Hoarding stuff

Address given at Templederry, Nenagh and Killodiernan on Sunday 11th August 2013, the 11th after Trinity

Are you a hoarder? I know I am – as Marty will confirm if you ask her!

I am surrounded by ‘stuff’ – the attic is full of it, so is the garage. Some stuff  has sentimental value, such as things I’ve inherited which I remember from childhood. Some stuff I don’t need right now, but a nagging voice tells me it might just be useful sometime. And then there is some old stuff which I tell myself I might be able to sell, if I ever find myself down on my uppers – little enough, for in truth most of it is just junk.

And it doesn’t stop there either. There is something inside me which covets more stuff than I have already, and which covets the security that money and wealth brings. There is that urge to accumulate in most if not all of us, I think.

It is this covetous human nature that advertisers constantly play on in this consumer market economy. Their siren voices tempt us to buy that new car, the latest smartphone, cosmetics to make us young again, exotic foreign holidays – ‘because we’re worth it’. If we cannot have it all we feel cheated.

Those unlucky enough to have no paying work are made to feel inadequate as they eke out an existence on welfare, unable to afford what is advertised. And begrudged by those better off who pay their dole. While those with good incomes feel an inner void, finding that despite the siren voices all the stuff their money can buy does not make them happy after all.

The market economy has created great wealth, and a high standard of living for the majority in rich societies like Ireland. We have all come to believe that we will have more than our parents did. But it depends on ever growing consumption which the finite resources of our beautiful planet cannot sustain. When growth inevitably falters - as it has done - those with the least suffer the most, and all of us become fearful for the future. We worry that our jobs and pensions are precarious, we see our children and grandchildren emigrate and fear their lives will be harder than our own, we are anxious about the damage being done to the natural world about us, and we dread the prospect of massive climate change.

Today’s Gospel reading (Luke 12: 32-40) has a lot to say to us in present circumstances.

Jesus understands that people are often selfish and greedy because they are anxious and afraid for the future. So he tells the disciples – and through them, us – that we should put aside such anxiety. God knows what we need, and God will give us all we need when we work for his kingdom – in other words, when we try to be the people God wants us to be, loving God and his wonderful creation, and loving our neighbours as ourselves. ‘Do not be afraid, little flock’, he says, ‘for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom’.

God has given us all that we have so that that we may be generous with it, not hoard it. What we give away, to those who need it more than we do, is ‘an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys’. If we want to be good Christians we must focus on that kind of spiritual wealth, rather than accumulating material wealth, ‘for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also’.

And we must be alert at all times for opportunities to respond generously, as and when God prompts us to do so. As Jesus puts it, ‘Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit’. We should not put off calls on our generosity, waiting perhaps for a better time or a more pressing need to come along. We are mortal – we do not know when God will knock on the door to call us out of this life. ‘You also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour’, says Jesus. And it would be shameful, when he does come knocking - as we know he will - to admit that we wasted the opportunities he gave us to act like the good people he created us to be.

Jesus calls his disciples, I believe, to live lives of holy simplicity and generosity.

In the passage immediately preceding the one we heard, Jesus talks of the birds of the air and the lilies of the field. ‘Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither store-house nor barn, and yet God feeds them … Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; yet I tell you, even Soloman in his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field … how much more will he clothe you.’

As Christians we need to live like the birds and the lilies. That does not mean that we should not work and plan for the future. Unlike the birds and lilies we must sow and reap, build store-houses and barns, toil and spin, and we must do so communally with others, because that is what it means to be human. That is how we have evolved to make our living, how God has made us to be - just as the birds and the lilies have evolved to make their different livings. But we must also recover a sense of what it is to have enough. We must resist the temptation always to seek more than we need, more than God has already given us. And we must cultivate a generous spirit.

So I commend to you Rae Croft & Marty Sanders’ lovely initiative to send pencil cases to help children in schools in Swaziland. This simple action can make so much difference to children who have so very little, as Bishop Ellinah of Swaziland told us when she visited our diocese in Adare a few months ago. Please have a look at the poster on the noticeboard, take a leaflet, and give as generously as you can. As their Lenten project the children in St Mary’s No2 school have already sent 97. Surely we the grown-ups can do just as well!

To finish, our globalised world is like an over-wound clockwork toy.

The spring that drives it is ready to snap. We face disastrous consequences unless we can release the tension. Our example of holy simplicity can show others how together we can ease the tension, how we can return to a way of living which will enable everyone to continue to flourish in the wonderful world God has given us, alongside the birds and the lilies.

