Something Happened

Address given at Templederry & Nenagh, and from memory at Killodiernan, on Sunday 12th April 2015, the 2nd of Easter Year B.

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

That first Good Friday it must have seemed that the whole life and ministry of Jesus was a complete and abject failure. He started out so well, proclaiming the Kingdom of God, healing the sick, on the side of the marginalised and needy. But then it all seemed to fall apart. He got on the wrong side of the temple and the state; he was arrested; he was deserted by his disillusioned followers; and he was painfully and shamefully executed. Just another 1^st Century messianic pretender, destined to be forgotten like so many others – so it must have seemed!

If the story had ended there, none of us would ever have heard of him. But we have all heard of Jesus – that’s why we are here today. Something happened to continue the story. The writers of the NT describe this something as Resurrection. They all believe and give witness that Jesus rose from the dead. This belief emboldens them to continue his mission, now strengthened by the sense of God’s Holy Spirit working in and through them. The followers of Jesus multiply. Less then 3 centuries later they take over mighty Roman Empire. And the rest, as they say, is history.

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

Let us look more closely at today’s readings, and reflect on what they tell us about how the earliest disciples responded to Christ’s Resurrection.

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

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

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

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

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

Time has moved on. Many new believers have joined the small frightened band of disciples who had met the risen Christ behind locked doors. The apostles testify ‘to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus with great power’. All the believers, new and old, are ‘of one heart and soul’, and ‘great grace (is) upon them all’. The word translated here as ‘grace’ is the Greek word charis (χαρις) – ‘that which affords joy, pleasure, delight, sweetness, charm, loveliness’. It is ‘shalom’. It is how the disciples felt when they heard the risen Christ say ‘peace be with you’.

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

Some suggest this is a scriptural endorsement of Communism, but that would be a mistake, an anachronism, I think.  Communism as a political philosophy is a 19^th Century idea, a response to the injustices of industrial capitalism. The circumstances of the tiny group of disciples trying to live a life of Christian witness within the Roman Empire were quite different.

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

So to sum up, as 21^st century Christians here are three things we can learn from the response of the earliest Christians to the fact of Resurrection

1^st, the risen Christ blesses us with his ‘shalom’, the gift of his peace – just as he did the first disciples.

2^nd, the risen Christ breathes his Holy Spirit into us to give us strength to continue his mission of loving service in the world – just as he did the first disciples.

And 3^rd, in response to Christ’s peace and the Holy Spirit we should care intensely for one another - love one another. Let us share what God has given us so that no one is in need – just as the first disciples did.

Finding life by losing it

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

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

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

Why was Jesus so hard on Peter, his friend and disciple? Jesus knew that God’s way was not the way of violent earthly conquest, but the way of self-sacrificing love. I’m sure he didn’t want to die a painful death, but Jesus must have realised this was the inevitable outcome of what God called him to do. He was determined to face it bravely. But Peter tries to argue him out of it, in an echo of Satan’s tempting in the wilderness.

Isn’t this often the way it is? When we’ve made up our minds what the right thing is to do even at a personal cost, our friends and loved ones try to talk us out of it. The tempter can be the very person dearest to us! Yet we must not allow even the pleading voice of love to stop us from doing God’s will.

So Jesus seizes the moment to teach Peter and the disciples his way, the way of the cross, how to find life by losing it.

As usual, Mark compresses Jesus’s teaching to a very few words, but it goes to the very heart of our Christian faith. It is worth reflecting on it sentence by sentence.

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

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

First Jesus calls us to ‘deny ourselves’, to say no to our own selfish instincts. But more than simply practicing self-denial, Jesus tells us we must be prepared to take real risks – even to risk our very lives – if that is what God, through our conscience, tells us is right. We who follow Jesus must do God’s will in all things to the best of our ability.

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

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

The very essence of life is to risk it and spend it, not to save it and hoard it. If we live selfishly, always thinking first of our own profit, comfort and security, we lose life all the time. But if we spend life for others, if we follow Jesus’s way of loving self-sacrifice, we win life all the time.

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

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

I’m sure you, like me, can think of people who are outwardly hugely successful, but who in another sense are living a life that is not worth living. In business, they may have sacrificed honour for profit. In politics, they may have sacrificed principle for popularity. In their personal lives, they may have sacrificed their deepest relationships for their own ambitions or desires. Such people are seldom comfortable in their own skin and often live to regret their bad choices.

