Suffering & Redemption

Address given at Templederry, St Mary's, Nenagh and Killodiernan on Sunday 28th February 2016, the 3rd Sunday of Lent, year C.

Over the last week or so I’ve been following two developing news stories.

They’re happening in faraway countries and aren’t likely to affect us much here in Ireland. It would be all too easy to ignore them, amidst all the media focus on our General Election, as well as all the other awful news from around the world. But for some reason I can’t get them out of my mind.

The 1^st is the Zika virus epidemic in South and Central America. Doctors suspect it is causing the simultaneous surge in cases of infant microcephaly – babies born with abnormally small heads, who are likely to suffer a spectrum of life-long intellectual and physical disabilities. Last year at least 2,500 more babies than usual were born with this condition in Brazil alone, and numbers are growing rapidly across the region. Can you imagine what life will be like for these babies as they grow up? What anguish must it be for their parents, and for all the expectant mothers waiting to learn whether their baby is one affected?

The 2^nd is Cyclone Winston in the South Pacific. It struck the islands of Fiji as the strongest ever category 5 storm a week ago. It has destroyed thousands of homes and killed at least 45 people, but we still don’t know the full impact because it has not yet been possible to contact some of the outlying islands. It will take years for this small country of around 850,000 souls to recover. That puts our winter storms and floods in the halfpenny place, doesn’t it?

The UN, governments and aid agencies around the world are springing into action to help these unfortunate people. We too must be ready to help if asked. In the meantime let us pray for them, that they may receive the help they need and feel Christ’s healing touch.

Why, oh why does God permit such suffering to occur? 

Surely, if God were both good and almighty he would eliminate suffering from his creation. But we know that suffering exists – there isn’t one of us who hasn’t personally suffered something, sometime, is there? Can it possibly be true that God is both good and almighty? This is what philosophers and theologians call ‘the problem of suffering’ or the ‘problem of pain’.

Jesus confronts this problem of suffering in today’s Gospel reading (Luke 13:1-9).

People tell him ‘about the Galileans whose blood Pilate mingled with their sacrifices’, and in response he reminds them of ‘those eighteen who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them’. We have very little clue just what these two events were about, but we can take it that they were two disasters that were part of the news of the day that people were talking about, much like the Zika virus epidemic and Cyclone Winston for us.

Jesus knows that many people, then as now, think that if bad things happen to people it must be because they are bad – God must be punishing them for sin, for breaking God’s law. So he asks rhetorically ‘Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? Do you think that (the victims at Siloam) were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem? 

No, I tell you’, says Jesus, answering his own question. Suffering and disasters are not punishments from a loving God. They are just the inevitable other side of the coin to the joy and delights of the wonderful life God has given us.

‘But unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did’, he continues. One thing we all know for sure is that we will die. But I don’t think Jesus is talking here about physical death – this perishing is a spiritual perishing - being and feeling far from God’s love. Jesus is repeating the central message of his ministry, his call to repentance. We sometimes have the wrong idea about repentance. It is not about going around with a long face carrying a corrosive burden of guilt saying ‘Oh woe is me!’ Rather repentance is about admitting to ourselves that the way we are living is wrong and determining to change ourselves for the better. A second thing we all should know is that we need to repent. If we repent, God who loves us forgives us, removes the burden of guilt and brings us close to him.

Jesus then tells the parable of the barren fig tree.

It’s a charming, earthy story, isn’t it? A fig tree planted in a vineyard is not producing fruit. The owner of the vineyard says to the gardener, “See here! For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none. Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?” The gardener replies, “Let it alone for one more year, until I dig round it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.”

The owner quite reasonably suggests the barren tree should be cut down, but the gardener pleads for it to be given a second chance, and promises to nurture it.

This is the way God works with us when we do not produce good fruit. With good reason God questions whether we are worth keeping, but Jesus the Son of God intercedes for us and nurtures us. We are given a second chance to come right.

But we should heed Jesus’s warning, the sting in the tail of the parable – the fig tree is given one more year, and we are not given an infinite number of second chances. If we do not respond to the nurturing teaching of Jesus, if we do not start trying to live and bear fruit as God wants us to – if we do not answer his call to repent - we will indeed perish spiritually. And that is a fate worse than any suffering and death.

I confess I don’t know why God permits suffering - and I doubt anybody else does either! 

Could it be that the existence of suffering is simply a necessary logical condition for a creation which can evolve and develop, and in which we can flourish? Perhaps. 

