Sermon for Sunday 15th April - Easter 2 2012

Sermon for Easter 2 Sunday 15th April 2012

This Extraordinary Life

“Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul,
and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions,
but everything they owned was held in common. And with Great power the Apostles gave their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus’

The resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead defies all categories - it makes no sense in our world - it is totally Other. And the evidence for it is not to be found in anyway like the evidence for anything else in all of Creation. Despite the plethora of books arguing ‘from the evidence’ either for or against and both with Compelling certainty - it cannot be Proven. But that is Not to say that there is no evidence. Rather there is evidence which fits the Extraordinary nature of that to which it attests. As the Resurrection of Jesus is an event Like Nothing ever encountered, it produces communities of people who live in a way that defies any explanation, Except that Christ is Risen and his Life is flowing out into the world.

The idea of a group of people living together in such freedom as the Acts church, not grasping onto things but freely sharing all they had with one another is beyond our categories our understanding of how the world is supposed to work. We hear it and Have to dismiss it. What we as Christians have come to call stewardship is nothing of the kind in the light of God’s Light and life. The Acts church are true stewards of their possessions - they do not understand them as their own - they only exist for the benefit of others. No economic model will account for  this - no theory of life together - only the resurrection of Christ - the one who does not grasp but lays down His life.
The one who does not hold on but lets go

And if we truly believe in the Resurrection then we too should be set free to live likewise, in such a way that people have no choice but to consider the Extraordinary Truth which they see enacted. It is This Visible lif of the church which lends the preaching of the Apostles its ‘Great Power’

So we come to the second Sunday in Easter - as I said last week -it takes time for this Easter message to sink in - it seems just too vast for us to grasp and comprehend and in a sense that is Important. For it is not to be grasped - it is to be received! And lived out. Even He in his great humility does not grasp at equality with God - If we try to grasp, if we wait until we grasp this Resurrection of Jesus - we will Never Live in its light. Mary Magdalene in the garden wanted to grasp - to take hold of him, but He wouldn’t allow her. ‘Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.” there would come a time shortly when she would be Given this life as a gift but for now she had to learn not to grasp.
    I remember as a teenager talking long into the early hours with a friend about God and at some point came up with an utterly cast iron ‘Proof’ of his existence. We were utterly thrilled - we’d Got it! We’d Grasped it. The following morning we arose excitedly to tell all we could meet - but when asked, ‘What is your proof?’ - we couldn’t remember :) It had slipped through our fingers
    The Life of God is not a set of rational propositions which we can master, He is Light and Love and Life. Like the daily bread for which we pray - it is His Life which is Given and we are to receive and live out of it, not grasp it. The Israelites in the Wilderness were taught this lesson early on in the Manna - they were told ‘collect only that which you need for the day’ - which is freely provided, but they tried to grasp more and it turned to maggots in their hands. Not grasping.
    Strangely enough it is Thomas of all people shows us the way of faith - the so called doubter - yet the only one who believed far better the way of Christ than his companions - ‘Let us also go that we may die with him’. Thomas Knew that to follow Christ meant Death - unlike those who hoped it wouldn’t and like Peter were prepared to gamble on it not being the case and so promise never to leave him. Not Thomas. But Thomas Knowing where it must go. And thus Knowing Jesus was going to his death he is all the more to be surprised by Joy. ‘Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.’ For Thomas it was not enough that one should come back from the dead - no. After all in the days following his resurrection there had been tales of tombs opening and the dead walking around - no for Thomas he had to Know that it was Jesus - I need to Know it is the Crucified one - I must see - I must touch and then Jesus appears to him - and it is Enough. He knows he doesn’t have to grasp him.

And that perhaps is why faith at the end of the day is expressed in obedience to him and not in a set of beliefs - for we cannot grasp what this resurrection life means except through the obedience of faith we live into it. In a sense there is no other way to discover the truth of the Christian faith than to live it. As I said all through Lent - the more we live into it - the more we discover it is true, the More we want to enter deeper and deeper in.
    We have to live the Resurrection life - the Life that Jesus sets free and gives to us - we have to live His Life. And unless we understand that we don’t begin to get off first base in this Christian Life - for the Resurrection teaches us that the Christian life is the life of the Risen Lord. The Christian Life Is the Life of the Risen Lord - there is No other Life.

And Christ begins to share that life with his disciples in these weeks following the Resurrection. Do not cling onto Me, Mary. I have given my Life for you and so now you may receive it ‘Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.’ When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.’ ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.’

Some years ago - when I was just starting out in my first parishes - I led a course on the Lord’s prayer. I began one session by paralleling what we might call the old words - with its ‘thee’s and temptations and trespasses, with a more modern form, with its ‘you’s and trials and sins. One member of the group, a good man and very devout, said he could not agree with the new form - he said ‘As human’s we can forgive trespasses, but only God can forgive sins’. We then began a very interesting discussion as to what if anything was the difference. But it struck me that this in a sense was precisely how the Scribes criticised Jesus when he healed the paralysed man “Why does this fellow speak in this way? It is blasphemy! Who can forgive sins but God alone?” Who Can forgive sins but God alone??     Actually it is a Very good question if we properly understand the nature of Sin, that it is a breaking of the bonds of the Love of God that sustain the world - Sin is Always against God - we are in a sense Never sinned against - Sin is Always a rejection of the Love of God, if often we find ourselves on the receiving end of it, ultimately it s God’s Love that is Rejected. As David said after his murder of Uriah and adultery with Bathsheba - Against You, You only have I sinned, and done what is evil in your sight’ When we are sinned against we always lose sight of God - We are afronted, but in the end all sin is only ever against God, against Life and Love. Who CAN forgive sins but God alone?? Only God truly Can forgive - which brings us to the next step in this extraordinary Resurrection account. We are already left breathless by the fact of the Resurrection  - our hearts and minds racing and struggling to catch up with the reality of the Crucified AND Risen Lord and then ‘Jesus came and stood amongst his disciples and breathed on them and said ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.’

