An address given at the ecumenical service of thanksgiving for the Lough Derg Yacht Club Regatta, on Sunday 16th August 2009.
Have you ever been out on the water at night in a small boat in a gale? I expect many of you have been. Were you frightened? I can tell you, when I was, I was terrified!
It was a wild night and I was a teenager. To get back to the cottage in Luska bay where we were staying, my mother and I had to row less than a hundred yards - but it was blowing a gale, with a big sea running, and waves breaking. With one oar each, side by side, we pulled against the wind, inching forward, sometimes being thrown sideways as the wind caught the side of the boat, shipping water all the while. We made several attempts and were thrown back, but eventually we made it to calmer waters, and arrived safely on the other shore. By that time I was shaking like a leaf, terrified. My mother probably was too, though she never let me see it. It taught me a lesson I’ve never forgotten: respect for the water – it’s not our native element, and we underestimate the power of wind and wave at our peril.
Today’s reading from St Matthew’s Gospel (Matthew 14:22-33) brings this memory back to me. The same event is recorded in Mark’s and John’s Gospels. I feel I can identify with the disciples, even though I don’t think I was in real danger, as they must have been. The Sea of Galilee is renowned for the fierce and dangerous storms that suddenly appear out of nowhere, and abate just as quickly. I see it in my minds eye as rather like Lough Derg – it’s much the same size: about 40% bigger in area and wider, but not so long. We all know how quickly a squall can blow up on Lough Derg, but Galilee's position, 200 metres below sea level in the Jordan rift valley, can make theirs much more ferocious.
The disciples had got into trouble in one of Galilee’s notorious storms - and they had no RNLI or Coastguard to help them!
Immediately after feeding the 5000, Jesus sent the disciples off in a boat, while he told the crowds to go home, and went off up the mountain to pray by himself.
The disciples had set out in the evening light, unaware of the coming storm. Mark tells us that Jesus ‘saw that they were straining at the oars against an adverse wind’. I imagine the night was bright and moonlit for Jesus to be able to see the little boat.
‘Early in the morning’, Matthew tells us, Jesus ‘came walking toward them on the sea’. The Greek words translated as ‘early in the morning’ literally mean ‘in the 4th watch of the night’. In those days, with no clocks, time during the night was counted in 4 watches of 3 hours each. So sometime between 3 and 6 am, Jesus, walking on the high ground after praying, saw the little boat struggling through waves and spray, and came to help.
But what is this about Jesus walking on the sea?
Should we imagine Jesus far from land, in the middle of the lake, walking on the water over the waves? This is how most Christians have imagined the scene, I suppose, and many artists have depicted it. But we should be aware of a possible problem with translation here. The Greek words translated as ‘on the lake’ could equally mean ‘towards the lake’, or ‘at the lake’, that is by the lake shore.
The truth is that there are two perfectly possible interpretations of this passage. The first describes Jesus miraculously walking on the water in the middle of the lake. In the second, the disciples’ boat is driven by the wind to the shore, Jesus comes down from the mountain to help when he sees them struggling in the moonlight, and Jesus walks through the surf towards the boat. Both interpretations are equally valid, I think. Some will prefer one and some the other.
When the disciples saw Jesus they were terrified, believing him to be a ghost, until Jesus spoke to them, saying, ‘Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid’.
However we interpret the Greek, the significance to the disciples is perfectly clear: In the hour of their need, Jesus came to them, to help and reassure them.
Only Matthew adds the detail about Peter trying to walk on the water too.
It’s a charming vignette, and so in character for Peter, from the other things we know of him. He was brave and impetuous, but he often found it hard to live up to his good intentions. Remember, it was Peter who swore undying loyalty to Jesus only to deny 3 times that he knew him the next day.
When Jesus said ‘Come’, Peter bravely ‘got out of the boat, started walking on the water, and came toward Jesus’. But his courage failed him and he started to sink. ‘Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him, saying to him, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?”’
Whether Jesus was miraculously walking on water, or whether he was walking through the surf on the shore to help the disciples in the boat, Peter surely learned this: It is not always easy to follow Jesus, but Jesus is always there to catch him when he stumbles and sinks.
Finally, is there anything we can learn from this story, 2000 years on?
Well, surely the same things that Peter and the disciples learned! They were privileged to know Jesus the man and sail the Sea of Galilee with him. But we are privileged too to know the spiritual reality of the living Christ.
In life the wind is often against us. Life for every one of us sometimes feels like a desperate struggle, with ourselves, with our circumstances, with temptations, with sorrow, with the consequences of decisions made. But none of us need struggle alone. In the hour of our need, Jesus will come to us as he did to the disciples long ago, to help and reassure us. Just listen for his voice saying, ‘Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid’!
If we seek to follow Jesus, we will find like Peter that it is not always easy. It will test our faith at times. Our faith will not always be enough and we will have doubts. But when we feel ourselves going under, if we cry out ‘Lord save me’, Jesus will be there for us, just as he was for Peter, reaching out his hand to catch us. Jesus is always there to save us when we are sinking. Just listen for his voice saying, ‘You of little faith, why did you doubt?’
Monday, 17 August 2009
Sunday, 9 August 2009
Living Bread
An address given at Templederry and Killodiernan on 9th Aug 2009, Trinity 9
One of life’s greatest pleasures is to share a meal with loved ones and friends, isn’t it?
It is for me, and I'm quite sure it is for you too – good food, good drink and good company! And it must have been so for Jesus as well, since so often in the Gospels we find Jesus sharing meals with others. He shared table fellowship not just with his disciples and friends, but also with tax collectors and sinners, and with Pharisees and scribes – with all kinds of people.
When Jesus himself broke bread as the host at a meal, he had a special way of doing so – first he took the food, then he gave thanks or blessed it, and finally he broke it and shared it out. It was so distinctive that only when the disciples on the road to Emmaus saw it did they recognise Jesus, after his death and resurrection. Today’s reading from John’s Gospel (John 6:35, 41-51) comes just after Jesus shares a meal with others on a grand scale – the feeding of the 5000 – a gigantic outdoor picnic. There too in his special way, he took, blessed and shared the five barley loaves and two fishes to feed the crowd.
We can recognise this same sequence of actions – taking, blessing and sharing - in the Last Supper as recorded by Matthew, Mark and Luke. And that of course is the model for Holy Communion - the Eucharist - which we with all other Christians continue to celebrate in his memory. The Last Supper can be seen as an acted parable – and so, I think, can all the other meals Jesus shared in his Eucharistic way of taking, blessing and sharing.
But what does the acted parable of Eucharist mean? In today’s reading John opens out for us the spiritual significance of Eucharist for Jesus himself, in Jesus’s own words. The last verse (John 6:51) sums up what Jesus meant:
First, what does Jesus mean when he says, ‘I am the living bread that came down from heaven’?
Jesus says ‘I am’ many things on different occasions, among them ‘I am the good shepherd’, ‘I am the door’, ‘I am the way’, and ‘I am the true vine’. He is of course talking in metaphors, about his relationship with those he is talking to, but also his relationship with God, who he calls his loving Father.
Jesus has just been responding to hecklers in the crowd who want him to display earthly power as Moses did by sending bread from heaven - manna - to feed the people in the wilderness, so naturally the metaphor Jesus uses on this occasion is about bread.