But what I do know is this:

·         God the Father loves each and every one of us.

·         Through Jesus Christ his Son God shares in and understands our suffering.

·         If we allow Jesus’s teaching to nurture us, if we repent and seek to live the lives God wills for us, we will overcome any suffering that may afflict us, and we will experience the reassuring closeness and love of God, in this world and the next.

If you are interested in a Christian approach to the problem of suffering you might find enlightenment in CS Lewis’s book ‘The Problem of Pain’.

My how time flies!

Address given on Ash Wednesday 10th February 2016 at St Mary's, Nenagh (based on a reflection by Sally Foster-Fulton of Christian Aid Scotland in 'Dancing in the Desert - Prayers and reflections for Lent', published by Wild Goose Publications and the Iona Community).

My, how time flies! It seems like only yesterday we were caught up in the great consumer fest of Christmas – the Cadbury’s Roses, the over-priced party food, the booze, the chocolate Santas. But now they’ve been replaced with Creme eggs and chocolate bunnies in the shops, so the consumer festival of Easter is upon us already. We risk missing out on Lent.

Now I don’t mean to sound like a Scrooge - we should leave him behind at Christmas! I have nothing against chocolate – I’m fond of the stuff, and I love a celebration as much as the next man. But if we skip Lent we miss an important opportunity – in danger of being hidden under all these chocolate bunnies and Creme eggs is the ancient call to reflection. The church needs to reclaim it because the world needs it. Lent is a time to rethink, to reconsider, to reflect on where we’re going. Lent is a time, before the celebration of Easter, to consider where some of the paths we follow ultimately lead.

If we head in the direction that money, power, self-interest leads us … where will we end up? If we climb the ladder of success while ignoring the ones around us … where will we find ourselves? If we continue to consume as if there is no tomorrow … what will become of this beautiful planet? Lent is a time to reconsider.

Secular people often say that in an increasingly ‘post religious’ society the church has nothing to offer them. But I say we have this: We have the clarion call to repentance – not the ‘sackcloth and ashes, I am a loathsome sinner’ misunderstanding of repentance, but the ‘turn around, reconsider, redirect yourselves call to a new way of living’.

We could focus this Lent on denying ourselves and thinking pious thoughts, in other words on our own personal salvation. But would that really be any different to buying into the ‘me, me, because I’m worth it’ consumer culture of Creme eggs and chocolate bunnies? Jesus summarises God’s law as ‘love God and love your neighbour as yourself’. So in our Lenten journey we should rather seek to travel with Jesus and live in a way that allows everyone including ourselves to live as full a life as possible.

I hope you have already decided how you will mark Lent, but if not, here are a couple of ideas:
1. You could use Christian Aid’s Count Your Blessings calendar to be inspired to give, act and pray for communities in need. The calendar is an insert in this month’s Newslink, and I’ve left some copies at the back of the church.
2. You could undertake a Carbon Fast for Lent as Green Anglicans in South Africa have suggested. You can read about this in Newslink, and I’ve left copies at the back of the church.

Lent is an opportunity to journey with Jesus and wrestle with yourself. Lent is a time to reconsider, reflect, and redirect your life. Lent is an ancient clarion call to change.

My, how time flies! Before we know it, it will be Easter Day. How will we travel there this year?

The origins of Baptism & Confirmation

Address given at Templederry, Nenagh & Killodiernan on Sunday 10th January 2016, the 1st after Epiphany.

On this 1^st Sunday of Epiphany we celebrate the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist.

St Luke in today’s Gospel reading (Luke: 3:15-17, 21-22) tells us what happened when John baptised Jesus: ‘When all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” And the same event is described in slightly different words in the other three Gospels.

In this striking scene God reveals to us that this man Jesus is his Son, the Beloved. It is also the only scene in the Gospels where we find all three persons of the Trinity – Father, Son and Holy Spirit - together at the same time. It is in fact an epiphany of the Trinity, so it is especially important for all of us Trinitarian Christians.

Luke tells us that John’s baptism was ‘a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins’.

John baptised with water those who came to him to signify their repentance – that is, their personal commitment to live in future by God’s standards. God forgives their previous failures to live up to his standards – their sins – which are symbolically washed away in the water.

Since the earliest times, Christians have been puzzled that Jesus came to be baptised by John. After all, the argument goes, Jesus as the Son of God must be without sin, with nothing to repent, so a baptism for forgiveness of sins seems inappropriate. Matthew tells us that the Baptist himself was reluctant to baptise Jesus, but Jesus insisted, saying ‘it is proper for us in this way to fulfil all righteousness’.

