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Homilies as they happen
Earlier pages on this site group sermons from the autumn of 2001 through to Easter-tide 2002.
This page continues with sermons preached at St. Cuthbert's from Pentecost 2002 onwards to November 2002.
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Pentecost - Whit Sunday 2002
 Eucharist – 19.v.02
The Revd. Martin Jackson
Acts 2.1-21;
1 Corinthians 12.3b-13;
John 20.19-23
I wonder if we can easily picture that first day of Pentecost in Jerusalem. Not just the gathering of disciples who find the Holy Spirit come upon them like the rush of a mighty wind,… the Spirit who comes upon them with tongues of fire which rest upon the apostles, giving them the ability to tell what they believe, even in languages they did not know. But the way they then go out for their first exercise in preaching the Gospel….. Can you picture the crowd which gathers to hear them, people with so many different languages and from so many different countries? How could the disciples get them all together? Is this simply an account of an event nearly 2,000 years ago which is never to be repeated?
I had my day off last week in Edinburgh…. The Princes Street Gardens, which I love walking through, were beautiful with the flowers in full bloom, though the wind was blowing straight off the Firth of Forth and it was perishingly cold. So I was rather surprised to find a large crowd of people – perhaps about 200 of them – gathered in the middle of the park. There was none of the special staging you might expect to find during the Edinburgh Festival, and it’s much too soon for it to be even a fringe event connected with the Festival, so I went to take a look. As I got closer I realised the voice carried by a makeshift sound system was speaking in a foreign language. And many of the people were dressed rather differently. Then it dawned on me. They were there to celebrate the National Day of Norway. It had never occurred to me that there might be so many Norwegians living in a Scottish city – though obviously there was a fringe of curious spectators like myself who’d just stopped to look on. How had the word got round to tell so many people this was going to happen at 1.30 on a Friday afternoon? And the people were quite a mixture. Lots of suits – perhaps not surprising in the middle of a city. But Norwegian national dress too, especially for the women, and quite a lot of the men wearing Norway’s national colours or carrying its flag were also sporting kilts. It was quite a glorious mix-up. And the language kept shifting too. Sometimes Norwegian, sometimes English, sometimes repeated in both. Perhaps, I realized, it was something like this on that first day of Pentecost – a hard core of disciples who put the word about, but then the onlookers too, those who were curious, and people of many different nations such as you’ll find in any capital city… London, Edinburgh or Jerusalem.
What impression did Peter and the apostles make by their preaching? St. Luke’s account in the book of Acts tells us that all who heard them were “amazed and perplexed” by what they heard, some wanted to know what it was all about, others simply sneered and put their enthusiasm down to drink. …. And it was interesting to be with that crowd which I encountered the other day. The centrepiece was actually a service taken by a Lutheran pastor. There was a band with clarinets and bagpipes to make a cheerful sound, but I was struck how religion gets its place when people even as overwhelmingly secular as the Norwegians want to have something to bring them together. The pastor at least could sing, which was something that most of the crowd didn’t do – but then how many people know the words of any hymns these days? But while many listened, others simply enjoyed themselves, greeted old friends, smoked a cigarette, took pictures of each other or chatted. The pastor preached in English on themes of our human vulnerability in the face of such tragedies as the terrorist attacks in the United States and the loss of life in a Scandinavian air crash – he hoped to point his audience to a different sort of life beyond death, though he didn’t seem too convinced that his message was hitting the mark. But people stayed through the prayers even if they couldn’t join in the Lord’s Prayer (it was said in English - and how many people with English as their first language can say it confidently today?), some heads were bowed for the blessing, and everyone applauded at the end. Some chords had been struck, and I wondered if what I had witnessed would have been much different on that day of Pentecost, nearly two thousand years ago in Jerusalem.
I got out of the cold as quickly as I could, and took shelter in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery. There I found an exhibition of some of the earliest photographs to be taken anywhere in the world. In 1843, Robert Adamson began an experiment in ‘calotype’ photography – a method invented by W.H.Fox Talbot. It involved some very complicated processes in developing and printing pictures. What is astonishing from the photographs in the exhibition is just how rapidly Adamson learned the science which was necessary – and then, in partnership with David Octavius Hill, turned it into an art form. They had just four years before death broke their partnership, but even in the first weeks of their work they were producing results which will demand to be seen for centuries to come. They photographed the landscape of the area surrounding Edinburgh, they recorded the lives of poor fisherfolk on the coast of Fife, and people came from far and wide simply to be photographed in their studio on Calton Hill.
But what initiated their partnership was an event in that first month of Adamson’s experiment. In May 1843, the Church in Scotland experienced what has become known as the Great Disruption. Enraged at what they saw as undue political influence in church affairs, 474 out of 1203 of the Church of Scotland’s ministers seceded from the Church. As a body they marched out of the General Assembly in Edinburgh, and set up their own assembly in a nearby hall. The scenes were dramatic, and David Octavius Hill was determined to paint all the participants as they met together for the momentous proceedings. And so began his partnership with Adamson, who saw that the new science of photography could be put to good use if each of the ministers could be photographed before they left – then Hill could get to work on his painting which would involve him for many years to come.
I think this is a fascinating period, worth remembering. Photography and science and art took a great leap forward together as they received the impetus of urgency and encouraged people from different disciplines to work together. And at the same time, the Church experienced an upheaval from which we may learn still today. What did those ministers think they were doing when they walked out of a church in which they could remain so comfortably for the rest of their lives? They had established congregations, warm manses in which to house their families, church buildings which had been passed down and maintained over the years. Now they would have to start again from scratch. One of the photographs in the exhibition shows a minister with one of the wealthiest parishes in Scotland signing a deed of relinquishment – literally giving up a comfortable living for the sake of what he held to be true. I can’t say that I have much sympathy with the theology the seceders professed. But their faith – and their willingness to act upon it – is something from which we can all learn. They held a principle. They gave up all their security to act upon it. And remarkably their faith was rewarded. People rallied to them, new congregations formed rapidly, in no time at all even huge buildings were once more being erected as places of worship.
It’s a sort of Pentecost story. Again and again we have to go back to that small room in which the disciples met just ten days after the Ascension of our Lord. It all starts from there. These are simple men and women, none of them rich, probably few of them even more than barely educated – but we read how they were filled with the Holy Spirit, and how “the Spirit gave them ability.” All they can do is go out and share what they now feel and believe. Theirs is a faith which needs to be proclaimed – and they can follow no course of action other than to shout it out and put it into practice. They couldn’t know where it would lead them. But from preaching it first to that gathering of people who just happened to be in Jerusalem, in the course of a few years they will find themselves at work in those very lands from which their audience had come.
