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Ordinary Time - Sermons 2003
| Once past Pentecost, the Church enters the season of Ordinary Time. Which sounds a bit boring. It shouldn't though. This is the long period when we are able to follow the thread of one particular Gospel-writer - this year it's St. Mark. We read his account of Jesus' life and ministry, and we ask "Who is Jesus Christ for us today?" |  |
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Surviving the Storm
Trinity 1 – Eucharist – 22.vi.2003
The Revd. Martin Jackson
Job 38.1-11;
2 Corinthians 6.1-13;
Mark 4.35-41
“Who is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?”
That’s the question the disciples ask about Jesus after their brush with disaster on the Sea of Galilee. At least, disaster is how it seems to them at the time. They were fishermen who must have sailed on that lake many times; but however many times you’ve put out from shore, you only have to sink once… and that’s your last voyage. What happens in these few minutes may be the briefest of episodes in their lives. But it will stay with them, and as they look back on it they will recognize something – not only about the dangers they faced that night – but also about Jesus, the man they had with them in the boat.
My father was a sailor. Perhaps I should say, “My father is a sailor.” He might have left the Merchant Navy over 50 years ago, but the young man in him was formed in and by his travels from icy Spitsbergen to Australia and Nauru, from Canada and Hawaii to Singapore. The photograph albums still come out together with the stories. And the stories he can still tell most clearly are the stories of near-disaster: of storms with hundred foot waves; of 10 days adrift in the Indian Ocean without engine power or radio communications; of ships which sank, and the ship which his own boat sank coming into harbour. When we say that “the sea is in someone’s blood”, it’s something to do with respect for its force, the knowledge that it can turn against you, the challenge of battle in the face of the storm against the elements. As our Psalm (107) today puts it of those who “go down to the sea in ships, and do their business in great waters”:
They beheld the works of the Lord and his wonders in the deep.
Then he spoke and a stormy wind arose,
which tossed high the waves of the sea.
They mounted up to the heavens and fell back to the depths;
their hearts melted because of their peril.
They reeled and staggered like drunkards and were at their wits’ end.
Then, the Psalmist goes on, “they cried to the Lord in their trouble…” And he hears, the calm returns, and safely they are brought back into harbour….
Except… there is always the possibility that he won’t hear, the storm may get worse, the boat may break up and sink, families in port may be left bereft.
We can recognize the mercy of God – as the Psalmist recognizes it – only if we see the possibility of disaster. If our safety is guaranteed so long as we say the right prayers, then the God to whom we pray must be a God who simply tests us to see if we’ll do the right thing… in fact he must be a god who uses us as play things for his own amusement, to see how we will respond to the dangers he sends against us. What we need to recognize when we read this story of the disciples in the midst of the storm, when we sing that wonderful hymn, “Eternal Father, strong to save”, is the absolute terror that the disciples feel, the all-too-real danger in which they are set, the fact that they might not get out of this one alive. It’s when they come through it – knowing they might not have – that they can appreciate truly the Psalmist’s words, “Let them give thanks for the mercy of the Lord…”
Perhaps we know the story of the storm on the Lake too well. We read it and we know that all will be well. But it doesn’t seem like that at the time to the disciples. Already they are taking in water when they realize that Jesus is actually sleeping through it all. Read the story now, and it seems that all they need to do is wake him up and he will make everything OK. But think how the disciples might be feeling as they struggle to stay afloat, and you realize they probably were not all that polite as they woke him up. There wouldn’t be time to be gentle – more likely they’d grab him roughly and shout at him to get baling. The surprise is that when he wakes he simply speaks to the wind and the sea: “Peace! Be still!” It’s not what the disciples expect. They know him as someone who can captivate crowds with his words,…. and hearing him talk about God is one thing. Actually finding that his words make a real difference is quite another. So, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?”
That seems to be the crucial question: to ask who Jesus is for us. To be able to recognize that he is at the centre of the storm with us. That we are not alone. But we wouldn’t be human if we didn’t have times of sheer desperation. Jesus is sleeping in the stern of the boat. It’s not the first thought of the disciples that they’ve got him with them. Their first thought is that Jesus is asleep. They feel on their own, and this man is doing nothing for them. They feel on their own, even though other people must be near to hand. St. Mark tells us that as they set out across the Lake, “Other boats were with him.” But there’s no other reference to the people in these boats. When we are in the midst of the storm, perhaps we forget the peril that other people are in – “this is my disaster, and I’m going to suffer it all myself.” When we are in the midst of the storm, perhaps we forget that there are other people who might be able to help us. But the disciples are so pre-occupied with danger that they forget anything other than their own fight for survival on that one tiny boat. Nothing else and no one else matters. It’s as though nothing else in the world seems to exist.
And perhaps that’s how life is for us when we know that we are in trouble. All we can do when things are extreme is be conscious of the peril. So easily we feel that we’re on our own. We don’t care that other people may have their problems, because nothing can match mine. We don’t think that anyone else can help, because my problems are so far beyond my being able to deal with them that we don’t believe anyone can help us find a solution. And if we call on God, it might be only to find that he seems to be asleep.
It’s this story that tells us that it’s not necessarily so. There is the chance of disaster. Our problems and perils are real and need to be taken seriously. But perhaps as well there are those other boats near to hand – people who can come to our help, people who might have more experience in surviving the storm, people who at least are in the midst of our troubles with us.
And we can be those people for others – just by being there for them. We need to recognize people for what they are – beloved of God. That’s the problem that Job has. We’ve read from chapter 38 today, and it’s taken all the previous 37 chapters for God to get into the picture. Job has suffered more than anyone: loss of wealth, health and family. And it bothers him – he doesn’t deserve this, and he can’t see how things can get any better. He feels so alone, and we can see why: his wife tells him just to curse God and die; and his so-called friends turn up to treat him as a theological test-case and prove that he must have done something wrong for all this to happen. …And they’re all wrong. For Job is and remains a human being in spite of the calamity which befalls him. He needs his humanity to be affirmed, and it can be affirmed only when he sees that he is loved by God. It’s love of the Creator for the created which Job finally must recognize. It’s the fact that God goes on loving us which we need to recognize, that we need to hold onto; and it’s recognizing that love which is to form us in all our relationships.
It’s easy for us to treat people as Job’s so-called Comforters treat him – as someone who must obviously be at fault, who therefore can’t expect the fullness of God’s love. We can treat ourselves like that too. The news stories of the last week have shown how respectable church people and even bishops can bring a whole new dimension to the term Pharisee, as they’ve shifted their complaints against the new Bishop of Reading from calls for him to repent of past ways, to concerns over the history of a particular relationship (a faithful one of 27 years it seems), and now to condemnation of him as unfit because of particular views he holds (views which also the Archbishop of Canterbury holds – and me too, if that is relevant). I’m not going any further down this road except to say this is a sorry tale, where so many Christians have shown themselves quick to condemn without a fair hearing, and to be all too capable of not only hating the sin (if there is a sin) but also despising and pillorying the sinner.
