Presenting Jesus in the Temple - Mary's story

An address given at Templederry & Nenagh on Sunday 2nd February 2014, the Presentation of Christ in the Temple, commonly called Candlemas

So often at Candlemas the whole focus is on Jesus, ‘the light to lighten the gentiles’.

After all the proper title of the festival in the church calendar is ‘The Presentation of Christ in the Temple’. We heard about it in today’s reading from Luke’s Gospel (Luke 2:22-40).

I think Luke has woven into his account of the Presentation an authentic story from Mary’s own lips, based on her own memories of that day.

·          Luke was not an eyewitness of Jesus’s life, and he probably wrote his Gospel at least 30 years after the resurrection, but he tells us himself that he carefully gathered his material from eyewitnesses.

·          Of the principal characters, Simeon and Anna would have been long dead by the time of Jesus’s death, and Joseph too. The story also contains words probably spoken privately to Mary, so bystanders are unlikely to be Luke’s source.

·          That leaves Mary as Luke’s likely source, whether in person or at one remove through an eyewitness, who heard her tell the story sometime after Jesus’s death and resurrection.

So today I’m going to focus on Mary for a change, not Jesus. I invite you to enter into the story of the Presentation in your imagination, to put yourself in the shoes that day of Mary, the young wife of Joseph, and the new mother of the baby Jesus.

Why did Mary and Joseph bring Jesus to the Temple?

Luke gives us two Jewish religious reasons: 1^st for ‘their purification’, and 2^nd to fulfil the Jewish law that ‘Every firstborn male shall be designated as holy to the Lord’.

Hebrew law was obsessed with purity. It defined in excruciating detail what makes a person clean or unclean. God’s favour depends on your being clean, it was believed, and any contact with someone who was unclean made you unclean, as if un-cleanliness was a contagious disease. Leviticus laid down the law that a woman was unclean for 40 days after the birth of a male child. If the child was a girl, the mother was unclean for twice as long - 80 days! The only way for a mother to become clean again was to make a prescribed sacrifice at a sanctuary – in Mary’s time this was in the Temple.

We have, thank God, long abandoned this and other ancient Hebrew purity taboos. Nowadays we find the idea that birth makes a woman unclean quite repulsive. But did Mary really feel she needed to be purified, or was she simply following ancient tradition? She certainly had important practical reasons to fulfil the requirements of the law - pious Jews would shun Mary and her husband unless she had been purified in this way. And it saved a journey to bring Jesus to the Temple at the same time to present him to God as the law also required.

But perhaps Mary and Joseph also had another reason to bring Jesus to the Temple - to give joyful thanks to God for her safe delivery and for the great gift of her healthy son Jesus. This was an opportunity for Mary to show off her new baby, as women still do when they first come to church after giving birth - such a lovely opportunity for a bit of baby-worship! And perhaps they combined it with a family celebration.

In the Church of Ireland BCP we still have special prayers of thanksgiving for childbirth, which once served this purpose. Originally they were used 40 days or so after birth, in church after MP, in what was commonly called ‘Churching a Woman’. In the new BCP the word ‘Churching’ has been dropped, and the prayers are recommended for use in hospital or at home. I don’t think they are used very much now, perhaps because of some association with the repulsive idea that women need purification. But I think it is a shame not to use the prayers - they carry no implication of impurity, and would fit beautifully at the end of a service before the Blessing.

Simeon was one of the priests on duty in the Temple that day.

He was ‘righteous and devout’, we are told, ‘looking forward to the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit rested on him’. He must have been a well known and popular priest, I think, or his name would not have come down to us – did Mary choose him specially, I wonder?

He certainly had a wonderful gift with words in his priestly role, as he pronounced over Jesus that great prayer of joy we still use as the canticle ‘Nunc Dimittis’ – ‘Lord now letest thou thy servant depart in peace…’ It’s odd, isn’t it, that this cry of joy is now mostly heard amidst the sadness of funerals. Mary and Joseph were amazed by his words, we’re told. But I wonder if it was Simeon’s pastorally sensitive custom to greet every new child in this joyful way.

Notice that the sacrifice Mary and Joseph gave was two pigeons. The standard sacrifice was a lamb and a pigeon, but Leviticus allowed those who could not afford a lamb to offer two pigeons. Mary and Joseph were not wealthy, just ordinary people who had to live on a budget like the rest of us.

At the end of the ceremony, after blessing them, Simeon spoke to Mary, quietly and privately I think, since Joseph’s name is not mentioned. ‘This child is destined’, he said, ‘for the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed – and a sword will pierce your own soul too.’  What was Mary to make of his cryptic words? We’ll come back to that.

