Easter 4

This sermon was written in the run up to the General Election called by Theresa May and is very much in note/script form.  I'm putting this up in the Coronavirus lockdown; so the quotation at the end  by Rowan Williams seems even more a vision of hope than normal.

07/05/17                            King Sterndale                               Easter 4

Acts 2:42-end                1 Peter 2:19-end                        John 10:1-10

Though I'm an election Junky - listen obsessively to the news - I'm rather less so than I used to be - because increasingly politicians sound like a caricature of v. 10 The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.  vote for our opponents and they’ll lay waste to the country -vote for me and abundant life will be yours - it seems like overkill for a general election and as time goes on the balance of the talking has shifted (it seems to me) so there is a greater concentration on the opponent’s potential disasters than what actual good the speaker will do - we’re encouraged to act out of protectiveness than to consider the common good.

I want us to look at this verse not because it’s a neat summing up of electoral rhetoric but because it shows up the difference between how we see things and how God does. How differently he views the abundant life.

election promises focus on our health wealth and happiness - low taxes, high pensions better health care - may well be good things but a very different view of abundance from Jesus’s - he doesn’t offer ease of life, length of life,  success in life - that’s not his view of abundance - indeed if I had to choose one place in the gospel where Jesus recognises it, it’s in the story of the  widow with her two mites…

if he doesn’t mean accumulation by abundance what does he mean by having life, and having it abundantly.?

First it’s about out knowing God - Jesus came so that in him we would be children of God - and that is our central identity - everything else is secondary - this matters very much and we - the church - often get it wrong - when church arguments obscure the fact that every other christian is our brother and sister and should be treated as such something has gone wrong - once we accept it and deal well with those we disagree with, we begin to share in that abundant life.

Then as children of God we have a purpose in life - we are part of our Father’s kingdom and we are called to be salt and light in His creation - to preserve it and to bear witness to his welcome to us all. 

A purpose we’ll never grow out of, or retire from and from which we’ll never be laid off,  which makes sense of everything we do, which weaves every act of kindness, every word of reconciliation into God’s abundant life.

And knowing God gives us perspective - what matters in life - not what advertisements tell us but what has always mattered - family, friends, hospitality, generosity and the recognition of someone bigger and better and more than we are that is the wellspring of our worship - these all work with the grain of God’s kingdom and are part of the abundant life Jesus offers us

Does he deliver on the promise?

 Yes he does - Peter thought so So Jesus asked the twelve, ‘Do you also wish to go away?’ Simon Peter answered him, ‘Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.’ 

With all the antagonism that he would face as a follower of Jesus Simon knew there was nowhere else he could go.

The saints bear witness to the joys they have received through Jesus’s gift of life. We know it too - even when we don’t always call it by name  - when we get something right in the way we live even if it’s cost us something - then we know it too.  

Knowing God, sharing his purpose, beginning to see just how much he has given us to enjoy …. 

When reading the Gospels you sometimes get the impression that if anywhere in ancient Galilee you heard a loud noise and a lot of laughter and talking and singing, you could be reasonably sure that Jesus of Nazareth was around somewhere nearby. Jesus created fellowship wherever he was. And it is one of the things in the Gospels that is remembered as most distinctive about him, because even then some of his friends were embarrassed by it. The indiscriminate generosity and the willingness to mix with unsuitable people were already, in the first Christian generation, just difficult enough for the Gospel writers to scratch their heads and cough just a little bit about it. But they could not deny it or suppress it. It was too vividly remembered. Jesus sought out company and the effect of his presence was to create a celebration, to bind people together. 

This is abundant life.

Primary Wonder - Levertov

Primary Wonder - Denise Levertov

Days pass when I forget the mystery.

Problems insoluble and problems offering

their own ignored solutions

jostle for my attention, they crowd its antechamber

along with a host of diversions, my courtiers, wearing

their colored clothes; caps and bells.

And then

once more the quiet mystery

is present to me, the throng’s clamor

recedes:  the mystery

that there is anything, anything at all,

let alone cosmos, joy, memory, everything,

rather than void: and that, O Lord,

Creator, Hallowed one, You still,

hour by hour sustain it.

Easter 3 - St Mary's

Luke 24:13-35

Whenever I read this passage the question that niggles at me is how did Cleopas and the person,  who for the purposes of the sermon I’m going to call Mrs Cleopas not realise it was Jesus they were talking to? We’ll park that for the moment but we will come back to it.

But first we’re going to follow the Cleopases as they travel to Emmaus on the first Easter Day - a seven mile journey which is about as far as St Mary’s is from St Thomas Becket in Chapel-en-le-Frith  - we’ll watch them and eavesdrop.  

But before we set out what do we know about them?  Only what we learn by reading between the lines of the passage - the Cleopases don’t seem to have been in Jesus’s inner circle - the men and women who had followed him from early days - but nonetheless they were people who had heard him and hoped in him and despite the crucifixion still held he ‘was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people,’ the one they had hoped ‘was the one to redeem Israel.’

From the passage it sounds as though after Good Friday a core of those who had loved Jesus had gathered together to give each other support - they’d all thought he’s be part of their future but he was dead now so what could they do with the hope they’d invested in him?