For Jews, righteousness meant doing God’s will. Jesus clearly believed God willed him to be baptised by John. But for what purpose? Perhaps so that Jesus would be certain who he was before beginning his ministry. Or perhaps so that John could testify to his Trinitarian vision. But I like to think that God willed Jesus to be baptised in a stunning act of solidarity with sinful people – with you and with me – so that Jesus stands alongside us as we bare our souls in repentance, as our sins are washed away, and as we receive God’s forgiveness.

What about the Christian sacrament of baptism with water as we know it today?

None of the Gospels tell us that Jesus himself baptised anyone, but his disciples certainly did. They did so with his approval while he was alive, as John’s Gospel tells us. John also records Jesus teaching that ‘no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and the Spirit’. And the disciples continued to baptise after his death, following his Great Commission, recorded in Matthew’s Gospel in these words: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”  3000 are said to be have been baptised on the day of Pentecost alone!

Those who came to Christian baptism in the earliest days would have made the same personal commitment to change, in expectation of God’s forgiveness, as those who John baptised. This baptism, like John’s, must surely have been ‘a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins’.

But as time passed, baptism with water more and more came to be seen as a ceremony of initiation into the community of believers, the Church. Baptism was essential, Christians felt, because Jesus had said no one could enter the kingdom of God without being born of water. In times when many children died in childhood, Christian parents naturally wanted to make sure their children would join them in the kingdom of God, so they began to baptise infants too. Parents and friends sponsored the infant Christian, making personal commitments on their behalf. The original idea of a ‘baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins’ began to fade into the background, perhaps because it is hard to see what sins infants need to repent.

So baptism evolved to become the sacrament of Christian initiation we know today, and the parents and friends became what we call sponsors and godparents.

But surely there is something missing in this baptism as Christian initiation?

In today’s Gospel John the Baptist says ‘I baptise you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming.’ That’s Jesus, of course. ‘He will baptise you with the Holy Spirit and fire’. What has become of Jesus’s baptism with the Holy Spirit and fire?

The apostles were baptised with the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost, just as Jesus had promised them before his ascension. They also experienced tongues of fire – and fire was certainly kindled in their hearts. They went out fired-up to preach the good news of Jesus Christ, which as the Book of Acts tells us spread like wild fire.

The embryonic Church spread despite – or rather because of – persecution. As it grew the apostles found it necessary to appoint assistants, called deacons, one of them a man called Philip. When persecution came the new Christians scattered throughout the countryside of Judea and Samaria, leaving the apostles in Jerusalem. Philip fled to the city of Samaria, where he in his turn preached the good news. Large numbers of people responded and Philip baptised them.

This is the background to today’s 2^nd reading from Acts 8:14-17.

‘When the apostles at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had accepted the word of God, they sent Peter and John to them’. Peter and John were, of course, apostles. In Samaria, we are told, they discovered that the new Christians had not received the Holy Spirit, even though they had been baptised by Philip. Peter and John prayed for them, ‘laid their hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit’ - in other words they received Jesus’s baptism of the Holy Spirit.

The apostles were faced with the problem of maintaining the unity of the church as it spread away from Jerusalem. Their solution seems to have been to insist that they alone could administer Jesus’s baptism of the Holy Spirit by laying on of hands. As a result Christians in faraway places maintained links with the apostles in Jerusalem.

As the church grew and the original apostles began to grow old and die, they consecrated others they trusted to carry on their work, which included administering the baptism of the Holy Spirit. These others in turn consecrated their successors to do the same, and so on to our own day.

Their successors are what we now call bishops. The line of succession we call apostolic succession. And the sacrament of confirmation is Jesus’s baptism with the Holy Spirit, administered by a bishop in apostolic succession laying his hands on a person seeking confirmation.

So to conclude, as we celebrate the baptism of Jesus:

First, let us give thanks for the insight we receive into the nature of God as Trinity from the epiphany of Father, Son and Holy Spirit at Jesus’s baptism by John.

Second, let us give thanks for the sacrament of baptism with water, which builds on John’s baptism, to mark our incorporation into Christ’s body the Church, whether as infants or adults.

And third, let us give thanks for the sacrament of confirmation, through which we are born again as we receive Jesus’s baptism of the Holy Spirit, to inspire us and put fire in our hearts to work for his kingdom.

