Sermon John 14:1-14

07/05/23            Holy Communion                    St. Peter’s, Birkdale

1 Peter 2:2-10                                                       John 14:1-14

Most of us probably spent quite a lot of yesterday watching the coronation service where the first spoken words made reference to the Kingdom of God and the kingship of Jesus. Our starting point is John but there will be a few excursions to the Coronation.

John 14 has a very particular context and it makes a difference to how we should watch what Jesus is doing and listen to what he is saying

We join him at the last supper after after he has washed his disciples feet, after the meal and just after Judas has slipped off into the night to betray him. 

Jesus knows his immediate future is likely to hold arrest trial and death. His expectation that this was the  this was the  last meal he would share with them gives an added poignancy to his actions, and it gives an extra weight to what he is going to say to them. These words and actions are what he most wants them to remember, So it is significant that his first action when they are all gathered is to wash their feet. He was the host, he wanted them to know they were welcome, he had no servants to do it for him so he did it himself. Here Jesus very explicitly takes on the servant role and he wanted them to remember that they should all serve each other’s best interests

The first thing Charles said in the service was ‘In the King of kings name and after his example I come not to be served but to serve.’  Kingship and the service of the common good belong together. 

What else does he want his disciples to remember? Despite what is about to happen they have a future and a hope.  

At this point they probably think that everything is going well. When Jesus came into Jerusalem riding on a donkey - it was great -  everybody loved them - certainly the crowd did and Jesus always got under the skin of the temple authorities anyway. But Jesus knows this time is different. The sky is about to fall in. 

‘Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house there are many dwelling-places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.’

He wants them to remember this later, to know that though they are going through a dark night they have his word that there is a dawn coming. They have not been abandoned.

   In the service  we were given the chance to pledge our allegiance to the king. Here it is the other way round - Jesus makes his allegiance to his disciples and through them his allegiance to us absolutely clear.

What does he want the disciples to remember ?

First, serve one another.

Second I will never abandon you, there is a place for you in my Father’s house

And then keep walking the way I have shown you

The disciples are used to being confused by Jesus - why is he going away? Why can’t they go with him? That’s what they signed up for. And where is his Father’s house - what does he mean. Thomas asks first - ‘we don’t know where you’re going so how can we know the way.’ 

Jesus responds, ’Thomas you all know me well, you don’t need to know more than I’m telling you now. You’ve all seen my relationship with my Father in action. Love God, love neighbour act justly, love mercy, walk humbly with your God. Keep on with that and you’ll get there - there may be missteps, it will be difficult , but keep on 

‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me so Remember what you’ve seen and heard, follow the path I have shown you. 

Shape your behaviour by what you have seen in me. 

Jesus knows the disciples, but just as importantly they know him. The whole time they have spent together travelling round Israel they have been getting to know him, they have seen both his devotion to the Father and his commitment to them. 

They know they’ve been irritating, that they’ve continually missed the point, that they’ve squabbled amongst themselves when they should have been united and daydreaming when they should have been listening but he has never let them down. For all their failures he’s never given any of them a final warning. They know he loves them, they may not understand why, but they don’t doubt it. 

They trust Jesus but Philip is still worried, ‘We don’t know the Father like you do, if we could just see him it would be so much easier.’

Jesus replies, ‘Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, “Show us the Father”?’

We shouldn’t take these words for granted. He is saying - when I was washing your feet that’s what the Father would have done, all those meals we’ve shared, conversations we’ve had - they have all taken you into the heart of God. He feels about you the same way that I do.’

The disciples may not have understood what Jesus was saying at the time, but they did remember what he said. Their trust in him kept growing even beyond the crucifixion. As we follow him, at the same can be true for us.

Three things Jesus wants the disciples and therefore us to remember

First, Jesus shows his commitment his disciples by serving them. He puts any idea of status to one side and washes their feet - they are welcome at the table he has prepared.

Then, despite all life’s uncertainties, however we may be feeling about God, he will not abandon us, 

Third, He is the way, trust him enough to follow that way. 

One final thought - in his epistle Peter sketches out a future for God’s followers

‘You are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.’ 

The disciples could easily have felt that this was too high a calling for them to fulfil - we may feel the same, and despite the assurances of the Coronation service the king too might well feel overmastered by what he is being given to do.

But Peter goes on to say, ‘Once you were not a people,  but now you are God’s people;
once you had not received mercy,    but now you have received mercy.

And that is the grace that can encourage and strengthen us.