As Jesus tells the hecklers, it is God who sent the manna, just as it is God who sends the food we all need to nourish our bodies. But Jesus wants his listeners to look beyond the physical to the spiritual. God also provides what we need to nourish our spirits – by analogy with the bread which feeds our bodies, this is bread from heaven.
And Jesus knows that his loving-father God is calling him, by his every action and every word, to offer this spiritual nourishment to all people. So he uses metaphor to describe himself as the living bread which comes down from heaven.
The hecklers in the crowd knew quite well who Jesus was - the son of Joseph the carpenter from nearby Nazareth. They chose not to understand the metaphor – and they ridiculed the idea that Jesus came down from heaven.
Second, what does Jesus mean when he says, ‘Whoever eats of this bread will live for ever’?
I suppose people since the dawn of humanity have dreaded death and had fantasies of living for ever. But we all know, as Jesus did, that our physical bodies are doomed to die and decay.
Yet for Jesus this is not what truly matters. What does matter is our relationship with God. It is those who believe that God is like a loving Father, enfolding and protecting them, that are released from dread of their own mortality. So he says, ‘Very truly, I tell you, whoever believes has eternal life’. Eternal life is surely another metaphor for a loving relationship with God.
And more than that, Jesus knows his own importance. Working in and through him, God reveals his own nature as loving Father to those who listen. Those who feed on Jesus’s words and actions, as on bread from heaven, have eternal life.
'This is eternal life,’ says Jesus, after the Last Supper in John's version, ‘that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.’
Third, what does Jesus mean when he says, ‘The bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh’?
Jesus goes on to equate bread from heaven with his own body, his own very flesh. He does so again at the Last Supper, when he says ‘Take, eat, this is my body which is given for you’, words we still hear every time we attend Holy Communion, when the priest consecrates the Eucharistic bread.
What a shocking thing to say, with that suggestion of cannibalism! It certainly upset the hecklers in the crowd. And it also upset many of Jesus’s disciples, who, we are told, ‘turned back and no longer went about with him’.
And it still causes problems for some of Jesus’s disciples today. On the one hand we have those who accept - perhaps with difficulty - the medieval doctrine of transubstantiation, whereby in some miraculous way the essence of the Eucharistic bread is actually transformed into the essence of Jesus’s flesh. On the other, we have those who are disturbed by the idea that the Eucharist involves eating human flesh.
I think that perhaps some Christians interpret these words of Jesus too literally, as the hecklers in the crowd did. For here surely Jesus is extending the metaphor of bread from heaven, and to understand it we need to look behind the literal words.
Christians have wrestled to understand Jesus’s metaphor of his flesh as bread ever since. They have come up with many different ideas – and perhaps this is part of the strength of the metaphor, that it can be understood in so many ways. For myself, I wonder if the point is simply this - that Jesus is expressing the depth of his commitment to God’s saving work for us. He is ready to give up his life, his human existence, his very flesh for it. For that is what he did for us on the cross.
These words of Jesus are difficult, and you’ve sat patiently through my reflections on them, poor as they are.
But why don’t you take a little time to ponder them for yourself? Take out your copy of the Bible and read John Chapter 6. Jesus's words may speak to you in a quite different way to how they speak to me. And that is alright – it is alright if you disagree with me - metaphors often bear many different meanings at the same time. God will surely grant you the metaphors that are right for you.
To finish, let's listen again to what Jesus says:
One of life’s greatest pleasures is to share a meal with loved ones and friends, isn’t it?
It is for me, and I'm quite sure it is for you too – good food, good drink and good company! And it must have been so for Jesus as well, since so often in the Gospels we find Jesus sharing meals with others. He shared table fellowship not just with his disciples and friends, but also with tax collectors and sinners, and with Pharisees and scribes – with all kinds of people.
When Jesus himself broke bread as the host at a meal, he had a special way of doing so – first he took the food, then he gave thanks or blessed it, and finally he broke it and shared it out. It was so distinctive that only when the disciples on the road to Emmaus saw it did they recognise Jesus, after his death and resurrection. Today’s reading from John’s Gospel (John 6:35, 41-51) comes just after Jesus shares a meal with others on a grand scale – the feeding of the 5000 – a gigantic outdoor picnic. There too in his special way, he took, blessed and shared the five barley loaves and two fishes to feed the crowd.
We can recognise this same sequence of actions – taking, blessing and sharing - in the Last Supper as recorded by Matthew, Mark and Luke. And that of course is the model for Holy Communion - the Eucharist - which we with all other Christians continue to celebrate in his memory. The Last Supper can be seen as an acted parable – and so, I think, can all the other meals Jesus shared in his Eucharistic way of taking, blessing and sharing.
But what does the acted parable of Eucharist mean? In today’s reading John opens out for us the spiritual significance of Eucharist for Jesus himself, in Jesus’s own words. The last verse (John 6:51) sums up what Jesus meant:
Today I’m going to share with you my own reflection on these words.‘I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live for ever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.’
First, what does Jesus mean when he says, ‘I am the living bread that came down from heaven’?
Jesus says ‘I am’ many things on different occasions, among them ‘I am the good shepherd’, ‘I am the door’, ‘I am the way’, and ‘I am the true vine’. He is of course talking in metaphors, about his relationship with those he is talking to, but also his relationship with God, who he calls his loving Father.
Jesus has just been responding to hecklers in the crowd who want him to display earthly power as Moses did by sending bread from heaven - manna - to feed the people in the wilderness, so naturally the metaphor Jesus uses on this occasion is about bread.
As Jesus tells the hecklers, it is God who sent the manna, just as it is God who sends the food we all need to nourish our bodies. But Jesus wants his listeners to look beyond the physical to the spiritual. God also provides what we need to nourish our spirits – by analogy with the bread which feeds our bodies, this is bread from heaven.
And Jesus knows that his loving-father God is calling him, by his every action and every word, to offer this spiritual nourishment to all people. So he uses metaphor to describe himself as the living bread which comes down from heaven.
The hecklers in the crowd knew quite well who Jesus was - the son of Joseph the carpenter from nearby Nazareth. They chose not to understand the metaphor – and they ridiculed the idea that Jesus came down from heaven.
Second, what does Jesus mean when he says, ‘Whoever eats of this bread will live for ever’?
I suppose people since the dawn of humanity have dreaded death and had fantasies of living for ever. But we all know, as Jesus did, that our physical bodies are doomed to die and decay.
Yet for Jesus this is not what truly matters. What does matter is our relationship with God. It is those who believe that God is like a loving Father, enfolding and protecting them, that are released from dread of their own mortality. So he says, ‘Very truly, I tell you, whoever believes has eternal life’. Eternal life is surely another metaphor for a loving relationship with God.
And more than that, Jesus knows his own importance. Working in and through him, God reveals his own nature as loving Father to those who listen. Those who feed on Jesus’s words and actions, as on bread from heaven, have eternal life.
'This is eternal life,’ says Jesus, after the Last Supper in John's version, ‘that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.’
Third, what does Jesus mean when he says, ‘The bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh’?
Jesus goes on to equate bread from heaven with his own body, his own very flesh. He does so again at the Last Supper, when he says ‘Take, eat, this is my body which is given for you’, words we still hear every time we attend Holy Communion, when the priest consecrates the Eucharistic bread.