Apocalypse

We are living in a time of great insecurity and many of us are afraid.

Only a fortnight ago we watched with horror images of the carnage Islamic State terrorists wreaked in Paris. They brought home to us in Europe a little of what people in Syria and Iraq have been suffering. This is the latest manifestation of the bitter conflict between Sunni and Shia Islamic traditions that has been devastating the Middle East for more than a generation, since the Iran-Iraq war began in 1980.

One consequence has been millions of people displaced as refugees. Most live in camps inside the countries affected, or in neighbouring countries, which struggle to feed and house them with insufficient help from the global community. More and more refugees have given up hope of a decent life where they are, or of ever returning home in safety. These are the hundreds of thousands of men, women and children we have seen this year, travelling to find sanctuary in Europe, crammed into unsafe boats, drowned on Mediterranean beaches, trudging along railway lines and motorways, or camped in make-shift reception centres. We have not seen such movements of people in Europe since the end of WW2. They are desperate, they are determined, they are unstoppable – we cannot push them back into the sea, nor can we shoot at them until they go away.

As European citizens we are worried how we will feed and house so many, and what social changes they will bring. Since most of them are Muslim – though many are Christian – extreme nationalism and Islamophobia are on the rise. Increasingly we hear strident voices claiming refugees are probably Islamic terrorists, and that Islam is an irredeemable religion of violence. Yet for all but a tiny percentage of Muslims, Islam is a religion of peace. Just like us, they want to make a decent living, raise their families in peace, and contribute to the communities they live in. Before we demonise Islam, let us remember the European Wars of Religion at the time of the Reformation, when Catholic fought Protestant in bloody conflicts that lasted for more than a century. Does that make our Christianity a religion of violence?

And then there is the crisis of climate change. We know that to avert the worst effects we will have to make great changes in how we live now. But we do not yet understand what those changes will be, so we are afraid of what we may have to give up, and at the same time we are afraid of the world our descendants will inherit if we do not change.

No wonder we worry about the future – our own, our children’s, our grandchildren’s, and if we are lucky our great-grandchildren's. We are afraid, and I think we are right to be. We are living in apocalyptic times.

Luke records Jesus speaking of apocalypse in today’s Gospel reading (Luke 21:25-36).

 ‘There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and waves’, Jesus says. ‘People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then they will see “the Son of Man coming in a cloud” with power and great glory.’

The original meaning of the Greek word ‘apocalypse’ is a prophetic disclosure, a revelation, though in modern English we now usually mean a great catastrophe that results in widespread destruction or the collapse of civilisation.

Jesus’s words are a prophetic disclosure, an apocalypse in the original sense. They are in a literary tradition reaching back into OT times - “the Son of Man coming in a cloud” is actually a quotation from the apocalyptic Book of Daniel. The tradition reaches forward to the NT book we call Revelation. And from there through medieval visions of the last judgement, to modern science fiction fantasies of disaster.

Is Jesus forecasting in these words that the world will end in catastrophic violence, an apocalypse in the modern sense? There are Christian fundamentalists who look forward to the second coming of Christ amid awful battles and destruction in the end-time. They may believe so, but I don’t. They take scripture too literally, and I think they are deeply, deeply misguided. Rather I suggest that Jesus intended his words to apply to every time, not just to an end-time.

Perhaps his parable is a clue: ‘Look at the fig tree and all the trees; as soon as they sprout leaves you can see for yourselves and know that summer is near.’ Trees sprout new leaves every year – the image is of something that happens again and again, not just once at the end.

And it is true, isn’t it, that every generation is faced with its own apocalyptic fears. We may be terrified by terrorism and the refugee crisis, and of the consequences of climate change. But my parents were haunted by the horror and destruction of total war and nuclear holocaust. Their parents suffered the horrors of the trenches followed by bloody rebellion and fratricidal civil war. And every previous generation has lived through its own nightmares – famines, plagues, wars and social collapse.

Jesus tells us to read clearly the frightening signs of the times, but his message is surely one of hope as we confront our fears - hope for us and for every generation that hears his words. ‘So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that the kingdom of God is near.’ Even if these things are terrifying. ‘Stand up and raise your heads’, he tells us, ‘because your redemption is drawing near’.

The basis of our hope is the miracle of the Incarnation.

This is the first day of Advent, the time each year when we look forward to the Incarnation; the miracle that God has chosen to be part of the world he created, our world; the miracle that God has taken on our flesh in a stunning act of solidarity with his creatures. We wait in expectation for the kingdom of God and our redemption to come near.