Pentecost is sometimes called “the Birthday of the Church.” It’s the Holy Spirit coming upon ordinary men and women like us that makes the difference. The rest we might say is history. But also something to be lived now. The risen Christ had come to the disciples behind locked doors and breathed on them with the words, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” The Spirit is the very breath of God, the life of God breathing in us. “To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good,” St. Paul tells us. That means “to each one of us.” That’s why – in just over three weeks time – the Bishop of Jarrow is coming to our parish to confirm six of our members. And he will pray:
Let your Holy Spirit rest upon them:
the Spirit of wisdom and understanding;
the Spirit of counsel and inward strength;
the Spirit of knowledge and true godliness;
and let their delight be in the fear of the Lord.
That’s a prayer which has been made for each of us who has already been confirmed, a prayer to join in for those who will be confirmed in the coming weeks, a prayer to make for ourselves each day. How can God’s Holy Spirit work in me? Am I ready for him to make a difference to the way I live? Am I ready to be delivered from despondency and the feeling that things can only wind down? Am I ready to allow the Spirit of God to breathe in me with his life? – to deliver me from staleness and direct me beyond my expectation?
“In the one Spirit we were all baptised into one Body…” writes St. Paul. That Body is Christ’s and at the same time that Body is the Church. But not a Church which we must simply work desperately to maintain. It’s a Church in which the Spirit breathes, which is called to look beyond its walls, which can have faith because each day it is given new life.
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This guy welcomes sinners and eats with them...
 2nd Sunday after Trinity – 8.vi.02
Eucharist - The Revd. Martin Jackson
Hosea 5.15-6.6;
Romans 4.13-25;
Matthew 9.9-13,18-26
The American actor, Martin Sheen, has recently found a new audience in his role of the fictional President Josiah Bartlet in the television series, The West Wing. Apparently, he is just the person that many – if not the majority of – Americans would like to see in the White House: good looking, a full head of hair even in his 60s, and morally upstanding. Which is probably why he gets interviewed in the current issue of Reader’s Digest – and can there be any more significant indicator of having achieved respectability than that?
But it was not always so. 25 years ago – when he was filming Francis Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now” in the Philippines, Martin Sheen nearly died as the result of a heart attack. He was 36 years old, a Hollywood star with a drink problem, living life just too fast. It was his brush with death that stopped him in his tracks. He went back to his Catholic roots. Reading Dostoevsky’s “The Brothers Karamazov”, he realized his need for a faith which would sustain him – and as he puts it himself:
On May Day 1981, I went to [my church] and pounded on the door. The priest came out, and I said: ‘ I’ve been gone a long time. I want to come home.’ He replied: ‘Come on Saturday, and be early because I’ve got a wedding at four o’clock. We’ll look after you.’ And he did. I’ve been a Catholic ever since.
There’s more to the story of course – not least the nature of Sheen’s Christian conviction, his radical politics and his commitment to the peace movement. But what strikes me is how he saw his need for faith and acted on it – and how he was welcomed in. He recognized his need – but could anyone give him what he needed? – how welcoming would the church be when he banged on its door?
Jesus says, “I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.” We start almost every service in church with the formal confession of our sin. But can we cope with the reality of that sin? Can we really accept people who have made a mess of their lives, people who are different from ourselves, people who know their need – and know they need to come home? Jesus’ words, “I have come to call not the righteous but sinners,” are a judgment on the religious and upright people of his day who just couldn’t come to terms with the sort of company he kept. The Pharisees in today’s Gospel are people who know all too well what is wrong with the world, and are determined not to be contaminated by it. But what if we are tempted by their approach? I found these words of an anonymous clergyman: "More than once I have failed utterly in convincing someone who has been away from the Church that they are the most welcome of all. They see so much evidence to the contrary."
So what impression do we give? What can we do to convince people that they are welcome here?
Again and again, we need to go back simply to the person of Jesus himself. Week by week I find myself a bit guilty that I don’t preach more on parts of the Bible like our second reading today – from St Paul’s letter to the Romans. But then I realize why (I don’t). This is Paul trying to unpack the Christian message for the specific audience to which he writes. He knows their circumstances; he does his own wrestling with problems of faith. But he’s not writing directly for us nearly 2,000 years later. We continue to read his writings basically because he’s dealing with what Jesus means to him, and to the people he’s in touch with. And the important thing for us is to see that we have to keep going back to Jesus, and ask, “what does this man mean to me now? What difference does he make to our lives?”
If you do that, then I don’t think there’s a better place to look than today’s Gospel reading. It doesn’t need great commentaries written about it. Just read it, and you recognize the people in it – we recognize ourselves…
The call to faith… In this case it’s Matthew the tax-collector, sitting at his desk. “Follow me”, says Jesus to him – and he gets up and follows. Can we believe that Jesus might say those words to us, “Follow me”? How can we dare to make a start on that journey? We simply know that people like Matthew did it. If they can do it, we can do it!
The people who wrestle with faith…. There are no promises that the journey of faith will be easy. But look at those people who come to Jesus with their needs. The woman who pushes through the crowds to reach out and touch the hem of Jesus’ cloak has lived with her illness for 12 years – and the nature of her illness is such that she’s considered unclean by the religious people who make her an outcaste because of ritual taboos. But something in her enables her faith to persist despite a disability and discrimination against her which might make us want to give up. And Jesus sees that: “Take heart, daughter; your faith has made you well.”
That’s a faith which brings the leader of the synagogue to Jesus, seeking his help, even though his daughter is already dead. We might expect him simply to be consumed by grief, but he dares to hope that even despite his loss Jesus can bring new life. Is this a vain hope? There is a happy ending in our Gospel reading: Jesus takes the young girl by the hand and up from the bed of death she rises. I wonder if that makes it all the harder for us. We hope and hope, and say we have faith, but so often we seem to be up against a dead end. Life just doesn’t work out the way we want, no matter how much we try to believe. Perhaps we need to forget the happy ending and see instead the faith which brings people to Jesus – it’s a faith which is there regardless of the outcome…
A true story I found recently is a reminder that questions of faith, hope, and healing are not experiences to be confined to the pages of the Bible. A couple had a baby, Jacob, who was born with a hole in the heart. The prognosis was not at all good, and the doctors feared he had perhaps only a very short time to live. So the baby was baptized in an emergency ceremony on the maternity ward. To everyone’s amazement, at the very instant of the child’s baptism, his vital signs stabilized, and he began to flourish. The priest who administered baptism himself said that it was the greatest miracle he’d ever seen. “We were on Holy Ground that day,” he would tell other people. Two years went by, and when he returned for surgery to repair the hole in his heart, Jacob had become a vibrant and happy toddler who would talk to everyone and everything. He should thrive because he’d been a miracle in himself. But instead he died on the operating table as the surgeons worked on him.
