Watching and Enduring

A Three Hour Vigil for Good Friday

Introduction

In the next 3 hours we are going to join inwardly in events that happened nearly 2000 years ago, when Our Lord Jesus Christ was cruelly executed alongside two common criminals, after a travesty of a trial, on trumped up charges, at a place called Golgotha, just outside Jerusalem.

This is a vigil, not a church service. Like all vigils, it is about watching and enduring.

• We are the watchers. We are watching Jesus as he dies slowly, suffering in agony on a cross. And to help focus our thoughts, we have a life-size cross looming in front of us. It is made of rough-hewn timber, not sanded or varnished, roughly bolted together. The craftsman who made it to this specification would not allow his name to be put on it, because it does not properly display his skill. We can imagine that Jesus’s cross would not have been so very different, a crude, functional instrument of torture.
• We are watching with Jesus, but we are not enduring. Jesus is enduring. He is enduring not just physical pain, but spiritual torments of desolation, as life drains from him.
• And as we watch Jesus endure, let us try to make sense of this dreadful scene. Is it possible for us to feel – really feel - the magnitude of what Jesus, our Lord and saviour, our friend and brother, did for us so long ago on the cross? It’s difficult, at least I find it so, but let us try.

To help us, we’re going to meditate on the Seven Last Words of Christ on the cross, as recorded by the Gospel writers. And to place these in context, we are first going to meditate on the events last night in the Garden of Gethsemane and the events of his trial first thing this morning.

Our meditation will be broken into 20 minute sections, during which we shall hear readings from the Gospels and reflections on the readings, and listen to the beautiful choral music of Théodore Dubois’s Seven Last Words. And we will also spend time just being still, pondering in silence the passion of Christ.

In the Garden of Gethsemane
“Abba, Father, for you all things are possible; remove this cup from me; yet, not what I want, but what you want.”

Jesus has just spent the evening sharing a meal with his disciples in an upper room – his last meal, the Last Supper, which we re-enact every week as the Communion. Then he leads them out walking in the night, out of the city.

Let’s enter into the scene in our imaginations. There must have been a moon, or they could not have seen the way, but without street-lights the heavens would be ablaze with stars, such as we rarely see these days. It would be pleasantly warm. And as they walk Jesus talks, always teaching them. At the Mount of Olives, Jesus shocks them by saying that they will all desert him; they protest they never would. Then they go into a Garden, the Garden of Gethsemane. I imagine fruit-trees in it: figs, vines, perhaps oranges and lemons. And no doubt carefully tended patches of herbs and vegetables. The air would be heavy with Mediterranean scents.

But Jesus is agitated. He seems to know that this is the end-game; that at last the authorities are moving to arrest him; that the outcome will be his death. He leaves the others, taking only Peter and James and John with him. He is visibly distressed; he goes on ahead to pray by himself. “I am deeply grieved, even to death; remain here, and keep awake”, he asks them.

And alone now, Jesus opens his heart in prayer to his loving-Father God, “Remove this cup from me”, he pleads, “yet, not what I want, but what you want.” He knows what is in store for him: the cutting off of fellowship; the severing of joy; the utter darkness, loneliness and desolation beyond endurance. But yet he is perfectly obedient to God’s will, perfectly trusting in his Father’s love. He is a model for us of how to behave when we see the abyss open in front of us. As we will: of one thing we can all be certain, we will suffer the separation of death from all we love.

Jesus knows what is in store for him, but he does not waver in his trust in the love of God, not for one moment. Even when Peter and James and John cannot stay awake for a single hour to watch with him as he wrestles with the temptation to run away. Even when his chosen disciple Judas betrays him with a kiss. Even when all his disciples flee, as armed men take him away. He knows their unreliability, but even so, how their desertion must hurt him! Would you or I be any different to them? Have we never been guilty of desertion or betrayal?

As we start our first period of silence, you might like to focus your thoughts on 2 things:

• On Jesus’s perfect obedience to the will of our loving Father God; and
• On our own unreliability as his disciples

Trial and Judgement
“If I tell you I am the Messiah, you will not believe; and if I question you, you will not answer. But from now on the Son of Man will be seated at the right hand of the power of God.”

One thing that strikes me about Luke’s story is the sheer variety of people involved in Jesus's trial. As well as the great and powerful who sat in judgement, there are the ordinary folk: there’s Peter, trying to be inconspicuous in the courtyard of the High Priest’s house, and there are those who challenged him there; there are the guards who taunted Jesus; and there’s the rent-a-mob who cried, “Crucify him”.

Peter was a brave man. John tells us it was Peter who cut off the ear of the High Priest’s servant with his sword. And Peter dares to follow Jesus and his captors back to the High Priest’s house. Yet even brave Peter denies he knows Jesus three times: when the cock crowed, Jesus’s wordless glance reduces him to bitter tears. Would I have been more faithful? I doubt it. I’m not as brave as Peter. But we can all take heart that the gift of the Spirit at Pentecost turned the Peter who denied Christ into the Peter who declared his faith boldly in public.

The guards were brutal men. They blindfolded Jesus, they mocked him and they slapped him around a bit. The point was humiliation. There are still people like that today – just call to mind those shocking photographs from Abu Ghraib. We may not have done quite such ghastly things ourselves, but have we never been guilty of deliberately humiliating someone? Perhaps we’re not so different from them.

Jesus was actually tried 3 times, by 3 distinct authorities: by the Jewish assembly of elders, by Pilate the Roman Governor, and by Herod the ruler of Galilee.

Have you been watching the new version of The Passion on TV? It gives a vivid picture of the self-serving, ruthless arrogance of the Temple leaders. To put him out of the way, they try to get Jesus to convict himself from his own lips of blasphemy, a capital offence in Jewish law. I believe Jesus really did think he was the Messiah, the Son of God. But according to Luke Jesus avoids saying so: he neither confirms nor denies it, saying instead the equivalent of ‘if you say so’. I prefer this to Mark’s account, where he says ‘I am’. It seems so much in character for Jesus to try to leave the outcome entirely in his Father’s hands. Yet, in their eagerness to be rid of Jesus, the elders break their own rules of evidence and convict him. But before we condemn them, ask yourself: am I any better? How often have I rushed to judgement, and condemned a court for releasing someone I believe to be guilty?

They send Jesus to Pilate because only the Roman occupiers can confirm a death sentence. But notice that they don’t accuse him of blasphemy in front of Pilate – that wouldn’t cut much ice with a Roman. Instead they accuse him of being a dissident, claiming he is King of the Jews. Pilate believes he is innocent, and doesn’t want to execute him. He tries again and again to find a way of letting Jesus off: he sends him to Herod, who mocks him and sends him back - Herod is a puppet who will not exercise any responsibility, as well as a joker; Pilate offers to have Jesus flogged - but this does not satisfy the Temple leaders' desire to put Jesus out of the way; and Pilate seeks the approval of the rent-a-mob crowd to release him - but they blindly follow their leaders and don't think for themselves. The mob howls for Jesus to be crucified and a murderer Barabbas to be released. And Pilate is a weak man; a weak man seeking to avoid trouble. He caves in under pressure and washes his hands of this innocent man. But before we condemn Pilate, ask yourself again, am I any better? How often have I gone along with the crowd, for the sake of an easy time, and given my tacit approval for something I know to be wrong?