On Christmas day Jesus will be born as the helpless baby son of Mary and Joseph into a frightening world. A Roman imperial decree forces his parents to travel from their home to Bethlehem. There they find no shelter but a stable in which Mary gives birth. And soon they will be forced to flee as refugees from Herod’s violent wrath. Mary and Joseph have to confront their own fears just as we must.

But through the eyes of faith we will see this helpless child grow up to be ‘“the Son of Man coming in a cloud” with power and great glory’, who announces the kingdom of God and promises us redemption. ‘Heaven and earth will pass away’, he says, ‘but my words will not pass away’.

Jesus urges us, ‘Be alert at all times, praying that you may have the strength to escape all these things that will take place, and to stand before the Son of Man.’ It is through praying that we will find the strength and confidence to endure - and we may hope avert - the worst the future can bring, so that we can stand fearlessly in front of our God in his Kingdom.

So I shall finish with a prayer:

Loving Father,

Who sent your Son Jesus Christ

to proclaim your kingdom

and restore the broken to fullness of life:

Look with compassion on the anguish of the world and of your people;

Give us the strength to overcome our fears

And to stand before the Son of Man;

Through Jesus Christ, our Lord and Redeemer.

Amen

Second chances

Address given at Templederry and Nenagh on Sunday 8th November 2015, the 3rd before Advent, year B

This morning I want to reflect on our 1^st reading (Ruth 3:1-5, 4:13-17), the story of Naomi, Ruth and Boaz.

First let’s remind ourselves who these three characters are.

Naomi and her husband, with their two sons, had left their home in Bethlehem years before for the land of Moab to escape a famine – they were refugees. Naomi’s husband died there, and then her two sons who had married Moabite women died as well. Naomi had lost her whole family. And she decided to go back to her home place, Bethlehem. But Ruth, one of her daughters-in-law and a Moabite foreigner, insisted on going with her. She said, ‘Where you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God’. Ruth must have loved Naomi very much.

It was the time of the barley harvest when Naomi and Ruth got to Bethlehem. It was a Jewish tradition to leave the corn in the corners of the fields to be harvested by the poor – this was called gleaning. Ruth went out into the fields to glean to support both of them. There she met Boaz, the owner of a field, who was a relative of Naomi’s late husband – that’s important as we shall see. Boaz had heard about all that Ruth was doing to support Naomi, and praised her for it. And because he was a kind man, he made sure that Ruth was able to glean enough for two of them without being harassed. This is where today’s reading begins.

I found the reading rather odd when I first looked at it – perhaps you did too.

It sounds almost as if Naomi puts Ruth up to seducing Boaz, tricking him into marrying her! But that is only because the reading jumps from ch3 v5 to ch4 v13 - for some reason the good compilers of the lectionary have missed out an important piece of the story.

To understand what really happened we need to understand a Jewish tradition, called ‘levirate marriage’. In this case, if a married man died without leaving children, his next of kin - his brother or another close relative - could choose to marry his widow, and this was seen as a good and righteous thing to do. It kept the property in the family, it ensured the future of the widow, and any children of the marriage would be treated as children of the dead husband.

No doubt Naomi could see how Boaz was attracted to Ruth. So she sends Ruth to ask Boaz if he would marry her in this way, to provide her with security. Ruth uncovers his feet and lies down beside him, and when Boaz wakes she says to him, ‘Spread your coat over your servant, for you are next of kin’. She is seeking his protection. And Boaz wants to marry her, but he tells Ruth that there is another, closer relative who should have the first refusal - if that man does not wish to marry her, he will. And he is careful to guard her reputation and sends her away with a present.

Boaz is entirely honourable by the standards of his society - and he’s as good as his word. The next day he goes to talk to the closer relative in front of the elders. He establishes that the closer relative does not want to marry Ruth – in fact he persuades him that he shouldn’t. And then Boaz says to the elders, ‘Today you are witnesses that I have acquired from Naomi all that belonged to (her husband and sons). I have also acquired Ruth the Moabite … to be my wife, to maintain the dead man’s name on his inheritance’.

In this way Ruth becomes Boaz’s wife, and with Naomi they live happily ever after. Their son whom Naomi nurses is the grandfather of King David, and an ancestor of our Lord Jesus Christ, through his earthly father Joseph.

It’s a charming story. But why should it have been included in our Bible, and why should we still read it in churches today?

I suggest it is because this very human tale illustrates how God works in individual human lives.

