Israel". Then in verse 14, he says, "I will settle you in your own land".

We might ask - how will he accomplish this? The answer comes again in verse 14: "I will put my Spirit in you, and you will live". The words used here are an echo of the story of the first man...who was created by God out of dust...but who needed God's Spirit, God's breath, breathed into him in order to live. God describes himself as the very life that courses through our veins...both as individuals, as nations, and as the whole human race.

Once again, we are invited to see things from God's perspective. From the perspective of the Exiles, life looked pretty bleak. They had been ripped from their homes and from their land. They were under the domination of a foreign power. They had been in that condition for decades...and they couldn't see how things could possibly change for them. But God knew what he was doing.

The Exile - as terrible as it was for the Exiles themselves - gave to the world a rich body of Scripture. The writings of the Exile, like Ezekiel, some of the Psalms, the book of Daniel and so on...they all speak to us of how God remains God, and very much active and alive, even through the toughest of circumstances. That is not to say that God himself causes those tough circumstances...time and time again (as we saw in the Nazi holocaust for example) it is not God who causes the suffering...but man's inhumanity to man. But God is present in the suffering - looking for ways to bring good out of it...to transform it from death to life, from defeat into victory.

There is, of course, no more powerful example of God doing that than through the event of the Cross. On the cross, as Jesus cried out 'why have you forsaken me?' he appeared to be at his lowest ebb...as good as dead... dried up bones. But there, just at the moment when evil had seemed to overcome good, the moment when the Son of God has been nailed down...God intervenes; and transforms the situation utterly. From being a cross of defeat, it becomes a cross of victory. Sin is defeated, and all humankind is offered eternal life. The resurrection - the greatest reversal of fortune in history - powerfully proves that God is at work.

So what about us? What can we learn from these stories that can apply to our situations? Well, I think that if we begin to see our lives and experiences from God's perspective...trusting that what he has done in the past he will do again in the future...then I think we have reason for hope. There are two levels to this; the level of the church itself, and the level of our personal experience of God.

Perhaps, like me, when you look at the church worldwide - appearing to tear itself apart over theological issues...you might have a deep sense of gloom. Perhaps, like the Exiles, you feel that you want to cry out to God..."when, O Lord, will the trouble be over? When will you rescue us?" But, if we pause to look at the situation from God's perspective...with a God's-eye-view...perhaps we can begin to see another pattern emerging. There is no doubt, for example, that the theological splits of the church are man-made. They are examples of human arrogance...human beings who believe that they've got a personal hot-line to God...and that they know better than their fellow Christians how God wants them to act.

But I think God takes that human folly, and in typical topsy-turvy Kingdom ways...somehow manages to redeem it. Can you imagine, for example, how small the church would be if every church did things the same way? If all churches were like our church, they would only attract a certain number of people...people, in our case, who find comfort in the ancient words of the Prayer Book, and who enjoy singing psalms. But instead, because of the very issues that divide us as a world-wide church, there are a fantastic variety of ways in which people can experience God at work. Suddenly, seen from a God's-eye-view, the human folly of argument and division becomes a divine opportunity for colour, variety, and infinite creativity. In the same way that God saw the dry bones of Israel as an opportunity for divine action, he sees the dry bones of the church as a chance to break through...and let people experience God in all his glorious creativity.

And on a personal level - I think God invites us to see him in action in our lives too. Ezekiel's vision invites us to see that however tough our own circumstances, however difficult is the journey of faith for us, God is at work...breathing his Spirit into our situation...looking for ways to bring glory out of defeat, and life out of death.

Because that's the kind of God he is.

Mothering Sunday

Readings: Luke 2: 34-35 + 1 Sam 1: 20-28

Here we are again. Another year has turned, the daffodils are peeking up through the soil, and children all over the country are either presenting their mothers with breakfast in bed… or, right now, rushing down to the newsagents in a last minute attempt to find a card or some flowers!

