A Final Word or Two

As you may have noticed, I rather like having the last word – and this is it!  It may be that from time to time I'll be called off the bench – a sort of impact player when the starting preacher's legs are getting weary – but apart from that I'm at the end of a period of regular preaching that has lasted almost exactly 20 years.  So today I'm going to indulge myself and break my own rule that I would not allow myself to break on previous occasions.  I'm not going to address today's readings – I have done so at least 5 times during that period of 20 years – and if you really want to know what I said on those occasions I'm sure I have copies somewhere!

But of course I do want to say something about the Scriptures; and I want to begin with an episode which, looking back, I now realise made a huge impression on me.  When the Reverend George Spargo was being instituted as Vicar of Otaki in 1989 he invited his friend, the Reverend Colin Barnes to be the preacher at the service; and we soon realised that Colin was a passionate lover of the Scriptures, the key word there being "passionate".  His other claim to fame was that he came from Burnley in Lancashire, and had a wonderful accent to prove it.

After a few minutes of preaching he had worked himself up into a bit of a lather on the virtues of the Scriptures, when he suddenly stopped, held his Bible up above his head like a winning captain with a sports trophy, and cried out, "Oooh, it's such a looovely book!"  Of course, many of us laughed, but I remember at the time thinking how wonderful it must be to feel like that about the Bible; and I guess that, although I didn't think of it as a prayer at the time, what I was doing really was to hope (to pray) that one day I might feel passionately about the Scriptures – albeit in my more restrained way as befits a southerner!

Well, over the years my memory of Colin faded; but one day I was talking to another priest who mentioned Colin, and we got talking about him, and I mentioned this incident; and as I recounted it I suddenly realised something: I did feel passionately about the Scriptures.  I could say with Colin "the Bible is a lovely book"; and I could say about Colin, "Thanks be to God!"  And one of the lessons that I have drawn from that little episode is the power of language that comes from the heart.    Colin was infamous for preaching too long – he probably went on a bit on that occasion in Otaki – and I cannot recall anything else he said.  But those six simple words have had an enormous effect on my own faith journey and on my commitment to preaching ever since he spoke them.

Now, I mentioned George Spargo; it's time to turn to a far more recent George, Bishop George Connor.  When Bishop George addressed Synod in May he announced his intention to retire at the end of November – on St Andrew's Day, which will be the 44^th anniversary of his ordination; and this no doubted prompted him to look back over his faith journey.  And he told us that throughout that time four small verses of Scripture had been of special significance to him in shaping his faith journey and his ministry.  I found that very interesting, and started to think about which few verses have been particularly significant for me.  If the Bishop can have his top 4, why shouldn't I?

The obvious difficulty in this approach soon raised its ugly head.  I couldn't agree with myself on my four choices.  And why only four, why not five or six or twenty-three?  The exercise threatened to get so out of hand that I thought it would be best to abandon the idea altogether (or perhaps pinch the Bishop's four and leave out his name!).  Part of the difficulty, of course, is that a particular verse may have particular significance to us at a particular time or in special circumstances.

An obvious example for me is Hebrews 11:8, which I have probably spoken about before.  That says, "By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as an inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going."  That was the crucial verse that, in the end, convinced me to resign from the Law Drafting Office, even though I did not have a clue what the next step was.  Was my sense of call real, or was I grandstanding?  Only when I resigned, did I convince myself that it was real, and six and a half months later I was offered a temporary position on the staff of All Saints, Palmerston North.  But once all that fuss was over, that verse had nothing more to say for me; so it can't claim a position in the final four.

A couple of other contenders are in a similar class.  After I had been ordained a deacon but before being ordained a priest, my first marriage collapsed, and there were many who advised the Bishop to cancel my licence and not ordain me as a priest.  For the record, I agreed with them.  However, our Bishop at the time was Archbishop Brian and he told me that against the advice he had received, and against his own instincts, that was going to go ahead with my ordination to the priesthood.  When I asked him why, he said, "Because I cannot escape the conviction that God is calling you, so you and I really have no choice."  And he drew my attention to Isaiah 43:1, which reads in part, "I have called you by name, and you are mine."  So that could have made the cut.

But in the end I have settled for 2 finalists, two less than the Bishop, which is fitting, perhaps; and it was only after I had chosen them that I realised that they are drawn from my two favourite books, they are related to one another and to Hebrews 11:8, and they are both extraordinarily timely for our two congregations.

They are Isaiah 43:18-19a; and John 5:6.  Here they are: Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past.  See, I am doing a new thing!  Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?  And from John: When Jesus saw him lying there, and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, "Do you want to get well?"

