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Septuagesima (Year C)

One of the roles of the Church is to ask the world a question. This question is, ‘How do you want to live?’ The readings this morning outline two possibilities: living in accordance with God’s will, or living by our own. It is clear which is preferable, and which way leads to human flourishing. So we have the challenge set before us of living this way as children of God. As we begin the countdown to Lent over the next few weeks, it is good to ponder such questions, and explore how we can support each other in living our faith in our lives.

The prophet Jeremiah offers us two different pictures. The first is of life without God, while the second is of life with God. Jeremiah’s imagery is stark and uncompromising:

“Cursed is the man who trusts in man and makes flesh his strength, whose heart turns away from the Lord. He is like a shrub in the desert, and shall not see any good come. He shall dwell in the parched places of the wilderness, in an uninhabited salt land.” (Jer 17:5-6)

If we trust in ourselves, and our own strength, then things will not go well. Life without God looks hard and difficult. But another way is possible:

“Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord. He is like a tree planted by water, that sends out its roots by the stream, and does not fear when heat comes, for its leaves remain green, and is not anxious in the year of drought, for it does not cease to bear fruit.” (Jer 17:7-8)

Clearly, the latter way of life is preferable to the former. Trusting God is better than trusting humanity. Putting our trust in God, allowing Him to be in charge is not an admission of failure, but rather an acknowledgement of how things are supposed to be. It is a vision of how we can flourish as human beings and continue to thrive, even in difficult times.

In Luke’s Gospel we see the continuation of Jesus’ ministry of teaching and healing. People come to Jesus because they want to know God, and they long for healing. They have come from a wide area, and are a diverse group of people, united by a common desire, to be closer to God. Unlike Matthew’s account, here Jesus does not go up a mountain to teach, but comes down to where people are. Before He teaches, Jesus heals the sick. This is important, because it reminds us that God comes among us to heal our wounds, and restore us. People want to touch Jesus, because they long for God’s healing love to transform them. Then Jesus proclaims the values of the Kingdom:

“Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.” (Lk 6:20)

To be poor in the world’s eyes is to lack money, possessions, power, and influence. All these worldly things do not matter. In the Kingdom of God, those who are poor, who recognise their complete dependance upon God, are truly rich. Because they have the humility to let God be at work in them, and rely upon God, rather than their own strength, they are able to be transformed. 

“Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you shall be satisfied.” (Lk 6:21)

Hunger here is both literal and metaphorical. Through a common life, and by practising radical generosity, Christians can deal with both. We long to see the world transformed, and Jesus points to a future when it will be. 

“Blessed are you who weep now, for you shall laugh” (Lk 6:21)

Jesus is announcing a Kingdom characterised by joy. The reality of the Kingdom has been demonstrated by the healings which precede the Sermon. We know from Nehemiah that ‘the joy of the Lord is [our] strength’ (Neh 8:10). Jesus is proclaiming a restored relationship with God so that humanity may enjoy life in all its fullness. 

Jesus recognises that His radical vision will meet with opposition:

“Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you and revile you and spurn your name as evil, on account of the Son of Man! Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven; for so their fathers did to the prophets.” (Lk 6:22-23)

The reaction towards persecution is to be joy, which seems a little strange. Israel tends to reject prophets. Calling people to repentance and to change their lives is not easy. The point is that it is what God calls us to do, so we do it. 

There follows a series of four statements beginning with ‘Woe to you’. These parallel the earlier positive statements about the Kingdom. They turn human values upside down, and say to those who trust in themselves, their riches and abilities, that all will not go well for them in the future. Those who will not listen to Jesus because they think they do not need to will soon find out that they were wrong. 

At its heart, Christianity looks dangerous and suspect to the world around us, and so it should. As Christians, we are not conformed to the ways of the world, but rather to the will of God. We don’t just go along with things, because that is what everyone does, instead we follow a higher authority. We cannot be bought off with baubles and trinkets, with wealth or power, things of this world. This is because we acknowledge someone greater, namely God. We try to live as God wants us to live, acknowledging Him before all things. There should be something strange and different about us, something that others can see, something that reflects Christ.