Motherhood is of course something that most people have to grow into. It’s a road that is paved with all sorts of good intentions…many of which get thrown out of the window the first time that your darling little baby turns to you and says ‘No…I won’t!’. Motherhood – and for that matter fatherhood – sort of creeps up on us. Here are five signs which conclusively prove that you have become a mother – which I found on the internet:

• You start spending regular half hours in the bathroom…just to be alone!
• You start hoping that tomato ketchup is a vegetable, since it’s the only one that your child eats.
• You find that, without thinking about it, you’ve cut the crusts of your husband’s sandwiches
• You hear your own Mother’s voice coming out of your mouth when you say “NOT in your best clothes!”

And finally…the most telling sign of all…

• You use your own spit to clean your child’s face.

This morning’s readings invite us to consider something of both the joy and the pain of motherhood. In our first reading, from the 1^st Book of Samuel, we see Hannah, Samuel’s mother, celebrating the birth of her long-awaited son. She is so grateful to God for the gift of a child, that she offers him back to the Lord – to serve in the Temple under Eli the Priest.

That’s a passage that has particular resonance for me – if I might be allowed to share a personal story. A few hours after I was born, it was discovered that I had a life-threatening condition, in which my tummy was twisted 360 degrees – so that no food would pass down my pipe. I was rushed to the Bristol Children’s Hospital, and while I went through very invasive surgery to correct the problem, my own mother prayed and prayed for her first child.

Obviously I survived. And around 35 years later, I went to visit my parents, to tell them of my decision to offer myself for ordained ministry. My mother was deeply touched by the whole event – because, as she explained, when she had been praying for me all those years before, she had said to God “If you let my son live, I will offer him to you!”. Like Hannah, my mother had decided to give her son back to the Lord. And as with Samuel, the Lord honoured the gift.

I’m just lucky that I didn’t end up being called Samuel myself!

In the chapter immediately after the passage we heard, Hannah celebrates the gift of her son with words that sound very similar to the Magnificat of Jesus’ mother Mary: “My heart rejoices in the Lord; in the Lord my horn is lifted high. My mouth boasts over my enemies, for I delight in your deliverance” (1Sam2:1). Later in the same song she sings of the Lord that “He raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heap” – very much a pre-echo of Mary’s exaltation, from Luke chapter 1, that “He puts down the mighty from their seat and exalts the humble and meek”.

This is typical Biblical imagery about what God does – about what the Kingdom of Heaven is like. The Kingdom is a topsy turvey place – in which all of our human perceptions of what life should be like are turned on their head. It’s a theme that we see repeated in our second reading.

When Mary and Joseph presented their new son Jesus to the Lord at the Temple, Simeon prophesied over the child – whom he recognised by divine light to be the promised Messiah. And his prophecy contained some strange words – topsy turvey words: “This child is destined to cause the rising and falling of many in Israel…” (Luke 2:34)

When we look at the subsequent story of Jesus, we can see what Simeon meant. Jesus would take simple, poor folk – fishermen, labourers, civil servants – and transform them into leaders of what would become a world-wide church. The great and powerful of the day, however, would have a different fate. The High Priests of Israel would be hated throughout the millennia for their part in Jesus’ downfall. The Temple itself would be destroyed in AD 70. Pilate would become the epitome of the distant ruler who washes his hands of his own responsibilities – and the mighty Roman Empire itself would ultimately fall…while the Kingdom of God advanced down the centuries. The kingdom of God was not advanced by political leaders, Caesars and Herods, but by simple everyday folk – like you and me. Later in his life, Jesus would pick up on these themes – especially in what are known as the Beatitudes: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the Kingdom of God…” (Luke 6:20)

Both Mary and Hannah exalted at this prospect. There was real joy in the gift of motherhood they had been given, because they glimpsed something of the potential of the child they had borne.

But there is a darker edge to the prophecy of Simeon too. At the end of his promises about all that Jesus would achieve, there is a dark foreboding in his final line: “And a sword will pierce your own soul too” (Lk 2:35).

Simeon knows his Scriptures. He knows, for example, that Isaiah had prophesied that the Messiah would have to die to achieve his ultimate goal of saving the Earth. He knows that the path Jesus must tread is going to a difficult one. Perhaps he also knows that Jesus must out-grow the earthly human family of Mary and Joseph – and move to embrace all those who love God. There is the occasion when the boy Jesus stays in Jerusalem to discuss theology with the priests – rather than returning home with his parents…(which is the very next story in Luke’s gospel). And do you remember the occasion that Jesus was told of his mother and brothers being outside – when he responded that his mother and brothers were now all those who hear and act on God’s words? (Lk 8:21)

And that is something that many mothers – and fathers too – must experience. As children leave the nest, and make their own way in the world – there can be pain at their passing. There is a sense in which all parents are called to give back the gift of their child to the God who created them…just as my mother, and Hannah, and Mary did.

And there is worse pain still at the moment of losing a child…as many do. It is right, I think, that we should remember this morning the parents of Madeleine McCann, and now, in this latest week, the parents of little Shannon Matthews. Awful pain. Wretched. And their pain is repeated over and over again in the hearts of mothers and fathers of children – sick children, dying children, abducted children, abused children – throughout the whole world.

There is something for us to ponder here. Can it be that, in acknowledging the reality of this kind of pain, the Bible is warning us, all of us, not to hold too tightly on to the things of this world – even the relationships with which we are blessed?

God knows the kind of pain that human beings are capable of inflicting on each other. Whether that pain is caused by the evil actions of a few individuals – the child abductors and abusers. Or whether it is caused by the failure of the entire human race to stop killing each other, and to focus our efforts instead of finding cures for sickness, and starvation, and death. Can it be that by enlarging the scope of his own family to include all those who hear and obey God’s words, Jesus is inviting us to do the same? Can it be that Jesus is saying that he knows what a rotten place we humans have made this world. But here, in the Church, is a place where the topsy turvy Kingdom of God can at least offer a different way of being…a more collective way, a more community –based way. A way of mutual support – of holding one another up through all the pain of life, and yes of Motherhood.

Perhaps we would do well to remind ourselves of the original meaning of Mothering Sunday – the day when people returned to the church in which they were brought up…to their ‘mother church’…to remind themselves that we are not only given the blood-relations with whom we are blessed…but the whole of God’s people…all the brothers and sisters, and fathers and mothers in Christ that we share.

Amen

A New Job

Regular readers will be interested (I hope) to know that I've been appointed to a new job. I've been asked to take on the role of Team Rector of North End - a parish of three churches in the north of Portsmouth. You can read more about the parish on their website at www.stmarkportsea.co.uk.

I expect to take up the post towards the end of May. Clare, Emily and I are really looking forward to the opportunities and challenges ahead - though we will, of course, miss the lovely people of Warblington with Emsworth.

There will be plenty of time to reflect on our time in Warblington and Emsworth over the coming months. For now, I just thought everyone who may be interested should know that I'm on the move!

Original Sin? (A Sermon for the First Sunday of Lent)

Lent already? It only feels like yesterday that we were celebrating Christmas together! Well I suppose that’s what we get for aligning a Christian festival to a pagan one! Easter, as I’m sure you know, was superimposed onto an existing pagan feast of the goddess Eastre – the so-called ‘goddess of the dawn’. Which is why we still have eggs and bunnies, and all that lovely imagery of new life.

But for now, we’re in the period of Lent… and period in which we pause, and hold our breath before the celebrations of Easter morning. And, of course, it’s a time for examining ourselves, and for asking ourselves whether we’ve fully understood the full implications of the Easter message that we are about to celebrate in 40 days time.

This morning’s readings, which come straight from the authorised lectionary for this year, invite us to consider one of the key messages of Scripture…the rather disturbing notion that we are all sinners, who have inherited our sin from Adam.

It’s a message that many people struggle to hear. I think that I will never forget the first funeral that I conducted soon after my ordination as a deacon. When trying to explain to the family that we would have a prayer for forgiveness near the beginning of the service, they asked, “what’s all that about then?”. I replied, innocently, that it was a chance to ask God for forgiveness of our sins…at which the family erupted. “Sinners!” they said. “We’re not sinners…and our Gran definitely wasn’t one!”

I could see that I was not going to get very far with this particular family. The idea of sin had become irretrievably linked in their mind with heinous crimes like murder. They had no concept that sin could be something far less dramatic. I found myself rather amused a little later however, when I asked them what their dear Gran’s favourite leisure-time occupations had been. “Oh”, they said, “she liked to go out into the country on Sunday, and do a bit of poaching!”