Most people hadn’t heard of Canon Jeffrey John before last week. I had, and I remember a lecture he gave some years ago in Durham which I found quite eye-opening. His writings are profound, challenging but also over-whelmingly orthodox. Any adult whom I have prepared for Confirmation in the last five years or so will have used at least in part a handbook on Anglican Church teaching which he produced - though you have to look hard to find his name on it (he’s not into self-advertisement): and we’ve used it because it’s the best for the job. And if you want to explore today’s Gospel reading, you can make a good start with his book “The Miracles of Jesus.”
This is what he has to say about the storm on the Lake, and about Peter’s attempt to emulate the Christ who walked on water:
… These miracles have strengthened countless millions of Christians, whether going through the tempests of corporate persecution… or through personal storms of illness, loss, betrayal, bereavement or breakdown. There can hardly be a Christian who cannot immediately identify with Peter, losing faith in face of fear and trouble, sinking in panic, then gathered up and rescued by forgiving love. However much modern Christians may wonder what did or didn’t happen on the Sea of Galilee over 2,000 years ago; however much we may struggle to understand what it means to say that Jesus was God on earth, as Mark and the early Church were so unshakeably clear he was – it remains a fact of Christian experience that these miracles “work”. Their message is true… certainly in the sense that Christ’s words still have extraordinary power to bring “a great calm” in times of turmoil and chaos – when we have faith, however faltering, that he is who he is: “Peace, be still. Do not be afraid. I AM.”
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Priesthood for Today
 | Feast of St. Peter the Apostle – 29.vi.2003
First Eucharist presided over
by the Revd. Ian Waugh
Preacher: The Revd. Martin Jackson
(Ezekiel 3.22-27; Acts 12.1-11; Matthew 16.13-19)
“It was the Vicar that did it… in the study… with a candlestick.”
I had to get out my old Cluedo set to remind myself of all the names of characters in the who-done-it game, but the one character everyone seems to remember in it is the Rev. Green. Colonel Mustard might get a look in, but Miss White, Miss Peacock and Miss Scarlett seem well down the field. I think the game is perhaps set for a come-back. I’ve found that murder-mystery evenings and even weekends are becoming increasingly popular – where people get together for a good time, but dress up in character and wait to get bumped off by one of their friends or to do the bumping off. And perhaps the most popular figure to go along as is a priest – or maybe it’s just that members of this congregation have a certain weird sense of fun…. but there’s something more to it I think…. What do you find on Saturday night peak-time television at the moment? The mysterious-death programme, “Strange”, in which a series of unwilling victims meet their horrible end due to unknown and probably demonic forces. If you find out where it’s set, I can only say, “Don’t go there!” And not just because of the remarkably high murder-count, but because the place is full of clergy. John Strange himself is a de-frocked and extremely disheveled priest who inhabits a dingy house with bricked-up windows, lit only by scores of flickering candles yet evidently with an electricity supply to keep going the computers which he and his friends purport to use as they investigate psychic phenemona. As he goes about his work, people come up to him and say “I can tell that you’re a clergyman.” But you want to say, “How?” Perhaps it’s because nearly everyone else in his town is one. There’s a nurse who looks perpetually worried (no wonder in view of the company she keeps), and who makes it plain that she’s a nurse by wearing her uniform whether or not she’s at work. But apart from her there’s the sinister Canon Black, dressed for the part in cassock and swirling cloak, his worryingly young assistant Doddington (you wonder if he’s old enough to be at school, never mind a priest, but that’s how people always used to think about curates),… and there are at least two other clergymen guesting in each programme who are there for the purposes of first revealing how little they know about life and secondly to have their inevitably gruesome deaths investigated. The Church of England really needs to be worried about this programme: banshees, carriages of death and Bosnian trees made into English skirting boards (it’s just too complicated to explain that one…) are disposing of the Anglican clergy faster than the Bishop of Jarrow can ordain them….
And that’s why we’re here today… Not because of the sterotypes of clergy who inhabit second-rate television programmes, Cluedo boards and the imaginations of mystery writers. But because of this latest person to be ordained as a priest in the Church of God. After Ian’s ordination yesterday in Durham Cathedral with all the splendour of the occasion, the glory of the building, the wonderful music,… we’re back here at St. Cuthbert’s this morning to do what the Church is called faithfully to do. Sunday by Sunday, week by week, we take bread and wine to recognise Christ in our midst and to see ourselves for what we truly are… Christ’s people, called to service in the world, nourished by his body and his blood. Today, for the first time as a priest, Ian takes that bread and wine, so that they may become for us the body and blood of Christ; he does it to enable us to see ourselves for what we are; he does it not to show us who he, Ian Waugh, is… but to show us who Christ is.
Today is the Feast of St. Peter the Apostle. There’s no better saint to celebrate at the time of an ordination than Peter. Because Peter is the disciple who shows us most clearly what it means to follow Christ. It’s Peter who is among the first to hear the call of Jesus, to leave his nets and to follow him. He it is who can say that he has given up everything for the sake of following Jesus. It’s Peter who pre-eminently combines loyalty, boldness, perception and love for Jesus… with rashness, frailty, fear and betrayal. It’s Peter who is perhaps the most obviously human of all the disciples, wearing his heart on his sleeve, so ready to serve and so quick to make mistakes; and it’s Peter who knows above all what it means to be accepted in spite of it all, to be loved, to be forgiven, to be given the second and third chance.
“Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” Jesus poses the question to the disciples and they’re not slow to give an answer. They tell him that some people think he’s John the Baptist back from the dead, or Elijah, Jeremiah or one of the other prophets. But this is text-book stuff, theory, the sort of thing you learn from books or maybe even in ordination training. Jesus doesn’t really want to know what other people think. When Jesus speaks it’s to put us on the spot: “But you, who do you say that I am?” And it’s Peter who gives the answer: “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” It’s Peter who sees who Jesus truly is, and who isn’t afraid to say it. It’s Peter who will spend the rest of his life telling people about it. It’s Peter who will have to show people who Jesus is by living out his discipleship – finally even by giving up his own life.