Naomi and Ruth had suffered terrible blows. Naomi had lost her husband and two sons. Ruth had lost her husband. Suddenly they had become impoverished widows dependent on charity. It must have seemed as if the very heavens had fallen in on them.

It would have been so easy for them to give in to depression, to become bitter and angry. But they didn’t. Instead they make the best of their situation, showing their love for each other.

And then good things start to happen. They meet a good man, Boaz, who is attracted by the love they show each other. He wants to help them and sees how he can do so. New life and hope comes into all their lives. They are offered a second chance of happiness. And they take it.

This, surely, is how God will work in our lives, if God forbid dreadful things happen to us. If we hold on to what is good and true and beautiful, even when it seems we have been abandoned, even when we find ourselves in the depths of depression, then suddenly we will notice good things starting to happen. Our spirits will rise and we will start to discern new life and happiness.

I have had my own dealings with loss and depression, and this has been my own experience. The story of Naomi, Ruth and Boaz is a message of hope to hold on to in the most difficult of times.

This is redemption - God redeeming us. This is God acting like our loving Father. In the words of the Benedictus, sung in the temple by Zechariah,

Blessed be the Lord God of Israel,

For he hath visited and redeemed his people,

And hath raised up a mighty salvation for us

In the house of his servant David

Harvest Thanksgiving - Living simply

Address for Harvest Thanksgiving, year B, given at Killodiernan Church on Sunday 11th October 2015.

We all love Harvest Festivals, don’t we?

Just look around us at this beautifully decorated church, filled with harvest bounty - how can we fail to feel thankful? The decorators have every right to be proud of their skilful arrangements. Those who have grown the produce have every right to be proud that the best of it should be displayed here in God’s house. We all enjoy the colours and the smells of the fruit and the vegetables and the flowers; we all enjoy the familiar harvest hymns; and we all enjoy seeing so many cheerful people, filled with a sense of accomplishment, now that the year’s work has been crowned with success.

Let’s take a moment to reflect on the sheer breadth and variety of our harvest:

o   We have the staples: we have wheat for bread, barley for beer, oats for porridge, rape-seed for oil, silage for cattle, and hay for horses.

o   But there is so much more than staples for us to enjoy, isn’t there! There’s milk and butter, cheese and yogurt, fruit and nuts, blackberries and mushrooms, plums and apples, potatoes and turnips, pumpkins and marrows, cabbage and lettuce, peas and beans, meat and leather. My wife Marty has harvested delicious vegetables and beautiful flowers this year. My plum crop was so heavy that the branches broke on the tree, and I’ve harvested over 40 jars of honey and a good crop of filberts.

o   Let’s not forget the animals too – we have this year’s foals and calves, lambs and chicks, ducklings, and goslings to delight us. And we must not forget the fruit of our own bodies, the children born this year.

Thanks be to God for giving us so much to rejoice over!

In today’s 1st reading (Joel 2:21-27) Joel expresses this feeling in beautiful poetry.

‘Do not fear, O soil; be glad and rejoice, for the LORD has done great things!

Do not fear, you animals of the field, for the pastures of the wilderness are green;

the tree bears its fruit, the fig tree and vine give their full yield.

O children of Zion, be glad and rejoice in the LORD your God…

The threshing-floors shall be full of grain, the vats shall overflow with wine and oil.’

Don’t you just love it, that Joel calls not just human kind, but all living creation to be glad and rejoice, even the very soil on which fertility depends.

Joel is writing at a time when Judean farmers have been suffering hardship - successive plagues of locusts have ravaged the land. In these words he gives them hope for their future. They ‘shall eat in plenty and be satisfied’, he tells them, because God says:

‘I will repay you for the years that the swarming locust has eaten,

the hopper, the destroyer, and the cutter, my great army, which I sent against you…

You shall know that I am in the midst of Israel,

and that I, the LORD, am your God and there is no other.

And my people shall never again be put to shame.’

The harvest has been bountiful this year. Cereal yields have been good and cows have produced more milk than ever, according to figures I’ve seen from Teagasc. But market conditions are making many farmers very anxious, so a farming neighbour tells me. Dairy farmers struggle to survive with milk prices below the cost of production. Arable farmers are also worried about prices.

And it’s not just farmers who are anxious. Despite the economic recovery there are still very many here in Ireland trapped in unemployment, negative equity, at risk of losing their homes, or actually homeless. And then there are those other anxious, frightened people we see on the news in foreign countries far away, refugees from persecution, war and intolerable poverty.

