Something Happened!

An address given on Sunday 19th April 2009, Easter 2, Low Sunday, at Templederry and St Mary's Nenagh.

Perhaps the most surprising thing about Jesus Christ is that we’ve all heard of him!

So claims John Polkinghorne, an Anglican priest who is also an eminent particle physicist and Professor of Mathematical Physics at Cambridge University, in an article he wrote for the Times of London this Easter.

That first Good Friday it must have seemed that the whole life and ministry of Jesus was a complete and abject failure. He started out so well, speaking such wisdom about the Kingdom of God, and acting with great compassion toward the poor, the sick and the needy. But then it all seemed to fall apart. He got on the wrong side of the religious leaders and the state; he got himself arrested; he was deserted by his disillusioned followers; and he was painfully and shamefully executed. Just another 1st Century messianic pretender, destined to be forgotten like so many others! If the story had ended there, none of us would ever have heard of him!

But we do all know the name of Jesus. He has been a powerfully influential figure for 2000 years. It is why we are here today. What is the reason for this? The answer is that something happened to continue the story.

The writers of the NT describe this something as the Resurrection. They all believe and witness for us that Jesus rose from the dead. This counter-intuitive belief emboldened them to continue his mission, now strengthened by the sense of God’s Holy Spirit working in and through them. The followers of Jesus multiply. Less then 3 centuries later they take over the mighty Roman Empire. And the rest, as they say, is history.

The Resurrection is a mystery. No one is recorded as witnessing the event itself, just the empty tomb. Many disciples, we are told, met the risen Jesus, but there is something strange about the accounts – even his best friends find it hard to recognise him, and he comes suddenly, even through locked doors. These aren’t ordinary meetings, as I might meet you. The gospel writers do not attempt to explain it – for them the fact of it is all that is important. The fact of the resurrection which they experienced is all that matters. I suggest the same should be true for us. We can’t go back in time to study it with our 21st century science. But something happened – something happened which we might as well call what the NT writers called it: Jesus Christ rose from the dead!

Let us look more closely at today’s readings, and reflect on what they tell us about what it is like to be disciples of the risen Christ.

In the gospel reading John 20:19-31 gives an account of the disciples meeting the risen Christ.

On the first day of the week, though the doors were locked, ‘Jesus came and stood among them.’ He shows them his wounds and the disciples rejoice. He tells them, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” Then, ‘he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”’.

One thing that strikes me about this passage is how meeting the risen Christ makes his disciples feel. Jesus would have used the Hebrew word Shalom, which has a rather wider meaning than the English word peace – it also signifies wholeness, wellbeing. When his disciples sense that Jesus stands among them, they feel his peace, they feel whole, they feel good: as we say today, they feel centred. And this enables them to rejoice, no matter how difficult the situation may be – and it’s hard to imagine a situation more desperate than the one they faced after the crucifixion, isn’t it? Huddled together in a locked room in fear of their lives.

A second thing that strikes me is this: as the risen Christ sends his disciples out, he also gives them the strength to continue his mission of self-sacrificing love and service. He breathes his Holy Spirit on them, just as the Father gave him the strength and the Spirit to begin it. I believe Jesus does so in every age.

It was no easier for ordinary men and women of Jesus’s time than it is for us today to believe in the counter-intuitive idea of resurrection. Even Thomas, one of the original twelve, resisted this interpretation of what had happened. ‘Unless I see the mark of the nails … I will not believe’, he says. But when a week later he too meets the risen Christ he is able to say, ‘My Lord and my God!’

Some Christians meet the risen Christ in a personal conversion experience, as St Paul and St Francis did, and as some have done in our own day - but many of us don’t. If you haven’t, don’t worry - remember what Jesus says to Thomas, ‘Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.’

The 1st reading from Acts 4:32-35 tells us about the common life of the earliest Christians.

Time has moved on. Many new believers have joined the small frightened band of disciples who had met the risen Christ behind locked doors. The apostles testify ‘to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus with great power’. All the believers, new and old, are ‘of one heart and soul’, and ‘great grace (is) upon them all’. Following St Paul, we usually think of grace theologically as ‘unearned favour received from God’, but here surely the word has the plain meaning of the original Greek charis (χαρις) – ‘that which affords joy, pleasure, delight, sweetness, charm, loveliness’. It is ‘shalom’. It is how the disciples felt when they heard the risen Christ say ‘Peace be with you’.

These earliest Christians were living as a community sharing everything. ‘No one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common’, we are told, and ‘there was not a needy person among them’.

Some people see this passage as a scriptural endorsement of Communism, but I think that would be a mistake and an anachronism. Communism as a political philosophy developed only in the 19th Century in response to the injustices of industrial capitalism. The circumstances of the tiny group trying to live a life of Christian witness in an obscure province within the classical Roman Empire were quite different.