He breathed on them the Very life of God - and what work did he give them to do?? It is odd how we do not think this so very odd - ‘Receive the Holy Spirit and . . .Love people?’, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit and . . . heal people?’  But no. ‘Receive the Holy Spirit and - forgive’ Everything else is secondary - the first need is forgiveness. The first work of the cross is Forgiveness - Restoration. Because Only when one is Forgiven and knows it can we be Restored and so set free to Love and Heal. God Creates his New Heaven and New Earth by forgiving Sins - by reweaving the broken tapestry of Creation, as it were remaking all the delicate connections through which Love and life can flow.

As anyone who has ever been forgiven much will tell you, it makes All the difference in the world. As Jesus said of the woman ‘She who has been forgiven much loves much’ Forgiveness precedes Love. Without Forgiveness Love cannot flow. We need First to forgive and we say - Ah this is so hard, but the point is this - it s not Our life - it is His life in Us - He forgives Through us. Receive the HOly Spirit - He gives us his life as a gift and it is like the manna to be freely used and spent on the undeserving, in unmerited acts of forgiveness like the prodigal Father does to the errant son. Does he ask forgiveness? Does he come crawling back in sorrowful repentance? No!! - He comes to the Father, that is all - he is forgiven. This is what God does. So he enters into the joy of his father.

You see we gasp at the extraordinary nature of the Resurrection - mocking our careful sense of decency and order and ‘how the world works’, as if we Knew. He is risen from the dead??
But wonder of wonders - this Resurrection Life is then poured out on all who will be open to receive - on all who will become themselves forgivers, on all who would be children of their heavenly father. Who like their heavenly father do not hold on even to their own son. Even God does not seek to possess - He is the Great Giver. And so the early church Lived - not grasping or hoarding - just letting it flow through their fingers, out into the world.

The Christian Life is Pure Gift. We can never grasp it - we can only receive it and Live it.

Amen

Lenten Disciplines - Fasting (1)

I began by suggesting that we might think that Almsgiving was the easiest of Lent disciplines - after all one need merely set up a standing order to a charity and that, we think, is that. I went on to suggest that Almsgiving if pursued in the spirit in which it is intended is actually the hardest, such is the grip that money has on us

On the other hand - we might suppose that fasting is the hardest of the three chief disciplines. Of all three, it most smacks of asceticism - a much maligned word in a culture that thinks that lack of Anything we desire as soon as we have the thought is Gross Deprivation!

Yet, at the heart of all these disciplines is the stripping away to discern Reality. Through Self denial, we realise we have been living a Lie, we have been deceiving ourselves. All that is stripped away is revealed as a cloak under which we have hidden - the false security of Money, the Busyness which cannot allow time for Prayer, and we come to see how we have abused the Goodness of Food, and in so doing missed its real Gift.

When we Fast we learn again the significance of food. And it is a significance we have forgotten and lost sight of, a Loss as significant as the Loss of Life we suffered when our First Parent Sinned, for it is inextricably linked to it. We fail to understand what we are involved in when we eat, and Most especially as we always should - (for 'it is not good that Man should be alone') - when we eat together.

One of the first effects of the fall was a distorted relationship with food - 'by the sweat of your brow you shall eat bread' - and we have reached a time in history where that distortion has reached what one can only call blasphemous proportions. We live in an age when many millions are dying from overeating and millions more from inadequate nutrition. This is played out before us through the media, yet nothing seems to change. That which was Good has become a Snare.

In part this is revealed in our practice of fasting or, better, lack of practise. In an age when so many of us have so much food, fasting has died a death. Yet in previous times when food was more scarce and thus more precious, such self denial was a commonplace. We have as it were become addicted to food and our relationship to it more and more unhealthy. Many homes are full of cookbooks that are never read, TV shows draw in millions who rarely prepare a fresh meal to watch the experts, perhaps whilst also munching through a bag of potato crisps. Which draws attention to the paradox that we have also become increasingly inattentive to food. We Watch it, look at it, read about it - but do not attend to it - we are not Present to the Gift. We talk of Grazing - we Eat on the move - we have business lunches. Family mealtimes are more and more a thing of the past [One sad definition of a family I read was 'a small group of people who share a common refrigerator and microwave].

And this last example brings me to my point - that Food is a Creative Vehicle of Reality - it has the Deep potential of Creating Life, if we understand what it is - God's Life giving Gift. And the Life is Shared. In the Fall we lose our relationship to Everything in losing our relationship with God - with Food and each other. (It is noticeable that the first murder denotes separation over matters of Food). We speak of Companionship as a deep level of Friendship - the word literally means 'With Bread' - Friendship - Relationship is Food oriented. And so in lent we strip away all the Lies and re-appropriate Food - by  NOT eating for a time.

Imagine you have not eaten for some time - you are hungry - you have been praying (Fasting should Always be accompanied by prayer). Now you come to sit and eat. Take time to contemplate what is before you - God has Provided - Give thanks (Saying Grace has also disappeared from our lives as we have lost touch with Food). In a very real sense, the food is an expression of the presence of God - He has provided it, without Him you have no food.

Now imagine further - two people sat together sharing a meal - but a third is present, for God has provided. Something knew comes into being in the Deep web of reality if we will but see it. Eating and Drinking is a Sacramental Act. We remember one who came 'eating and drinking' - the Lord of Life is Present. In this simple act of sharing a meal Companionship is happening - in God's hospitable act of providing food - you are drawn closer together.

Of course, as Christians we should never have forgotten this for central to our Faith is The Meal. God offering himself to us in Bread and Wine - the Life that enlivens Everything. In the early days of the church, the feast of the Eucharist was encompassed by a shared meal, just as the Institution of the Lord's Supper takes place in the context of a meal. Everything touched by this becomes Holy.

If we are alert to what we are doing - to the Gift, then Every shared meal becomes something Gloriously Other. As we say at the Eucharist 'The Lord is Here - his Spirit is with us!'. 

Might we not also say around the dinner table??

If we fast we begin once more to encounter God, 

to strip away the excess and thus see everything in its true light - including Food.

[For more Very wonderful thoughts on Food, and Sacrament, and Life,

I recommend the blog of a dear friend which you can find here.]

Sermon for Sunday March 18th - Romans 5:1-11

Sermon for Sunday March 18^th 2012 – EVENSONG

Exodus 6:2-13

Romans 5:1-11

(LINK TO AUDIO RECORDING)

Hope and Life

“I am the Lord, and I will free you from the burdens of the Egyptians and deliver you from slavery to them. I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgement. I will take you as my people, and I will be your God. You shall know that I am the Lord your God, who has freed you from the burdens of the Egyptians. I will bring you into the land that I swore to give to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; I will give it to you for a possession. I am the Lord.” ’ Moses told this to the Israelites; but they would not listen to Moses, because of their broken spirit and their cruel slavery.”

My subject this evening is Christian Hope and the Christian Life. But we have to begin I think with this reading from Exodus. God has heard the cry of the Israelites in their harsh oppression and remembering his Covenant, his unbreakable Oath – Whilst we think of Love as the Pre-eminent aspect of God, the Scriptures speak more of his Faithfulness. God is Faithful, for as St Paul says, he cannot deny himself. To be faithless is to deny your very being. – and so God in his Covenant faithfulness has decided to rescue His people from Egypt. To claim them for himself.

And he tells Moses to go and tell the people, “but they would not listen to Moses, because of their broken spirit and their cruel slavery.”  They were so down they did not even have the energy to look up – they had nothing to hang their hope on. How on Earth could this be so . . . and to be frank who can blame them. For when We speak of hope, we have something similar in mind. I hope something will come along – I hope the weather will be better tomorrow – I hope aunty Jean will get well soon. But if we ask Why do you hope these things, then we have to say  - nothing really, I just hope they are true. And this is as far as it probably could be all that the Israelites could mean by hope also – a vague wish, based on?? Well based on very little, indeed based on the words of a strange God whom they did not know – Remember when they Cried out in their oppression, they didn’t cry out to God, they just Cried out! Based on the words of a strange God through the mouth of one of their own who had grown up in the Egyptian court and then got them all into trouble by killing an Egyptian and trying to set himself up as some kind of saviour and then fleeing who knew where to suddenly arrive back and say “God has been speaking to me’ and all the while they have been whipped and driven and tormented and forced to make bricks without straw. A labour camp of the worst sort, in all but name a Death Camp. Humanly speaking their situation in hopeless. I doubt any one of them listened to Moses, and they certainly didn’t pay any attention. Imagine being Moses and having to declare it!

No they didn’t even have the vague wish kind of hope for there was Nothing to base it on . . . which brings us to Christian Hope and one of the most densely argued sections of St Paul’s densely argued letter to the Romans. This reading is So significant that it is unusually read here at Evensong as Well as being part of the three year lectionary cycle – but it is not easy. I remember early in my years as Vicar in Hellifield. There was a diminutive lady in the congregation, a widow by the name of Barbara. And She was on the rota for readers and had this passage to read. And she came to me afterwards and said – I haven’t a clue what any of that meant! And it was at once highly understandable, and at the other deeply regrettable, for in some sense if we don’t get what this is about, we really don’t understand Christian faith or life at all.

Paul here in these carefully worded 11 verses in a very real sense tells us the Good News. He speaks of the past and the future and their concrete relationship to the present. It is masterful theology. And it reveals a staggering Hope about which there is Nothing Vague – and the Extraordinary nature of the Christian Life. So if you will permit me – I shall take a few minutes now to unpack what he says.

Verse 1 (Yes I am Really going to unpack this :) ) Therefore since we ARE justified by faith – ‘Therefore’ reminds us that we are in Chapter 5 and Paul has spent much of the preceding 2 chapters proving that if we put our Trust in God, abandoning trust in anything or anyone else, then That is sufficient to put us right with Him – we are Justified by Faith, by placing our trust in him.