As we move into our 2nd short period of silent meditation, you might like to focus your thoughts on the human weaknesses displayed by the different characters in the story. Which of them are you most like?

The 1st Word
“Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

We have come to spend three hours in vigil from 12 to 3; but if we had arrived at Calvary at noon, we would have missed three of his seven words from the cross. We are told that they crucified him at 9 in the morning. The 1st word came as the nails were hammered into his hands and wrists: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”

It’s astonishing, isn’t it? Here is someone more concerned for the people who are causing him agony than for himself who suffers the agony; and at the very moment that the agony is being caused! I remember the time that I slammed the car door shut on my mother’s fingers, God bless her. As I hopped around crying, “Mum, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to”, she screamed in pain and cursed me. She couldn’t forgive my carelessness in the moment of her excruciating pain. But Jesus could, even though he knew that they did mean to.

You might say, "Oh, Jesus could forgive because he was God." But that misses the point, I think, which is that God became a human being, one of us; and, as one of us, forgave his fellow human beings who caused him pain.

What is our attitude to those who give us pain? Is it modelled on Jesus? It’s hard to be forgiving, isn’t it? Particularly when the person who hurts us means to do so, or doesn’t mind hurting us. If we’re to imitate Jesus, we must ask ourselves, “Is there anyone I do not forgive?” There probably is, and if there is, shouldn’t we ask our loving-Father to forgive them, even if we can’t quite do so by ourselves?

And let us think for a moment of those who wielded the hammers, those who drove home the nails. What a sin it was to crucify the best man who ever lived, the Messiah, the Son of God! But are we any better than them? Have we not driven home the nails ourselves, many times? I know there are times when my thoughtless, selfish actions have caused real hurt to others of God’s children, and there are times when I have lashed out deliberately, and times I have said things that can never be unsaid, in pain myself and driven to cause pain. I need to hear Jesus say to me, “Father, forgive him, for he does not know what he is doing”

As we sit in silence, let’s focus our attention on this cross in front of us. Let’s try to imagine Jesus hanging there, and marvel at his amazing capacity for forgiveness. As we hear him say “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do”, let’s ask ourselves, “Is there someone I need to forgive”?

The 2nd Word
“Truly, I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise”

Jesus did not hang on his cross alone - two others shared the agony with him. He was innocent, but they were not: they were criminals. We are not told what their crimes were, but I think they must have been pretty heinous. The Romans did not lightly sentence men to crucifixion. Today’s equivalent of their crimes might be murder in the course of a robbery, or child abuse, or a terrorist atrocity.

In his agony, one of these bad men taunts Jesus. Jesus does not respond in kind, he simply bears the insults. But the 2nd bad man rebukes the first: he acknowledges Jesus’s innocence, and he admits his own sentence is deserved. He says, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” Jesus does respond to the second man, with his 2nd word from the cross: he says to him, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”

What a remarkable contrast between the two criminals who are suffering, and Jesus’s response to them! But what is it that makes the difference?

I think Jesus doesn’t respond to the 1st man, because nothing Jesus could say would do any good. The 1st man is so wrapped up in his own pain and degradation that he can only spew out hatred. His is a lost soul.

Even though the 2nd man is in the same agony, Jesus perceives that he loves God, that he knows he has done wrong, and that he is capable of feeling sorry for someone else, for Jesus. Jesus does not use his power to bring him down from the cross, to make it all better – that would be supernatural, and that doesn’t seem to be the way God works. Instead Jesus reassures the man that God loves him, even though, like Jesus, he is dying on a cross. It is really a spiritual miracle: despite all the mess, today they will truly be together in Paradise!

God calls each one of us to carry our own cross, as a Christian, in our own way. Perhaps it is only by enduring our own personal cross, enduring without losing sight of God’s love for us and our common humanity, as Jesus and the 2nd criminal did, that we too can be with Jesus in Paradise.

Another silence in the shadow of the cross. You might like to use it to think about your own personal cross, if you have one, or what it is that you most dread happening, if you don’t. Can you endure it, without losing sight of God’s love, and your own humanity? Remember the words of Psalm 23:

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the
shadow of death, I will fear
no evil;
for thou art with me, thy rod and
thy staff they comfort
me.

And let us pray for those who are suffering but cannot feel God’s loving touch, that feel unloved and unable to love. May they too hear Jesus say, “Truly, I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”

The 3rd Word
He said to his mother, “Woman, behold your son!” Then he said to the disciple, “Behold your mother!”

Thank God I’ve never had to watch a public execution. It is an ugly thing, a degrading thing – that is the point of it, to degrade the victim. I find it hard to understand, but people have always thronged to watch them – even today where they’re still allowed. This degradation is part of what Jesus had to endure: his enemies jeering; the curious simply there for something to do, a bit of fun; those who loved him, grieving in front of his eyes.

It must be particularly gut-wrenching to watch someone you love, the child you have nurtured, suffer the prolonged torture of crucifixion. It took hours, not just the 3 hours of this vigil. Yet somehow Mary his mother finds the strength to stay close by Jesus in his agony. How completely torn she must be: repelled by his ghastly death, yet drawn to be near her beloved son in his last hours. In Mary at the cross we see an image of the eternal love at the heart of motherhood, and of the suffering it can bring. I thank God too that I have never had to suffer the death of a child.

Mary the mother of Jesus is supported in her vigil by four others: her sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene, as well as someone not named, but described as the ‘disciple whom Jesus loved’. Scholars have identified Mary’s sister as Salome, the mother of James and John, the sons of Zebedee. The ancient tradition of the Church is that the disciple Jesus loved was Salome’s son John, the writer of John’s Gospel. If scholars and tradition are right, it is Jesus’s cousin John who is there with Mary at the crucifixion; though most scholars now believe the Gospel was written long after his death.

It’s rather moving, isn’t it, that in his 3rd word from the cross on the brink of his death, Jesus should commit his mother Mary to the care of his cousin John, and John to the care of Mary, to look after each other, and to comfort each other’s loneliness when he was gone. A truly practical example of the love of God at work in evil times.

The first three words from the cross display Jesus’s compassion for others, even in the midst of his own torment: he has asked forgiveness for his torturers; he has assured the criminal of a place with him in Paradise; he has provided for his mother and the disciple he loved. He has hung on the cross now for more than 3 hours. There is nothing more he can do, but conserve his remaining strength for the job of yielding himself to death.

As we watch in silence in front of the cross, we remember how Jesus gave Mary his Mother into the care of John, and John into the care of Mary. Let us remember all those who are bereaved and missing their loved-ones. Let us pray that they may find the love and support that Mary and John gave each other.

The 4th Word
“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Time has moved on as Jesus labours at dieing. Now it is approaching 3 in the afternoon, and Jesus speaks again a 4th time: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

What terrifying implications flow from these words! Jesus has always felt himself so close to his loving-Father God. Has God really forsaken his obedient son, at this moment of his greatest need? If so, what hope is there for our wayward souls? Is our faith vain? We are compelled to seek answers.

The onlookers misunderstand Jesus’s words in Aramaic, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” They think he is crying out for Elijah, and some even wonder whether that great prophet will come to save him miraculously. Could we too be misunderstanding him?

It is possible that as he waits to die Jesus is recalling a Psalm. Psalm 22 begins in desolation and dejection with these words, but it ends in soaring triumph:

He has saved my life for himself; my descendents shall serve him;
this shall be told of the Lord for generations to come.