I wondered about telling this story. Faith and hope seem to be betrayed. But perhaps we need to hear stories like this, simply because they tell us how faith needs to be lived out. In the case of Jacob’s family, there was to be broken-heartedness and grief; times when they called to God, and they knew he could not give them what they wanted – to have their son back. But there was also a persistence of faith: not that it gave them an understanding of why their son had died; not that the Church could answer their questions; but a peace which lived on because they knew they had been touched by God.
We don’t know what happens in the lives of the people we read about in today’s Gospel – except that these are lives changed by the encounter. Each of them is touched by the presence of God in Christ, and none of them fits into the category of those considered most worthy to receive from God. “Why does your teacher eat with tax-collectors and sinners?” demand the Pharisees. And the answer must be that this is the way God is. He comes to the most unlikely of us. In these few short verses of the Gospel, we see Jesus acts to confound the understanding of the society in which he lives. He calls the tax-collectors and sinners without any word of forgiveness, because he never speaks any word of condemnation. He resists mockery by a crowd which laughs at him for wasting time on a dead child (a female one at that!) – at a time when life was held cheap, and infant mortality was a fact of that life, he comes not to join the ritual of mourning but to touch and heal. And he allows himself to be touched by a woman who is shunned because of an illness which makes her taboo – where the onlookers would say that her touch brings ritual defilement to this supposed religious teacher, Jesus himself brings cleansing and making whole.
The healing work of Jesus and the company he keeps are a challenge – to those who would condemn, to those whose lives are strangely changed, to us who are called to follow in our own day. And Jesus needs to be at the heart of our life as a church if we are to be a welcoming community. A church of which I know has an inscription on its altar from St. Luke’s Gospel: “this man welcomes sinners and eats with them.” They’re words which echo our reading today from St. Matthew, the Pharisees’ question to the disciples: “Why does your teacher eat with tax-collectors and sinners?” The form they have in Luke’s Gospel is that of an insult, and where insults are preserved in the Bible you know you’re on to something authentic. “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.” Put them on the altar and they’re a reminder every time you share in Communion of the company you’re called to keep, of the one who does the calling, and of the people we’re called to be.
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The fierce love of God
Trinity 4 - Sunday 23 June 2002
A sermon from Rosie Junemann
Genesis 21.8-21
Matthew 10.24-39
When I was a little girl, about 5 or 6 years old, when I first started school, I had a favourite hymn. After so many years, I’m not sure if I can remember all of the words. But it goes something like this:
Can you count the stars that brightly
Twinkle in the midnight sky?
Can you count the clouds so lightly
O’er the meadows floating by?
God the Lord doth count their number
With his eyes that never slumber
And he made them, and he made them
And he made them every one.
Do you know how many children
Rise each morning blithe and gay?
Can you hear their happy voices
Singing sweetly on their way?
God the Lord doth count their number
With his eyes that never slumber
And he loves them, and he loves them
And he loves them every one.
These are reassuring words for a small child away from Mum for the first time and in what seems to be a very big school. They tell me that even though I’m very small, and only one among so many, God sees me and God hears me and God loves me.
Something of the same thought is expressed in today’s gospel reading: “Are not two sparrows sold for one penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground unperceived by your Father. And even the hairs of your head are all counted. So do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows.”
God’s wonderful care and concern can also be seen in today’s Old Testament reading. Today’s reading is part of the story of Abraham. Abraham is married to Sarah. They are growing older, and it seems that Sarah is unable to have children. So according to the custom of the day, Sarah’s slave Hagar has Abraham’s child and they name him Ishmael. Some years later, as God had promised, Sarah does have a baby – a boy whom they name Isaac. Now Sarah becomes concerned that her son’s inheritance will have to be shared with Ishmael.
(In those days, any child who was acknowleged by his father had the right to inherit, but a slave who was freed lost the right to inherit.)
So Hagar and Ishmael are freed and sent away to wander in the desert with only some bread and a small amount of water. When they have no water left, Hagar fears that they will die. But God hears the voice of the boy and responds by leading them to a well. Genesis tells us that Ishmael went on to have twelve sons and lived to a ripe old age (137 years, I think!)
So here again, the God who notices every time a sparrow lights on the ground, the God who counts every hair on our heads, hears the voice of a child in the desert and watches over him.
The love of God is a caring love. But it is also a fierce love.
In the gospels, the loving and caring God of the Old Testament is brought closer to us in the person of Jesus. But what kind of love do we see in Jesus? It’s certainly not a passive, wishy-washy sort of love, shown only to those who are good and obedient. In Jesus we see a profound and heartfelt compassion for people in need. Jesus is ‘moved with pity’ for a leper. He has compassion for the crowd ‘because they were like sheep without a shepherd’. He weeps when he sees the sorrow of Mary and Martha after the death of their brother Lazarus. But the Jesus of the gospels also disturbed and shocked the people of his day. He mingled with the poor and the oppressed, befriended women, associated with sick and deranged people. He touched lepers and socialised with outcasts. He challenged authority, got angry with people who turned their backs on human suffering, and he always did something to relieve people’s pain. The love of Jesus is a fierce and active love. It’s my guess that if Jesus were here in the world, today, you would find him in the People’s Kitchen or Cardboard City, or with street children in Rio de Janeiro, or on a cancer ward, or working with people with Aids in Africa or with a rescue team in the earthquake zone in Northern Iran.
In today’s gospel reading, Jesus said: “Do not think that I have come to bring peace on earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.” What did he mean? The theologian Daniel Migliore writes:
“God in Christ enters into a world saturated with violence, a world in which people are victimized again and again – the poor neglected, women beaten and raped, children abused, the earth plundered, prophets murdered – so that the order of our society and our world may not be disturbed. When Jesus disturbs that order – announces God’s forgiveness of sinners, promises the future to the poor, welcomes outcasts and strangers, calls all to repentance and a new way of life characterized by love of God and others ……….. the boundless love of God must clash with a world built on hostility and violence.”
