The healing touch

Address given at Templederry and Killodiernan on Sunday 12th February 2012, the 2nd Before Lent, Year B (incorrectly using the readings for Proper 1!)

Leprosy is the link between the OT and NT readings we’ve just heard.
In the OT reading (2Kings 5:1-14), we are told about how Naaman, the commander of the Aramean army from what is now Syria, is cured of leprosy by following the Prophet Elisha’s instructions to bathe in the River Jordan. And Mark (1: 40-45) tells us how Jesus cured a man with leprosy who begged him to do so.

True leprosy, now properly called Hansen’s disease, is a dreadful illness. It’s a chronic bacterial disease of the peripheral nerves and respiratory tract. It causes skin lesions, loss of the sense of touch, and over many years progressive disfigurement and disability. Until the 1930s it was incurable, but happily the infection can now be easily cured by a cocktail of drugs, and the WHO is coordinating efforts to eliminate it altogether in the near future. But despite being cured of the infection 2 to 3 million people worldwide are still estimated to be permanently disabled by its long term effects. It is right for us to continue to support the charities that work to help them.

Before the development of modern medicine, Hansen’s disease was often confused with other skin diseases, such as psoriasis and ringworm. They were all lumped together as leprosy, and sufferers – called lepers - were greatly feared, because leprosy was believed, incorrectly, to be highly contagious.

In Jesus’s time, religious law decreed that lepers were ritually unclean, and anything or anybody they touched also became unclean, so people avoided any contact with them. Theirs was a cruel fate. They were forced to live away from villages and towns with other lepers, and were obliged to warn other people of their presence by crying out ‘Unclean, unclean!’ If ever someone was cured – and real leprosy was incurable, so it must have been some other skin disease – the leper would have to go to be examined by a priest and take part in a complicated ritual involving animal sacrifices, as described in the book of Leviticus. Only then would the former leper be allowed back into Israelite society.

But leprosy is not what either reading is really about, I think.
The story of Naaman is surely not about his leprosy, but about how pride must be overcome before a person can find favour in the sight of God. It was only when Naaman could put aside his pride in his own greatness, and his pride in his own country, that he could be made clean by obeying the Prophet Elisha’s instructions. How greatful he must have been to his servants for encouraging him do so when he was stamping off in a a huff!

And Mark’s story is about Jesus, and about how Jesus responds to those in trouble who come to him – the leprosy is purely incidental. Let's look at it a bit more closely.

The leper comes to Jesus and begs him, ‘If you choose, you can make me clean’.
And how does Jesus respond? Jesus is ‘moved with pity’, we are told. ‘Moved with pity’ does not really capture the strength of the original Greek, which literally translated means ‘gut-wrenched’. Jesus was gut-wrenched by the leper's plight.

Then ‘Jesus stretch(es) out his hand and touch(es) him’. Those who saw it, or heard about it later, would have found this extraordinary, quite scandalous – a deliberate breach of the purity laws by a man who called himself a preacher. The leper was unclean, cursed by God perhaps. By touching him Jesus was making himself unclean. And those who associated with him risked becoming unclean themselves. Yet, ‘moved with pity’, Jesus does not hesitate. He reaches out his hand to this suffering human being and touches him – something, perhaps, which the leper had not experienced since his disease was first detected, perhaps years before. In this very human gesture Jesus makes manifest the love that he knows his Father in heaven has for all his children.

And this touch is a healing touch. ‘I do choose’, says Jesus, ‘Be made clean!’ And the leprosy leaves the man.

This little tale shows us, I believe, how we too can receive healing from Jesus when we are in trouble. When we are in trouble we can feel shunned by society, cut off perhaps from friends and family, by their anger, fear or embarrassment because of what has happened. But if we come to Jesus in prayer and ask him, he has the power through his Father in heaven to reach out with a loving touch to heal us, as he healed the leper. He may not choose to heal us physically – miraculous healing is very rare these days – but he will surely choose to heal us spiritually, to give us the strength to bear the trouble, whatever it is.

And the tale also shows us how we should behave when we encounter those in trouble who seek our help. Jesus did not shun the leper, and we who bear Christ’s name should model ourselves on him. When those who are shunned in our society come to us for help, we must reach out to them with a loving touch, like Jesus. And that includes those whose circumstances horrify us, for instance AIDS victims, drug addicts, sex abusers, prostitutes - as well as the plain feckless.

Jesus sternly warns the newly cleansed leper not to tell other people what has happened.
‘See that you say nothing to anyone’, he says, ‘but go, show yourself to the priest, and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.’

Why should Jesus want to keep his healing miracle secret? Perhaps he foresees that news of the miracle will make him a celebrity, and get in the way of his ministry. For that is just what happens: the former leper ignores Jesus’s warning; he tells everyone who will listen and crowds flock to see Jesus, ‘so that (he) could no longer go into a town openly, but stayed in the country.’