“Who do you say that I am?” And it’s Peter who answers. “You are the Messiah… you are the Christ.” “Messiah” is simply the Hebrew word for the Greek word “Christ.” In English it translates literally as “anointed one.” In ancient Israel – as in our own country’s coronation service – the king was anointed with oil as a sign of being chosen for his particular task. To call Jesus the Messiah or Christ was for Peter to recognize the special-ness of Jesus, that by his very being Jesus brings God into our human picture. But to recognize Jesus for who he is means we have to recognize also who we are. Simon Peter recognizes that Jesus is the Christ, and tells him. And Jesus tells him who he is: not just Simon, as he has been hitherto known, but “you are Peter”… literally “the rock”. The Christian faith can be built up only if there are people like Peter who can provide a foundation on which to build. And that is the remarkable thing – that God can build, using people like Peter. Peter, who says that he will follow Jesus wherever he will go, and then tells him, he can’t go to Jerusalem where he will meet his death. Peter, who says that he will stick with Jesus to the end, and who then betrays him three times when he is on trial for his life. Peter, who by the Sea of Galilee will find the risen Christ again putting him on the spot, asking “Do you love me?” Peter, having his call to discipleship re-affirmed as Jesus tells him “Feed my sheep.” And there he sees that in the end, we shall be saved by love.
Peter recognizes that Jesus is the Christ, the anointed one of God. He looks to see who truly Jesus is, and finds his own identity. As St. Augustine puts it, Peter gets a name derived from the word for rock, not vice versa; and in the same way a Christian is named after Christ. The Christian is to reveal who Christ is. The priest who is anointed with oil by the bishop at his ordination is to show who the anointed one of God truly is. With Ian as our new priest, we have some one else who can help show us who Jesus is. And we need to pray for Ian as he carries on his own journey to discover what it is to be for other people. That’s at the heart of the priest’s task and calling. To be there.
It’s not an easy task. There are so many stereotypes and expectations. So much Ian may himself wish to do that just isn’t possible. I’m always struck by the Bishop’s words to those who are about to be ordained, words which are something of a warning, though all the more important because they are so true: “Because you cannot bear the weight of this ministry in your own strength, but only by the grace and power of God, pray earnestly for his Holy Spirit. Pray that he will each day enlarge and enlighten your understanding of the Scriptures, so that you may grow stronger and more mature in your ministry….”
Yesterday and today are the big days in any priest’s life. Yesterday, ordination in the magnificent setting of a cathedral that brings to a climax all the years of preparation for priesthood. Today, the taking of bread and wine for the first time as a priest – the first time so special, but the beginning of a continuing ministry to reveal who Christ is. And then there’ll be tomorrow… For Ian it’ll be a matter of back to school, back to teaching and marking books and setting educational attainment targets. But that’s Ian’s calling too. That’s the way Ian will continue to go about making his Christian calling real, and still more so as a priest. To be who he is. To be faithful to Christ. To be for others. To be so that others may see who Christ is.
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Being Human. Is that a possibility?
 Trinity 9 – Eucharist – 17.viii.2003
The Revd. Martin Jackson
Proverbs 9.1-6;
Ephesians 5.15-20;
John 6.51-58
In today’s New Testament reading, St. Paul writes to the Christians of Ephesus in terms which sum up, for many people, what they think religion is about:
“… be careful how you live… the days are evil. So do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. Do not get drunk, for that is debauchery…”
Religion is so often seen as something which tells you what not to do: do not be foolish… do not get drunk… So perhaps it comes as a bit of a surprise to people to read less well-known parts of the Bible like the Book of Proverbs. Here we find not just a collection of writings on how to live wisely. Wisdom itself (or more properly herself) is made into a person who speaks to us. And she says – as we read today – “Come, eat of my bread, and drink of the wine I have mixed. Lay aside immaturity, and live, and walk in the way of insight.” Wisdom waylays people and seeks to persuade them to follow her – and people learn wisdom by looking at what they are doing day by day; not by wishing they were someone else or seeking to believe six impossible things before breakfast, but by asking what it is to be human. Wisdom’s call is to find her in the eating and drinking of life – in the everyday, and in the feast of celebration.
And then we have Jesus’ words in today’s Gospel: “eat my flesh and drink my blood.” These words must have had rather more impact for his original audience than for us who perhaps talk rather too automatically about receiving the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist. For the first Jews to hear Jesus speak like this, there was no Holy Communion in which bread symbolized the body of Jesus and wine his blood. Perhaps we need to think of how offensive the words might have sounded – how easily the first Christians did attract accusations of cannibalism as they spoke of sharing in the body and blood of Christ. There’s no doubt that the early Christians did speak in these terms. And when they did, they looked back to what Jesus had told them, and knew also his presence with them to be a reality as they met together to share bread and wine as he had told them. Jesus has taken bread at the Last Supper and said, “This is my body… do this in remembrance of me…” He’d taken the cup of wine, and told them, “This is my blood of the new covenant… do this in remembrance of me…” And he would be with them whenever they did it.
But perhaps our attention has shifted more to Jesus’ talk of his body and blood, and away from the context in which Jesus originally spoke. And what Jesus originally talked about, he did. He shared bread and wine with people. He fed the hungry crowds who came out to him in their thousands. He was to be found with people at parties, even changing water into wine when it had run out. Jesus’ way of proclaiming the Kingdom of God was quite startling. Not a religion of what not to do. Not a faith which begins in talk. But a way of living that starts in action, and in the stuff of everyday living. Jesus himself spoke of how difficult some of his hearers found his ways, when he made the contrast between himself and John the Baptist:
For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say ‘ He has a demon’; the Son of man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Look a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax-collectors and sinners!’ Yet wisdom is vindicated by her deeds.
We’re back to talk about wisdom – and where she is to be found. I keep looking… One of the things I do to try to make myself think is to go along to a group which meets in Durham called “Claret and Chips.” It’s a group of clergy and lay people who meet every couple of months. The group has the name because we drink – if not claret – at least red wine. Though we don’t eat chips… the chips are “chips” of information or wisdom which we seek to share. So every time we meet, a member of the group gives a paper which we all listen to and then (constructively we hope) discuss. My aim is to listen, learn and say as little as possible, so I wasn’t too bothered to miss the last meeting when it was being decided who would produce the seminar papers for the next 12 months – at least I haven’t had to offer anything to cause me all the work that will entail, I’d thought. That is until I’d got back from holiday to find the group convenor had written to say what I’d missed, and in his letter to write: “… we thought we might ask you to respond to the Doctrine Commission Report, Being Human. Do you think this might be a possibility?” Hard to say no when the request comes in writing and you’re offered a choice of five dates – I should have gone to the meeting after all. The especially daunting thing about the request is that the convenor is himself the consultant to the Church of England Doctrine Commission which produced the report. But what I found interesting – and my starting point if I decide to say yes – is the syntax of his letter. Can I respond to the report, Being Human? Do I think this might be a possibility? In one sense it’s a question of whether or not I can do the job. But in another it’s the fundamental question: Being Human – is this possible? How humane can we be in our religion?
