Millstones and the Good Shepherd

 

Wall-size painting of Christ as Good Shepherd surrounded by multitudes of people, painted by Ruth Owen Pook and hanging in The Chapel of the Good Shepherd at The (Episcopal) Cathedral Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania

Reflection for morning worship with the Community of Brendan the Navigator on Tuesday 10th December 2024

The Gospel reading set for tomorrow, Tuesday, is the much loved Parable of the Lost Sheep (Matthew 18:12-14), but to place it in context I have chosen to start the reading at the beginning of the chapter.

The disciples come to Jesus and ask ‘Who is the greatest in the kingdom of Heaven?’ They really want heavenly greatness for themselves. But Jesus knows that wanting to be great is not the way to greatness in the kingdom of heaven. So he calls a child to him and says, ‘Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.’  Humble, weak, ordinary human beings, as trusting as this child, will be greater in the kingdom than those who push themselves forward.

Jesus is concerned that disciples who seek greatness will mislead ordinary folk, and be like a stumbling block to them, causing them to fall below God’s standards, in other words to sin. So he warns them, ‘If any of you put a stumbling-block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were fastened around your neck and you were drowned in the depth of the sea.’

If we look around Christ’s church today, we see all too many cases where leaders who want to be great have become stumbling blocks to ordinary Christians like you and me. A few have done evil things, and must dread the millstone. Others, from different Christian traditions, have sought to protect their positions, their friends and their churches by covering up the evil behaviour, of others. This has seriously damaged victims, and caused many good people to turn away from the church.

As we all know, the Roman Catholic Church has been seriously damaged by clerical abuse scandals and cover-ups, here and around the world. And our own Anglican Communion is not immune. Recently we have been shocked to learn of the appalling abuse of young men by John Smyth, a Reader in the Church of England. Senior clergy and leaders covered it up for many years, enabling him to move to Zimbabwe, and then South Africa, to continue his abuse. The Church of England is in turmoil. The Archbishop of Canterbury has been forced to resign for not taking timely action, and there are calls for other resignations.

We can only hope and pray that in the Church of Ireland our Safeguarding Trust processes are robust enough to prevent anything similar here.

Christian leaders of all traditions must beware of the dangers Jesus himself warned of, and choose the path of humility, the child-like humility of someone who knows the overwhelming power of God’s fatherly love for all his creatures. They must be open to give an account of themselves.

But what of the little, ordinary Christians? Jesus goes on to reassure us with his Parable of the Lost Sheep. He is our true and faithful shepherd. He does not rest until he has found any of us who is lost. And if he finds us, he rejoices, more than he rejoices over those that never went astray. When we see church leaders misbehaving, we should take comfort in this: ‘It is not the will of (our) Father in heaven that (even) one of these little ones should be lost.’

 

Make straight the Way

Address given at St Mary's Nenagh and Killodiernan Church on Sunday 8th December 2024, the 2nd of Advent Year C

As I dodge the potholes on North Tipperary boreens, I often pray that the County Council would take to heart the words of Isaiah we’ve just heard Luke quote in his Gospel:

"Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth;”

Joking aside, today I want to focus on John the son of Zechariah, the subject of today’s gospel reading (Luke 3:1-6). He is the person we familiarly call John the Baptist. But Orthodox Christians call him John the Forerunner, which is quite as it should be, because the gospel writers and the early church saw him as the forerunner of the Messiah, foretold by Old Testament prophets including Isaiah.

There are 3 questions I shall try to answer:

1.                        Who was this John?

2.                        What was his teaching? and

3.                        How is it relevant for us today?

So, firstly, what do we know about John the son of Zechariah?

Quite a bit, in fact - and not just from the Gospels. Josephus the 1^st Cent Jewish historian is an independent source, who says more about John than he does about Jesus. John was a real person, not just an invented character in the gospel story. Notice how firmly Luke places John in his historical context.

Within the gospels, Luke tells us the most. He weaves the story of John’s birth in with that of Jesus. At the very beginning of his gospel, he tells us about John’s parents, a priest called Zechariah and Elizabeth his wife: both good, pious people, but getting on in years and childless. The angel Gabriel appears to Zechariah to tell him that Elizabeth will bear a son to be named John, who will be a great spiritual leader. Zechariah doesn’t believe Gabriel and is struck dumb, but Elizabeth does indeed conceive.

Now, Elizabeth is a relative of Mary the mother of Jesus. Six months later, after Gabriel appears to Mary to tell her she will give birth to Jesus, Mary rushes off to visit Elizabeth. When Elizabeth hears Mary’s voice, the baby John leaps for joy in her womb, and Mary responds in the words of the canticle we know as the Magnificat.

In due course, Elizabeth bears her son, whom Elizabeth and Zechariah duly name John. Zechariah’s speech returns, and he gives thanks in the beautiful canticle we know as the Benedictus, which we used as our psalm today. It echoes the OT prophesies:

And thou, child, shalt be called the Prophet of the Highest,

for thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to prepare his ways,

to give knowledge of salvation unto his people,

for the remission of their sins.

All 4 of the gospel writers tell us how John, now grown up, goes out into the barren desert country by the Jordan. There he called on the crowds who followed him to repent, to change their ways, and baptised them as a sign of their repentance. The background to all this was a great popular religious revival: many people were convinced that the Messiah of prophesy was about to appear, and they were urgently looking for signs that this was so. As we all know, Jesus himself went to John to be baptised, and John recognised him - not surprisingly since they were cousins.