Perhaps if Jesus were here today we would see him leading a protest march or lobbying parliament, challenging political oppression or fighting for justice.
The love of God is a caring love and it is a fierce love. It is also a challenging love.
In today’s gospel Jesus challenges us to follow him. As his disciples we must be like our teacher. We must openly acknowledge him and proclaim his teaching ‘from the housetops’. As Paul commands in his letter to the Ephesians, we too must take up the sword – ‘the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God’. We have a gospel which is not to be whispered in the dark but boldly proclaimed out there in the light.
It’s quite clear that the Christian cannot expect an easy life! Jesus expects his followers to ‘take up the cross’. That speaks of positive action and hard work. The Christian life must be active and challenging and may be painful. It’s not the way of the world - but a rebellion against the way of the world. If we are to be like Jesus, then we must love the unlovely, welcome the outcast, and support the oppressed. It’s down to us to fight their corner against the world, to challenge apathy and complacency and to be active in righting wrongs. And we should not be afraid to do this because we always have the assurance that God sees us and cares for us.
I started with a hymn and I’m going to end with a hymn, too. This is one I’ve discovered quite recently – a current favourite, you might say. It’s from the Iona Community.
Jesus Christ is raging, raging in the streets,
Where injustice spirals and real hope retreats.
Listen, Lord Jesus, I am angry too.
In the Kingdom’s causes, let me rage with you.
Jesus Christ is calling, calling in the streets,
‘Who will join my journey? I will guide their feet.’
Listen Lord Jesus, let my fears be few.
Walk one step before me; I will follow you.
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Weeds, wheat & the world as it is
8th Sunday after Trinity – Eucharist – 21.vii.02
The Revd. Martin Jackson
Wisdom 12.13,16-19;
Romans 8.12-25;
Matthew 13.24-30,36-43
Here’s my text for today: “A weed is a flower growing in the wrong place.”
For the second week running, our Gospel reading gives us a parable of Jesus with an agricultural theme. Last week the parable of the sower – and the question, where does the seed (which stands for the word of God for our world) fall?… on good ground which lets it grow healthy and strong?… or somewhere less receptive, where growth will be inhibited or simply not happen at all. And what I wanted to say was that we need to look beyond the interpretation Matthew gives to the parable, and see the simple act and foolishness of the sower, who goes out careless as to where the seed may fall – this is an over-generous sower who doesn’t look too closely as to where the seed lands, but who - like God - showers his blessings abundantly. Whether you count yourself good ground, stony, choked up with weeds and hang-ups, or whether you’re as hard as the road surface, God has not written you off – he cares for you, and he’s coming for you, just like Jesus is coming not just for the receptive and religious, but for the tax-collector, the sinner, the publican and the women of disrepute.
This week’s parable is again about seeds. This time they’re already planted and growing. And there’s a different slant to the story. The seed is no longer God’s word or Jesus’ message. It’s people – or so the explanation of the parable tells us. And the problem is that the good and the bad are all mixed up. How can they ever be sorted from one another? The Bible scholars tell us that the weed growing alongside the good wheat is darnel, a weed which is difficult to tell from the wheat. And even if you can tell them apart there’s another problem. Their roots intertwine. Pull up the weed and there’s a good chance that the growing wheat will come up too.
I can follow the parable that far… In my own garden I have to confess that I’m never really sure what I should pull up. I find quite a lot of the weeds individually attractive… I know they’re a mess when there’s a lot of them, but the plants we put in deliberately don’t seem that much different at times. And on the rare occasion that the urge overcomes me and I actually do some gardening, the wrong things come up: sometimes it’s simple mis-identification; but often I just can’t pull up the weeds without the flowers coming too. Realising my general incompetence, I once agreed to take up the offer of gardening help from a caller to the Vicarage. He couldn’t be any worse than me I thought, and I went off leaving him to the task. When I came back, he’d dug out absolutely everything in the borders. “That’s the only way to get rid of those weeds,” he said. And he spent the next day laying out the plants, flowers, weeds and shrubs on the drive, trying to decide what he should re-plant. Within a week everything was pretty well back to its original state, except the flowers were rather thin on the ground – in fact those that survived were actually flat on the ground.
So when someone comes up to you and asks – like the slaves in the parable or the man at my door – “look at those weeds: do you want us to go and gather them?”, then take heed of the wisdom of the landowner who says: “No, for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them.”
But of course this parable is not just a course in basic gardening. It’s a sign of the kingdom of heaven. But even more basically it’s a picture of how things are. We get bothered that there’s so much evil in the world. Things just don’t go right. We’re right of course; the trouble is all those other people who get it wrong. We have our own notion of what is good. But so many other people seem to go out of their way to cause bother and grief. They might be terrorists at one end of the scale, or members of a public service union if you’re bothered that your dustbin didn’t get emptied last Wednesday. They might be religious extremists (not our sort of religion, of course) or they might just be your neighbours or fallen-out-with friends who rub you up the wrong way. There’s a lot that could be read into those words, “an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat… an enemy has done this.” Enemies fall into many categories but they have in common the fact that they cause us trouble, and they’re not easily got rid of. The good and the bad are there together, side by side.
So you could follow the interpretation of the parable which Matthew’s Gospel gives: that this is a matter of having to put up with wrong-doers for the time being, but in due course they will get their just reward in a “furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” Fine.. if you reckon you’re one of the “righteous” who “will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father.” But can you be so sure? What do other people think about you? And what about those recurring enigmatic words of Jesus: “Let anyone with ears listen”?
I got into trouble last week – in a fairly mild sort of way, I suppose. I’d just done my second wedding of the weekend, and was mingling with the guests when one came up to me, congratulated me on the way I took the service which he thought was very warm and dignified, but then expressed his disappointment: it was not appropriate, he thought, that someone wearing “that collar” should be questioning Holy Scripture. The mistake I’d made was to suggest that most of the biblical material that refers directly to marriage is written in terms more appropriate to the society in which the writer lived than to ours. And we have moved on through another 19 centuries and more since then. So when letters which bear the name of St. Paul advise, “Wives, obey your husbands…,” we need to read them as meaning something other than unswerving diffidence and readiness to take orders. He couldn’t accept that my approach is born out of twenty years of experience in preparing couples for marriage where none has ever opted to use the Bible passages which spell out relationships in these terms. Perhaps I should have asked him if he felt that we should maintain the injunction found in the same books of the Bible that slaves should obey their masters. Each, after all, is saying “Know your place.”