But what we should notice, I think, is this: the disciples of Jesus cared intensely for each other. They were generous; they never forgot that when some do not have enough, everyone must help; they wanted to share what they had, because they loved one another, as Jesus commanded them to do. That is a lesson that we should all learn from them, I think.

So to finish

• Let us all share in Shalom, the peace of the risen Christ – as the first disciples did.
• Let us go out to continue Christ’s mission of loving service in the world, strengthened by the Holy Spirit he breathes into us – as the first disciples did.
• And let us care intensely for one another, and be generous with what God has given us, let us share what we have so that no one is in need – as the first disciples did.

Mothering Sunday

An address given on Sunday 22 March 2009, Lent 4, at Shinrone and Aghancon.

A Simnel cake - a traditional Mothering Sunday gift

Mothering Sunday is such a lovely opportunity for us to make a fuss of our Mothers, isn’t it?

And if they are no longer with us, to remember them, and to recall how much we owe them. We’ll all be doing so today, I’m sure, and it’s right that we should.

I want to start by reflecting a little on how much I owe my own mother:

• I owe her my very life, of course, as we all do our mothers. She carried me safe in her body for 9 months, and nurtured me, from the time when I was just a bundle of cells until I arrived squalling into the world.


• Then throughout my childhood she was there, to love me as only a mother can, to comfort me when I was hurt or frightened, to encourage me to be brave and to be ‘a useful engine’. And still she nurtured me – even when I was away at boarding school, every fortnight I received a fruit cake in a parcel through the post from her.


• As I grew to adulthood she let me go, to make my own way in the world. But she was still always there to love, to comfort, to encourage, and, yes, to nurture me, whenever I needed it.


• And it was she who taught me the first elements of her Christian faith. One of my earliest memories is of learning my first prayer at her knee: ‘Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, bless the bed that I lie on’.


• I am very blessed to have had such a mother, and I give thanks to God for her. I expect you are too. But we need to remember that not all children are so blessed. And also that there are women who yearn for children who cannot have them.

In the rest of this address, I’m going to reflect a little on the origins of the Mothering Sunday tradition, and then focus on the mother themes in today’s OT and Gospel readings – the good compilers of the lectionary have of course carefully chosen ‘mother’ readings for the day that’s in it!

The Mothering Sunday Tradition

The 4th Sunday of Lent was not originally a celebration of motherhood. From at least the C16th in England, it was the day when people returned to make offerings in their “mother church”, the main church or cathedral of the area. Hence it came to be known as ‘Mothering Sunday’.

If children had moved to neighbouring towns and villages, this would be one of the few occasions when whole families could get together. Remember, not much more than 100 years ago, very many children would be sent away from home to work at no more than 10 or 12 years old.

According to historians, this was the origin of the English tradition that children and young people working away from home should be given the day off on Mothering Sunday, to visit their mothers. I’m not sure if this was an Irish tradition too - we may just have borrowed it from the Church of England!

I imagine that as the children walked along the country roads, the boys would stop and pick a bunch of violets or other flowers as a present for their mother. And equally the girls might bring their mother a present of a cake they had made. Hence the old traditions of bunches of flowers, and the delicious Simnel cake.

That was the ancient tradition, at least in England. Like so many other old traditions, it was just about extinct after WW1: killed off by social changes and industrialisation. But it got a new lease of life, under the impact of the American invention of ‘Mother’s Day’, which was designated by US President Woodrow Wilson in 1914 to be held on the 2nd Sunday of May. Mother's Day has now become something of a commercial opportunity, to sell cards and flowers and boxes of chocolates, but I think it’s rather nice that we have managed to retain the ancient traditional Church day for it, on this side of the Atlantic, and I cherish the old name Mothering Sunday.

The Mothering Sunday traditions, and the emotions they evoke, are warm and tender and comforting.

But in case we are in any danger of getting carried away by sentimentality, today’s readings from Exodus and John’s Gospel provide the antidote. They serve to remind us that being a mother is not just about flowers and cakes and loving hugs. It is also about heartbreak, and separation, and even death. Thank God that giving birth in Ireland today is not so dangerous for a woman as it once was, though a very few still do die in childbirth here. But in the 3rd World it remains frighteningly common for mothers to die in childbirth.

In the OT reading from Exodus, we heard the strange little tale of Moses in the Bulrushes.

The background to the story is that Pharaoh decreed that Hebrew boys should be drowned at birth in the Nile, because he feared the Hebrew minority becoming too strong in his kingdom. The girls were allowed to live: no doubt they would have been married off to Egyptian men, and their children would be Egyptian. A rather nasty ancient case of ethnic cleansing.