John was just as blunt and bold a preacher as any of the Old Testament prophets before him, always ready to speak truth to power. He was bound to run into trouble with the authorities. And he did: he upset Herod Antipas, the Tetrarch or King of Galilee, who ordered him to be arrested, and later beheaded. Josephus says Herod had John killed ‘to prevent any mischief he might cause’.

Let’s now turn to examine John the Baptist’s teaching.

In today’s gospel passage, Luke (3:1-6) says that John ‘proclaimed a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins’. He goes on to outline John’s teaching. Three points stand out in it for me:

1^st, all the gospel writers are clear that John never claims to be the Messiah, but believes himself to be the forerunner. Luke puts these words in his mouth: ‘I baptise you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming: I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptise you with the Holy Spirit and fire’.

2^nd, John is what we call a hellfire preacher. Luke quotes him saying: ‘You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruits worthy of repentance. () Even now the axe is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire’. John seeks to shock the crowds into repentance by terrifying them with the consequences if they don’t. Then John seals their repentance by immersing them in water to symbolise that they are washed clean of sin. His preaching must have been very effective, judging by the crowds he gathered.

3^rd, John’s message is about much more than just hell fire. He calls for social justice. Quoting Luke again, he says: ‘Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise’. And he calls everybody, even tax collectors and soldiers, to do whatever work they do fairly, and not to extort more than their due. No price gouging!

So what relevance does John the Baptist and his teaching have for us today?

Luke saw John the Baptist as the hinge on which salvation history turns, the forerunner promised by the prophets, making straight the way for Jesus the Messiah. 

It is difficult for us to see the world as Luke and his contemporaries did, through the prism of scriptural prophecy. And I for one deeply distrust fundamentalists who see it that way today. But that world view empowered the early church to respond to Jesus’s message, no matter what the cost. Without it, the church would probably not have survived, and we would not be Christians today. The mysterious working of the Holy Spirit through prophecy is something we should celebrate, I suggest.

Few Christian preachers nowadays stir up hellfire in their sermons, as they once did - and not so very long ago. We have become uncomfortable with the idea of the wrath of God. Instead it is ecologists and scientists who have been leading denunciations of our foolish and wicked trashing of this beautiful, God-given planet from secular pulpits.

Now more and more people are hearing the call to protect our planet, and starting to act upon it. Christians are to the forefront. Our Anglican Communion has adopted as the 5^th mark of mission, ‘to strive to safeguard the integrity of creation, and sustain and renew the life of the earth’. Pope Francis has given us a clarion call in his encyclical Laudato ‘Si. Among the Eastern Orthodox, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew has been leading from the front to promote ecology and environmental protection. Here in Ireland, Eco Congregation Ireland is spearheading the movement.

I am not a prophet – certainly not in my own country and parish! But I prophesy this: we will hear more and more John-like hellfire preaching from our Christian pulpits, as the twin ecological catastrophes of climate change and bio-diversity loss intensify. Why? Because we should be terrified of the wrath to come predicted by the scientists. That should bring us to repentance. And we should seal that repentance by mending our ways!

And as we mend our ways, we must also try to live out John’s social gospel, to share the good things we have received with our neighbours of every faith and race, at home and abroad. Mé féin is a road to perdition in our shrinking, globalised world. We must do so because this is not only the gospel of John, but the Gospel of Jesus, who empowers us by baptism not with water, but with the Holy Spirit and with fire!

I shall finish in prayer with the Collect of the Word for today

Almighty God,
who sent your servant John the Baptist
to prepare your people to welcome the Messiah,
inspire us, the ministers and stewards of your truth,
to turn our disobedient hearts to you,
that when the Christ shall come again to be our judge,
we may stand with confidence before his glory;
who is alive and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever. Amen

What are we looking forward to?

Joc Writes, in Grapevine December/January 2024/5

Christmas, John Betjeman, 1954

The bells of waiting Advent ring,
The Tortoise stove is lit again
And lamp-oil light across the night
Has caught the streaks of winter rain
In many a stained-glass window sheen
From Crimson Lake to Hookers Green.

The holly in the windy hedge
And round the Manor House the yew
Will soon be stripped to deck the ledge,
The altar, font and arch and pew,
So that the villagers can say
'The church looks nice' on Christmas Day.

Provincial Public Houses blaze,
Corporation tramcars clang,
On lighted tenements I gaze,
Where paper decorations hang,
And bunting in the red Town Hall
Says 'Merry Christmas to you all'.

And London shops on Christmas Eve
Are strung with silver bells and flowers
As hurrying clerks the City leave
To pigeon-haunted classic towers,
And marbled clouds go scudding by
The many-steepled London sky.

And girls in slacks remember Dad,
And oafish louts remember Mum,
And sleepless children's hearts are glad.
And Christmas-morning bells say 'Come!'
Even to shining ones who dwell
Safe in the Dorchester Hotel.

And is it true?  And is it true,
This most tremendous tale of all,
Seen in a stained-glass window's hue,
A Baby in an ox's stall ?
The Maker of the stars and sea
Become a Child on earth for me ?