They shall come and make known his salvation, to a people yet unborn,
declaring that he, the Lord, has done it.

Perhaps Jesus never experiences the withdrawal of the love of God at all. Or perhaps the evangelist puts these words in his mouth to echo the Psalm.

There are other views. Some people suggest that this is the moment when Jesus feels the whole weight of the world’s sins, which he must do so that he can atone for them and bring us salvation. Paul in his 2nd Letter to the Corinthians says, “For our sake (God) made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” Others don’t feel very comfortable with this theology of atonement, because it makes God out to seem more vengeful than loving.

Another way of looking at it is in more human terms. It seems to me that Jesus could not be Jesus unless he had plumbed the absolute depths of human experience. There are times when every one of us feels that God has forgotten us; when we simply cannot comprehend why a loving God would let some awful thing happen, and we feel absolutely alone and bereft. Perhaps this is such a moment for Jesus. It is very Hell! There is an echo of this in the Apostles’ Creed, where we say ‘He descended into Hell’. And the idea of Jesus 'harrowing Hell' is an ancient one, much beloved by the Orthodox churches. Isn’t it comforting to think that there is no place we might go, where Jesus has not been before us? Even Hell!

Let us be silent again in front of the cross, as we think of the spiritual torment Jesus is expressing in the words “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” When we feel forsaken and abandoned by God, let’s remember that Jesus has been there before us. It will pass.

The 5th Word
“I thirst!”

Time is starting to move very slowly now for Jesus on his cross. On Golgotha it is nearly 3 o’clock, and Jesus is close to death. But here we still have nearly an hour to watch with him.

Jesus’s 4th word from the cross revealed his mental and spiritual suffering. This 5th word, “I thirst”, reminds us again of his physical suffering. When he wrote his Gospel around 100AD, John may very well have included these words deliberately, to refute the views of Gnostic Christians that Jesus as God was pure spirit, and incapable of suffering as humans do. But we can’t avoid Jesus’s suffering; even if we feel we can’t bear it, we mustn’t turn away; we have to face squarely the excruciating physical pain of the Cross. Excruciating – the word literally means ‘from a cross’.

So let us focus on what was involved with crucifixion.

• The nails would have been hammered through Jesus’s wrists, not the palms of his hands as imagined in medieval pictures, because only bones can support the weight of a body.
• The arms would be spread quite wide, because if the angle were narrow Jesus would have died too quickly from suspension asphyxiation. Even so he would have felt he could hardly breathe. And to get relief by hauling his body upward on the nails would be very painful.
• Death could come either from asphyxiation, or by shock and dehydration. Liquid loss from the scourging and exposure in bright Judean sun would lead quickly to dehydration.
• Jesus would have become very thirsty. As dehydration worsened, his heart would begin to race and his breathing would become fast, he would experience headache and nausea.
• At about 15% fluid loss he would begin to suffer muscle spasms and vision loss. Death would follow later.

It could take days to die on a cross. If the executioners wanted to speed the process up, they would smash the victim’s legs to cause traumatic shock and hasten death. Jesus did not have to suffer this because his death came mercifully fast, but the two criminals beside him did.

If you can bear it, look up at the cross behind me; imagine that broken body hanging there in excruciating pain. Excruciating pain which Jesus accepted obediently, as his loving Father’s will. Excruciating pain which Jesus accepted willingly, to show us his way to life and the love of God.

Let us keep silence. No words can do justice to the courage Jesus shows as he endures the cross.

The 6th Word
“Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.”

The moment of Jesus’s release draws near; it will not be long now.

As a skilled storyteller Luke emphasises the tragic drama being played out on Calvary by describing an ominous darkness. The sun’s failure is an image of creation gone awry. Scholars and commentators are uncertain and divided on the significance of the rending of the curtain of the temple. But you may like, as I do, this thought: it is as if the veil hiding the presence of God from us was torn down as Jesus died. From now on all people have direct and equal access to God, through Jesus’s self-sacrifice upon the cross.

The next to last word Jesus utters on the cross is a prayer, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.” If he had felt truly forsaken by his God earlier, now he is confident once again that God loves him. He offers his spirit back to God, in the certainty that God will keep it safe.

“Into your hands I commend my spirit” is a quotation from Psalm 31. In later centuries this psalm was often used in Jewish evening prayer to commend oneself into God's care during the night's sleep. There is something very childlike and trusting in the way Jesus uses this verse. Who knows, perhaps Mary taught her little son to say it as a bed-time prayer, as my mother taught me this one:

Now I lay me down to sleep;

I pray the Lord my soul to keep.

If I should die before I wake,

I pray the Lord my soul to take.

To this verse Jesus adds the word “Father”. Jesus was not alone in addressing God as Father, “Abba” in Aramaic, but it was characteristic of his teaching. He taught his disciples, and you and me, to pray to “Our Father in heaven”. This not only teaches us that God is like a loving father to us, but also teaches us that Jesus is like our brother. He is one of us, experiencing all the joys and sorrows that we experience.

When my own time comes, and I look my own death squarely in the eyes, I pray for the grace to be able to say with Jesus “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.”

As we keep silence under the cross, let us pray in Jesus’s words,“Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.”

The 7th Word
“It is finished!”

The other Gospels tell us that at the moment of his death Jesus uttered a great cry, but only John tells us what it was: “It is finished!” It is a shout of triumph. He didn’t whisper it, like someone forced to admit defeat. He didn’t mouth it in relief that his agony is over. He threw back his head and he shouted it. “I have done it!” he is saying, “I have faced the very worst, and I have won!”

By his victory won upon the cross, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, our friend and brother, shows us all the way to vanquish sin and death with the weapons of love. It is only left to us to follow.

The note of triumph in Jesus’s last word from the cross this Good Friday is a foretaste of his resurrection which we celebrate this Sunday. But before we meet him again on Easter Morning, we must follow him to the tomb, as Matthew tells us his mother Mary does with Mary Magdalen.

In Jewish law, in Deuteronomy (21:22), it is written: “When someone is convicted of a crime punishable by death and is executed, and you hang him on a tree, his corpse must not remain all night upon the tree; you shall bury him that same day.” The Temple authorities have no option but to arrange with Pilate for the bodies of Jesus and the two criminals to be taken down.

But where to bury him? No doubt the little party of disciples from Galilee does not have the resources to do so decently. Two people step forward to help. Joseph of Arimathea is rich and powerful, a member of the Sanhedrin, and a secret disciple of Jesus: he provides the tomb - his own, we are told. Nicodemus is also a secret disciple; he had visited Jesus at night, because he was afraid to do so publicly: he provides the ointments and spices needed to embalm the body. Together they make sure that Jesus is buried with decent reverence.

It’s amazing, isn’t it? These two people, who were afraid to support Jesus publicly while he was alive, are able to do so as soon as he is dead. All the cowardice, the hesitation, the prudent concealment are gone. Jesus has not been dead an hour, when his words reported by John (12:32) begin to come true: “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” Jesus is already showing his risen power to be a magnet of souls.

But we are running ahead. Here, now, Jesus has just cried “It is finished!” His lifeless corpse hangs on the cross in front of us. Yet he is victorious. Let us meditate on that.

As we move into our last period of silence in front of the cross, let us focus our thoughts on the beautiful words of the prayer of St Richard, Bishop of Chichester in England in the mid C13th. It goes like this:

Lord Jesus Christ we thank you
for all the benefits you have won for us,
for all the pains and insults you have borne for us.
Most merciful redeemer, friend and brother,
may we know you more clearly,
may we love you more dearly,
and follow you more nearly,
day by day.

Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones!

1. Introduction

Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones.
Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones.
Ezekiel connected dem dry bones.
Oh hear the word of the Lord!

Forgive me for my poor singing, but after hearing the words of Ezekiel’s stirring vision in our OT reading, I couldn’t resist it!

Both readings today are about resurrection: the renewal of life in someone or something that to all appearances is dead. Ezekiel (37:1-14) prophesies the resurrection of the House of Israel, at a time of desolation and exile. And John (11:1-45) tells us the charming story of the raising of Lazarus.

So today I’m going to examine these readings more closely and ponder the meaning of resurrection. What a fine subject resurrection is for a fine spring day, when all about us seeds and plants and trees and lambs and calves are bounding into new life in our gardens and fields!.

2. So firstly, what about Ezekiel’s dry bones?

Ezekiel is writing in Babylon around 580BC, shortly after Nebuchadnezzar’s armies had laid waste to Jerusalem and the Temple. The Israelite leaders and many of the people had been deported into exile by the banks of the Euphrates, close to Babylon in what is now modern Iraq. Babylon may well have been the greatest city in the world at that time, with a population estimated at about 200,000. There are disturbing reports that when the American army invaded Iraq, they bulldozed and levelled part of the ruins of this great city to build a base for tanks. The invading armies of today are no less brutal and destructive than those of antiquity!

Ezekiel conjures up such a vivid picture, doesn’t he? The unburied corpses of the Israelites killed in the Babylonian invasions have weathered to parched, dislocated and scattered bones. We are told they represent the whole people of Israel, the exiles crushed by despair, and the dislocated and disoriented Israelites left behind, not just the dead. And Ezekiel tells this devastated people that their God YHWH will not let them down; he will open their very graves, he will give them life, and he will restore them to their land.

Many people have seen this passage as a promise of a literal resurrection of the dead, but I think that is a mistake. I feel sure we should see it as a metaphor, a metaphor carefully crafted by Ezekiel to give a devastated nation hope, hope that one day they will be restored to their land. His words, and those of other prophets, resonated with the people of Israel, and helped to hold them together, until eventually the exiles were able to return to Jerusalem, 50 years later, when Babylon in turn was captured by Cyrus the Persian. The ancient people of Israel did indeed experience a resurrection to new life!

These words resonated once again with the devastated Jewish people of Europe, emerging from the Nazi extermination camps after the Holocaust, the Shoah in Hebrew, as they created their modern state of Israel in Ezekiel’s ancient homeland. A heart-breaking consequence has been the devastation of the Palestinian people they displaced. The creation of the modern state of Israel brought exile and dispossession to some 750,000 Palestinians, which they call the Nakba, or Catastrophe in Arabic. As we walk with Jesus on the road to Jerusalem and the cross this Lent, let us pray for an end to the evil cycle of hatred and bloodshed there, for reconciliation with peace and justice, for a resurrection to new life for all in the Holy Land.

The black slaves transported to America were another devastated people. The plight of the Israelites in exile and Ezekiel’s message of hope resonated with them too, inspiring the fine Negro spirituals and Gospel music which are part of our common inheritance. Thank God that Christian leaders like Martin Luther King were there to harness their hope. I quote from his great speech to the March on Washington in 1963:

Let freedom ring. And when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children—black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics—will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!

A call for resurrection to new life, if ever I heard one!

3. Now let’s turn to John’s Gospel and the raising of Lazarus.

It’s a rather long passage, and it’s a puzzling story, but the Evangelist fills it with so much incidental detail that the scenes really come to life.

One lovely thing that shines out is how much Jesus loved Martha and Mary and their brother Lazarus.

• Luke also tells us about Martha and Mary, but not Lazarus. If you remember, Mary sat at Jesus’s feet and listened to him talk, leaving Martha to do all the housework. And when Martha complained, Jesus gently chided her for being so distracted by mundane tasks.
• How delightful it must have been for Jesus to visit these close friends, to relax, to be himself, and to drink in the warmth and love of their home. As a wandering teacher Jesus had no home of his own. I feel sure that he must have needed that sort of refreshment, just as much as we do.
• But this visit was different. Lazarus was dead. Both Martha and Mary separately said to him ‘Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died’. How guilty Jesus must have felt for arriving late! When he saw Mary weeping, Jesus too broke down and wept. Our translation has it that he was ‘deeply moved’, but this really isn’t strong enough at all. The Greek word used by John is also used of a horse snorting. The meaning must be that Jesus’s heart was so wrung by anguish that he groaned out loud.
• And then Jesus did what he had come to do: he called Lazarus out from the grave, back from the dead.

But there are a number of things that puzzle me about John’s story:

• Firstly, some of the words he puts in Jesus’s mouth seem rather out of character to me. Think for a moment about his declaration that Lazarus’s illness ‘is for God’s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it’. What a cold way to look at a friends suffering! Could Jesus really have said that? John's purpose in writing his Gospel was to convert Greek speaking Jews who were not believers. Is it possible this lead him to colour his story?
• Secondly, John makes it clear that the raising of Lazarus is the immediate reason why the Jewish authorities decided to do away with Jesus, leading directly to his crucifixion. Yet the other three Gospels say absolutely nothing about it, nothing at all! We know that at least one of the apostles was there, Thomas. So how could the other Gospel writers not have heard of and written about such an important miracle, with such momentous results, if John’s account is correct? Is it?
• And then there’s the elephant in the room. How can we explain satisfactorily - scientifically - a four day old, stinking corpse rising up and walking? A person who has apparently just died might be woken from a coma. But one that has started to decompose?

There may be problems with John’s story. Some of us will believe that it all happened just as John sets down that it did. Others will be much less certain. And we can never know for sure what exactly happened so long ago. But does it really matter whether or not Jesus literally raised a corpse to life in Bethany in AD30?

4. What really matters, I think, is the spiritual message.

That message is that that Jesus is the resurrection and the life. Perhaps John has crafted the whole story around that message.

Jesus said to Martha ‘I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die’.

One thing is clear – Jesus is not speaking of physical life. We all know that Christians experience physical death just like everyone else.

But if we believe in Jesus Christ, if we accept everything he teaches us about his loving Father God as absolutely true, and stake our lives upon it, then we enter into a new relationship with God, and we enter into a new relationship with life.

• We become absolutely sure of God’s love. We become absolutely sure that above all he is a redeeming God – if sin is death, forgiveness is resurrection. And the fear of death vanishes, because death means nothing more than a merging with the great lover of souls.
• With faith in Jesus Christ, our life becomes a new thing, a strong thing, such a lovely thing, that we cannot imagine it ending incomplete.

‘Do you believe this?’ said Jesus. ‘Yes, Lord’ said Martha, ‘I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world’.

Original Sin

1. Temptation and sin is the strong theme running through the readings set for today.

This is no accident. Today is the 1st Sunday of Lent, and Lent is a ‘penitential’ season in the traditional Church calendar. It is a time when we are invited to reflect on our sinful natures, and to seek God’s forgiveness for our actual sins.