But I prefer another explanation. Perhaps Jesus fears that the former leper may be stigmatised if his connection with Jesus is made widely known. For Jesus already knows that he will be a controversial figure – he has already shown he is prepared to break the law by touching a leper, and that will not be the end of it. So he advises the man he has cured to go quietly to the priest. If the priest hears Jesus was involved, he might withhold his declaration of cleanliness. And only the priest’s testimony will make other people believe the former leper is clean again.

We are not told what happened to him, but I wonder if the former leper lived to regret ignoring Jesus's warning.

So to finish, thanks be to God for the insights to be found in today’s readings from scripture!
Among them are these:
(1) We need to overcome our foolish pride before we can find favour in the sight of God.
(2) Jesus will reach out with his loving touch to heal us if we bring our troubles to him in prayer. And
(3) We should follow Jesus’s example by reaching out to others in trouble, no matter who they are.

God cares for us, his children!

Address given at Portumna, Eyrecourt and Banagher on Sunday 5th February 2012, 3rd Before Lent (Year B, Proper 0)

What beautiful poetry Isaiah (40:21-31) has given us in today’s Old Testament reading!
It is actually a fragment of a rather longer poem, which goes on for several chapters. The poet invokes the sense of how small and insignificant we humans are in the face of the immense universe around us, and in the face of its Creator.

It is he who sits above the circle of the earth,
and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers;
who stretches out the heavens like a curtain,
and spreads them like a tent to live in;

Hasn’t every one of us experienced this same sense of awe at our own smallness - for instance when we look out from a high place at a big view? For me it brings back the memory of standing on top of the hill above Black Head, looking out beyond Aran, out across the vast ocean - next parish Boston, as they say.

And it is not just you and me, the little people, who are as nothing.
The poet continues: It is he

who brings princes to naught,
and makes the rulers of the earth as nothing.
Scarcely are they planted, scarcely sown,
scarcely has their stem taken root in the earth,
when he blows upon them, and they wither,
and the tempest carries them off like stubble.

It is good, I think, for the powerful of this world to be reminded that they too are insignificant. And it is good for us to remember it too. We have no reason to fear princes and rulers, since they, like us, will wither and be carried away.

Then the poet invites us to look up at the stars, as today's psalm 147 echoes:

Lift up your eyes on high and see:
Who created these?
He who brings out their host and numbers them,
calling them all by name;
because he is great in strength,
mighty in power,
not one is missing.

I am intrigued by this idea of numbering and naming stars. I think for the poet it must represent having power over them, in a magical kind of way.

Astronomers today, using ever more sensitive telescopes, survey the stars and register them in gigantic star catalogues, so that they can find any one of them again if they want to study it. And as astronomers first discovered more than 150 years ago, not far from here using the great telescope at Birr, we now know that there aren’t just stars out there, but a myriad of galaxies, each one consisting of more stars than we can see with the naked eye. If anything, we are even more insignificant than the poet could ever have imagined!

Astronomers will never catch them all. But if they could, that would not give them the power the poet ascribes to the Creator.

Faced with such a God, is it possible for any of us to feel anything but frank terror?
Yet the poet goes on to reassure us that God, YHWH in the original Hebrew, translated here as the LORD:

.. gives power to the faint,
and strengthens the powerless.
Even youths will faint and be weary,
and the young will fall exhausted;
but 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.

The images are very powerful, aren’t they? Which one of us would not wish to ‘mount up with wings like an eagle’? I certainly would, particularly after watching the recent TV series on birds in flight. But it’s a big claim to make that such a mighty creator is concerned with the faint and the powerless. Why should we believe it? The answer, I suggest, lies in our shared experience of faith and the example of Jesus.

Jesus knew his Hebrew scriptures very well.
Quite likely he had this whole poem by heart. I feel sure that he felt the same awe we do when he contemplated the magnitude of creation and his own place in it. A little before our Gospel passage, Mark tells us that the Spirit drove him out into the wilderness where he was tempted for 40 days. I imagine Jesus, in the barren, rugged Judean uplands, looking up at the stars, filled with awe.

Perhaps part of his temptation concerned doubts about whether YHWH really cared for him, small as he was. If so, his faith was strengthened. He overcame these doubts, and went out to teach all who would listen that this mighty God cares for all his creatures, as a father does. And he taught us to pray to ‘Our Father in heaven’.

In today’s reading from Mark’s Gospel (Mark 1:29-39) we heard that when Simon hunted for Jesus and found him praying in a deserted place, Jesus said: ‘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’. What was this message? It was surely the message Mark has already summarised in these words (Mark 1:15): ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent and believe in the good news’.

I like to think that the good news is that not only does God love us, but that he has given us the faith to believe that he does. We human beings seem to be primed to faith - it comes naturally to us. Even though we are faint and powerless we have been given the faith to believe in Isaiah’s caring God, who is the same loving Father that Jesus teaches us about.

It is because of this faith that we are enabled to be fearless, to act like true human beings made in God’s loving image, able to walk and not faint, able to run and not be weary, able to mount up with wings like eagles.

Thanks be to God for the faith that God cares for us, his children!