And is it true ?  For if it is,
No loving fingers tying strings
Around those tissued fripperies,
The sweet and silly Christmas things,
Bath salts and inexpensive scent
And hideous tie so kindly meant,

No love that in a family dwells,
No carolling in frosty air,
Nor all the steeple-shaking bells
Can with this single Truth compare -
That God was man in Palestine
And lives today in Bread and Wine.

December is a month for looking forward, in expectation. But what are we looking forward to?

As I write, there are 4 weeks before the winter solstice, and 32 days before Christmas. You will likely read this around the 1st December, the 1st Sunday of Advent this year. That is also the start of a new Church year, liturgical Year C, when most of our Gospel readings will be from Luke. 

After the winter solstice, the days will become longer, but it will take a while before we begin to see the stretch in the evenings we so look forward to.

And then there is Christmas. We need to distinguish between the secular and the Christian festivals of Christmas. The secular Christmas is all about exchanging gifts and feasting with friends and families. It is not in any real sense Christian at all. It is a continuation of the ancient pagan festivals of Yule in the Germanic world, Meán Geimhridh in the Celtic, a very human celebration of life, warmth and relationships at the darkest time of the year in mid-winter. No wonder, in an increasingly post-Christian world, some now call it Winterval. But Christians should surely not behave like the Grinch, saying ‘Bah, humbug’ about this secular Christmas, as the 17th century puritans did when they tried to ban it. For most of us it is a time of joy as we renew relationships, and recall Christmases past together, though for some it will be a time of sadness, because of difficult memories or straitened circumstances. 

When I was a child, the secular Christmas traditions were Victorian, probably no more than 100 years old, greatly influenced by Charles Dickens’ book ‘A Christmas Carol. We began to look forward to Christmas at the start of Advent. My brother and I took turns opening the windows in the Advent calendar to reveal little pictures. We were asked what presents we hoped Father Christmas would bring. We sent off cards, and parcels with presents, to faraway family and friends. A few weeks later, singers started to go round the houses singing carols, and perhaps were offered a drink or a mince-pie. We made Christmas decorations at home from strips of coloured paper. We waited expectantly for the Christmas turkey to arrive by post, sent by my grandmother. Decorating the house would wait until the week before Christmas, when holly and ivy and the Christmas tree would be brought in, to last until 12th Night, Epiphany. Our Christmas feast was on Stephen’s Day, since Christmas Day was a working day for my father, a priest.

Things are different now. Christmas is much more commercial. As soon as Halloween is past, we are deluged with Christmas adverts, and the shops are decorated for Christmas. The Advent calendar contains sweets or toys. The decorations go up weeks before Christmas and are gone long before Twelfth Night. Father Christmas has turned into Santa. And turkeys no longer arrive by post. But I’m sure we will all plan to celebrate a secular Christmas with family and friends again this year, mixing old family traditions with the new, as is surely right. 

But as Christians, during Advent, we also look forward to a Christian Christmas. We prepare to celebrate the birth of our incarnate God, taking flesh as a helpless child 2,000 years ago in Bethlehem. And at the same time we look forward to his second coming, the fulfilment of his kingdom, and the heavenly banquet. 

John Betjeman, a devout Anglican, got it right in his lovely poem.

Remembering

The white poppy of the Peace Pledge Union (www.ppu.org.uk)

A reflection on Remembance for morning worship with the Community of Brendan the Navigator on 12th November 2024

Here in the Northern hemisphere, November is an in between month. The joys of gathering in the harvest and celebrating its bounty are only a memory now. The leaves have mostly fallen, tender plants have collapsed, and the days are getting short. At twilight, as darkness falls, we light fires to warm us. We hope that there will be enough to keep us warm and fed through the cold and dark of winter. But it is too soon to look forward to lengthening days and the return of growth. Now is a time of reflection and remembering.

It is not an accident, I think, that the Church focuses on remembering in November. 

At the start of the month we celebrated the feasts of All Saints and All Souls. We remembered and gave thanks for those who have been as saints to us, pointing us along the Way of Christ, and those we love but see no longer.

Last Sunday, we marked as Remembrance Sunday. We remembered those on all sides, men, women and children, service personnel and civilians, who have suffered and died in the wars and conflicts of the last century, in our own times, right up to today. 

It is surely right that we should remember and mourn them, and in particular our own dead. It is powerfully symbolic to do so at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, the exact time of the armistice which ended WW1, which so many vowed to be the ‘war to end war’. But we must never glorify our dead as offering a blood sacrifice for our nation. There is no such thing as a holy war. Jesus commands us to love our neighbours as ourselves. Our human species has been stained through the ages by a disposition to hate others not like us, to make enemies of them, to kill and destroy them in war, rather than treat them as neighbours we must love. Surely this disposition is a kind of original sin, something we need to guard against and repent.

I am conflicted by red poppies as a symbol of remembrance. Earl Haig began the poppy day appeal to raise money to support service men and women whose lives had been shattered in WW1, and the money it raises is still used for that good purpose. I remember as a child how my father wore a red poppy as he led remembrance commemorations alongside other veterans, as they silently mourned their fallen comrades, and remembered the dreadful things they had seen and been a part of. But I am dismayed at how the red poppy has come to be used as a symbol of British military glory, so that public figures who do not wear it are attacked for being unpatriotic, traitors even. I choose to wear the white poppy of the Peace Pledge Union instead, as a symbol of repentance, while I also contribute to the poppy day appeal.