Holy simplicity is liberating, and our world needs liberating now as much as it has ever done. Let us live simply, so that others can simply live!

Who is my neighbour?

Address given at Templederry & Killodiernan on 14 July 2013, the Seventh Sunday after Trinity, year C.

Jesus’s story about the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37) is so familiar that it is easy to miss his main point.

It is more about recognising who our neighbour is, than about loving them as ourselves and responding to their needs, important though that is.

And his words would have been very shocking for those who heard them first.

The story was prompted by a lawyer, we’re told – a learned professional man.

He asks Jesus ‘What must I do to inherit eternal life?’ – in other words, how must I behave to be worthy of God’s favour. Jesus bounces the question back at him, saying ‘What does God’s law say?’ When the lawyer answers, ‘Love God, and love your neighbour as yourself’, Jesus agrees with him, saying ‘Do this and you will live.’ After all, as both Matthew (22:37-39) and Mark (12:31) tell us, Jesus had said as much himself when asked what the greatest commandment was. Jews understood very well their obligation to protect and care for their neighbours in need. ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself’, is a quotation from the book Leviticus (19:18) – it is a command from God.

But then the lawyer chances his arm again, asking Jesus, ‘And who is my neighbour?’ It is in reply to this that Jesus tells the story of the Good Samaritan.

A man travelling from Jerusalem to Jericho is robbed and left for dead. A priest and a Levite travelling on the same road pass by on the other side, ignoring his plight. (A Levite was a layman privileged to help the priests in the Temple – a bit like a Diocesan Reader, I suppose!) But then a Samaritan comes along. A Samaritan of all people, who stops and helps the traveller, treats his wounds, takes him to a safe place, and even pays for him to be cared for. When Jesus asks which of the three was a good neighbour, the lawyer replies, ‘The one who helped’ – in other words the Samaritan. Jesus tells him, ‘Go and do likewise.’

To accept help from a Samaritan as a neighbour – that is what was shocking for a pious Jew.

So just who were these Samaritans?

The Samaritans worshipped the same God as the Jews, the Hebrew God YHWH, but believed that YHWH had chosen Mount Gerizim near Nablus, not Jerusalem, as the site of his holy temple. That was where they worshipped and where Samaritan priests made the traditional Hebrew sacrifices. They accepted variant texts of the Torah, the first 5 books of the Hebrew scriptures, but they rejected the rest.

According to the Samaritans themselves, they followed the true religion of the ancient Israelites prior to the Babylonian Exile, preserved by those who remained in the Land of Israel, as opposed to Judaism, which was changed and brought back by those returning from the exile.

When Jesus was alive up to a million Samaritans lived alongside but apart from the Jews in their own villages in what we now call Palestine and Israel. But history has not been kind to them. They suffered centuries of persecution and forced conversion, first by Byzantine Christians and then by Arab and Turkish muslims. Yet a small Samaritan community of around 1,000 still remains today in Nablus in the West Bank, faithfully maintaining their own distinctive faith.

In Jesus’s time, orthodox Jews despised and disliked Samaritans. They were heretics who did not follow Jewish law, unclean, untrustworthy, quite outside the pale. And the Samaritans no doubt heartily returned these sentiments. Both groups had as little to do with each other as they could – neither saw the other as their neighbour.

Jesus made the shocking point that every person is a neighbour, even despised Samaritans.

Many people in our society today find it just as hard as the Jews in Jesus’s day to accept some people as neighbours.

Take Travelers for instance. It is not so many years ago that one of the Nenagh RC priests bravely insisted that a sign saying ‘No Travelers’ should be taken down in the cinema. More recently a house in Ballina was burned to prevent a traveler family from moving in. And I notice the Council is still sending out an unmistakable message that travelers are unwelcome by mounding up the verge on the Drummin Rd.

Or consider asylum seekers. There is a lot of prejudice against them, partly perhaps because so many are not European. Surely it cannot be right to keep people in direct provision centres for years on end on a dole of €19 per week, denying them the right to work and contribute to society. There are fears for the safety and welfare of children in these centres, and once children reach the age of 18 they are denied funding to take up college places, and left in complete limbo.

And then there are Muslims. A Muslim doctor at Nenagh Hospital was assaulted in the street a couple of years ago, and there are disturbing reports of growing harassment and attacks on Muslims in Ireland. Since Bush declared his ‘war on terror’, I have often heard derogatory comments about Islam, including remarks that ‘Muslims are all terrorists’, which is quite untrue.