If I had to try to sum up the message of the Gospel in a relatively few words, these would be where I would start.  I have long ago lost count of the people I have come across who have got stuck somewhere in their own past – who have been in their present condition for a long time.  I remember reading somewhere of a psychiatrist who told a priest that the Church could cut the need for psychiatric services in half if it could convince people first that they are forgiven, and secondly that they need to forgive themselves and others.  That, of course, is the core business of the Church.

I suspect that we all know people who are stuck in grievance mode; who tell the same hard luck story over and over again; and who believe that because of something or other in the past they cannot move one.  I once asked such a person what she and I would talk about if her particular grievance was ever resolved.  After a long, long struggle in silence, she told me that we wouldn't need to talk again because she would then have her life back, which is an interesting expression in itself.  I don't mean to diminish the pain and suffering that has often been experienced in such cases.  But I do want to suggest that the lovely book, and in particular these two extracts, provide a remedy.

First, that question.  Do we want to be healed?  Do we want to let go of the grievance, the bad memory, or whatever it is that is burdening us and stopping us from moving forward?  The man at the pool convinced himself that he could never be healed because others beat him to it – they looked after themselves and didn't stop to help him.  Jesus cut through the self-pity, and told the man to stand on his own two feet.  He raised him again – the man was resurrected.

How was that possible?  Because God was in Christ doing a new thing; it was time to forget the former things and stop dwelling on the past.  That's a message we need to hear time and time again on our faith journey; and it is a message that each of our congregations needs to hold on to as you are being called to leave your comfort zones and to go forward to the inheritance God has in mind for you, even though you do not know where you are going or what it will involve in any detail. 

The same is true for Trish and I, and for Bishop George and Nonie.  So let us pray for one another that we let go of past certainties and perceive the new thing that God is doing in our lives.  And let us hold on tightly to this lovely book as we go!  Amen.

Plain Speaking

Texts: Jeremiah 11:18-20; James 3:13-4:8; Mark 9:30-37

One of the many tensions in being human is that between meeting the expectations of our community on the one hand and being true to ourselves as individuals on the other; and that's as true for Christians as for anyone else.  The great prophets of our faith history – including the giants like Jeremiah – are to be honoured and remembered for their great courage in speaking out, in challenging those in positions of authority and calling them to account.  We have an example of that in our first reading today; at least, we have an example of the cost of doing it.  Jeremiah has been telling anyone who would listen that the people of his time were heading towards disaster – and the political leaders have had enough.  To them he is not a brave voice standing up for what is right: he is a seditious mongrel causing panic and alarm among the people at the very time when unity is necessary.

All that should sound familiar to us.  We have only to look at the war of words that has erupted in Wanganui for a recent example.  Is Ken Mair a divisive ego-tripper causing disharmony in a multicultural city, or a brave voice challenging the power elite to right a longstanding wrong?  Is Mayor Laws defending his own position of power for the sake of it, or is he standing up for the majority of his citizens on an important point of principle?  Is Bev Butler a heroine or a pain in the nether regions of the human anatomy?

Our theme today is ego-tripping; and when we look at our second lesson (ironically, from the plain-speaking St James) and the gospel reading, you can see why.  Both St James and Jesus himself seem to counsel against pushing ourselves forward.  Our Minister of Health might want everyone on the front line, but these two readings seem to suggest that we are all better off serving in the back room!  We should not seek positions of power, but be like powerless children.  We should not speak up, but be humble and even submissive.  And yet – there is Jeremiah, and with him all the other prophets of our faith history, including those of our own age, such as Desmond Tutu.

And there is the inescapable fact that Jesus was crucified for speaking out.

Where does all this leave us?  Well, I think we have already had one clue recently in the story of the healing of the deaf man who could hardly speak.  Remember how we are given quite graphic details of the way in which Jesus healed this man, and if we look at those details we will find that all the way through the story the deafness is treated as the primary complaint.  He is described as "a man who was deaf and could hardly talk".  Jesus first puts his fingers into the man's ears, and then touches the man's tongue.  When healing comes it comes in the same order: "the man's ears were opened, his tongue was loosened and he began to speak plainly".  The ability to hear precedes the ability to speak.

And that seems to me to be the gist of this very direct teaching from St James this morning.  He distinguishes between "the wisdom that comes from heaven", and the wisdom that is "earthly, unspiritual, of the devil".  In other words, when someone speaks out we need first to discern to whom he or she has been listening before speaking out; and we can get a pretty clear idea of that, not just from the content of what is said, but the tone and manner in which it is said.