For the rest of November, I suggest we should continue remembering. 

We should allow our spirits to be lifted by happy memories of the blessings we have received, and the good times we have had this year. The burgeoning growth of spring. The beauty of summer flowers. The bounty of autumn’s harvest. The holidays we returned refreshed from. The meals shared with friends and family. 

We should also remember the changes we have seen over the years. Fewer people live in poverty than when I was a child. People here in Ireland live longer, healthier lives. But we can also see the damage being done to the world around us, fewer insects, wild plants and birds, and increasingly frequent and intense droughts, floods and wildfires around the world. We must give thanks for the good, and mourn the bad. 

Then, when Advent arrives in December, when we look forward to Christ incarnate at Christmas, and the lengthening days after the winter solstice, we can start to consider our New Year resolutions, what we ought to do to make the world next year more like the kingdom of heaven.

Navigating the Eye of the Needle

The Jaffa Gate in the walls of Jerusalem
- is the 'Eye of the Needle' like the small door?

Address given in St Mary's Nenagh and Killodiernan Church on Sunday 13th October 2024, the twentieth after Trinity

Do you know how to catch a greedy monkey?

First take a jar with an opening a little larger than the monkey's hand. Attach the jar to something that can't be moved, like this pulpit. Then put something in the jar that the monkey wants – a sweet, perhaps. The monkey reaches in, grabs the treat, but with his hand full, he can't get his hand out of the opening. He's so greedy he won't let go – you have him trapped!

 

Forgive me if you have heard this trick from me before, but I think it vividly illustrates today’s reading from Mark’s Gospel (Mark 10:17-31).

 

The man who ran up to Jesus and knelt before him is rather like that monkey, isn’t he? He had asked Jesus, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” - ‘Jesus, looking at him’, we are told, ‘loved him and said, “You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” When he heard this, he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions.’

I think the man is a failed apostle. He received the same call to leave everything and follow Jesus that Peter and the rest of the Twelve did. Jesus loved him and must have seen his potential. But the man was trapped, trapped by all his possessions, and he could not respond to Jesus.

What should we learn from this man’s story?

Should we all, perhaps, do what this man couldn’t do – sell all our possessions, give the money to charity, and follow Jesus in holy poverty?

Just imagine what would happen if everybody did that. Prices would immediately crash. The economy would come to a grinding halt. And as ever the weak would suffer the worst consequences.

No, the fact is that Jesus calls each one of us uniquely, personally. He does not call us all to be or to do the same thing. He calls some to follow him in holy poverty, as he called his twelve apostles, as he called others through the centuries like St Francis of Assisi, and as perhaps he still calls some today. But very few are called to be apostles.

Rather each one of us should practice listening attentively for Jesus to reveal our personal call, through prayer, through our conscience and through the working of the Holy Spirit. And we should pray that when we hear Jesus call, we will be able to respond.

Jesus goes on to reflect on how wealth and possessions can cut us off from God.

“Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God!” he says, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”

What a knack Jesus has for vivid, humorous images! Once heard, no one ever forgets this image of a camel trying to get through the eye of a needle, as a metaphor for human impossibility. By the way, ‘the eye of the needle’ was probably a very short and narrow gate in the city walls of Jerusalem, which it would have been difficult to lead a loaded camel through, but perhaps not totally impossible.

Almost all of us here in Ireland are rich compared to most on the planet. Surely we must all sit up and take notice of these words of Jesus, whatever else our personal call might be.

The trouble, I think, is not wealth and possessions in themselves; it is how we use them - or how we allow them to use us. They are God’s good gifts, but it is all too easy for us to allow them to close our ears to Jesus’s call, preventing us from being the people God wants us to be – in other words preventing us from entering the kingdom of God. We must always be prepared to surrender wealth and possessions back to God, if that is necessary to do God’s will.

How often have we heard politicians and economists tell us our first priority must be economic growth!

And I dare say we will hear very many more voices saying this in the run up to the coming elections.

With economic growth, they say, we will become ever richer. Without it, we will become uncompetitive, we will be unable to afford the health, education and social services we all need, and we will all become impoverished. But the unthinking drive for economic growth is at the heart of the false values of our globalised consumer capitalist economies.

Economic growth in economies like ours works like this. Advertising encourages us to want more and more stuff we don’t need. We run around chasing our tails to get the money to buy stuff, at the expense of our health, our families, and our communities. We consume the stuff, and finally we throw it away. In doing so we damage our environment, causing global warming and biodiversity loss. Yet we are no happier for doing so! Meanwhile, the rich, the owners of capital, increase their wealth, while the poor get even poorer.

We are on a treadmill. And this treadmill can only lead us to the despair so searingly expressed in Psalm 22 (1-15) which we read today.

‘I am poured out like water; all my bones are out of joint;
my heart has become like wax melting in the depths of my body.
My mouth is dried up like a potsherd; my tongue cleaves to my gums;
you have laid me in the dust of death.’

We all know this kind of collective madness cannot go on - unless we are peculiarly deaf and blind. People made in God’s image are being hurt. Humanity’s greed is damaging the beautiful life filled planet God has placed us on. This cannot be God’s will. The Holy Spirit is speaking very clearly, and our consciences must tell us this is wrong.