We would all love to believe Joel’s words of hope: that the Lord our God promises us that he is with us, and that times will get better. But do we?

How do you feel when somebody says, ‘Don’t worry! Everything will be fine!’

I don’t know about you, but my first reaction is to scream inside, ‘It’s easy for you to say! This is my life. It isn’t happening to you. It’s happening to me.’

Worry is such a large part of all our lives. We worry about everything: our jobs, our children; our personal relationships. We worry whether we have enough money to pay the bills. In this wealthy country, while some go hungry others worry whether their food is healthy or fattening, and while some have no warm winter coat others worry about fashion. And we worry about our health, our aches and pains, and about dying.

In today’s reading from Matthew’s Gospel (Matthew 6:25-33) – part of the Sermon on the Mount – Jesus tells us, ‘Do not worry about your life’. I wonder what the crowds who heard him thought - I feel sure many reacted just like me: ‘It’s alright for you, Jesus – you don’t have my responsibilities, you can afford to be idealistic’.

But in our heart of hearts I think we all really know that Jesus is right. We know that worrying cannot add a single hour to our life. We know that there really is more to life than material things, more than food and drink and clothing, more than all that stuff that we are greedy for, but which clutters up our lives.

In fact if we stop to think about it we will realise that it is precisely our society’s lifestyle of over-consumption which causes so many of the world’s problems that make us so anxious. And that anxiety, that constant worry, is unhealthy not just for our bodies and our minds, but for our deepest being, our soul.

We need to live more simply.

If we don’t we are lost - as individuals, as a society and as a species. Our over-consumption is destroying God’s Earth and making the poor poorer. We need to learn to trust that God, our Father in heaven, who knows what we need, will faithfully give us enough, so that we can stop grasping for more.

‘Consider the lilies of the field’, says Jesus, ‘how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field… will he not much more clothe you – you of little faith?’

Jesus is not saying we should not work, he is telling us we must get our priorities right. ‘Strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness’, he says. What does this mean?  God’s righteousness is found in his unconditional love for all his creation, including all human beings. To be righteous ourselves we must imitate God’s love. Jesus has told to love God, and love our neighbour as ourselves. This surely is what it means to ‘strive first for the kingdom of God’.

We must strive – that is, work hard - to show our love by replacing consumption with self-sacrifice, greed with generosity, wastefulness with a spirit of sharing. This is about not simply giving things up, but giving things away. It is a way of loving which moves away from what I want, to what God’s world needs – at the same time liberating us from all that makes us anxious.

God knows what we need and God works in and through us to provide it for one another. If we join together to show our love for one another like this, God will give each and every one of us enough - though maybe less than our foolish desires. If we live simply, so that others may simply live, we really can believe Joel’s words of hope!

We’ve all been horrified by recent images of refugees in the media.

We’ve seen pictures of people fleeing for their lives to seek sanctuary and build new lives, far from home. Today these refugees are like ‘the birds of the air’ that Jesus talks about. ‘They neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns’, because they cannot – they have lost everything.

How will our heavenly Father feed them? Through us, of course, through you and me, and through the generosity of our spirit.

So as we give thanks to God and rejoice in the Harvest, I urge you to reflect on how together we can best help these brothers and sisters, our neighbours. And I ask you to give generously to the collection we will shortly take up for the Bishops’ Appeal in response to the refugee crisis.

St Michael & All Angels

An address given at Templederry, Nenagh and Killodiernan on Sunday 27th September, 
St Michael & All Angels, transferred

How do we talk about what we know but cannot see, what we perceive but cannot touch?

Today’s readings use the language and metaphor of angels and demons to talk about good and evil. Good and evil are spiritual concepts. We can’t see or touch them, but we know all about them, and we can distinguish between them, because each of us has the capability called conscience. I think this is what it means to say God has made us in his image.

Many people these days are embarrassed to talk about angels and demons. We’re modern people, they say - these are just old, unscientific, superstitious ways of talking. But hold on a moment. Scientists also talk about what they cannot see or touch. To talk about the nature of space and matter and energy, they coin strange, new words and concepts, like quarks and gluons, inflation and dark energy – with no embarrassment at all.

Others may be turned off by the highly sentimental depictions of angels we find in popular culture, and the ‘mind & spirit’ shelves of bookshops. But there is nothing sentimental about angels and demons in the Bible.