We cannot claim to be followers of Jesus unless we accept that all these - and many more besides - are our neighbours. We have an obligation to be good neighbours to them, to protect and care for them when they need it. And when we hear others express crude prejudice about them we should confront it and not collude with it.

The Samaritan crossed the boundaries of prejudice to help his neighbour – may we ‘Go and do likewise’.

Circumcision

Address given at Portumna, Eyrecourt & Banagher on 7 July 2013, the 6th Sunday after Trinity

How’s your handwriting? Are you proud of it? – I’m rather ashamed of my own scrawl.

Despite my teachers’ valiant efforts to teach me copper-plate writing at school, I sometimes find it difficult to read what I’ve written myself!

Is this how St Paul felt when he wrote in today’s 2^nd reading (Galatians 6:7-16), ‘See what large letters I make when I am writing in my own hand!’? Was his handwriting poor? Or was his sight bad? Perhaps neither - many commentators believe that he used large letters to stress the importance of what he was about to say.

Let’s see if his words have any important message for us today.

Paul goes on to write about the Jewish ritual practice of ‘circumcision’. Why did he do so?

Every Jewish man was required by the Jewish law to be circumcised - it was a permanent mark that he was one of the children of Israel, with whom God had made a covenant.

The Galatians were not Jews, but gentiles. Originally they were a Celtic people living in central Asia Minor, near Ankara in modern Turkey, but no doubt by Paul’s time there were also many migrants from elsewhere in the Eastern Roman Empire, and Greek would have been the common language.

Paul had founded churches in Galatia on one of his mission journeys. He had taught them that it was not necessary for gentile Christians to adopt the Jewish law, and this had been agreed with the Jewish Christian leaders in Jerusalem. Now he has learned that some people - who is not clear - are pressing these churches to insist that all must obey the full Jewish Law, including male circumcision. In his letter he appeals to them not to go down that road. They are made children of God by faith, not by obeying the Law given to Jews. ‘There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus’, he says. Paul’s letter is dictated, but in the passage we have just heard Paul reinforces this message, by writing in his own hand, ‘For neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is anything; but a new creation is everything’. And that new creation is to be found in Christ.

Paul’s letter is written in very specific historical circumstances. His message may have been very important for the Galatians, but surely it can’t be relevant for us 2000 years later? But I suggest it is.

Our Church of Ireland, like other churches, has got itself into an awful tizz on the LGBT issue.

One party insists on the traditional view that all same-sex sexual activity is sinful, another disagrees and seeks to affirm permanent, loving same-sex relationships. Many in the church wish that the issue would go away, so we can get on with the business of loving God and loving our neighbours as ourselves, which Christ called us to do. Meanwhile most outside our church have already made up their minds that gay marriage should be welcomed, according to opinion polls.

General Synod in 2012 voted 3 to 1 to reaffirm the traditional view – I was in the minority, and I felt most uncomfortable with the procedure used. General Synod 2013 appointed a ‘Select committee on human sexuality in the context of Christian belief’ – now there’s a mouth full - to continue the listening process begun last year. Bishop Trevor and the Dean of Limerick Sandra Pragnell from our diocese are members of it. Views are deeply entrenched, and I will not be holding my breath for a speedy resolution any tile soon.

It is very much my personal view of course, which you should feel free to disagree with according to your conscience, but I see clear parallels with the debate in Galatia about the Jewish Law. To insist that our LGBT brothers and sisters deny their natures is like insisting that gentiles obey the Jewish Law, circumcision and all. Surely what matters to God is the love displayed in our personal relationships, not our genders. I suspect the Holy Spirit is calling us to add something like this to Paul’s call to equality in Christ: ‘There is no longer gay or straight – for gay or straight is nothing, but a new creation is everything’. If that is so, most of our fellow citizens have heard the call, whether they recognise it as the work of the Spirit or not, and the institutional church – our Church of Ireland is in danger, to use Paul’s phrase, of not ‘sowing to the Spirit’.

‘You reap whatever you sow’, says Paul - the adage was old even in his day.

‘So let us not grow weary in doing what is right’, he continues, ‘for we will reap at harvest time, if we do not give up. So then, whenever we have an opportunity, let us work for the good of all, and especially for those of the family of faith’.

Our LGBT brothers and sisters in Christ are part of the ‘family of faith’.  So what can we do to work for the good of all, while the institutional church makes up its mind?