St James describes the wisdom that comes from heaven as "first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere.  Peacemakers who sow in peace raise a harvest of righteousness".  Every politician, every court lawyer, and in fact every one of us who ever gets into a debate with anyone else should ponder those words long and hard.  Is my argument 'pure'?  Whatever else St James meant by that word, I think there are at least two ways in which our arguments may fail that test.  First, are we expressing ourselves in pure language, free from foul and abusive terms?  Secondly, are our motives pure in pressing our argument, or do we have a selfish agenda?  Are we pushing what we honestly believe to be a just cause, or are we more interested in winning the argument to show how clever we are or to save face?

Are we peace-loving?  Even though we disagree with someone on an issue – and maybe it's a very important issue – are we seeking to resolve the issue in a way that promotes peace, rather than ongoing discord?  Are we considerate of the feelings of those who disagree with us?  How different the battle over the proposed stadium might have been if all concerned had followed St James teaching here!

And St James is equally clear about the other side of the coin.  What he calls earthly, unspiritual wisdom that comes from the devil causes "fights and quarrels" among us, which come from "bitter envy and selfish ambition" in our hearts.  These are tough words, but pretty well on the mark, I think.  And to me what this whole passage calls into question is our widely accepted belief that democracy works best as a sort of free for all where each individual and each group pushes his, her or its barrow as hard and as selfishly as possible, and somehow or other what is best for all of us is supposed to emerge from that chaos.  But is that what it means to live in a free society – that each is free to be selfish?

I believe that our Christian faith tells us that each of us is free to consider our neighbour's interests as well as our own, and free to advocate what is best for others even at our own cost.  One of the great issues facing our society in the years to come will be the provision of health care.  While none of us like the idea, there will be – even if there isn't already – some form of rationing required.  We simply cannot provide all our citizens with every conceivable surgical procedure and every conceivable drug.  Someone somewhere will have to make tough decisions.   So do people like me join Grey Power and advocate for more treatment for oldies like me – based, perhaps, on how long we have been paying taxes – or do we stand back and look at what is best for the people as a whole?  Should we give priority to my grandchildren's generation, then my children's, and only then to my own?

What I'm suggesting in all this is that St James and Jesus are not talking about relatively minor matters within the community of faith.  While both readings have something useful to say to us as a diocese facing an electoral college, and as congregations about to have Vestry elections, they should guide us at a much deeper lever than that.

In all aspects of our lives we need to seek first the wisdom that comes from heaven; and that is particularly true when we find ourselves getting into an argument.  When I first went through Law school I was taught that my first duty was to the Court, and only after that was my duty to my client.  Why?  Because a properly functioning judicial system is in the best interests of all of us, including my client.  Sadly, there seems to be reason to doubt that such a view is still taught today.  As we become ever more obsessed with the rights of the individual, so we move ever further away from the kingdom of God.

I want to end with the story of two religious brothers who came to Sheffield University to teach us in our debating society their form of debating.  The rules were very simple.  First, the proposition for debate was read out by the chairperson.  (Until then, neither speaker knew what is was to be.)  Then there was silence for 15 minutes.  After that, the person for the proposition spoke one sentence in support.  Then the opposing speaker spoke two sentences.  The first sentence was his summary of what the first speaker had said.  The second sentence was designed to refute the first speaker's statement.  That was the first round.  Altogether there were 8 rounds.  In each round the number of sentences for each speaker increased by one; but in each case the first sentence had to be a summary of what the other speaker had just said.

When the eighth round finished, there was another period of 15 minutes silence.  At the end of that period, the speaker for the proposition had 5 minutes to summarise the case against the proposition, and the other speaker had 5 minutes to summarise the case for it.  The audience was then asked to vote on which of the speakers had most accurately summarised his opponent's case throughout the whole process.

In discussions afterwards, the brothers explained the purpose of their approach in one line: to learn to listen respectfully, first to our inner wisdom, and then to those who disagree with us.  That's wisdom that comes from heaven.  St James could not have put it any better.

  

 

The Retiring Sort

Texts: Numbers 11:4-6, 10-16, 24-29; James 5:13-20; Mark 9:38-50

I must confess that my record as a sensitive new age guy – or at least as a politically correct liberal on gender issues – has one black mark.  I'm still not comfortable with women playing rugby; which explains why, of all the many regular columnists in the ODT, the one I have never read is Farah Palmer.  Never, that is, until last Thursday, when I felt strangely drawn to it.  It was meant to be.  She was writing about retirement, albeit under a rather strange heading "All Blacks' trouncing of Wallabies spurs fresh outlook".