The Wise Men's Quest

Epiphany sermon preached at Templederry & Killodiernan on Sunday 8th January 2012.

At Epiphany, in our Western Church tradition, we remember the Wise Men from the East.
As Matthew tells us in the reading we’ve just heard (Matthew 2:1-12), they follow a star which leads them to find and adore the baby Jesus. But the tradition in the Eastern Church is different - they remember a different Epiphany - the Baptism of Christ, when the Holy Spirit descends like a dove, and a voice from heaven says 'This is my beloved Son in whom I well pleased'. That's nice to recall on this joyful day when we baptise Hollie Linda Clarke.

The story of the Wise Men is so familiar to us, ever since we first heard it as children. Over the centuries it has grown with the telling, as the best stories always do. Story-tellers and artists have embellished it from their imaginations. Matthew’s unspecified number of Wise Men became three kings, riding on camels and bearing expensive gifts for the Christ-child. And the kings acquired names unknown to Matthew along the way - Caspar, Balthazar and Melchior - beautiful, exotic names.

It happened this way, I suppose. Matthew’s Wise Men were foreigners bringing gifts. People remembered OT texts referring to foreign kings who bring gifts. We have heard some today. Psalm 72 says: ‘The kings of Tarshish and of the isles shall pay tribute; the kings of Sheba and Seba shall bring gifts’. Today’s reading from Isaiah (60:1-6) says: ‘Nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn… A multitude of camels shall cover you, the young camels of Midian and Ephah; all those from Sheba - Sheba again - shall come. They – the kings that is - shall bring gold and frankincense, and shall proclaim the praise of the Lord’. At first people must have thought Matthew’s Wise Men were rather like these OT kings. Later they came to the conclusion they were just the same. The number of the gifts the Wise Men brought no doubt explains why there are three of them. I’ve no idea where the names came from, though.

Leaving aside these embellishments, it’s not easy to see Matthew’s simple tale as plain history. The idea of a star which moves and then stands still seems absurd to us today. So is it any more than just a pretty story for children? Let’s examine it a little more closely to find out.

Matthew’s Wise Men are on a quest.
A quest is a kind of story in which heroes follow a long, hard and dangerous journey to find an object of great value before returning home. Such stories have been told since time immemorial. An ancient example is Homer’s Odyssey; Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings is a more modern one.

The object of great value the Wise Men are looking for is a rather special human child: ‘Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews?’ they ask in Jerusalem, ‘For we observed his star at its rising, and we have come to pay him homage’. We are not told why they associated this star with a king of the Jews, but no doubt as learned astrologers they were led to do so by their sacred scriptures

The learned people in Jerusalem, the chief priests and scribes of the people, similarly draw on their ancient scriptures, from the prophecy of Micah, to answer the Wise Men’s question. They suggest the Wise Men look in Bethlehem for ‘a ruler who is to shepherd my people Israel’. But it's strange, isn't it, the chief priests and scribes are strangely indifferent to the Wise Men's quest – they don’t even bother to send someone with them to report back what if anything they find.

King Herod, however, ominously asks the Wise Men to let him know when they have found the child, ‘so that I may also go and pay him homage’.

The light of the star is what leads the Wise Men on their quest.
This light leads them to the Christ-child with Mary his mother. There, at the culmination of their quest, they are overwhelmed with joy. They kneel in homage and present their gifts, signifying that the royal king they seek is in fact - this baby. Now that’s amazing, isn’t it? They have travelled so far, suffered such hardships, to find what? A tiny, vulnerable, human child, just like so many they could have found without stirring from home!

One great truth buried in Matthew’s mystical story is this, I believe - the Wise Men’s quest is our quest too. If we have the tenacity they had to follow the light of their star, like them we will find that baby, who is, as St John puts it, ‘the true light, which enlightens everyone’.

Light represents all that is good and true and beautiful, all that is worthy of God. This, surely, is what light means to Isaiah, when he addresses God’s people the Israelites, saying, ‘Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you’. I believe that Isaiah’s words are addressed to us just as much as to the Israelites - we too are God’s people. ‘Our light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon us’. We too should be overwhelmed by joy, like the Wise Men!

After finding what they seek, the Wise Men return home – the proper end of any quest.
No doubt they were changed by all that had happened to them, perhaps unsettled by it. They would surely be better able to appreciate what was good in their homelands, but be less tolerant of the bad.

But notice this dark note: Matthew tells us that ‘having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road’.

They had good reason - Herod had form. He had already executed a wife and several sons he suspected of disloyalty. Now Matthew goes on to tell us he orders the massacre of every child under 2 years old in Bethlehem, because he fears that the child found by the Wise Men might usurp his throne. Jesus only escapes their fate because Joseph was also warned in a dream to flee with Mary and Jesus to Egypt.

The characters in Matthew’s story illustrate three ways in which people respond to the good news of Jesus Christ.

• First there is Herod. He reacts with hatred and murderous hostility – just as some people do to this day.



• Then there are the chief priests and scribes of Jerusalem. There reaction is one of complete indifference. They are so engrossed in their own affairs that they completely ignore the good news. How like so many people today!