One possibility would be to list your church as a ‘Welcoming and Open Congregation’ with Changing Attitude Ireland on their web site – you can use google to find out all about it. This would require the Select Vestry to discuss and agree to declare publicly that your church is a place where LGBT Christians can be sure of a welcome. In our own diocese, the Killaloe and Kilcolman Unions have already done this, and my own Nenagh Union has just agreed to join them.

The traditionalists are also part of the ‘family of faith’ of course. We should seek to continue respectful dialog together, as we wait for the Holy Spirit to draw us to a common understanding of God’s will.

So, I believe Paul’s words are as important for us today as they were for the Galatians.

Referring to those who follow his advice, Paul says, ‘peace be upon them, and mercy, and upon the Israel of God’ – the latter I think are those who don’t accept his advice. He wishes peace and mercy on both factions.

I shall finish as Paul finishes his letter, though we did not hear it today: ‘May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit, brothers and sisters. Amen.’

A call to remember St Columba

Address given on Sunday 9th June 2013, St Columba's Day, at Templederry, Nenagh & Killodiernan

I ring this bell to call us to remember St Columba, whose feast day it is today.

St Columba’s name in Irish is Colm Cille, which means Dove of the Church – Columba in Latin simply means a dove. He was born in 521 AD in Co. Donegal to an aristocratic, warrior family. He studied in Clonard monastery, Co. Meath, became a monk, and eventually was ordained a priest. In his early years he is said to have founded several monasteries including those at Kells, Derry and Swords.

But Columba was not always as peaceable as his name suggests. He got embroiled in a quarrel over a psalm book with St Finnian of Moville. Columba borrowed the book and copied it secretly for his own use, but Finnian disputed his right to keep it. He took it to court and the High King adjudicated the case, coming to the famous judgement, ‘To every cow its calf, to every book its copy’ – setting a precedent that is still remembered in copyright law. Columba would not accept the judgement, and the dispute eventually resulted in a pitched battle between the supporters of the two men in which 3,000 were killed.

A Synod threatened to excommunicate St Columba for the deaths he had caused, but St Brendan of Birr spoke up for him, and he was allowed to go into exile. Columba went to Scotland as a missionary, pledged to convert as many heathen Picts as had been killed in the battle.

Columba sailed into exile in 563 AD in a curragh with 12 companions.

No doubt he brought with him a precious copy of the Gospels and the psalms, perhaps also a bell like this one, as many early Irish saints did, to call his fellows to prayer and worship.

Landing on Iona, an island in the Inner Hebrides, he began his life’s work to convert the Picts to Christianity. This year is the 1450^th anniversary of his arrival – an anniversary worth celebrating! He established a great monastery in Iona, one of the most important in the Celtic world, which he developed into a centre of learning and a school for missionaries.

He became deeply involved in Scottish politics, helping to broker peace between the warring Picts and Gaels. Isn't it wonderful how the aristocratic Irish warrior who caused so much slaughter became St Columba, the dove of peace. Today’s 1^st reading (Micah 4:1-5) is very apt for his feast day:

‘(The Lord) shall judge between many peoples, and shall arbitrate between strong nations far away; they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.’

Columba’s monastery continued to flourish after his death in 597 AD. It was renowned for its learning, and the scriptorium for beautiful illuminated manuscripts, among them many scholars suggest the Book of Kells. From Iona missionaries went not only around Scotland, but to England where St Aidan went from Iona to Lindisfarne, where he converted the heathen Anglo-Saxon Northumbrians.

The Iona monastery was eventually abandoned in 849 AD after being sacked several times by the Vikings. Its treasures and relics were dispersed around Scotland and Ireland, which may explain how Kells got its famous Book.

But Iona remained a sacred place. Scottish kings continued to be buried there, including Macbeth. And a Benedictine Abbey was built there in 1203 to cater for pilgrims, which continued to flourish until the Reformation when it was suppressed. The Abbey in turn fell into ruins.

But that is not the end of the story.

The history of Iona is one of continuing cycles of decay and rebirth – Columba himself, the Celtic monastery, the Benedictine Abbey. This brings Jesus’s words in today’s Gospel reading (John 12:20-26) into sharp focus: ‘Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit’.

So, in 1938 a Presbyterian Minister called George McLeod brought a party of men from Govan near Glasgow to rebuild Iona’s ruined Benedictine Abbey. In doing so he founded the Iona Community

The Iona Community today, in words taken from their website (iona.org.uk), ‘is a dispersed Christian ecumenical community working for peace and social justice, rebuilding of community and the renewal of worship. (They) are an ecumenical community of  men and women from different walks of life and different traditions in the Church, engaged together and with people of goodwill across the world, reflecting and praying for justice, peace and the integrity of creation’.