So what are we to make of this word ‘sin’ – what is actually meant by it? Clearly it includes murder. But what else? Are we really meant to define ourselves as sinners who have all erred and strayed from God’s ways like lost sheep. Are we really the ‘miserable offenders’ that we declared ourselves earlier to be – in the words of the confession? I think that if we are honest, most of us probably don’t see ourselves in quite that way. We are normal, honest, church-going people aren’t we? I doubt that any of us have done anything particularly evil this week. I can’t imagine that many of you have been out murdering anyone in the last seven days!

The Genesis story tells us that the Serpent tempted Eve to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. He told her that if she did so, she would be like God – understanding the difference between good and evil. He also told her that God was lying when he said that she would die if she ate the fruit.

And of course, the Serpent was lying…on both counts. Physical death arose as a direct consequence of Eve’s, and then Adam’s actions. But more than that, the Serpent lied when he said that Adam and Eve would become like God, understanding the difference between good and evil. Patently, that was not true. Oh, we can understand the very basics of the difference between the two… but we are not capable of making the tough decisions about what is right or wrong. If you want proof of that, just think of all the ethical issues that the church has grappled with throughout the centuries. Slavery? The equality of the sexes? Attitudes to abortion, or stem cell research? Even the current debate in the Anglican Communion about the rightness or wrongness of homosexuality.

We are simply not wise enough to be able to judge these issues with any sense of certainty. All our decisions are provisional, and open to challenge by equally committed and faithful people who are grappling with the same questions. Our knowledge of good and evil is certainly far less than God’s.

So the story of Adam and Eve – whatever we think of its merits as an actual historical event – is a powerful statement of what happens when we human beings try to make ourselves like God… when we move from allowing God to shape us, and try instead to shape ourselves. We end up in a mess. We become subject to sin. We create societies and cultures which are infected with incompetence, and the inability to reach clear moral decisions about just about any important issue.

It might also be helpful if we see sin like an infection. The things that our ancestors got wrong, continue to affect us – or infect us today. And the things we are getting wrong (like destroying the planet, or tolerating great evil around the world) will affect, or infect our descendents. I think that’s the idea that St. Paul is leading us towards, in our second reading, when he says that ‘sin came into the world through one man, and death came through sin, and so death spread to all because all have sinned’ (Rom 5:12)

So if sin has infected the world, like a disease, what is the cure? Well St Paul outlines the remedy for that too. He makes a comparison between the first Adam – the man through which the infection of sin first entered the world – and the ‘second Adam’ – which of course is Jesus. (We might like to remember that the word ‘Adam’ simply means ‘Man’). In other words, the first Man (with a capital M) has now been replaced by the second ‘Man’ (with another capital M). The way of disobedience – of thinking that we are capable of living without God – is replaced by the way of obedience…modelled by Jesus up to and including the point of death. That’s what Paul means when he says, in verse 19: “For just as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous”. Paul himself summed this idea up much more succinctly in his first letter to the Corinthians, when he said “All in Adam die. All in Christ are made alive” (I Cor 15:22)

There are, I think, two distinct ways in which this new life is offered to us through Jesus. The first is, plainly, through his death. Again in Paul’s words, a little earlier in Romans chapter 5, “For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly” (Rom 5:6) By a mechanism which remains an eternal mystery – something that we can only begin to grasp with our feeble human minds – Christ death had the effect of wiping away our sin. Entire branches of Christianity have been founded on trying to understand the depth of that statement. Was Jesus sacrificed in our place? Were our sins attributed to him so that he was punished for us? Or was his death an immense example of how far God is willing to go to draw us back to his ways? Did he, in some way, pay a ransom to the Devil to free us from the Serpent’s clutches? Substitutionary atonement. Penal substitution. Ransom. Redemption. Moral example – all these, and many other ways of grappling with the meaning of Jesus’ death have been offered – even by different writers in the New Testament. But what they are all pointing to is essentially the idea that Jesus – the second Adam – somehow undid the damage of the first Adam. Jesus was the cure to the infection of sin.

And the second way that Jesus offers us new life is quite simply through his teaching. If his only purpose was to die for us, then he could quite simply have done that without spending three years telling us what else we needed to know.