Now, surely, we need as a society to discard the false values, to surrender our greedy dreams of riches. We must face the fact that our society, indeed our civilisation, is blighted by our collective greedy behaviour. Let us call it out for what it is: it is sin, collective sin.

Jesus tells us that it is almost impossible for us to enter God's kingdom while we hold on to our dreams of riches. But how hard it is to let them go! “Then who can be saved?” say the disciples to one another. “For mortals”, says Jesus – that is for men and women like you and me – “it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible.”

The Epistle to the Hebrews (4:12-16), urges us to listen to the living, active word of God, and to trust in Jesus, the Son of God. ‘Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need’. Now is a time of great need, and we are badly in need of mercy and grace, I suggest.

This surely is what we must do to escape from the treadmill of riches. We must be bold in seeking out God’s will. We must pray that his Spirit will show us how to live more abundantly with less, how to heal our damaged earth, how to rekindle community, how to serve fundamental human need instead of worshiping greed. And we must change, change our ways to live by God’s values.

I shall finish with a Collect of the Word.

Merciful God,
in your Son you call not the righteous but sinners to repentance;
draw us away from the easy road that leads to destruction,
and guide us into paths that lead to life abundant,
that in seeking your truth, and obeying your will,
we may know the joy of being a disciple of Jesus our Saviour,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever. Amen

Celebrating Harvest

Reflection given at Morning Worship with the Community of Brendan the Navigator on Tuesday 8th October 2024

Today, in this harvest season, we are celebrating and giving thanks for the bounty of good things we have received. God has given them to us because he loves us.

How has your harvest been this year? It’s been a bit mixed for me, as it may have been for you too. Plums and pears have been a disaster, due to a mixture of my bad husbandry and a late frost. I also lost most of the wild damsons in the hedge because I did not pick them in time, so there’ll be no damson jam this year.

But the apples have been excellent. I now have 4 supermarket trays of them in storage, which will last the winter, and I’ve been giving some away to visitors. I’ve made pickled walnuts for the first time, which are delicious with cream cheese. I’ve also had a good crop of cobnuts. Those that fell and the damsons on the ground have fed the badgers – they’ve been loving it, judging by the traces they leave. My wife Marty has grown delicious strawberries and blueberries for us, and the flowers in her labyrinth garden have given marvellous scent and colour all summer. My generous friend has left me a large container of honey he has extracted from the hive he keeps in our garden. And let us not forget the miracle of new life. I have a brand new grand-nephew Freddy this year - he’s a dote!

It is so very right that we should celebrate and give thanks in this harvest season for all the bounty we have received, even if we feel it could have been a bit better.

But not everyone has been so blessed with bounty. Think of the millions caught up in hellish wars. Think of those faced with rebuilding communities, homes and livelihoods after floods, storms or droughts. Think of the millions of refugees around the world seeking safety, but finding only distrust and hatred. How can they celebrate and give thanks?

It is hard not to worry that this beautiful and fruitful world God has placed us in is going to hell. But Jesus tells his disciples not to worry, in the reading from Matthew’s Gospel (6:25-33) we have just heard, set for Harvest this year. He tells them and us, ‘Do not worry, saying, “What will we eat?” or “What will we drink?” or “What will we wear?” … For indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.’

Worrying will do us no good, any more than it will help those who are suffering. It can only make us ill and miserable. Instead, Jesus calls us to action. He tells us to strive first for the kingdom of God; that is, to work hard to make this world a better place, more like God’s kingdom. Only then can we properly enjoy the fruits of the harvest.

So as we celebrate and give thanks for the harvest we receive, let us also rededicate ourselves to share it generously, and to fight the evil that disfigures God’s world, so that it may be filled with the peace and justice God wills for it.

 

The Birth of Mary, the Mother of Jesus, Theotokos, God-bearer

Greek Orthodox Icon of the Birth of the Theotokos

Reflection at Morning Worship with the Community of Brendan the Navigator on Tuesday 10th September 2024

Today we remember the Birth of the Blessed Virgin Mary, which is included as a Festival in the Calendar of the Church of Ireland on September 8^th, last Sunday. It is one of only 3 birthdays included in the Calendar - the others are of St John the Baptist, and of Jesus himself of course, at Christmas.

Now, neither Mary’s parents nor the circumstances of her birth are mentioned in any of the Gospels in the canon of our New Testament. But they are mentioned in the apocryphal Gospel of James, which claims to have been written by James the half-brother of Jesus by an earlier marriage of Joseph. Scholars date it to the middle of the 2^nd century, long after James’ death.

This and later traditions tell us that Mary’s father Joachim was rich and pious, and that he and her mother Anne were childless. Anne solemnly promises God that if she is given a child she will dedicate it to the Lord. They both receive a vision of an angel, who announces that Anne will conceive. She gives birth to a daughter, whom Anne names Mary, and the couple rejoice. When Mary is 3 years old they bring her to the Temple in Jerusalem to be brought up there, in an echo of the OT story of Hannah and Samuel. When Mary approaches her first period, the Temple authorities betroth her to Joseph and send her away, because they believed menstrual blood to be a source of impurity. And we all know her story thereafter.