The Community run pilgrim and retreat centres on Iona and nearby Mull. Newslink readers may remember a fine report by Jonathan Pyle about his pilgrimage to Iona. They run outreach programmes in Glasgow and for children. And their Wild Goose publishing house makes new, exciting liturgy and hymns available to Christians everywhere. The Rector regularly includes their materials in her services, particularly the Family Services, because they are so accessible. You may also remember John Bell, a member of the Iona Community, hosting his ‘Big Sing’ with us here 2 years ago.

In this their 75^th anniversary year we can truly say that the Iona Community continues to bless us by building on their inheritance from St Columba.

Let me tell you a secret - I have a dream - foolish, maybe, perhaps impractical, but bold.

What is there to stop us in this Diocese, in our part of Ireland, from emulating our brothers and sisters in the Iona Community?

Bishop Trevor in his conversations on Vision, Mission & Ministry has given us permission to come up with new ways to express our faith. He has encouraged us to find a critical mass in clusters of parishes on a wider canvas than our historic parishes. We also have beautiful, ancient cathedrals such as those of Clonfert or Kilfenora which are barely used, but whose stones like Iona’s speak of a long, living Christian tradition.

We might start, perhaps, by calling together a group to adopt in a sense one of these cathedrals - only with the blessing of that parish of course. We might use it for modern, joyful services, designed to attract and inspire the young at heart in all generations from a wide area and from different Christian traditions. We might draw on Iona materials at first, but then we might start to develop our own voice. It would be wonderful if it became a place for pilgrims to gather. Perhaps a new dispersed Christian Community might come together around it. And who knows what blessings might flow from that?

So, I ring this bell to call us to remember St Columba.

·        Let us give thanks for his arrival on Iona 1,450 years ago, and for his work as missionary and peacemaker.

·        Let us give thanks in our own day for the 75 years of Christian witness and service of the Iona Community.

·        And let us give thanks for the inspiration we continue to receive from both St Columba and the Iona Community.

Rogation prayers

Today is Rogation Sunday - ‘But what is this Rogation thing all about?’, I hear you ask.

The word ‘rogation’ comes from the Latin verb ‘rogare’, which means to ask. In the medieval church the 3 days before Ascension Day - that’s next Thursday this year - were called Rogation Days. They were kept as special days of prayer and fasting to ask for God’s blessing on the crops in the field – as so often, this was a case of the Church taking over – Christianising - an earlier Roman pagan festival, called Robigalia. The Gospel set in the old lectionaries for this Sunday included Christ’s words, “Whatever you ask the Father in my name, he will give to you”, so it was called Rogation Sunday.

All kinds of traditions grew up in different places in Western Europe about Rogation-tide, though I’m not aware of any particular Irish Rogation traditions. In many places entire congregations would march in procession around the fields to bless them. In some places this was combined with ‘beating the bounds’ - visiting all the landmarks on the boundaries of the parish, so that in the days before maps the young would come to know them, and they would continue to be remembered in immemorial tradition.

We don’t do that anymore, of course – though it would be rather fun, wouldn’t it!. But I do think it is important in our rural community to recognise our dependence on God’s blessing for our livelihoods and communities. At Harvest time we come together to give thanks for all he has blessed us with, and at Rogation we come together to pray that he will bless us in future – they are two sides of the same coin.

It’s been a long and difficult winter for many of us, hasn’t it?

After a bad summer last year, many farmers were feeding fodder early and were left with low stocks for the winter. And with Spring close to a month behind and late snows and frosts, there has been little grass growth. Animals have been on short rations, even starving. Farm organisations, Co-ops and Government have responded to the crisis by importing fodder from Britain – something quite unprecedented. Could we be starting to see the ill effects of climate change?

The Great Recession we have been living through since the housing bubble burst is a bit like a long and difficult winter too, it seems to me.

But we have turned the corner now – the grass is growing, the arable crops are starting to move forward, we are beginning to see calves and lambs and foals in the fields. Now, as the great on-rush of spring lifts our spirits, is a time to look forward not back, to ask God for the blessings we hope to receive in future, not dwell on past troubles.

Last Sunday I missed the large and joyful Confirmation party you had here in St Mary’s. I was sorry to miss it – but I was also part of large and joyful party at a long planned wedding in Co Clare. That lifted my spirits – but then they were raised to towering heights by an afternoon in the Burren with Marty.