What a shocking thing to say, with that suggestion of cannibalism! It certainly upset the hecklers in the crowd. And it also upset many of Jesus’s disciples, who, we are told, ‘turned back and no longer went about with him’.
And it still causes problems for some of Jesus’s disciples today. On the one hand we have those who accept - perhaps with difficulty - the medieval doctrine of transubstantiation, whereby in some miraculous way the essence of the Eucharistic bread is actually transformed into the essence of Jesus’s flesh. On the other, we have those who are disturbed by the idea that the Eucharist involves eating human flesh.
I think that perhaps some Christians interpret these words of Jesus too literally, as the hecklers in the crowd did. For here surely Jesus is extending the metaphor of bread from heaven, and to understand it we need to look behind the literal words.
Christians have wrestled to understand Jesus’s metaphor of his flesh as bread ever since. They have come up with many different ideas – and perhaps this is part of the strength of the metaphor, that it can be understood in so many ways. For myself, I wonder if the point is simply this - that Jesus is expressing the depth of his commitment to God’s saving work for us. He is ready to give up his life, his human existence, his very flesh for it. For that is what he did for us on the cross.
These words of Jesus are difficult, and you’ve sat patiently through my reflections on them, poor as they are.
But why don’t you take a little time to ponder them for yourself? Take out your copy of the Bible and read John Chapter 6. Jesus's words may speak to you in a quite different way to how they speak to me. And that is alright – it is alright if you disagree with me - metaphors often bear many different meanings at the same time. God will surely grant you the metaphors that are right for you.
To finish, let's listen again to what Jesus says:
'I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live for ever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.’
Sunday, 12 July 2009
Guilty Conscience
I preached this sermon for children (of all ages!) at Templederry and Nenagh, and a variant for adults at Killodiernan, on the 5th Sunday after Trinity, 12th July 2009.
Children, today I’m going to talk especially to you, so I hope you will listen, or at least please try to! And those of you who are grown up can listen in, but I’m sure you already know everything I’m going to say!
I’m going to let you in on a guilty secret – I'm a thief! Or at least I used to be...
When I was about 6 years old, in the village where I lived with my parents, I used to go to Mrs Pullan’s shop with my pocket money to buy sweets. And sometimes, when I thought she wasn’t looking, when her back was turned, I would take a few extra and put them in my pocket. I stole them! I knew it was wrong, but I just couldn’t stop myself. I felt awful, so that I didn’t enjoy them as much as I thought I would, but I still went on doing it. I tried my best not to think about it, and I didn’t want anybody to know, because I didn’t want to admit to myself or to anyone else what a bold, naughty boy I was. That’s the first time I can remember having a guilty conscience - but I’ve felt guilty about much worse things since then.
We all know what a guilty conscience is, don’t we? It’s when we know we have done something bad, or not done something good that we should have done, and we just can’t stop thinking and worrying about it. It’s a horrid feeling. And we all suffer from it, no matter how young or old we are, because try as we might to be perfect - or even just ordinarily good - every one of us does what we know is wrong more often than we care to admit. That’s just as true for me as it is for you.
Well, in the reading we’ve just listened to, we heard about how King Herod had a really, really guilty conscience. He had done something very wicked indeed – he had ordered his soldiers to cut off John the Baptists head. And he had done this even though he thought John was a good and holy man and knew he didn’t deserve to die. So later, when Herod heard people talking about Jesus, he thought that Jesus must be John the Baptist come back from the dead as a ghost to haunt him.
Let’s remind ourselves again of the story about how Herod came to do this wicked thing.
King Herod had married a new wife, who was called Queen Herodias. And the trouble was that she was already married to Herod’s brother. It wasn’t right for Herod to take her from his brother and marry her himself. But John the Baptist, bravely, told Herod that what he had done was very wrong – it was against the law. Herod didn’t want John going about making trouble for him by telling everyone this, so he had John arrested and put him in prison.
How do you think Queen Herodias felt about John? She hated him; she really, really hated him! She wanted very badly to have him killed. But she couldn’t do that, because she knew Herod liked listening to John and respected him, even if Herod didn’t always like what John said.
Then at last came the perfect time for Queen Herodias to get her own way. It was Herod’s birthday, and there was a big party, with lots of important people there. Now Herodias had a daughter who was called Salome. And after Herod and all the important people had finished eating Salome came in to dance for Herod and his guests. She must have been a pretty good dancer because when she finished, everybody clapped. Herod was so pleased with her dancing that he did a very silly thing. Can you remember what he did? He told Salome that she could have anything she asked for – even half the kingdom! And all the important guests heard him say it! Salome didn’t know what to ask for, so she went to Herodias her mother, and asked her, ‘What should I ask the King to give me?’ Can you guess what Herodias answered? She said to her daughter, ‘Ask for the head of John the Baptist!’
King Herod was very sad and quite upset, because he really didn’t want to have John killed. But he had just told Salome she could have anything she asked for – absolutely anything - and he did not want to look weak or silly in front of all the important people he had invited to his party. So he gave the order, and the soldiers chopped off John’s head. They brought it on a big serving plate and gave it to Salome, who gave it to her mother Herodias.
It’s a horrid story, isn’t it? All the characters are pretty nasty! Except John the Baptist, who was brave.
Herodias wasn’t nice at all to use her daughter to take such an awful revenge. Salome asked for a truly yucky present - a bloody severed head - though perhaps she was too young to be blamed for doing what her mother told her. But it was Herod who gave that wicked order to behead John the Baptist, even though he knew it was wrong. Let’s think about him to see what lessons we can learn.
What do you think he should have done differently that day?
Well, one thing would have been not to make that silly promise! If Herod hadn’t promised to give Salome anything she asked for, she couldn’t have asked for John’s head, and everything would have been different.
This is the first lesson: we must always be very careful what we promise!
But even after Herod had made that silly promise, he didn't have to give that wicked order! Herod was a coward, wasn’t he? He knew it would be wrong to give Salome what Herodias had told her to ask for. But he was afraid – afraid that his important guests would think he was weak or silly if he didn’t – so he did it anyway. If Herod had been a braver man, as John was, not a coward, he would have listened to his conscience – that's the little voice inside each one of us which tells us what is right and what is wrong. He would simply have said, ‘No, that would be wrong, ask for something else’, and John would have been saved.
The second lesson is this: we must always be brave and do what we know is right no matter what.
So Herod did that wicked thing, and he suffered from a guilty conscience.
We are not told if he ever felt sorry for what he had done. But if Herod had listened to Jesus, he would have known what to do when he felt guilty for doing such a bad thing. Because Jesus tells us that if we own up to doing wrong, if we say we are sorry and really mean it, and if we try our very best to be better in future - then God, our loving Father in Heaven, will forgive us. In other words, if we repent of our sins, God will forgive us. We will no longer feel bad, and we can be happy living a new and better life.
So what about my own guilty conscience over stealing sweets when I was a child? Years later, when I was a student and thought I was grown up, I went back to the village and called on Mrs Pullan in her shop. She invited me in for tea and a chat, and when I came to leave, do you know what she did? She took a brown paper bag and filled it with all kinds of sweets, and gave it to me, to take away! Suddenly I was 6 again, and I felt really badly about stealing her sweets long ago. So I told her what I had done and said I was sorry. Then, with a laugh, she said, ‘You don’t think you were the only little boy who nicked sweets, do you? Of course I knew what you were doing. And of course I forgive you!’