It is a matter of values really - Jesus asks us where our values lie. As he says elsewhere, we are to store up our treasures in heaven, not on earth, ‘for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also’. Our values must be God’s values, not the false values of worldly success.

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

Many people did not like what Jesus said and did. He stood up for the poor, the despised, the rejected, and he was a friend of sinners. Scribes and Pharisees – the pious and respectable of his time – saw his behaviour as shameful. Knowing this, Jesus warns his disciples not to be ashamed to follow him publicly - for if they are, how can they expect to share in the glory of God’s kingdom?

These same words should be a warning for us. In Ireland - and in Europe generally - it has become deeply unfashionable for many people to own up to a Christian faith. Even if we believe in our heart of hearts, many of us find it easier not to speak openly about our faith for fear of being mocked or thought less of. In fact, we behave as if we are ashamed of our faith.

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

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

1^st, Jesus calls me to be ready to risk everything to do God’s will, rather than my own;

2^nd, Jesus calls me to find true life and happiness by losing my life in the service of God and others;

3^rd, Jesus calls me to live my life by God’s values, not the false values of worldly success.

4^th, Jesus calls me to follow his path of loving self-sacrifice, joyfully, fearlessly and without shame.

Let us pray for the grace to respond to Jesus’s voice, in the words of St Ignatius of Loyola:

Teach us, Good Lord, to serve you as you deserve:

To give, and not to count the cost;

to fight, and not to heed the wounds;

to toil and not to seek for rest;

to labour and not to ask for any reward,

save that of knowing that we do your will.

Through Jesus Christ Our Lord, Amen

Lent is a holiday from the everyday!

Address given at the Service for Ash Wednesday (with ashing) in St Mary's Nenagh on 18 Feb 2015

You’ll be delighted to know that I’m not going to give you a long sermon! But I do want to say a very few words about Lent.

The Church invites us, as we heard in the introduction to this service, ‘to observe a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God’s holy word’.

But to many in the wider society we inhabit, Lenten fasting and self-denial seem plain daft, perverse even. ‘Oh what a bore!’, I hear them say, ‘Why all this guilt-inducing, self-flagellating, call to gloomy repentance? Go away, and let us get on with our busy lives.’ There is no shortage of people to mock those who take Lent seriously.

My answer to them is this: Lent is not a burden – it’s not meant to be a burden, but a gift – it’s a holiday from the everyday!

Lent is an opportunity:

·         To liberate myself for a bit from one of those little habits of luxury that can so easily become addictive bad habits. It is a chance to prove to myself that I am more than the sum of my desires. And after the fast, thank God, I shall relish what I denied myself even more.

·         To spend a little more time with God, to feed my spiritual side, my soul. He is the great lover of souls, but often I feel too busy to respond to his love. There are so many ways to do so it is difficult to choose, from prayer, to reading scripture, or some other worthwhile book I wouldn’t otherwise find time to pick up, to joining with others in a Lenten course.

·         To live more simply for a while and enjoy the present moment. Heaven knows, most of us could do with a break from the pressures to be busier and busier to acquire and consume more and more. Lent is also the time of lengthening days and burgeoning spring – let us enjoy what God has given us - for free.

·         To be as generous as I can be from the surplus of good things God has given me. There is nothing so pleasurable and good for the soul than to help someone in need or donate to a good cause.

And whatever we choose to do or not do, we must not be gloomy about it! As Jesus tells us in the Gospel reading (Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21), ‘when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that your fasting may be seen not by others but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.’

May we all have a joyful, holiday Lent!

God and Creation

Sermon preached at Templederry, Nenagh and Killodiernan on Sunday 8th February 2015, the 2nd before Lent year A

I want to share with you some thoughts about God and about Creation, because that is the common theme of today’s readings

When we look about us at creation - at this amazing living world and the wider heavens - how can we feel anything but awe and wonder? It is natural for us as human beings to interpret it as the work of a mighty creative God. The Psalmist captures this in beautiful poetry (Psalm 104:26-37):

‘O Lord how manifold are your works! In wisdom you have made them all; the earth is full of your creatures.’

God in his wisdom has made his creation comprehensible to us through logic, mathematics and science. Thanks to science we now comprehend so much more about creation than the Psalmist ever could. We can now see that creation is not a once-and-for-all thing, but an unending process starting from the ‘big bang’ at the dawn of time, and continuing still into the distant future.

I do not consider myself an old man, but in my own lifetime we have discovered how the material universe evolves: we are literally made of star-dust – the very elements of this earth came into existence in the explosive deaths of generations of stars. And in my own lifetime we have started to unravel how the subtle biochemistry of DNA has allowed teeming life to evolve on our planet.