Actually, before I go any further with Farah, perhaps I should apologise for using the word "retirement" in a holy place like this.  One of the strange things about my present situation is that people keep telling me that that word is no longer acceptable in polite society.  I received an email recently in which a friend told me never to use the "R-word" again.  Over the years in ministry I have often come across people who wont talk about cancer by name; the nearest they'll get to it is to say the "C-word".  Things that frighten us must not be named.  Sir Howard Morrison didn't die this week - he passed away.

Well, I understand why any reference to death or to terminal illness might frighten us (even though our faith teaches otherwise); but why does retirement have the same effect?  Why is retirement so awful we dare not speak its name?  According to a recent report on so-called baby-boomers, they have no intention of retiring until they're eighty, if then.  Of course, although we talk of baby-boomers as a generation, they are also a class.  We mean people of a certain age and belonging to a certain income group – middle class and upwards, don't we?  Tell a fifty-five year-old coal miner that he's a baby-boomer and he'll have no idea what you're talking about.  Tell him he now has the right to keep working into his eighties, and you may find he doesn't welcome the news.

So we may be talking only about middle-class, reasonably high income earners.  Which gets us back to Farah.  Actually, she's a bit of a fraud – she's not nearly old enough to retire properly.  What she is doing is leaving her present employment to have a baby, but to her that was traumatic enough.  And in writing about it she was honest enough to give us some idea as to why people like her prefer not to think about – you know, the R-word.  Here's her opening paragraph: Monday was my last day at work.  I struggled to leave, and kept finding last-minute things to do and people to meet.  My work-related ego was struggling.  How could they cope without me?  Would I be missed?

Two or three good strong clues there, aren't there?  "My work-related ego" is a revealing phrase in itself.  Then she wonders how they'll cope without her – a clear sign of the indispensability self-delusional syndrome.  On the other hand, will they even miss her?  Notice, she doesn't wonder how she will cope without them, or whether or not she will miss them.

Farah is not alone.  A few years ago on a clergy retreat a retired bishop talked to me about how difficult he was finding it to adjust to his new life of retirement: "Suddenly, nobody wants me any more", he told me.  And a recently retired priest told me that he was now "unpaid, unlicensed and unwanted".

All of which seems to me to raise some very deep questions in terms of our faith.  Last week our theme, interestingly enough, was "Ego-tripping"; and in our gospel passage Jesus told his disciples off for jockeying with each other for positions of power.  The greatest among us, he said, must be the servant of all.  That bishop and that priest would have experienced many times the frustrations of today's busy world.  They would have noted the decrease in the number of people with time to volunteer, in the church or in many other groups and clubs in the community.  There would have been many times, especially in the so-called working-life of the Bishop, when he was going from committee meeting to committee meeting, wondering when he would ever have time to pray, to reflect, and to minister to people in need.  Now they have that time to be a neighbour, a friend, a visitor, a family member – without all the burdens and constraints of formal office –and they hate it.

Moses would have understood.  He suffered from a similar condition: in his case, it was the superman self-delusional syndrome.  He was the leader who tried to do it all himself: delegation was not his forte.  Eventually his great mental and physical stamina was not enough; and when the people rebelled yet again, he was ready to throw in the towel.  God's response was to confer on a team of elders the same Spirit with which he had anointed Moses.  Leadership was to be shared with others.

And today's story has a nice little detail.  There were 72 elders in those days, but only 70 made it to the meeting: the other two remained behind in camp.  Yet all 72 were anointed by God.  This infuriated young Joshua, who was P.A. to Moses at the time.  Why should those two get the same deal when they hadn't made it to the meeting?  But Moses has seen the light.  Wouldn't it be wonderful if every one of the people received anointing with the Spirit of God?  Professional jealousy has no place in the community of God; nor is it appropriate for us to place limits on whom God may or may not ordain to leadership positions.  If true leadership in the community of faith is about servanthood, then the more servants there are, the better it is.

History adds an interesting footnote to this story.  God decided that Moses' leadership would end before the people entered the Promised Land; and that he would be succeeded by Joshua.  Did they miss Moses?  Probably.  Did they cope without him? Yes.  Was Moses indispensable?  No.

Our gospel reading shows our human nature hadn't changed much by the time of Jesus.  Last week the disciples were competing with each other.  This week we see them outraged because an "outsider" is healing someone in Jesus' name.  That's their job, and they don't want anyone else doing it, thank you very much.  Turf wars are not unknown within the Church, are they?  They should be, of course, but sometimes our human nature doesn't look as transformed as we would like to think.