Children, today I’m going to talk especially to you, so I hope you will listen, or at least please try to! And those of you who are grown up can listen in, but I’m sure you already know everything I’m going to say!
I’m going to let you in on a guilty secret – I'm a thief! Or at least I used to be...
When I was about 6 years old, in the village where I lived with my parents, I used to go to Mrs Pullan’s shop with my pocket money to buy sweets. And sometimes, when I thought she wasn’t looking, when her back was turned, I would take a few extra and put them in my pocket. I stole them! I knew it was wrong, but I just couldn’t stop myself. I felt awful, so that I didn’t enjoy them as much as I thought I would, but I still went on doing it. I tried my best not to think about it, and I didn’t want anybody to know, because I didn’t want to admit to myself or to anyone else what a bold, naughty boy I was. That’s the first time I can remember having a guilty conscience - but I’ve felt guilty about much worse things since then.
We all know what a guilty conscience is, don’t we? It’s when we know we have done something bad, or not done something good that we should have done, and we just can’t stop thinking and worrying about it. It’s a horrid feeling. And we all suffer from it, no matter how young or old we are, because try as we might to be perfect - or even just ordinarily good - every one of us does what we know is wrong more often than we care to admit. That’s just as true for me as it is for you.
Well, in the reading we’ve just listened to, we heard about how King Herod had a really, really guilty conscience. He had done something very wicked indeed – he had ordered his soldiers to cut off John the Baptists head. And he had done this even though he thought John was a good and holy man and knew he didn’t deserve to die. So later, when Herod heard people talking about Jesus, he thought that Jesus must be John the Baptist come back from the dead as a ghost to haunt him.
Let’s remind ourselves again of the story about how Herod came to do this wicked thing.
King Herod had married a new wife, who was called Queen Herodias. And the trouble was that she was already married to Herod’s brother. It wasn’t right for Herod to take her from his brother and marry her himself. But John the Baptist, bravely, told Herod that what he had done was very wrong – it was against the law. Herod didn’t want John going about making trouble for him by telling everyone this, so he had John arrested and put him in prison.
How do you think Queen Herodias felt about John? She hated him; she really, really hated him! She wanted very badly to have him killed. But she couldn’t do that, because she knew Herod liked listening to John and respected him, even if Herod didn’t always like what John said.
Then at last came the perfect time for Queen Herodias to get her own way. It was Herod’s birthday, and there was a big party, with lots of important people there. Now Herodias had a daughter who was called Salome. And after Herod and all the important people had finished eating Salome came in to dance for Herod and his guests. She must have been a pretty good dancer because when she finished, everybody clapped. Herod was so pleased with her dancing that he did a very silly thing. Can you remember what he did? He told Salome that she could have anything she asked for – even half the kingdom! And all the important guests heard him say it! Salome didn’t know what to ask for, so she went to Herodias her mother, and asked her, ‘What should I ask the King to give me?’ Can you guess what Herodias answered? She said to her daughter, ‘Ask for the head of John the Baptist!’
King Herod was very sad and quite upset, because he really didn’t want to have John killed. But he had just told Salome she could have anything she asked for – absolutely anything - and he did not want to look weak or silly in front of all the important people he had invited to his party. So he gave the order, and the soldiers chopped off John’s head. They brought it on a big serving plate and gave it to Salome, who gave it to her mother Herodias.
It’s a horrid story, isn’t it? All the characters are pretty nasty! Except John the Baptist, who was brave.
Herodias wasn’t nice at all to use her daughter to take such an awful revenge. Salome asked for a truly yucky present - a bloody severed head - though perhaps she was too young to be blamed for doing what her mother told her. But it was Herod who gave that wicked order to behead John the Baptist, even though he knew it was wrong. Let’s think about him to see what lessons we can learn.
What do you think he should have done differently that day?
Well, one thing would have been not to make that silly promise! If Herod hadn’t promised to give Salome anything she asked for, she couldn’t have asked for John’s head, and everything would have been different.
This is the first lesson: we must always be very careful what we promise!
But even after Herod had made that silly promise, he didn't have to give that wicked order! Herod was a coward, wasn’t he? He knew it would be wrong to give Salome what Herodias had told her to ask for. But he was afraid – afraid that his important guests would think he was weak or silly if he didn’t – so he did it anyway. If Herod had been a braver man, as John was, not a coward, he would have listened to his conscience – that's the little voice inside each one of us which tells us what is right and what is wrong. He would simply have said, ‘No, that would be wrong, ask for something else’, and John would have been saved.
The second lesson is this: we must always be brave and do what we know is right no matter what.
So Herod did that wicked thing, and he suffered from a guilty conscience.
We are not told if he ever felt sorry for what he had done. But if Herod had listened to Jesus, he would have known what to do when he felt guilty for doing such a bad thing. Because Jesus tells us that if we own up to doing wrong, if we say we are sorry and really mean it, and if we try our very best to be better in future - then God, our loving Father in Heaven, will forgive us. In other words, if we repent of our sins, God will forgive us. We will no longer feel bad, and we can be happy living a new and better life.
So what about my own guilty conscience over stealing sweets when I was a child? Years later, when I was a student and thought I was grown up, I went back to the village and called on Mrs Pullan in her shop. She invited me in for tea and a chat, and when I came to leave, do you know what she did? She took a brown paper bag and filled it with all kinds of sweets, and gave it to me, to take away! Suddenly I was 6 again, and I felt really badly about stealing her sweets long ago. So I told her what I had done and said I was sorry. Then, with a laugh, she said, ‘You don’t think you were the only little boy who nicked sweets, do you? Of course I knew what you were doing. And of course I forgive you!’
This is the third lesson: if we are truly sorry for the bad things we do, God will forgive us when we ask him to - just as Mrs Pullan forgave me!
I shall finish with a little prayer:
O God our loving Father,
we thank you for the courage of people like John
the Baptist,
who do what is right even when it puts their lives in danger.
Give us the courage to always try to do what is right;
and when we fail
show us how to truly repent, and forgive us.
We ask you in Jesus’s name.
Amen
Sunday, 24 May 2009
Child abuse and the kosmos-world
An address given at Shinrone and Aghancon on the 7th Sunday after Easter, 24th May 2009.
“I see trees of green, red roses too, I see them bloom for me and for you, and I think to myself, what a wonderful world.”
I apologise for my bad singing! But I’m sure you all recognise this song, perhaps best known sung by Louis Armstrong, with his gravelly voice. And it’s true isn’t it! We all know what a truly wonderful world God has made for us to live in - a veritable Garden of Eden, if only we would learn to look after it and use it rightly.
John the Evangelist uses the Greek word ‘kosmos’, meaning ‘world’, no less than 13 times in today’s Gospel reading. But this is not the beautiful material world which God made, and which God saw ‘was very good’, as the 1st chapter of Genesis puts it. I shall call what John has in mind the kosmos-world, to distinguish it from God’s world. It is a place of spiritual death, filled with souls cut off from God: a place where greedy people trample on each other to grab more for themselves; a place where violent people kill and torture other people; a place where cynical people despise what is good and true and beautiful. And we all know the reality of that kosmos-world too, don’t we!