Then the old widow Anna came up to them. Like Simeon she would have been well known to everyone who came to the Temple, because she was always there, and had been for many years. And as she praises God she just gushes over Jesus to everyone in the Temple. Could Mary possibly have felt a bit embarrassed by her gushing, proud as she was of her baby?

Looking back on it later, surely Mary felt the trip to the Temple had gone swimmingly.

The ceremony had gone well; Simeon had conducted it beautifully; even Anna had said nice things about Jesus. She could go out again in public now everyone recognised she was pure again. And she could resume normal relations with her husband without transmitting impurity to him.

No doubt Mary pondered Simeon’s obscure words in her heart for a while, as Luke tells us she did the Shepherds’ words a few weeks before. I imagine her saying to herself, ‘What did that nice Simeon mean? I understand that every child causes pain to a mother, once in a while. Which of us hasn’t? But what about the rest of what he said?’ But quite soon these questions would have been pressed to the back of her mind by her busy duties as wife and mother.

Meanwhile Jesus, oh so quickly, ‘grew, became strong, filled with wisdom; and the favour of God was upon him’.

Perhaps it was only after Jesus’s death and resurrection that Simeon’s words came back to Mary.

Only then could she properly understand them. Jesus’s ministry in life confirmed his destiny. His crucifixion pierced her soul like a sword, so much worse than she could possibly have imagined. His resurrection revealed him to be the Messiah, the Saviour over whom Simeon had prayed so joyfully as a baby.

The Spirit moved her to tell her story to Jesus’s disciples. Maybe Luke heard her do so, or perhaps one of the disciples passed it on to him. In any case, Luke collected the story and passed it on in turn to us.

Let us give thanks for Luke’s telling of Mary’s story and particularly for Simeon’s joyful prayer, which I shall finish by praying:

Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace: according to thy word.

For mine eyes have seen thy salvation, which thou hast prepared before the face of all people;

To be a light to lighten the Gentiles, and to be the glory of thy people Israel.

The story of Cornelius & Peter

An address given at Templederry, Nenagh and Killodiernan on Sunday 12th January 2014, the 1st Sunday after Epiphany, celebrated as the Baptism of Christ.

What image does the name Cornelius conjure up for you?

If you’re a certain age like me, it might be that wise old elephant Cornelius with the wrinkly forehead, who was Babar’s friend and trusted counselor in the children’s book. Or if you’re a bit younger perhaps it’s Cornelius the chimpanzee archaeologist in the cult SciFi movie Planet of the Apes, who believed that apes descend from humans.

How many of us, I wonder, would think immediately of Cornelius the Roman centurion, whom St Peter addresses in today’s 2^nd reading from Acts 10:34-43? Not many probably! Which is a shame, because the story of Peter and Cornelius is important for our faith. To understand why, I’m going to focus on that story today.

Now the lectionary reading, as so often, is only a small fragment of the larger story, so I’m going to try to summarise it for you. But I do urge you, when you have a moment, to take down your Bible at home and read the whole thing, from the beginning of Acts Ch10 to the middle of Ch11.

The story begins with Cornelius.

Cornelius was a centurion in the Roman army, stationed in Caesarea, the Roman administrative capital of Palestine. He was in charge of a company-sized unit of around 100 men, equivalent to a Captain, or perhaps a Major or Commandant in today’s army - a man of substance and authority.

He was a ‘God-fearer’, we are told. These were people who were not Jews, but believed in one God, admired the ethic of the Jewish religion and sometimes attended synagogue – many thoughtful gentiles at the time were feeling their way to a monotheistic faith and no longer believed in the old pagan pantheon of Gods.

One afternoon Cornelius had a vision. In the vision an angel told him to send messengers to fetch Peter from Joppa where he was staying - a day’s journey away on foot. Perhaps he had heard tell of Peter’s preaching, and realised he should hear what Peter had to say. Anyhow, he did as the angel asked him.

The next day Peter also had a vision, just as Cornelius’s messengers were approaching Joppa. He fell into a trance as he waited hungrily for his mid-day meal. He saw a bag-full of unclean animals in front of him and a voice told him to kill and eat them. He protested that the Jewish law forbade him to eat unclean meat, but the voice said, ‘What God has made clean, you must not call profane’. While Peter was still puzzling over what this meant, the messengers arrived to ask him to go with them to Cornelius.

The next day Peter set out for Caesarea with the messengers and some disciples from Joppa. Cornelius had called his family and friends together and was waiting for them. When Peter arrived he said to them, ‘You yourselves know that it is unlawful for a Jew to associate with or to visit a Gentile; but God has shown me that I should not call anyone profane or unclean’. His words would have been shocking to a pious Jew – he has begun to question whether the strict Jewish law is really what God wants.