I took a long walk on a green road that was new to me, up the Glen of Clab to the great circular sink-hole of Pol an Bhiain. Although the trees were barely budding, the Spring flowers were a sight to see. In sheltered grassland there were plenty of Spring Gentians with their blue eyes – I discovered they close again in the late afternoon – did you know that? Under the hazel and ash woodland canopy were sheets of golden saxifrage, carpets of primroses and violets. Up on the heights, I found cattle grazing, met a herd of donkeys and saw feral goats in the distance. And in Pol an Bhiain I found a badger’s set. Enough to make my heart sing, despite the blisters!

I hope your heart sang too this morning, as you heard Joel’s beautiful words (Joel 2:21-27)

“Do not fear, O soil; be glad and rejoice, for the Lord has done great things! 
Do not fear, you animals of the field, for the pastures of the wilderness are green;
the tree bears its fruit, the fig tree and vine give their full yield. 

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

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

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

You shall eat in plenty and be satisfied, and praise the name of the Lord your God.”

So in that hopeful mood, trusting in God’s faithfulness, let us pray on this Rogation Sunday for a successful harvest to come, for an end to painful unemployment and austerity so that our communities will flourish, and for a sustainable future for us and for all God’s creatures.

Let us also reflect upon how our prayer can and will work.

Some people believe that by prayer you can somehow get on the right side of God. That if you have been good enough to worship him, to pay him attention and flatter him with a request, then he will reward you by giving you whatever it is that you want. But to seek to manipulate God like that is a travesty of Christian prayer. Rather we should understand prayer as a kind of conversation with God, a dialogue if you like, that opens us up to be transformed by God’s truth and love.

Our prayer, if it is genuine and sincere, expresses our most heartfelt desires. But we must recognise that it expresses our will, which may or may not be closely aligned to God’s will. The object of prayer is not to align God’s will with our will, but instead to align our will with God’s will.

And always, alongside us in this conversation with God, is the hard material reality of the natural world which God has also created and loves as he loves us.

As we express in prayer our deepest hopes and fears we must also seek to understand the real consequences of our actions, in order to discern how to align our will with God’s.

·        God cannot grant us a successful harvest unless we work hard and apply our God-given skills and ingenuity to achieve it.

·        God cannot grant us flourishing communities unless we make sure the economy works with God rather than against him.

·        And God cannot grant us a sustainable future unless we restrain our greedy and acquisitive natures.

Saul or Paul?

Address given at Templederry, St Mary's Nenagh and Killodiernan on 14th April 2013, the 3rd Sunday of Easter, Year C.

Imagine for a moment that you are Saul, who we heard about in the 1^st Reading (Acts9:1-20).

You are approaching Damascus, one of the great cities of the Roman Empire. You are on business, important business. You carry letters from the High Priest himself, which give you the authority to round up the subversives who follow what they call the Way, both men and women, followers of that notorious criminal Jesus of Nazareth who was justly executed for inciting rebellion against lawful authority in Church and State.

Suddenly, a light flashes around you. You collapse in a heap on the ground. You hear a voice saying ‘Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?’ Where is this voice coming from? ‘Who are you?’ you say. ‘I am Jesus whom you are persecuting’ the reply comes. ‘But get up and go into the city, and you will be told what to do.’ Then you realise that you can see absolutely nothing, even with open eyes.

What a terrifying realisation – you have been struck blind, completely blind. Your travelling companions lead you by the hand into the city, and there you stay in a room for three days, sightless, neither eating nor drinking. Your mind races, returning again and again to the agonising question, ‘Why me? I am a good Jew, a Pharisee, punctilious in keeping the Law. Surely I don’t deserve this fate?’

Then at last a man called Ananias comes into your room. He is a Jew like you, living in Damascus, but he is also one of those subversive followers of the Way, against whom you have been breathing threats and murder. He simply touches you with his hands and says softly, ‘Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus, who appeared to you on your way here, has sent me so that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit’. And suddenly you can see again – it is as if something like a blindfold fell off your eyes.

What a surge of relief you feel! And as your strength returns you find that everything – the whole course of your life – is changed.

This is the bones of the story told us by Luke, the author of Acts. But let’s look a little closer at this man called Saul in Hebrew or Paul in Greek. He is worth studying because he - more than any other of the first generation of Christians - has profoundly shaped our Christian faith through his missionary activities and writings.

Saul’s background was that of a cosmopolitan Jew of the diaspora.

He was born in Tarsus, a major Mediterranean trading port in what is now South East Turkey, to a devout family - in his own words (Phil 3:5) he was ‘circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee’. He took great pride in his family, which must have been quite well to do for him to inherit Roman citizenship.

