6/10/24 St Peter’s Trinity 19
Hebrews 1:1-4 Mark 10:13-16
A bruising news week. - War spreading, floods, drought and famine underlining climate change, the anniversary tomorrow of the horrors of the Hamas attack on Israel. In the face of all this it might seem to some that our faith and worship are simple escapism.
But it is not so. It is true that church is a place where we should be able to find consolation, but this consolation is not fraudulent, not wishful thinking; it is real because God walked this earth as one of us, human, incarnate and he came not as a sightseer but to offer us a different way of living - to give hope in the present and then to join beyond now to the kingdom of God. When we come to worship it is because our good God calls us to follow him and so help create his kingdom of peace and reconciliation.
It is an act of faith because a world that gives us such terrible headlines also asks us questions to which we cannot give a full answer.
In one of his sermons Austin Farrer - a philosopher friend of C. S. Lewis - said ‘...we do not comprehend the world, and we are not going to. It is, and it remains for us, a confused mystery of bright and dark. God does not give us explanations; He gives us a Son.’
Which is a good place to start looking at our readings.
Part of clergy training is to be exposed to an argumentative hubbub of saints, theologians and teachers - which of them can you trust? A couple of clergy friends developed a question to decide whether a particular approach rang true for them ‘Does St. Augustine, Martin Luther or the Venerable Bede - whoever they had been given to read - strike us as the sort of person we would we be happy to use as a baby sitter for the kids?’ Which has always struck me as a pretty insightful rule of thumb.
In our gospel Jesus passes the babysitter test with flying colours. Not only were parents actively bringing their children to him, but when the disciples spoke sternly to them order to discourage them Jesus was indignant - and scooped the nearest child up. The disciples must have thought that Jesus would have no time for women and children. They were wrong.
Lets add in the Hebrews reading. Here the writer says, ‘The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact imprint of his very being.’ Which means at the very least that when we see Jesus we see what God is really like. And it turns out in the gospel that what our God is really like is someone who has more time for children than for standing on his dignity
If we think of God as distant from us, judgmental, trying to catch us out, we get him wrong. He has an open door. Jesus regularly objects when people set themselves up as God’s gatekeepers. The disciples were putting a barrier between Jesus and the parents and children trying to see him. He would have none of it. It was the same when they tried to shoo away the irritating man who was lame, or the crooked tax collector who wanted to change his life, or the crowd who had come out to hear him and were hungry, or the lepers or the lonely or the bereaved. Jesus went to places and spoke to people who were beyond the pale. He went to the places and people we might abandon - but God won’t.
Jesus is the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being - do we want to know what God is like? Look at Jesus. Look at Jesus teaching, Look at him suffering, look at him with the young children, look at him indignant with the disciples - In all of these he is the exact imprint of the father. Approachable, loving, forgiving, merciful - when you look at Jesus you see the grace of God wearing a recognisably human face - grace, mercy, peace are not abstract qualities - they are what Jesus looks like.
Look at the cross we see Jesus, we see his suffering but we see the Father’s suffering too. If we think of a God who is far off, who is living cosseted in heaven, whilst Jesus decides to take us up as his own particular project - we are very wrong. The Father and the Son are one.
If we think that on the cross Jesus bought off an angry, grudging vengeful father we are quite mistaken. The father and the son are one. The way Jesus walked was the only way they could see to bring change to the world.
Our world does not look like the kingdom of God; indeed it looks antagonistic to it. Jesus so loved us that he came to a world that would never by itself see things the way he does in order to show us a better way to live. Despite everything we do to each other, despite the way we treat his creation he loved us enough to die for us.
He welcomes us and asks us to join him as people of the kingdom who will represent his way of living in a world predisposed to selfishness, greed and violence. This is why our worship is not escapism - we can’t change everything but we can affect where we are - we can show something of the love of God to our neighbours. He doesn’t promise us that it will be plain sailing but he does promise to walk with us.
Austin Farrer said that God does not give us explanations of how the world is rather he sent us a son. St Anselm said ‘I believe in order that I understand’ that is if we believe the Son - which means following him - we will be lead into a greater understanding of how God’s world works best.
When people met Jesus they met God and they found him approachable, welcoming, true, compassionate joyful and just - being utterly God meant that he could be utterly human - this is who we come to at communion. It is also the way of life of his kingdom that we are called to take on as we leave our worship and go outside. If we do we can help change the world - or at least our little bit of it.