It is at this point that Peter gives the address we heard in today’s reading.

First he reassures Cornelius, his family and friends that God does not reject them because they are not Jews - ‘I truly understand’, he says, ‘that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him’.

Peter goes on to speak simply and powerfully of what he knows from his own experience. He tells them about Jesus’s special relationship with God: his baptism by John, his healing ministry to the people of Galilee and Judah, his death and resurrection, his command to the disciples to continue his teaching. And he interprets the words of the ancient prophets to show that ‘everyone who believes in Jesus receives forgiveness of sins through his name’.

While Peter is still speaking, we are told, ‘the Holy Spirit fell upon all who heard the word’. Peter’s words, shot through with personal conviction, so excited Cornelius, his family and friends that they became ecstatic, ‘speaking in tongues and extolling God’. Perhaps it was something like a charismatic prayer meeting today, with hand-waving, clapping, dancing and whoops of joy. Peter recognised that despite being Gentiles they had received the Holy Spirit, just as the disciples had at Pentecost, and ‘he ordered them to be baptised in the name of Jesus Christ’.

The story continues with Peter’s return to Jerusalem.

Word has got back to the apostles and believers there about what had happened at Joppa, and they take Peter to task for consorting with Gentiles.

So Peter tells them the story from the beginning, finishing by justifying his actions in these words, ‘“If then God gave them the same gift (of the Holy Spirit) that he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?” …  And (the believers in Jerusalem)  praised God, saying, “Then God has given even to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life.”’

Those who wished to maintain a Jewish exclusiveness were silenced, at least for the time being - though as we know the issue continued to bedevil the Christian community for many years to come.

The story of Cornelius and Peter is a story of many epiphanies.

It’s worth reminding ourselves what an epiphany is. The English word comes from a Greek root meaning ‘showing forth’. It is used in two senses. First, in everyday speech, it means a sudden insight experienced by someone – a ‘Eureka!’ moment. Second, in a religious context, it means an event in which God reveals himself to human beings. An example of an Epiphany in this 2^nd sense is the Coming of the Wise Men which we celebrated last Sunday, a day early, in which God reveals his Son to the Magi in the shape of the baby Jesus. Another is the Baptism of Christ which we celebrate today, in which God through a voice from heaven, accompanied by the Spirit in the form of a dove, marks Jesus as his Son.

The story begins with Cornelius’s vision, a little epiphany in the everyday sense – a ‘Eureka’ moment in which he suddenly realises that the preacher Peter might have something important to tell him.

Then we have Peter’s vision, another little epiphany in the everyday sense, which causes Peter to question the rigidity of the Jewish dietary laws in which he had been brought up, which had become such a barrier between Jews and gentiles.

How marvellous it is that these little epiphanies are brought together to make possible the greater Epiphany, in the religious sense, in which the power of God as Holy Spirit was revealed to Cornelius, his family and friends - just as the apostles and disciples experienced it at Pentecost, and indeed as Jesus did at his baptism. They were the first gentiles we know of to experience it.

But the whole story, taken together is an even greater Epiphany – this is why I believe it is so important!

It shows us God, by the power of the Holy Spirit, revealing his nature to be inclusive – God seeks to include in his kingdom all people who turn to him and do what is right. This is revealed first to Peter and then through him to the first Christians in Jerusalem in the context of race: ‘God has given even to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life’.

But the Holy Spirit didn’t stop there. St Paul later received the insight that God’s inclusive nature extends beyond race, to social status and gender too. As he wrote in Galatians 3:28, ‘There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male or female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus’. Some found this difficult to accept - Paul like Peter had to contend with those who preferred an exclusive God – but as time moved on eventually Paul’s teaching was accepted by all.

In our own days I am convinced that the Holy Spirit continues to work for inclusion. More and more Christians are being led to understand that those attracted to the same sex are one in Christ with the rest of us. There is resistance of course – some of it frankly quite shocking - but that would not surprise Peter or Paul.

I hope and pray for, and look forward to, the time when the Holy Spirit has brought us all to accept one another as fellow disciples of Christ no matter what our sexual orientation, race, social status or gender may be.

Prophets change history!

Address given at Templederry & Nenagh on Sunday 8th December 2013, the 2nd of Advent, year A

Today we lit the 2nd candle in the advent wreath to remember the prophets.