Jesus died to reconcile us to God and each other, and was raised from the dead to give humanity hope in the God who loves us. This hope inspired St Paul to preach the Good News, and it should inspire us as well. We need to live out our faith in our lives. Our beliefs need to make a difference to who and what we are, so that others might see the truth of the Gospel. What we do here in church helps us to love our neighbour. We hear God’s word, and are nourished by it. We pray together for the Church and the World, and those in need. In the Eucharist, Christ fill us with His grace to strengthen and transform us.

So let us prepare to rely upon God, be filled with His Joy and Love, and share it with others so that they may come to believe and give glory to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. To whom be ascribed as is most right and just, all might, majesty, glory, dominion, and power, now and forever. Amen. 

James Tissot The Sermon of the Beatitudes (Brooklyn Museum)
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Sexagesima (6th Sunday of Yr A)

People nowadays can often have a rather negative view of the Old Testament. This is a terrible shame. They think the God of the Old Testament is angry, and nasty, and horrible. The New Testament, on the other hand, is all about how God loves us, and it has a much more sympathetic picture of the deity. The first position is entirely wrong, it represents a misunderstanding of who God is, and how God acts. Thus Jesus is completely right when He says, ‘Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfil them’(Mt 5:17 ESV). Christ does not abolish the Law or the Prophets. The prophets speak of Him, they foretell a coming Messiah, He fulfils their prophecies. 

Our first reading this morning from Eccesiasticus, or the Wisdom of Jesus son of Sirach, presents us with a number of alternatives. We are free to choose. Do we want to keep God’s commandments and act faithfully? We can choose between fire and water, life and death. God does not force us to choose one or the other, but one is clearly good, and the other bad. The problem is that we often choose the wrong one. This is what sin is: choosing the wrong thing. God does not tell us to be ungodly, or give us permission to sin, and yet WE do. This is why forgiveness of sin is such a big deal: we all need it regularly. Also, holiness of life matters: God wants us to flourish, and we flourish by trying to live holy lives in accordance with God’s will.

In the Gospel this morning Jesus expects a lot from us. Jesus does not abolish the Law of Moses, quite the opposite. He makes it a lot stricter. ‘Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.’ (Mt 5:19-20 ESV) The point is that we are free to choose. We can choose to do the right thing, if we listen to God, if we read Holy Scripture, if we pray, if we trust God to guide us. It is possible: Jesus spends His entire life giving us the example of how to live as humans, made in God’s image. It is possible, but it is difficult, and we will fail, especially if we trust in our own strength alone. As Christians we believe that God is loving and merciful, that our sins are forgiven, if we repent, and turn away from our sins, and ask for God’s forgiveness. Indeed sin is such a big deal that Jesus dies to take away our sins. God dies for us, for you and me, hands Himself over willingly to suffer and die on our behalf. This why we regularly celebrate the Eucharist, the Lord’s Supper, because Jesus took bread and wine, blessed them, broke the bread, and gave them to His disciples saying, ‘This is My Body … This is My Blood’ and to them to do this. So we do. So that we might feed on the most precious food and drink there is, to heal our wounded souls and bodies, to have a foretaste of the Heavenly Banquet prepared for us, to strengthen us to live the life of faith. Without it we cannot live, without God’s help we will fail, so we need it, and we need to trust in God to help us to do His will, and walk in His way. 

We can do this because of what God in Christ has done for us. The Cross is the place where the world, the flesh, and the devil are conquered. Here, sin which separates us from God and each other is dealt with. Because of what God has done in Christ we are able to make the choice to try to be righteous. We can do this if we rely upon God. The failure of the Scribes and Pharisees is that they rely upon the Law and their  human strength and will. Jesus expects perfection from His disciples because they are following His example, and trusting God to be at work in them. 