Some people like to say that this new science is incompatible with the idea of God, but I disagree. I think that’s poppycock! For me it makes God’s work of creation even more marvellous. Evolution is the mechanism God uses in creation – and God has not finished his creation yet.

The OT reading from Proverbs (8:1, 22-31) introduces us to God’s Wisdom.

God’s first creative act was to create Wisdom, we are told. And Wisdom has remained beside God ‘like a master worker’ throughout creation.

I like to think of Wisdom as like the laws of nature, God-given. The laws of nature make continuing creation through evolution not just possible, but inevitable.

Cosmologists have been surprised to discover that the laws of nature seem to be very finely tuned to allow the evolution of a universe like ours, with life like ours. Some have proposed what is known as the Strong Anthropic Principle, that the Universe is compelled, in some sense, to eventually have conscious and sapient life emerge within it.

Perhaps we should see this as God’s Wisdom at work: Wisdom tells us, ‘I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always, rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the human race’.

But there is more to creation than physics and biochemistry.

Ours is also a moral universe. We human beings have been created as souls with a moral sense of what is good and what is evil, and a conscience which prompts us to choose good over evil. We can distinguish between right and wrong, truth and falsehood, beauty and ugliness, love and hate. Yet all too often we fail to choose wisely and do what we know we shouldn’t. We are imperfect beings, incomplete, not yet finished by God – that is what the idea of original sin and the myth of the Fall is all about.

It is not true, as it is sometimes said, that nature is always red in tooth and claw – there is more to life than a vicious struggle for existence. Communities of plants and animals live together supporting each other. Think of the intricate three-cornered dance of life between plants like plums and apples, the insects that pollinate them in return for pollen and nectar, and the animals that disperse their seeds in exchange for the fruit. Think of social insects like ants and bees, how virgin sisters devote their lives to raising their queen’s children. Think of the altruism and unselfish love of which we human beings are capable at our best.

This shows me that God is still at work, creating a moral universe in which good triumphs over evil. Shall we call it the Kingdom of God? Perhaps the Kingdom is an emergent property of creation, necessarily arising out of evolving life, just as life necessarily arose out of the physics and chemistry of matter. If so, the potential for it has been there from the start, a consequence of God-given laws of nature. It has evolved gradually in many species. We see it dimly and imperfectly in our human natures. And we may believe that it will become ever brighter and more perfect as God works his purpose out through creation.

Why should this be so, I ask myself? The answer I think is this: Just because God is good, and God prefers all that is right and true, beautiful and loving.

The moral universe – the Kingdom of God - is what matters to both St Paul and St John.

Both of them place Jesus Christ at the heart of the evolving moral universe, much as Proverbs places Wisdom at the heart of the evolving material universe.

In Paul’s letter to the Colossians (1:15-20), Jesus Christ ‘is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation … through (whom) God (is) pleased to reconcile to himself all things… by making peace through the blood of his cross’. In John’s Gospel (1:1-14) Jesus Christ is the eternal  Word: ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God … he gives power to become the children of God to all who receive him, who believe in his name’.

Theirs is a deep theology, and I am no theologian. But one key message I take from them is this:

God offers through Jesus to complete his creation of us in his image to be part of God’s Kingdom.

The big question for each one of us is this:

Will we accept God’s offer?

If we want to be a part of the Kingdom of God – the emerging moral universe filled with all that is good, right and true, beautiful and loving - then we must start with Jesus. If we want to be reconciled to God, then we must start with Jesus. If we want to become children of God, then we must start with Jesus.

Because in Jesus, ‘the Word (becomes) flesh and (lives) among us, and we (see) his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth’.

What makes Jesus cringe?

Address given at Kinnitty, Shinrone & Aghancon on Mission Sunday, 23rd November 2014, the last Sunday before Advent year A, 

This is Mission Sunday.

It is the day each year when the Diocesan Board of Mission appeals to us to give generously to the good causes it supports. But it is also an opportunity for us to think about what we mean by mission, and why it is so important.

The word ‘mission’ comes from a Latin word meaning ‘sent out’, but I think it is really more about ‘calling out’.

In the past people thought about mission mostly in terms of sending out missionaries to foreign lands to convert the heathen savages. But the reality of mission is very different, certainly these days. Mission is not so much about sending out missionaries to make converts and grow the church, but much more about calling out all Christian people to reveal the Kingdom of God to our fellow human beings, wherever and whoever they may be.