Moses’ mother saved him from this fate by hiding him, until he was too big to hide anymore, and then she made a little boat for him from a basket, and left him to be found in the rushes by the river-bank. He was found by Pharaoh’s daughter, who took pity on him, and decided to adopt him. Moses’ own mother was employed to nurse him, but when he was weaned, she had to give him up to Pharaoh’s daughter.

Two things strike me about this story:

• 1st, how completely torn the emotions of Moses’ natural mother must have been, to be compelled to give away to another woman the child to whom she had given life, and whom she had saved and nurtured. But she knew that was the only way to show her love for him.


• But 2nd, the strength of the love of Pharaoh’s daughter for this little Hebrew boy. She no doubt risked the wrath of the state to save his little life, even though he belonged to a hated minority. The love of a foster mother, or of an adoptive mother, is just as valuable in God’s eyes as the love of a natural mother.

In the Gospel reading we heard John’s poignant story about how Jesus, even in agony on the Cross, expressed his love for his mother, and the disciple he loved.

Public execution is an ugly thing, but the prolonged torture of crucifixion must have been particularly gut-wrenching to watch. Yet Mary his mother found the strength to stay close by Jesus in his agony. How torn she must have been, too: repelled by his ghastly death, yet drawn to be near her beloved son in his last hours. We see an image of the eternal love at the heart of motherhood in Mary at the Cross.

Mary the mother of Jesus was supported in her vigil by four others: her sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene, as well as someone described as the ‘disciple whom Jesus loved’. It is an ancient tradition of the Church that this disciple was John, one of the sons of Zebedee and Mary’s sister Salome, and the author of St John’s Gospel. If so, this John too, like John the Baptist, would be Jesus’s cousin.

I find it very moving that on the brink of his death, Jesus should think to commit Mary to the care of his cousin John, and John to the care of his mother Mary, to look after each other, and to comfort each other in their loss. A truly practical example of the love of God at work in evil times.

So, to conclude, it is surely very right for us, on this Mothering Sunday, to thank God for our mothers and for their love for us, whether they are our natural mothers or our foster or adoptive mothers.

But let us also remember those mothers whose hearts are broken by death or separation from a child.

And let us not forget all those women who long to have a child but cannot, and all those children who for whatever reason cannot give thanks for a mother’s love.

Finding life by losing it

An address given at Templederry and Killodiernan on the 2nd Sunday of Lent, 8 March 2009

‘Get behind me, Satan! Get thee behind me, Satan!’

What a shock it must have been for Peter to hear Jesus address him in these cutting words, as recorded by Mark (8:31-38) in the reading we have just heard.

Peter had been the first to say, ‘You are the Messiah’, when Jesus had asked ‘Who do you say that I am?’ But Mark tells us Jesus then ‘began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering … and be killed’. Peter realised that Jesus was referring to himself, but he was quite unable to understand this teaching. Like most Jews of his day, he expected the promised Messiah to come as a great conqueror to destroy the gentiles – including the hated Romans - and to rule over a revived Kingdom of Israel. The Messiah would vanquish his foes, not be killed by them! So Peter remonstrates with Jesus: ‘Look here, Jesus, that can’t be right!’ he says - or words to that effect. Then Jesus turns on him and likens him to Satan – and he does so in front of all the others!

Why was Jesus so hard on Peter, his great friend and disciple? Jesus knew that God’s way was not the way of violent earthly conquest, but the way of self-sacrificing love. He needed to teach Peter and the other disciples to change their thinking. I feel sure Jesus didn’t want to die a painful death, but he surely realised this was the inevitable outcome of what God called him to do, and he was determined to face it bravely. But Peter tries to argue him out of it, in an echo of Jesus’s temptation in the wilderness.

Isn’t this often the way it is? When we have made up our minds what the right thing is to do, even though we know we will suffer for it, our friends and loved ones may try to talk us out of it. The tempter can be the very person dearest to us! Yet we must not allow even the pleading voice of love to stop us from doing God’s will. This surely is what Jesus felt that day – no wonder he responded as he did.

But Jesus immediately seized the moment to show the disciples his way, the way of the cross, how to find life by losing it. As usual, Mark has compressed Jesus’s teaching to a very few words, but it goes to the very heart of our Christian faith. I think it is worth reflecting on it sentence by sentence.

‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.’

Jesus’s honesty is startling isn’t it? No one can ever say Jesus lured them to follow him on false pretences! He does not offer his disciples an easy life or a comfortable way to God. Like other great leaders, he calls us as Churchill did to ‘blood, toil, tears and sweat’. But again like a real leader, he does not call us to do anything more than he was prepared to do himself.

First Jesus calls us to ‘deny ourselves’, to say no to our own selfish instincts. We must do God’s will, not our own will, to the best of our ability, in all things.