Saul could read and write fluently in the Greek common language of the Eastern Empire, as well as Aramaic and Hebrew no doubt, and he was sent to Jerusalem to complete his education in the famous rabbinical school of Gamaliel. He said of himself that he wrote words of wisdom, even though he had to confess he was not an impressive speaker – he was no orator.

He had learned the trade of tent making - he was proud he could support himself by it during his later missionary journeys. But he may have been trained for ownership or management of a family business. He knew how to use a secretary and dictate letters, and he displayed the managerial skills to plan, monitor and control missionary teams in the growing network of churches he founded.

It is clear from his letters that his was, shall we say, a disputatious personality. He was quite prepared to challenge the authority of Peter and James, the leaders of the growing Christian community in Jerusalem, when he thought they were wrong. As he did when he insisted that his gentile converts should not have to adopt the whole of the Jewish law. And he must have been a prickly individual, always certain that he was right, who was known to fall out with his co-workers.

Saul was also a zealot – he would throw himself body and soul into whatever project he believed to be right. This led him to prominence in a nasty pogrom against Jesus’s followers in Jerusalem, after he watched the stoning to death of Stephen, the first martyr. And it was following those who fled the pogrom that brought him on the road to Damascus to the religious experience that we now call the Conversion of St Paul.

Saul’s religious experience determined the rest of his life.

Religious experience is a strange thing. God seems to choose to reveal important things suddenly to a some people. Not just to Jews like Saul, or to Christians – many claim the experience of being ‘born again’ even today - but to individuals of other faiths – for instance the Buddha Gautama’s awakening under a Bo tree. But most of us discover religious truth and faith in a much gentler, gradual way, as I have, absorbed as if by osmosis in a process which takes a lifetime.

What exactly Saul experienced is uncertain. Acts says that he saw a bright light and heard a voice. Was it an epileptic fit or a kind of migraine perhaps? In his own letters he says only that ‘God revealed his Son to me’, and claimed he had seen the Risen Lord. He considered this to be a resurrection experience – which is why this reading is set for the Easter season. He used it to justify his claim to be the equal of the original apostles. And he believed he had been called not just to serve Christ but to accomplish a special task – to convert the gentiles. This is what he dedicated the rest of his life to.

And the Christ who chose to appear to Saul chose well. Saul was the right man in the right place at the right time. His personality and his skills made him outstandingly successful at the task of converting the gentiles. The book of Acts tells the dramatic story of his missionary trips throughout the Eastern Mediterranean. At some point he ceased to use the name Saul, so that in the latter part of Acts and in his letters only his Greek name Paul is used. He founded vibrant congregations, and nurtured them by writing letters to encourage and sometimes chastise them. He developed a Christology and a theology of salvation which continue to inspire and perplex us. And he bravely endured many hardships and punishments over some 30 years of work, culminating in two years of house arrest in Rome. There according to tradition he was beheaded as a martyr in the reign of Emperor Nero – he who allegedly fiddled while Rome burned.

In 70 AD, just a few years after Paul’s death, the Jews of Judea rebelled against Rome.

Jerusalem and its Temple were destroyed – just as Jesus had predicted, according to St Matthew, though he may have been writing in hindsight. All the inhabitants of Jerusalem were dispersed as refugees. The fate of the Jewish Christians is uncertain, but most probably they merged into the Greek speaking gentile churches created by Paul. Without Paul’s churches the small, vulnerable Christian minority might well have been wiped out – and we would not be here today, as a Christian community in this place.

So let us give thanks to God for Saul’s conversion on the road to Damascus. Let us give thanks for his mission to the gentiles which has led us to Christ. And let us give thanks for the inspiring and challenging words he has left us.

I will finish in prayer in the words of the collect for the Conversion of St Paul:

Almighty God, who caused the light of the gospel

to shine throughout the world

through the preaching of your servant St Paul:

Grant that we who celebrate his wonderful conversion

may follow him in bearing witness to your truth;

through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen

Prodigal sons (and daughters)

Mothering Sunday is such a lovely opportunity 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 thinking of our mothers today, I’m sure, and it is very right that we should.

Let me reflect a little on how much I owe my own mother, God bless her:

·        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. And she never held against me what I understand was a hard labour.

·        Then throughout my childhood she was there, to love me, to comfort me when I was hurt or frightened, to encourage me to be brave and to be ‘a useful engine’. When I was bold, as I often was, she was never cross for long. And she nurtured me – even when I was away at boarding school, she sent me a home made fruit cake in the post every fortnight.