• But the Wise Men respond with adoring worship, seeking to lay at the feet of the Christ-child the finest gifts they can bring.

The story of the Wise Men is surely much more than just a pretty tale for children
It is an adult fable which shows us how to respond to the good news of Jesus Christ.

To ‘follow your star’ has entered our very language as a description of single-minded determination to be the very best we can be.

Let us pray that, through God’s grace, we may follow the same star that led the Wise Men to the Christ-child - to be the very best that we can be - for him!

Mission Sunday collection for Luyengo Farm Project, Swaziland

The parable of the sheep and the goats (Matthew 25:31-46) is vivid and memorable - so typical of the stories Jesus uses to convey his teaching.
And its message is clear – God will judge us in accordance with our response to human need.

In NT times sheep and goats were usually kept in mixed flocks, as they still are in the Near East. But it was sometimes necessary to separate them into their kinds, at shearing time for instance. Or at the approach of hard weather – sheep are hardier than goats and can be left to graze over winter in the uplands, but goats must be brought down and folded in the shelter of the valley. Or to manage grazing – sheep eat only low growing herbs while goats will eat the leaves of bushes so that when forage of one kind is running out the appropriate animals must be moved to other grazing.

Jesus uses this image of separating sheep and goats, so familiar to those he was talking to, as a metaphor for how people can be separated into two kinds. ‘When the Son of Man comes in his glory’, says Jesus, ‘… he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left’.

Those that are righteous will be blessed by God and receive everlasting life, and those that are not will be accursed and receive eternal punishment. ‘Then the king will say to those at his right hand, “Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world”, and ‘he will say to those at his left hand, “You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels”’.

The test for whether a person is righteous or not – to be blessed or accursed - is how he or she responds to the human needs they encounter. The king tells those who are blessed, “I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me”. He tells those who are accursed that they did none of these things.

And when both kinds of people express surprise because they did not recognise him, the king tells them, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me”.

Jesus confronts those who hear him, then and now, with this great truth: help given to those who need it is help given to him as the Son of Man, the king; and in contrast help withheld is help withheld from him. God is our loving Father, we are made in his image, and it is our Christian duty to help his children, our fellow human beings.

This teaching of Jesus is wonderfully apt for today, Mission Sunday.
Mission Sunday is the day designated by the Bishop for a special collection for overseas mission. In previous years the money has been split over many projects, all most deserving, but inevitably this has meant that none received very much. But this year the Diocesan Board of Mission, with the support of Bishop Trevor, has decided all the money should be directed to a single project in Swaziland. By concentrating resources in this way our diocese can make a real difference, which seems like a very good idea to me.

Most of you will remember Amy Hanna’s inspiring talk about her experiences in Swaziland on Mission Sunday last year. She told us that this small landlocked country squeezed between South Africa and Mozambique, with a population of around 1 million in an area about the same as Northern Ireland, is desperately poor – most people live on less than €1 per day. And she shocked us by telling us that as many as 40% of people have HIV, with the result that Swaziland has the lowest life expectancy in the world, just 32 years.

The poorest of the poor in Swaziland need help. The Anglican Diocese of Swaziland recognises that it is their Christian duty to respond. They have initiated a programme to help people affected by HIV, which includes these elements:

• Care Points: Places run by parish churches where orphans and vulnerable children can come after school for fellowship and food, and to interact with adults who care and will listen. Swaziland has 140,000 orphans. 15% of all families are headed by a child.




• Home Based Care: Anglican teams of retired nurses visit homes, bringing painkillers, antibiotics, vitamin supplements etc to supplement the antiretroviral drugs supplied by the state.




• Egumeni: In Swaziland this is the reed fence around a homestead where women sit and girls learn from their mothers and grandmothers. The egumeni programme is about passing on wisdom from generation to generation, and in particular training in safe behaviour and self respect - not just a matter of morals but a matter of life and death in Swaziland.




• Life Skills: A training programme for teenagers, enabling them to take control of their lives and stay safe, covering topics from personal identity to safe sex.

The programme sounds splendid, doesn’t it? There is just one problem – paying for it. But the diocese, supported by USPG Ireland mission partner Andrew Symonds and his wife Rosemary, has identified a way to do so.

• The diocese owns 200 acres of good agricultural land, with unlimited access to water, at Luyengo Farm at Big Bend.




• An investment of €300,000 would turn it into a productive commercial farm. Part of the site would be used to produce baby vegetables for export. Three harvests annually would create regular seasonal employment. Pigs would be fed from farm waste.




• A commercial partner has agreed to provide half the investment and USPG Ireland seek to raise the other half on behalf of the Diocese of Swaziland.




• The income from the farm is expected to rise to €40,000 in the 2nd year. And what will be the result? The diocese will become self-sufficient, with a steady, reliable income to pay for the HIV/AIDS programme.