The old tradition of giving something up for Lent is good practice for this, particularly if we turn it into something positive, like giving what we save to a good cause. It’s not too late to make a Lenten resolution if you haven’t done so already!

But more than simply practicing self-denial, Jesus tells us we must be prepared to take real risks – even to risk our very lives – if that is what God, through our conscience, tells us is right.

‘For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.’

Jesus focuses our attention with this great paradox: to save life is to lose it, and vice-versa.

The very essence of life, I think, is in risking it and spending it, not in saving it and hoarding it. If we live cautiously, always thinking first of our own profit, comfort and security, if we make no effort except for ourselves, we are losing life all the time. But if we spend life for others, if we follow Jesus’s way of loving self-sacrifice, we are winning life all the time.

The truth is that the only way in which we can find a life that matters is by losing it in the love of God and the love of our neighbours. That is the way of Jesus, that is the way of God, and that is the way of happiness too.

‘For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? Indeed, what can they give in return for their life?’

I have no doubt that you, like me, can think of people who are outwardly hugely successful, but who in another sense are living a life that is not worth living. In business, they may have sacrificed honour for profit. In politics, they may have sacrificed principle for popularity. In their personal lives, they may have sacrificed their deepest relationships for their own ambitions or desires. Whatever the reason, such people are unlikely to be comfortable inside their own skin, and they often live to regret their bad choices.

It is a matter of values really, isn't it? Jesus is asking us where our values lie. As he says elsewhere, you should store up your treasures in heaven, not on earth, ‘for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also’. Our values should be God’s values, as Jesus reveals them to us, not the false values of worldly success.

‘Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.’

Jesus knew that many people around him were uncomfortable with what he said and how he behaved. He stood up for the poor, the despised and the rejected, and he was the friend of sinners. And the scribes and the Pharisees – the pious and the respectable - criticised him for it. With these words Jesus warns his disciples not to be ashamed to follow him publicly. For if they are ashamed, how can they expect to share with him and the holy angels in the glory of God’s kingdom?

These same words should also be a warning for us, I think. In Ireland - and in Europe generally - it is becoming rather unfashionable these days to own up to being a Christian. Even if we believe in our heart of hearts, many of us find it easier not to speak openly about it for fear of being mocked or thought less of. In fact, we behave as if we are ashamed of it.

It is a simple truth: we cannot expect to share with Jesus the joy of shaping the world into the place God means it to be, if we are not prepared to stand up and be counted for Jesus and for his message of loving self-sacrifice.

So to sum up, when I reflect on these words recorded by Mark, I hear Jesus’s voice urging me, down through the ages:

To do God’s will, not my own, and to be ready to risk all for it;

To find true life and happiness by losing my life in the service of God and others;

To live my life by God’s values, not the false values of worldly success;

To follow joyfully, fearlessly and without shame, Jesus’s path of loving self sacrifice.

Let us pray that we may all be encouraged to respond to that voice. In the words of St Igantius Loyola:

Teach us, Good Lord, to serve Thee as Thou deservest:
To give, and not to count the cost;
to fight, and not to heed the wounds;
to toil and not to seek for rest;
to labour and not to ask for any reward,
save that of knowing that we do Thy will.
Through Jesus Christ Our Lord,
Amen

Transfiguration

Address given at Shinrone and Aghancon on Sunday 22nd Bebruary 2009 - Transfiguration Sunday, the Sunday before Lent

An example of a Glory - the Brocken Spectre

Today is traditionally called Transfiguration Sunday.

In today's Gospel reading Mark gives us a short account of how Peter and James and John had a strange spiritual and emotional experience. They saw Jesus transfigured, in dazzling white clothing, with Elijah and Moses, high in a mountain. The same story is told in the other synoptic Gospels, and scholars tell us that most likely Matthew and Luke made use of Mark’s earlier account.

The Church obviously sees this as an important story, because the traditional church calendar also takes a second bite at it, with the Festival of the Transfiguration on 8 Aug.

So what is its importance? Some people have seen the Transfiguration as a miracle story prefiguring Jesus’s Ascension, a sort of artistic device to reinforce the Gospel drama. This might be all well and good as literary criticism, but I feel there is a lot more to it than this!

In reflecting on the Transfiguration story, I’m going to look first at the physics that may lie behind it, then at the disciples’ emotional response to it, and lastly at the effect their experience had on them

First to the physics:

Mark’s account gives us a clue as to what the disciples actually saw. They were high on a mountain, with cloud around. These are just the circumstances where we can see an optical effect called a ‘Glory’. In this effect sunlight is scattered back from water droplets in a mist, as a glowing halo. The technical term for this is Mie scattering, and you can even download software packages from the Web to calculate what can be seen for different droplet sizes!