Sermon St. Peter's Birkdale 5/3/23

 5/03/23          Holy Communion.                  St Peter’s

               Gen. 12:1-4a.                            John 3:1-17

There are at least two self indulgences in this sermon - the first is the subject -  Nicodemus I’ve often thought there are not enough Nicks in literature generally -glossing over old Nick obviously - so this morning I’ll try and redress the balance:-

Who was Nicodemus - he turns up three times in the gospel, and I don’t think it’s too fanciful to see him going further out on a limb each time we meet him.  

In our first encounter we are told he is a Pharisee, a member of the Jewish ruling council - is a member of the religious establishment -  The picture we get from the New Testament of Pharisees is of a group whose faith - often genuinely and passionately held - had a very narrow focus, zeroing in on the law and the traditions of the fathers and for many that was where their faith stopped, but that was not enough for Nicodemus.

He recognised a wonder and a glory and a mystery in the world that the Pharisee approach did not do justice to. It’s narrow focus didn’t take him any closer to God. In the words of the Beatitudes he is hungering and thirsting for righteousness and he is intrigued by Jesus, so after dark he comes to talk to him.  ‘Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the signs you are doing if God were not with him.’ And so they talk.

The second time Nicodemus is mentioned, he has moved on from a simple interest in Jesus.

When the Pharisees heard the crowd whispering about Jesus the chief priests and the Pharisees sent temple guards to arrest him.

The guards fail and go back to the chief priests and the Pharisees, who asked them, “Why didn’t you bring him in?”

“No one ever spoke the way this man does,” the guards replied.

 “You mean he has deceived you also?” the Pharisees retorted.  “Have any of the rulers or of the Pharisees believed in him?  No! But this mob that knows nothing of the law—there is a curse on them.”

Nicodemus, who had gone to Jesus earlier and who was one of their own number, asked, “Does our law condemn a man without first hearing him to find out what he has been doing?”

They replied, “Are you from Galilee, too? Look into it, and you will find that a prophet does not come out of Galilee.”

Nicodemus has gone beyond casual interest. We are familiar with regimes that sent out their police to arrest dissidents and what happens to people who don’t toe the party line. Nicodemus is taking a risk here. One can imagine the whispers beginning about how he was going soft, cranky.

The final mention he gets is when he and Joseph of Arimathea recover Jesus body after the crucifixion so he can be given a proper burial. He didn’t know what happened next - he is saying though this terrible, shameful thing has happened to Jesus, though the authorities have won - I will stand with him.

What happened in that conversation with Jesus to give Nicodemus this trajectory.  

Nicodemus came to Jesus as a dissatisfied Pharisee. His colleagues approach to God had  contracted him so he would fit into their laws and traditions. They worked with what God had done and had said - Nicodemus knew that God is too big to stop there - he is still doing and is still speaking  - Nicodemus doesn’t want a shrunken knowledge of God, he  wants to know more of him, he wants a bigger understanding.

Who is Nicodemus? He is a pharisee, but a Pharisee with his eyes open so he begins his conversation with Jesus by saying He doesn’t know who Jesus is, but he does recognise God in Him 

What did Jesus want him to know, how does he want his faith to develop?

Nicodemus has recognised that God is working through Jesus and Jesus tells him you wouldn’t recognise the kingdom unless God was already at work in you.

“Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.” And he goes on to talk of a world that is blown through by God’s Spirit.

He says we live in a world penetrated/shot through with God’s presence. ‘The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going.’

God is always active in the world but because we are  creatures with all kinds of baggage we don’t always see it. 

Two witnesses to God at work… 

And this is where the other self indulgence comes in  - about ten days ago we had another granddaughter -  there are occasions that we don’t have proper words for, where we are joyfully aware that our understanding falls short of what is going on - and birth is one of them - where we encounter  wonder, mystery, glory, and we know this world is insufficiently explained by pure materialism - it’s a time of grace, a touch of the eternal that hallows what could be commonplace.

That’s an example of God at work on a good day but there can be moments in terrible days that suddenly catch us. The other witness is the writer Christian Wiman  talking of a time when he had a life threatening illness and is rather tentatively exploring his local church. He’s just had very bad news and a very bad night’s sleep and is reluctantly walking to the train station with the church pastor who he hardly knows and on the way they have a rather stumbling conversation but ‘I remember when we parted there was an awkward moment when the severity of my situation and our unfamiliarity with each other left us with no words, and in a gesture that I'm sure was completely unconscious, he placed his hand over his heart for just a second as a flicker of empathetic anguish crossed his face. It sliced right through me. It cut through the cloud I was living in and let the plain day pour its balm upon me. It was, I am sure, one of those moments when we enact and reflect a mercy and mystery that are greater than we are.’