As Christians, Jesus calls us all to continue his ministry by making the kingdom of God visible. But how are we to discern what it is that we should actually do? At the Mission Evening in Adare ten days ago Salters Sterling suggested an excellent answer to this question.

In order to discern where Christ is calling us to mission, we should look about us to find places where people are suffering the kind of injustice that would make Jesus cringe.

And then of course we should work together to do something about it.

Today’s Gospel, the parable of the sheep and the goats (Matthew 25: 31-46), can help us to see where to look.

Jesus is teaching his disciples when they are alone with him, he is not speaking to the crowds. He tells them, ‘When the Son of Man comes in his glory … he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. … 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 …

for 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.”

And when in their surprise they ask when they had done this, the king will say to 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 was accustomed to refer to himself as the Son of Man. Here he uses the imagery of divine judgement to teach his disciples what they must do to be blessed by God and accepted into his Kingdom - they are to comfort and support even the least member of God’s family who is in any kind of distress or trouble.

And God’s family is inclusive. Every human being is made in God’s image, and hence is a member of God’s family - whoever they are, wherever they live, whatever they look like, however they worship, whether they are friends or enemies. Every person is our neighbour, and Jesus commands us to love our neighbours as ourselves (Matthew 22:39).

So you and I, as Jesus’s disciples today, must take his call to heart. Where we encounter any kind of injustice, injustice that would make Jesus cringe in Salters’ words, Jesus calls us to do something about it, to shine something of the light of God’s kingdom on it. We too are to feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, welcome the stranger, clothe the naked, care for the sick and visit the prisoner. If we do so, we will be blessed by God and inherit the Kingdom. If we do not, we are accursed.

This is why mission is so important to us as Christians.

80% of our Mission Sunday collection will once again go to Luyengo Farm in Swaziland.

Swaziland is a place where people really are suffering injustice that would make Jesus cringe. It is one of the poorest countries on earth, with more than a quarter of adults infected by HIV, and all the problems of orphaned children and families headed by children that go with that.

We can feel proud as a diocese that since 2011 we have raised nearly €60,000 for Luyengo Farm. The Farm is a success story. When we started there was nothing but bear earth, now it is producing carrots, lettuce, beetroot, pigs and other commodities, for sale in Swaziland and South Africa. This provides local employment, and the money raised supports AIDS relief and feeding stations run by the Diocese of Swaziland.

Our efforts have helped the Diocese of Swaziland in a very concrete way to feed the hungry, care for the sick, and educate Swazi children. We have opened a window to let the light of God’s kingdom shine through, and we are blessed by it.

Now the Board of Mission is calling us to make one final effort to meet our diocesan commitment to clear the debt incurred to build the reservoir – they need just €5,000 to do so.

The other 20% of the collection will be returned to the parish for local mission work.

Why is this? The Board of Mission is seeking to encourage parishes to look about them in order to identify and support a project in our own communities which will shine the light of God’s kingdom on people in our own communities who need help.

Heaven knows, there are enough people here in Ireland that are suffering injustice that would make Jesus cringe:

·         People who go hungry because their money does not stretch to the end of the week, and children who go hungry to school in the morning.

·         Homeless families in B&B accommodation, or sleeping on friends’ sofas or in cars.

·         Travelers and immigrants who are not made welcome and suffer discrimination in shops and pubs.

·         People whose naked bodies are exploited for profit and pleasure in the sex industry.

·         Frail and lonely elderly people confined to the house with few if any visitors.

·         Patients waiting on hospital trolleys, or on endless lists for under-resourced public health care.

·         Refugees for whom living in direct provision for years on end feels like imprisonment.

If we address their needs, we do the same to the Son of Man and we will be blessed. If we don’t, we deny the Son of Man and we are accursed. Which of us would wish to be judged for not responding to their needs? So what are we going to do about it?

Most of us, I’m sure, already give generously to local charities. But this question, ‘what are we going to do about it?’, is one we need to talk about within our parishes. We need to seek creative answers, as for instance people in Tralee have by establishing a Soup Kitchen & Food Bank, and people in Kenmare have with a very successful Men’s Shed.

We Church of Ireland folk can sometimes feel discouraged. ‘What can we do?’, we say to each other, ‘we are so few and dispersed’. But we do not have to do it all by ourselves. God’s family is inclusive. When we begin to do things we will probably find that we are doing it with people of good will from other Christian traditions, from other faiths, and from no faith. And we may hope that what we do will reveal something of the kingdom of God to them as well.