The Eucharist is a foretaste of the Heavenly Banquet: something God has in store for us, or as St Paul says, quoting the prophet Isaiah (64:4), ‘What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him’ (1Cor 2:9 ESV). Heaven is our true home, and its glory is beyond our understanding. Enfolded in the love of God, we may spend eternity worshipping the God who loves us and who made us. This is why the Lord of Glory died: to give us the hope of heaven. This is what we are preparing for here and now. 

Jesus makes demands of us because following Him is not easy: it is demanding, and it comes with a cost. Thus, the church is to be a place of reconciliation, where sins are forgiven, where wounds are healed. It is hard to be reconciled to someone. We have to recognise our own failures and shortcomings, and seek forgiveness ourselves. It is a difficult and costly process, which sees us stripped of pride, humble and reliant upon God as the only one who can heal us. We are powerless, and have to rely on One whose Love and Generosity can do in us what we cannot. We can forgive because we are forgiven, we can love because we are loved. 

Jesus expects much of us, because that is what the Christian life is: difficult, and demanding. Much is asked of us, in how we live our lives. We are to be in the world, but not of the world, living differently. As Christians, if we are to be salt and light then we need to live lives which make people think, ‘They’re not like us’ ‘They don’t do what we do’. We can choose life or death. We have through Christ the possibility of eternal life with God. May we choose wisely, and live as an example to others so that all creation may sing the praises of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, to whom be ascribed as is most right and just, all might, majesty, glory, dominion, and power, now, and forever. Amen

Fra_Angelico_-_Die_Bergpredigt

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Sixth Sunday of Year C (Lk 6:17-26)

The world around us has many clever and subtle ways of going after false gods. One of the most prevalent in our modern world is consumerism. Feeling a bit down? Shopping will cheer you up! You don’t even have to leave the comfort of your own home, just click a button and what you want will be sent to you. But it is a transitory pleasure, it doesn’t last. As Christians we know that our source of true happiness and joy is to be found in God alone. This is something which our readings this morning make very clear.

The prophet Jeremiah shows the difference between trusting in humanity, and trusting in God. Where we put our trust matters, because it shapes who and what we are. Against a model which stresses human self-sufficiency, we see that reliance upon God leads to human flourishing, having life in all its fulness.

Our death is something which we all need to face. Each and every one of us will die, it is inescapable. But because of who Christ is, and what He has done, we do not need to be afraid. The heart of our faith is that Christ died for us, to take away our sins, and was raised from the dead, to give us the hope of eternal life in Him. If it is not true, then the church is a sham, we’ve been fed lies for two thousand years. It would be the greatest deception of humanity ever, we would be truly pitiable. But it is true, and Christ’s Death and Resurrection have in fact changed everything. We have the hope that those who are in Christ share in His Death and Resurrection through their baptism. For us life is changed and not ended, and we have the hope of being united with God in Heaven, which we prepare for here on earth.

This is what lies behind the account in Luke’s Gospel. People come from all over the place, from far and wide, to be healed by Jesus. This is what God is all about, the healing of humanity, taking away our fears, our troubles, and giving us the peace ‘which passeth all understanding’. God’s love is made manifest in the healing miracles of Jesus Christ because it represents life in all its fulness. We are loved, healed and reconciled by God, so that we can live in a new way — living the life of the Kingdom, the life of Heaven, here and now.

To be poor in the world’s eyes is to lack money, possessions, power, and influence. All these worldly things don’t matter in the grand scheme of things. We have God, and are filled with his love, and that’s what really matters. God satisfies our hunger, or as St Augustine put it, ‘You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in You.’ (Confessions 1.1.8) We have the source of everlasting Joy in God. But being a Christian won’t make us popular in the eyes of the world, quite the opposite. We will be seen as strange, dismissed as hypocrites, because we don’t buy into the emptiness of the world around us. 

At its heart Christianity looks dangerous and suspect to the world around us, and so it should. We are not conformed to the ways of the world, but rather to the will of God. We don’t just go along with things, because that’s what everyone does, instead we follow a higher authority. We cannot be bought off with baubles and trinkets, with wealth or power, things of this world, because we acknowledge something, someone greater, namely God. We live as God wants us to live, acknowledging Him before all things. There’s something strange and different about us, because we are not like other people. 