But the more I have reflected on that brief exchange of views, the more I’ve felt that I’ve got Jesus on my side. Different things get said about marriage – and about a multitude of other subjects – depending on which part of the Bible you look in. Jesus himself gets taken to task over his attitude to marriage and divorce when he says that the Jewish tradition going back to Moses is not an unchanging divine ordinance but something which makes allowance for human weakness. It leads Jesus to say something which at face value appears very harsh – that grounds for divorce are either extremely limited or even non-existent. Until you look again, and see that Jesus is talking about the value of human relationships, the value of people as people because they’re far more precious than anything we can put into words, even if we call it a divine law. You’ve got these laws because of human weakness, Jesus says, and in saying it Jesus is recognizing that we are weak and human, and to be human is what God intends of us – and God meets us in our weakness and humanity. Why else did God create us, if not to love us? Surely he does not create us simply to punish us?
St. Paul can write in today’s New Testament reading from Romans chapter 8: “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us…” And it’s certainly that attitude which has helped Christians stand firm in their faith in the midst of personal suffering… and even persecution for the sake of what they believe. But someone else has said,
I often think that this is very easy to say. St Paul was never married [well we don’t know about that!] - so he could never have lost a child. No promise of future happiness will ever assuage such a suffering…. I wonder if St Paul would be able to say the same about suffering if the suffering he endured was because he worked in some mundane repetitive occupation, or was unemployed, scratching for a living to try to provide for himself and his family? St Paul travelled wherever he liked because he was able and knew he could obtain the protection of the State wherever he went. The refugees who come to our shores [this is an Australian writer] are fleeing a life with no prospects, no freedom and no guarantee that they will not be returned to the existence they fled. Do we say to them that they should go back where they were from and await a future blessedness?
And this brings us back to that Gospel reading for today. It’s about hope – the hope of a kingdom of righteousness, where justice will be done, wrongs righted, the evil-doers shown up for what they are. But shown up for what they truly are, not what we think they are. This is a parable not of vengeance against those we categorise as “the enemy” but of warning that we should not be hasty in judgment. Who can tell the darnel from the wheat? But also Jesus calls us to be his disciples living out the call of the kingdom in all the contradictions of this world. He comes to this world to meet us in our human need. He bids us live out our vocation here because of what we can do for this world. And what can we do? Not jump to conclusions, not rush into condemning those who are different from ourselves, but rather, “Let anyone with ears listen!”
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Parables are for People
9th Sunday after Trinity – Eucharist – 28.vii.02
The Revd. Martin Jackson
1 Kings 3.5-12;
Romans 8.26-39;
Matthew 13.31-33, 44-52
“The kingdom of heaven is like…” This is something of a refrain in today’s Gospel. Five times Jesus uses these words to introduce a parable on the nature of God’s kingdom – even more times if you look at the chapter of St. Matthew’s Gospel from which they are taken. What Jesus is seeking is to attract the attention of his audience to what he is saying. How do you do that? Try a story…
Fishermen’s tales are legendary. Here’s one I found some time ago….
A man was telling a crowd how he had caught a 30lb bass, and wrestled with it for 3 hours before finally landing it.
A friend overheard, and interrupted him. 'Wait a minute, I saw the photo of you with that one. It was no more than 10lb!'
'Well', replied the man, 'it is amazing how much weight a fish can lose in a 3 hour fight!'
It’s not one of the better stories, and I wonder about the fisherman’s tale which Jesus relates in today’s Gospel:
….the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and caught fish of every kind; when it was full, they drew it ashore, sat down, and put the good into baskets but threw out the bad. So it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous and throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
I almost wonder if some of the crowd might say, “we’ve heard that one before!” And of course, they have… you have. It’s simply a re-telling of the story of the parable of the wheat and the tares, which we heard last week, but while one had farmers in mind, this has a fishy flavour. The message is the same. At first hearing it’s overwhelmingly a story about judgment – a warning that God will separate out the good and the bad; we might bemoan the fact that there’s so much evil in the world, that the good and the bad seem so inextricably mixed up, but give God time: just wait till the catch is landed (or the harvest is brought in), and those evil-doers will get sorted out!
At least that’s what these two parables seem to say. But perhaps there’s more… Jesus doesn’t only repeat the words, “the kingdom of heaven is like this…” He adds another refrain too: “If you have ears, then listen.” The challenge is always to ask, what is Jesus really saying? How is it that God really works? Is it an assurance that God will finally make everything all right, and just the way we want it? Or something more?… (i.e.) that we expect God to throw out and destroy the people we find undesirable, but strangely God – like that great net – keeps gathering them in. …That God puts them alongside us, and it makes us uncomfortable, but perhaps it’s a challenge to us and we need to do something about it?….
How do we hear what God is saying? Here’s another fisherman’s tale – from somewhere cold, like Northern Canada:
A man went out to fish on a frozen lake. He cut a hole in the ice, dropped his line in and sat for hours without so much as a nibble.
After a while, a boy came along and cut a hole nearby. He baited his line, dropped it in the hole, and within a few minutes caught a fish. He baited his line again, and within another few minutes he had another fish.
The man was incensed, so he went over to the boy and asked him his secret.
'Roo raf roo reep ra rums rrarm.'
'What was that?' the man asked.
Again the boy replied, 'Roo raf roo reep ra rums rrarm.'
'Look, I can't understand a word you're saying.'
The boy spat into his hand and said, 'You have to keep the worms warm!'
But is that a lesson the man wants to learn? What will he do for the sake of catching fish? What will we do for the sake of the kingdom of heaven? How much value does it have for us? What will we be prepared to do for the sake of the kingdom? What kind of discipline and even sacrifice are we ready for? And perhaps we have to ask, “what is the kingdom of heaven?” What does it mean to us? What meaning can we give it in an overwhelmingly secular world?