And today’s readings are concerned with two of the greatest of them: Isaiah in the Old Testament (Isaiah 11:1-10) and John the Baptist in the New (Matthew 3:1-12). Christians see their prophetic words as referring to the incarnation of God in Jesus, and the coming of Christ’s kingdom.

We shouldn't see prophets, I think, as being like weather forecasters, or racing tipsters - people who merely foretell the future without engaging in it. Rather a prophet is someone who tells things how they are and expresses a vision for how things should be. This powerfully influences those who listen, so that they act to make that prophetic vision a reality. Prophets actually change history through their vision!

Let me try to tease out what these prophets’ words say to me.

Let’s start with Isaiah’s vision of a world of peace and justice.

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

Beautiful imagery - but we all know, don’t we, that the strong prey on the weak; the natural world is all about survival of the fittest. ‘Nature, red in tooth and claw’ – the phrase comes from Tennyson's long poem ‘In Memoriam’ (canto 56). In it the poet contrasts the idea of a good and loving God with the terrors of an uncaring Nature. He talks about a person of faith,

Who trusted God was love indeed

And love Creation's final law-
Tho’ Nature, red in tooth and claw
With ravine, shriek'd against his creed

Surely Isaiah’s vision of predator and prey at peace together can be nothing more than a fairytale? That’s just not the way the world works. What’s going on here?

The context is important, I think.

Isaiah is writing in Jerusalem, the capital of Judah, at a time of great danger. The Assyrians have just conquered Judah’s twin kingdom of Israel and carried the people off as captives, and now they threaten Judah. Isaiah believes that the social and political collapse of Israel was caused by its failure to live up to the spirit of the law given in Sinai – and he sees the same thing happening to Judah. Isaiah has just prophesied that Judah too will be overthrown, but he can’t believe that God will desert his chosen people completely – once the Assyrians have purged those who have broken the covenant, surely a faithful remnant will be left.

So in today’s reading Isaiah prophesies that from the root of Jessie, the ancestor of Judah’s kings, a new shoot will rise up. From the ruins of Jerusalem, from the ruins of the kingdom of Jessie’s son David, a new kingdom will arise. It will be a kingdom of justice and peace, worthy of God’s favour. It will be marked by ‘the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and fear of the Lord’. Its ruler – from the stock of Jesse – ‘with righteousness … shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth’.

It is a vision of the kingdom of heaven. In such a society the powerful will not prey on the weak. Isaiah’s vision is about people, not nature. Survival of the fittest should not – must not - apply in human society, however much it does in nature.

Isaiah was mistaken in his belief that Judah would fall to the Assyrians.

The Assyrians mysteriously abandoned their attack. When destruction came, 100 years later, it was the Babylonians, not the Assyrians who laid waste to Jerusalem and carried its leaders into exile.

But Isaiah’s vision was not forgotten. His words were remembered by the exiles. His vision inspired them to hold firm in their traditional faith, to keep their identity as a people, and to return home when conditions allowed.

Over the centuries that followed, Isaiah’s words were studied and elaborated. By Roman times, religious Jews felt quite certain that God would send his Messiah – his anointed one – of the stock of Jesse, who would rule over the Jewish people, as Isaiah had prophesied, with righteousness and faithfulness.

John the Baptist believed in Isaiah’s prophecy and expected God to send his Messiah.

As Matthew reports, he told his followers ‘one who is more powerful than I is coming after me, I am not worthy to carry his sandals’. Matthew also believed that John himself was the messenger that Isaiah said would announce the Messiah, ‘the voice of one crying out in the wilderness: “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight”. John called the people to, ‘Repent,’ – that is, to make a new start, to change their lives – ‘for the kingdom of heaven is at hand’ – the kingdom of Isaiah’s vision.

Jesus surely pondered Isaiah’s words too. I believe he came to the conclusion that they were to be fulfilled in him. But God gave Jesus the insight that as the Messiah, he must come not in physical power and glory like a secular king, but with self-sacrificing love as a suffering servant to lead his people – all people, Jews and gentiles alike – by his example, to the kingdom of heaven which his loving father God wills for all his people.

The early Christians, steeped in the Jewish Messiah tradition, were convinced that Jesus is the shoot from the stock of Jesse in Isaiah’s prophesy. And why not? The spirit of the Lord rested upon him. He preached the kingdom of heaven. He died that we might be saved, he rose from the dead, and he ascended to God. Surely, they said, he will return to rule with righteousness and faithfulness over God’s kingdom of justice and peace.

So what of us today? Do we believe in Isaiah’s vision?

In our own time, as in Isaiah’s, we are faced with dangers and uncertainties. But we must live in hope for the future.