The Gospel of James was excluded from the New Testament canon, though not before it had been widely read, copied and translated, and it continued to influence later views about Mary. St Jerome, who translated the Bible into Latin, rejected it as spurious, and Pope Innocent I condemned it in 405, when he confirmed a list of the books of the NT as we know it.

So, I believe that the stories of Mary’s birth and childhood are best seen as pious, but unreliable, fictions. The one thing we can know for sure about Mary’s birth is that she was indeed born, like every other human being.

The canonical Gospels tell us Mary’s wonderful story of humility and faithfulness. At the Annunciation, when the angel Gabriel tells her she will give birth to a son, to be named Jesus, she willingly accepts the extraordinary privilege of nurturing him in her womb, saying ‘Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.’ When she visits her cousin Elizabeth, she declaims the Magnificat, that great song of praise to God that we have just heard. She rears Jesus to be the divine man he was. She remains faithful to him throughout his ministry. And she suffers the unspeakable pain of watching her child’s brutal execution on the cross.

No matter whether we believe the stories about it or not, it is entirely right for us to remember and give thanks for the birth of Mary, the Theotokos, meaning God-bearer in Greek. So let us join with Christians of other traditions in the words of the Ave Maria:

‘Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb Jesus’.

 

Faith and Good Works

Jesus exorcising the Canaanite Woman's daughter. 

From Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, 15th century.

Address given at St Mary's Nenagh and Killodiernan Church on Sunday 8th September 2024, the 15th after Trinity

Do you feel anxious for the future? Many of us do, I think, including me.

Different folk worry about different things. Some dread accelerating climate change, some are concerned by the unknown dangers of new bio-technologies or artificial intelligence, some are frightened that newcomers of different races and religions will change their familiar communities, while others fear that class, race, or religious hatreds will lead to disastrous wars and social collapse.

But there is nothing new in any of this. It is part of the human condition, as we grow older, to fear that the world is going to hell in a handcart. Jesus himself warned his disciples not to be alarmed by ‘wars and rumours of wars’, for ‘the end is not yet’ (Matthew 24:6).

Nor should we ignore the good things that are continually happening. In my lifetime, advances in hygiene and medicine have reduced the burden of disease and immensely increased life expectancy. And global development has lifted hundreds of millions of people across the world out of crushing poverty. We should see these as signs of hope, signs that God’s kingdom of peace and justice is growing.

I think today’s readings have much to teach us about our Christian duty to contribute to the growth of the God’s kingdom. If we respond as we should, perhaps it will allay some of our fears.

In the Gospel, Mark (7:24-37) tells us two stories about Jesus ministering to foreign strangers.

Jesus has left the Jewish homelands to travel on a circuitous route through Gentile country in the regions of Tyre, Sidon and the Decapolis. We are told he did not want anyone to know he was there, so perhaps he was taking a holiday from ministry, but news of his presence got out.

In the first story, a Greek-speaking Syrophoenician woman with a sick daughter hears about him and comes to beg him to cure her daughter.

Jesus says to her, ‘Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.’ She boldly and wittily answers, ‘Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.’ And Jesus tells her that because of what she has said, her daughter has been healed.

Do Jesus’s words sound like a rude and crushing response to you? The children might be understood as the Jews, the children of Israel, and the dogs as gentiles like her. But I cannot believe Jesus was being rude or crushing – it would not be like him.

What I think is going on is this. A pious Jewish religious leader at that time would avoid contact of any kind with a Gentile woman to maintain his ritual cleanliness. But Jesus is different, he is intrigued, and he engages with her, no doubt with a twinkle in his eye and a friendly tone of voice. I think his words were to the effect that, ‘Look, I’m a foreign Jewish Rabbi and I’m on holiday – do you really want my help?’ In the woman’s witty reply, the word translated as ‘Sir’ is the Greek ‘Kyrie’, meaning Lord. She is acknowledging Jesus’s status and insists that she believes he can help. And that is what he does.

I ask myself, is this the moment when Jesus, fully human as well as fully divine, realises that his ministry is not just to Jews, but to people of all races and faiths?

In the second story, the friends of a deaf-and-dumb man bring him to Jesus to be healed.

Jesus ‘took him aside in private, away from the crowd, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spat and touched his tongue’. Then Jesus looked up to heaven and prayed over him, and the man was healed.

Notice how sensitive Jesus is to the circumstances and needs of the deaf-and-dumb man. The deaf man could not have known what was being said, and perhaps he was frightened by being the centre of attention in a crowd. So Jesus treats him in private, and Jesus uses mime to let him know what is going on.

As followers of Jesus we should model our behaviour on his.

Like him we must engage at a human level with people we meet who are different to us, and pay attention to their needs. We must not demonise people of other faiths and races, we must not demonise Muslims or Jews, but rather treat them as our neighbours, and offer them help if they need it.

And when we minister to people in distress, the poor, the sick, the vulnerable, we must, like Jesus, be sensitive to their circumstances and treat them as individuals with rights, not merely anonymous ‘cases’.

In his Epistle, James (2:1-17) urges Christians to break down the barriers of class and wealth in order to relieve the distress of the poor.

We can’t be certain who this James was, but an ancient tradition says it was James the brother of Jesus, a leader of the earliest church in Jerusalem. At the great council there, he and St Peter supported St Paul’s case that gentiles should be accepted into the Christian church alongside Jews without being circumcised.