Well what is the consequence of doing that? When we let go of everything else and trust God instead, ‘we have Peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ’. Christ in his death and resurrection has brought us access into a profound relationship with God – he has opened the door to the Rich Life of God and we enter into that Peace through Faith  - this Grace in which we now stand Vs 2 – And then Paul makes an Extraordinary claim and it is the first mention of that word Hope –at Peace with God, Made right with Him, Standing in Grace, we boast in our Hope of sharing in the glory of God!! We boast in our Hope of Sharing in God’s Very Life!! This is Extraordinary and we may well say hope in what?? Paul, you have gone to far!! But Notice that this is not a baseless hope – this is no vague wish, for Already God has acted – Our position for hope is Not like that of the Israelites in Egypt who are addressed before God rescues them. No! It is based on what God has Already done. The security of hope is the Past even of the death and resurrection of Jesus. So our Hope, our Faith has a Solid Past foundation upon which we base our Future Hope. And because it is Such a Breathtaking foundation, it gives rise to a similarly breathtaking Hope. That we might share in the glory of God.

Then Paul changes gear – having given the foundation for the Future hope – he then speaks of how we Now enter into that Hope.. throughout Lent I have been teaching on the Christian Practices – if you like the Essence of the Christian Life an I have said over and over again, that that is no more or less than entering into the very Life of God. We enact His Generosity, His Love, His forgiveness, His Hospitality, His Life. (details on my website). In other words that we begin to live the future reality in the present, based on the firm foundation of the past.

And here we see how clearly we enter the life of God – for we boast in our sufferings – for the Life of God is Suffering in the World, we can only walk in this Life following our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ – there is no other way. If we Trust in God, we Will find ourselves in conflict with All that is not God, BUT say Paul, Suffering produces Endurance – endurance character and character Hope. As I have been teaching these past few weeks, if we push past that first terrible resistance to Living out the life of God, we discover the Life of God available to us. The more we enter in the more we know of this Life of God in us and So we Grow in that life, Suffering, Endurance (God Endures though all the mountains are worn away, He endures), Character (the fullness of God’s being more and more revealed as we walk in this path, Growing in Love and Generosity and Forgiveness) and finally  - there is is again Hope. We Work from Hope founded upon the work of Christ – to Hope –the End is found in the beginning. You see we begin with this seed of Hope – given to us through the death and resurrection of Jesus, and Like All Life – it produces of its Own – we Grow in Hope.

And now Paul moves again, from the future Hope to its breaking into the present. ‘Verse 5’ ‘And Hope does not disappoint us because God’s Love has been poured into our hearts through the holy spirit that has been given us.

This is SO important. The Holy Spirit – the very Life of God is given to us. His Love poured into our hearts and Out into the world. In other words, this future hope  - this scandalous Hope that we will share in the Glory of God – share in His Life is found Present Expression as he shares his life with us here and Now.

The Hope is based on the Past work of Christ – it has a firm foundation – as we step out in faith, through suffering, endurance and character grow which produce More Hope and that Hope is already Now partially realized. So our hope is not only now based on what God has done pouring his life out for us Christ in the past but also his continual pouring out of his life for us in our present experience. We are Tasting the future.

The Christian Life is Based on the past, future directed and Present enacted – our Vocation, our Call it to live out the Life of the future, Here and Now. This is the Fruit of Faith.

So Paul makes this stunning and Wonder Full case for a Concrete Hope, Based Solidly on the Past work of Christ – Growing as we enter into the Life of God ourselves as Christ’s disciples – Given Present re-inforcement by God Living in us now by His Spirit.

And then he leads us in a meditation of the wellspring of all of this. Bringing us back again to the work of Christ on the Cross, this Spring of Life. Paul wants us to Wonder more and More. If you are at all unsure of God’s Love for you –meditate on this. For it was while we were still weak, Then at the Best time Christ died for the ungodly (Not the immoral, by the way, not the moral, no he died for those who were without God – God’s Love does not depend on us except in that we are far from him – that is the basis of His love – his love is poured out for those who do not believe – those like the Israelites who did not, who could not listen, because of their broken Spirit, and their cruel slavery. God proves his love for us that while we were yet sinners – while we had nothing in us to commend ourselves, like the utterly unlovely, That is the measure of God’s Love. Like the Father loving the Prodigal, Wasting his love on the wastrel. God’s Love is breathtaking for it Loves where NONE is shown in return. THAT is why we may have So much confidence in the Love of God precisely because it does NOT depend in anyway upon us..

And How Much that One fact can transform our Christian Life – that God’s Love is shown to us for no reason that we have anything to do with except our mere existence. Truly Unconditional Love. And So Paul now works up to his final Crescendo. Having Spoken of the past work being the Sure ground of our faith, he has Shown Just how wonderful that work is – if the death of Christ for you is Not enough – just consider that it is Utterly Gratuitous!! ‘Much more surely then’ he goes on, Much more surely that we have been put right by his blood , shall we be saved from the wrath of God’ Because this whole Salvation is an act of Gratuitous Love. There is NO basis for Fear.

For if while we were yet his enemies Christ died for us – the wrath of God is shown to his enemies, YET he takes the wrath upon himself, absorbing in himself for the sake of Love – If God makes his enemies his children through the death of Jesus, HOW much more surely will we be Saved by His Life.

In other words, Having started out on this journey into the life of God, we discover we are given his Life that we might more fully live the Salvation Life – which is of course the Life of Christ and so we rejoice, boast, glory in God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Karl Barth in his magisterial commentary on the Epistle to the Romans puts it like this ‘When once again people have God’ No longer without God and without Hope ‘they have all the fullness of life and its blessedness’ . . . because through the death of Christ, they are now filled with the future of God’

This is our Hope, This is our Life. The Past work of Christ – the present Life of God poured into us by the Holy Spirit as we live both In and towards the Glorious future of God.