Isaiah’s vision is in front of us – the world can be like the kingdom of heaven, filled with justice and peace. 

John’s call echoes in our ears, to make a new start because the kingdom of heaven has come near.

Jesus has shown us the way as God incarnate. He has sent us the Spirit to lead us, and fire to drive us forward, just as John said he would. 

Our task as Christians is to do our bit to make his kingdom, the kingdom of heaven, a living reality.

God is faithful to his faithful people.

‘They will not hurt or destroy

on all my holy mountain;

for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord

as the waters cover the sea.’

Isaiah’s vision is not a fairytale – it is a vision of the kingdom that God wants for us. And Jesus has shown us how to make it a reality.

Saints and saints

An address given at Templederry and Nenagh on Sunday 3rd November 2013, celebrated as All Saints.

We are celebrating All Saints today.

But just who are these Saints we are celebrating? Let’s try to tease it out a bit.

The common answer, I suppose, is that Saints are dead Christians who were most particularly holy and close to God, either because they lived such exemplary Christian lives, or because they died as martyrs for their faith in Jesus Christ.

But how can we be sure that any particular individual is a Saint?

No one would doubt, I suppose, that Jesus’s earthly family and close friends, and the Apostles and Evangelists we meet in the NT, were very close to God and worthy to be called Saints.

Later on, in the first Christian centuries, local churches and dioceses quite informally came to recognise other people as Saints, such as outstanding bishops, teachers, martyrs and missionaries within their own area. This includes our many early Celtic Saints, among them St Brendan the Navigator, who a number of us in the Pilgrim Fellowship was remembering in Clonfert Cathedral yesterday.

The process of recognising Saints was gradually formalised over the years, until eventually in the pre-Reformation Western Church it was accepted that only the Pope in Rome could declare someone a Saint, after exhaustive enquiries and checks, as is still the case in the Roman Catholic Church. By now there are thousands and thousands of them. I have a Roman Catholic ‘Book of Saints’ at home which has alphabetical entries for almost 5,000 named Saints and groups of Saints, starting with St Aaron – a C6^th  Breton Abbot, and ending with St Zoticus – a C4^th  priest in Constantinople.

It is particularly important for Roman Catholics to have certainty about who is a Saint, because they believe in the intercession of Saints – that dead Saints can effectively intercede on our behalf with God, if we ask them to in prayer. Only God truly knows who is a Saint, the theory goes, so no one is declared a Saint until God has demonstrated this by performing miracles in answer to prayers addressed to that candidate for sainthood.

Most reformed Christians reject the practice of asking Saints to intercede – Article 22 of the 39 Articles describes the invocation of Saints as ‘a fond thing, vainly invented, and grounded upon no warranty of scripture, but rather repugnant to the Word of God’. Nevertheless, reformed Christians like us continue to honour Saints, at least those recognised before the Reformation, as examples of holiness and faith that we do well to imitate, in order to strengthen and encourage our own holiness and faith.

The Church of England has not declared any new Saints since the Reformation – with the peculiar exception of Charles I, who was honoured for political reasons as St Charles King & Martyr from the Restoration until 1859. But the Church of England Calendar does list many post-reformation Christians as worthy of commemoration, without explicitly calling them Saints. Not all of them are Anglican – they include for instance: George Fox the Quaker, Oscar Romero the martyred Catholic Bishop of San Salvador, and German Lutheran Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

We in the Church of Ireland are more parsimonious, but our BCP Calendar includes commemorations for two post-Reformation Bishops - Bishop Jeremy Taylor of Down, Connor and Dromore, and Bishop Charles Inglis, a bishop in North America from Raphoe.

All of these are examples for us of holiness and faith whom we should honour at All Saints – I suppose we might call them ‘heroes of the Church’ – and we are at liberty, I think, to consider them Saints too if we wish.

So far so good – but St Paul in today's reading from Ephesians 1:11-23 gives us a completely different view on who the saints are.

‘I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints’, says Paul. ‘I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ … may give you a spirit of wisdom … so that you may know what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints … for us who believe’.

It is clear from the context of this and other similar passages, that for St Paul the saints are all those who are ‘in Christ’, both those alive who believe and follow Jesus as his disciples, and those who have died. For the first Christians, the saints included ordinary Christians like you and me, as well as a few exceptionally holy people.

We are all saints (with a small ‘s’)!

We are all saints in this sense: we are sanctified, that is made holy, by being made part of the body of Christ in his Church at our baptism - the English word ‘saint’ comes from the Latin ‘sanctus’, meaning holy. Even though we know we are all sinners if we are honest with ourselves. We are not particularly holy, we often feel far from God – and, please God, we won’t be asked to die as martyrs. But we do try to live good Christian lives, and when we fail we seek forgiveness and try again - and again, and again. That is what makes us saints.