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

·        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.

Most of us are similarly blessed. But we need to remember that not all children are. And also that some women yearn for children but cannot have them, and others mourn the loss or death of a child. So as we give honour to our mothers, let us also keep in mind and honour children without loving mothers and mothers without children to love.

In the OT reading from Exodus (Exodus 2:1-10), we heard the familiar tale of Moses in the Bulrushes.

The background to the story is that Pharaoh has decreed that Hebrew boys should be drowned at birth in the Nile. Why? Because he is afraid the Hebrew minority might become too strong in his kingdom. The girls are to be allowed to live: no doubt they will be married off to Egyptian men, and their children will be Egyptian. A rather nasty ancient case of ethnic cleansing.

Moses’ mother saves him from this fate by hiding him, until he is too big to hide any more. Then she makes a little boat for him from a basket, and leaves him to be found in the rushes by the river-bank. He is found by Pharaoh’s daughter, who takes pity on him, and decides to adopt him. Moses’ own mother is employed to nurse him, but when he is weaned, she has to give him up to Pharaoh’s daughter.

Two things strike me about this story:

·        First, how completely torn Moses’ natural mother must have been, at having to give away to another woman the child to whom she has given life, and whom she has saved and nurtured. But she knows that is the only way to show her love for him.

·        And second, how strong the love of Pharaoh’s daughter is for this little Hebrew boy. She no doubt risks the wrath of the state to save his little life, even though he belongs to a hated minority. The love of a foster mother or an adoptive mother is just as valuable in God’s eyes as the love of a natural mother.

·        The love of both these women was needed to raise and nurture the child Moses, who would become the Israelites’ greatest prophet and lead them out of slavery to the Promised Land.

The NT reading (Luke 15: 1-3, 11b-32) is also familiar – the parable of the Prodigal Son.

As a parable it is really misnamed, I think, because for Jesus the focus is less on the prodigality of the son than the loving forgiveness of his father – it should really be called the parable of the Loving Father.

While it is set for today, the 4^th Sunday of Lent, we don’t usually use it to celebrate Mothering Sunday. But I chose to do so today to remind us that it is not only mothers who display self-sacrificing love, but fathers too. As we give honour to our mothers, let us also honour all loving parents!

No doubt the father knew his younger son’s character. No doubt he feared he might make bad choices with the inheritance that was his due under Jewish law. While hoping his son would make good, I fancy the father knew that if the son was ever to learn he would have to do so the hard way. So I imagine it was with foreboding that he handed over the son’s share.

And the son was indeed prodigal – he ‘squandered his property in dissolute living’ and ended up destitute. How degrading the son must have found it to be reduced to herding pigs, unclean animals to an Israelite. But perhaps it was his very degradation that made him come to himself, to realise that he would be better off as his father’s hired hand. So he went back to his father in his ragged filthy clothes with his tail between his legs, to admit his foolishness: ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son’.

But the father is a good father - he is filled with loving compassion when he sees his prodigal son coming towards him from afar off. He runs to him to hug and kiss him. He dresses him in the best clothes, and commands a feast to celebrate his return: ‘for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!’  Every parent I’m sure has experienced the joy and relief of finding a lost child. But this welcome is so much more than the son could ever have expected.

Luke has Jesus tell this story in answer to the Pharisees and scribes who were criticising him for consorting with disreputable people – ‘tax collectors and sinners’ who ‘were coming near to listen to him.’ It is the last of three parables he tells about rejoicing at finding things that have been lost – the others were the parables of the Lost Sheep and the Lost Coin.

‘Just so’, Jesus declares, ‘there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance’.

Jesus is revealing the key insight of our Christian faith. God is like this loving Father! We are like prodigal sons – and prodigal daughters. We are foolish, weak people who walk away from God, who do what we ought not to do, and do not do what we ought to do. But if we come back to him and admit our foolishness and weakness, God will not only forgive us, but rejoice that he has found us again.

But what about the elder son, the one who did not leave and squander his inheritance?

We can all understand his human anger. He has been the good son. He has stayed at home and for years has done exactly what his father wants. Yet he has never been welcomed with rejoicing and feasting as his dissolute younger brother has been – ‘You have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends’, but ‘you killed the fatted calf for him!’

It can be very hard to be the dutiful child when the prodigal returns. And it can be very hard to see sinners repent and accept that they have been joyfully reconciled to God. But that is what faithful Christians must do in order to hear God, like a loving Father, say to them, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.’