• The OT reading from Genesis is that old story of the Fall, which we all learned in childhood: how the serpent tempted Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, and how they sinned by disobeying God and eating the forbidden fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
• The Gospel reading from Matthew tells us how Jesus resisted the temptation of the devil in the wilderness. He did not sin.
• In the Epistle reading from his letter to the Romans, Paul contrasts the sin of Adam with the righteousness of Jesus. This passage is very important historically for the development of Christian theology, because it’s a scriptural foundation for the doctrine of ‘original sin’.

It’s this uncomfortable idea of original sin that I want to explore today.

2. First let’s look at the story of the Fall (Genesis 2: 15-17, 3: 1-7).

What vivid images it conjures up! They have inspired artists and writers through the centuries.

But surely this is just an old myth, with no relevance to sophisticated people like us today? Well, yes it is a myth, and a very ancient one. But like so many old myths, I think it has been preserved over the generations because it captures an essential truth: despite being moral creatures with consciences, we human beings, endowed with free will, all too often choose to do what we know to be wrong – in other words we have an innate tendency to sin.

• We don’t have to believe that Adam and Eve were literally the first man and the first woman, but they are typical of men and women, like you and me. God forbade Adam and Eve to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, but they did so, and became like God, able to distinguish good from evil. We can all tell good from evil, can’t we? We call that capacity conscience: it’s part of what makes us human, and humans are moral beings.
• Adam and Eve could distinguish good from evil, and no doubt like us they would like to prefer good to evil. But that doesn’t mean to say that they would always choose good over evil, any more than we do. Like us, they had free will. They were tempted by the serpent, and they chose to eat the forbidden fruit, because they desired it: because it was good to eat, because it was beautiful, and because it would make them wise. So many rationalisations for their bad choice! We don’t have to believe in a literal talking serpent, but we all know about temptation don’t we? We’ve all heard that little nagging voice in the head, haven’t we? Prompting us to do something we know in our heart of hearts is wrong, for what we pretend are jolly good reasons.

This is original sin: to know what is right, but to be tempted by our desires to do what is wrong, and all too often to give in to our desires. We all suffer from it, without exception. We know we are all sinners, even though we may try not to be, and even though we do not always succumb to temptation.

It is not so much a mysterious, theological doctrine as a truth about our psychological natures, derived from observation. In fact scientists are now studying our behaviour as moral beings. Harvard biologist Hauser has found that people of all races and religions share at an unconscious level what might be termed a universal moral grammar, which drives their moral judgements. Yale psychologist Milgram has found that perfectly ordinary people can be manipulated to perform heinous acts, analogous to Nazi war crimes. Others have explained how the mechanism of natural selection can result in altruistic behaviour. People like Richard Dawkins use their findings to attack all religion, including Christianity. But I believe the scientists are really expressing old religious truths in the new language of science.

3. Matthew (Matthew 4:1-11) tells us how Jesus was tempted by the devil in the wilderness, but resisted his blandishments.

We are told that Jesus fasted for forty days and forty nights. It is often said that Lent lasts forty days to commemorate Jesus’s fast, and it is an ancient tradition to fast during Lent, or to give up something you like. But if you check on the calendar you will see there are actually 46 days from Ash Wednesday to Holy Saturday. To make it 40 days you must exclude the six Sundays in Lent, which are traditionally seen as mini-Easters, days of celebration. No fasting on Sundays! If you’ve given up something for Lent, you might or might not find that thought helpful!

The devil tempted Jesus we are told, just as the serpent tempted Adam and Eve. Jesus, like us, could hear that nagging little voice in his head. But Jesus had the strength to resist temptation. That is the difference between him and us.

I think it is significant that Jesus quotes scripture, his own Jewish scripture, to rebuke the devil and to resist temptation. Perhaps we might do the same when we are tempted. Scripture can be a tool to help us resist temptation. Now that’s a thought that might help you keep your Lenten resolutions!

4. So we come to Paul (Romans 5:12-19), and his contrast between the sin of Adam and the righteousness of Christ.

I find his argument difficult to understand and convoluted – Paul can be so irritating sometimes, when he seems to deliberately make things obscure – but he ends up crystallizing matters in these words:
‘For just as by the one man’s disobedience (Adam’s) the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience (Christ’s) the many will be made righteous’.

Paul sees the reality of original sin only too clearly: all human beings, like Adam, are inevitably sinners; like Eve too for that matter, though the old misogynist leaves her out! Later on in his Epistle to the Romans, Paul expresses the human dilemma perfectly:
‘I do not understand my own actions… I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.’

What a mess we are all in! Our sins convict us; they cut us off from God; and we inevitably suffer spiritual death. Or to put it another way, in the modern language of psychology: I am ashamed of the bad things I do; the shame destroys my self-esteem; and I plunge into depression.

But Paul also sees another reality: the reality that God offers us a way out of the mess. The way out is God’s free gift of grace in Jesus Christ. By following Jesus’s path of obedience to God, our sins will be forgiven and we will be made righteous. Again, to put it in the language of psychology: if I am truly sorry for the bad things I’ve done and seek to make amends, I will cease to feel corrosive guilt, and I will learn to be better in future, accepting myself for who I am, with all my flaws.

5. So to sum up

• Every one of us, without exception, should feel uncomfortable about original sin, because it is a reality: we all share an innate tendency of human beings to sin, which leads every one of us to be a sinner. We are all guilty as charged. We all deserve to burn in hell.
• But as St Paul saw so clearly, that is not the end of the matter. God offers us the free gift of grace in Jesus Christ. If we follow his way and repent of our sins, they will be forgiven. We will be released on parole.

And a final comforting thought for Lent: ‘Remember, I am with you always’, says Jesus. The consequence of original sin is the nagging little voice of temptation, which we personify as the serpent or the devil. But if we trust in Jesus and listen for it, we can also hear Jesus’s confident, comforting voice, encouraging us to resist temptation, and when we succumb offering us forgiveness if we repent.

Let’s try to listen for his voice, really listen, as we travel with Jesus on the way to Calvary this Lent!

One Lord, one Faith, one Baptism

1. Introduction

• The feast of the Baptism of Our Lord gives us a chance to think about baptism more generally, so as well as talking about Jesus’s own baptism by John, I’m going to talk about how Christian baptism started among Jesus’s disciples, what a mess our splintered Churches have made of it since then, and the hope that we can recover some unity in the diversity of our different baptisms in future.
• But first, I hope you like this little baptism joke that I discovered. A baptism is taking place, with the congregation gathered around the font. Just as the Rector pours the water over the baby’s forehead, a 5-year old says in a stage whisper, so all can hear: “Daddy, why is she brainwashing that baby?” Hold onto that thought – out of the mouths of babes!