For John the very opposite of the kosmos-world is eternal life, as he tells us in the preceding verses, ‘And this is eternal life, (to) know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent’.
In the Gospel reading (John 17:6-19), Jesus prays to his Father for his disciples.
It is the night of the last supper, after he has washed the disciples feet, just before he goes out with them to be arrested by soldiers and police led to him by Judas Iscariot. Jesus is praying for his disciples. But surely he is also teaching them, for he does so out loud, in their hearing.
Jesus’s words are dense with meaning - perhaps because he knows this is his last opportunity to speak to his disciples before he is arrested, tried and executed.
It would take a very long sermon to tease out all the nuances of his prayer. So I shall pick out just three points, all to do with the relationship between Jesus’s disciples and John’s kosmos-world.
It’s hard to see evil for what it is in the abstract. It comes in so many disguises. I think it helps to focus on a concrete example.
In the week following the shocking report of the Commission of Enquiry into Child Abuse, let’s focus on the evil of child abuse. The abuse was perpetrated in Industrial Schools and other institutions run by religious orders, by a minority - but far too many - professed religious. It is now clear that the evil extended far beyond the abuse itself. It extended to their colleagues and superiors who colluded in it by failing to stop the perpetrators. It extended to organs of our Irish State which failed to exercise their duty of care. And it extended throughout Irish society, to all of us who knew there was something wrong, but could not bring ourselves to say so publicly, thus allowing the evil system to fester for decades.
What I find almost incomprehensible is how so many who professed to be Jesus’s disciples could have gone so wrong – but they did. And that must be a lesson to us all not to underestimate the forces of evil. We need God’s grace to protect us from being overcome by them.
So to sum up:
“I see trees of green, red roses too, I see them bloom for me and for you, and I think to myself, what a wonderful world.”
I apologise for my bad singing! But I’m sure you all recognise this song, perhaps best known sung by Louis Armstrong, with his gravelly voice. And it’s true isn’t it! We all know what a truly wonderful world God has made for us to live in - a veritable Garden of Eden, if only we would learn to look after it and use it rightly.
John the Evangelist uses the Greek word ‘kosmos’, meaning ‘world’, no less than 13 times in today’s Gospel reading. But this is not the beautiful material world which God made, and which God saw ‘was very good’, as the 1st chapter of Genesis puts it. I shall call what John has in mind the kosmos-world, to distinguish it from God’s world. It is a place of spiritual death, filled with souls cut off from God: a place where greedy people trample on each other to grab more for themselves; a place where violent people kill and torture other people; a place where cynical people despise what is good and true and beautiful. And we all know the reality of that kosmos-world too, don’t we!
For John the very opposite of the kosmos-world is eternal life, as he tells us in the preceding verses, ‘And this is eternal life, (to) know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent’.
In the Gospel reading (John 17:6-19), Jesus prays to his Father for his disciples.
It is the night of the last supper, after he has washed the disciples feet, just before he goes out with them to be arrested by soldiers and police led to him by Judas Iscariot. Jesus is praying for his disciples. But surely he is also teaching them, for he does so out loud, in their hearing.
Jesus’s words are dense with meaning - perhaps because he knows this is his last opportunity to speak to his disciples before he is arrested, tried and executed.
It would take a very long sermon to tease out all the nuances of his prayer. So I shall pick out just three points, all to do with the relationship between Jesus’s disciples and John’s kosmos-world.
- Jesus’s disciples are in the kosmos-world, but they do not belong to it. God has given the disciples to Jesus, in the sense that God has made them able to respond to the word of God which Jesus has given them. They have been brought to know and believe the truth that Jesus is sent from God. That is what sets them apart from the kosmos-world, even while they remain in it.
- The kosmos-world hates Jesus’s disciples because they do not belong to it. Those mired in evil - in cynicism, violence and greed - cannot co-exist with those who live by God’s values. Jesus has protected his disciples from this evil, but now he is leaving them. So Jesus calls on his Father to continue to protect them, when he is no longer there to do so in the flesh.
- Jesus does not ask God to take his disciples out of the kosmos-world. Just as God sent Jesus into the kosmos-world, so Jesus sends his disciples into it. God sent Jesus to redeem the kosmos-world from within. Jesus sends his disciples to continue his redeeming work in the kosmos-world.
The kosmos-world is a metaphor for the evil we encounter all around us, day by day.
It’s hard to see evil for what it is in the abstract. It comes in so many disguises. I think it helps to focus on a concrete example.
In the week following the shocking report of the Commission of Enquiry into Child Abuse, let’s focus on the evil of child abuse. The abuse was perpetrated in Industrial Schools and other institutions run by religious orders, by a minority - but far too many - professed religious. It is now clear that the evil extended far beyond the abuse itself. It extended to their colleagues and superiors who colluded in it by failing to stop the perpetrators. It extended to organs of our Irish State which failed to exercise their duty of care. And it extended throughout Irish society, to all of us who knew there was something wrong, but could not bring ourselves to say so publicly, thus allowing the evil system to fester for decades.
What I find almost incomprehensible is how so many who professed to be Jesus’s disciples could have gone so wrong – but they did. And that must be a lesson to us all not to underestimate the forces of evil. We need God’s grace to protect us from being overcome by them.
So to sum up:
- The wonderful world God has placed us in is good. We should rejoice in it, and give thanks for it. But as Jesus’s disciples, we must always be on guard against the evil that spoils it.
- We disciples live amidst evil, but we do not belong to it, because God has given us to Jesus.
- We disciples must be ready to suffer personally when we fight evil and do not collude with it. We should take strength from knowing that Jesus intercedes for us, asking God to protect us from something much worse than suffering – from being drawn into evil ourselves.
- Our task as disciples is to continue Jesus’s redeeming mission. We have been set apart to confront and defeat evil wherever it is found. We must not hide ourselves away like cowards in the face of it.
Sunday, 10 May 2009
Love one another!
An address given on Sunday 10th May 2009, Easter 5, at Templederry & Killodiernan
‘Little children, love one another!’
Rev Patrick Comerford is the Director of Spiritual Development in the CofI Theological Institute, as well as writing a column for Newslink. I’m indebted to him for his reflection on these words in his excellent blog, which is well worth reading – you can find it by Googling his name.
Patrick quotes St Jerome, that great Doctor of the Church writing around 400AD, telling a lovely story about St John the Evangelist. The Evangelist is traditionally said to be the author of the 1st Letter of John, from which our 2nd reading was taken, as well as St John’s Gospel. The story goes like this:
The Evangelist continued preaching even when he was in his 90s. He was so enfeebled with old age that the people had to carry him into the Church in Ephesus on a stretcher. And when he was no longer able to preach or deliver a long discourse, his custom was to lean up on one elbow on every occasion and say simply: “Little children, love one another.” This continued on, even when John was on his death-bed. When he finished, John would lie back down and his friends would carry him back out. Every week, the same thing happened, again and again. And every week it was the same short sermon, exactly the same message: “Little children, love one another.” One day, the story goes, someone asked him about it: “John, why is it that every week you say exactly the same thing, ‘little children, love one another’?” And John replied: “Because it is enough.”
