Matthew 5.13-20 Salt and Light

Matthew 5.13-20

 

You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled underfoot.

‘You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hidden. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.

‘Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfil. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. Therefore, whoever breaks 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.

We start today part way through Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. Prior to this passage, Jesus had been encouraging the poor and marginalised by telling them how blessed the downtrodden and powerless are in the section we call The Beatitudes, Blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are those who mourn, blessed are the meek, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, blessed are the merciful, blessed are the pure in heart, the peacemakers, the persecuted and the reviled.  This isn't written for everybody everywhere, whoever, wherever. Neither is it intended for people with a casual interest in God. It's meant for people who are committed: much of the Sermon on the Mount makes no sense unless you’ve already decided to follow Jesus. It's a text for pilgrims, for people on a journey of faith.

You are the salt of the earth, Jesus says to his disciples. That’s a commonplace statement today isn’t it? “So-and-so is the salt of the earth” we say, and to me it seems an odd phrase. What does it mean, particularly at a time when health-conscious people are advised to avoid salt? We live in a culture – certainly in the West – where salt is seen as rather a bad thing: high blood pressure, strokes, heart-attacks etc. Nevertheless we instinctively know that when we describe someone as the salt of the earth we mean that he or she is a simple, down-to-earth, good person – someone dependable, approachable, reliable, and responsible: someone we can trust.

We need to dig a bit and, as twenty first century people, come to an understanding of some of the realities of the first century.

The Old Testament speaks of 'covenant of salt' which means a permanent relationship; eating salt with someone meant to be bound in loyalty. So there’s a significance that’s lost to us today but might help us to understand what Jesus was driving at. The people of God, then as now, were, by agreement, in a relationship of loyalty, the covenant of salt.

In Jesus’ day, at a time without refrigeration, people used salt to prevent food from spoiling and no doubt people also used salt as we use it, to enhance flavours and to add zest to our food but another thing about salt is that it gives us a thirst. Do we behave as if we’re thirsting for what God wants for us and the societies we live in, or do we behave as if we’re full? Full to our own satisfaction rather than God’s?  In those respects salt’s a very appropriate metaphor for discipleship, which can and does lose its vigour over time if care isn’t taken to keep it alive. If we fail in our discipleship, we’re as useless as flavourless salt. 

Bland. Food without salt is bland. Are we bland Christians?

Maybe there’s a message for us there.

In the same way, Jesus says that his followers are to be a light in the world. No one can hide a city set on a hill, and no one lights a lamp and places it under a basket: that makes no sense at all. Jesus’ friends are to let their light shine out in the world, so that everyone will see that light and glorify God. Why? Because the light’s revealing God through the actions of his followers who are lighting the dark places and practices of our societies and working to bring God’s Kingdom closer.

I find these analogies of discipleship a real challenge because they talk of a distinctiveness about Christians and the Christian way of life that I don’t really see very much of in our society, and I include myself in that analysis. The saltiness and the light are there in us to make a difference: certainly a personal difference in the people we are: our attitudes and behaviours; our spirituality and so on, but we are also to make a difference to those around us by the very fact of our being who and what we are: disciples.

We should no more escape notice than a city set on a hill . 

Are we that visible as Christian witnesses to those around us? Are we really? By our deeds, we who call ourselves disciples are to influence the world for good. And by inviting us to be “light,” Jesus invites us to make him present in the world, not just locally, but nationally and internationally as well.  We radiate Christ’s light, divine light, and that searching light shows up not just where individuals have to change, but where the church has to change and where society has to change.

Are we up for that?

And what does it mean in practice?

The God we know is passionate about justice; the God we know is passionate about truth – it was a passion that took him to the cross, it’s a passion that the Holy Spirit fires up within us, it’s a passion that sends us to the world and to the church with the message that things should be different.  How can we be quiet if we’re so passionate?  How can we be quiet when there’s so much injustice around, how can we stop saying things until people hear, really hear, and are challenged to change as a consequence?

We live in interesting times: BREXIT; a president on one side of the Atlantic and a prime minister on the other ignoring the law or trying to change it in their favour, seeking to undermine democracy and control the press; arms sales to some of the most despotic regimes around; a growing tide of racism, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and homophobia, fuelled by hate filled newspapers and the phenomenon of fake news and alternative facts; social inequality on the up for the first time in a generation with zero hours contracts - to name just a few nasty current issues. At the same time it seems to me that the sort of people that are disproportionately affected by these issues are the very people Jesus was talking about where we picked up this morning: the poor in spirit; the meek; the persecuted and the reviled.

Being a light surely means revealing these dark places and practices, otherwise what is our light as disciples for? Are our voices being heard? If not, why not? Are we speaking out? Are we being prophetic voices to others over the issues of our age?

The German Theologian and martyr, Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s life was shaped by the conviction that the church is only truly the church  when it lives for all God’s children in the world and that Christians fulfil their faith as Christians only when they live for others, and he called on Christians to “speak out for those who cannot speak”. When we realise that he said this in 1934, in the midst of deeply troubling times in Germany, it should make those of us who also live in deeply troubling times pause for thought, because he went on to say that the church has, “an unconditional obligation towards the victims in society even if they don’t belong to the Christian community.”

Is that us? Because it seems to me that that’s exactly what being salt and light means in practice.

When I was much younger, there used to be a question that regularly circulated like a spiritual checklist, it asked: if you were accused of being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you? I do sometimes wonder whether we’re in danger of going with the flow to the extent that we‘ve become the very type of bland, saltless Christians that Jesus warned about.