2. All 4 Gospels tell us of John the Baptist baptising Jesus in the river Jordan:

• Just before today’s reading, Matthew quotes John as saying “I baptise you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptise you with the Holy Spirit and with Fire”. A very striking image! John baptised penitents in water, as a sign that their sins were forgiven, washed away in the water. But he believed the promised Messiah was coming after him, whose baptism would be something wholly different.
• In today’s Gospel reading (Matthew 3:13-17), Matthew tells us that John at first refused to baptise Jesus. John recognised Jesus, which isn’t surprising because they were cousins. John believed that he needed to be baptised by Jesus, rather than the other way about, because he was already convinced that Jesus was the Messiah. But Jesus insisted, and John consented.
• Since the earliest times, Christians have been puzzled that Jesus insisted on being baptised. After all, if Jesus, the Son of God, was without sin, with nothing to repent, a baptism for forgiveness of sins seems inappropriate. Perhaps the reason is that Jesus was determined to express his solidarity with his sinful people – with you and with me – by standing with us as we bare our souls in repentance, our sins are washed away, and we receive God’s forgiveness. Solidarity – Jesus is here with us and for us, always!
• ‘And when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him.’ Such a beautiful image, so often captured by artists! ‘And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”’ Surely Matthew must have very deliberately chosen these words to echo Isaiah’s words in today’s OT reading (Isaiah 42:1-9): ‘Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights’.
• But who saw the dove, and who heard the voice from heaven? I don’t think it can have been the crowd down by Jordan’s banks, because Matthew uses the pronoun ‘he’. This vision is surely not a public one, but a private religious experience. The pronoun is ambiguous. Is it Jesus then who sees the vision? Possibly. Perhaps this is the very moment when Jesus realised that his destiny, the destiny of the Son of God, the Messiah, was that of Isaiah’s suffering servant. But perhaps more likely it is the Baptist who sees the vision. For the writer of John’s Gospel tells us that John the Baptist testified: “I saw the spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him. I myself did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptise with water said to me, ‘He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain is the one who baptises with the Holy Spirit.’”
• Whatever the truth of these musings, this passage stands as a critical text for all Christians who understand the nature of God as Trinity – Father, Son and Spirit. This is the only place in the Gospels where we find all three persons together at the same time. It is the defining vision of the Trinity

2. Jesus himself did not baptise anyone, but his disciples did.

• They did so while he was alive, as the writer of John’s Gospel tells us. And he also tells us that Jesus taught that ‘no one can enter the kingdom of God with out being born of water and the Spirit’.
• And Jesus’s disciples baptised after his death, following his Great Commission, recorded in Matthew’s Gospel in these words: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing 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!
• So right from the very start Christians have used baptism to symbolise the joining of disciples into the Church, so memorably identified by Paul as the body of Christ.
• I feel sure Jesus himself really did institute baptism, and I think he meant it as a gift to unify his people.

3. Yet from the earliest times Christian people have found reasons to fall out about baptism!

• The Apostle Paul had to beg the Christians of Corinth not to quarrel about who had baptised them.
• As Christian denominations have multiplied over 2 millennia, they have quarrelled bitterly about more or less every imaginable thing to do with baptism:
  o Is baptism necessary to salvation or not? That doctrine is behind the horrid medieval practice of refusing to bury un-baptised children in consecrated ground.
  o Is it right to baptise infants, or ought baptism be reserved for adults capable of making promises for themselves?
  o Must baptism be by total immersion or is pouring or sprinkling alright. Is water required at all?
  o What form of words must be used? We baptise ‘in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit’, as Catholics and Orthodox do. Some Churches baptise ‘in the name of Jesus’, which many scholars make a persuasive case was the wording used in the primitive Church. Many Christians on both sides reject each others baptisms as invalid.
  o And Christians have disagreed whether baptism qualifies children to receive communion before they are confirmed as they approach adulthood.

4. Surely Christ must weep to see what his professed disciples have done with his gift of baptism!

• The reality of the matter is that we brothers and sisters in Christ can agree neither on what Christ asks us to do in baptism, nor on what it means. While I don’t believe that Christ wants us all to believe exactly the same – our God seems to like diversity in the natural world – I do believe he wants us to respect each other in our diversity. We break Christ’s body again when we refuse to recognise the equivalence of each others baptism.
  
• Yet there are signs of Christian hope! In 1982, theologians from a variety of denominations, working together in the framework of the World Council of Churches, were able to put forward some ideas to allow practices to converge in the areas of baptism, eucharist and ministry. As a result, some churches have changed their liturgical practices, and some have entered into discussions, which in turn have led to further agreements and steps towards unity.
• This is part of the background which has lead Rev Marie to propose that baptised children should be admitted to communion before confirmation in this parish.

5. Next week is the 100th anniversary of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity.

• This is another initiative supported by the World Council of Churches. It reminds us how very much more still needs to be done to unite us all in faith in Jesus Christ.
• Which brings me back to where I started: ‘Daddy, why is she brainwashing that baby?’ Our brains do indeed need washing, to wash away our very human but sinful tendency to create divisions between each other, little pockets of them and us.
• Our prayer this week should be this, I think: that the Holy Spirit may so wash our brains in every denomination of Christ’s Church, that we respect each other in our diversity.
• Only then can we, in Paul’s words to the Ephesians, ‘with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace’ rejoice in ‘the one hope of our calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all.’

Angel voices at Christmas

'Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace, goodwill toward men & women'!

• This is the great song of the heavenly host, which Luke tells us the shepherds heard, when the angel announced the birth of the Messiah. It is a song of joy and exaltation, echoing the song of Isaiah’s sentinels. It is a song which we echo in so many of our Christmas carols.
• Have you heard the heavenly host sing? I certainly have, in not so different circumstances, and you may have too. I can remember my joy and exhilaration after the births of my own children. I can remember literally dancing down the wet deserted streets of Guildford at 4am, on the way back home from the hospital. It was as if the whole universe was laughing and crying and singing with me. And everyone I met over the following days shared my joy. Angel voices – a memory to treasure!
  

What exhilarating joy the shepherds must have felt at the birth of this very special baby!

• ‘They went with haste’, we are told, ‘and found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger’.
• Not just the shepherds, but Mary and Joseph especially will have felt joy and wonder: when they looked adoringly at their beautiful, helpless baby, their first-born son; when they felt the smoothness of his skin, the strong grip of his tiny perfectly formed fingers; when they caught the scent of his new-born baby hair, and heard his insistent baby cry.
• And although we’re not told of them, I feel sure that there were others there to share the joy, perhaps staff and visitors at the Inn in which there was no room, perhaps a local midwife there to help Mary with her birth.
• But not one of them could have realised just how special this baby was to be, whatever inkling the angel Gabriel may have given Mary and the shepherds.
• This baby grows up to be our Lord Jesus Christ - in John’s mystic vision, the Word of God, the true light that enlightens everyone - through whose life and teaching, and death and resurrection, we are shown the way to God.

Of course, every birth and every baby is special.

• Every baby ever born is made in God’s image, including you and me.
• And we can all call ourselves sons and daughters of God, because that very special baby, Jesus, as a grown man, teaches us to pray to ‘our Father in heaven’.
• In celebrating Christmas – in sharing the joy of Jesus’s birth - we also celebrate the miracle that every child is born with a soul which reaches naturally toward God.

There was no place for Mary and Joseph in the Inn, so Jesus was laid in a manger, so Luke tells us.

• Mary and Joseph were far from home for the birth. And soon they were to become refugees, fleeing to Egypt to avoid Herod’s persecution, far from their families and friends.
• Far too many millions of God’s children are also born far from home, as refugees. We must ask God to show us what we can do to help them. But not tonight, I think, not tonight.

Tonight we are here to share with the shepherds, and with Mary and Joseph, in joy and exaltation at the birth of Jesus, to join our hearts and voices with the heavenly host in singing:

'Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace, goodwill toward men & women!'