Nor do we know what church or churches he is writing to, but they are clearly riven by class divides – the wealthy are being treated better than the poor.

James challenges his readers to ask whether their behaviour is consistent with their faith in Jesus Christ. He points out that God has ‘chosen the poor… to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the kingdom that he has promised to those who love him’. And he reminds them of the law proclaimed by Jesus, ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself’.

‘What good is it, my brothers and sisters’, he asks rhetorically, ‘if you say you have faith but do not have works?’ By ‘works’ he clearly means good works, deeds of love and compassion toward those in need. He continues, ‘If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food… and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that?’ ‘So’, he concludes, ‘faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead’.

The message is clear. We have no right to call ourselves Christians, followers of Jesus Christ – our faith is dead – unless we seek to relieve human distress when we see it. For us in modern Ireland, this means, I think, that we should not evade the taxes which fund the social welfare system and the health service – we must pay up with a good grace, while giving thanks that we are rich enough to be obliged to do so. And we must also be generous in giving to the organisations which support those who slip through the cracks - organisations such as St Vincent de Paul, Protestant Aid, the Simon Community, and the Nenagh Food Bank, to name a few.

I shall finish in prayer with the Collect of the Word for today

O God, whose word is life,
and whose delight is to answer our cry:
give us faith like that of the woman
who refused to remain an outsider,
so that we too may have the wit to argue
and demand that our children be made whole,
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen

 

Where are the butterflies?

 

From the September issue of Grapevine, the parish newsletter of the Nenagh Union of Parishes.

In August and September the Buddleia bushes in our gardens should be covered with colourful butterflies, sipping nectar from the sweet-smelling flowers. These are mostly from the Vanessid family: the native Small Tortoiseshells and Peacocks which survive the winter here as adults in sheltered places, including behind curtains in our houses; and the Red Admirals and Painted Ladies, immigrants from southern Europe and Africa, which arrive in Spring, breed here, and then return south in Autumn.

But where are they this year? Earlier in the year I saw many other butterflies, even a couple of tattered Small Tortoiseshells in early Summer. But as I write in late August there are almost no Vanessids to be seen at all. This I find very worrying.

Insect numbers generally have been falling over recent years, including butterflies. If you are my age, you will remember how car windscreens used to be matted with squashed moths and flies driving home after dark. But that is now a distant memory. There is less food now for insectivores like swallows and bats. One reason is changing farming practices, and the use of insecticides. Another is changes to the seasons due to climate change. The collapse of butterfly numbers this year is probably due to the disappointing summer we have had, connected to climate change. I hope that better weather next year will see numbers bounce back. But I fear we may be seeing signs of the collapse of the ecosystem that supports these butterflies. Future generations may never be captivated by their beauty, as I have been.

Butterflies are not mentioned in the Bible, not once. I wonder why not. They’re so beautiful and graceful. I can imagine Jesus, teaching outdoors, pointing to one, saying, “Behold, the butterfly…”, and using it to illustrate some profound truth. If he ever did, it’s not recorded.

But wait a minute. Consider the lifecycle of a Peacock butterfly. A tiny green egg is laid on the underside of a nettle leaf. A few days later a tiny, black spiny caterpillar hatches out. It devours the nettle leaves and grows until it is about 2in long. Then it hangs upside down from a stem and attaches itself with a thread. Its skin bursts and falls off, revealing a pupa. A few weeks later the pupa breaks open and the butterfly emerges with crumpled wings. It rests while the wings are pumped up with liquid and harden. Then it flies away in a new body perfectly designed for its new life, to seek a mate and start the cycle all over again.

These changes are called ‘metamorphosis’, from a Greek word meaning transformation. And this word is used by St Paul in his epistles, twice:

·         Romans 12:2: Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.

·         2 Corinthians 3:18: And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit.

Perhaps Paul was inspired by the transformations he saw in the lifecycle of butterflies. He tells us that as followers of Jesus we should expect to be transformed, bit by bit, into entirely new people, able to discern what God wants of us, becoming more like the image of God in Christ Jesus. Just as the Peacock butterfly’s egg turns into a caterpillar, the caterpillar into a pupa, and the pupa into the adult butterfly.

Joc Sanders

Remembering Jeremy Taylor, Bishop of Down, Connor & Dromore

The frontispiece of Taylor's 'Offices',
for which he was briefly imprisoned in the Tower of London,
because his printer included the picture of Christ praying

Address given At Morning Worship for the Community of Brendan the Navigator on Tuesday 13th August 2024

On 13^th August the Book of Common Prayer commemorates Jeremy Taylor, Bishop of Down, Connor and Dromore. Who was he, you may well ask? He was ordained a priest in the Church of England, and lived from 1613 to 1667, through the tumultuous times of the English Civil War, the execution of Charles I, the Protectorate under Oliver Cromwell, and the restoration of Charles II.

In the secular world at the time, England was bitterly divided between Royalist and Parliamentary supporters. The Church was similarly divided between a High Church party known as the Caroline Divines, who were royalist supporters of a church with bishops, and Puritan and Presbyterian parties, who were not. Jeremy Taylor supported the former.