Those that we recognise as Saints (with a big ‘S’) and heroes of the Church are different from us in degree but not in kind – they too knew they were sinners. Even as marvellous examples of holiness and faith worth celebrating, they were human and fallible just like us. Remember, even the great St Peter was rebuked by Jesus with the words, ‘Get thee behind me, Satan’.

I wouldn’t for a moment suggest that we should celebrate ourselves at All Saints - how horribly narcisistic that would be – but surely at All Saints tide we should remember the saints (with a small ‘s’) from whom we have received our own faith, whether they are parents, teachers, friends, or others we have met on the way.

Since we are all saints, surely there are implications for how we should live our lives.

And I think Jesus spells them out for us very clearly in today’s 3^rd reading from Luke’s Gospel (6:20-31).

First, as saints we must never forget that we are blessed by God, whatever bad things may befall us. Let's hear Jesus's words again:

‘Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man … for surely your reward is great in heaven.’

Second, as saints Jesus tells us that we must obey what philosophers call the Golden Rule, ‘Do unto others as you would have them do to you’. He tells us:

‘Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes your coat do not withhold even your shirt. Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again.’

Wow! That is a big 'ask'! How difficult these things are for ordinary, self-centred human beings. But they are commands from the very lips of Jesus, the Son of God. Unless we do our best, however poor, to follow them, we cannot claim to be part of the body of Christ, and we are not worthy to be called saints, even with a small ‘s’. No wonder we need the example of the Saints with a capital ‘S’ to show us that it is possible!

So as we celebrate the lives of all the Saints, let us pray that God the Father, through his Holy Spirit, will strengthen and encourage us to live up to the example of the Saints, and to behave as Jesus has commanded us to.

The Earthly & Heavenly Harvests are deeply interconnected

A Harvest Festival address given at Kinnitty on Friday 18th October, year C

What a privilege it is for me to join you for your Harvest Festival, to give thanks to God for all the good things he has given to us all.

And I must thank your Rector, Michael, for his invitation to address you this evening.  

Like all of us I’m sure, I’ve loved Harvest Festivals ever since I was a child! Let us just look around us at this beautifully decorated church, filled with harvest bounty. The decorators have every right to be proud of their skillful arrangements, and 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 - when I came in I smelt the apples and was transported back to my childhood. And we love the familiar harvest hymns, and all the cheerful people.

I’m going to talk about two things today: the earthly harvest, for which we are giving thanks today - and then a different, heavenly harvest. The two are deeply interconnected.

So first, the earthly harvest.

Are you feeling cheerful? I do hope so, because we have so much to give thanks for. And cheerfulness is a Christian virtue!

After the fodder crisis of the winter and late spring, my farming neighbours tell me the good summer has cheered them up. The crowds at the Ploughing were happy ones. The harvest has been easier than for several years. And a friend who grows cereals told me, with a twinkle in his eye, that although prices have dropped back, yields aren’t too bad, and he can’t complain – now for him that’s almost a shout of joy!

Yet even so, many of us remain anxious in this great recession we are living through. After the turmoil in global financial markets, policies of austerity have destroyed jobs and many are driven to emigrate. Worries bubble up: Is my job safe? What about my savings and my pension? How can I stretch my income to pay the rising bills for energy and other things?

But we should try to look at the glass as half full, not half empty! Just reflect for a moment on the breadth and variety of our harvest:

·         We have the staples: we have wheat for bread, barley for beer, oats for porridge, hay for horses and silage for cattle.

·         And there’s much more than staples for us to enjoy, isn’t there? There’s milk and honey, butter and cheese, fruit and nuts, blackberries and mushrooms, plums and apples, potatoes and turnips, pumpkins and marrows, peas and beans, cabbage and lettuce, and gardens full of flowers!

·         Many of us work with animals, and there are this year’s foals, and calves and lambs and chicks. But there’s also the fruit of our own bodies - our children and grandchildren born this year, and older ones growing apace as mine are - thank God for them too!

·         Above all perhaps we should thank God for our health and strength, and also for our intellects, our god-given cleverness. As every farmer knows, this bountiful harvest does not appear from heaven as if by magic: it takes intelligent planning and hard graft!

In this rich corner of the world today, no one will starve in times of recession, as our forefathers so often did. With our cleverness we have invented ways to store food and to transport it, and economic and social systems to distribute it to where it is needed. If we consume a little less, it will probably be good for our health; and perhaps the whole planet will benefit. So let us be cheerful and follow the good advice of Deuteronomy (26:1-11): ‘You shall set the first of the fruit of the ground down before the Lord your God … Then you shall celebrate with all the bounty that the Lord your God has given to you.’