The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. 

Nicodemus could have been forgiven for thinking that Jesus had given him enough to think about but the conversation continues

One of the promises that God made to Abraham was that all the peoples on earth would be blessed through him. Jesus in the last part of our reading fills that out

He says three things that give ample space for wonder, glory and mystery and since we can’t exhaust any one of them I’ll just give the headline

The first of them is the promise of eternal life - the kind of life we already get occasional hints of - the Son of man is lifted up that whoever believes in him may have eternal life - this is not about keeping all the laws, or by being born in the right family, or even being a lovely person - this is about recognising that Jesus is the one to follow, however inadequately

The second is the answer to the question the pharisees might have asked  - why does God set the bar so low?

And the answer is He loves us - and love is perhaps above anything else that we know beyond our powers of explanation  ‘For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.’

The third thing is a reminder we are not God’s gatekeepers. The Pharisees sometimes seemed keener on a purity that barred people from God’s presence than a love that welcomed them v.17 makes clear this is the opposite of what God wants. ‘For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.’

Perhaps as a Lenten disciplines we could try and notice God - ‘not in the fire but in the still small voice’ the voice that slightly disrupts your normal internal narrative - it could be ‘this is something that needs to be done and I could be a part of doing it , but it could be the unexpected richness of a moment ‘this is a beautiful sky’, ‘this is my friend with whom I feel at home’ 

Typically those parts of life which mean most to us have at their core something inexplicable and yet holy  - not religious holy, but everyday holy, something we recognise as good news   those places where  we get a glimpse of wonder, mystery, glory - the place where we are most likely to meet God, or at least recognise his finger prints. 

Sermon St Peter's Birkdale 5/2/23

 5/02/23                   Holy Communion.             St Peter’s

1 Cor. 2:1-12                                            Matthew 5:13-20

I started looking at today’s passages just after I’d finished a detective story (Bleeding Heart Yard - Elly Griffiths) where one of the characters was nagged at by a phrase from an old A level set work ‘No light, but rather darkness visible’ and then having read the passages and what Jesus said about light, and our being the light I found it began to nag at me too. 

Let me put the phrase back into the passage it came from

 ‘No light, but rather darkness visible
Served only to discover sights of woe,
Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace
And rest can never dwell, hope never comes
That comes to all;

( John Milton  Paradise Lost  Lines 63-67)

Darkness visible, sights of woe, regions of sorrow, a place where peace and rest can never dwell, a place without hope. It’s probably no surprise that originally the poet was describing hell, what is more depressing is how uncannily it sounds like too many of our news bulletins - from Ukraine __to Afghanistan__ to social housing with mould is growing up the walls and no place to keep your children safe from it - sorrow, woe, no peace, no rest, no hope - darkness visible is something we recognise.

I’ve sometimes heard people suggest that we need darkness so we can properly appreciate light - but I don’t buy that idea in the slightest. We don’t need sorrow to understand happiness, or misery to understand content or despair to understand hope, what we know is that where there is darkness, we do need light. 

We know light pushes back the darkness, but when we look around the darkness can seem so enveloping and the light such a pinprick that it is easy to feel dispirited.

But Jesus lived in the same world as us and though he knew better than anyone the power of the dark he was not cowed by it and neither do we need to be. 

He knew - and knows - us his followers well - he knows us accurately and without wishful thinking and still he said of people like us ‘You are the light of the world…. let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.’

So what can we say in the face of the darkness?

To begin with - light and dark, good and evil are not equal and opposite. A French writer (Simone Weil) writing about stories put it like this 

Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvellous, intoxicating.

There  is more to light than there is to darkness it will have the last word.

But what can we do?

1) Our gospel reading came from early on in the Sermon on the Mount, but it came just after the bit where I want to begin - Matt. 5:1-12 

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.

Blessed are the poor in Spirit …

It’s worth  noting the world these Beatitudes are spoken into -  we began with a picture of darkness visible the poet gave talked of a place of sorrow, woe, no peace, no rest, no hope and that could be the world of the beatitudes  - many are addressed to those those who know sorrow and woe - the poor in spirit, the mourning, the persecuted - but Jesus doesn’t leave them there he gives them hope. How is he going to make that hope good?  