Amen

'No Man is an Island'

As we pursue this idea of Lent stripping us, that we are revealed for what we are in our essence, it may well be easy to say that it reveals how we are 'individuals'. Yet such an idea, that 'we are all individuals', is anathema to Christian faith, however loudly some may aver. And indeed in purely philosophical terms it must be denied, for how an we know that we are 'individuals' without comparison with the other? So even our 'Individualism' requires others.

To be an 'individual' is to be less than that which we Are in Truth.

The phrase 'the Image of God' is one of the most dangerous in Scripture - [God's Love is from the First a Risk] - for through our sinfulness we all too readily reverse it's meaning. That instead of  taking our reference for what it means to be Human from the God who makes himself known to us in Christ, humans all too readily think our 'best' ideas of what We take to be human, and project them onto 'god'. We create 'God in our Image', a broken and shattered image, 'exchanging the Glory of the immortal God, for a Lie'. 

But let us turn our gaze from this human tragedy, to the glory of Immortal God, whom our faith teaches us is Father, Son and Spirit. Three in One and One in three. 'Neither confounding the Persons, nor dividing the Essence'. Thus in God's being what do we find,  not Individualism but Persons in Communion. Only within the Being of God can we begin to comprehend the Human, and here we discover that I cannot speak of 'My life', nor you of 'Your life', in any sense of possession. For the Father freely lays down His Life in sending the Son into the World, the Son who only does what he sees the Father doing, freely lays down His Life - neither saying 'My Life', rather saying 'My Life is in effect 'Yours', Given to you. And this Self Giving is given full expression in, to, and through us in the Spirit - 'God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us' 

It is in this laying down our lives that we discover that Life is not so much In us as Between us.

Lent, if we will let it is given that we might learn Not to call our life our own, and so like the manna kept overnight, discover it is turned to maggots, but rather through the disciplines of prayer, fasting and almsgiving relinquish our hold on the life given to us that it might in truth become Life - called into communion and community, into Lives shared, for it is only in the sharing that Life comes into Being, in the space Between.

Jesus + Nothing = Everything

"Jesus + Nothing = Everything" is the title of a book I have recently enjoyed reading. An extended meditation on the book of Colossians, written in the midst of huge personal challenges to the author, I was drawn to it by the title. At once a statement, but also a question. Is this true for me??

Lent is a season which is Given to us to test the truth of this Reality of our Faith. We follow Jesus into the Wilderness to discover whether it is yet true of us, that He is Our Sufficiency.

Through Disciplines of fasting, prayer, almsgiving and the like we are opened up to our Inner reality. The person we are when no-one is looking and our dependence or otherwise on the things of the world. Lent tests the reality of Faith. In a world where we have such an abundance Lent is Given, to reveal how much or how little that abundance is that which in reality we lean on. Would we happ'ly sell our possessions, give alms and follow him if he asked? Do we trust his promise of Heavenly treasure?

By letting go of things that we are so familiar with, that shape our world and view of it we are asked The Fundamental Question, 'Am I Enough?'

We have grown accustomed to reading the book of Job as if it is a treatise on suffering, in particular the question of Theodicy 'How can a God of Love allow suffering?'. But that reading and indeed the question itself reveal immediately how far we are from faith, that God is for us in our comfortable worlds, Not Enough. We need comfort, we need freedom from hardship strife and pain, we need good relationships and happy marriages, we need, we need . . . He is not enough for us. We don't believe that only when we have surrendered ourselves to him do we find the life we crave - we don't believe that our reality is but a shadow. For us it is still heaven and the Life of God in Christ that is the shadow. We ignore the first Word of Life, Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength - the All is too much for us and we have to share our love around and we love other things more and better - He is not enough.

In reality the book of Job is much more about the reality of our faith - Job is like Jesus in the desert - everything stripped away and then the mocking questions - Does God really care? If you only pull your moral socks up!! If you are the Son of God . . .

The Life of God in Christ is Everything - substituting Anything for this Life is Death

Lent is a Vital gift in which we learn to see more clearly the truth of this

Sermon for Sunday 19th February - Epiphany 7 - Ordinary time7

 Sermon for Sunday 19^th February, 2012

Epiphany 7 / Ordinary 7

Isaiah 43:18-25

Psalm 41

2 Corinthians 1:18-22

Mark 2:1-12

LINK TO RECORDING OF THE SERMON

 

I, I am He who blots out your transgressions for my own sake,
   and I will not remember your sins. Is 43:25

God who is the source of all Life – who is Love in his very being – does something utterly extraordinary – something which I think should give us all pause before we say that we know what love is. In Love he inextricably binds himself to a people – he commits himself to them by unbreakable bonds. He promises Never to let them go.

God is the Centre of Everything, Everything comes from Him and to Him Everything must return. God is Love. God is Light, in Him there is no darkness at all and when he takes on flesh for our sake, it is to banish the darkness, for the glory of His Name, that Love may Triumph

When I think of this Love of God, this convenant love, I am reminded of human marriage. I have to say straight away that I am comparing the Great Perfect Love of God with the far lesser, highly imperfect and at times invisible love in a human marriage – but I will deal with the Ideal (if the reality always falls short of this) 

In the Church of England liturgy the words used are these ‘I . . . take you to be my wife’, ‘I . . . take you to be my husband’. As I frequently told couples whom I was preparing for marriage – there is no ‘I will if you will’ – for you are entering into a Covenant relationship, which is the purest form of Love – a commitment to the other which is not dependent upon the Other. God’s Love is not dependent on us, He Is Love. In other words in marriage a couple you enter into a Covenant expression of Love, a Love that expresses how God love us. And of course this metaphor of marriage is used by St Paul when he is talking of the relationship between Christ and His Church.