It’s not easy being like this, in fact it’s difficult, very difficult, and it’s why we, as Christians need to support each other in living out our faith together, as a community of faith. Christians face persecution around the world, people are forbidden to convert to Christianity, they are not free to meet and worship, and risk beatings torture, imprisonment, and even death for doing so. It’s real and it is happening around the world as we speak. 

Here in this country we are more likely to face indifference, someone might say, ‘Why do you believe in all that claptrap? Christians are just a bunch of hypocrites’. Our faith is not nonsense, but rather profound, meaningful, and wonderful. We do, however, need to live it out in our lives. It needs to make a difference to who and what we are, so that others might see the truth of the Gospel lived out in our lives. What we do here in church prepares and nourishes us to love our neighbour. We hear God’s word, and are nourished by it. We pray together for the Church and the World, and those in need. 

Above all, we are nourished by Christ, with Christ, with His Body and Blood, so that He may transform us more and more into His likeness. The Eucharist makes the Church, it is the source and summit of our life together. Through it we are united with each other and with Christ in this, the sacred banquet of the Kingdom of God. This is the medicine for which our souls cry out, so that they may be healed by Christ and prepared to live out our faith in Christ’s Death and Resurrection in the world, putting our trust in God, so that He might be at work in and through us, sharing His love with a world which longs for it. 

So let us prepare to rely upon God, filled with His Joy and Love, sharing it with others so that they may come to believe and give glory to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, to whom be ascribed as is most right and just, all might, majesty, glory dominion and power, now and forever. Amen. 

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Epiphany III Year C (Luke 4:14-21)

In this morning’s Gospel we see Jesus back on home turf, as it were, in Nazareth, where he grew up. He goes to the synagogue, to pray and to teach on the Sabbath. When he stands up to read He is given the scroll of the prophet Isaiah, and he reads from the 61st chapter, ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.’

As we have seen from St Luke’s account of Jesus’ baptism two weeks ago, the Holy Spirit is indeed upon Him, He is filled with it. Jesus has been anointed, he is the Messiah, the Anointed One, He is the Christ. 

Christ brings good news to the poor: poverty is a grim thing, it makes life bleak and hard. But it is probably their fault, they are probably feckless and undeserving. This mindset is still with us today, and it is wrong. We should be ashamed that we haven’t more to eradicate poverty, and be mindful of those who are poor. The kingdom of God should be a place where all are cared for, and where our needs are met. The good news is also for those who are spiritually poor. As Jesus will say in the Sermon on the Mount ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of God’. The good news of the Gospel is for those who know their need of God, their spiritual poverty. That’s all of us: we need God’s love in our hearts, and our lives, to transform us.

Christ brings freedom for the captives. Those who are slaves to sin, and that’s all of us, can find true freedom in Christ. We can be free from what sin is and what sin does. Christ brings sight to the blind, both in healing the blind, but also in helping us all with our own inner blindness: the bits of our life we are ashamed of, or would rather forget about. It allows us to see the world with new eyes, where everyone is our brother and sister, where we can be one in Christ, the unity Christ came to bring.

Christ brings healing to the broken. That’s good because I know I need it. I’m broken, you are, each and every one of us is, and Christ can heal that. It is what the Kingdom and God’s love are all about — being a place of healing, where we can come to share in the Divine life, where our wounds are healed by His wounds on the Cross, and by the Eucharist, where Christ gives himself to heal us and restore us.

Christ brings the proclamation of the day of salvation: Jesus comes to save us from our sins, hence the Incarnation. God becomes human so that humanity might come to share the divine life. Christ dies for us on the Cross, and rises from the dead, overcoming death, the world, and the devil, so that we need not fear. The message of salvation is for all people, to come and have life in and through Christ, believing in Him, trusting Him to be at work in our lives.

These are big claims to make, and that’s the point. What we see here this morning is Jesus proclaiming the fulfilment of Scripture, the Good News of the Kingdom of God. It is extraordinary, and radical, and it changes who we are, and how we live our lives. Something new and wonderful is happening, something which changes the world. 