Our Mission Sunday collection this year will go to support this Luyengo Farm Project.
As the Bishop of Swaziland the Rt Revd Meshack Mabuza puts it, ‘As a church we see agriculture as an answer to the continuance of our AIDS ministry. This land that we have is arable and fertile, with plenty of water running through it. We must use it, and we desperately need your help to get started’.

The Board of Mission has challenged the whole diocese to raise at least €40,000 for it this year. That may seem a lot, but it is only €20 for each active member of the diocese. It is therefore a challenge we can meet, if we choose, and meet in a single year. This collection is the first bite at it, and they invite us to use our creativity to find ways to raise more in the next 12 months.

I commend the project to you. By helping the Diocese of Swaziland we are helping Swazi people in need, and as today’s Gospel teaches us, when we help those in need we are helping Jesus himself.
So please be truly generous with your money in the Mission Sunday collection envelopes. However rich or poor you may feel in these recessionary times, we are all rich compared with the people who will be helped by it. If you usually put a coin in, look for a bigger one; if you planned to put in a note, pull something bigger out of your wallet.

Our heavenly Father will bless us for our generosity!

Bridesmaids

An address given at Portumna, Eyrecourt and Banagher on Sunday 6th November 2011, the 3rd before Advent.

I hope you are wise enough to check the oil level in your central heating tank regularly.
When I read through today’s reading from Matthew’s Gospel (25:1-13), I was prompted to rush to check my own tank, and I was very glad I did because there were only a few inches left.

It’s an awful pain when the oil runs out, as I know only too well, because it happens to me far too often. And I don’t just have problems with central heating oil, but other oil too. Patrick Towers teased me this week, advising me to check I had enough fuel in my car today of all days, lest I be shown up as a ‘foolish Diocesan Reader’. This struck a nerve because it reminded me of my mother, God bless her. She would always ask me as I drove away whether I had enough petrol, because she knew I’d run out twice in a fortnight years before – she never accepted my excuse that the fuel gauge was broken and I had to dip it with a stick to see if I needed a fill.

The bridesmaids in the Gospel story - or the virgins as older translations had it: the Greek word simply means an unmarried girl – needed oil for their lamps. The wise ones made sure they had enough, but the foolish ones didn’t. We would all like to think we are like the wise bridesmaids but I fear I’m often more like the foolish ones.

The story Jesus tells about the bridesmaids may seem a bit strange to us in Ireland in the 21st Century.
In our wedding tradition we don’t expect bridesmaids to have to wait up with oil lamps for the groom to turn up in the middle of the night. But those who heard the story from Jesus would have found it all quite familiar.

In Jesus’s time the tradition was for the bridegroom to go around the houses of his friends and relatives before the wedding so that they could congratulate him and rejoice with him – a bit like our stag-nights I suppose. And the bride’s unmarried friends – the bridesmaids – would gather to escort the bridegroom to the house where the marriage ceremony would take place, when he finally arrived with his friends. When they got there everyone would join in a big party – the wedding banquet - which might go on for several days. No one could be sure when the groom would arrive - perhaps the suspense of waiting added to the general excitement, or perhaps it was a bit of a game for the groom’s friends to see if they could catch the bride’s friends napping.

So in Jesus’ story the wise bridesmaids, who came prepared with extra oil for their lamps, get to join in the bride’s big day and enjoy the party. But the foolish bridesmaids, with no extra oil, not only have the shame of being late for their friend’s wedding, but they are shut out and miss the party too.

Jesus finishes by saying ‘Keep awake therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour’. Those who heard him would have grasped the moral of the story straight away – it is to ‘Be prepared’, just like the Girl Guide’s motto. If you are wise you will be prepared. If you are not prepared you are foolish.

Jesus tells the story as a parable about the kingdom of heaven.
‘The kingdom of heaven will be like this’, he says. But what did he intend the parable to convey to those who heard him?

Since ancient times Christians have taken the parable as an allegory of the 2nd Coming of Christ in the end times. The bridegroom who is delayed stands for Christ, the time of whose coming we cannot know; he will judge between the faithful and the unfaithful – the wise and the foolish – in a Last Judgement; the wise bridesmaids stand for those faithful Christians who will receive their just reward in heaven - represented by the wedding banquet; and the foolish bridesmaids are those who are unfaithful - they will be excluded from the heavenly kingdom.

Matthew believed with all the earliest Christians that Jesus would return again within their lifetime to usher in the kingdom of God which he had preached. Earlier in his Gospel (16:27-28) he quotes Jesus saying, ‘For the Son of Man is to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay everyone for what has been done. Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom’.

As time passed, later Christians began to realise that Jesus wouldn’t necessarily return in their lifetimes - the first Christians had died. Jesus was delayed like the bridegroom. So they came to believe that Christ’s 2nd Coming would be at some indefinite future date, at the ‘end of time’.

I’m not convinced by this theology of the 2nd Coming – it smacks too much of a vengeful, not a loving God. I don’t think it is what Jesus meant to convey to those he spoke to.