Historically, the most famous example is the ‘Brocken Spectre’, so named because of sightings on the Brocken, the highest peak of the Harz Mountains in Germany. This appears when a low sun is behind a climber who is looking downwards into mist from a ridge or peak. The spectre is the shadow of the observer projected onto the mist, and it is surrounded by the glowing halo of a glory. Above you can see a photograph of it, and another here.

You might be lucky enough to see a Glory yourselves, as I have. I saw it when I looked down from a plane at the shadow it cast on a cloud. The shadow was surrounded with a halo of light – this was the glory! Try looking for it the next time you fly off on holiday.

If you are interested in more of the physics, see http://www.atoptics.co.uk/

I do hope you don’t feel that this takes anything away from the transfiguration story. Far from making the Transfiguration more mundane, for me, as a modern man with just a little scientific training, the physical explanation makes me think that Mark did not just invent it to serve his artistic and theological needs. It helps me believe that the event really did take place!

Now, let us focus on what the disciples actually experienced, emotionally and spiritually.

I imagine Peter and James and John close together on the mountain, with Jesus a little bit away, as the clouds swirled around them. Where Jesus had stood, they each suddenly see a glowing figure – it’s their own shadow cast on a cloud, wrapped in a glory - and two other shadows beside it, those of their companions.

They would not have understood the physics, as we can, but they are awed by what they see. Peter was always the impulsive one. Just days before, when Jesus had asked the disciples who people said that he was, Peter had blurted out ‘You are the Messiah’. Now he identifies the three figures with Jesus, Moses and Elijah.

All three were terrified. The cloud came down around them, and it was as if they heard a voice, saying ‘This is my Son, the Beloved, listen to him!’

This description of their spiritual experience rings very true to me. When people suddenly realise something of vital importance, something which changes everything, they often talk of having a ‘flash of inspiration’ or ‘hearing a voice’. Many people have reported such deeply emotional religious experiences. This is so in our own Christian tradition, for St Paul or St Francis for instance; and perhaps for some of our ‘born again’ contemporaries. But it is also so in other faith traditions, such as for Gautama, the Buddha, who experienced enlightenment under a Bodh tree, and for Mahommed, peace be upon him. We may not have had such a religious experience ourselves - many never do - but we may have felt something similar, for instance at the moment we realise that this person here is the one I want to marry, to spend the rest of my life with.

Finally, if Peter and James and John had such a life-changing experience, what effect did it have on them?

Neither Mark nor the other Gospels tell us much about this. After all, Jesus forbade them to talk about it, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead. But they remembered its importance clearly, for they passed on the story through Mark, to Matthew and Luke, and so passed it on to ourselves.

The voice the disciples heard told them to listen to Jesus. I get the impression reading on in Mark’s Gospel that from then on Jesus intensified his teaching to them, as if preparing them for their role as apostles after his death.

I think the Transfiguration was the moment on their long road when they realised their complete commitment to Jesus and his teaching. Starting from the call in Galilee, this road led them ultimately to Jerusalem, to the Cross, to the Resurrection, to the Ascension, and on to Pentecost, where they started to blossom as the church of Christ.

With the start of Lent, we too shall be starting out on this road to Jerusalem, we too shall be following the Gospel drama.

I believe we should value Peter and James and John's transfiguration experience, and other transfiguration experiences, because without them, and without the commitment that flows from them, there would be no church, and we would not be here today!

Strength of purpose

An address given at Templederry and Killodiernan on 8th February 2009, the 3rd Sunday before Lent.

I'm very struck by how much pressure Jesus could absorb in his ministry!

He never turned anyone away, he always responded when someone needed him, whatever time of the day or night it was. His strength of purpose was quite amazing. This is perfectly illustrated by Mark’s account in today’s NT reading (Mark 1:29-39).

Ruins of the C4th Synagogue at Capernaum, under which archeologists think that of Jesus's time may lie

Jesus had just been to the synagogue in Capernaum on the Sabbath. No doubt the leader of the synagogue had invited him to expound the Jewish scriptures, as was the custom for a visiting Rabbi. The congregation ‘were astounded at his teaching’, we are told, ‘for he taught them as one having authority’. Then he was heckled by ‘a man with an unclean spirit’, which Jesus cast out – I suppose the man was ranting and disruptive because he suffered a mental illness.

After all that, you would think that Jesus would want to relax. I certainly do when I’ve been leading services on a Sunday! But no, when he leaves the synagogue and goes to Simon Peter’s house, he finds Simon’s mother-in-law ill in bed. She needs him, and he has to respond; which he does by curing her fever. And that evening, more people come crowding to the house, bringing with them others who are sick or possessed by demons. Jesus is still needed and he must respond as he always does, late into the night.

And so it continued, throughout Jesus’s ministry.