Prophecy

1. If there’s a common theme to the readings set in the Lectionary for today, the 2nd Sunday of Advent, it is prophecy:

• Isaiah announces (Isaiah 11:1-10) that ‘a shoot shall come out from the stock of Jesse’, on which ‘the spirit of the Lord shall rest’. Christians traditionally take this as a prophecy of the coming of Jesus.
• St Paul in his epistle to the Romans (Romans 15:4-13) quotes no fewer than 4 Old Testament prophecies, to support his case that Christ came to save gentiles as well as Jews.
• Matthew (Matthey 3:1-12) declares that John the Baptist fulfils Isaiah’s prophecy as ‘the voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord’’.

What I shall try to do today is to tease out what lies behind these three prophetic readings, and to explore what relevance they have for us today.

2. But first, what do we mean by a prophecy?

For me prophecy is more than just prediction, like a weather forecast or a racing tip. It is a much wider theory about the way things are, and the consequences this has for the future. And then there is the key question of whether any particular prophecy is true or false – has it been, or will it be fulfilled.

I don’t know about you, but I feel a little queasy about the notion of biblical prophecy. It makes me uncomfortable, because it doesn’t seem to fit with the rational, scientific world view I was educated in. I am also afraid that irrational belief in prophecy may cause people to do bad things – to sin, in other words. As I believe, for instance, that so-called Christian Zionists sin, when they use Bible texts to justify dispossessing Arab Palestinians. Yet I can’t doubt that prophecy can have, and has had, immense power. Prophecy can change history!

Prophecy doesn’t stop with the Bible, of course:

• Karl Marx prophesied 150 years ago that the conflicting interests of capitalists and workers would lead inevitably to revolution, ushering in a new communist era of equality, peace and plenty. Marx certainly inspired millions of people, not always to the good – think for instance of the suffering caused by Stalin’s collectivisation, by Mao’s Great Leap Forward, and by Pol Pot’s evacuation of Cambodian cities. All equally good candidates for sins, I think. The collapse of Communist states in the last 25 years suggests that Marx’s prophecy was false – but it may still be ‘too early to tell’, as Zhou Enlai said of the French Revolution!
• And Jim Lovelock is actually prophesying today, when he says that human lack of respect for Gaia – Earth’s evolving ecosystems - threatens the extinction of species including our own, unless we mend our ways. I am inclined to believe Jim Lovelock, myself. But we must take great care that our actions in response to his prophecies, and other prophecies, work for good and not for evil.

3. So let’s turn to Isaiah’s prophecy.

Scholars believe that the book of Isaiah was written in two periods separated by about 200 years. The Jesse prophecy comes from the first, dated to around 700 BC. The Northern Kingdom of Israel has just fallen to the Assyrian conquerors, and the population have been carried off into captivity – they are the lost 10 tribes of Israel. The Southern Kingdom of Judah, with its capital Jerusalem, is under threat.

Isaiah recognises the threat from imperial Assyria. He believes that the social and political collapse of Israel was caused by its failure to live up to the spirit of the law given in Sinai, and he can see the same things happening in Judah. If God’s chosen people break their covenant with God, the only result can be destruction, he reasons. So Isaiah prophesies that Judah too will be overthrown, along with Jerusalem and its Kings descended from David.

But Isaiah also believes that God would not desert his chosen people entirely. Once those breaking the covenant have been purged by the Assyrians, a remnant of faithful people will remain. In our passage today, Isaiah prophecies that a descendent of Jesse will be their righteous and faithful leader. He describes poetically, and beautifully, what society will be like under such a leader’s rule:

‘The wolf shall live with the lamb,
the leopard shall lie down with the kid,
the calf and the lion and the fatling together,
and a little child shall lead them.’

Jesse was the father of the great King David, whose descendents the prophet Nathan had said would succeed him in perpetuity. I suppose Isaiah, following Nathan, must have believed that only someone from this royal family could lead the remnant, even after the downfall of Judah’s Davidic kings. And no doubt Isaiah expected the downfall to happen very soon. But if so, Isaiah was wrong. The Davidic dynasty continued for another 100 years. When destruction came, it was the Babylonians, not the Assyrians that laid waste to Jerusalem and carted the leaders off to exile.

4. But prophecy can change history, even when it seems to be wrong!

Isaiah’s words were not forgotten. They were remembered by the exiles, who were inspired to hold firm in their faith, to keep their identity as a people, and to return home when conditions allowed.

Over the centuries that followed, Isaiah’s words were studied by religious thinkers and elaborated by prophets. By Roman times, religious Jews felt quite certain that God would send a Messiah – an anointed one - of the stock of Jesse, who would lead Israel back to the glory days of David, and rule over the gentiles. The prophets said it - it must be so!

John the Baptist believed it. Matthew reported he told his followers ‘one who is more powerful than I is coming after me, I am not worthy to carry his sandals’. Matthew believed that John himself fulfilled Isaiah’s prophecy that the Messiah would be preceded by a messenger.

Jesus surely pondered the prophetic words too. I believe he came to the conclusion that they were indeed to be fulfilled in him. But God gave Jesus the insight that as the Messiah he did not come in physical power and glory like a King, but as a suffering servant, leading his people by example – all people, both Jew and Gentile - to his loving-father God.

Mathew’s Gospel in particular, more than the other Gospels, locates Jesus firmly in the tradition of Jewish Messiah prophecy. He announces at the very start that Jesus is the Messiah, and traces Jesus’s ancestry back to David and Jesse to show that Isaiah’s prophecy is fulfilled. In his Gospel, Matthew helped the primitive Church remodel the Jewish Messiah tradition into our Christian Messiah tradition. Our tradition is encapsulated in the Apostles Creed: Jesus, the Son of God, our Lord and Saviour, was incarnate, crucified and rose again, ascended into heaven, and will come again in judgement. It’s worth saying that again: it is our tradition that Christ will come again!

5. Paul perhaps did more than anyone else to develop this Christian tradition.

As a Jew, he was steeped in the Jewish Messiah tradition, but he saw clearly that Jesus was a Messiah for all, Gentiles as well as Jews. In today’s Epistle, Paul quotes four passages from scripture to demonstrate to his readers in Rome that this isn’t just his own idea, but is inherent in the ancient tradition. It seems that there was a split between Jewish and Gentile factions in the Roman Church. Paul argues that just as Christ is an inclusive saviour, so his church must be an inclusive church.

• Most Bibles will give you a footnote, showing where Paul’s quotations from the OT come from. But if you go to those verses in our translation you will see that they look rather different to Paul’s words. Why is this? The reason is that Paul himself used a Greek translation of the OT known as the Septuagint, not the original Hebrew. This sometimes differs quite a lot from our modern translations from the Hebrew. It must take a lot of faith to believe in the inerrancy of scripture!

6. So what relevance does all this prophecy have for us, on this 2nd Sunday of Advent, 2007?

While I can’t myself believe in the predictive power of ancient scripture, I can understand some of the blessings the Jews have received from their Messianic tradition of prophecy.

• Firstly, the tradition has held their community together. Without it, there would be no Jewish people. Even today, more than 2,700 years after Isaiah, Jews still await the promised Messiah.
• Secondly, it has kept their eyes fixed on the future, on an ideal future, marked by equity and justice and peace, where in Isaiah’s words ‘the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea’.

I think that we, as Christians, receive much the same blessings from our own Christian Messianic tradition, growing out of the same root as the Jewish one.

• By looking back to the ancient scriptures and prophecies, both in the New and the Old Testaments, we bind ourselves together as the Church with Christians in every place and age.
• By looking forward to Christ’s return, we are led to try to make this world more like the ideal Kingdom that God means it to be. Christ will hold each one of us answerable for our stewardship.