But there is another way of looking at the parable, a way I prefer. Perhaps when Jesus refers to the undefined future coming of the bridegroom – or to the end times, because this parable is surrounded by other end-times parables - he is really talking metaphorically about a typical time, any old time. No one can know when that time will be, but perhaps Jesus is telling his disciples that each one of them should expect to personally encounter him again, during their lives not in the indefinite future. That is when they will be judged, depending on whether they are ready to greet him or not.

Looked at this way, the parable teaches us that Jesus’ disciples – like the bridesmaids – must prepare themselves to be ready to greet him – as the bridegroom – whenever he comes. And who are Jesus’s disciples today? – You and I, all of us, of course!

If we are wise, we will prepare ourselves to recognise and respond when Jesus returns – though in truth he never really left us: ‘Remember’, Jesus says, ‘I am with you always, to the end of the age’ (Matthew 28:20).

If we are wise, we will prepare ourselves to hear and respond to the prompting of the Spirit – ‘The Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything’, says Jesus, ‘and remind you of all I have said to you’ (John 14:26).

If we are wise, we will prepare ourselves to discern that still small voice of the God Jesus calls his Father – to which we should respond as Eli advised Samuel to do: ‘Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening’ (1Samuel 3:9).

If on the other hand we are foolish, if we are unprepared, if we are not ready when the time comes, we will miss the opportunity our Trinity-shaped God freely offers to each and every one of us, the opportunity to share in the joy of his kingdom, the opportunity to share in the joy of doing what is right and just, simply because that is what God calls us to do.

Ultimately, if we cannot respond to God we condemn ourselves. That surely is the sin against the Holy Spirit, the only sin that can never be forgiven.

Harvest justice and righteousness

A harvest festival address given at Dorrha on Sunday 16th October 2011

We all love the harvest season and Harvest Festivals, don’t we?
Just look around us at this beautifully decorated church, filled with harvest bounty - how can we fail to feel thankful? The decorators have every right to be proud of their skilful arrangements. Those who have grown the produce have every right to be proud that the best of it should be displayed here in God’s house. We all enjoy the colours and the smells of the fruit and the vegetables and the flowers, we all enjoy the familiar harvest hymns, and we all enjoy seeing so many cheerful people, filled with a sense of accomplishment, now that the year’s work has been crowned with success.

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

• We have the staples: we have wheat for bread, barley for beer, oats for porridge, forage for cattle - and I saw a pile of good black turf in the porch. Farmers were worried by the lack of sun earlier, but in the end it’s been a good harvest - so my farming neighbour tells me, and he’s not usually so positive. Yields are generally up a bit, and prices are good, though broken weather damaged some of the hay, he tells me.


• But there is so much more than staples for us to enjoy. There’s milk and butter and cheese, fruit and nuts and honey, blackberries and mushrooms, plums and apples, potatoes and turnips, pumpkins and marrows, cabbage and lettuce, peas and beans. My beans have done particularly well this year, despite a slow start – after filling the freezer there’s more than enough to share with friends. My wife Marty has had terrific strawberries and flowers too. And generous beekeeping friends have given us lovely honey, as I wait impatiently to harvest my own next year from my new beehive.


• There are the animals too – we have this year’s foals and calves and lambs, chicks, ducklings, and goslings to delight us. And we must not forget the fruit of our own bodies, our children and grandchildren born this year – I rejoice in a new grandson, Cormac, born in September.

Psalm 65:12-13 expresses it in beautiful poetry, ‘The pastures of the wilderness overflow, the hills gird themselves with joy, the meadows clothe themselves with flocks, the valleys deck themselves with grain, they shout and sing together for joy’.

Thanks be to God for giving us so much joy!

In the OT reading from Deuteronomy (8:7-18), Moses speaks to the Israelites as they wait to cross into the Promised Land.
‘The Lord your God is bringing you into a good land’, he says, ‘a land with flowing streams, with springs and underground waters welling up in valleys and hills, a land of wheat and barley’. Well, God has placed us in just such a land, hasn’t he? We live in ‘a land where (we) may eat bread without scarcity, where (we) lack nothing’. It is surely right for us, like the Israelites, to ‘eat our fill and bless the Lord (our) God for the good land that he has given (us)’.

But Moses also gives the children of Israel a warning. As they enjoy all these good things, he tells them, ‘Take care that you do not forget the Lord your God, by failing to keep his commandments, his ordinances and his statutes, which I am commanding you today’. For, he says, it is God who makes it possible to have all this wealth of good things. And, he adds, if you fail to keep his commandments – that is if you fail to live as God intends you to live – terrible things will happen to you. In the very next verse he says, ‘If you do forget the Lord your God and follow other gods to serve and worship them, I solemnly warn you today that you shall surely perish’.

In his long speech to the Israelites, of which today’s reading is a tiny part - and it is long, taking up almost all of Deuteronomy - Moses restates the Ten Commandments, and expands on them at length, as a rule of life for the Israelites. Moses believes God is just and righteous; God has made a covenant with the Israelites; this requires them to behave with justice and righteousness to other Israelites, because that is what God does.