Perhaps Jesus was one of those rare people who can get by on very little sleep.

If so, he wasn't a bit like me - I need my full 8 hours!

Mark tells us that Jesus was up again early, while it was still dark, to go out by himself to pray. I feel sure he needed to pray. Private prayer is a way to recharge your batteries, to digest your experiences, to relieve the weight of them, so that you can move forward refreshed into the future. We often read in the Gospels how Jesus spent time alone in prayer, in the company of his loving father God, whenever he could.

Most of us would probably benefit by following his example. Many of us have lost the habit of daily prayer, I think, and find it hard to do. The next time you find yourself awake with your mind racing in the middle of the night, why not spend a little time in prayer, perhaps just saying the Lord’s Prayer to yourself, or the 23rd Psalm, or remembering other well loved prayers? If you're anything like me, you will probably drop off in no time - and you might be surprised how refreshed you are when you wake up again!

Jesus knew his Hebrew scriptures very well. Quite likely he knew by heart Isaiah's beautiful poem, part of which was today’s 1st reading (Isaiah 40:21-31). He surely knew that:

those who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength,
they shall mount up with wings like eagles,
they shall run and not be weary,
they shall walk and not faint.

Perhaps it was as he prayed that Jesus found the strength to take his mission on to the next level.

Mark records that when Simon and the others found Jesus they chided him saying ‘Everyone is searching for you’. By then Jesus's mind was made up. ‘Let us go on to the neighbouring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do’, he said. And that is what he did – more crowds, more teaching, more healing, an unrelenting pressure, culminating in Jerusalem and the cross.

What was this message he proclaims? Earlier in his Gospel Mark summarises it in these words: ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent and believe in the good news.’ Mark has rather compressed Jesus’s message, but this is how I understand it:

Jesus knows that the time is right for his great mission, which is to lead every one of us into the kingdom of God. In other words, his mission is to show us all how to be the men and women that God wants us to be. It is no less than the salvation of humanity.

What prevents us from being the people God wants us to be? We are all created in God’s image and in our heart of hearts we can all tell right from wrong – in other words we are souls with consciences. But we all know only too well - it is a matter of observation, if we are honest with ourselves - that we continually fail to live up to God’s standards. In other words we sin, and that cuts us off from God’s kingdom.

Jesus teaches us that God loves us, every one of us, as a father loves his children. But more than that Jesus teaches us that like a loving father, God will forgive our sins and allow us to enter his kingdom. All we have to do is to acknowledge them and repent – of course we have to really mean it, we must truly repent! It is this message of God’s loving-kindness that Jesus proclaims and asks us to believe.

So to conclude, let us give thanks for Jesus’s strength of purpose in his earthly mission.

Let us give thanks:

• For his unfailing response to the need of others.
• For his example of prayer.
• And for his message of God’s loving-kindness, which he proclaims to us all.

Choosing your team

An address given at Shinrone and Aghancon on Epiphany 3, 25th January 2009.

You can hardly have missed all the fuss surrounding Barack Obama’s inauguration as 44th President of the United States!

We certainly didn’t in my house: my wife Marty is a dual Irish-US citizen and actually voted for him, so immediately after his inauguration speech we toasted him with a glass of champagne!

Perhaps you too have a special interest in him – while Moneygall have claimed him as a native son, I’ve heard rumours that his earliest traceable Irish ancestor really came from Shinrone!

There is such an outpouring of emotion about Obama, not just in the United States but right around the world. I find it both heart-stirring and also a bit scary. He has great charisma. His words speak to American hopes for an end to division and a return to peace and prosperity. They speak to all of us, I think. But I fear too many see him as a Messiah who can deliver the change they voted for in the twinkling of an eye. How can he possibly live up to their expectations? And how will they react if he doesn’t?

When a leader takes on a great mission, two of the many things he or she must do are these:

First, to find words clear and simple enough to inspire people to achieve his mission – in horrid business jargon, that’s a vision statement.

Second, to choose the team that is needed to implement the vision.

This is what President Obama has been doing over the last few weeks of transition. His inauguration speech is in effect his vision statement. Very wisely he has tried to use it to manage the expectations of the American people. And he has been choosing the team who will make up his Government and implement his vision.

And surely this is just what Jesus did as well, at the very start of his ministry, as Mark tells us in today’s Gospel reading (Mark 1:14-20).

As Mark tells it, Jesus first went to be baptised by John the Baptist in the Jordan - perhaps that is when he got the first inkling of his own significance. Driven by the spirit, he then spent 40 days being tempted by the devil in the Judean desert – perhaps this is where he refined the vision that would define his mission. Only when he learned that John the Baptist had been arrested did he actually start his ministry in Galilee. Only then was the time right for the kingdom of God to come near.