These sayings are not just addressed to the those in a hard place some are for those who are seeking to give or receive peace rest hope - the hungry for righteousness, the merciful, the peacemakers.

God often chooses to work through his people - The beatitudes are blessings for troubled and searching people. They are what the kingdom of heaven looks like as it is lived out in our troubled and searching world.

How can we push back against the darkness?  what needs do the beatitudes point us towards.

2) Next how we live matters

Our reading began with salt and light and then went on to Jesus saying

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.  For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.’

A passage I have sometimes found rather uncomfortable - uncomfortable because I have seen Jewish law as a mass of rather odd restrictions which don’t apply now, and anyway knowing God is a matter of grace, of gift - it’s not a matter of good behaviour so why is Jesus making a big deal about it. What has this got to do with salt and light, what has it got to do with the beatitudes

What I had missed was what the purpose of God’s law - it’s utterly  different for example from the law which was imposed on Israel as part of the Roman occupation - the purpose of Roman law was largely to protect and preserve the rights and property of Roman citizens - nobody else had much in the way of rights, and slaves of course had none at all. What the Roman law created was a society that served the interests of the few - if others benefitted from the smooth running of the machinery of state  that was fine, but if there were people it didn’t suit then so much the worse for them. It wasn’t concerned with good or evil let alone the transcendent and so it allowed darkness to flourish. 

The law and the prophets that Jesus says here  he didn’t come to abolish are quite different - they are not arbitrary , they are things of light. Both law and prophets are fundamentally a working out of the the great commandments You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the greatest and first commandment. Love God above all else. And the second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbour as yourself.' On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”

These two commandments are the pillars of God’s Kingdom - they are its geography.

God’s law is for the creation of his kingdom - it is all about the creation of his people. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.

How we live matters 

3) Jesus said Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them’ Jesus fulfilled the Law and the Prophets by completely loving God with all his heart and soul and mind, and utterly loving his neighbour as himself. Jesus fulfilling the law didn’t mean ticking every available  box, it means he is the embodiment of what God’s law is intended to achieve. 

We are his followers - how do we live

Law, salt, light, defeating darkness sound heavy - I’m going to finish by quoting Rowan Williams which pick up the idea of real good being always new, marvellous, intoxicating. 

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.

(Rowan Williams Being Christian p41, 42)

Sermon St. Peter's Birkdale - 16/10/22

 16/10/22               St Peter’s, Birkdale.              Trinity 18                      

Jeremiah 31:27-34      Holy Communion           Luke 18:1-8         

There are three parts to this sermon.

The first is a reading from St. Augustine who is realistic about what our life is, hopeful about what it will be and reminds us of our calling as the people of God. The second part is two linked stories about Russian composers that I found in the programme notes of a concert Hilary and I went to in Buxton - it exemplifies the human problem and then eventually in the third part we’ll look at the passage from Jeremiah and tenuously connect it to the Augustine.

‘Let us sing alleluia here on earth, while we still live in anxiety , so that we may sing it one day in heaven in full security... We shall have no enemies in heaven, we shall never lose a friend. 

God’s praises are sung both here and there, but here they are sung in anxiety there in security; here they are sung by those destined to die; there by those destined to live forever; here they are sung in hope , there in hope’s fulfilment; here, they are sung by wayfarers; there, by those living in their own country. 

So then let us sing now, not in order to enjoy a life of leisure, but in order to lighten our labours. You should sing as wayfarers do - sing, but continue your journey ...sing then, but keep going.’

This was part of a sermon by St Augustine and it has a lovely balance between the life we live now and our future hope.

He is realistic about our life  - we are anxious, there may be enemies, we lose friends, in this world we are wayfarers rather than permanent residents.

He is reassuringly plain speaking about our hope in God - our hope is in heaven where there is security, no-one is an enemy, we will never lose a friend - there is eternal life - we are no longer wayfarers but those living in their own country.

He ends with a reminder that for now we have a task So then let us sing now, not in order to enjoy a life of leisure, but in order to lighten our labours. You should sing as wayfarers do - sing, but continue your journey ...sing then, but keep going.’

Now the Russian composers.. The first is Borodin - who was a very gifted composer  but he was also a very gifted chemist and a doctor - and though now he is remembered for his music - what he was proudest of was establishing a school of medicine for women and this was the late 19th Century. Much to the irritation of his composer colleagues music was only part of his life. He began working on an opera Prince Igor - but the usual distractions meant progress was very slow.