So in this Advent season:

• Let us celebrate the prophecies and stories of Christ’s 1st coming as the helpless baby, Jesus.
• And let us also reflect on what we can do to make this world good enough for Christ’s 2nd coming.

Mission Sunday

1. Today is Mission Sunday. Which prompts the question, what is Mission Sunday, and what does it mean to us?

At one level, the answer is quite straightforward: it’s the Sunday which Bishop Michael designates each year for all parishes in the Diocese to collect money to support a programme of very worthwhile overseas projects, which are selected by the Diocesan Board of Mission.

Parish clergy are usually asked to exchange with other parishes on Mission Sunday, but this year Diocesan Readers like me, and Auxiliary Clergy, have been sent out to the different parishes as special preachers. This allows Dean Stephen to stay put and celebrate communion in his own parish, and gives you a different voice in the pulpit. For myself, I have to say what a pleasure and a privilege it is to be asked to come and speak to you, and worship with you, here today, though perhaps you may think you’ve drawn the short straw, since I am a very new Diocesan Reader, still wet behind the ears! I guess my main job today, but not I think my whole job, is to encourage you to give really generously to the nominated projects!

At a deeper level, I think Mission Sunday is an opportunity for us all, as Christians, to reflect on what Christian mission means, and to ask ourselves what part Christ wants each of us to play in it.

So in this address I want to do two things:
· 1st, to outline the excellent, worthwhile projects that the diocese is supporting this year
· and 2nd, to tease out what Jesus tells us about our Christian mission.

2. First, lets look at the mission projects chosen for 2007

This year the Board of Mission has chosen 11 projects to support, and set the diocese as a whole a target of raising €8,000 for them. Last year parishes contributed more than €9,700 to around 9 projects, of which nearly €400 came from this Killaloe Union, so I think this years target is a bit low – we should try to do even better than last year!

Most of the projects aim to help the poor, the sick and the suffering in countries of the 3rd world, the ‘poor south’. I would go on far too long if I spoke in detail about all of them, so I’m going to focus on just 3, and simply list the rest:

1. There is the AIDS project run by Maryknoll Missions in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, which is also supported by Christian Aid. They run an orphanage for children whose parents have died from AIDS. And they also run hospices, not just for adults, but for children dying of AIDS. It’s shocking isn’t it; one consequence of the AIDS epidemic is that hospices are needed for dying children, many of whom have been infected in their mother’s womb! Think of that when you decide how much to put in the plate today!
2. There is the Bethlehem Arab Rehabilitation Centre, run by our fellow Anglicans in the Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem. The Holy Land, Israel and Palestine, was the cradle of our Christian faith, as well as Judaism and Islam. Today it is also the focus of much of the evil in the world. Our fellow-Christians there are suffering, as well as those of other faiths – Christ is being cruelly crucified there all over again – but still they work to bring healing in Jesus’s name to people of all faiths. They need our financial help now. Surely we must respond, as St Paul did when he organised a collection by the gentile churches for the first church in Jerusalem when it was suffering from famine.
3. There is the Uganda Mission Fund, organised by Religious Sisters Mona and Eileen Maher from Roscrea. These wonderful women went to Uganda more than 35 years ago to teach in mission schools. Their ecumenical project has already raised several thousand Euro over the last 4 years to provide at least primary education for orphans and vulnerable children. They report what a joy it is to see how happy children are to be given a chance to go to school. There is no such thing as a free education – in Uganda €25 pa is needed for a child in primary school, and €100 in secondary. Our support will make the difference for many children between having a bright future and remaining in poverty and ignorance.

The rest of the projects are:

• St Luke’s Hospital, Milo in Tanzania, which is desperately under-staffed, and needs help to train local health workers
• Leprosy research in Nepal, where the disease is still a major public health problem
• Sponsoring education for street children in Guatemala through the Toybox Charity
• The Big Bend project in Swaziland to support AIDS orphans where no less than 50% of the population is infected with the HIV virus.
• The Church in the Sudan aid programme in Darfur
• Rev Noel Scott’s humanitarian projects in the Church of the Ascension, Bulawayo in Zimbabwe.

Just two of the projects are concerned with evangelism, with spreading the Christian message directly overseas, though that is still what many people think of when they hear the word mission. These are:

• The SPCK, which for instance provides a set of basic theological books to ordinands in 3rd world countries, quite possibly the only theological books they will ever have;
• and the Bible Society, which last year provided much needed help to Churches stricken by the Tsunami in Sri Lanka.

3. All of these projects are eminently worthwhile – but how do they relate to our Christian mission?

I think we need to ponder Jesus’s words in today’s Gospel reading, before we answer this question. According to Matthew, they are the last words he spoke to his disciples, after his resurrection, at the very end of the Gospel. Let’s listen to them again: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

These words, and similar passages in the Gospels of Mark, Luke and John, are often called the ‘Great Commission’. Some scholars argue that the passage in Mark is a late addition to the text, and that Matthew’s original words were to baptise in the name of Jesus, not in the Trinitarian formula of Father Son and Holy Spirit. I don't thnk it matters a whit whether they are right or wrong. It is clear that Jesus claims God’s authority to tell his disciples – that’s you and me, isn’t it? - to go out into the world to spread his teaching. In other words, they – and you and me - have a mission to evangelise.

Why then are most of the projects we are asked to support today to do with charitable work overseas rather than direct evangelism? Should we perhaps focus just on evangelism? The answer, I am certain is no, and it flows from those words ‘to obey everything that I have commanded’. Jesus also teaches us that the second great commandment, alongside loving God, is to love your neighbour as yourself. Jesus makes it clear that every person is our neighbour. And Jesus makes it clear that we have a particular duty of charity to our neighbours in want and distress; he says that what we give or refuse to them, we give or refuse to him. In other words, we also have a clear Christian mission to give charitably to those in want and distress.

I am sure that we will all give generously to the Mission Sunday collection today. This will both help to relieve suffering in the poor South and help to spread Jesus’s message there. And I dare say our practical help will make just as many disciples as sermons would. We will then have done our duty by Christian mission, won’t we? No, not at all - that would be much too easy!

It is in our own communities, here in Ireland and in this parish, among the people that we live and work and play with, that we are best able to live up to Jesus’s Great Commission to make disciples. Each one of us needs to look into our own heart and use the talents God has given us to discover in what way Jesus is calling us, here and now, to be his disciple, to help him build his kingdom. We must try to be - and do - the best we can, and not be ashamed to let people know that it is Christ who inspires us. To take Jesus as a model and to live with integrity is the surest way to make disciples. It probably won’t bring worldly success or popularity. It won’t be easy, and you may find the prospect uncomfortable - but don’t be daunted! Jesus promises us spiritual help: what could give us more strength than to hear him say: ‘Remember, I am with you always, to the very end’?

4. So, to conclude:

• Yes, please be truly generous with your money in the Mission Sunday collection plate. However rich or poor you feel, we are all rich compared with the people who will be helped by it. If you usually put a coin in, look for a bigger one; if you planned to put in a note, pull something bigger out of your wallet!
• But as Christians, let us also reflect that Jesus gives his disciples a mission, not just to help neighbours in want and distress around the world, but to spread his message of love. So let us pray that Jesus will show each one of us what part he wants us to play in his mission, and let us also pray that he will give each one of us the strength to discharge our mission faithfully.