And always, St James the Blunt has his own take on all this.  Related, perhaps, to our fear of retirement, is our unwillingness to accept that sometimes we need the help of others.  Long experience in the church tells me that those who are most willing to help others in need are often least able to accept help when they are ill or in need of some kind.  Could that be about pride?  Do we have this image of ourselves as strong and able to cope in all circumstances?  Do we forget that Jesus graciously allowed others to minister to him, so that we should be able to do the same from time to time?  Those who give us a glass of water will surely receive their reward, we're told.  But what if we refuse the glass of water because we're perfectly capable of getting our own drink, thank you very much?

And talking of water, I want to end with a verse from a poem by Saxon M. Wright, quoted in her column by my new friend, Farah:

Take a bucket and fill it with water,

Put your hand in it up to the wrist

Pull it out and the hole that's remaining

Is a measure of how much you'll be missed.

 

I'm thinking of having that printed and framed for the 31^st October!

What Do We Want?

Texts: Exodus 16:2-4, 9-15; Ephesians 4:1-16; John 6:24-35

Today we continue our journey through this amazing sixth chapter of St John's gospel; and not for the first time I wish I knew more about musical composition, because I think there is a sense in which St John has composed this chapter like a piece of music.  I seem to remember reading an essay on a piece of music by J.S. Bach, which I think was called The Goldberg Variations.  And if I understood the point rightly, I think what Bach did in that piece of music was to start off with a small musical phrase, and then write an astonishing number of variations of that one phrase.

As I say, my ignorance of music is so awful that it may be another piece of music, with a different title, and by a different composer!  But the point I'm trying to get at is this; when I started re-reading this chapter in preparation for this series of sermons, it seemed to me that St John has done something similar.  He has brought together a number of discrete images, themes, memories or whatever, and woven them together in varying patterns without ever quite repeating himself, and certainly without contradicting himself.

If you were hear last week you may recall some of the themes that we found in that long opening sequence from this chapter – the story of the feeding of the five thousand, followed by the story of Jesus walking on the water.  I suggested that the overall theme of the whole gospel is St John's vision of Jesus as the One who has come from above, the One sent by the Father to meet our deepest hunger for God; and if that is right we may agree with those commentators who say that this chapter is the very heart of this gospel, because that idea of Jesus coming to us from above recurs throughout this chapter.  Today we find two examples of it.  First, when the crowds ask Jesus what they must do (what is required of them by God), he tells them to "believe in the one he has sent".

Remember that this teaching is being given in the synagogue at Capernaum, so his audience is Jewish.  They might have expected his answer to draw on the Torah, the Law of God; they might have expected what we know as the Summary of the Law.  But no, Jesus calls on them to believe in the one whom God has sent (that is, himself).  And the second reference is even clearer: in verse 33 Jesus says this: "For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world."

Which leads us to the second theme we identified last week.  Why did Jesus come down from heaven?  According to St John, he comes to bring us "life" or "eternal life"; and that thought is woven in and out of this chapter, and the wider gospel.  We're so use to the term that we might overlook the fact that it is very common in this gospel, but not in the others.  Conversely, the others talk frequently of the "Kingdom of God" or the "Kingdom of Heaven", as St Matthew prefers; but that term is almost absent from this gospel.  So in some sense, St John is using this notion of "eternal life" in place of the term "kingdom of God" favoured by the other gospel writers.  But only in some sense.  If the "kingdom of God" means something like the realm or rule of God, or the sovereignty of God, it still has a sense in which  we, the people of God, are separate from God, subjects of God, or as St Paul puts it, citizens of heaven.  But St John seems to go even further than this.  He says that Jesus has brought to us God's own life, his divinity, and, as it were, infuses that life into those who believe in him.  What he means seems to be in accord with that astonishing expression we find in Second Peter (so important to the Orthodox Churches), when we are told that we "may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires".  In Christ, we become like him, with dual natures, the human and the divine.

The third theme that St John plays on again in this passage is the disparity between what the crowds want and what Jesus has come to offer us.  Last week we saw Jesus trying to escape from the crowds who were besieging him because they had seen the miracles he performed in healing the sick.  So they all went off and rounded up anyone who needed healing, and followed Jesus even though he had tried to withdraw from them.  This week, having followed Jesus across the lake and experienced the miraculous feeding, they are looking for him again.  Once more St John seems to be laying a lot of stress on these details – who crossed the lake, how did they get there, and how did they get back?  In one sense we may see these things as trivial, not worth going on about; but St John doesn't deal with trivialities.