Then catastrophe - eighteen years after he had started work on it  - Borodin died suddenly with Prince Igor nothing like finished. But his friends did not abandon him or his work and  Rimsky-Korsakov and Glazunov, began the hugely unenviable task of sifting through his belongings and dealing with the score of Prince Igor. As Rimsky-Korsakov later wrote ‘Glazunov ... was to fill in all the gaps in Act III and write down from memory the Overture played so often by the composer, while I was to orchestrate, finish composing, and systematise all the rest that had been left …’ The work was finished and is still performed.

Glazunov - was the hero of the hour - painstakingly assembling the bits of manuscript, then finishing it as truly as possible to Borodin’s intentions. What real friendship and selflessness that took. What Glazunov gave to Borodin was the best of himself.

The second composer is Rachmaninov and his 1st symphony. It was written early in his career -  when he was known as pianist and conductor rather than a composer. Its premiere was a a total disaster. Rachmaninov was very unlucky in his conductor. It was a difficult work anyway but it had been under-rehearsed and for the performance itself reports suggest the strong likelihood that the conductor was drunk. Unsurprisingly it had a wretched reception and it put Rachmaninov off symphonies for almost ten years  Poor man - his career blighted by a conductor.

As I said these are linked stories and the link is that Rachmaninov’s  conductor was the same Glazunov who so helped Borodin -for one he was the hero but for the other he was the villain.What he gave Rachmaninov was a long way short of his best.

How can this be?  How can the same person be a hero and a villain, a success and a failure , a saint and a sinner?

The better we know ourselves the less surprised we will be - because this is us too. This is what we are like  - we see it dramatically here but we are made of the same ingredients.

The good - the glorious, the made in the image of God - that’s in us but so too is the bad, the bit which gets things wrong sometimes accidentally, but sometimes quite deliberately and knowingly, the bit that  is selfish, mean and uncaring.

All of us have both these sides tugging at us the whole time - sometimes we’re more aware of the one than the other but they’re both there.

It’s how we deal with this tussle that shapes how we live. How do we make sure that the good - the made in God’s image predominates, and the bad, the fallen is subdued.

Of course this is not a new concern - Glazunov’s behaviour would have been no surprise to Jeremiah

In the reading he knows the mess that God’s people have made - their behaviour has exiled them from the promised land and brought them to slavery in Babylon - but he knows God is not washing his hands of them  he writes in effect ‘You get things wrong, You have a bias that pulls you away from what is good and towards what is bad. How can you make a better fist of living? God says ‘I’m going to do something different, to make a new deal with you, I will put my law within you, I will write on your hearts and I will be your God - I will forgive your iniquity and remember your sin no more.’  Here is hope in Jeremiah for Judah and for us. Forgiveness - because however much we try we still get things wrong - and a new heart alert to the things of God.

What does it mean that God will write his law on our hearts?

It can’t be just a more sensitive conscience to heighten our sense of guilt and failure when we get things wrong - that very rarely improves us. 

What are the laws that he wants us to have on our hearts - very simply the two great laws “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. And , love your neighbour as yourself

God wants a people  who don’t just know his laws, he wants people who know him.  A heart with a greater responsiveness to God, a heart which naturally warms to him and his ways.  

Easy to say God writes his laws on our heart - how do we learn to respond

Having touched on Russian composers, we are finishing with a Russian bishop. Metropolitan Anthony Bloom suggested this - when you read scripture look out for those passages that suddenly strike you and you say ‘ How beautiful, how true’ - it may be something vast, or it may be something very small - take that beauty that struck you - turn it around in your head, reflect on it, live with it 

‘That will allow us to start on our struggle for integrity and wholeness, not by any ineffectual effort to reject or to heal what is wrong in us, but by watching over with joy, with tenderness, with a sense of reverence, something which is of God in us: visible, a light that pierces the darkness, and which is God himself’ (Encounter p.285)

Dwell on those things of God that gives you joy - love, truth, a parable, a saying -whatever it is - let them grow and bit by bit they can provide a touchstone of what is good - and the more attentive you are to them, to that which bears the stamp of God, the more natural it will be to live out of that part of you - so that you will be able to give the best of yourself to the people around you.

Love God, love our neighbour. These are the laws of God’s Kingdom. Learning to live by them is the labour that builds the kingdom of God. These are the laws God writes on our heart. This is what Augustine is talking about when he says So then let us sing now, not in order to enjoy a life of leisure, but in order to lighten our labours. You should sing as wayfarers do - sing, but continue your journey ...sing then, but keep going.’