Under the patronage of Archbishop of Canterbury William Laud, he was appointed a chaplain to King Charles I. As a result, he was politically suspect under the Protectorate. He was briefly imprisoned several times, but was eventually allowed to retire to live quietly in Wales. There he wrote two devotional books, Holy Living, concerned with personal morality, and Holy Dying, concerned with preparation for a blessed death. They are renowned for their practical wisdom, as well as being models of English prose, admired by John Wesley and Samuel Taylor Coleridge among many others.

At the Restoration Jeremy Taylor was appointed to the See of Down and Connor, to which Dromore was soon attached. He was also made a Privy Councillor of Ireland, and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Dublin. He proved to be a vigorous reforming bishop. He advocated wise toleration, but felt obliged to eject 36 of his clergy with Presbyterian views, because they refused to accept his authority as a bishop. And he was widely loved in his own time for his undoubted sincerity and devotion, as well as for his books.

I think today’s reading (Acts 5:27-42) is appropriate as we remember Jeremy Taylor. Two things stand out in it for me:

·         First is the bravery of Peter and the apostles when brought before the High Priest and the Jewish Council. They must have known that their lives were on the line, but they would not be silenced. They boldly declared their faith in Jesus Christ, saying ‘We are witnesses to these things, and so is the Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who obey him.’

·         Second is the wisdom of Gamaliel. He successfully urges the Council to proceed with caution. ‘If this plan or this undertaking is of human origin, it will fail; but if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them—in that case you may even be found fighting against God!’ The message the apostles proclaimed prospered, showing that it was indeed of God.

Like the apostles, Jeremy Taylor stood up to the authorities for what he believed in. He never recanted his moderate high church episcopalian beliefs. He continued to write and minister in exile in Wales. We do not know why the Puritans in Parliament spared him the fate of his patron Archbishop Laud, whom they beheaded. But perhaps among them was someone as wise as Gamaliel to dissuade them. And when the Puritan turmoil was over, Jeremy Taylor returned from his exile as a bishop in the Church of Ireland, where he helped to ensure our church would continue to be guided by bishops.

Let is pray in words taken from Morning Prayer in Jeremy Taylor's Collection of Offices, London 1658:

O Great King of heaven and earth, the Lord and patron of all ages, receive thy servants approaching to the throne of grace in the name of Jesus Christ; give unto every one of us what is best for us, cast out all evil within us, work in us a fullness of holiness, of wisdom and spiritual understanding, that we increasing in the knowledge of God may be fruitful in every good work, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen

 

Living Bread

 

Detail from a stained glass window in the chapel of St Joseph's Institution in Singapore

Address given at St Mary's Nenagh and Killodiernan Church on Sunday 11 August 2024, the 11th after Trinity

One of life’s greatest pleasures is to share a meal with loved ones and friends, isn’t it?

It is for me, and it is for you too I’m sure – 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 meals 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, after Jesus’s resurrection, it was only when the disciples on the road to Emmaus saw it that they recognised him. 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 truly gigantic outdoor picnic. There too in his special way, he took, blessed, broke and shared the five barley loaves and two fish to feed the crowd.

We recognise this same sequence of actions – taking, blessing, breaking and sharing - in the Last Supper as recorded by Matthew, Mark and Luke. And that of course is the model for 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, breaking 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:

^‘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.’

Today I want to share with you what these words say to me.

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 they believe Moses did by sending bread from heaven – manna - to feed the people in the wilderness. So naturally the metaphor he 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 know quite well who Jesus is - the son of Joseph the carpenter from nearby Nazareth. They choose not to understand his metaphor – and they ridicule 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 to decay.

Yet for Jesus this is not what truly matters. What does matter is our relationship with God. It is those of us who believe that God enfolds and protects us like a loving father that are released from dread of their own mortality. So he says, ‘Very truly, I tell you, whoever believes has eternal life’ (John 6:47).

Eternal life is surely a metaphor for a loving relationship with God. ‘This is eternal life’, says Jesus, after the last supper in John’s Gospel (John 17:3), ‘that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.’

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 to Jesus. Those who feed on Jesus’s words and actions, as on bread from heaven, have eternal life.

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 the priest consecrates the Eucharistic bread.

Many have found this suggestion of cannibalism very shocking. It certainly upset the hecklers in the crowd. And it upset many of Jesus’s disciples too, who, as we are told, ‘turned back and no longer went about with him’.

And it is still a problem for some of Jesus’s disciples today. I think that perhaps they 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 about how Christ is really present in the eucharist: transubstantiation, metousiosis, spiritual presence, or as a memorial.  And perhaps this is part of the strength of the metaphor, that it can be understood in so many ways.

For myself, I think the point is simply this - 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 our salvation.  That is precisely what he did for us on the cross.

These words of Jesus are difficult. I have told you what they mean for me, and I hope you find it helpful.

But when you get home, why don’t you take down your bible, turn to John’s Gospel chapter 6, and spend a little time pondering Jesus’s words for yourself? They may speak to you in quite a different way to how they speak to me. And that is OK. Metaphors often bear many different meanings at the same time. God will surely grant you the ones that are right for you.

Let us 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.’

I shall finish in prayer with a Collect of the Word

Grant, O Lord,
that we may see in you the fulfilment of all our need,
and may turn from every false satisfaction
to feed on the true and living bread
that you have given us in Jesus Christ;
who lives and reigns with you
and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever. Amen