The great challenge we face as Christians is to say something that can be heard as relevant to the society in which we live. …Not for us simply to be seen as God-botherers who always remain rather detached from the everyday concerns of most people. And so I’ve found the events of the last few days – and the coverage in the media – quite amazing, and a sign that there is much to hope for. I’m talking about the announcement that Rowan Williams is to be the new Archbishop of Canterbury. Who could have imagined that there would be so much interest? Not just The Times in its desperation to be first with the news of the appointment, or the Daily Telegraph, playing the voice of the establishment but finding itself rather strangely admiring of this player from the outfield. But also the generally-agnostic Guardian giving page after page of coverage and even printing the Archbishop’s poetry, and The Sun… which has started calling him the “Bartbishop” after discovering he enjoys watching “The Simpsons” with his family. The Times itself even bothered to print two long and intellectually-challenging extracts from one of his books: in one he examines the place of the child in society; in the second he questions our general approval of “choice” as a good thing by asking what choice really means when it is set in relation to the fate of the unborn child or the dilemma which affects parents as to which school their children should attend. But what struck me was a short letter – again, I think, in The Times – from someone writing to express disappointment that the Archbishop could write at such length without ever once mentioning the words “God” or “Jesus”. Didn’t this say something about the sort of bishops we have now? asked the correspondent. Surely a Christian needs to talk about Christ?
For anyone who’s read or heard anything from Archbishop Williams, the accusation that he is failing in his Christian integrity is quite preposterous. This is a man whose writings on the nature of the Christian faith are the most profound, whose holiness is apparent not only in the way he speaks but also in the way he listens (and you can read in the current issue of our Parish Magazine of how he prays)… he’s a man who draws people of all ages to hear him in pulpits, in lecture theatres and even at rock festivals. But the writer of that letter had a point. There was no religious reference in either of those essays printed in the newspaper – and deliberately so… Because his argument is that if Christians are to have anything to say to society, then we must do so by dealing with society as we find it. We can’t pretend that it is something other than it really is. We need to take it on using its own terms, we have to speak a language which people already use, and we have to be prepared to do hard work to make our case as Christians convincing. It doesn’t do simply to tell other people what they should do because the Bible tells them so. Because most people today will simply turn round and say, “So what?” So a man like Rowan Williams, whose life is so evidently grounded in Christ, does not expect that people are going to accept his arguments because they have respectability as religious answers – his case has to bear upon people as they are. It’s an approach he himself has practised as long as he has studied theology: on his second day as a Theology student in Cambridge he found himself talking to one of that city’s many homeless people, and since that time his academic and priestly life has been inseparable from his concern for the underprivileged, for human rights, peace and justice.
Well…. You can read all that in the newspapers. My simple point from it is that Christians don’t prove their case just by bringing God into the argument. And I think it can be said that you discover that if you look at the life, teaching and practice of Jesus himself. Jesus teaches what the “kingdom of heaven” is “like”… But none of those parables actually mentions God. And none is very exact. The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed which can grow into a massive tree, or like yeast which leavens bread – in other words it’s about growth and change…. The kingdom of heaven is like treasure or the merchant seeking the single pearl of great value - in other words it’s a quest, and demands sacrifice and the willingness for renunciation… But you can never pin it down. The kingdom of heaven is not simply a goal, like treasure you can dig up and possess. It’s also like that merchant who sells all his possessions in order to buy that most valuable of all… “The kingdom of heaven is like a merchant…” It can’t be a person, but it’s discovered when people follow its ways. The way of the kingdom – Christianity – is not a set of doctrines or a collection of social norms. It’s a life of discipleship and an on-going quest. “The kingdom of God … is righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit,” writes St. Paul. To find it, like the merchant in Jesus’ parable, we may have to sell off all that holds us back from entering into it…. to buy the field where the treasure lies… to be able to own that pearl. As someone has written, what we have to “sell off” is
our anger,
and our lack of kindness
and our failure to forgive
and our lack of understanding of others
and our jealousy
and our fear
“Have you understood all this?” asks Jesus when he finishes his parables. And the people listening say, “Yes.” Have we understood? The answer is in the lives we lead which reveal the true extent of our discipleship.
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Who do you say that I am?
9th Sunday after Trinity - Eucharist - 25.viii.02
The Revd. Martin Jackson
(Isaiah 51.1-6; Romans 12.1-8; Matthew 16.13-20)
I think it was the great early 20th century musician, missionary doctor, and theologian, Albert Schweitzer, who said something like this: “Jesus came preaching the Kingdom of God – and what came about was the Church.”
For some people these are words with a ring of disappointment: you might expect great things if the Kingdom of God came in all its fullness, if only there could be an end to suffering, war, disease, hunger, poverty; if the refugee could find a home; if discrimination, fear, prejudice and intolerance could be banished. “Imagine there’s no heaven,” John Lennon sang – and while there’s much that is disingenuous in the lyrics of that song, at least we can appreciate the sentiment that we need not a heaven that’s pie in the sky when you die, but a heaven which is righteousness, justice and peace worked out for real upon earth. So, Jesus came preaching the Kingdom of God… the Kingdom of heaven. But what do we get? – the Church, all too feeble, frail and failing, riven by faction, carping in its moralizing, seemingly irrelevant in so many of its doctrines. Is this what Jesus wanted?
It’s doubtful. But then again, it was the author of the Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx, who himself said, “Thank God, I’m not a Marxist.” Whether you’re a religious person or a humanist, a Communist Revolutionary or a Christian, there’s a gap between the ideal and the actual. You can paint the picture yourself, but getting your followers to make it into a reality is another matter altogether.
And Jesus must have known this. Jesus came preaching the Kingdom of God… And the evidence is that for some time at least he was very popular. The crowds came out in droves. Thousands would listen to his preaching and marvel at his miracles. Jesus himself pointed to the fact that the deaf found they could hear, that the lame walked and the blind received their sight,… and these things, he said, were signs of God’s kingdom – it was coming, it was very near, even… it was to be found within you. And these were miracles which Jesus himself could perform.
And yet we find a doubtful note too. It’s there in our Gospel reading today… Jesus’ words: “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” And he doesn’t get any single or straightforward answer. For some people it’s John the Baptist, for others Elijah… or Jeremiah or some other prophet. And the disciples don’t seem too keen to volunteer their own opinion. It might seem strange to us that they don’t immediately say, “It’s you of course!” But the fact is that it seems to have been far from obvious. Elsewhere we’ve got them asking Jesus, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to expect someone else?” There have been so many other good men before Jesus, so many prophets who’ve spoken out even at the cost of their own lives, so many religious reformers whose dedicated work has been speedily undone – perhaps Jesus is just the latest, as of course he is for Muslims who will readily recognize Jesus as one of the greatest of the prophets, only not as great as Mohammed through whom God gives his ultimate revelation.