I’ve not read the Doctrine Commission report yet, so I can’t tell you what it’s members have to say about Being Human. But what I’d say again and again is that humanity is at the heart of the Christian faith. And it needs to be a warm humanity. Is our faith one which looks first to Puritanism or to a spirit of rejoicing? So often we look at our Bibles and come away feeling we need a spirit of moral determination or simply depressed and frustrated after we’ve read the outcome of St. Paul’s struggles with his Pharisaism – all the things I must avoid doing… But look in the Gospels and we see the Jesus who rejoices in everyday life, who takes delight in the people he meets, who goes out to parties with the publicans and sinners – and accepts the hospitality of the Pharisees even though (or, perhaps, especially because) his presence will be a disturbing presence.
Christian faith is something to be lived. It needs to be learned as well, of course – and wisdom is to be found in books, even in reports of the Church of England’s Doctrine Commission. But it’s not something simply to be left on – or even lifted from – the printed page. It needs to be drunk in, digested, appreciated for what it is. “Come, eat of my bread,” calls Wisdom in our OT reading, “ and drink of the wine I have mixed.” That group, Claret and Chips, of which I’m a member, offers wine with a purpose – to encourage relaxation and friendship so as to bring out understanding. We need to drop our defensiveness is we’re to drop the pre-conceived ideas of what God may be saying to us.
And there’s much scriptural justification for wine drinking. The prophet Isaiah gives us a picture of a heavenly kingdom where God will prepare,
a banquet of rich fare for all the peoples,
a banquet of wines well matured and richest fare,
well-matured wines strained clear…
Notice how the mention of rich fare and matured wines gets repeated! It’s a call to a wonderful party. But of course the original mention in scripture of the “bread from heaven” refers to the manna in the wilderness. God provides us not only with a future hope, but with daily sustenance – a daily ration, nourishment for the day.
Jesus calls us to eat of his flesh and drink of his blood. And perhaps we need to be warned against taking the words too literally. The promise that we meet with Christ here in this Eucharist is the assurance of his Real Presence in the Sacrament. Literalism would be cannibalism. We take the bread of the Eucharist for our nourishment, and rejoice in the wine of celebration. To receive the body and blood of Christ is to open ourselves to the whole person – and to know that Christ meets us as whole people. The way of Christ is to come, the Son of God, in human flesh. He shares in all that we are. And he meets us where we are. Being Human. Is that a possibility? If it’s possible for God, then it needs to be essential for us.
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Avoidance Tactics and the Church
 10th Sunday after Trinity - Eucharist – 24.viii.2003
The Revd. Martin Jackson
Joshua 24.1-2a, 14-18;
Ephesians 6.10-20;
John 6.56-59
The priest-theologian, Joseph Fortuna, describes a near encounter he had on the streets of New York. A near-encounter, because he actually avoided it... One day, he was hurrying along, not wanting to be late for an appointment, when he saw ahead of him a man he recognised as one of the many homeless people of his neighbourhood, a man just waiting for the opportunity to stop him, ask for money, hold him up with conversation that would get neither of them anywhere. He didn’t want to be delayed,… and then he saw his opportunity. He was beside the Cathedral - so instead of carrying on along the street, he nipped in through the side door, dashed past the altar, and then exited at the other end of the nave. Fortuna felt very pleased with himself - he knew just how much time he might have wasted if he’d been held up in pointless talking.
At least he was pleased with himself until he reflected on what he’d done. He’d seen someone who would come to him in need and then, in his own words, he’d “gone through the Church to avoid the poor.” Literally and metaphorically… He knew this man to have real needs, but he’d excused himself by saying he couldn’t really do anything to help, and he evaded his responsibility by physically hiding in the shelter of the Cathedral. The Church had given him the means of avoiding this man. What did that say in the light of Christ’s words about the nature of God’s judgment: “I was hungry and you gave me food,... thirsty and you gave me drink,... a stranger and you welcomed me,... naked and you clothed me.... just as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.”
The fact is, there are lots of excuses we can make to save us from the demands of our Christian faith - excuses which are perfectly respectable for us as members of the Church. The Church itself provides us with excuses. Because the Church needs its members to give responsibly, even sacrificially, to be able to maintain its ministry, to provide for the upkeep of its buildings – our own parish has a four-figure deficit, and our diocese is hundreds of thousands of pounds in the red. But what of all the other demands upon us? The needs of the poor, provision for the wider community, the demands of justice. Do we find that in a sense we avoid them by going through the Church? Jesus was scathing about the people in his own community who said that all their time, money and energy were bound up with their religion. He condemned the Pharisees who said that their money was dedicated to God, and made that into an excuse to refuse the duty of supporting their own families. “In this way,” Jesus said, “you disregard God’s command to follow your own teaching.” Or we might just keep our faith so isolated from the realities of daily life, that we fail to see where it should lead us. Instead of being a means to guide us and support us in the hardships of life and the demands of other people, we turn religious practice into a refuge from those very demands!
Or maybe we don’t. Thank goodness that there is such a sense of being a part of a wider community in this place, that the church’s resources are not there simply to be clung onto, but to be shared. That means our buildings, our time, our care, and the understanding we have because we are Christians.
I’ve said all of this because I think we always have to be on our guard. Don’t miss the wood for the trees, goes the old saying. For the last five Sundays we’ve been following through just one chapter of St. John’s Gospel, and to concentrate so much on so little strikes me as a very real danger. John chapter 6 begins with the feeding of the 5,000 – with five loaves and two fish. But then the next four weeks’ worth of readings have been about what it means to talk of Jesus as the bread of life. One week of faith in action; followed by four weeks of commentary,... even worse – of sermons and sermonising. Are we any the wiser at the end of it? What good did it do Jesus’ disciples? This is a chapter of the Bible that starts with the crowds in their thousands, and finishes with the disciples complaining that “This teaching is difficult...” and voting with their feet. They seem to have gone away in droves, till Jesus finds himself asking the Twelve, “Are you going to go as well?” Just how many of them get the point?
The answer of Simon Peter on behalf of the disciples who do stick with Jesus is one about faith and truth: “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life... you are the Holy One of God.” But how much could any of them really understand? I’m left with the feeling after so long concentrating on just one chapter of the Bible that we can easily feel it just leads us round and round in circles. There’s lots we can say about it, but where does it all lead? Isn’t this what most people today wonder about religion in general?