Sermon 18/9/22

 18/09/22                        1 Tim 2:1-7                                          Matthew 25:31-40

 I think we can be pretty certain that when Paul wrote to Timothy urging prayer for kings and all those in  authority he  was not thinking of the Queen marking her Platinum Jubilee by inviting Paddington Bear to tea. On the other hand it is just possible that the Queen was thinking of St Paul.

We will come back to this in a moment, but first a quick look at our readings.

It’s very easy to forget how unexpected the gospel was. We have so much history of faith around us, from much of which we have benefitted, that the Good News no longer startles us. We take for granted the change Jesus wrought in our standing before God, the way he transformed our relationship to each other.

But take what St Paul said ‘pray that kings and those in authority should behave so that ‘we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness.’ What kind of sense would that have made to anyone?

The assumption for Rome dominant at the time, as it had been for the Greeks before them, and the Egyptians and whoever was before them was that might was right - if you were powerful you could do what you liked, you protected your own position and that of a favoured few - ruling for the benefit of the average citizen was simply not on the radar. Let alone the idea that leaders should be the servants of their people. Even now there are places where that is a subversive idea.  

Then take what Jesus says in the gospel ‘the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’ The least that this means is that in God’s eyes every person is as valuable as every other person. Again this was not on the radar. 

And what did it mean to follow the risen Jesus when guided by his Spirit rather than his physical presence; and what did it mean when Gentiles began to follow him.    

It was all new and in his letters Paul is filling out the shape of our faith on the hoof - so they are a mixture of answers to queries, interventions in arguments, encouragement of the faithful and filling out the understanding of his readers about the shape of the Good News. 

Our passage from 1Timothy is no different. He roots the way of life of the church in its prayer and in what God has given us in Jesus. 

The queen will have known both of today’s passages well and we know that she took her faith very seriously. We know that she espoused the idea of servant leadership; we know that the Son of Man in our gospel reading was the King to whom our queen held herself accountable.

We are going to look at one thread from this new understanding of what it means to be human  - That each person is worth as much as any other person because all are made in the image of God - and using comments from three individuals try and shine a light on how the queen wove this thread into her life and how we can weave it into ours.

The first comment is from Paul Keating,  former Prime Minister of Australia, and a staunch republican

“In the 20th century, the self became privatised, while the public realm, the realm of the public good, was broadly neglected. Queen Elizabeth understood this and instinctively attached herself to the public good against what she recognised as a tidal wave of private interest and private reward. And she did this for a lifetime. Never deviating,” he said. 

What did he mean? Whenever she could the queen came down on the side of co-operation rather than competition, on the side of the common good rather than of self  or corporate interest. She was on the side of reconciliation and hope. In so far as it was in her power she worked to enable us, in St Paul’s words, to live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness because this is good, and pleases God our Saviour.

How can we work for the common good? 

 The second person I’m going to quote is Frank Cottrell Boyce the writer who scripted both the Queen parachuting in to open the Olympics  and Paddington having tea with her at the Platinum Jubilee 

‘It used to be said that millions of people had dreams in which they had tea with the Queen. Now watching her have tea with Paddington will have to do instead. It’s easy to see why that was so powerful. In retrospect, it was valedictory. A woman waving a happy goodbye to her grandchildren and great grandchildren, an image of love and a happy death.

Apparently the idea for the Queen to meet up with Paddington during the Jubilee ceremony came from Buckingham Palace. “And what an astute idea it was to have her act with Paddington, because Paddington embodies so many of the values that she stood for. He is all about kindness, tolerance, being kind to strangers, politeness, these things that are about character.

Cottrell Boyce is a practising Catholic and he too is familiar with our gospel, and goes on to say ‘And Paddington is an evacuee, a refugee, one-time prisoner, pretty much every category of need that is mentioned in Matthew 25. Here, he is being welcomed with tea and good manners. This is a strong statement of a set of values that are not uncontested in the corridors of power. To have them exemplified so joyfully at such a moment meant something.’

 Every contact mattered to her, since she died probably what we have heard most frequently from those who met her was that she met them properly - person to person.  

Each person we meet is as valuable to God as we are - do we think of them like that, do we treat them like that, do we meet them with tea and good manners, are we hospitable?

The third quote is from the former MP and now newspaper columnist Matthew Parris

Speaking about the queen’s political influence, ‘Did she win an argument? I doubt it. Did she make monarchists out of republicans? A few, perhaps; not many. What she did was different. By winning personal respect, and by making monarchy work, she gently put the argument aside.’ 