Today I’m going to reflect both on Jesus’s vision statement, and how he chose his team, because I think there’s a lot we can learn from them.

Mark summarises Jesus’s vision statement, in these few words: ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.’

Mark has so compressed Jesus’s vision that I find it is not easy to grasp the meaning straight away. Let me try to unpick it.

Jesus sees that the time is right for his great mission, which is to lead every one of us into the kingdom of God. In other words his mission is to show us all how to be the men and women that God wants us to be. It is in fact no less than the salvation of humanity.

What prevents us from being the people God wants us to be? We are all created in God’s image, and in our heart of hearts we can all tell right from wrong, can't we? – in other words we are souls with consciences. But we all know only too well - it is a matter of observation, if we are honest with ourselves - that nevertheless we repeatedly do what we should not do and do not do what we should do. In other words we all sin; some more and some less, but we all sin. And that sin cuts us off from God’s kingdom.

Jesus teaches us that God loves us, every one of us, as a father loves his children. More than that Jesus teaches us that God like a loving father will forgive us our sins and give us entry to his kingdom. All we have to do is to acknowledge them and repent - of course we must really mean it, we must truly repent. This is the good news that Jesus proclaims and asks us to believe.

‘Repent, and believe in the good news’ sums up Jesus’s vision for every one of us.

Mark also tells us how Jesus chose his first followers, Simon and his brother Andrew, and James and John the sons of Zebedee.

The other three Gospels have similar stories, and no doubt Jesus called the rest of the Twelve who he would send out as apostles in much the same way.

Let us think a bit about the men that Jesus picked out to be his very first followers. Here are some things I notice about them.

First, notice who they are: they are ordinary folk, working fishermen. Like Jesus himself, they aren’t part of the Jewish elite; they are neither learned nor wealthy. They are part of that honourable class the common people. Abraham Lincoln once said, ‘God must love the common people – he made so many of them.’ Jesus clearly did.

Notice what they are doing when Jesus calls them: they are just going about their ordinary day’s work, catching fish and mending nets. If we are alive to God’s world and listening for him, his call may come to any one of us, at any time, in any place.

Notice how Jesus calls them: he simply says, ‘Follow me!’ I don’t imagine this is the first time they have seen Jesus. No doubt they had stood in the crowd and listened to him. Perhaps they had lingered afterwards and talked to him in person. Whatever, they must already have been captured by his charisma – if Obama has charisma now, then I think Jesus must have had it in spades! Their response I feel sure is an emotional one, not an intellectual one. It is love that draws them to the person of Jesus, not his arguments, just as love has drawn so many to him ever since.

Lastly, notice what Jesus offers them: a task to do. He calls them not to a life of contemplation, but to a life of service to others, as ‘fishers of men’, in that lovely phrase from the King James translation. It is a task in which they will spend themselves, burn themselves up, and in the end die for his sake, and for the sake of others. It is also a task in which they will find eternal life in God’s kingdom.

So to conclude, among the things we can learn from Jesus’s vision statement and his choice of disciples are these:

• We should listen well to Jesus’s words, ‘Repent, and believe in the good news’, because they sum up his vision for us.
• And we should try to model ourselves on Jesus’s first disciples. They are ordinary people, just as we are. Like them we should stay alert and open for Jesus’s call. It may come anywhere, at anytime. It is a call to love, to love him and to follow him in his life of service to others. It is a call to enter the kingdom of God.

An Epiphany of the Trinity

An address given at Templederry and Killodiernan on 11 Jan 2009 - the Baptism of Christ

Tracks of charged particles in a cloud chamber

Ever since I was a schoolboy, I’ve been fascinated by the pictures taken by particle physicists of the tracks of sub-atomic particles in cloud chambers.

The particles are smashed into each other in accelerators. By studying and measuring the patterns they make as they split and decay, scientists can see traces of the underlying structure of matter. The results confirm or disprove elegant theories – mathematical models - constructed by theorists.

I’m looking forward this Summer to the first results from the Large Hadron Collider experiment. Built in a circular tunnel 17 miles in circumference under the Franco-Swiss border near Geneva, it will accelerate beams of charged particles to almost the speed of light and smash them together head on. Among the things scientists hope to discover are traces of a weird particle called the Higgs boson, the last undiscovered particle predicted by the Standard Model of particle physics. Some people jokingly call it the God particle, because it gives mass to all other particles!

In much the same way, I think, as particle physicists search their cloud chambers for events that reveal the nature of matter, Christian theologians have searched the Bible for passages which reveal something of the nature of God.