If you want to know the basics of living as a Christian, there it is in a nutshell. All you need to know is, “Little children, love one another.” If you want to know the rules, there they are. And there’s only one. “Little children, love one another.” For John, once you put your trust in Jesus, there is only one other thing you need to know. So week after week, he would remind them, over and over again.
‘Little children, love one another!’
This is precisely the message that John gives us in today’s 2nd reading (1John 4:7-21). And he keeps on repeating it throughout his 1st Letter. 1John is quite short, only 5 pages in my Bible – you might like to take down yours when you get home and read the whole thing.
John tells us that the reason we must love is that God first loved us. God loved us so much that he sent his only Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, into the world to be ‘the atoning sacrifice for our sins’.
What does this talk of an atoning sacrifice mean? We all know our own sins, don’t we? Our inveterate wilfulness – doing what we know we shouldn’t, and not doing what we know we should. That, and our own guilty consciences, cut us off from the love of God. It would be quite wrong to imagine the atoning sacrifice to be a vengeful God taking out our sins on Jesus. Rather Jesus has shown us the way to reconnect ourselves to the love of God despite our sins, through his example of self-sacrificing love, and by teaching us that if we repent God loves us enough to forgive our sins. This is Jesus’s atoning sacrifice, sealed by his victory on the cross. And the cross is a victory, not a defeat, despite what so many at the time believed. Jesus turned the apparent defeat of the cross into victory by his obedience to his Father’s will even unto death. No doubt this is the good news about Jesus that Philip proclaimed to the Ethiopian eunuch in today’s 1st reading (Acts 8:26-40).
John tells us that if we don’t love each other, people we can see and touch, then we surely can’t love God, who we cannot see and touch.
Jesus tells us in John’s Gospel (John 15:12), ‘This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.’ Jesus’s love is not an easy, sentimental kind of love. It’s easy enough to love those who are lovable, isn't it? But Jesus also tells us (Matthew: 5:44), ‘Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you’. That is the sort of edgy love that John reminds us Jesus asks of each one of us.
We should make love our priority. Forget about ego, forget about career. In this time of elections, forget about political divisions. Forget about bankers’ greedy mistakes. Forget about the silly divisions that we constantly let creep into the Church. Forget about likeability too. Love one another. God loves us. We ought to – no, we must – love one another. That’s what it’s all about.
“Little children, love one another … because it truly is enough.”
‘Little children, love one another!’
Rev Patrick Comerford is the Director of Spiritual Development in the CofI Theological Institute, as well as writing a column for Newslink. I’m indebted to him for his reflection on these words in his excellent blog, which is well worth reading – you can find it by Googling his name.
Patrick quotes St Jerome, that great Doctor of the Church writing around 400AD, telling a lovely story about St John the Evangelist. The Evangelist is traditionally said to be the author of the 1st Letter of John, from which our 2nd reading was taken, as well as St John’s Gospel. The story goes like this:
The Evangelist continued preaching even when he was in his 90s. He was so enfeebled with old age that the people had to carry him into the Church in Ephesus on a stretcher. And when he was no longer able to preach or deliver a long discourse, his custom was to lean up on one elbow on every occasion and say simply: “Little children, love one another.” This continued on, even when John was on his death-bed. When he finished, John would lie back down and his friends would carry him back out. Every week, the same thing happened, again and again. And every week it was the same short sermon, exactly the same message: “Little children, love one another.” One day, the story goes, someone asked him about it: “John, why is it that every week you say exactly the same thing, ‘little children, love one another’?” And John replied: “Because it is enough.”
If you want to know the basics of living as a Christian, there it is in a nutshell. All you need to know is, “Little children, love one another.” If you want to know the rules, there they are. And there’s only one. “Little children, love one another.” For John, once you put your trust in Jesus, there is only one other thing you need to know. So week after week, he would remind them, over and over again.
‘Little children, love one another!’
This is precisely the message that John gives us in today’s 2nd reading (1John 4:7-21). And he keeps on repeating it throughout his 1st Letter. 1John is quite short, only 5 pages in my Bible – you might like to take down yours when you get home and read the whole thing.
John tells us that the reason we must love is that God first loved us. God loved us so much that he sent his only Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, into the world to be ‘the atoning sacrifice for our sins’.
What does this talk of an atoning sacrifice mean? We all know our own sins, don’t we? Our inveterate wilfulness – doing what we know we shouldn’t, and not doing what we know we should. That, and our own guilty consciences, cut us off from the love of God. It would be quite wrong to imagine the atoning sacrifice to be a vengeful God taking out our sins on Jesus. Rather Jesus has shown us the way to reconnect ourselves to the love of God despite our sins, through his example of self-sacrificing love, and by teaching us that if we repent God loves us enough to forgive our sins. This is Jesus’s atoning sacrifice, sealed by his victory on the cross. And the cross is a victory, not a defeat, despite what so many at the time believed. Jesus turned the apparent defeat of the cross into victory by his obedience to his Father’s will even unto death. No doubt this is the good news about Jesus that Philip proclaimed to the Ethiopian eunuch in today’s 1st reading (Acts 8:26-40).
John tells us that if we don’t love each other, people we can see and touch, then we surely can’t love God, who we cannot see and touch.
Jesus tells us in John’s Gospel (John 15:12), ‘This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.’ Jesus’s love is not an easy, sentimental kind of love. It’s easy enough to love those who are lovable, isn't it? But Jesus also tells us (Matthew: 5:44), ‘Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you’. That is the sort of edgy love that John reminds us Jesus asks of each one of us.
We should make love our priority. Forget about ego, forget about career. In this time of elections, forget about political divisions. Forget about bankers’ greedy mistakes. Forget about the silly divisions that we constantly let creep into the Church. Forget about likeability too. Love one another. God loves us. We ought to – no, we must – love one another. That’s what it’s all about.
“Little children, love one another … because it truly is enough.”
Sunday, 19 April 2009
Something Happened!
An address given on Sunday 19th April 2009, Easter 2, Low Sunday, at Templederry and St Mary's Nenagh.
Perhaps the most surprising thing about Jesus Christ is that we’ve all heard of him!
So claims John Polkinghorne, an Anglican priest who is also an eminent particle physicist and Professor of Mathematical Physics at Cambridge University, in an article he wrote for the Times of London this Easter.
That first Good Friday it must have seemed that the whole life and ministry of Jesus was a complete and abject failure. He started out so well, speaking such wisdom about the Kingdom of God, and acting with great compassion toward the poor, the sick and the needy. But then it all seemed to fall apart. He got on the wrong side of the religious leaders and the state; he got himself arrested; he was deserted by his disillusioned followers; and he was painfully and shamefully executed. Just another 1st Century messianic pretender, destined to be forgotten like so many others! If the story had ended there, none of us would ever have heard of him!
But we do all know the name of Jesus. He has been a powerfully influential figure for 2000 years. It is why we are here today. What is the reason for this? The answer is that something happened to continue the story.
The writers of the NT describe this something as the Resurrection. They all believe and witness for us that Jesus rose from the dead. This counter-intuitive belief emboldened them to continue his mission, now strengthened by the sense of God’s Holy Spirit working in and through them. The followers of Jesus multiply. Less then 3 centuries later they take over the mighty Roman Empire. And the rest, as they say, is history.