This sounds a lesser comment than the other two but may be what we need to hear most.

How did the Queen win personal respect? She was steadfast in what she did -- she had influence rather than power, but she was steadfast in doing good.

Jesus never treated people casually; to treat others with a proper concern is one of the areas where we can bear witness to his presence with us.  

Three questions the passages ask of us:

How can we work for the common good?

Are we hospitable?

Are we steadfast in doing good?  

An Indian Christian Pandita Ramabai Saraswati wrote ‘People must not only hear about the kingdom of God, but must see it in actual operation, on a small scale perhaps and in imperfect form, but a real demonstration nevertheless.’ 

We won’t be perfect but working for the common good, hospitality and steadfastness of care will show the reality of the kingdom of God more than words alone ever will 

The queen knew herself accountable before God and like us she may not have found that a comfortable thought, bur she would also have known, ‘there is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus’,

The trouble is that mediator can easily be impersonal theological  legal word not at first glance a comfort  so close with a passage by Donagh O’Shea an Irish catholic priest  which fleshes out what it means that Christ is our mediator.

'The passion and death of Christ belong to us as fully as if we had suffered them ourselves.' I must have read this in St. Thomas (Aquinas) years ago as I crammed for exams in theology, but it failed to strike root in the mind's weed patch. Having rediscovered it, I think of little else at Mass. Christ is our brother: the Father cannot see us apart from him. So we stand before our Father with pride and joy, not in tortured anxiety.’

Dorothy L Sayers - women first at the Cradle and last at the Cross

 

“Perhaps it is no wonder that the women were first at the Cradle and last at the Cross. They had never known a man like this Man - there never has been such another. A prophet and teacher who never nagged at them, never flattered or coaxed or patronised; who never made arch jokes about them, never treated them either as "The women, God help us!" or "The ladies, God bless them!"; who rebuked without querulousness and praised without condescension; who took their questions and arguments seriously; who never mapped out their sphere for them, never urged them to be feminine or jeered at them for being female; who had no axe to grind and no uneasy male dignity to defend; who took them as he found them and was completely unself-conscious. There is no act, no sermon, no parable in the whole Gospel that borrows its pungency from female perversity; nobody could possibly guess from the words and deeds of Jesus that there was anything "funny" about woman's nature.”

The quotation is from ‘Are Women Human?’ by DLS

Christmas 2 2022. All Saints Southport

   02/01/22       All Saints Southport        Christmas 2  

Ephesians 1:3-14                                                  John 1:10-18

If there’s one thing that living in a pandemic has made pretty clear it’s that all our plans are provisional. For example, in February we hope to go down to Surrey to look after two of our grandchildren allowing our son and daughter in law to have a week end away. Will it happen - we hope so and think so but have learned to keep a little way this side of complete confidence. 

The reason I mention this is that in this sermon I am going to make a very modest proposal which should see us through this year and beyond - I have every hope it’s Covid proof and government proof, but I can offer you no guarantees.

Further, my proposal is manageable whatever our starting point and will improve the quality of our life whether we are great saints, great sinners or somewhere in-between. At this point you’re probably wondering when will I bring out the bottles of snake oil and what the catch is, but in fact we are going to look at the passages. 

Our readings are very different from each other - Paul is exuberant, he is overwhelmed by what God has done for us and can scarcely pause for breath, the gospel is comparatively dour it has a greater sense of buckling down to a difficult but necessary task - nevertheless they have at least two things in common. 

The first is that neither is satisfied to simply say that Jesus came that we might be forgiven in the sense of having been given a get out of jail free card, an ‘off you go and don’t do it again’ approach they go further, we are not just forgiven we are reconciled to the Father ‘God and sinners reconciled’ - the relationship has been healed, made good, Jesus came so we might be welcomed into the family of God ‘Mild he lays his glory by, born that we no more may die, born to raise us from the earth, born to give us second birth.’  - if I’d been thinking we could have sung Hark the Herald Angels. Forgiveness is only the starting point of what God has done for us, what he wants, intends, looks forward to - is our adoption into his family.

Now before telling you the second thing they have in common I’ll give you my modest proposal.

I am going to introduce it with a paragraph by Rowan Williams which I very often use during a eucharist. 

 For Christians, to share in the Eucharist, the Holy Communion, means to live as people who know that they are always guests - that they have been welcomed, and that they are wanted. It is, perhaps, the most simple thing we can say about Holy Communion, yet it is still supremely worth saying. In Holy Communion, Jesus Christ tells us that He wants our company.