Into that grieving confused company news had come that morning  ‘some women of our group astounded us. They were at the tomb early this morning, and when they did not find his body there, they came back and told us that they had indeed seen a vision of angels who said that he was alive. Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said; but they did not see him.’  

Now we know how the story carried on but Jesus’s followers didn’t. And an empty tomb and an angel message aren’t self explanatory. 

Why aren’t the Cleopases happier, this first Easter Day - people they trust have told us something extraordinary, but they have no idea what difference it makes so when Jesus asks them ‘What are you discussing with each other while you walk along?” They stood still, looking sad.’

Now we can eavesdrop “Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared! Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?” then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures. It would have been wonderful to hear what he said to them, how he took the stories and the prophecies they learned at their mothers’ knees, the things  they knew inside out and told them what they really meant, showed how what had happened to him was inevitable. 

Steeped in the OT they were sure they knew what God wanted, the kind of leader his Messiah was going to be - away with oppressors, away with corruption - when the Messiah comes everything will change - nobody will be able to stand up to him. And after the triumph of Palm Sunday it looked to them like Jesus was that kind of leader. Till the crucifixion they had been able to look at Jesus and with a bit of squeezing and stretching fit him into their existing ideas. 

After the crucifixion that was impossible. First all their hopes collapsed, but then came the  resurrection.

Augustine wrote this for Christmas but it gives a sense of how Jesus went against the grain of what they expected of their Messiah,

Man’s maker was made man, that He, Ruler of the stars, might nurse at His mother’s breast;

that the Bread might hunger,

the Fountain thirst,

the Light sleep,

the Way be tired on its journey;

that the Truth might be accused of false witness,

the Teacher be beaten with whips,

the Foundation be suspended on wood;

that Strength might grow weak;

that the Healer might be wounded;

that Life might die.

Jesus reworked everything they thought they knew - and it wasn’t just words, he was the reinterpretation  of the old ideas in human form. From now on they wouldn’t go to scripture to work out what the Messiah was like they would go to Jesus and then see what those scriptures looked like in the flesh. 

If we had been just a little behind them that day we would have seen Mr and Mrs Cleopas  begin to wake up “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?’ We would have seen the spring come back into their step. 

It was only at the meal table when he took the bread, blessed it and broke it that the penny finally dropped ‘they recognised him; and he vanished from their sight.  The unhappy confusion they had been left with that morning had been blown away. 

He showed them that what happened to him had been the only way to bring about not just Israel’s redemption but ours too. Jesus is the king of a Kingdom that starts by changing people’s hearts. What had been a confusion became a wonder. God in Jesus went far beyond their  hopes so That same hour they got up and returned to Jerusalem; and they found the eleven and their companions gathered together. Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.

As I prepared this sermon I realised I had been niggling about the wrong question - the how of their not recognising him isn’t the point - it’s the why that matters.

The resurrection isn’t just about the miraculous escape of one man from death. Jesus’s appearances aren’t just the demonstration of a successful escape act. Before the Cleopases could recognise it was Jesus they were talking to they needed to know what his resurrection was for and how they had a share in it. 

The resurrected Jesus is our first sight of God’s pattern for all his people. The Jesus the Cleopases meet on the Emmaus road is God’s new order in flesh and blood - this new resurrection life is what he has in mind for all of his people. This is for us as well as the Cleopases.

It’s a human characteristic to try and second guess God, ‘We know what God is like. We know  what He’ll do.’ It’s as much a trap for us as for the early church -  they had to wait and see what God would do - he went far beyond their hopes and expectations - and he hasn’t changed.  

Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote, ‘For I greet him the days I meet him, and bless when I understand.’ We don’t need to understand the hows of God’s actions to receive his grace.

Easter 2 - St.John & St. Stephen

19th April 2009                          St. John & St. Stephen                                Holy Communion 

Sunday after Easter               Acts 4: 23 - 31                       John 20:19 - end      

      

When I came to prepare this sermon and read over the passage I realised that I’ve probably always misunderstood some of the verses in it. (this could become my standard sermon opening sentence.)

It’s likely that our gospel reading is where John originally meant to finish his book. It is the proper conclusion to everything that has gone before. The actual final chapter reads like an afterword. 

And in the last two verses he tells us why he wrote the gospel and what it’s for and it’s in the very last verse

where I noticed the point I’d been missing. 

Before the penny dropped if you’d asked about it I would have said that John’s main purpose for his gospel was evangelistic; he wrote so people would become christians. And of course he did want that, it is part of it, but what I hadn’t noticed was who he was writing for - But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.  Who is the ‘you’ here?  you may believe, you may have life in his name - who is the ‘you’?  I am, you are, we are, John’s readers, the church. John is saying this gospel is for the outsider but it is for us who are already committed to Him as well.

So what does John give us here.

First of all what does he show us about Jesus the Messiah? Both on Easter day and a week later when Jesus comes into the house the first thing He does is give the people there His peace. Jesus their friend and companion as they travelled the country had been good news for them then; this is even more true of Jesus resurrected. When He brings them peace it’s more than just a greeting, It’s more than just freedom from fear and worry. It’s something richer. The peace He brings them is the assurance of right relationship, of things being ordered right, of harmony with the Father. He brings this not just as their friend, but as God’s Messiah. 