The term “Son of Man” is itself still a matter of cause for great debate amongst Biblical scholars. If you see how it’s used in the Bible for hundreds of years before the time of Jesus, it’s simply not obvious that it should apply to him. And even after Peter tells Jesus, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God,” it’s still not obvious that this is the same as Jesus being the “Son of Man.” Because Peter answers a question that has changed. First Jesus had asked, “Who do people say the Son of Man is?” And after that question had provoked only confusion, he puts a second and different question, “Who do you say that I am?” It’s this question that gets the answer – and the question and answer are themselves telling.
Questions like that first one, what do people say about a biblical figure called the Son of Man, keep them in the realm of debate – you can kick the question about, no one needs to make their mind up, it’s been talked about for ages, so an answer now doesn’t seem to be all that urgent. But the second question moves everything on: “Who do you say that I am?” There’s no escaping this one. Jesus doesn’t any longer ask his followers to talk about it. He asks them that most profound question about their relationship to him. Why are they following him? What difference does he and can he make to their lives? What will they be able to tell other people about him? And it’s Peter who can say, “You are the Messiah – the Christ – you are the Son of the living God.”
From now on, nothing can be the same. “Jesus came preaching the Kingdom of God, and what came about was the Church.” These are not words about the failure of Jesus’ mission. They tell us instead how that mission was to be accomplished. It’s when Jesus is recognized as the Christ, that the Church comes into being. Peter speaks, and Jesus calls him the rock on which the Church will be built. Not because of any great quality of Peter himself, but because it’s Peter who recognizes what it is to have your whole life bound up with Jesus. The word “church” itself simply means “belonging to the Lord.” The people who follow Christ, who find meaning for their lives in him, are those who belong to him – they… we… are the Church.
Not that that will make everything perfect. If we preach Christ, we have to continue his task of proclaiming the Kingdom of God. And at times it seems further away than ever. Today’s Collect – which you can find on the front of the pewsheet - speaks of “God, who called your Church to bear witness that you were in Christ reconciling the world to yourself.” But what meaning does that have? How near is the world to being reconciled with God? What signs are there that we have made any progress in working for an end to cruelty or any of the horrors we inflict upon each other?
When I was on holiday I rather lost touch with the news – except that the few television news bulletins we saw had one lead item in common. All the French and even the Italian channels we could receive led on the disappearance of the two English girls from Soham in Cambridgeshire. That people in other countries shared a sense of horror at events which have so much dominated the last weeks in this country shows how terrible these murders have been recognized to be. That these things should happen to two girls, so innocent and so young. How – when this can happen – may we speak of a God in Christ reconciling the world to himself? How can God let this happen?
And we don’t have the answers. Being a Christian doesn’t mean believing that everything is alright with this world we live in. Being a Christian doesn’t mean having the words to make people feel better. But being a Christian does mean having some sense of how God relates to this world in all its brokenness. Jesus spoke of the signs of the Kingdom – that the blind receive their sight, the deaf hear, and the lame walk. But also he said that the poor have good news preached to them, and the captive receives freedom. These are the signs which are still to be accomplished – and it takes us to work for them. For God in Christ to reconcile the world to himself does not take miraculous intervention on his part. It takes human commitment to bring the world to Christ, to work for the establishment of his Kingdom.
We see what is wrong in our society when the trauma of the abduction and murder of two young girls like Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman brings about a collective sense of mourning and grief. We can understand the need for minutes of silence at football clubs around the country and floral tributes by the thousand in the churchyard of their home village. But where is this sense of loss to be directed? What does it say when it leads a crowd of hundreds to turn out to scream obscenities and spit at one of the suspects – and to take their children with them? We must not combat the hate which leads to murder by allowing hatred to infect our own hearts. We need to recognize that Christ brings reconciliation between God and his world by his readiness to share our human condition, by his weeping at the grave of his friend Lazarus, by his condemnation of evil, even as he extends forgiveness and welcome to the sinner.
And how much more remains for us to do, that the world may be reconciled to God! “For evil to triumph it is necessary only that good men should do nothing,” someone said. We feel grief and outrage at the cruelties which people inflict upon one another, but so many of us hold to that mistaken belief that to live the right sort of life you yourself only have to try not to do any harm to other people. We need to remember that parable of the sheep and the goats. The goats never did anyone any harm, as they tell the “Son of Man” at his coming: “When did we see you hungry or thirsty or naked or in prison and not help you?” They never did any intentional harm. But nor did they have the readiness to do good. “Who do people say the Son of Man is?” For them it might have been an interesting issue for discussion – the point is that they never saw him, and they never heard his voice.
“Who do you say that I am?” Jesus asks the disciples… and asks us. It’s not a matter for indifference. It’s not a matter of having the “right” answer. It’s a question that calls for an answer from our hearts – which must make a complete difference to the way we live. Jesus has preached the Kingdom, he leaves a Church which seeks in all its frailty to preach Christ – but above all he call us to the task of bringing this world to the knowledge and reality of God’s love.
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Celebrating the Saints
 All Saints’ Sunday – 3.xi.2002 - Eucharist
Revelation 7.9-17;
1 John 3.1-3;
Matthew 5.1-12.
The Revd. Martin Jackson
For a text, let me direct you to our second reading – I guess that the letters of John are not widely read, but they should be. You can spend a long time simply meditating on a little of what St. John says. Perhaps that’s why we’re only given three verses to read today. And for now, here’s just half a verse:
Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed… (1 John 3.2)
How can we live as God’s children? Today’s celebration of All Saints tells us that there’s a clue in those who have gone before us as disciples of Christ. One of the things I love about the Christian calendar is the lives of the saints which are marked throughout the year on a pretty-well daily basis. Come to church on a weekday, and you might find us remembering the Christian witness of saints you’ve never heard of, and never imagined in the circumstances they lived in. Two of my favourites were marked in the middle of last month….
19th October is the feast day of St. Jean de Brébeuf and St. Isaac Jogues. Their feast day is an optional commemoration even in the Roman Catholic Church, but their lives were truly heroic. A few years ago a film was made about the Jesuit mission of which they were part in 17th century Canada – the film, Blackrobe, based on a book of the same name by Brian Moore. I’ve only seen the film once, but it’s stayed with me, partly because of the spectacular settings of a country in which they were almost as much explorers as missionaries – but also because of the heroic nature of their witness, daring to believe they could share their faith in the most alien of contexts, with peoples perceived by Europeans as no better than savages. And share that faith they did, despite their own doubts and fears, and despite the sufferings they endured.
Isaac Jogues was the younger of the two, and was martyred before he reached the age of 40. Even some years before that he’d been captured by the Iroquois, enemies of the Hurons – he’d gone to them in a mission of mercy to alleviate the famine and disease by which they were gripped. Isaac was beaten, his nails and hair were torn out, his fingers were mutilated and he was made a slave before he managed to escape. And his response…. was simply to go back to that same place to seek to build peace, only to be captured again and killed with tomahawks.
His fellow French Jesuit, Jean de Brébeuf, had a longer ministry. He worked in the Canadian mission from 1625, and from 1633 lived among the Huron Indians at their request, sometimes with companions, and sometimes alone. He learned their language and wrestled with a culture of superstition, violence and even cannibalism. It was his fate, when the village was attacked by another tribe, to be captured, mutilated, tortured, burned, and eventually eaten – his martyrdom in 1648 is one of the most horrific in the history of Christian missions.
In one sense these two saints are remembered for their deaths. But their lives were still more important. It’s not the dying which made them saints, but their willingness to put themselves in situations in which they might have to give up their lives. The film, Blackrobe, ends not with the death of one of the priests, but with the tribespeople coming to him to ask him to stay. They recognize in him something he himself has struggled to find. His task seems daunting almost to the point of being impossible. But hundreds of miles from the nearest European outpost, and thousands of miles from home, surrounded by a people who might so easily misunderstand him and turn against him, he gives them his promise – that he will never leave them.
It was an ending which left me with lots of questions. How could he dare to hope that through his work the Gospel could become established? How could he hope to build a church and make it relevant to people who lived such a different way of life? How could he expect to survive in such hostile and remote territory? And of course he didn’t survive, but suffered the most brutal of deaths.
But by his dying he shows how the Church lives and grows. By his ministry, and that of his companions, the Christian faith was shared and given real form. The Christian faith is made real not only in success, but in its readiness also to endure failure. That’s something important for us all to recognize. When we try to picture the saints who have gone before us in faith, we might be restricted by our imaginations – perhaps we’ll think simply of some of the more notable characters in the Bible; maybe we’ll have in mind a saint whose image is formalized in an icon; or perhaps we’ll think of St. Cuthbert, St. Aidan or one of the other saints of our own Northumbria in the 7th century. But to understand saint-hood we need to move beyond the limitations of our minds. Saint-hood is about living God’s way in whatever circumstances we might encounter. You don’t have to live in a particular time or place to be a saint. And saint-hood is not a quality only for certain notably holy people. It’s to be found in those whose names are now barely known – like Isaac Jogues and Jean de Brébeuf. It’s to be found in the still greater fellowship of saints whose names were never known, or who are now forgotten – like their companions…
There’s a danger that what I say now might be treated as something of a history lesson. But that’s not the intention. The celebration of All Saints is not an encouragement to think of how wonderful things were in the past – nor of the remarkable achievements of Christians centuries ago. It’s to remind us of our calling as Christians here and now. Talk about the life of the Church today, and you’ll find people talking about its problems. We’re all too aware of the issues at stake – or think we are. And so much of our response is to look at matters of organization. Parishes and clergy are encouraged to work together in “localities” – and not surprisingly wonder if they’re simply being encouraged into an exercise similar to re-arranging the deckchairs on the “Titanic”. In our own church we’re still in the process of a “Parish Review” – and we’re somewhere in-between weighing up perceptions, many of them voiced before, and asking whether we need a new strategy (but which strategy?). And so it’s not surprising if we might ask where is all of this getting us? What is the point of it all?
The point is that we do in fact need strategies. If the Jesuits in 17th century Canada had had no strategy, then there would have been no mission to the native American peoples – and lives which were to be heroically sacrificed in the cause of the Gospel might have been lived out in comfort, but would never have had the point we now see them to have had. So we need strategies now to ask how we can carry on our calling as Christians in today’s world. But we need something more than simply a means of survival. The lives of the saints show us that it’s people who make the difference, and particularly it’s people responding to God’s call.
What we see in the saints is people who have become what they are because the Gospel has been made real in them. The distinctive thing about the Christian faith is that we believe that God is made incarnate in Jesus Christ – God comes to us in human flesh, and in the man Jesus we see who God is. The distinctive thing about Christianity is that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is made incarnate in us – we understand the Good News of our faith when we see it made a reality in people. And these people who give flesh to the Gospel are people like us. People who struggle, not only against unbelief or against hostility or in the midst of danger, but people also who struggle with themselves, with their own doubts and fears, with the knowledge of their own limitations. These are people who discover something about holiness, but not necessarily in the way it is conventionally caricatured by self-denial and renunciation – because holiness is the Christian vocation to come close to God wherever we may be.
And of the saints there are so many. Of only a few do we know the names. For the most part the names are not known, but the reality of their faith is what gives substance to the Church.
Our Bishop at his most perceptive has declared the vocation of the Church to be a “Holy, Learning and Witnessing People.” When we are so often distracted by matters of organization, of managing decline, of raising money and considering how to counter-act falling numbers, we need to be reminded of those wise words. If we seek a blueprint for Christian living in the words of Jesus, we won’t find it in any set of dogmas nor in any fail-safe structure for the Church. But we do find those words we call the Beatitudes – which are today’s Gospel. They call again and again for us to make a response to them, to ask ourselves what it truly means to be “blessed” and a citizen of God’s Kingdom. It’s St. John in those verses with which I began who assures us that we are God’s children now, though we cannot know just how this is to be worked out. But we can dare to believe in it. We see the Beatitudes worked out in the lives of the saints, in those who’ve gone before us in faith – known and unknown, even in the lives of people who sit among us or live beside us.
We have Jesus’ promise that we may find comfort in mourning, mercy in living, and the vision of God when hearts are made pure. In the building of peace we shall be called children of God, in meekness we may find our true relation to the earth, and in poverty of spirit we may come into the kingdom of heaven. Already, says St. John, “we are God’s children now.” Dare we hope to believe it? – to act upon it? – do we hope for the time when we shall be like God, “for we shall see him as he is”?
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