What Jesus called us to, throughout his life of teaching, was the idea that we can chose to live under the Lordship of God – the Kingdom of Heaven, the Kingdom of God. Jesus offers us the chance to live in a kind of relationship to God – similar to that of a subject to their King, or a child to their father. We are offered God’s way of living, through the teachings of Jesus. It’s a way of poverty, and of peace. It throws aside notions of power and wealth and warfare and exploitation. It reaches out to the poor and the sick – and declares to the meek and the humble that theirs is the Kingdom of God.

And Lent is a period when we might spend some of our time thinking about that very question. Accepting entirely that Jesus has done all that is necessary for our salvation; we then need to consider whether we have truly begun to live the eternal life that he offers us now! Jesus said that he had come so that we may have life, and have it to the full. (John 10:10) He didn’t just mean life after death – he meant eternal life that starts NOW. Jesus’ challenge is that we are capable of living lives that are pure, holy and, in Paul’s words to the Romans, ‘made righteous’ – now.

So what about us? Have we heard the voice of Jesus, calling to us across the centuries? “Repent” ‘Turn away from doing things your way – and turn to my way’. The Kingdom of Heaven is breaking through now… you can live a righteous and holy eternal life…now.

Let me invite you, then, to take time this Lent to slowly, deliberately, and prayerfully read through the Gospels. Take time to let Jesus’ radical call to a new way of living get soaked into your mind and into your consciousness. Take time to begin fully living eternal life, in the ‘family’, the ‘community’, or the ‘lordship of God’. Now. It’s there for the taking.

Amen

Just Dust and Ashes

Isaiah 58. 1-12 & Matthew 6.1-6, 16-18 Ash Wednesday.

(Please forgive this slightly early posting of tomorrow evening's sermon. It's just that if I don't do it now, I'll probably forget!)

Do you remember the dustmen's strike of the late 1970s? I do – simply because of one very memorable event – which happened soon after we had moved into a new house. My Dad decided to deal with the overflowing rubbish bin by the simple expedient of having a bonfire in the garden. However, he wasn't quite as careful as he might have been – and accidentally consigned an aerosol can to the flames. Sure enough, the can exploded – sending a missile over the fence at the bottom of our garden, to land in the open kitchen door of a new neighbour.

Our neighbour, who turned out to be the headmaster of our local school, came screaming out of the house. "What on earth to you think you are doing?!" My Dad was, of course, very apologetic – but thought that this rather bossy man was over-reacting a bit. It was only an accident after all. He was then rather puzzled by the neighbour's next question: "What would have happened if a net had been there?". "Well," replied my puzzled father, "I suppose a net would have caught it!". What Dad didn't realise, was that 'Annette' was the headmaster's daughter!

(From the Blog point of view...I wonder if my Dad will exercise his right of reply...in the comments section below?!)

Ashes were something we got used to many years ago. Everyone had bonfires, in the time before smoke-control zones. I guess most of us have had the experience of raking ashes out of the grate, in the days before central heating. Ashes are just rubbish, aren't they? The product of burning something away. Just carbon. Waste, after the heat and light are gone.

So why, tonight, are we going to put this rubbish, this ash, on our heads? I want to suggest three reasons why we maintain this tradition - though I am sure there are more.

First of all these ashes are a reminder of who we are. The Bible tells us that we came from the dust and to the dust we shall return. As I'm sure you know our bodies are made up of about 50% water, and about 22% carbon (which is all that ashes are in the main). Mixed in with that are a couple of pounds of nitrogen (such as we find in good compost) and a couple of pounds of calcium (like the chalk hills of the Downs). On top of that there are about 30 or 40 other trace elements. But if I were to have all those elements here, and threw them all into a bucket, would I be able to make a human being? No, of course not.

The mythological imagery of Genesis tells us that the first human was formed out of the dust of the earth by God and then God breathed life into that dust. That is a powerful image. God is the source of our life – and the ashes we will use later on remind us of our utter dependence on him. Without the breath or Spirit of God moving in us, we are just ashes – dust: lifeless - worthless.