When he greets them then in the locked room Jesus shows the disciples his hands and his side. Thomas isn’t there and doesn’t believe his friends but a  week later it’s his turn, he looks  and of course the wounds are still there, Jesus still has the marks of crucifixion. What does this mean about the Messiah, the Son of God? The very least is that when He rose He did not leave His humanity behind.  The incarnation is not God temporarily inhabiting a human form, but God who was fully human on earth taking that full humanity through resurrection and out the other side of it. Jesus is still as human as we are. One of our great sources of hope and strength.

Touchingly it’s Thomas seeing the very tangible marks of Jesus humanity who first acknowledges His divinity. ‘My Lord and my God!’

John tells us too of the continuation of Jesus mission. He came so that the Father would be glorified, so that we can see what God is really like. Now the mission has been expanded and passed on to us. As He showed the Father to the world so we are to show Him too and to that end he breathes His Spirit into us.

What does John want us to know about Jesus? 

He wants us to know that he comes to bring us peace. Though he was crucified,  He is still our friend. He is risen but he still carries the wounds of the crucifixion. He is no less human than He ever was. His mission is still to show us what God is really like and now we are to be part of that mission.

The other part of the verse is ‘through believing you may have life in His name.

I don’t know what the phrase ‘Life in Jesus name’ conjures up for you but for me...

I expect all of us get times when we are particularly aware of our shortcomings, failures, wrongdoing, sin. Not long after I became a Christian when I was feeling generally incapable I remember thinking, ‘Wouldn’t it be simpler if I could really give myself over to God properly so that He could eliminate all the grubby, gritty, shoddily put together bits so they weren’t there any more. He could overwhelm all those bits that pulled me away from Him.  Surely that must be what he wants so that is what I prayed. 

It wasn’t a very successful prayer - I wasn’t suddenly translated onto a new higher, holier more spiritual plane, but I think I did understand why I didn’t get what I’d asked for. What I had been asking God for was to take away the need for effort on my part and even to the need for faith - if he overwhelmed me how could I doubt Him.

So however many years ago that was mu understanding of ‘having life in his name’ was God taking me over and allowing me to slide out of responsibility. What I eventually understood was this wasn’t a plan He was interested in. He didn’t want to give me a soft option because he wanted to work with me, the whole package and not just the edited highlights.

But images can hang on and despite knowing this what the phrase ‘life in his name’ brings to my mind can still be pretty artificial - my idea of having ‘life in Jesus name’ often leaves the real fallible me out of the picture.

So I’m grateful for John’s picture of Thomas in this passage - and through the gospel - and of Peter in the next chapter. Thomas and Peter are probably the two disciples we know best. Their personalities seem to be at opposite ends of the spectrum - Peter only opening his mouth to change feet, Thomas’s glass not only being half empty but having a crack in it, but what is unquestionable for both of them is that they loved and believed in Jesus - Peter enough to get out of the boat and walk across the water towards Him, Thomas enough to follow Him to Bethany even though he thought that there was a good chance it would be simply to share His death. 

The one thing I think I got right about life in Christ’s name is that though it stretches into eternity it begins now. And what we see in the stories of Peter and Thomas are people  discovering what it means to live in Christ’s name now. And what we find is that we don’t need to be artificially sanitised before we begin. Thomas still has the characteristic and recurring faults he had throughout the gospel - they are part of the whole package of Thomas that Jesus loves and welcomes.

When we see him here he has just had a tough week Put yourself in his place - for the last seven days your closest friends have all been saying that they have seen Jesus, whom you know to have been executed - you have seen no evidence of it. You might have been very excited and hopeful when they first told you, but nothing seems to have happened - seven days would have seemed a very long time to be hearing your friends saying something that was surely impossible. Thomas seems to have been someone who found hope so unsettling that he almost preferred a despair he could depend on and a week on he’s had enough  v.25.

On a couple of occasions earlier in the gospel Thomas lacked confidence in what Jesus was saying or doing but he was with Jesus he managed to put his naturally morbid tendencies on hold and trust him. And so it is here as well. Jesus comes to him and Thomas who is not unwilling to believe - he just finds it difficult - Thomas together with Jesus can see and say something the others hadn’t yet got to - ‘My Lord and my God.’

What does John want us to know about life in Jesus name? It’s about the life we live now, it’s a life that the true us is called to, and crucially it’s a life lived in the presence of the Spirit. 

Jesus breaths on the disciples and gives them the Holy Spirit not to overwhelm them but to accompany them. What we see of Thomas shows him learning to live in a way which is both true to him and true to Christ. That’s the life we are offered. The great commission given to us, the great responsibility laid on us only makes sense in the context of our relationship with God. We can only fulfil our tasks together with Him.

Jesus breathes his Spirit into us and the result for us is the peace he had promised. With that peace we are enabled to perform the extraordinary task he has given us. We are to pronounce, in God’s name and by his Spirit, the message of forgiveness to all who believe in Jesus.