We’re in a covenant with God. What does God require of us in return? The prophet Micah gave us an answer that encompasses our dealing both with God and with our neighbours,  … To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.

Perhaps our prayer as we approach the season of Lent should be to ask God to help us to look at our society and it’s marginalised and downtrodden, those who Jesus called blessed, and while we seek to walk humbly with God, to ask that we do indeed act justly and love mercy in our dealings with them: not in a passive, but in an active way as advocates for them.

Amen.

Luke 2.22-40 Candlemass - Jesus is presented in the Temple

Luke 2:22-40

 

When the time came for the purification rites required by the Law of Moses, Joseph and Mary took him to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord (as it is written in the Law of the Lord, “Every firstborn male is to be consecrated to the Lord”, and to offer a sacrifice in keeping with what is said in the Law of the Lord: “a pair of doves or two young pigeons.” Now there was a man in Jerusalem called Simeon, who was righteous and devout. He was waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was on him. It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not die before he had seen the Lord’s Messiah. Moved by the Spirit, he went into the temple courts. When the parents brought in the child Jesus to do for him what the custom of the Law required, Simeon took him in his arms and praised God, saying: “Sovereign Lord, as you have promised, you may now dismiss your servant in peace. For my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the sight of all nations: a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and the glory of your people Israel.” The child’s father and mother marvelled at what was said about him. Then Simeon blessed them and said to Mary, his mother: “This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against, so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your own soul too.” There was also a prophet, Anna, the daughter of Penuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was very old; she had lived with her husband seven years after her marriage, and then was a widow until she was eighty-four. She never left the temple but worshiped night and day, fasting and praying. Coming up to them at that very moment, she gave thanks to God and spoke about the child to all who were looking forward to the redemption of Jerusalem. When Joseph and Mary had done everything required by the Law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee to their own town of Nazareth. And the child grew and became strong; he was filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was on him.

I don’t know whether any of you ever have the opportunity to look at the Lectionary: it’s the set programme of readings the church has chosen for each day of the year and of course, on a Sunday, we, like many churches, don’t tend to look at all the designated readings generally ignoring the Psalm, for instance and in the prison I rarely touched the Old Testament reading.

There is, I’m sure, some logic in the selection of passages but I struggle, sometimes, to find those links and I’m often perplexed by why those four passages have been chosen to go together: but that might just be me being a bit thick.

Today, though, I can see that theme very clearly.

The Old Testament passage for today is taken from the prophet Malachi and includes this phrase, the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple. The messenger of the covenant in whom you delight—indeed, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts.

Today’s Psalm, 24, fills in some more of the context: Lift up your heads, O gates and be lifted up, O ancient doors that the King of glory may come in.

It is into this theological context that today’s Gospel passage sits. As we’ve seen, Luke talks about the presentation of Jesus in the Temple and that event is regarded by many as the fulfilment of Malachi’s prophecy, When the time came for their purification according to the law of Moses, they brought him [Jesus] up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord [in the temple]. To underline this we have the two revered elders, Simeon and Anna who, much to Mary and Joseph’s amazement – and possible disquiet, seize on this child – one among many brought to the temple that day for this ceremony, and identify him as God’s chosen one.

As we read the passage we may have been guilty of assuming this was a quiet, personal family event with just Mary, Joseph, the infant Jesus, the priest and these two Holy elders as random worshippers. Not so.

Picture the scene: the solemnity of this awesome and imposing building, the centre of Jewish religion, with its history of centuries of worship; its peace and quiet shattered by countless families, their new-borns and their doves for the required sacrifice. Perhaps the best comparison might be York Minster with a rolling multiple baptism: chaos, noise and bustle - but without the doves.  Far from being a personalised family occasion, it must have been a conveyor-belt of ritual and, like any regular ritual, you might imagine the danger implicit in a well-worn routine with the priests sleepwalking through something they’ve done so many times they could do it with their eyes closed!

Personal as it may have been to them, Mary and Joseph bring Jesus to this commonplace ceremony only for the commonplace to be turned on its head and made into something unique and profound. Simeon and Anna descend on Jesus and Simeon, a total stranger, takes him from Mary’s arms and begins to proclaim loudly about him. My eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel. “Now I can die in peace.” And as if that wasn’t enough, Anna begins praising God, and to speak about the child to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem. They don’t do this for any other family and if you were one of those other families you might feel a bit put out. Why them? Why that little boy? What’s special about them? What’s going on here?

At the end of the Gospel passage we read, The child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom; and the favour of God was upon him. Luke, very deliberately here, sets out Jesus’ credentials as God’s chosen one, the Messiah, and the passages all begin to make sense together as they look forward to what Jesus would do in his ministry.

Then we have St. Paul, writing in his letter to the Hebrews, looking back and explaining how Jesus’ mission was completed and its implications for each of us …. through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death ….. and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by the fear of death. For it is clear that he did not come to help angels, but the descendants of Abraham. The descendants of Abraham? Well that’s us: not genetically but through our faith.

So what can we take from this passage that will help us to develop as disciples? What comfort and reassurance does this passage offer to us today? Well, there’s a lot of deep theology there and we don’t have the time to unpick it in detail or this sermon will be in danger of turning into a hostage situation!

I think the first thing that stuck me was the idea that Jesus, despite all the talk of Kingship in the Old Testament passages, and his role as God’s servant, was like you and I. ….. he had to become like his brothers and sisters in every respect, Paul tells his readers – his readers then and now. Paul talks about Jesus’ suffering, not just the ultimate suffering of his death but his suffering in the daily experience of life which means that in our daily experience of life we have someone we can identify with and who can identify with us as a fellow sufferer: one who knows what we go through because he shared our humanity and has been there too. Sadness? He’s been there. Bereavement? He’s been there too. Disappointment, unjust treatment, temptation, rejection, fear and so on: the full range of our human experience? He lived that too. When I struggle, when you struggle we know that Jesus went through it all and so understands our pain and unhappiness. That surely must be a huge encouragement because we never face uncertainty, fear and loss alone. As Paul concludes, Because he himself was tested by what he suffered, he is able to help those who are being tested.  That’s us, in our various times of need.

And that leads into the second thing that always strikes me about my – our – relationship with Jesus, For the one who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one Father. For this reason Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters …

How often do we consider that? Again, despite all the talk of Kingship and Messiahship, Jesus isn’t some distant figure: he counts us as brothers and sisters of the same Father. Jesus is my brother, your brother. He is close and walks with us on a daily basis. Perhaps that’s our challenge: do we act as if he walks with us as a sibling? Do we recognise and act on the resource of loving support from him or do we somehow think of him more in his divinity as unapproachable? Jesus our brother or Jesus the incarnation of God? Well there is no “or” actually. They are one and the same but we are sons and daughters, as he is a son, of the same Father, God, and that’s what sets our faith apart from all the others: we can have a relationship with God through Jesus our brother. That, of course, demands a response: do we want that? Have we got that? Do we live as if we’ve got that because that, flagged up in the Old Testament and misunderstood by the culture and religious expectation of the Messiah in his own time, is Jesus’ mission to us, in the service of God as Paul reminds us.

Jesus' presentation in the temple and his recognition by Simeon and Anna set those credentials.

Well, there’s something to ponder in the coming week.

Let’s pray:

Help us, Jesus, to recognise you as one of us: as fully human and one who knows our trials and sufferings. Help us to recognise that you walk with us daily as our brother and as we get to know you better, help us to enter into a fuller relationship with God, your Father and ours.

Amen.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Matthew 4.12-23 Fishers of men

Matthew 4:12-23

 

Now when Jesus heard that John had been arrested, he withdrew to Galilee. He left Nazareth and made his home in Capernaum by the sea, in the territory of Zebulun and Naphtali, so that what had been spoken through the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled: “Land of Zebulun, land of Naphtali, on the road by the sea, across the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles— the people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death, light has dawned.” From that time Jesus began to proclaim, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”

As he walked by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea—for they were fishermen. And he said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fish for people.” Immediately they left their nets and followed him. As he went from there, he saw two other brothers, James son of Zebedee and his brother John, in the boat with their father Zebedee, mending their nets, and he called them. Immediately they left the boat and their father, and followed him.

Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness among the people.

In today’s Gospel reading from Matthew we have an echo of last week’s reading from John’s Gospel where we read how Andrew, a disciple of John the Baptist, began to follow Jesus and in his turn brought his brother Simon to discipleship. We hear, too, an echo of John’s preaching from his regular one-point sermon, “Repent, for the Kingdom of God has come near” taken up by Jesus himself. John had been arrested and this seemed to be the cue for Jesus to take up his ministry to develop the religious revival that John had started. But we see too the new emphasis in the words that Jesus adapted from the Baptist’s message – Jesus came preaching repentance, as John had done: the message of repentance is less about remorse over sins one has committed and more about a reorientation of one’s whole life. Neither Jesus nor John simply wanted people to feel bad about their sins and to want to do better. They were saying that their audience needed to turn their entire lives in a new direction, which we see when Jesus adds something to John’s message: that the vision and presence of God has come near.

Although the detail of how these two fishermen became Jesus’ disciples varies between the two gospels, the key point remains the same: these two men had an encounter with Jesus which changed them. We also hear now of the brothers James and John and how their encounter with Jesus also brought them to faith. These four were not necessarily the cream of the intellectual or religious crop in those days. Jesus seems to go about recruiting his disciples in all the wrong ways in terms of modern recruitment principles. He doesn’t wait for those who are interested in his teaching to approach him and apply for a position as his disciples: Jesus goes to them. He doesn’t examine their credentials and discern their worthiness for association with him. He simply chooses two fishermen he sees hard at work in a lowly job that’s thankless and without success most of the time and finds these to be great qualities in would-be disciples.  Maybe there’s a learning point for us there. How often have we rationalised our unwillingness to act as disciples with the excuse, “I don’t have the skills? I’m not good at that”? Maybe following Jesus is less about knowing intellectually exactly what the path ahead looks like than simply knowing with the heart that the way we want to walk forward into the future is with Jesus at our side.

All four moved from what they were, to become something very different; from fishermen to disciples – and we catch a glimpse of the pattern of that discipleship as they followed Jesus around the area, “teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness among the people.”

Perhaps what we should remember is that Jesus’ mission is often referred to theologically as The Missio Dei, the Mission of God, God’s mission and all disciples of Jesus, then and now, share in that mission, that overall ministry. It’s not my personal ministry. It’s not your personal ministry. However that ministry is worked out in each of us, it remains God’s ministry and we are merely partners in it.

So, maybe we can imagine them as they began that ministry, moving incrementally from raw recruits and apprentices to an increasing partnership with Jesus in his ministry. When Jesus looked at those four, he realized that something about fishing was what he wanted in Christian discipleship. I believe Jesus chose the image intentionally. Fishing remains one of the great models of Jesus for the growth of the kingdom of God. Maybe in our age and culture we’re in danger of losing the image because we no longer go fishing - just like we no longer herd sheep or know what a shepherd does. We no longer plant seed in the ground and know what growth is. We no longer draw water from wells and know what living water is.

These fishermen surely represent all future believers whom Jesus summons to follow him. It may not be necessary for all to leave professions and possessions behind, but all must leave their world behind and enter the new world into which Jesus invites them. It’s a sobering and challenging idea: to what extent does each of us believe we’ve done that? To what extent as disciples have we left our own worlds behind us? To what extent have we entered into the new world Jesus invites us into? Well, the good news is that Jesus’ followers didn’t give up homes and families never to return. Galilee was a small area and they rarely travelled outside it. A far more likely scenario is the group gathered around Jesus and were out on the road, returning to their homes and towns regularly.  The group was rarely more than a half a day to a day's walk from their traditional homes.

In a sense, it might be easier to physically leave all the old behind and live our new, Christian lives somewhere else, but that doesn't happen to most of us. We remain living in our local areas, with our families, friends, colleagues and social networks and, like the disciples then, those are the focus areas for God’s ministry and mission through us.

Taken as a whole, then, these twin stories of the calling of four disciples make it clear that Jesus summons people from their relationships - brother, sister, daughter, son, father, mother, friend  - and from the midst of their everyday lives – fishing for them, but an infinite variety for us -  into a new set of relationships and to a new vocation. In these stories of the calling of the disciples, then, Jesus disrupts family structures and disturbs patterns of working and living. He does so, however, not to destroy but to renew. Peter and Andrew don’t cease being brothers; they are now brothers who do the will of God.  James and John don’t cease being sons; they are now not only the children of Zebedee but also the children of God. All four of these disciples leave their fishing nets, but they don’t stop fishing. They are now, as the kingdom of Heaven comes closer, fishers for people. Their past hasn’t been obliterated; it’s been transformed by Jesus' call to follow. We know that they have given up much, but they have gained more.

The passage gives us a little context: Jesus begins his preaching in Capernaum. Shouldn't the Messiah have begun his work as he ended it, in Jerusalem? Why Capernaum? Why the land of the Gentiles?" And Gentiles here means not just the non-Jews, but the non-religious. We’re to be like Jesus and his immediate followers in that we’re to be a light to the Gentiles, ministers to those who‘ve not already had an encounter with God. Jesus locates himself amongst the people on the fringes. How many people do we know who are on the fringes? Capernaum was also strategically located on a crossroad connecting the two major trade routes between Egypt and Syria.  Then, as now, news travels fast along the super highways.  Whatever Jesus said and did in Capernaum was quick to be heard far and near.

John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist church, understood this text well when he wrote: “Christians are to go into the hills and dales, the highways and hedges, the markets, the fairs, the barns and the villages. Christians are to go out everywhere with the Gospel.” Indeed, to the people on the fringes. For two centuries, the Methodist church was good at doing this. Have we lost some of that urgency in our dealings with others? We don’t seem to be spending much time fishing anymore. We talk about the importance of evangelism; we pray about it, we preach sermons about the role of Jesus as saviour, but not many people are actively fishing anymore in our congregations.

Most mainline denominations, work under a broad assumption that the development of personal faith in Jesus has already occurred in people's lives elsewhere and that church growth merely involves assimilating these "already converted" into the ongoing life of the congregation: we have “back-to-church Sundays” for instance.

Most denominations are unprepared and ill-equipped to reach out to non-Christians and engage them in a process that leads to an active faith in Jesus Christ. We tend to see ourselves as nurturers of the faith, rather than as catalysts in any process of spiritual transformation in the lives of others. We seem to work on the basis that if we serve our own people well, outsiders will see this and want to become insiders. What’s often missing is any desire to find out about the spiritual needs of outsiders.

We are the fish and what God promises us, who are dragged out of the water in the nets to die, is a resurrection, a new life, a new family, a new future, all under God's control, all within the Kingdom of Heaven, which has come near in Jesus.

We have very little control over our own lives, but as fish caught in the net of God's love, we can trust that we’re under God's control. We have to believe that being captured by God's love, that responding to the command to repent and die to self, that being raised to a new life by God, is not only right for us, but a message we need to share with others.

 

 

Jesus heals a man with a withered hand

Mark 3.1-6

 

Again he entered the synagogue, and a man was there who had a withered hand. They watched him to see whether he would cure him on the Sabbath, so that they might accuse him. And he said to the man who had the withered hand, ‘Come forward.’ Then he said to them, ‘Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the Sabbath, to save life or to kill?’ But they were silent. He looked around at them with anger; he was grieved at their hardness of heart and said to the man, ‘Stretch out your hand.’ He stretched it out, and his hand was restored. The Pharisees went out and immediately conspired with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him.

So, we’re quite early on in Jesus’ ministry and Mark flags up for us the ongoing theme of conflict. On this occasion we aren’t told who the mysterious “they” are: over officious Synagogue leaders or the ubiquitous Pharisees? It doesn’t much matter because what we learn is that even at this early stage Jesus had ruffled enough feathers that the religious authorities were looking to accuse him. In more modern terms it must seem a bit MI5 or the East German Stasi, the Iranian Savak or the Russian NKVD. You can imagine dossiers being prepared, witnesses being interviewed, spies and informers sent out and so on. Perhaps the man with the withered hand was a plant, wittingly or unwittingly placed where Jesus would see him. If that is what happened, then there are two important admissions on the part of the Pharisees: firstly they believed that he had power to heal the sick. There isn’t any indication in all of scripture that they doubted the miracles. They couldn’t, because there were so many examples.

And secondly they acknowledged that when a helpless man was placed in his path, he would have compassion on him and heal him, even if it was the Sabbath.

I sometimes think when we read the Gospel stories that we don’t fully appreciate the implications of what we’re reading. This plot is more than a few over-zealous Pharisees getting a bit overwrought about an uneducated peasant getting his religious observance wrong. This is serious and nasty stuff.

And of course this incident looks odd to us, but then isn’t hindsight a wonderful thing? The idea that doing good, any form of good, would be seen as wrongdoing is just bonkers to us today and the fact that this story has a healing at its core makes it seem even madder. Surely healing someone must be right up there in the ranking of good deeds? Who could possibly take offence at that? Well, the religious authorities because in their theology of the Sabbath, the only healing which might take place on that day was one that saved life. This man had had a withered hand all his life, what difference would one day make? That was the logic. Theology verses compassion and the age-old conflict between vested interest and change.

What we mustn’t do here is think of Jesus as an innocent abroad who walked unknowingly into a trap. Trap or not, Jesus new what he was doing: he took up the challenge because he wanted people to see what he was doing. Rather than track down the man later privately so as not to make waves, he chose to cure him in public, in full view of all.

Should we be surprised by this? Well in Mark’s first chapter we hear that after John the Baptist’s arrest Jesus tells his followers that “….The Kingdom of God has come near” and up to this point we’ve already seen examples of Jesus teaching, healing and forgiving sins – which also upset the religious authorities – and another breaking of the Sabbath rules when Jesus and his disciples plucked ears of corn to eat. All of these things were done, and seen to be done in public. This wasn’t a man who was frightened of publicity. What would be the point of trying to usher in a new order quietly and in private?

What I find ironic is that the Pharisees weren’t able to answer him: not just on this occasion but on numerous others throughout the gospels, but rather than take time to reflect and to re-evaluate their own position they doubled down. “We must be seen to be right. He must be seen to be wrong and if we can’t shut him up, he has to go!” Vested interest again. And Jesus knows what they’re thinking. Mark tells us that he, “….looked on them with anger, being grieved for the hardness of their hearts.” Their hatred proved their hypocrisy. Men who were supposed to teach and promote the ways of God, conspired to kill an innocent man. They proved they’d stop at nothing to advance and protect their cause. These were not servants of God; these were sinful men hidden in self-proclaimed righteousness.

So what are we to make of this passage? How does it speak to us today? In order to make this passage real we have to see an application or it remains just an interesting piece of religious history.

What are we going to do about it?

For me there are two main themes, but of course there may be others.

The first thing that strikes me is the importance of Jesus having liberated someone from something that was holding him back. If we think of the people we regularly come into contact with or, indeed those we may just bump into, how many of those are in need of Jesus’ healing touch, his touch of liberation? What are the blocks to that release? It may be a lack of faith, “I don’t do God.” Do we have a role there as latter-day disciples as in our witness we seek to live and speak the Gospel?

Are they held back because of institutional issues? Look around us at poverty, the use of food banks, social inequality and every sort of prejudice you care to name. Do we have a wider role as disciples to be prophetic in our challenge to political vested interest? Should we be more overt in our criticism of government policy - governments of any colour, I’d add - where “the least of these my brothers and sisters” are being held back through social injustices?

What is our role as disciples in situations which are complex and sometimes scary to get involved with? What’s our role as disciples when legitimate groups such as Greenpeace and the Campaign Against the Arms Trade have been identified by the Home Secretary as extremist organisations alongside neo-Nazis and jihadists? And I’m afraid I can’t answer that question for you because in the words of St. Paul to the Philippians we have each to “work out our own salvation with fear and trembling.” What is the Spirit leading each of us to do or say in such situations?

My second thought was about being Christ-like agents of change in our own churches as we challenge some of those outdated ideas and attitudes that get in the way of the Kingdom of God coming closer. The Pharisees are alive and well and living in our midst.

We talked about truth and post truth/fake news last week and how the new normal seems to be political leaders who have no shame in indulging in bare-faced lying to their adoring followers. How have we come to this? But it exists in the church too as most of us have encountered. The church too often seems to have been slow to react and has found itself on the wrong side of history. I’m not sure what we do about the great tides of history as individual disciples except to acknowledge that the church - or perhaps to be entirely fair, some of its members - does get it wrong from time to time, and at the heart of those problems are often the modern Pharisees who want to put tradition or an inauthentic application of theology as a justification or who worry about rocking the boat, so don’t take the action they should. Don’t believe that National Synod is all Christian love, sweetness and light. Synod is full of religious politicians pushing their agendas and sometimes those agendas are about resisting change and keeping the status quo, perhaps even pushing back on some things to the way things used to be. There are cliques and alliances – some unlikely but temporary.

In the context of today’s passage I wonder what Jesus would say.

It’s one thing to have a long held antipathy to women priests or to believe that gay men and women shouldn’t be in ministry if those views are held as private matters of conscience, perhaps only ever discussed with the priest. It is when the holder of those views attempts to make them a public rallying point for dissent that the rest of us need to sit up and take notice. Silence is often seen as a form of agreement, of tacit collusion.

“We can’t possibly have guitars in church. It’s unchristian.

“We have to have choral evensong. It’s part of our tradition.”

“I think we should go back to 1662 for all services. The language is beautiful.”

“You can’t remove the pews in this church. We’ve always worshipped this way.”

Hymn books; children in church; a minor change to the liturgy and so on.

I’ve heard all of these arguments at some time or another and I guess many of you have too.

These things aren’t wrong aspirations as such but what might be the vested interest in these common examples? It’s a vested interest against change and development, much as the attitude of the Pharisees in today’s Gospel segment. And just like the Pharisees in that story, the modern Pharisee wishes to close down debate and have things as they always have been because change is threatening.

What’s our role as disciples when we encounter behaviour in the church which we know is damaging to the Gospel and which will damage the faith of some and hold others back from faith? St. Paul in Romans, “I urge you brothers and Sisters to keep an eye on those who cause dissentions and offence ….. avoid them.” And that’s probably enough for most of us should the occasion ever arise: we don’t want to cause discord over petty disputes and arguments – or we’d never have another PCC meeting: more serious issues should be left to parish priests and arch-deacons in the first instance but we should never be afraid to challenge bullying or any expression of prejudice and discrimination or we should  raise concerns discretely with the clergy about inappropriate behaviour, particularly when we perceive that someone is trying to groom other members of the congregation to a particular side. Vested interest exists in the church, in individual congregations, in deaneries and dioceses: the Pharisee tendency is alive and well in the church and we shouldn’t give such people an easy ride when we encounter it.

Jesus asked, “Is it lawful to do good or to do harm? And he was grieved at their hardness of heart.” Let’s ponder on that in the week to come.

Sunday Sermon: Mark 5.21-43 Jairus' daughter and the woman with the haemorrhage

Mark 5:21-43

When Jesus had again crossed over by boat to the other side of the lake, a large crowd gathered around him while he was by the lake. Then one of the synagogue leaders, named Jairus, came, and when he saw Jesus, he fell at his feet. He pleaded earnestly with him, “My little daughter is dying. Please come and put your hands on her so that she will be healed and live.” So Jesus went with him. A large crowd followed and pressed around him.  And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years. She had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all she had, yet instead of getting better she grew worse. When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, because she thought, “If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed.” Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering. At once Jesus realized that power had gone out from him. He turned around in the crowd and asked, “Who touched my clothes?” “You see the people crowding against you,” his disciples answered, “and yet you can ask, ‘Who touched me?’ ” But Jesus kept looking around to see who had done it. Then the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell at his feet and, trembling with fear, told him the whole truth. He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.” While Jesus was still speaking, some people came from the house of Jairus, the synagogue leader. “Your daughter is dead,” they said. “Why bother the teacher anymore?” Overhearing what they said, Jesus told him, “Don’t be afraid; just believe.” He did not let anyone follow him except Peter, James and John the brother of James. When they came to the home of the synagogue leader, Jesus saw a commotion, with people crying and wailing loudly. He went in and said to them, “Why all this commotion and wailing? The child is not dead but asleep.” But they laughed at him. After he put them all out, he took the child’s father and mother and the disciples who were with him, and went in where the child was. He took her by the hand and said to her, “Talitha koum!” (which means “Little girl, I say to you, get up!”) Immediately the girl stood up and began to walk around (she was twelve years old). At this they were completely astonished. He gave strict orders not to let anyone know about this, and told them to give her something to eat.

Mark’s Gospel reads like a whirlwind: when I was a student, Mark’s Gospel was one of our set texts and one of the things that sticks in my mind from those lectures is Mark’s sense of urgency. His frequent use of the word “immediately” sets up an almost frantic pace. Immediately such and such happened and then immediately Jesus said or did this or that. And that sense of constant activity is underlined at the start of this morning’s passage which tells us that Jesus “again” crossed the lake: he’s been backwards and forwards across the Sea of Galilee, teaching, preaching and healing and when I looked back at the events that precede this passage I found the story of the man with the unclean spirits who, when they came out possessed a herd of pigs. Before that we have Jesus calming a storm at sea, having had to be woken first from a deep sleep, both events suggesting huge emotional and physical effort. Then we have Jesus teaching through parables and everywhere being mobbed by the crowds. Add to that the relentless heat of Palestine which this week we’ve had a bit of taster of and we have a picture of a man who must have lived on the edge of constant exhaustion. Perhaps that’s why he so frequently took to boats: away from the crowds, gently rocked by the waves he could rest at last and maybe his fishermen disciples kept the boat in open water longer to allow more sleep rather than crossing immediately to the other side.  And what does Jesus find when they get to the other side? “A great crowd gathered around him.” and he’s off again in that frantic round of teaching, healing and preaching with people grabbing at him, shouting and imploring him for help, pressing in on him at every side and we can picture the disciples trying to carve a way through the crowd like bodyguards – and all this, still quite early on in his ministry.

In this public chaos a woman is waiting her chance to approach Jesus by stealth, but before she manages to pluck up her courage, she’s beaten to it by an anxious father – presumably only two of many clamouring for Jesus’ attention. Jairus, a man of faith as made clear by Mark in his description of him as a leader of the synagogue, literally falls in Jesus’ path and apart from the clear hint of supplication and worship in someone throwing themselves down in front of you, Jesus can’t ignore the man: he can’t get past him. He has to respond. “My little daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well and live.” Isn’t that an amazingly strong statement of faith in Jesus? There’s no preamble, no sense that the man has doubts. He’s straight in: “You can do this. Please.”

And now, just to show both the nature of Jesus’ appeal and growing reputation and the melee that surrounds him, Mark reintroduces the second supplicant, the woman who’d been quietly waiting: not waiting to speak to Jesus, though, just waiting to get close enough to touch him. She couldn’t possibly have approached him directly because she was a woman alone, and social norms would have prevented her from speaking to Jesus and because of the nature of her illness, a longstanding gynaecological problem, she would have been deemed to have been unclean and shouldn’t even have left her home to go out in public. In spite of the invisible role in which society had placed her, she summonses the courage to approach Jesus. 

This woman’s faith may not be so obvious at first glance, but subtle as it is, given what she’d been prepared to overcome to be there, her faith must rank with that of the desperate father. Refusing to be powerless any longer, she breaks through the social, cultural and religious barriers that have relegated her to isolation.

In the midst of a hundred grasping hands, Jesus feels a powerful connection with one person. The woman believes that if she simply touches his cloak she’ll be healed. With everyone milling about, Jesus asks, "Who touched me?" And in effect, the disciples respond, "Really? Are you serious? Just look around.” The woman, however, instinctively knows that something has changed and, nervous as she is, makes herself known to find no condemnation, only compassion and healing. Reaching through the gender barrier, stretching across the ritual purity boundaries, this woman displays extraordinary faith, and Jesus recognizes it.  Unlike the other miracle stories, Jesus doesn’t pronounce any healing words.  He also doesn’t recoil or regard himself as contaminated.  Jesus does nothing to bring the attention back to Him.  Instead, he overwhelms her with gentleness.  He does nothing but acknowledge her.  He simply calls her "daughter;" and in so doing, he not only gives her the blessing that no one else was willing to give, he acknowledges the power of female faith.  In seeking the source of the healing, he cites it as being her own faith.  Her courage to break through the conditioning of a lifetime, brings her a condition she can barely remember: peace.

This whole incident must have taken mere minutes but in the meantime Jairus’ daughter has died and Jesus is interrupted again, this time by mourners who come to tell Jairus that his daughter has died and that there is now no point in having Jesus come to heal her. When Jesus tells the crowd that she’s not dead but sleeping, they laugh at him. In spite of their seeing his miracles, in spite of the teachings they had heard, when Jesus tells them that their mourning is premature, they laugh in his face.  This is the nature of the crowd: a crowd is easily swayed between extremes, in this case between adoration and ridicule and perhaps this’ll help us to realise that Jesus was not always safe in the crowd and that very often his very being with the crowd was not just motivated by compassion but was a bravery motivated by compassion.  Jesus may be a healer, but the girl is dead. What can he do about death, the mourners scoffed? Well, they soon see because Jesus goes to the house and restores the child to life.

At first glance, we might think that these two stories, lumped together as one, are really unrelated until Mark adds at the end of the story a kind of afterthought: oh, yes, by the way, the little girl was twelve years old. Perhaps we might sense something more is going on here than two stories simply sandwiched together. The woman had been sick for twelve years so maybe there are other connections. Jesus addresses the woman, who would have been considered unclean, as "daughter." By touching Jesus, the woman threatens to spread her ritual uncleanliness to Jesus. When Jesus takes the dead girl by the hand, he dares to make himself unclean because he transgresses another boundary by touching the dead. The healing touch of Jesus makes them well instead of making him unclean and he restores these two women to abundant life. Two needy outsiders become daughters of God.

Both the woman and the father of the little girl take Jesus seriously. Both believe that Jesus can restore their lives. Both kneel before him. This two-part story shows us that Jesus is active in the world with divine power to restore life, abundant life for everyone.

But this isn’t just a story about healing as you may well have been picking up as we’ve gone along. In many respects the healing elements are almost incidental: they’re simply the hook to hang a deeper understanding on and what a shame it would have been, I think, if we’d concentrated on the healing and missed the more subtle depths of these stories because if they’re about anything, these stories are about faith and God’s grace challenging and breaking through cultural and religious norms to reveal a new and deeper aspect of that same grace.

The crowds weren’t expecting it; they weren’t really open to it and all but a few probably didn’t even notice it. In that light, I think we have to ask to what extent we’re truly open to God’s grace breaking through in ways we didn’t expect; whether we’d be open to it – or would we stick with what we’re used to and are familiar with? Would we be numbered amongst the few that even recognise it or would we be with those who laugh and ridicule?

 

A sermon about seeds Mark 4.26-34

Mark 4:26-34

 

He also said, “This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the ground. Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how. All by itself the soil produces grain—first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head. As soon as the grain is ripe, he puts the sickle to it, because the harvest has come.”

Again he said, “What shall we say the kingdom of God is like, or what parable shall we use to describe it? It is like a mustard seed, which is the smallest of all seeds on earth. Yet when planted, it grows and becomes the largest of all garden plants, with such big branches that the birds can perch in its shade.”

With many similar parables Jesus spoke the word to them, as much as they could understand. He did not say anything to them without using a parable. But when he was alone with his own disciples, he explained everything.

I posed a question to my friends on Facebeook recently: how often have you used a quadratic equation since you left school? I got a few positive responses from maths teachers and from parents helping with homework but in the main the response was that the quadratic equation was something that most of us were very happy to leave at the school gates and promptly forget.

I wasn’t very good at Maths at school and once got into trouble for writing “who cares?” as an answer to a question that went something like, “If a train leaves York at 9.45, travelling south at an average speed of 57 mph and a car leaves Penzance at 13.27, travelling east at an average speed at 42 miles per hour, how many sweets does Susan have left after she’s given Peter 9 oranges?”

It’s a mindset, I know, but I’m not one for puzzles of any sort: if someone starts that sort of conversation I just glaze over. “I’m not even trying. Just give me the answer and then I’ll tell you how much I care.” Catherine Tate’s wonderful comedy character Lauren Cooper, the gobby schoolgirl, sums it up for me:

“Lauren, you have to try, it’s important.”

“Not to me it’s not!”

I sometimes wonder if any of the disciples had this same feeling when Jesus told parables. I like to imagine a couple of the more recalcitrant ones sat in the back row muttering, “Oh here we go again. Just tell us the answer. Life’s too short!”

The parable, Jesus’ favourite teaching aid: some short and pithy, like today’s examples and others long and complex, like The Good Samaritan or The Sower. Now the parable of the Sower really sums up all of Jesus’ teaching: there are those who hear the word gladly but get side-tracked by other distractions. They’re the ones who have shallow roots. Others are the stony ground where the teaching has no impact whatsoever and still others are the ones where the seed takes root and they bear great fruit. (I over summarise, but you get the idea. You know the parable well.) That this parable is the key to all of Jesus’ teaching is clear when he rebukes the disciples, “Do you not understand this parable? Then how will you understand all the parables?”

The point is that Jesus only occasionally explained the meaning of the parables straight off. He liked to leave the ideas hanging in the air for people to think about and struggle with. Sometimes he would relent and explain the meaning to his immediate group of disciples, generally frustrated that they hadn’t worked the meaning out for themselves – the disciples get a pretty bad press in Mark‘s Gospel for being a bit slow. As Victoria Wood once noted, “There wasn’t dyslexia in my day. You just sat at the back with raffia.”

Unlike the Parable of the Sower which Jesus had just told and explained in detail, the two parables we’re given today are (mercifully) short: perhaps, like any good teacher, Jesus recognised that his listeners had limited concentration spans. There are no long narratives and no deeply hidden meanings here. It’s as if Jesus is saying, “We’ve done the hard stuff. This is by way of consolidation.”

Yes, they are simple stories but they’re not just about how little things turn in to big things.  They’re more about how the Kingdom of God takes over everything around it.  So, yes, more of, “The Kingdom of God is like this” stories.

The seeds take over the field.  They’re small and seem insignificant, but they change everything around them.  That's how the Kingdom of God works. It’s good to be reminded about that because sometimes we simply fail to see that sort of change. Perhaps we aren’t looking for it. Perhaps we don’t recognise it when it happens. Perhaps it takes us by surprise when it does happen.

I’ll give you a simple example: I started to work in a prison three years ago now and it’s busy. It’s don’t-have-time-to-think busy and that means that it’s really easy to miss signs of the Kingdom on a daily basis.

Just before Easter last year, I ran a Lent group on one wing. Twenty-two men opted to attend and they took part with great enthusiasm and showed some real perception and evidence of spiritual depth. A couple of weeks later, the Bishop came in and confirmed eight of them. Now it’s not easy being a man of faith in a prison: but these men, regardless of their crimes, had come to a point in their faith journeys where they wished to make a public declaration of that faith; to show true penitence and to strive to live a changed life for the remainder of their sentences and to seek to live as better role models to those around them - and many have noticed the change in these men’s lives, other men who are not generally easily impressed.

There’s a strong belief amongst the regular chapel-goers in the prison that you can move on from the shame that lead so many into mental health problems and a downward spiral of self-loathing; that you can be released from all of that to start afresh even if you know you’ll never leave prison. For these men, coming to a deeper understanding of God was also, inevitably, to come to a deeper understanding of themselves. At some time in the past – and I take no personal credit for this – something started to work in the lives of these men: something initially as tiny as a mustard seed set in motion something that would grow and flourish and, to borrow from the parable of the sower, to “bear fruit thirty-fold, sixty-fold, a hundred-fold.”

I think the point is that often we don’t see the wood for the trees and because things don’t always work out in church life in the ways we expect, we lose heart and fail to recognise that something is happening but it’s something different, or it’s happening to someone we don’t see any more because of something that we said or did some time ago which set in motion a chain of events which has taken time to come to fruition. We may never know, but because we don’t see it, doesn’t mean it’s not happening.

There is, though, another meaning in these parables for those of us who have been on our own pilgrimages of faith for some time: there is a theme of growth and maturity to be discerned at the heart of these short stories. To what extent has “the harvest come”, in the words of the first parable in each of our lives? Have we “put forth large branches” in the words of the second parable? The Kingdom of God is like this: we have to make room for the Kingdom in our lives. We must allow it to take over our lives in a big way. When we allow God to be significant in our lives, we create a path for him to be significant in the lives of other people too.

Spiritual growth and maturity: in his first letter to the Corinthians, St. Paul talks about the mother’s milk of spirituality and notes that his listeners were not yet ready for solid food. How many years have you been on your pilgrimage of faith? Where are you in relation to the solid food of spirituality? One way to assess this is to take an honest look back to your early years of Christian faith. In which ways have you moved on? What ideas and attitudes have you left behind and which have replaced them? What have been the shifts in your spiritual awareness and understanding and what – or who – have been the influences for those changes? How has your faith matured? What’s the evidence?  – and it’s a personal inventory: you’ve no need to tell anyone your conclusions. For some, it’s the difference between accepting and questioning, for others it’s the espousal of the justice issues we find in the Gospels, for others a growing awareness, perhaps, of God’s transcendence and the realisation that the God you first met is much bigger than you ever dared to think. Could it, perhaps, have something to do with the way you now express your faith to others? Is about a greater sense of confidence or assuredness? Is it about a growing recognition that the Kingdom of God is something for the wider world and not just the individual convert? Does it lie in your recognition that the way you live your life needs to reflect kingdom values? Is it linked to being willing to engage with the big theological questions in ways you’d never have imagined yourself engaging in the past?

I can’t answer those questions for you, but they – and a hundred and one similar questions – are part of the inventory of spiritual maturity. Are we asking those questions? Has the harvest come? Are we putting forth large branches? Or are we still at the stage of refusing to engage with the depth of the puzzle that is the Kingdom?

Amen