The Resurrection is a mystery. No one is recorded as witnessing the event itself, just the empty tomb. Many disciples, we are told, met the risen Jesus, but there is something strange about the accounts – even his best friends find it hard to recognise him, and he comes suddenly, even through locked doors. These aren’t ordinary meetings, as I might meet you. The gospel writers do not attempt to explain it – for them the fact of it is all that is important. The fact of the resurrection which they experienced is all that matters. I suggest the same should be true for us. We can’t go back in time to study it with our 21st century science. But something happened – something happened which we might as well call what the NT writers called it: Jesus Christ rose from the dead!
Let us look more closely at today’s readings, and reflect on what they tell us about what it is like to be disciples of the risen Christ.
In the gospel reading John 20:19-31 gives an account of the disciples meeting the risen Christ.
On the first day of the week, though the doors were locked, ‘Jesus came and stood among them.’ He shows them his wounds and the disciples rejoice. He tells them, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” Then, ‘he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”’.
One thing that strikes me about this passage is how meeting the risen Christ makes his disciples feel. Jesus would have used the Hebrew word Shalom, which has a rather wider meaning than the English word peace – it also signifies wholeness, wellbeing. When his disciples sense that Jesus stands among them, they feel his peace, they feel whole, they feel good: as we say today, they feel centred. And this enables them to rejoice, no matter how difficult the situation may be – and it’s hard to imagine a situation more desperate than the one they faced after the crucifixion, isn’t it? Huddled together in a locked room in fear of their lives.
A second thing that strikes me is this: as the risen Christ sends his disciples out, he also gives them the strength to continue his mission of self-sacrificing love and service. He breathes his Holy Spirit on them, just as the Father gave him the strength and the Spirit to begin it. I believe Jesus does so in every age.
It was no easier for ordinary men and women of Jesus’s time than it is for us today to believe in the counter-intuitive idea of resurrection. Even Thomas, one of the original twelve, resisted this interpretation of what had happened. ‘Unless I see the mark of the nails … I will not believe’, he says. But when a week later he too meets the risen Christ he is able to say, ‘My Lord and my God!’
Some Christians meet the risen Christ in a personal conversion experience, as St Paul and St Francis did, and as some have done in our own day - but many of us don’t. If you haven’t, don’t worry - remember what Jesus says to Thomas, ‘Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.’
The 1st reading from Acts 4:32-35 tells us about the common life of the earliest Christians.
Time has moved on. Many new believers have joined the small frightened band of disciples who had met the risen Christ behind locked doors. The apostles testify ‘to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus with great power’. All the believers, new and old, are ‘of one heart and soul’, and ‘great grace (is) upon them all’. Following St Paul, we usually think of grace theologically as ‘unearned favour received from God’, but here surely the word has the plain meaning of the original Greek charis (χαρις) – ‘that which affords joy, pleasure, delight, sweetness, charm, loveliness’. It is ‘shalom’. It is how the disciples felt when they heard the risen Christ say ‘Peace be with you’.
These earliest Christians were living as a community sharing everything. ‘No one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common’, we are told, and ‘there was not a needy person among them’.
Some people see this passage as a scriptural endorsement of Communism, but I think that would be a mistake and an anachronism. Communism as a political philosophy developed only in the 19th Century in response to the injustices of industrial capitalism. The circumstances of the tiny group trying to live a life of Christian witness in an obscure province within the classical Roman Empire were quite different.
Perhaps the most surprising thing about Jesus Christ is that we’ve all heard of him!
So claims John Polkinghorne, an Anglican priest who is also an eminent particle physicist and Professor of Mathematical Physics at Cambridge University, in an article he wrote for the Times of London this Easter.
That first Good Friday it must have seemed that the whole life and ministry of Jesus was a complete and abject failure. He started out so well, speaking such wisdom about the Kingdom of God, and acting with great compassion toward the poor, the sick and the needy. But then it all seemed to fall apart. He got on the wrong side of the religious leaders and the state; he got himself arrested; he was deserted by his disillusioned followers; and he was painfully and shamefully executed. Just another 1st Century messianic pretender, destined to be forgotten like so many others! If the story had ended there, none of us would ever have heard of him!
But we do all know the name of Jesus. He has been a powerfully influential figure for 2000 years. It is why we are here today. What is the reason for this? The answer is that something happened to continue the story.
The writers of the NT describe this something as the Resurrection. They all believe and witness for us that Jesus rose from the dead. This counter-intuitive belief emboldened them to continue his mission, now strengthened by the sense of God’s Holy Spirit working in and through them. The followers of Jesus multiply. Less then 3 centuries later they take over the mighty Roman Empire. And the rest, as they say, is history.
The Resurrection is a mystery. No one is recorded as witnessing the event itself, just the empty tomb. Many disciples, we are told, met the risen Jesus, but there is something strange about the accounts – even his best friends find it hard to recognise him, and he comes suddenly, even through locked doors. These aren’t ordinary meetings, as I might meet you. The gospel writers do not attempt to explain it – for them the fact of it is all that is important. The fact of the resurrection which they experienced is all that matters. I suggest the same should be true for us. We can’t go back in time to study it with our 21st century science. But something happened – something happened which we might as well call what the NT writers called it: Jesus Christ rose from the dead!
Let us look more closely at today’s readings, and reflect on what they tell us about what it is like to be disciples of the risen Christ.
In the gospel reading John 20:19-31 gives an account of the disciples meeting the risen Christ.
On the first day of the week, though the doors were locked, ‘Jesus came and stood among them.’ He shows them his wounds and the disciples rejoice. He tells them, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” Then, ‘he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”’.
One thing that strikes me about this passage is how meeting the risen Christ makes his disciples feel. Jesus would have used the Hebrew word Shalom, which has a rather wider meaning than the English word peace – it also signifies wholeness, wellbeing. When his disciples sense that Jesus stands among them, they feel his peace, they feel whole, they feel good: as we say today, they feel centred. And this enables them to rejoice, no matter how difficult the situation may be – and it’s hard to imagine a situation more desperate than the one they faced after the crucifixion, isn’t it? Huddled together in a locked room in fear of their lives.
A second thing that strikes me is this: as the risen Christ sends his disciples out, he also gives them the strength to continue his mission of self-sacrificing love and service. He breathes his Holy Spirit on them, just as the Father gave him the strength and the Spirit to begin it. I believe Jesus does so in every age.
It was no easier for ordinary men and women of Jesus’s time than it is for us today to believe in the counter-intuitive idea of resurrection. Even Thomas, one of the original twelve, resisted this interpretation of what had happened. ‘Unless I see the mark of the nails … I will not believe’, he says. But when a week later he too meets the risen Christ he is able to say, ‘My Lord and my God!’
Some Christians meet the risen Christ in a personal conversion experience, as St Paul and St Francis did, and as some have done in our own day - but many of us don’t. If you haven’t, don’t worry - remember what Jesus says to Thomas, ‘Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.’
The 1st reading from Acts 4:32-35 tells us about the common life of the earliest Christians.