Yet for all our cleverness, the earthly harvest is perishable and uncertain. Why has God not given us perpetually good harvests - and recession free economies? Perhaps to remind us that we are not masters of the universe: God is. God’s laws don’t change: Nature is as God has made it; and what we sow, we shall reap. We remain as we have always been, totally dependent on God’s continuing fatherly goodness.

In the passage from John’s Gospel that we’ve just heard (John 6:25-35), Jesus asks us to look beyond the earthly harvest, to a different heavenly harvest.

He tells the crowd: ‘Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.’  He tells them ‘the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.’ And finally he makes this great claim: ‘I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whosoever believes in me shall never be thirsty’.

What is Jesus talking about? His teaching is difficult; at least I find it so. But then so did many of Jesus’s disciples, according to John. One way to look at it, which I find helpful, is this. I offer it to you:

·           Just as God has made us clever, able to till and keep the world of which we are part, so he has made us in his image to be moral beings, to be souls. Souls with the capacity we call conscience to distinguish right from wrong, truth from lies, love from hate - and to prefer good to evil, as he does, at least in the abstract. If we use our conscience to make the right choices, we reap a heavenly harvest of good, which nourishes us for eternal life. As the old saw says, the good we do lives after us.

·           But we are not masters of our own souls, any more than we are masters of the universe: our souls are as God made them, with free will, vulnerable to temptation. So it’s hard to be good. We have to work at it, just as we do for the earthly harvest. It is hard work resisting temptation, putting what is right above our own desires. All too often we fail. We call that sin. And when we fail and sin, the evil we do poisons our soul, and that evil too is eternal. A bad deed done can never be undone!

·           What a mess it is! How can we possibly be as good as God wants us to be? As good as God has made us want to be in our best moments.

·           This is where Jesus’s teaching speaks to me: he promises us all the help we need to reap the heavenly harvest. All we require, all that is asked of us, is the faith to come to him. Then, as the bread of life, he strengthens our souls. He helps us to resist temptation and to do good. And when we fail, he sucks out the evil that poisons the soul – in other words he redeems us. The only cure for a bad deed is forgiveness!

·           It is in this sense, I suggest, that Jesus is the bread of life that endures for eternal life.

What are the practical implications of this? Consider greed for example:

Greed is the cause of so many of the problems we face, I think, from global warming to the global crash; old-fashioned, sinful human greed. Greed to consume more than we need at the expense of our planet. Greed for profit at the expense of other men and women.

To overcome the problems we must be generous to others, not greedy for ourselves. We must learn how to be unselfish. This wonderful planet – our God-given Garden of Eden – would be enough and more than enough for all of us if only we could do so.

But we cannot do this by ourselves, because of our innate tendency to be selfish and greedy. We can only do it through the grace of Jesus Christ, the bread of life, who will help us transform our sinful greedy natures into generous ones. He will help us to be as generous as God wants us to be.

And think on this: human greed threatens our future. I'll say it again: human greed threatens our future.

Selfish over-consumption in the rich world not only pushes the poor into deeper poverty to which they may respond violently, but it drives the climate change that is damaging our planet’s ecosystems on which all life depends. Without Jesus’s help to transform our greed into generosity, we stand to lose the earthly harvest too. The earthly harvest depends in a very real way on the heavenly harvest.

So to sum up:

·         Let us thank God our loving Father for this bountiful earthly harvest. God makes it possible, and we work hard for it, so it is right for us to celebrate it and enjoy it together.

·         But let us work just as hard for the heavenly harvest of goodness, to nourish our souls.

·         Let us also thank God for the gift of his Son Jesus Christ. We need his help to reap this heavenly harvest.

·         And let us pray that Jesus will transform our selfish natures into the generous natures on which both our earthly and heavenly harvest bounty depends.

If we believe in him, if we come to him, we will never be hungry or thirsty for good things.

Sowing the seed

Address given at the annual ecumenical service of thanksgiving for the Lough Derg Yacht Club Regatta on Sunday 18th August 2013.

Every year members of the Lough Derg & Loug Ree Yacht Clubs join with friends from near and far to share time together sailing on the Shannon, in competition but also in friendship and love. It is a great blessing. And it is very right that participants should also join together to give thanks to God for blessing them in this way. The Regatta Service has been held annually for more than 70 years. It is a lovely tradition, and one I hope will continue for many years to come.

Do you find it difficult to remember the point of a sermon you’ve just heard, 5 minutes later?