Jesus’ words also show us that prophecy is being fulfilled: what the prophets point to in the future is now becoming a reality in the person of Jesus Christ. The Word made flesh is the fulfilment of the Word of God. This is what we believe as Christians, and why we read the Old Testament. The New is prefigured in the Old, the Scriptures point to Christ, and they find their fulfilment in Him. What Isaiah is prophesying is closely related to the so-called ‘Servant Songs’, which foretell Jesus’ passion and Death. Here at the beginning of His public ministry we see a link forward to His Death: everything points to the Cross as the greatest fulfilment of prophecy and demonstration of God’s love for humanity.  Good news indeed!

But rather than making people jump for joy, Jesus’ words have the opposite effect: he makes people angry and uncomfortable, for several reasons. First, it isn’t what they want to hear. People understood the Messiah in political terms — he would wreak vengeance on the enemies of Israel. They wanted to free from the yoke of oppression. But it is they, and not the Romans, who are the problem — they fail to recognise the Messiah, or follow Him. They fail to recognise the wonderful things, the miracles that God is doing among them. The people in Nazareth can only see the little boy, the son of Mary and Joseph, and not the man standing before them. They are blind to both who God really is and what God does. They should not be angry or upset, quite the opposite. This a cause for celebration, one envisaged in Nehemiah, ‘Go on your way. Eat the fat and drink sweet wine and send portions to anyone who has nothing ready, for this day is holy to our Lord. And do not be grieved, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.’ (Nehemiah 8:10 ESV) The Kingdom of God is a cause for celebration. It is what we look forward to in heaven and it is what the church is for: to celebrate who Christ is and what Christ does, and encourage people to know Him, love Him, and believe in Him. 

‘Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing’ we, here, today, have heard this among us, we have come to be fed with Word and Sacrament, to be fed by Christ, to be fed with Christ, to have new life in Him, and to share that new life with others, a new life and a freedom which the world cannot give. So let us be fed to have new life in him, to live that life and share it with others, for the joy of the Lord is our strength. It is our vocation as Christians to be filled with that joy and to share it with others. 

christ-preaching-in-the-synagogue-at-nazareth

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All Saints – Matthew 5:1-12

The feast which we celebrate today is something  of an historical accident, it began as the dedication of a chapel to All Saints in St Peter’s in Rome by Pope Gregory III in the eighth century, as a way of commemorating all the members of the Church triumphant, thousands and thousands of them. It reminds us that our worship on earth is joined that of heaven, and we are one church together, joined in the worship of Almighty God The feast gives us a chance to consider saints, who and what they are, and what it means to be one. In short there are two things which we need to know about all the saints: that there are many of them and that they are all on our side. 

Though, at first glance, the example of the saints and their number can also appear unnerving, even off-putting: when we consider the example of the saints, of lives lived in unity with God’s will and purpose we can begin to feel that we humble Christians with our ordinary hum-drum lives and simple faith cannot live up to the example set by the saints and that heaven has no place for us.

But on this feast of All Saints, I would like to begin by considering the saints themselves. Many people, if you were to ask them what they thought about a Saint would probably reply that they are better than the rest of us, but they somehow earned their reward amongst the church triumphant, but this is quite wrong. No one can earn their way into heaven, and the church has never subscribed to a doctrine of salvation through works. This is not to say that a Saint is simply a sinner, revised and edited. The lives and examples of the saints show us the way to Heaven because they reflect the Good News and the person of Jesus Christ. 

All of us, in our baptism, receive the grace of God, his free gift whereby our souls are infused with the theological virtues of faith, hope, and love. We ALL of us receive the same grace as all the Saints Triumphant, we are given, through our baptism all that we need to get to heaven, through the free gift of God. 

In this morning’s Gospel Jesus goes up a mountain, just like Moses to teach people how God wants them to live their lives. In what He teaches them, Jesus is always the first and greatest example. and that there are saints in Heaven is because they have lived Christ-like lives, they have lived the life of the Kingdom of God among us, and now enjoy eternity in God’s presence, caught up in the outpouring of love and worship. Heaven is not so much a place, but much more about a relationship with God, made possible by Jesus Christ. 