Time has moved on. Many new believers have joined the small frightened band of disciples who had met the risen Christ behind locked doors. The apostles testify ‘to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus with great power’. All the believers, new and old, are ‘of one heart and soul’, and ‘great grace (is) upon them all’. Following St Paul, we usually think of grace theologically as ‘unearned favour received from God’, but here surely the word has the plain meaning of the original Greek charis (χαρις) – ‘that which affords joy, pleasure, delight, sweetness, charm, loveliness’. It is ‘shalom’. It is how the disciples felt when they heard the risen Christ say ‘Peace be with you’.
These earliest Christians were living as a community sharing everything. ‘No one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common’, we are told, and ‘there was not a needy person among them’.
Some people see this passage as a scriptural endorsement of Communism, but I think that would be a mistake and an anachronism. Communism as a political philosophy developed only in the 19th Century in response to the injustices of industrial capitalism. The circumstances of the tiny group trying to live a life of Christian witness in an obscure province within the classical Roman Empire were quite different.
But what we should notice, I think, is this: the disciples of Jesus cared intensely for each other. They were generous; they never forgot that when some do not have enough, everyone must help; they wanted to share what they had, because they loved one another, as Jesus commanded them to do. That is a lesson that we should all learn from them, I think.
So to finish
- Let us all share in Shalom, the peace of the risen Christ – as the first disciples did.
- Let us go out to continue Christ’s mission of loving service in the world, strengthened by the Holy Spirit he breathes into us – as the first disciples did.
- And let us care intensely for one another, and be generous with what God has given us, let us share what we have so that no one is in need – as the first disciples did.
Sunday, 22 March 2009
Mothering Sunday
An address given on Sunday 22 March 2009, Lent 4, at Shinrone and Aghancon.
A Simnel cake - a traditional Mothering Sunday gift
Mothering Sunday is such a lovely opportunity for us to make a fuss of our Mothers, isn’t it?
And if they are no longer with us, to remember them, and to recall how much we owe them. We’ll all be doing so today, I’m sure, and it’s right that we should.
I want to start by reflecting a little on how much I owe my own mother:
- I owe her my very life, of course, as we all do our mothers. She carried me safe in her body for 9 months, and nurtured me, from the time when I was just a bundle of cells until I arrived squalling into the world.
- Then throughout my childhood she was there, to love me as only a mother can, to comfort me when I was hurt or frightened, to encourage me to be brave and to be ‘a useful engine’. And still she nurtured me – even when I was away at boarding school, every fortnight I received a fruit cake in a parcel through the post from her.
- As I grew to adulthood she let me go, to make my own way in the world. But she was still always there to love, to comfort, to encourage, and, yes, to nurture me, whenever I needed it.
- And it was she who taught me the first elements of her Christian faith. One of my earliest memories is of learning my first prayer at her knee: ‘Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, bless the bed that I lie on’.
- I am very blessed to have had such a mother, and I give thanks to God for her. I expect you are too. But we need to remember that not all children are so blessed. And also that there are women who yearn for children who cannot have them.
The Mothering Sunday Tradition
The 4th Sunday of Lent was not originally a celebration of motherhood. From at least the C16th in England, it was the day when people returned to make offerings in their “mother church”, the main church or cathedral of the area. Hence it came to be known as ‘Mothering Sunday’.
If children had moved to neighbouring towns and villages, this would be one of the few occasions when whole families could get together. Remember, not much more than 100 years ago, very many children would be sent away from home to work at no more than 10 or 12 years old.
According to historians, this was the origin of the English tradition that children and young people working away from home should be given the day off on Mothering Sunday, to visit their mothers. I’m not sure if this was an Irish tradition too - we may just have borrowed it from the Church of England!
I imagine that as the children walked along the country roads, the boys would stop and pick a bunch of violets or other flowers as a present for their mother. And equally the girls might bring their mother a present of a cake they had made. Hence the old traditions of bunches of flowers, and the delicious Simnel cake.
That was the ancient tradition, at least in England. Like so many other old traditions, it was just about extinct after WW1: killed off by social changes and industrialisation. But it got a new lease of life, under the impact of the American invention of ‘Mother’s Day’, which was designated by US President Woodrow Wilson in 1914 to be held on the 2nd Sunday of May. Mother's Day has now become something of a commercial opportunity, to sell cards and flowers and boxes of chocolates, but I think it’s rather nice that we have managed to retain the ancient traditional Church day for it, on this side of the Atlantic, and I cherish the old name Mothering Sunday.
The Mothering Sunday traditions, and the emotions they evoke, are warm and tender and comforting.
But in case we are in any danger of getting carried away by sentimentality, today’s readings from Exodus and John’s Gospel provide the antidote. They serve to remind us that being a mother is not just about flowers and cakes and loving hugs. It is also about heartbreak, and separation, and even death. Thank God that giving birth in Ireland today is not so dangerous for a woman as it once was, though a very few still do die in childbirth here. But in the 3rd World it remains frighteningly common for mothers to die in childbirth.
In the OT reading from Exodus, we heard the strange little tale of Moses in the Bulrushes.
The background to the story is that Pharaoh decreed that Hebrew boys should be drowned at birth in the Nile, because he feared the Hebrew minority becoming too strong in his kingdom. The girls were allowed to live: no doubt they would have been married off to Egyptian men, and their children would be Egyptian. A rather nasty ancient case of ethnic cleansing.
Moses’ mother saved him from this fate by hiding him, until he was too big to hide anymore, and then she made a little boat for him from a basket, and left him to be found in the rushes by the river-bank. He was found by Pharaoh’s daughter, who took pity on him, and decided to adopt him. Moses’ own mother was employed to nurse him, but when he was weaned, she had to give him up to Pharaoh’s daughter.
Two things strike me about this story:
- 1st, how completely torn the emotions of Moses’ natural mother must have been, to be compelled to give away to another woman the child to whom she had given life, and whom she had saved and nurtured. But she knew that was the only way to show her love for him.
- But 2nd, the strength of the love of Pharaoh’s daughter for this little Hebrew boy. She no doubt risked the wrath of the state to save his little life, even though he belonged to a hated minority. The love of a foster mother, or of an adoptive mother, is just as valuable in God’s eyes as the love of a natural mother.
Public execution is an ugly thing, but the prolonged torture of crucifixion must have been particularly gut-wrenching to watch. Yet Mary his mother found the strength to stay close by Jesus in his agony. How torn she must have been, too: repelled by his ghastly death, yet drawn to be near her beloved son in his last hours. We see an image of the eternal love at the heart of motherhood in Mary at the Cross.
Mary the mother of Jesus was supported in her vigil by four others: her sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene, as well as someone described as the ‘disciple whom Jesus loved’. It is an ancient tradition of the Church that this disciple was John, one of the sons of Zebedee and Mary’s sister Salome, and the author of St John’s Gospel. If so, this John too, like John the Baptist, would be Jesus’s cousin.
I find it very moving that on the brink of his death, Jesus should think to commit Mary to the care of his cousin John, and John to the care of his mother Mary, to look after each other, and to comfort each other in their loss. A truly practical example of the love of God at work in evil times.
So, to conclude, it is surely very right for us, on this Mothering Sunday, to thank God for our mothers and for their love for us, whether they are our natural mothers or our foster or adoptive mothers.
But let us also remember those mothers whose hearts are broken by death or separation from a child.
And let us not forget all those women who long to have a child but cannot, and all those children who for whatever reason cannot give thanks for a mother’s love.
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