This Love of God for His people is the theme that runs through the whole of the Old Testament and in some respects comes to its zenith, its peak in these latter chapters of the prophet Isaiah. Here God is rhetorically arguing with his unfaithful people – reminding them of their sins, of their unfaithfulness – but over and over again saying he will do something extraordinary in response – he will save them, he will protect them, he will be a life giver to them

¹⁸ Do not remember the former things,
   or consider the things of old.
¹⁹ I am about to do a new thing;
   now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
I will make a way in the wilderness
   and rivers in the desert.
²⁰ The wild animals will honour me,
   the jackals and the ostriches;
for I give water in the wilderness,
   rivers in the desert,
to give drink to my chosen people,
²¹   the people whom I formed for myself
so that they might declare my praise.

 - These words of the love of God revealed in a time in the History of his people when they were being taken into Exile because they had abandoned the God who had Committed himself to them, Given himself to them, taken them to himself in Covenant Love . When, to use other prophetic language with its roots in marriage, they had been unfaithful – in the midst of this he declares - I am going to do something new – I am going to make life giving waters flow.

Then he re-iterates the argument

²² you did not call upon me, O Jacob;
   but you have been weary of me, O Israel!
²³ You have not brought me your sheep for burnt-offerings,
   or honoured me with your sacrifices.
I have not burdened you with offerings,
   or wearied you with frankincense.
 ^{. . .}
But you have burdened me with your sins;
   you have wearied me with your iniquities. 

I have not been a burden to you, but you have been a burden to me. I have not wearied you, but you have wearied me . . .

BUT your unfaithfulness will not be the last word

²⁵ I, I am He who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins.

 - I, I am He who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins.

Your unfaithfulness will not have the last word – My Love will – My foregiveness. God had bound himelf utterly to this people – they were His burden – he carried them – He was known as The God of Israel – if you like He was known as their National God – His identity was tied up with theirs – and so was His character - and Israel, the people of this God had besmirched themselves and so had taken God’s name with them into the mud.     

       

            So what does he do?? Does He cast them off?? NO! Rather he Refuses to let their Word be the Last Word – he will overcome Even Unfaithfulness, the Covenant may have meant little to Israel – but it meant everything to the God who makes Promises – He has made a Covenant – He has bound himself to these people and thus His name is being dragged through the mud? What will he do?? He will make their sins Whiter than snow!! – though they are scarlet – he will blot out their transgressions for His Names sake – He will not stoop down to their level of unfaithfulness – no He will restore them and Life them Up!!!

It is Breathtaking. To Israel’s No – he Thunders His Triumphant YES – and so one comes in whom All God’s Covenant Promises are held – In whom All His Promises are YES!! Which begins to explain what to some might be a strange puzzle in the gospel reading.

Here is Jesus – in this tightly packed house – barely room to breathe and some people bring their paralyzed friend to him – presumably to heal him?? The text is silent. So determined are they to get him to Jesus they go onto the roof and knock a hole in it. And lower him down in front of Him.

And here we see how Different is our reading of this text from those of the time of Jesus – What does Jesus do? He forgives him his sins – and his critics are thinking Why does this fellow speak in this way? It is blasphemy! Who can forgive sins but God alone? And we may be thinking – Hang on a minute!! He’s paralysed – can’t you see?? Why not do That First and forgive the sins later? Surely the Priority is healing him?? – and in this regard it is Very worth noting the following – Jesus heals the man to prove the point about forgiveness. Do you see??

He forgives the man. Then the scribes accuse him of blasphemy – THEN to show that the Son of Man has authority to forgive sins he heals the man of his paralysis – to show that the Son of Man has authority to forgive sins – Which is it easier to say ‘Son our sins are forgiven you’ Or take up your mat and walk??? Which is most important???

We look out on a world where there is So So much wrong – I used to get JWs coming to my door – I don’t know if they do the same here in NZ but in England they always began by saying- aren’t things in a terrible mess – and we LOOK OUT and have to agree with them – and so we see people with sickness – we see wars  - we see famines – we see all sorts of things. And we think that there are all these problems out there and we’re busy saying – look Here Jesus – all this forgiveness of sins stuff is . . . well of course its important but what about the Real problems . . . except the real problems all stem from sin which we do Not see because we’re all too busy looking out there. The problems are Symptoms – the root dis - ease is sin.

God is Love – he creates the world in Love, through Love, for Love – the Universe is if you like a cathedral of Love – Love holding it all together – its trellises  - its buttresses – its foundations and beautiful windows are Love -  and Sin takes a wrecking ball and smashes it up. If we go around that all that is wrong in the world today is down to sin, we might be thought idiotic – but if God is Love and Everything is an expression of Love – in other words the hard physical matter of our existence is in fact that Energy emanating from the Life of God that we call Love – then before any true healing can begin – those bonds have got to be restored. That is what holds everything together. Just what seems like a minor matter for the religiously minded becomes of literally Fundamental importance. And we might know this surely for ourselves for what is the pain we know like the pain of broken relationships – it is literally as if the fabric of our Lives is torn apart – it is that the fabric of creation is rent – love is torn.

Jesus – the Lamb of God from before all eternity offers himself to atone for the sins of the world. What is God’s Solution to the demolition of Love? More Love – Indestructable Love declared in Glory on Easter Morn and the Way for all who have found new life in Him. What he does for the paralysed man in forgiving him his sins, he literally embodies on the cross. 