We need to relate our faith to what is going on outside the walls of our churches. “Take up the whole armour of God,” St.Paul exhorts his readers in today’s epistle. But it’s not just for protection against all the troubles around us. Much more we need to be vulnerable to the problems of the world, not to avoid them but to be ready to enter into the midst of them. St. Paul bids us take up weapons not for battle but for peace; and the armour of God is not the clothing of defensiveness so much as the means of entering into the midst of the world’s sorrow. Our call is not to triumphalism but to solidarity.
And that starts here within the walls of our churches, at the altar. Jesus feeds the crowd of thousands with the bread they need to keep them from hunger. He calls himself the bread of life, on whom his people are to feed. But here in church, the sharing of the bread and wine have become also a matter of discipline, something more than the means by which we are fed and spiritually nourished; it’s become the sacrament from which people are excluded until formally admitted, the means by which the Christian is separated from those outside the Church.
We have to ask, is this what Jesus intended? “Do this in remembrance of me,” he said as he took bread and wine at the Last Supper. So it’s right that week by week we share this sacrament in obedience to his command. But not so that we turn ourselves into a holy huddle. Rather so that we are given the food we need for the journey, which is to take Christ out into the world. With manna, God fed the Israelites in the wilderness – not so that they could stay there, quite content to pick it up every day and do nothing else. It was food for them on the journey, as God pointed them to the Promised Land. And with the food we receive at the altar, we are pointed to the demands of God's kingdom.
And remember that it is bread – the most basic of foods, a staple in satisfying hunger, a foretaste of the heavenly banquet, but also the sign of what is most essential in the life of the world.... The bread we offer in the Eucharist is also the bread of human labour, and the bread without which the poor starve. The connection was realised powerfully in the conversion of Bartolome de las Casas. At the beginning of the 16th century he spent 12 years with the armies of the conquistadors in the Caribbean. He was the first priest to be ordained in the New World, and he was rewarded for his services when he was given a band of Indians to work for him. He writes of himself that he “was very concerned and busy with his harvests... sending his ... Indians to work in the mines, to dig for gold, and to sow the crops, taking as much advantage of them as he could.” Until one day he read some words from the Book Ecclesiasticus:
To offer a sacrifice from the possessions of the poor
is like killing a son before his father’s eyes.
Bread is life to the destitute,
and it is murder to deprive them of it.
... the man who cheats a worker of his wages sheds blood.
For Bartolome these words meant a complete change of life. The bread he offered at the altar must be first of all life for the people he exploited. As a priest he recognised he could no longer celebrate the Eucharist... as long as his livelihood was won at so hard a cost for others. Before he could return to the altar he first had to let his band of Indians go free, and then he began a prophetic ministry in Cuba, Santo Domingo, back in Spain and throughout the West Indies. People “who heard him were amazed and even horrified by what he said to them.” He showed that the Gospel they heard each Sunday had to be put into practice each day of the week.
So it is for us if we take seriously what Christ says of himself and what we do here. “I am the bread of life,” he tells us. And to meet with Christ we take bread which is life for the world. This bread points us in one direction to a heavenly hope. But when we see where it comes from, the labour of those who produce it and the hunger of those denied it, this same bread relates our calling as Christians to every part of everyday life. Perhaps in some ways the most important words of the Eucharist are those which come last, because they show us the direction we are to take:
Go in peace to love and serve the Lord.
In the name of Christ. Amen.
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The Cross and Christ's Call to his People
 13th Sunday after Trinity - Holy Cross Day
Eucharist after the licensing of Rosie Junemann – 14.ix.2003
The Revd. Martin Jackson
Isaiah 50.4-9a;
James 3.1-12;
Mark 8.27-38.
I’ve pondered quite deeply which reading from Scripture to use for our Gospel today. Normally it’s no problem. Sunday by Sunday the Lectionary tells us which readings to use. But today is not only the 13th Sunday after Trinity. It’s also Holy Cross Day – or the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross to give its full title. And today as well we celebrate Rosie Junemann’s licensing yesterday in Durham Cathedral. And I realize that I’m really spoilt for choice.
I’ve actually stayed with the regular Sunday readings. Those words of Jesus cannot speak more powerfully about the centrality of the Cross in our Christian faith: “If anyone would be a follower of mine, let him take up his cross and follow me.” This is at the heart of Christian vocation. To know that the decision to follow Jesus cannot be taken without the readiness for sacrifice. And it shouldn’t be a hollow choice. You can take that decision only after you’ve recognized who Jesus is. Peter has just said it for all the disciples. When there are so many opinions as to the significance of Jesus – teacher, healer, good man, madman, prophet – it’s Peter who says, “You are the Messiah.” “You are the Christ!” Unless Jesus is recognized as the one who can make a change in every part of our lives, then there’s little point in following him. Because the Cross is a reality on the journey we are called to make with him, whether it’s carrying that cross, stumbling over it, or knowing it as a potential destination for the disciple as well as the Master.
But the Cross is central in Christian faith not only to cause fear and to remind us of the reality of suffering. The Gospel reading which is actually given for today’s Feast of the Holy Cross is from St. John’s Gospel Chapter 3: … “just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.” This is the hope of salvation which we recognize when we look on Jesus. And this is the message to be proclaimed in faith. The crosses in our churches are not a mere matter of decoration. The huge cross over our chancel screen looms there to tell us, “Look up, and see that Christ is lifted up and dies to bring us life.” It’s the message Rosie is called to proclaim by her preaching – and all of us by our lives. And I’ve found myself hearing again and again Jesus’ words – elsewhere in St. John’s Gospel – “I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” St. John tells us, “he said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die.” But it’s also, I think, a rather wonderful image which speaks hope to the world that all people might be drawn by the love of Jesus who so allows himself to be lifted up for the world to see…. If only we would look! But where?