“Justice and Righteousness” - these two words are like mirror images, because to do what is just is to do what is right and, vice versa, to do what is right is to do what is just – these two words run right through the OT like a vein of precious metal through rock.

In his life and teaching Jesus extends Moses’ idea of God’s covenant of justice and righteousness to apply to all people, Israelites and gentiles alike. And it is Moses’ rule of life that Jesus summarises for us when he says: ‘You shall love the Lord your God’; and ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself’. Love of God and love of neighbour go together like two sides of the same coin.

In our 2nd reading, St Paul encourages the Corinthians to be generous (2Corinthians 9:6-15).
Paul is organising a collection for the poverty-stricken church in Jerusalem among the gentile churches he has planted. He has just told the Corinthians about how generous the Macedonian Christians have been - and he clearly had already told the Macedonians how generous the Corinthians would be - now he urges the Corinthians to be generous too.

He tells them what every farmer and gardener knows – you reap what you sow: ‘The one who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and the one who sows generously will also reap bountifully’.

He tells them they must not think they are under any compulsion to give more than they feel they can, because, he says, ‘God loves a cheerful giver’.

But he reminds them that God has given them quite enough so that they can afford to be generous. ‘God is able to provide you with every blessing in abundance’, he says, ‘so that by always having enough of everything, you may share abundantly in every good work’.

And he tells them that by being generous, not just to the needy in Jerusalem but to all others, they will both glorify God and benefit themselves spiritually. ‘You will be enriched in every way for your great generosity, which will produce thanksgiving to God … because of the surpassing grace of God that he has given you’.

We must, I think, listen very carefully both to Moses’ warning and to Paul’s urging.
Moses warns against breaking God’s covenant of justice and righteousness. Consider the situation that faces us today. The global crash continues to blight the lives of so many of us, and looks set to do so for years to come. And the gathering environmental catastrophe threatens to unpick the very web of life on this planet on which we all depend, as we are slowly, perhaps too slowly, coming to realise. Could it be that both crises result from a failure to keep God’s covenant? I rather think they do. Both crises are driven by human greed - by people who always want more and more, because they reckon they are worth it – such people worship Mammon in place of God, I think.

Paul urges generosity as a positive value. God who is just and righteous will generously supply more than enough to allow us all to flourish. But it is in our own interests to respond justly and righteously, by taking no more than we need and generously sharing the surplus with those with little.

I wouldn’t for a moment suggest that anyone here is greedy or ungenerous - though none of us is perfect. But it is plain for all to see that greed and lack of generosity are deeply embedded within the globalised world we live in. To change this won’t be easy, but it is necessary. Both as a society and as individuals, we need to cultivate justice and righteousness; we need to know when we have enough, we need to recognise when our neighbour has too little, and we need to listen when God calls us to share what he has so graciously given us. If we can’t do that, the future for the human race is dire.

So as we enjoy this harvest bounty, let us rededicate ourselves to justice and righteousness.
Let us love God and thank him for his good gifts. Let us also love our neighbours and share his gifts with those in need of them. And let us pray that all without exception may have enough.

In this way we can join together to pronounce this blessing on all our communities:

Blessed are we when we sing God’s praises
and walk together faithfully on God’s earth.
Blessed are we when we proclaim God’s justice
and share together the fruits of creation.
Blessed are we when we are guided by God’s wisdom
and live together in harmony with God’s world.

The golden calf

The story of the Golden Calf (Exodus 32:1-14) is a strange and ancient story.
The setting is Mount Sinai more than 3000 years ago, at the start of the 40 years that the children of Israel wander as nomads in the desert, after their escape from Egypt and before they arrive in Canaan, the land promised to their ancestor Abraham.

The characters are the Israelite people, Aaron the priest, Moses the prophet who is Aaron’s younger brother – and Yahweh, translated as the Lord. Yahweh, the Israelites were convinced, was the one true God, with whom they had a special relationship.

The story is part of the foundation myth of the Israelites, through which they understood their special relationship with God and its implications for how they should live. But does it have any relevance for us today?

Let me reflect on the characters in the story, before addressing that question.

But before that I must go back a bit to set the story in context.
Three months after Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt they reached Mount Sinai. There Yahweh spoke to Moses and gave him what we know as the Ten Commandments, and a lot of other detailed instructions about how to behave, which Moses relayed to the people. The Israelites confirmed their covenant with Yahweh, saying ‘All that the Lord has spoken we will do, and we will be obedient’.

Moses then climbed the mountain a second time, where Yahweh speaks to him again; this time giving precise instructions for building the portable tabernacle in which Yahweh will dwell with his people, and how Aaron and his offspring are to lead the people in worshipping him. We are told that ‘Moses was on the mountain for forty days and forty nights’.

That's when we come to the story of the Golden Calf in today’s reading.

Turning to the characters, we begin with the Israelites.
Can you empathise with them? I can.