I do - it’s as if what goes in one ear comes straight out the other! But I do remember one sermon preached by Stephen White, then the Dean of Killaloe, at a Regatta Service like this one several years ago.

He likened our different Christian traditions to a flotilla of yachts racing on the lake. We may look as if we’re sailing in different directions as we tack to find better air, but we are all sailing to the best of our ability to reach the same mark – which is God’s heavenly kingdom. Stephen was not a sailor, and may not have intended it, but I had to laugh when I thought of all the shouting and roaring which so often goes with racing, whether it’s the crew arguing about tactics, or shouts of ‘Starboard!’ or ‘Water’ to other competitors. How like our different churches so much of the time!

The point I took from his sermon is that we are all sailing the same race together, and there is so much more that unites than divides us. I remember it of course because the image Stephen conjured up was so vivid and familiar, and appropriate to the time and place.

Jesus was also a master of the vivid, familiar and appropriate image to make his words stick.

Let us enter in our imagination the scene of the reading from Mark 4:1-9 we have just heard, what we now call the ‘Parable of the Sower’.

So many people wanted to listen to Jesus that he used a boat as a pulpit to address the crowd on the beach. The beach was on a lake, the Sea of Galilee. I’ve never been there, but I see it in my minds eye as rather like Lough Derg: it’s about 40% larger in area, and wider but not so long. Imagine the people crowded on the beach at Dromineer, and Jesus in a lake boat talking to them.

Did Jesus see a man sowing in a nearby field? Perhaps this prompted the parable, and everyone could literally see what he was talking about. The sower wouldn’t be using a seed-drill; he would be broadcasting the seed by hand, just as our ancestors would have done only 150 years ago. The seed would be in a bag or a basket, and he would walk steadily up and down the field, taking a handful of seed and throwing it out as evenly as he could. Even at a distance it would be quite clear to everyone what he was doing: they had seen it hundreds of times before, and many had done it themselves.

And Jesus describes just what the crowd can all see:

§         Imagine a big field divided like allotments into strips farmed by different families, with paths between them, beaten down hard by the passage of many feet. The crowd can see the birds following the sower swooping down to gobble up the seed that inevitably falls on the path, for all the sowers skill.

§         Everyone would understand that different parts of the field are of different quality.

§         Some parts would be stony. Don’t imagine small pebbles - imagine great sheets of rock just under the surface, with just a few inches of soil on top. The soil above the rock would warm early, and the seeds would germinate quickly, but without a depth of soil the young seedlings would soon run out of nutrients and water and shrivel up in the sun.

§         Some parts of the field would be infested with perennial weeds: imagine scutch grass and creeping thistle, which would quickly outgrow the delicate crop, choking it.

§         But other parts of the field would be good land, with a deep, clean soil. Here the crop would have nutrients and water enough, and little competition. It will flourish and produce a harvest of thirty, or sixty, or a hundred times the grain sown on it.

‘Let anyone with ears to hear listen!’ Jesus finishes.

·        But when the crowd has left his disciples are still uncertain what he meant – as we are so often uncertain. So Jesus interprets it for them himself, in the passage that follows - perhaps to reassure them that they do indeed understand what he is getting at.

·         The seed sown on the path is the word spoken, but not understood. Satan snatches it away, before it ever has the chance to sprout.

·         The seed sown on rocky ground is the word received with joy, but by a person with shallow roots, without character, whose initial enthusiasm cannot withstand trouble or persecution.

·         The seed sown among thorns is the word heard by those who are so trapped by worldly cares and the lure of wealth that they cannot act upon it.

·         And the seed sown on good soil is the word heard by those who understand it, and act upon it. Only such people will yield a harvest of good.

The point of Jesus’ sermon is just the same as it was on that lake shore 2000 years ago.

If we are to be the good people God wants us to be, we need to cultivate our characters so that as good soil we yield a rich harvest.

Each one of us has to develop the character traits of attention, persistence, and concentration. Attention so that we do not miss God’s call when it comes. Persistence so that we can withstand opposition when we answer God’s call. And concentration so that the cares of the world and the pursuit of wealth do not distract us from acting on God’s call.

And I suggest these 3 marks of character are also needed by any winning sailor. Attention to the wind, the water and other boats. Persistence to overcome temporary setbacks. And concentration to make the most of the conditions we encounter.

I was never a winning sailor, as most of you know. But my prayer for every one of us is that we may never cease striving to build up our character – our powers of attention, persistence and concentration - so that we may be better sailors - and more like the people God wants us to be.

May you have fair weather and good sailing in the year ahead!

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!