Yesterday in Durham Cathedral, I realized that I was seeing how this can be. There we were for the Readers’ annual service. And so many people were there for the same reason as us – to support a fellow member of their congregation as he or she (and it was 90% “she”) was licensed to the office of Reader. So there was excitement in a huge building with its nave full and further visitors milling at the back. The setting itself couldn’t be more magnificent. And the whole service had a sense of being big: well-attended, long(!), but most importantly big as an occasion with a sense of purpose and the feeling which people brought in their hearts – commitment on the part of the new Readers, love and care for those making that commitment on the part of the congregation. And it was as I looked at that congregation that I could see something of what Jesus meant by those words, “I will draw all people to myself.” It was at the time of Communion. I got to sit near the front so nearly everyone who went up to the altar for Communion went past me. And what a mixture they were! Not just the big hats and Sunday suits which have stereotyped Anglican church-goers (and I’ve nothing against either!). Not just the middle-aged and elderly. Not just the middle-class and educated. But a cross-section such as you’d rarely see anywhere else. Young people – some of them quite bemused, I suspect – but there nonetheless… including the jeans-clad navel-barers, the ring-pierced and the wearers of tattoos. Those who were still younger: the babies who’d added their voice to the offering of worship – and a rather larger toddler full in her grandfather’s arms, and I watched him carry her asleep down the length of the nave to the altar and back again without her stirring, yet picking up her blessing on the way. So many people who were there simply because of their love and care for each other: the men behind me who talked throughout the Communion (but at least they were there!); people who were sat well back in the congregation and could have been doing something else, except it was more important to be there for a partner who was a Reader at the front; people whose support for one another was not just emotional but physical – as I watched so many elderly people slowly supporting an infirm husband or wife on that long journey down the nave; and a young man with Down’s Syndrome – apparently on his own, but in an environment where there was all the trust and care he could need. All these people, and those Readers too, whose so many gifts we were there to celebrate – not least in our pride for Rosie, and our pleasure at the part she played by reading in the service.
And seeing all these people gathered together, I heard again those words, “I, when I am lifted up, will draw all people to myself.” Could you find such a diverse group of people anywhere else? Our simply being there showed how the call of Jesus not only needs but is worked out. Look to Christ, and see how already he is calling you.
From us Jesus seeks that confession of faith made by St. Peter, “You are the Christ.” It’s the Reader’s task – Rosie’s task – to proclaim this. And we need to recognize what a challenge this is. St. James – in the words with which our second reading today begins – warns his people, “Not many of you should become teachers… for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness.” Because we cannot preach the Gospel lightly.
I was sorry that no one at yesterday’s service mentioned that it was the Feast Day of St. John Chrysostom (but you all you knew that anyway?…). In a way he could be the patron saint of preachers. The name Chrysostom itself was a sort of nickname, meaning “golden-mouthed.” Because he was famed for his oratory. He wanted to lead the simple and austere life of a hermit-monk in his home region of fourth century Asia Minor. But the people wouldn’t let him, and by popular acclaim he was made Patriarch of Constantinople, the leader of the Eastern Church. He was renowned as a theologian and preacher, he’s commemorated now as one of the four “Doctors” of the Eastern Church, he lived a life of prayer – but above all he knew the way of the Cross. It was the faith which he preached. But that preaching finally had to go further than his skill with words. He saw that faith had to be put into practice. And his integrity in preaching made him enemies not only amongst the clergy whose laxity he rebuked, but finally also at the imperial court – including the Emperor. Preaching the faith for St. John was not simply a matter of using a silver tongue or – in his case – a golden mouth. It was living with the consequences for what he said. And twice he was deposed from his bishopric, and finally he died as a result of a forced march into exile. Perhaps his grim fate is why he wasn’t mentioned yesterday.
But nevertheless his life and faith are a reminder that our preaching needs to be worked out in practice – in people’s lives, and first of all our own. For Rosie, and for any Reader, their calling to preach the message of Christ is to be undertaken in the context of pastoral care. Already we are discussing her “working agreement.” Not only how often she will preach, but the supervision and planning she will need, her readiness to continue to learn, what she will give of her time in care for other people, and what she will need in time for herself, her family, her daily work and for prayer.
So Rosie begins her task, which is the task of any Christian minister, to preach Christ and him crucified. And to do so knowing that he is lifted up to draw all people to himself.
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Remembrance Sunday
 Sermon for Remembrance Day
3rd Sunday before Advent
Sunday 9 November 2003
Rosie Junemann, Reader of St. Cuthbert's
Jonah 3. 1-5,10
Mark 1. 14-20
War, as we know to our cost at the present time, is not something that happens only inside history books. Fifty-two British servicemen have lost their lives in Iraq this year. But even the two great wars of the last century are not about faceless, nameless men seen in faded sepia photographs. War is much more immediate than that. It’s about real people – real flesh and blood men and women - with real human feelings – fathers and daughters, sisters and sons.
My grandfather was only 17 years old when war was declared in 1914. It wasn’t very long after that that he went off to fight in the trenches. He was a tall, slim, fair haired young man – a farmer’s son brought up in the peaceful countryside of North Yorkshire. What were his hopes, his expectations, his fears as he left home and family to go to France?
Maybe he set off with a sense of keen anticipation. Do you remember that feeling - days when you’ve woken up with a thrill of excitement – like a child on Christmas morning? Or maybe feeling a tinge of fear mixed with the excitement – your first day at school or university, or starting out in a new job?
Another young soldier who set off to fight in France in 1914 – William Colyer of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers - wrote, of his own experience:
“I felt restless, excited, eager to do something desperate for the cause of England. And then the impulse came, sending the blood tingling all over my body: why not join the Army now? A great and glorious suggestion. It might not be too late. Girls smiled at me, men looked at me with respect, the bus drivers wished me luck and refused to take money for my fare, and everybody made way for me, as being on the King’s business.”
Maybe my grandfather had that same sense of setting off on a great adventure – of being called to a heroic task.
In the early days of the First World War, how long did the sense of elation, of excitement last for those young men? Did they feel the same in the mud of the trenches? How could they have felt the same as they stared death in the face? The First World War poet Siegfried Sassoon wrote of the ‘ashen-grey masks of the lads who once were keen and kind and gay’. How soon did keenness turn to fear, kindness to anger, gaiety to despair?
Cyril Lomax, an army chaplain in the Durham Light Infantry and a former priest in the Diocese of Durham - who served in France in 1916 - wrote:
“The reality is too ghastly. There is none of the dignity of death – the flies and the rats see to that. The impression left upon one is one of waste. Indeed the whole country would admirably do as a picture of Hell. All that is pleasant and comely and decent and comfortable has been rent and torn away: all that is sordid and ghastly and terrible remains.”
In such circumstances you can’t help but admire and respect the courage and persistence and determination of those who continued to fight, who continued to serve their country. It is estimated that 13 million people died in that war. For those who survived, youthful ambition and passion must have matured into purposeful resolve and dogged endurance.
James Lovell, who is 104 years old, is the only one of the 27 surviving veterans of the First World War to have won a medal for bravery. He was quoted in The Times just a few days ago as saying: “I am not a hero…..I was just doing what was asked of me and just doing my job.” Only 35 out of 160 members of his company survived the war.