Remember last week – this faith of our is bodily and material? God who is Love takes on flesh. Jesus embodies Love and forgiveness on the cross and so the New Creation begins to spring to birth  - one which we are called to step into. This New Life of Christ is one we are all called as Christians to participate in. The Scribes are right – only God can forgive sins – but we are joined to him to become one with Him and thus enter into he work he is doing as Christ was himself one with the Father and only did what he saw the father doing. Forgiving and then healing.

This last couple of weeks I have referred to Peter and John and the healing of the lame man outside the Temple. I suggested that there was something missing in a church that could no longer say ‘Silver and Gold have I none,’ nor could it say ‘In the name of Jesus of Nazareth get up and walk’ – well if that seems to hard – which is easier to say ‘Your sins are forgiven you’, or ‘take up your mat and walk?’ We are given a simpler yet more Foundational starter. Peter and John having discovered the power of this love which refuses to be overcome even by death enter into this Life being renewed by forgiveness and so in that Life, in the Life of the Risen Christ, the Embodiment of the New Creation they engage in the works that that forgiveness, that restoration of the bonds of Love makes possible.

Forgiveness is the way in which the true ordering of the world is made new, that Love is restored and that Love is the healing of Everything.

Learning to fly is the easy part . . .

Nos fecisti ad te et inquietum est cor nostrum donec requiescat in te

[Thou hast made us for thyself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in thee 

- Augustine of Hippo]

Just recently, musing upon changes in life and ministry as I am at present, I 'saw' a picture which has stuck with me. It was based on a memory from many years ago, when I was but a youth - and on reflection a most disturbing and yet instructive one. 

At the age of 16 an opportunity fell into my lap that, unlike many others that came my way, I grasped with both hands.      I was offered the chance to learn to pilot a light aircraft. 
              And so a whole year before it would be legal for me to drive a motor car on the public road I found myself alone at the controls of a Cessna 152 - somewhat dramatically named 'The Aerobat', license G-GRBP - high above the East Midlands of England. 
            And what an exhilarating experience it was! There was a  freedom to powered flight that was quite wonderful, unhindered motion through three dimensions, unconstrained by roads and, by the wonders of the Bernoulli effect, a moderately powerful engine provided at least the illusion of freedom from gravity.

However, the memory in question was of a day when the exhilaration gave way to a profound discomfort to put it mildly -  a day when the freedom was exposed as illusory. 
                I had already discovered that flying was slightly less straighforward than my imagination had told me it was.  In many respects there was nothing to it, such aircraft are very stable in the air and even without the aid of the propeller could glide, but I had seriously struggled with the most elementary yet highly necessary skills, that of landing :) On my course, 10 hours of instruction was the cut off point for 'going solo', if you couldn't land safely before that point the course ended. After all if you couldn't satisfactorily land the plane, it wasn't a good idea to take off on your own! I think I was finally let off the leash after 9 hrs and 45 minutes . . .

And so it was about a week later I found myself spending a carefree hour practising a basic manouvre, the Steep Turn.  Paying close attention to airspeed and applying the necessary extra throttle, keeping the aircraft nose raised by applying opposite rudder I was utterly absorbed in the business of flying. Yet whilst putting my nascent knowledge to use and growing steadily in confidence, beginning to think I really could master the skies,  I had forgotten to pay attention to one important thing. 
            Having spent half an hour practising these turns I levelled out the aircraft and glanced at my map to navigate home, only to discover that the land underneath me bore no relation to said map. I was lost.

I have on rare occasions got lost in a car. It is little more than a minor irritation and certainly no reason to invest in SatNav. I pull over and ask someone where I am. In a light aircraft you can't pull over, you can't even stop . . .

Of course rather than seek help in my fear of being exposed for the fool I'd been, I guessed :) Seeing a large town beneath me I assumed I had inadvertently drifted off course in a Southerly direction, so duly headed North. Wrong town. I had as you may have guessed actually drifted North and so was headed even further away from my home aerodrome.

It was only about ten minutes later (air speed 90knots - you can do the math) that I realised I was in big trouble and called for help, or rather HELP!!! Fortunately my cry of distress was picked up by a USAAF base into whose controlled airspace I had drifted. Thus, apart from the knowledge that there were two F111 tactical strike aircraft headed vauguely in my direction at a speed that meant I could have been reduced to a million and one pieces before they ever saw me, my return to the safety of Leicester East airfield was  uneventful - I guess I must have landed ok too :)

Well this picture of flying in a kind of freedom above a map with which I had lost all connection came to me as I considered both my own spiritual walk and perhaps that of many others. In our restless quest for Something, we pay little attention to the Ground of Our Being - the source of all of our Life.

We are Human, of the earth - Adam - Mud men and women - and if God had meant us to fly he'd have given us wings - but Icarus like we still try and develop our own freedom, but one which is illusory. One way or another we will come back to earth. It all depends on whether we realise we are lost and cry out for help or just wait for the petrol to run out, and should the latter be the case, whether we have developed any facility for landing, for connecting with our true Home - our Life in God.

It will come as no surprise to anyone to discover that I have a somewhat butterfly mind - ceaselessly, restlessly (?) playing with ideas and thoughts and it occurred to me that that picture of flying above unfamiliar territory might be a picture of my own life and perhaps that of others. To paraphrase one old mentor, I think better than I live.