I suspect there are at least two things going on here.  First, he is repeating the idea that the crowds pursue Jesus for the wrong reason.  Last week it was free medical care; this week it is a free lunch.  Jesus himself rebukes them when they once again catch up with him: "I tell you the truth, you are looking for me, not because you saw miraculous signs, but because you ate the loaves and had your fill." Secondly, there may well be a subtext here: they were looking for Jesus, expecting to find him among them still on the far side of the lake.  But he wasn't there.  Where was he?  In Capernaum, in the synagogue, teaching, where they should have been on the Sabbath.  Manna was not provided on the Sabbath.

The fourth theme, of course, is the reference back to the great Exodus and the pilgrimage through the wilderness.  Perhaps they have begun to see some connection between the feeding of the five thousand and that great historical event.  Clearly, Moses has popped into their minds, Moses the Law-giver and Moses the provider of manna.  Perhaps that's why they phrased their original question to Jesus in the clumsy way they did: ""What must we do to do the works God requires?"  Very much a legal question, that one.  And that leads on to the provision of manna.  Jesus disabuses them: Moses didn't give them manna to eat; that came from heaven.  And now here for you is the true bread of heaven – "food that endures to eternal life".

Another important way in which this gospel differs from the others is that St John, in dealing with the Last Supper and all that happened on what we call Maundy Thursday, makes no reference to the institution of the Lord's Supper (the Eucharist).  Some scholars suggest that he substitutes the story of the foot-washing for that episode; but it is surely incredible that St John would not see the need for any reference to the Eucharist.  Surely it is beyond argument that he did not refer to the Eucharist in his version of the Last Supper for a very good reason: he had already dealt with it in this chapter.  We will come to that directly in a week or two, but already we can see how he is laying the groundwork.  The bread comes down from heaven; the bread gives life; Jesus is himself the bread.

And on that Eucharistic note, let's give the last word to St Paul.  "There is one body", he says and in our liturgy we agree: "we who are many are one body for we all share the one bread".  And he says one more thing in today's reading that ought to sound very familiar to us: "Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace."  Today, as we come to the Lord's Table to share in Communion, we will be surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses, and included in that crowd will be St John and St Paul.  We are, after all, in communion with them and all the saints.

What  then does God require of us?  Only that we believe.

The Truth of God Incarnate

Texts: 1 Kings 19:4-8; Ephesians 4:25-5:2; John 6:35, 41-51

One of the things that I touched on last week was some of the differences between the so-called synoptic gospels on the one hand, and the Gospel of St John on the other; and that's where I want to start this week.  One of the delights of reading Scripture for me is that a lot of it comes out of the arguments and debates of the times in which it was written.  The classic example of this is always said to be the letters of St Paul to the Corinthians.  Reading them is like listening to one side of a telephone conversation and trying to work out what the other party to the call is saying.  Throughout much of those letters St Paul is clearly responding to criticism levelled against him, and by reading his response it is possible to get a pretty clear picture of what that criticism was.

We can do something similar with the four gospels by asking ourselves a simple question: why were they written?  And the first thing we can say about that is that none of them were written until about 35 years after the crucifixion, presumably because of the early Christian belief that Christ would return during the lifetime of the first generation of Christians, including the Apostles.  When Christ returned the end of time would occur and all would be revealed.  There would be no need for Scripture, gospels or anything of that kind.  However, Jesus did not return, and that first generation started to die off.  Without the Apostles, how were future generations to be told the story of Christ?  The only alternative was to write it down before the last of the witnesses had died.

That's a good explanation in general terms, but what about the individual gospels?  Can we say something about why each of them was written?  Well, yes we can, by studying the differences between them, because they reflect the issues of their time.  The first one, Mark's Gospel, was primarily concerned to get the basic story down on paper and published, so there is little theological argument in it, and pains taken to avoid giving offence to Rome.  Then came St Matthew, and he is clearly anxious to convince his fellow Jews that Jesus is the promised Messiah.  Hence he goes immediately into a genealogical account designed to prove that Jesus is from the House of David.  He had to be if he were to be recognised as the Messiah.  So St Matthew is arguing with those who did not believe that Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah.

Ten years or so later comes the gospel of St Luke, and we know what he was trying to do because he tells us in the opening verses of his gospel.  He is writing for his Greek patron, and claims to have checked the whole story about Jesus very carefully so he can give Theophilus an accurate account.  And there is no surprise that in his account we find an emphasis on Jesus reaching beyond the House of Israel to the Gentiles.  (St Luke follows this theme up in his Book of Acts, of course, as he records the struggle by Jewish Christians to accept that the gospel is for Gentiles as well as Jews.)

So, when the first gospels were written, the argument was largely within the Jewish community, and over the issue of whether or not Jesus of Nazareth was the long-awaited Messiah.  By the time St Luke was writing, the argument was between Jews and Gentiles; was the gospel for all people, or only for Jews and those who first converted to Judaism.  Twenty or so years later, when St John's Gospel appears, the issue has shifted again.  Now the central argument is about the divinity of Christ.  Was Jesus simply a prophet, a very great one, certainly, but still a human being with a prophetic ministry?  Or was he God incarnate?

That is the central issue to which the whole gospel is addressed; and one clue to that is to be found at the very beginning of the gospel, in what we know as the Prologue.  St Matthew starts his gospel: A record of the genealogy of Jesus Christ the son of David, the son of Abraham.  Compare that with how St John starts his: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  And we only have to wait until verse 14 to get the gist of whom John is talking about: The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.  We have seen his glory, the Glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.  It's all there really.  If anyone ever tries to tell you that there is nothing in the Bible to support the view that Jesus is divine, just rub their nose in that verse 14!

And this is the issue that we've got to in our journey through this chapter 6; and it's very interesting how St John deals with it.  The other three gospels all record Jesus coming to the synagogue in his hometown and being given a hard time by the locals.  [Incidentally, they do not agree on the identity of his hometown: was it Nazareth or Capernaum?]  But in those accounts we are told that the locals are astonished at the wisdom and authority with which Jesus is teaching them.  Where is he getting this from?  Isn't he merely the carpenter's son?  Isn't Mary his mother, and don't we know his brothers and sisters who live among us?  And they take offence against him for being too big for his boots!  He seems to them to be claiming the authority of a Rabbi, or, worse still, a prophet, when's he's really just a local boy with the gift of the gab!

But look at what St John has done with this episode.  He agrees with the circumstances – Jesus is in the synagogue in Capernaum; but now the issue is something much deeper than any claim by Jesus to be a prophet.  Now, according to St John, what Jesus is claiming is to have come down from heaven.  Clearly, by the time St John is writing his gospel, the issue of the day is the divinity of Christ.  The congregation starts grumbling against Jesus over that claim, but their complaint is on the same grounds as before.  The locals know Mary and Joseph and the rest of the family; how then can Jesus claim some heavenly origin rather than a normal human one?  [We should note in passing John's clever use of the term "grumbling": it's what the Israelites were doing to Moses in the wilderness before the gift of manna from above.]

 

Jesus makes no attempt to soften his stance or change his language; on the contrary, St John has him stress the point over and over.  "I am the bread that came down from heaven"..."No one has seen the Father except the one who is from God"..."here is the bread that comes down from heaven"..."I am the living bread that came down from heaven".  All that would have been hard enough for his listeners to swallow; but, of course, worse was to come, as we shall see next week.

In preparation for that I want to close with one more observation about this gospel in general.  St John is often accused of being anti-Semitic, because he often refers to Jesus' opponents as "the Jews".  The claim is unfair; apart from anything else, St John was a Jew himself.  But again we need to put this gospel in its historical context.  By the time it was written, Christians had been kicked out of the synagogues, and the official Jewish stance was to label Christianity as blasphemous and heretical.  When St John refers to "the Jews" it is against that background; he means the Jewish rulers of his time.

They would certainly have rejected any suggestion that Jesus was divine, because to them that would offend against the fundament teaching that God is One.  And given their attitude to the consumption of blood, the Eucharist would have absolutely appalled them.  It's no surprise that this is the topic to which St John turns our attention next week.

The Essential Cat

 

Texts: Deuteronomy 4:12, 6-9; James 1:17-27; Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

One of the great spiritual teachers and writers of the 20^th century was a man called Anthony de Mello; and I've long treasured his story about a priest and his cat.  The priest's cat had developed a love of human attention, and had discovered that if he turned up when a service was going on in the chapel the congregation would soon pay him more attention than they were paying to the priest.  (The same thing happens today if a baby is present, or a bird flies in.  Any welcome distraction will do, as long-suffering priests will tell you.)

Anyway, the time came when the priest decided he had had enough of this cat disturbing the service, so he had a cage put up the front of the chapel; and every time the cat entered the chapel during a service, the priest would catch the cat and lock it in the cage until the service had finished.  Both the priest and the cat were long-lived and between them kept this practice up for years; but eventually the priest died.  After that the senior lay person became responsible for catching the cat and putting it in the cage, until the day came when the cat also died.  Even if you haven't heard the story before, you can probably guess what happened next.  Yes, the congregation got another cat, because in that congregation everyone knew that it was a necessary part of a service of worship to have a cat in a cage!