I suggest the biblical language of angels and demons is actually a fruitful way for us to talk about those very real but spiritual concepts of good and evil, and our relationship with God. Have you ever read The Screwtape Letters by CS Lewis? The letters are written by a senior demon named Screwtape to his younger and less experienced nephew Wormwood, to show him how to be a better tempter. If you haven’t read the book, you should – it’s very funny, but also full of insight into how we can be persuaded to make bad choices. I recommend it as a confirmation present, and for young people of all ages.

Let’s begin by looking at what we mean by an angel.

The word ‘angel’ is derived from the Greek word ‘angelos’, meaning simply ‘messenger’, any sort of messenger. Today we usually think of an angel as a spiritual messenger from God. People often suddenly realise what the right thing is to do in a particular situation, and make a life-changing decision - say to choose a caring vocation, or to make a stand against evil, or to decide this is my life’s partner. Sometimes this is so vivid an experience that it’s as if a voice calls them to make the right choice. That voice is the voice of an angel passing on a message from God.

The ancient Hebrews struggled to understand their relationship with God. In today’s 1^st reading (Genesis 28:10-17) we heard how Jacob in a dream suddenly realised something really important - that it is the very nature of God to care for his people. In his dream he sees God’s messengers – the angels of God - ascending and descending a ladder reaching from Earth to Heaven. Then in his dream, in the voices of the angels I like to think, he hears God make that great promise to the Hebrew people which we call the Covenant: ‘Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go’. As Christians we believe this applies to us as much as the Hebrews.

When Jacob wakes up from his dream he says, ‘This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven’. He makes an altar out of the stone he used as a pillow, and he names the place Bethel, meaning House of God.

Jesus knew his Hebrew scriptures very well, of course.

In today’s 3^rd reading (John 1:47-51), he is surely thinking of Jacob’s dream when he says to Nathanael, ‘Very truly, I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man’.

He says this in a joking tone, I think. But the underlying message is completely serious. Jesus is identifying himself, the Son of Man, with Bethel, Jacob’s House of God. And without saying so directly he tells Nathanael that he, Jesus, is the Gate of Heaven.

Why does Jesus not say this more clearly? Perhaps the time is not yet right for Jesus to reveal his significance publicly. But he does so later in John’s Gospel in the seven familiar ‘I am’ sayings: ‘I am …the bread of life … the light of the world … the gate to salvation … the resurrection and the life … the way and the truth and the life … the true vine’.

Not all angels in the Bible are good, however, as we heard in the 2^nd reading (Revelation 12: 7-12).

We heard about a great war in heaven: on the good side, Archangel Michael and his angels; and on the bad side, ‘the great dragon …that ancient serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world’, and his angels.  Yes, there are bad angels as well as good ones – we call them demons! Michael and his good angels triumph, and the Devil and his bad angels are thrown down from heaven to the earth. What is this about?

We all know how weak we are, don’t we? Even though my conscience allows me to distinguish right from wrong, all too often I can convince myself that what is wrong is right, perhaps because I desire it, or because I am afraid of what will happen or what others will think of me if I do the right thing, or simply because it is more convenient. It is part of the human condition, it is what is called original sin. Sometimes it is as if I hear persuasive voices in my head, arguing bad is good, lies are true, ugliness is beauty, or hate is love. These are the voices of the bad angels that have been thrown out of heaven, messengers from the Devil.

It’s tricky, isn’t it? If I hear the voice of an angel, how do I know the message is from God? How do I know it is not from ‘the deceiver of the whole world’? So often we hear competing voices and struggle to decide which is right - echoing that war in heaven in which, thank God, good triumphs.

These words from Matthew’s Gospel (7:15-20) give us a clue, a test we can use: ‘You will know them by their fruits’, says Jesus, ‘Are grapes gathered from thorns, or figs from thistles? In the same way, every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit’. In other words, we must use our God-given reason to look at the consequences of any decision we make, and if our God-given conscience tells us they are bad, we can be sure the voice we hear is that of a bad angel, a demon.

It is hard work to discern what is truly right from what is truly wrong. That work is the spiritual work which we call prayer. We would all do well to do more of it. Of course many unbelievers, if they are of good will, also work hard to make the right choices – they would not call it prayer, but that I think is what it really is.

Let me finish with a prayer for discernment:

Loving Father,

we pray that the voices of your holy angels

may help us to discern your will in all we do,

and to disregard the deceiving voices

which do not come from you;

May we share in the victory

of Michael and all your holy angels

as we work for the coming of your Kingdom.

In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen