Sermon for the Third Sunday of Lent

“Do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem? No, I tell you.”

Just imagine the furore which would arise if anyone suggested that the victims of the Holocaust, or innocent children killed by a paedophile ring, had “brought it upon themselves”? And yet there was once a school of thought which assumed that if something terrible happened to you, it must be some kind of “payback” for past bad behaviour on your part, or on the part of your family.

Jesus confronted this question directly from one questioner, putting him right. The idea that innocence should be blamed for evil is abhorrent, going against everything we understand about justice. But in the past people had to find meanings for terrible things which happened. Even

uncertainties, unless they can dress them up in creative and beautiful stories, preferably with happy endings, which soften the anguish which uncertainty can generate. They often create meanings, or, worse, identify people upon whom blame can be laid; scapegoats, like people of a different colour or social class, ethnic group or religion. In ancient Israel it was the victims of disaster themselves. As if it were not bad enough to have been made an unintentional victim in the first place, to then be blamed for your own misfortune!

Jesus tries to remove for ever the notion of personal blame through sin for accidents and unavoidable disasters, like blindness from birth. But he implies that if people do not work to change their lives, to accept his promises and have faith in God, they might end up worse off than those whose disasters he describes. Not because God will impose punishments

upon those who stray (after all, elsewhere Jesus tells us about himself as a loving shepherd who goes out of his way to recue a sheep which has strayed). But we call down upon ourselves all kinds of risks when we do not accept the best that is on offer. That is, Christ himself and his relationship with God, of which we are heirs, and which contains everything necessary for happiness. What he is asking of us is a light burden and may save us from a much worse fate. There is terrible uncertainty about living without God, with no foundation which will bear our weight when we need to lean on something or someone other than ourselves in time of trial. The foundation which Jesus offers, the strength which will carry us through when tragedy strikes, is love. Not the tabloid newspaper notion of love, which disperses like summer mist when the first trials occur. But the love which seeks justice, which tolerates hardship and welcomes difference, love which endures in spite of our weakness.

Jesus offers us both the opportunity to accept the love which strengthens and enables us to grow, and also the ability to see beyond the superficial in others and to love them unconditionally as Christ loves us. It is upon this foundation that a perfect world (the kingdom) will be built. It was love which designed the Incarnation, love which inspired Mary, love which carried Jesus through his ministry to his passion and death. It was such love that conquered death, for him and us. But, Jesus makes clear, without adopting his brand of love, and following in his footsteps, we place ourselves and the future of the world in greater uncertainty and at greater risk.

Jesus invites us to arm ourselves against possible disasters and to be able to cope when they occur. But even Jesus cannot make himself responsible for us and our safety if we ignore his warnings and his teaching, however much he might desire to do so. But he goes on giving us “another chance”. One of the secure aspects of Christianity is that every day we wake, we can turn over a new leaf and try afresh to live well.

If we are serious in our intention to become the people Christ calls us to be, then love is our yardstick and action is our proof. Love is the measure of the Christian because Jesus loved us unto his very death, which is about as far as it goes. The horrendous acts of people against their neighbour are not a failure of love on the part of the victim, but in the perpetrator who has ignored Christ and his warnings. We are made for love and it is this love which will save us and our world.

‘Lent’s Strange Harvest’ a sermon for the first Sunday of Lent

Deut. 26.1-11; Luke 4.1-13

On Wednesday we celebrated, if that’s the right word, Ash Wednesday, which means today is the first Sunday of Lent. So I want to say something about Lent this morning, but, as odd as it seems at the beginning of spring, I have to say something about harvest first.

Hearing our readings you may have wondered what the old testament reading was all about, which gave us a moment from Deuteronomy. It’s a point when Moses, looking forward to the future harvest that the Israelites would enjoy in the promised land, told the people what they should do. When the crops are being gathered in, the first thing that the Jewish people are told to do is to take a basket of the best stuff, go to the place the Lord has chosen for his house, and to offer it to the priest on duty there saying: ‘A wandering Aramean was my ancestor… so now I bring the first of the fruits of the ground that you, O Lord, have given me.’

Most of us don’t do much harvesting these days but I’m told that it’s hard work. Sitting on a combine harvester day after day, sun-up to sun-down, waiting for breaks in the weather when it’s been a particularly British summer, I can only imagine that it is exhausting.

Tracking back a few thousand years to the time of Moses we have to take out the combine harvester, which probably means that the work was even more exhausting, even more taxing on the whole community. So I wonder what your instinct might be when the crops begin to fill the barn? It might be to sit down after the hard work of gathering the harvest and to have a feast, it might be to congratulate yourself about how well you’ve done or how much you’ve got. But Moses tells the Jewish people that that is the second thing they should do. First he tells them to do something that I suspect he knows will go against their instincts, to take the first fruits of the harvest back to God.

‘A wandering Aramean was my ancestor…’ Moses is saying something important here. When all the crops are gathered in and the barn door is closed and the money is in the bank you have to stop and remember where it all came from.

It’s important not to misread this passage- God doesn’t want the first fruits of the harvest because he needs them to feel important, he’s not looking for a ‘well-done’ because he got the barley to do its thing for another year. A God who needed an annual ego boost probably wouldn’t be worth the effort.

Rather Moses is saying something more subtle and more important about wealth and power. Moses is telling they people that as great as wealth and power feel, fundamentally they are illusory. ‘A wandering Aramean was my ancestor.’ When the crops are gathered in, remember that things have not always been like this.

When the harvest is good remember that next year it night fail. If you enjoy your health and your fortune remember that they might not stick around. Remember, remember, remember, the only thing that is truly reliable is God.

This is why we have to think about harvest in spring, and the book of Deuteronomy at the beginning of Lent. Because when Jesus went for 40 days into the wilderness to do battle with the devil he did not go alone. He went, as it were, with Moses and the whole people of Israel whose spent 40 years learning to depend on God and not being very good at it. We might note that even Moses and Aaron failed in their own ways, couldn’t quite trust God to provide, and died in sight of the promised land on Mount Nebo, close, almost close enough to touch it, but not quite there.  

Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil.

‘If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become… bread.’ Jesus answered, ‘One does not live on bread alone.’

‘If you will worship me, all this will be yours’. Jesus answered, ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only Him.’

‘If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here.’ Jesus answered, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’

Jesus remembers. He remembers three times that plenty and power and position are fake news, and the only thing that is truly reliable is God. The devil’s power is shown to be an illusion, and like any illusion, when it is exposed, it and the devil drift away. When we see through the illusions of life the work of our salvation has begun.

You might recall that John’s Gospel does not tell this 40-day temptation story, but that’s not because he doesn’t like point it makes but because he puts it somewhere else. When Jesus stands silent before Pilate at his trial, Pilate says to him, ‘do you refuse to speak to me? Do you not know that I have authority to release you and authority to crucify you?’ Jesus answered him, ‘You would have no authority over me if it were not given you from above.’ Pilate’s power is like that of the devil, it is an illusion blown away by the truth that is Jesus.

So that’s where we are in Lent. Learning what we can trust, once again. Via the Israelite’s harvest and Jesus’ temptation we are called to remember, for our own forty days, that the only thing that is truly reliable is God. Not our money, not our intellect, not even our geopolitical alliances. During Lent we are called to look hard inside ourselves and see what things have control over us, what things we rely on, what illusions we particularly enjoy, and to know that God’s love is stronger and more reliable than whatever they are.

It takes disciplined prayer to do this. We probably need to spend some time in silence with God every day, even if it’s just a couple of minutes. The habit will take hold across 40 days, and the Holy Spirit might draw you deeper into the reality of God. If you don’t pray daily now then try it. It is the most important thing you can do this Lent. It will be hard, and there will be every reason under the sun not to do it. The temptations not to bother will be strong. The devil hates faithful prayer because it drowns him out. And whatever you do to strengthen your relationship with God and his Son Jesus Christ this Lent please know that I will be kneeling every day in that pew, praying for you to achieve it.

 I’m going to finish by reading a poem. It’s by Malcolm Guite and imagines the devil’s dialogue with Jesus. It’s called All the Kingdoms of the World.

‘So here’s the deal and this is what you get:

The penthouse suite with world-commanding views,

The banker’s bonus and the private jet

Control and ownership of all the news

An ‘in’ to that exclusive one percent,

Who know the score, who really run the show

With in-ter-est on every penny lent

And sweet-en-ers for cronies in the know.

A straight arrangement bet-ween me and you

No hell below or heaven high above

You just admit it, and give me my due

And wake up from this foolish dream of love…’

But Jesus laughed, ‘You are not what you seem.

Love is the waking life, you are the dream.’

May we all wake up to the reality of God’s love for us this Lent. Amen.

Roses are yours, violets are mine, St Valentine died in 269….

Jeremiah 17: 8-10, Psalm 1, Luke 6: 17-26 (The sermon on the Plain begins…)

Roses are yours, violets are mine, St Valentine died in 269.

Or did he?

I’m sure you all know that it was Valentine’s Day this week. This is the week when roses are twice as expensive as the rest of the year, restaurants are hard to book, and you learn that most things from chocolates to toilet roll can in fact be made in the shape of a heart. And all because of St Valentine, who might have died in the year AD 269.

I say might because the details about Valentine are sketchy. The first account of a life of someone called Valentine appears about 200 years later. There is a story that he might have been a priest and a doctor who was martyred by the Emperor Claudius II because he refused to stop converting people to Christianity, including his jailor’s daughter to whom, so later stories go, he wrote a letter, signing it, ‘from your Valentine’.

There is another story that he was a bishop from Terni, in Italy, who was martyred in Rome, at least partly because he refused to stop marrying Christian couples against the wishes of their pagan families.

And the possibilities don’t end there. There are at least 9 saints called Valentine, or a name like it, identified by the early church and recorded in lists of martyrs about whom not much else is know except that they were put to death for their faith. The roses, cards, and novelty menus didn’t put in an appearance until much later. But in a sense it doesn’t matter which Valentine we celebrate on the 14th of February, whether they were a Bishop or doctor, or anything else. What we do know is that there were plenty of Valentines who lived up to their names, Valens meaning strong, robust, courageous. There were plenty of Valentines who lived up to their names and held to their faith even to the point of death.

By chance this Sunday we are given one of the more appropriate readings in the whole year of readings to accompany the remembrance of these Valentines, from Jesus’ little section of teaching often called the ‘sermon on the plain’;

“Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man.”

This passage has a much more famous cousin called the sermon on the mount- that’s the one St Matthew wrote in his Gospel. In that version Jesus goes up a hill, and teaches the crowd assembled below. Here in Luke’s Gospel Jesus has just been up a mountain, choosing the 12 disciples, and comes back down to sea level. Then he teaches not the whole crowd, but just the disciples. There are other differences too: This is a more immediate, punchier, shorter sermon, and each of the blessings is counter-weighted with an accompanying ‘woe’ or ‘sorrow’. ‘Blessed are you poor – woe to you rich. Blessed are you who are hungry – woe to you who are full. Blessed are you who weep – woe to you who are laughing. Blessed are you when people hate you – woe to you when all speak well of you.’

At first glance this sermon is a council of despair for most of us who are not made of the same stuff as those early Valentines. Am I rich? Well, in most global terms however you cut it, yes. Am I full? Yes, mostly too much so. Do I laugh? Often. Am I spoken well of? Far more than I deserve.

But- we might have wanted to ask our Lord if we were there on the plain with him- is poverty something to aspire to? Is famine a moral condition more worthy than being nourished? Is misery to be commended above joy? Or seeking notoriety for the sake of being disliked? When all is said and done, what sort of misanthropic mission is being encouraged here?

I fear that faced with these questions Jesus would say we haven’t understood what he’s saying at all.

Like so much of St Luke’s Gospel, what is being held up is a contrast between present and future; the illusion of present reality, verses the reality of God’s future kingdom. If we think back to Advent, before Christmas had arrived and the turkey was still in the freezer, we heard the Magnificat, the song of Mary, Luke chapter 1 verse 46 and onwards. This song is Mary’s manifesto for her manifestation of the mad message of the angel saying ‘you will bear a son and you will call him Emmanuel – God with us’. The Magnificat sets out what we are to expect God’s kingdom to look like. The humble raised up, the mighty cast down, the hungry filled with good things, the rich sent empty away. Jesus’ sermon is true to this vision. But it is not just a pipe dream for some time in the future. You see, along with this contrast between the present and the future runs a contrast between human values and the values of God.

What is the recipe for happiness? A reasonable person would surely answer, ‘prosperity, comfort, peace of mind, and popularity.’ But Jesus didn’t come to be reasonable, and ‘=]]]]]]]]pronounces his blessing on those who fail to find their satisfaction in these goals. What Mary sings for, what Jesus teaches his new disciples to seek, is not the settled wisdom of a world too often satisfied with injustice as long as it applies to other people. Christ invites us to be citizens of a new world that begins in him where the poor are not cheap, and the hungry are not ignored.

The real St Valentine, whichever one was celebrated this week, heard these same words of Jesus that we hear today. He knew that this king does not promise a way of wealth, or glory, or even personal fulfilment; only a road to afflictions and trials. But, like Mary, Alban, Amphibalus, and countless others after them, Valentine found in Christ the reality of a new way of living, a way not driven by fear but hope; hope that the rich promises of the beatitudes are fulfilled. Hope that praying ‘thy kingdom come’ will mean nothing less than a new heaven and a new earth.

Roses are red, violets are blue, but the life of God’s kingdom is offered to you.

Sunday 16th February, 4 before Lent

Here I am Lord, is it I Lord? I have heard you calling in the night. I will go Lord, if you lead me, I will hold your people in my heart.

You probably know this hymn. Written in 1981, Here I am Lord quickly became a global hit for the Dan Schutte, a member of the St Louis Jesuits in America, from the album Earthen Vessels, which I’m told outsold Elton John’s Ice on Fire, and has found its way into every Church of England hymnbook published since. It’s a modern classic. Here I am Lord, is it I Lord? I have heard you calling in the night.

I nearly put it down for us to sing today. Nearly. In the end my courage failed; the director of music is a very reasonable man but we had it twice towards the end of last year and if I overplay my hand I am in serious danger of being on the receiving end of a raised eyebrow. So we’ll wait a couple more months until he’s forgotten.

Anyway, I nearly put this hymn down for today because of our first reading, from Isaiah chapter 6 which tell of the prophet being lifted into a vision of the heavenly presence of God, ending with the lines ‘And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘whom shall I send, and who will go for us? And I said, here am I; send me!’’. Dan Schutte echoes these words and turns them into his famous ditty about being sent out to do something vague, but to do it nicely- I will go Lord, if you lead me, I will hold your people in my heart, and so on.

The trouble though, and another reason it’s not on the list today in the end, is that it doesn’t get what’s happening in Isaiah 6 quite right. This isn’t just a passage about heaven, not really, or vocation, about being chosen to go out in the service of the Lord. Isaiah’s being chosen to be God’s messenger is important, but it isn’t the whole story. To understand that we need to go to the beginning of the chapter.

It begins with the description of the prophet Isaiah’s heavenly vision, ‘In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord, sitting on a throne, high and lofty… and I said, woe is me, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.’ It’s the first part that’s really important here, the bit we can miss so easily. In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord.

You see, the writer of Isaiah isn’t placing King Uzziah into the narrative here to add a bit of historical ballast, letting us know that this is about the year 750BC. No, he’s there to make a point. Uzziah was the 10th King of Judah, and had been crowned when he was just 16 years old. He was, as is so often the way, a brilliant king. To start with.

He listened to his prophets, he inspired the army to great military feats, he pushed back the borders of Judah, he brought prosperity and peace to the land.

But then he got carried away. Uzziah got ideas above his station, thought he could get rid of the priests that served in the temple and go into the presence of God to offer incense on the altar himself, in contravention of the law that only the priests of the tribe of Levi could do this.

It is a fearful and dangerous thing to enter into the presence of God.

But Uzziah forgot that, thought after all he’d achieved that kings and God could look each other in the eye, pass as equals, you know, so into the temple he marched with his incense and his status and his ego all trailing behind him. And, as the second book of Chronicles tells us, he was promptly struck down with a deadly disease and died soon after. Uzziah’s problem was a failure of humility. Which is why it is important that Isaiah tells us he had his vision of God the year that Uzziah died.

Uzziah presumed he could march in and offer incense; Isaiah is gifted a vision of the presence of God, but instead of saying, great let me join in, he falls to his face and says, ‘woe is me for I am a man of unclean lips, yet my eyes have seen the King, Lord of hosts!’. It is only after he has been cleansed, the fire of the hot coal touching his mouth, blotting out his sin, that Isaiah is ready to answer God’s question, ‘whom shall I send?’

Isaiah’s vision of heaven is not a comforting one, there is no cheering chorus in G major to accompany it. Isaiah gives us fear, the pivots of the thresholds shaking, the awesome presence of the Lord of hosts, the searing heat of God’s forgiveness. Whether you are king or cobbler, to follow the call of God is first to be changed. Our need for humility before God is what Isaiah’s vision is all about. It is the beginning of vocation, the beginning of true relationship.  

On the face of it, the Gospel reading from Luke couldn’t be more different. This is no heavenly vision, just a bad day at the office for some fishermen who are cleaning their nets when Jesus walks by and tells them to put out again, into the deep water. But Luke’s call of the first disciples, different to Mathew, Mark and John’s, is I think deliberately set up to give those with ears to hear an echo of Isaiah. While everyone is astounded by the miraculous catch of fish, distracted by the abundance of the miracle that unfolded in front of them, Peter’s reaction is the same as Isaiah’s- he recognises who it is that has climbed into his boat, who is truly is, falls to his face, and says ‘Go away from me Lord, for I am a sinful man!’.

If you read Luke’s Gospel through you’ll see that this is one of his key themes; true discipleship begins with humility. Each true encounter with Jesus, when people have seen past the glitz and the glamour of the crowds and the miracles, begins with a profound understanding of the need for humility in the face of this extraordinary person. It is the seed of true discipleship- the willingness to be changed by following Jesus.

Each Sunday as we come to receive the sacrament, and to hear the word of God, we are called to refresh our discipleship, to be honest about our sin, and then to hear the words of Christ’s forgiveness that not only calls us to stand and follow him, but also to sit and eat at his table. Every week we are invited again to receive the gift of life from the only one whose invitation makes us worthy to receive it. To renew our discipleship, to eat and to follow. In humility let us approach the throne of his grace, ransomed, healed, restored and forgiven. Then we’ll be ready to sing again the words of that hymn: I will go Lord, if you lead me, I will hold your people in my heart.