So to finish, let us respond as generously as we can to the Diocesan Board of Mission this Mission Sunday

If we usually pull out a note from our wallet, let us make it a bigger one. If we usually put a coin on the plate, let us make it two.

And I pray that we will also start the debate within this parish about where and how we are being called to make the kingdom of God visible, where and how we are being called to mission.

Bridesmaids

Address given at Templederry & Nenagh on Sunday 9th November 2014, 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. It’s an awful pain when the oil runs out, as I know only too well, because it has happened to me far too often. This time, though, there was plenty of oil, thank heavens.

And I don’t just have problems with central heating oil. My mother, God bless her, always used to ask me as I drove away whether I had enough petrol, because twice in a fortnight more than 20 years ago I had run out on the road – she never accepted my excuse that the fuel gauge was broken, so I had to dip the tank with a stick. And Marty continues to tease me with the same question!

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 at first hearing.

In our wedding tradition we don’t expect bridesmaids to wait up with oil lamps for the groom to arrive in the middle of the night. But those who heard the story from Jesus would have found it all quite familiar.

The tradition then 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 to convey to those who heard him?

Since ancient times Christians have taken the parable as an allegory of the 2^nd 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. 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’. And Jesus, who we believe to be the Son of God, was accustomed to refer to himself as the Son of Man.

As time passed, as Christians died with no sign of Jesus’ triumphal return, later Christians began to think that Jesus wouldn't necessarily return in their lifetimes - he was delayed like the bridegroom. So they came to believe that Christ’s 2^nd Coming would be at some indefinite future date - at the ‘end of time’. This is why Paul finds it necessary in today's epistle reading to encourage the Thessalonians (1 Thessalonians 4:13-18) to believe that 'the dead in Christ will rise first'. 

I’m troubled by this theology of the 2^nd Coming – to me it smacks too much of a vengeful, rather than a loving God. Why should God exclude those who are simply foolish from his Kingdom?

But is this what Jesus meant to convey to those he originally spoke to?

I prefer another way of looking at the parable. When Jesus refers to the undefined future coming of both the bridegroom and the Son of Man, I believe he is talking metaphorically about a typical if unknown future time, not the literal end of time.

Jesus is telling his disciples that each one of them should expect to personally encounter him as the Son of Man – God’s Son - at a time they cannot know, but in their lifetimes. That is when they will be judged, depending on whether they are ready to greet him.

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, of course, all of us!

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 loving Father – to which we should respond as Eli advised Samuel to do: ‘Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening’ (1Samuel 3:9).

If we are foolish, on the other hand, 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, because quite simply that is what God calls us to do.

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

The word of God

Address given at Templederry, Nenagh & Killodiernan on Sunday 26th October 2014, celebrated as Bible Sunday, year A

Today I’m going to talk about the Bible.

This is the last Sunday in October, which General Synod has designated as Bible Sunday. It gives us an opportunity to celebrate and reflect on what we sometimes call the Good Book.

But the Bible is more than just a book - it is in fact an extraordinary library of books.

The books of what we call the Old Testament are a record of how the ancient Hebrews - the children of Israel – developed over many centuries their beliefs in one great God JHWH. We find in them a strange mixture of origin myths, history, poetry, philosophy and theology. Why should these records of a small, weak nation more than 2000 years ago still be important to Christians today? Because they provide the background and context in which Jesus and his disciples thought and talked about their God, who is also our God. The New Testament would be unintelligible without the Old Testament.

The New Testament tells us in the Gospels about Jesus, whom we call Lord and believe to be God’s Son. It tells us of his teaching about God as Father, God’s outpouring Love and the power of God’s Spirit. And in Acts and the Epistles we get an insight into how Jesus’s small band of followers was inspired to bring their faith in him to the world, from which we too take inspiration.

Without both sections of the library, we could not be Christians. The scriptures anchor us to our faith. They allow us always to return to the safe harbour of Jesus’s teaching. Without them we would be adrift, bobbing about in chaotic seas of speculation, by turns wrong-headed or ineffectually well meaning. This is why the Bible is such a precious gift.

Christians often call the Bible the Word of God.

The word of God has meant different things to different people at different times, as the 3 readings set for today illustrate.

For Ezra and the people who gathered in the square before the Watergate in the 1^st reading (Nehemiah 8:1-6), set in the 5^th Century BC, the word of God meant ‘the book of the law of Moses, which the Lord had given to Israel’ – that is the Pentateuch, the first 5 books of the Old Testament.

By the time of Jesus the Jewish people had come to see the word of God in the later books of the Old Testament too.

Paul, writing 500 years after Ezra and a generation after Jesus’s death, identifies the word of God with the words of Jesus Christ. In our 2^nd reading (Colossians3:12-17) Paul prays for the Colossians, ‘Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly’, because, as he has written earlier in the letter, ‘in (Christ) the whole fullness of (God) dwells bodily’ (Colossians 2.9).

So does Matthew in the Gospel reading (Matthew: 24:30-35), writing perhaps 20 years after Paul. He believes that Jesus who called himself the Son of Man was truly the Son of God, and Jesus’s words are God’s words: ‘Heaven and earth will pass away’, says Jesus, ‘but my words will not pass away’. And they have not, thanks to Matthew and the other Gospel writers.

For Paul and Matthew holy scripture would have meant the Old Testament. The New Testament wasn’t assembled and put together until long after their deaths. So they could not have seen the Bible as we have received it as the word of God.

Some Christians believe the Bible is ‘inerrant’, meaning that every single word is God’s plain truth, never to be questioned. They believe that in some sense God has dictated the words to those who wrote the different books, and that God has ensured that no errors or omissions have been introduced over the millennia that they have been copied and translated. I can’t and don’t believe that myself. I fear their belief is dangerous, likely to lead them to misunderstand God’s word, and so not to behave as God wants them to.

But I do I suggest that we can and should believe that the Bible we have inherited is inspired by God’s Holy Spirit, even if mediated through fallible human authors. 

We can hear the authentic word of God in it -  provided we read it through the lenses of reason and tradition – as that great Anglican theologian Hooker put it. To which I myself would add the lens of experience – our own experience of the love of Christ working in our hearts, and that of God’s continuing self-revelation through his glorious creation.

But rather than listen to me talking about the Bible, surely we should be listening to what the Bible has to say to us.

Let me tease out some of the word of God that I hear in Paul’s words to the Colossians - I think they are particularly relevant to us today in this parish.

Paul has been warning the Colossian Christians not to be beguiled by false teachings, which have caused divisions among them. In his Gospel, John tells us Jesus prayed to his Father that his disciples may be one as he and the Father are one (John 17:21). But it is a sad fact that from the earliest times Christians have found it difficult to agree and easy to fight each other. Today, Christ’s Church is splintered. The splintered churches are divided into competing parties – as our Church of Ireland is on some matters. And our parishes are all too often divided by personal disputes, as we know only too well.

Now Paul urges the Colossians to come together. ‘Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body’, he says, because you are all ‘God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved’. In our heart of hearts we know we are chosen and loved by God too, don’t we? And our experience of God’s amazing, bountiful grace, as shown for instance in the harvest we’ve been enjoying, confirms it. So let the peace of Christ rule in our hearts too.

But holiness – that's difficult, isn’t it? The holy, Christ-like qualities of ‘compassion, kindness, humility, meekness and patience’ don’t fall on us like rain at our baptism or confirmation, drenching us to the core once and for all. We have to work at them continually. We have to consciously put them on every day, and wear them like clothes. Above all, says Paul, we must ‘clothe (ourselves) with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony’.

We know, don’t we, that Jesus calls us to ‘turn the other cheek’, to bear with one another and forgive those who hurt us: ‘just as the Lord has forgiven (us), so (we) also must forgive’, as Paul says. If ‘the word of Christ dwells in (us) richly’, as Paul prays it will for the Colossians, then we will ‘teach and admonish one another in all wisdom’ – that means, I think, we are to use our God-given common sense when we engage with those with whom we have fallen out or disagree, not let our feelings rule us.

Through it all, says Paul, we should always strive to be joyful. A smile on our face makes us feel better and that will help us be better – it will make others feel better too, and perhaps that will help them be better. And it is easier to be joyful if our heart sings – when we worship let us sing out our gratitude to God who has graciously given us so much.

And finally, says Paul, as Christians, ‘whatever (we) do in word or deed’, we must do ‘in the name of the Lord Jesus’.

These are words of God that I hear in St Paul’s words to the Colossians.

Let me finish with a prayer that the peace of Christ may rule in our hearts, as Paul prayed it would in the hearts of the Colossians.

O God, our loving Father,

Lead us from division to unity, from falsehood to truth.

Lead us from fear to trust, from hate to love.

Let peace fill our hearts, our parish, our church, our world.

Let us dream together, pray together, work together,

to build God’s Kingdom of peace and justice for all.

In Jesus name we pray. Amen