My proposal is simply that we should take this last phrase seriously - ‘Jesus Christ wants our company’ and so over this next year we should aim to keep him company, walk where he is walking, enjoy being with him..

If this is the proposal what is the catch?

One reason is that often - and I speak personally - we’d rather have a get out of jail free card than family membership. We suspect - often rightly  that if we stick too close to Jesus we may be taken ever so slightly outside our comfort zone.

However there is another reason - we find it hard to believe that God might enjoy time with us ‘Jesus Christ wants our company? That must be nonsense.’

Writing about Christmas Rowan Williams puts it rather more elegantly , ‘We are dealing…with a God who doesn’t have to be persuaded to be interested in us….what relics are there in our mind and hearts of an approach to God which still believes that God is essentially rather bored with us, rather removed from us and always in need of being kept sweet.

However long you’ve been a Christian, or however long you’ve been looking wistfully at Christianity from outside, that’s something that obstinately keeps coming back. That something is deeply etched in our mind, the mythology of a God who somehow has to be persuaded to be on our side.’ 

We expect that God is bored with us or that we’re just not his kind of people. Rowan Williams gives this idea short shrift

 ‘Persuade God to be on our side? You might as well try and persuade a waterfall to be wet.’

We can have a blind spot about God’s love for us - the idea is so odd we can distance ourselves from it. Yet he could hardly have done more to try and get us to take it seriously. And this is the second thing that our epistle and gospel have in common. Listen to what Paul wrote Read extracts from Ephesians to emphasise God's agency , God sent his son so that we would be brought into his family Similarly read from the gospel. Preparing this sermon reminded me that the incarnation wasn’t inevitable; it happened because of God’s active choice, it is his idea, our relationship with him is not one of the byproducts  of his Creation, the word being made flesh is not an afterthought, it’s the focal point of his intentions. Adopting us as his children/ giving us the power to become the children God wasn’t a business decision - ‘how can I make the very most of this universe’, or a reluctant rescue ‘they’ve made a complete pig’s ear of things, I’d better hit the plan B button’ - he did it because us in his family is what he had wanted all along. 

My proposal is about accepting we don’t need to be defensive with God - he enjoys our company - but it will change us, if we have his ear he has ours - and he is different from us, our understanding will not be perfect.

We will have questions about faith, the world, the way people are  for which we have no answer   Life comes to us, not always straight forwardly or comfortably and we have to find our way through it - part of our keeping company with Jesus will involve asking the awkward questions - we may not get a full answer but we can still be left with hope.

C. S. Lewis’s friend  Austin Farrer wrote this

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. Such is the spirit of the angel’s message to the shepherds: ‘Peace upon earth, goodwill to all..... You shall find a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes, and lying in a manger.’

The Saviour the angels sing of is not an abstract idea, He has been born to us

... flesh and blood, fully human - and he is going to live in the world we live in and provide God’s response to our questions in that flesh and blood.

‘A Son is better than an explanation.

From the gospel ‘No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.’ Sometimes alived example or an image is worth a thousand words 

Desmond Tutu’s funeral was yesterday so one example and one image from him. The example wasn’t his but touched him The first time he met Trevor Huddleston, an Anglican missionary he doffed his hat to Tutu's mother, a gesture almost unheard of in apartheid South Africa. When Tutu spent 18 months in hospital with TB  Huddleston regularly visited him and later supported him as went forward to ordination. Huddleston knew all people have the dignity of being made in the image of God so he did the simple things that changed a life and eventually a nation.

An image Desmond Tutu at a sitting of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, his head is bowed While listening to the testimony of victims, Tutu was sometimes overwhelmed by emotion and cried during the hearings. Firmly believing that that the conclusion of forgiveness is reconciliation meant he didn’t try to armour himself against the pain of those who had suffered, but this was a very hard road to walk. 

Trevor Huddleston and Desmond Tutu - immensely different characters - both Godly people who gave time to keeping God company - following Jesus led them along difficult paths but they were more fully themselves as his companions than ever could have been otherwise.

A modest proposal for the new year  ‘For Christians, to share in the Eucharist, the Holy Communion, means to live as people who know that they are always guests - that they have been welcomed, and that they are wanted. It is, perhaps, the most simple thing we can say about Holy Communion, yet it is still supremely worth saying. In Holy Communion, Jesus Christ tells us that He wants our company.’

Day by day, spend a little more time with him in the give and take of companionship and it will change your life.