They must have felt very insecure – as refugees surely do today - they had left behind all that was familiar in Egypt, however onerous their slavery had been. And now Moses had left them - perhaps he would never come back? perhaps the messages he brought from Yahweh were an illusion? No doubt they felt a need for the reassurance of something familiar and concrete to focus their hopes for the future on. It is very human to seek something to live for, something to give meaning to life – it is sometimes said that there is a God-shaped hole in every person which must be filled one way or another.

So ‘the people gathered around Aaron and said to him, “Come make gods for us, who shall go before us”’. Aaron went along with them. He took their gold jewellery – their rainy day savings, I suppose – and he made it into a golden calf, just like the familiar idols they had known in Egypt. The people shouted, ‘These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt’. And they worshipped the golden calf with sacrifices - and they ran wild in an orgy of feasting.

Oh what faithlessness! The people are breaking the first two of the Ten Commandments they so recently vowed to keep: ‘I am the Lord your God… you shall have no other gods before me’; and ‘You shall not make for yourself an idol’. They are putting something made by human hands, an idol, in place of Yahweh, the God who made all things, to whom they are bound in a covenant.

So what about Aaron?
With Moses away Aaron is the Israelites’ leader. He is a levite, a descendent of Levi, an hereditary priest of Yahweh. Yet he makes the golden calf, an idol, when the people, or some of them, came to demand he do so - because, he later tells Moses, he was frightened of these people.

But I don’t think he joined in the people's idolatry. In fact he seems to have tried to divert the people from it. He declared that ‘Tomorrow shall be a festival to the Lord’ – that is to Yahweh, not to the idol. Perhaps he believed that he could present the golden calf as a symbol to represent Yahweh, to help the Israelites worship the one true God. But if so, he was terribly wrong – they worshipped the golden calf as an idol - and then they ran amok.

Aaron was surely a weak leader, and he displayed bad judgement.

Then there’s Moses.
Moses is a prophet, someone who converses with Yahweh and articulates Yahweh's wishes to the people.

On the mountain Moses receives the insight to see that the Israelites needed something concrete on which to focus their worship. And he also receives a vision, written on tablets of stone by Yahweh, of what would provide just such a focus without replacing Yahweh by an idol.

Moses also receives the insight that the Israelite people are wilful, inclined to ignore Yahweh’s wishes when it suits them; ‘I have seen this people, how stiff-necked they are’. He feared that Yahweh in his wrath would wreak a great vengeance on the Israelites. So he pleads with Yahweh to spare them, reminding Yahweh of his promises to Abraham, Isaac and Israel. ‘And the Lord changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring on his people’, we are told.

But unlike Yahweh, Moses is entirely unforgiving. After the passage we heard, we are told of his fury when he came down from the mountain and saw what was going on. He broke the tablets of stone on the ground. He took the golden calf, ‘burned it with fire, ground it to powder, scattered it on the water, and made the Israelites drink it’ – rather like rubbing a puppy’s nose in its own dirt, I suppose. And then he incited the sons of Levi to slaughter 3,000 of the Israelites who had worshipped the idol and were still running amok. There is blood on Moses’ hands, and not for the first time.

And where is Yahweh in all this?
Yahweh worked through Moses to teach the children of Israel, 1st that it is wrong to worship an idol in place of the one true God, and 2nd that the one true God is faithful and will keep his promises.

Moses understood that Yahweh is not like one of the jealous, vengeful gods of popular belief in the ancient Middle East. Yahweh is faithful to his people - Yahweh can be relied on to keep his promises. Yahweh does not go in for collective punishment. But Moses also believed that Yahweh would in the fullness of time individually punish those who disobeyed him; he heard Yahweh say, ‘Nevertheless, when the day comes for punishment, I will punish them for their sin’.

Our Christian understanding of the one true God has moved on from the Israelites’ ideas about Yahweh. In particular we have Jesus Christ’s example of loving self-sacrifice, and we have his message that God will forgive our sins if we only repent. Our God is not just faithful, but also merciful. I believe that Moses probably misheard what Yahweh had to say about punishment. God does not punish his people – we bring punishment on ourselves when we fail to repent

So is anything in this strange story relevant for us today? I think so.
First, surely, we must all recognise that we are not so very different from the Israelites – like them, like all human beings, we are all too likely to be ‘stiff-necked’, to put something we create in place of God. Pleasure, possessions, money - country, class, tribe - party, markets, economic systems – how easy it is to make any of these into a golden calf. When we do, we lose touch with the kingdom of God in which all people can flourish - and bad things happen. Isn’t that what the global crash is about? Isn't that what the gathering ecological disaster is about? That is why God forbids idolatry, I think. We must always be on guard against golden calves, focus our worship and attention on God our loving Father, and work to make his kingdom a reality.

Second, I think Christian leaders should reflect on Aaron. Aaron made an idol for the people to worship - perhaps out of fear, perhaps because he thought people needed a concrete image to help them worship the one true God. He was weak, he was wrong. Is it possible that some Christian leaders today allow the dogmas and rituals of their churches to obscure the God that Jesus shows us? They should take care they do not – and that includes me when I lead MP and talk to you from this pulpit!