In today’s Gospel reading four more young men, Simon and Andrew, James and John, are called to leave their daily work, their security, their homes and families. The gospel writer doesn’t tell us much about their feelings, their thoughts, their hopes. What we do know is that they had no hesitation. They’re setting off on a great adventure, too, and no doubt – like our soldier – they are ‘restless, excited, eager to do something desperate for the cause’. They’re ‘on the King’s business’, too!
Simon, Andrew, James and John were ordinary, simple men called by Jesus in the service of God’s kingdom. Most of the Jews of that time eagerly awaited the day when the prophecies of the Old Testament scriptures would be fulfilled and God would send a Messiah – his Anointed One – a king – to liberate Israel from their hated Roman oppressors. “Listen” said Jesus. “Here’s good news for you! That time has now arrived. The kingdom of God is close at hand.” But the message that Jesus proclaimed was not what the Jews expected! His task was not that of a military or political leader who would lead Israel to territorial freedom. No, his mission was to open up the minds and hearts of people to the possibility of a new life, a new world, where God himself would rule. It is God himself who is to be the King – and not just of Israel but of the whole world.
We pray the words so often that we perhaps don’t really hear them any more: “Thy kingdom come; thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” But God’s kingdom will not come on earth without something of an upheaval – some immense effort on our part.
Jesus tells us that in order to be a part of that kingdom we must first ‘repent’. Our new Bishop Tom Wright makes the point that if you were to walk down the street of any town or village with any Christian background and were to call out ‘Repent’, people would think you meant ‘Give up your sins’. But Jesus is saying so much more than that. Repentance is about making a complete change. Turn right around, stand on your head, look at the world in a radically new way! Turn away from all the things that distance us from God, and welcome with open arms all the good gifts that God has provided for us. Gifts like love and joy and justice - and peace.
As Martin wrote in the November Parish Magazine, this is a season of remembrance. On All Saints Day we remembered those like Simon and Andrew, James and John, who have laboured and suffered in the service of God. On All Souls Day we remembered our own loved ones who have passed away. And today, on Remembrance Day, we are asked to remember the dead, not just of the First World War, but of all the conflicts of the last 100 years.
But all of our remembrance today is worth little if we treat it as merely a passive act of recollection, an empty ritual. Remembrance requires effort – an act of calling people out of the past into the present, of clothing them with thoughts and feelings, of hearing their voices speak to us, of naming them. Remembrance is for a purpose. It enables us to recall and celebrate the idealism and hope with which many men and women have gone to war. It helps us to learn from the past, to rededicate ourselves to the cause of peace. If we share the vision of the prophet Isaiah of a world where “Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more”, we must respond to the call of Jesus, too, to a different kind of active service, to work for the building of God’s Kingdom. Like those men and women who are called to serve their country at times of war, and like Simon, Andrew, James and John, we too are ordinary people called to do extraordinary things.
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The stones with which we build
 2nd Sunday before Advent Year B
Eucharist – 16.xi.2003
The Revd. Martin Jackson
Daniel 12.1-3;
Hebrews 10.11-25;
Mark 13.1-8
It’s the last week of Jesus’ life, but the disciples don’t know it. Yet when they come to Jerusalem they must sense that things are different; that they’ve reached a special stage in a journey that has brought them from their home region of the Galilee, finally to the Holy City of Jerusalem. Perhaps they’re visiting this magnificent city - which is the capital of their nation - for the first time. And suddenly so much is happening.
Throughout this year, we’ve been following St. Mark’s account of the story of Jesus. It’s the shortest of the Gospels, and in only 10 chapters St. Mark tells the whole story of how Jesus had appeared as if from nowhere, how he’d startled the crowds from the time of his Baptism with a call to a new way of life, how just 12 men had followed him on the road, leaving behind all that they had counted dear. And in just a few spare details given by St. Mark, we find lives transformed, sick people healed, people from the margins of society knowing themselves to be accepted by God, sinners forgiven, the respectable rebuked, and crowds astonished at what they see and hear in the authoritative teaching of this man and his miracles. All that in ten chapters. Which leaves just six more to take us to the end of the Gospel.
And these six chapters deal entirely with the last week of Jesus’ life. Things start to move so fast. Jesus enters Jerusalem, hailed as a king but riding on a donkey. He drives money-changers from the Temple, upsetting the tables on which they deal. He curses a fig tree and it withers. And now… teaching after teaching spills out, leading to his celebration of the Passover, the most sacred night of the Jewish year, with his disciples. Then the next day he will be dead.
The disciples must have wondered just what was going on. We can see them gasping in astonishment, trying to take it all in, in today’s Gospel. The country bumpkins have come to town, and they stare in amazement at the Temple. What huge stones in such massive buildings! They’ve never seen anything like it. But Jesus replies. “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.” How can that be? The whole religious life of the Jewish nation centres on that Temple. Destroy it, and it must be the end. And when we read these words of Jesus with the benefit of hindsight, we know that the eventual destruction of the Temple did mark an end. Demolished by the Romans in AD70, just 40 years after Jesus spoke these words, the Temple’s destruction meant the end of the Jewish nation, the dashing of its people’s hopes, and exile for the best part of the next 2,000 years. The throwing down of the stones of the Temple would be for them the end of the world as they knew it.
And probably we invest rather more than we might acknowledge in buildings.
Yesterday I went to the first session of the new Diocesan Synod, where we met for the first time with Bishop Tom, our new Bishop of Durham. We began with a Eucharist in Christ Church, Gateshead, just round the corner from the Civic Centre, where our Synod meeting was to take place. It’s a church I’d never been in before, rather larger on the inside than you might expect from outside. I was quite surprised at just how big it was. I’d heard that the people had struggled to keep it open, but it’s really quite magnificent. Built 130 years ago, it’s been well-kept, and a meeting room built into one of the aisles shows a sense of purpose and the ability to raise a fair bit of money in the not too distant past. But after greeting us, the priest-in-charge informed us that it was likely to be the last occasion we would all meet there together. In the time it’s been there, the population around the church has changed considerably, and it now finds itself at the heart of an Orthodox Jewish population of 5,000. They have their own distinctive way of life, and have brought something special into that community. But meanwhile the congregation of faithful Anglicans has dwindled to a handful. It’s too much of a struggle to carry on. They don’t want people to travel in from other parishes to keep them going, because those people ought to attend their own churches. So with heavy hearts the people of Christ Church have petitioned for the closure of their building. Its work is done…
I wondered how we at St. Cuthbert’s would have felt if we were in their position. What a great building we have! Look at these large stones from which it’s made. And how we have struggled to keep it going over the last 150 years! Just this week we’ve had steeplejacks working inside the spire as they secured the bell-frame which had worked itself loose of the mortar in its anchor-points (so no bells for the next four weeks as the cement dries out – but tell your neighbours you’ll hear them ring out again on Christmas Eve). There’s so much effort goes into the maintaining of this building which is so well loved. But perhaps sometimes we’ve got to pinch ourselves and ask, just why? The answer is hopefully obvious. Because here we make the offering of prayer and praise before God, because here we are renewed in our faith, encouraged in our understanding, made ready for the service of others and fitted for life in God’s wider world. Yet the sad fact is that in so many cases when a church has been closed, the people have drifted away from the practice of their faith; they’ve lost their focus and their sense of the familiar – they don’t know where to look when their discipleship should tell them that the task of following and proclaiming Christ goes on.