The Greek word ἐπιφάνεια (epiphaneia), from which our word epiphany comes, literally means a showing forth or a manifestation. And it is during Epiphany that we are invited through the chosen readings to reflect on how God reveals himself to us, how he is shown forth, made manifest. In the Church callendar, Epiphany begins on Jan 6th, when the focus is on the story of the Magi, when the Christ-child is first shown to the gentiles. But on this and the next 3 Sundays in the season of Epiphany, until Candlemas on 2 Feb, the set readings present us with many other epiphanies, many other stories that reveal something of the nature of God.

So today I invite you to reflect on how God is revealed to us in today's readings as a Trinity - Father, Son and Holy Spirit – and what this means for us.

Psalm 29 presents us with an epiphany of God the Creator.

From time immemorial human beings have seen traces of the majesty of God the Creator in the natural world, and in the awesome power of natural forces.

Psalm 29 captures this kind of epiphany in these words:

The voice of the Lord splits the flash of lightning;
the voice of the Lord shakes the wilderness;
the Lord shakes the wilderness of Kadesh.
The voice of the Lord makes the oak trees writhe
and strips the forests bare;

I think we’ve all experienced this sense of awe when confronted by the great forces of nature, and by wild and desolate landscapes. They make us feel small and insignificant.

But this is a rather primitive idea of the nature of God, isn’t it? If this were all we knew of God, no doubt we would still be sacrificing our children to appease such a terrifying presence, as many primitive cultures have done, and as it seems the Hebrew patriarch Abraham planned to do with his son Isaac, before the angel prevented him.

Over the long centuries of OT time, the Hebrews came to see themselves as having a covenant with this powerful God, who promised to protect, strengthen and nurture them, so that Psalm 29 can finish with these words:

The Lord shall give strength to his people;
the Lord shall give his people the blessing of peace.

By the time of Jesus, Jews had begun to think of God the Creator as loving his children - the Children of Israel - as a father does. And of course Jesus built on this in his teaching. He himself clearly experienced God as like a loving Father, and he taught his disciples – and through them us - to pray to Our Father in Heaven.

God the terrible creator is transformed into God the loving Father.

The 1st reading from Acts (19:1-7) is about an epiphany of God’s Holy Spirit

The dozen or so disciples that Paul met in the great pagan city of Ephesus were followers of John the Baptist. They had been baptized into John’s baptism of repentance, but they had not been baptised or initiated as Christians. They knew nothing of the Holy Spirit, which the disciples in Jerusalem had experienced after the Ascension.

Paul explained to them that John himself had taught his disciples ‘to believe in the one who was to come after him, that is, in Jesus’. And they accepted baptism from Paul, not ‘in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit’, the Trinitarian words we use now, but ‘in the name of the Lord Jesus’. Perhaps the earliest baptismal words were changed as later theologians began to understand the nature of God as a Trinity.

Only then, when Paul laid his hands on them, did they experience the Holy Spirit. We are told they spoke in tongues and prophesied, just as the disciples in Jerusalem had done. We are not much given in the Church of Ireland to speaking in tongues and prophesying, are we? – in fact we are rather afraid of the idea! I hate to think what the Rector and Bishop Trevor would do if I started to speak in tongues from this pulpit! But if we interpret this phrase as how the early Christians described their sense of being empowered, empowered by Jesus to do the work of God, perhaps we would do well to be more open to the idea.

The 2nd reading from the beginning of Mark’s Gospel (1:4-11) describes an epiphany in which Jesus is revealed as the Son of God at his baptism by John.


‘Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptised by John in the Jordan’, Mark tells us. ‘And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart, and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven,’ – from God – ‘“You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased”’. What an amazing vision Mark conjures up with so few words! It has inspired so many artists over the centuries to paint beautiful images.

The Baptism of Christ, by Andrea del Verrocchio, 1475, in the Uffizi, Florence

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 a private not a public experience. The pronoun is ambiguous. Is it Jesus who sees the vision? Possibly. Perhaps this is the very moment when Jesus the man realises his own significance as the Son of God. 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.’”

Whichever it is, this passage is very important for all Christians who see the nature of God as the Trinity. This is the only place in the Gospels where we find all three persons of the Trinity – Father, Son and Holy Spirit - together at the same time. It is the defining vision of the Trinity.

The Church teaches that God is a Trinity – a Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit


After analysing these and other Bible passages for a long time, around 3 centuries, Christian theologians achieved a high degree, though not complete, unanimity on this. And they expressed it in the historic creeds which we still say together.

But do we have to rely entirely on the authority of ancient scriptures and long-dead theologians to reach this understanding?


I wonder if, like the particle physicists probing the nature of matter with their cloud chambers and experiments, we can ourselves come to understand God as Trinity, by probing our own hearts and spiritual lives, and the hearts and spiritual lives of those about us? I rather think we can.

All around I see faint but unmistakeable traces of a God like a loving Father, of a Son that shows people how to relate in love to all about us, and of a Spirit that animates all creation!