St Augustine spoke of the restless heart and how we needed to come home, the plane needed to land on the solid earth of Existence that is our Life in God. A Life not lived in a rarified but disconnected thought life, 2000 feet above reality, but rather is immersed in it. As one dear friend constantly reminds me, a Life that is found in life's keepings, in a thousand and one human encounters and simple acts of service. That somewhat paradoxically, it is within these constraints of the everyday that our true freedom is found. And here we find Him. Whilst undoubtedly there are some who are Called to the Academy or the Monastery, most of us are not ( and what is it to us, should He so call them? Jn 21:22) - but the message of one who was so called I think teaches us the how of this Ordinary life - Brother Lawrence who taught about the Practise of the Presence of God - of Lives turned to Him - heaven bound whilst bound to Earth.

The attentive heart can be alert to him in each moment of the Ordinary, found in Him and not lost in our illusions. 

Following my qualification as a pilot I never flew again - it was an enjoyable and rich distraction - yet I am still struggling with those most important of skills, paying attention to the Ground and learning to land, to come home and live there.

The Heart has but one door

Recently I took an assembly at my daughters' high school. (One of the crosses the children of priests have to bear is 'Dad' turning up to speak to all their peers, but I think I may have got away with it without causing major embarrassment). My theme was Fullness of Life and I used the utterly wonderful U2 song "Breathe" as an intro - after all, any school assembly Must provide 'Improving' music as part of the diet :-).

Whilst freestyling with ideas as is my wont, I remembered the movie Flat World in which three dimensional objects move through and interact with a two dimensional world (I don't remember if there ever was such a movie, but I remember a cartoon of that name?? - Well I had had a LOT of coffee to drink that morning!). Anyway I used this as an illustration of how the Life of the Spirit of Christ gives such a richness to life that it takes on an utterly new and beguiling dimension - that although invisible, this Life had a profound impact both upon the one who bears it, and upon the world through which he or she passes.[Actually, I didn't say much of that and have just made it up - freestyling again - why do all the best ideas come either in the dead of night when no-one's listening, or after everyone's gone home??]

U2  capture something of this Life in their music - as a good friend once said to me after I'd recommended their music, 'They really get it!' - and the song in question is crammed full of allusions to the Life we may know in Christ and the two dimensional life we experience without Him. Interestingly the song opens with an allusion to James' Joyce Ulysses, possibly the most detailed description of an Ordinary day to be found in literature - with some 'snake oil' salesman coming to the door at 9.05 on 16th June to offer something which will help "if I want to stay alive a little longer",  but goes on to the  chorus, where Bono belts out "there's nothing you have that I need, I can Breathe." Full of the Spirit, Full of Life - he doesn't need things to put death off, 'staying alive a little longer', but rather has already in Christ discovered the LIFE that is eternal, the fulness of life of which Jesus speaks in John 10. [It is perhaps as Brian Eno suggests,  the best song the band have ever produced and with this theme ringing through it, it is little suprise]

As I left the school after the assembly I pondered, "what if one of my somewhat captive audience had been caught by this idea of this Life, rather than the rather distracting thought that at the end of the assembly the holidays would begin - and wanted to know, How might I know this life, and How might I live it? What might I have said??"

Of course the answer to the first is simple, the way to receive the life is to receive the one who is Life, the Gloriously Alive One - 'everyone who lives and believes in me will never die'. So the first step is belief in Him, but the second - live in Him . . . what of that?

Recently a good friend who patiently reads and listens to many of my witterings, suggested I should try and write more from my heart and it came to me that this was the answer - live from the heart. The only problem with that, being precisely the problem of the heart - for we are taught in our Christian tradition not to trust out hearts, and this leaves us in a bind - believing, but fearing to live the Life poured out for us and through us to the world. (Perhaps we are all too often the last servant in the parable of the talents??) So what to do??

A few years ago I passed through a bit of a wilderness time, a time when my own internal inconsistencies so reared their heads as to make the whole business of life too much for a while. Difficult though it was, it opened the door for me and gave me time, time to listen and to learn, and from that grew an awareness that the only way the heart could be healed was to be open to the Healer. As one of my brothers kindly pointed out, Having got myself into the mess , I was hardly in a position to get myself out!! And it came to me then that there was truly nothing new under the sun - it was all there in that first Word or Command - Love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind and all your strength - that is Live Open heartedly before God in every moment of Life - He will Heal your heart. 'Practising the Presence of God' as one wise old Saint put it - being continually present to Him who is eternally Present to us

But it also came to me that this also was the key to living the Life of Love of neighbour, for it seems that the heart has but one door - as John reminds us 'how can we say we live God whom we do not see if we do not live our brother whom we do?'.  Jesus ties the two commands together Love God AND Love your neighbour - and they are inseparable, for to truly Love God, to be directed towards Him, to be Open to his Life, the door to our hearts are therefore Open and not closed and thus his Life can flow into the world. In other words if His Love is not flowing out into his world it is because our hearts are closed to Him who is Life.

This requires Practise - we are trained in infinite distractions from the Life of God - a million and one things compete for our attention, the 'three things I need you to know' seeking to seize our hearts and bar The Door, but 'these days are better than that'. The treasure of Life is More than worth the effort of living open heartedly of living in each moment - present to Him and thus to the world,  and U2 get this, too 

'Ev'ry day I, die again and again and'm reborn,

Ev'ry day I gotta find the courage to walk out into the street

with arms out, gotta Love you can't defeat, neither down nor out . . .'