Secondly ashes are also a sign of repentance. As well as being a time of preparation for Good Friday and Easter, Lent is a time of mourning for our sins. It is a time when we are called to repent, turn away from our sin – which why, throughout Lent, we do not sing the Gloria, but focus instead on the Kyrie. "Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy, Lord have mercy". For many of Lent will involve giving up something which we enjoy, as a personal discipline, and as a sign of our repentance.

Repentance is of course a key biblical theme. Time and time again the Old Testament prophets called people to turn away from their way of doing things, and to turn towards God's way. Sometimes, as we heard from Isaiah just now, that even meant repenting about the way that repenting was done! Fasting - or the giving up of food - was (and still is) an excellent discipline. It is designed to train us in the task of looking to God for spiritual and physical sustenance. It was an outward sign of a contrite heart - a heart that longed to be obedient to God.

But in Isaiah's day, fasting had become sort of fashionable, and as a result, hollow. Isaiah, speaking for God, says "Such fasting as you do today will not make your voice heard on high. Is such the fast that I choose, a day to humble oneself? Is it to bow down the head like a bulrush, and to lie in sackcloth and ashes. Do you call this a fast - a day acceptable to God?"

Then, as we heard in the reading, Isaiah goes on to outline what true fasting, true repentance will look like. It won't be a mechanistic tradition of wearing certain clothes, and going without certain foods, or, in our case, for example, just performing again the ancient traditions of Ash Wednesday. It won't be the public wailing and showy-ness that Jesus condemmed in our Gospel reading. Instead, true repentance will be the complete changing of our minds to be more like the mind of God. This, of course, means being like the God whose heart is for the poor, and the hungry, and the homeless, and the weak. It means not being religious - but being practical, outward looking, loving our neighbour as we love ourselves. It means moving from a state of receiving God's love for us as individuals, into expressing that love for other people, through our actions, through our prayers, through our giving.

This year the Bishop of Liverpool has suggested that we should give up using carbon for Lent – or at least to cut down on its use as much as possible. That is a really tangible way of loving our neighbour – cutting down on our personal use of planet-destroying carbon emissions – that will ultimately flood, and starve, some of our poorest neighbours around the world. Let's turn off some lights. If you have any clusters of lights, like a small chandeliers, for example – why not remove one of the bulbs for lent – as both a real contribution to climate change, and a symbolic statement of our commitment to live with less? Perhaps you might leave the car at home? As we are marked with the carbon of Ash, in a short while, perhaps we might like to make a commitment to reduce our own carbon use this Lent...and then, hopefully, throughout the rest of the year.

But there is one final point I want to make. The people in Biblical stories put the ashes on top of their heads - so why do we put them in the sign of the cross on our foreheads? It's not just because we ministers are of those who have just had their hair done! We make the sign of the cross because it is a reminder of how we are marked for Christ. It is in once sense a reminder of our baptism, when we were signed with the sign of the cross. And the cross of ashes also reminds of the mark of the Lamb as it is described in the Book of Revelation. Revelation tells of an angel marking the faithful before the tribulation. These faithful would then be protected. The mark of the cross is a mark of ownership. These ashes tonight remind us that we are Christ's, we belong to him; and that he died so that we might live.

So let me summarise. These may be just a few ashes, but they mean a lot. First, they are a symbol of our need for God, for His breath of life. We are nothing but dust and ashes apart from Him.

Secondly, they are also a symbol of our repentance and mourning. They are a way of showing on the outside what is happening on the inside. Our trust in our own powers and abilities has tarnished the image of Christ in us. We have failed to live as he commands us to live. We've allowed ourselves to be seduced by the wealth and comfort of the world, while our neighbours are starving. The ashes are a sign of our deliberate repentance, our turning away - from our way of being, to God's.

Finally, in the midst of our repentance, these ashes, marked onto our forehead, are a sign that we are forgiven and marked as Christ's own. The very burning away of our sin by the fire of God's love makes us God's own. And as his own we are stamped and certified as children of God through the cross.

So as we come today to have the sign of the cross placed on our foreheads, let us

• remind ourselves of our need of God, the source of our life, without whose life we are just ashes and dust
  
• commit ourselves anew to living for him
  
• remind ourselves that we are forgiven, and marked as Christ's brothers and sisters; children of our heavenly father.
  

Amen