Jesus says many things in the Gospel passage this morning which should strike us as odd if we look at them in worldly terms. That’s the point! Jesus is talking about the Kingdom of God, and about Himself. 

What greater example could there be of humility than the fact that Jesus Christ was born among us, and shared our human life. The simple fact of the Incarnation, which we will prepare to celebrate at Christmas, changes everything. He comes to share our humanity so that we might share His Divinity. It is an act of such generosity that the only proper response is worship. We honour a God who is characterised by generosity and humility. To be poor in spirit is to lack a sense of one’s own importance, it is the exact opposite of feeling self-satisfied or rejoicing in the fact that we have attained wealth or status or anything that is seen as important in the eyes of the world. The meek will inherit the earth. Because in God’s eyes their gentleness and kindness is what really matters. 

We are used nowadays to a ‘go-getting’ world where you are deemed to have succeeded by possessing a confidence bordering on arrogance, where all that matters is your own success. Whereas, in the kingdom of heaven those who are meek, and gentle and kind, those who think about others before themselves will be rewarded in a way which exceeds their expectations – Jesus’ vision of the world lived in accordance with the will of God does turn our understanding upside down.

To be poor in spirit is to be humble, to know that you’re a sinner, that you are no better than anyone else, and that you need God’s love and mercy. It is the exact opposite of pride, that first and foundational sin, whereby humanity thinks it knows better than God, and wants to go its own way. Humility is not masochism or self-pity, but instead a recognition of our reliance upon God and God alone. If the way to salvation is narrow then the door itself is low down, and only through humility may we stoop to enter. That is why Jesus says this first, because those who are poor in spirit, those who are humble and know their need of God, can live out lives in accordance with God’s will. They can live out their baptism, and share in Christ’s death and new life.

The most surprising Beatitude is the last one: ‘Blessed are you when men revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so men persecuted the prophets who were before you.’ (Mt 5:11-12 ESV) Jesus is talking to His disciples, who are following Him. He looks to their future and tells them what it will be like, it mirrors His own coming rejection and death in the Gospel. It looks to the Cross as the place of Love, Humility , and Reconciliation, where Christ will restore humanity, and inaugurate the Kingdom, in a New Covenant, in His Blood, and after three days rise again to show us that our destiny is to be with God in Heaven. God keeps his promises and loves us. If we want to be saints, then we have to be like Christ, share in His suffering and death, be prepared to be rejected by the world, and dismissed as irrelevant. 

We may not face imprisonment, torture and death in this country, but many Christians do. Instead we are scorned and ignored, or put in a corner and given a patronising pat on the head. What do we do? We are loving, and generous, and forgiving, because that is what Jesus showed us. We can confront the world around us because we belong to a new community, the community of faith, built on our relationship with Jesus Christ, who came to save humanity from itself. He came that we might have life and have it to the full, and that is what the Beatitudes mean. We live the life of God’s Kingdom here and now. We live the life of heaven here and now, because of who Christ is, and what he has done for us, to transform the world around us one soul at a time. It may sound crazy, but it is what God wants us to do, and what Jesus showed us to do, and how to do it. 

If we are courageous, kind, and humble, then we can give the world an example to follow, as opposed to the violence, greed, corruption, and a shallow cult of celebrity, which seem to characterise our modern world. We can truly offer an alternative, which shows that we are in the world but not of it, and in which the light of the Gospel will shine. 

Thus when we consider what constitutes proper behaviour for human beings and how we should live out our faith in our lives the picture of the saints in heaven becomes a far less off-putting one. What God requires of us, and what the saints have demonstrated was their willingness to do what God asks of us, no more and no less.

So let us, on this feast of All Saints, be filled with courage, ready to conform our lives to God’s will and live out our baptism and our faith in the world — as this is what we are called to do, and our reward will be great in heaven.

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