Jesus tells the disciples that the stones of their Temple will be torn down, … and they can’t take it in. It’s so central to their understanding of their religion and the life of their nation, even though they’re perhaps only now seeing it for the first time. Surely this means the end of everything – something apocalyptic. But Jesus tells them, No, “the end is still to come.” There’s more to be done for God’s purpose to be fulfilled.
Our faith can use buildings, but it doesn’t depend on them. When Synod met after yesterday’s service, we heard about plans for a new Diocesan Mission Fund. The hope is to stimulate new action in making the Gospel real, and money will be made available for a whole range of initiatives. Immediately I started wondering if we could apply for some cash for the Church Hall to make it more accessible to even more people. But the sad answer is “no.” Grants for building work are specifically excluded. You might get money from the fund for rental, but not for anything permanent. And part of the reasoning is that we have enough struggling to do with buildings already. Fresh thinking, and fresh ways of living out the Christian life are what they’re looking for.
Not that we’re being told to give up on buildings. Just to see them for what they are. And I remembered how a wise older member of a parish in which I worked in Sunderland told me about the church where once he’d been churchwarden. It had all got too much. So many houses around the church had been demolished, the population had moved away, there were other churches not too far away which the congregation could attend. Finally they agreed with the Bishop that they would leave the church. But it wouldn’t be made redundant. Instead they held their final service, gave thanks for what they’d been able to do in that building, and then watched the bulldozers move in the next day. They were free to move on, and had never looked back. He’d become churchwarden in his new parish with an even bigger building to maintain, but what mattered was the sense of purpose.
The challenge to us is to find in our relationship with Christ a sense of purpose. A relationship is more than a building. The Temple had stood so that sacrifices could be offered there, day in, day out. But with Christ, the one true and eternal sacrifice is made. We don’t need that Temple any more. The Bishop had reminded us of Christ’s words in his challenge, “which of you, before setting out to build a great tower, will not first count up whether he can meet the cost?” Is a great tower what we need? Sometimes – as one of my colleagues pointed out in the course of our meeting – the need is for two towers. It needs one tower on each side of the river to support the Tyne Bridge, less than a mile from where we were meeting. When we build, we need to build boldly, with a sense of purpose; and with a vision and calling which keep us in relationship with the one who truly is the Builder.
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The Feast of Christ the King
 The Revd. Ian Waugh
Eucharist - Sunday 23rd November 2003
Revelation 1.4-8;
John 18.33-37
Jesus answered, “You say that I am a King. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.”
Jesus was born to live the truth. In the first chapter of John’s Gospel the author says, “ And the word became flesh and lived among us, …full of grace and truth.” Do we really understand the truth that Jesus came to live out for us? Have we stopped for a moment to consider the outrageous significance of the forgiveness that is inherent in God’s grace?
This is ‘Christ the King’ Sunday. Christ is referred to as King because of the Kingdom of God, or the reign of God, that began when Jesus Christ came to dwell among us. It is interesting that next week, Advent, heralds the time when we begin to consider the infant Jesus, but our preparations begin as we ponder upon the significance of the confrontation between Jesus and Pilate.
Pilate would be all too aware of Kings and the manner in which they operated. Power and autocracy were their main attributes. Pilate was certainly more concerned about the possibility that Jesus may have had these earthly powers and was ready to use the political might of Rome to eradicate him if he was a threat. The irony of the situation was that Jesus was not a physical or political threat to Rome for as he himself said, “My kingdom is not of this world.”
Looking at our world over this last week it is tempting to point at recent events and recognise that they fulfil the prophecies of Jesus in last weeks Gospel reading from Mark. “For nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom” were the words of Jesus to his disciples. Here we are two thousand years after the events in Pilate’s residence and the men of violence are still with us. Even today there is real significant that Jesus was about to be executed as a criminal upon the cross, but how can this horrifying death be the truth that Jesus came to live among us?
John’s Gospel contains many clues about what this ‘truth’ is, that Jesus speaks about. In Chapter eight Jesus confronted the Pharisees with the words, “If you continue in my word, you are truly disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” Jesus invites them to follow him to the cross and to the events of Easter morning.
However Jesus, in the same chapter, also reminded the Pharisees that they are from the Devil who is a liar and murderer and has no truth in him. Jesus was trying to inform the Jewish leaders, and us, that some aspects of our society are built upon violence and fighting. They were blinded by their role in the violence and could not understand his words. We too must accept that in our world violence and conflict have become the manner in which some violent people impose their will on others. The ‘father of lies’ is still at work among us and continues to operate through the Pilate’s, Caesars, and Pharisees of our time. If we refuse to accept this we fail to hear the words of Jesus, and we don’t stand in the truth! As Jesus stands before Pilate his words make a great deal of sense. The Jewish and Roman authorities are about to prove Jesus right and put him to death!
This is the truth Jesus came to live among us: one man dies and others go free. Jesus died for Israel, for Pilate, for the world, and for us! If you consider this to be outrageous then ponder the amazing nature of God’s grace. God confronts the lies with grace and forgiveness, but Jesus was not coming to force people to see the truth! This is no earthly grace that Jesus brings. As his words to Pilate confirm, “my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over.” In fact all of his followers had deserted him and he tackled the mob on his own.
Jesus did not attempt to implant his message by revolutionary action but he did bring with him a revolution of gigantic proportions. The difference with Jesus and his revolution was that it was about life and how to obtain it, not death. God’s grace and forgiveness can be given to the Pilates of this world, and what is so amazing is that it is given even when they stand in the lies. Jesus showed us the truth on the cross and uttered those words of forgiveness that can help the whole world to stand out of the lies and into the truth!
It is well worth remembering that Jesus calls us to stand in the truth. Baptism is the means by which we are born again into that grace and truth. It is essential to stand in the truth of forgiveness and grace if we wish to help others to stand beside us! I truly believe that we should acknowledge and give thanks to Jesus as ‘Christ the King’.
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