That story for me exactly captures the temptation we are all capable of falling into of thinking that what we have done for many years must be essential to worship.  I was once roundly criticised by a colleague for extinguishing the candles on the Holy Table in the wrong order.  He wasn't being helpful, trying to guide a new, inexperienced priest to do things in the proper manner; he was furious with me for spoiling our service!  I remember, too, the outrage inadvertently caused by the organist at All Saints, Palmerston North, who decided on one occasion, for very good musical reasons, to play one of the hymns on the piano instead of the organ.  This prompted the justly famous line from one of the senior women of the parish, "If the pipe organ was good enough for our Lord Jesus Christ, it should be good enough for All Saints, Palmerston North"!!!  And, of course, in fairly recent times, there was a period when the Church seemed more interested in ensuring that the readers and preachers used gender-inclusive language than that they read the right passage and did not preach heresy!

In today's gospel passage we find a classic example of this tendency to give too much importance to the trivial details, and forget the essence of what we are supposed to be about.  Some Pharisees have arrived from Jerusalem, which tells us that they are probably a sort of audit team, sent by officialdom to check out what Jesus is doing and saying.  Jesus, of course, has been saying and doing a lot by this time, all over Galilee, drawing huge crowds and amazing the populace with his miracles and his extraordinary teaching.  But this official audit team pays all that no attention.  It's not his teaching or miracles that they find upsetting.  Rather it's the failure of his disciples to carry out ritual hand-washing before having a meal that has called down their wrath.

Which is strange, for all sorts of reasons.  First, this has got nothing to do with personal hygiene: this is not a public health issue.  It is about a requirement to render yourself ritualistically clean before eating, because eating was a sacred act – it began with thanksgiving and a prayer for blessing, and you couldn't do that with unclean hands.  The second thing that is strange about that is that this requirement is not to be found in the Law: it is found in what we today would call "case law", or, perhaps, "legal commentary".  Sometime in the past some learned scholar of the Law had said that it was necessary to be ritualistically clean before eating, even in the privacy of one's own home, and that ruling had become accepted by the Pharisees as part of the Law.

We've had a wonderful example of this sort of process in recent times in this country over the physical disciplining of children.  The basic rule in this area was an obvious one: no one must assault anyone else.  But what is an assault?  Well, said the Law, it is the application of force by one person to another.  Had we left things there we might have saved ourselves a lot of angst.  In principle, we all agree that we shouldn't go around assaulting people.  But it happens all the time.  If I tap someone in the street to attract their attention so I can ask them if they can tell me the time, that tap is an assault.  I am guilty of an offence.  So is every player who comes into contact with any other player during a game of rugby, soccer, hockey or netball.  So is a surgeon who operates on me.

But none of us would expect a prosecution to be brought in any such case.  We would expect everyone to rely on commonsense.  We know what we mean by assault, and we don't mean tapping someone on the shoulder, or tackling them in the course of a game, and we don't mean anything properly done by a surgeon in the course of removing someone's inflamed appendix.  BUT...somewhere in the past someone raised the specific case of a parent applying force to a child, and of a surgeon applying force to a patient, with the result that specific defences were written into the law for those cases – but not, be it noted, for the tap on the shoulder or the rugby tackle.  Once we decided that the general principle, backed up in practice by commonsense, was not enough, we opened the floodgate for the sort of rampant Pharisaism that we are now experiencing.  Less than two years ago, our leaders changed the wording of the law, and now they are intending to issue guidelines to explain further how the law is to be administered.  and so it grows and grows.

We've been going through a similar practice around the administration of Communion.  Throughout, the intent has been good; our Bishops have sought to modify our practice in a way that minimises the risk of spreading swine flu among participants.  But we have now found ourselves paying more attention to the act of receiving Communion, rather than to the meaning and effect of receiving it.  I found it particularly weird (to use a mild term) to be receiving missives about how to wash my hands before the service and sanitise them before touching the wafer, and how to wash the chalice after the service, while we were reading our way through chapter 6 of St John's Gospel, which includes his teaching on Holy Communion itself.  And having finished that, I return to St Mark to find this argument about washing our hands before receiving food!

Perhaps the fundamental error the Pharisees of all generations make is to forget that the Law is given for our good; it is given so that we may live long and well in our own land.  It is to guide us along the way, not trip us up every time we stray.  God gave the people the Law out of love for the people; and Jesus gives us his teaching for the same reason.  Parents love your children and care for them to the best of your ability.  That's what our Law should be understood to mean, surely.  Leave it to the Pharisees among us to split hairs over what that means in each and every particular case.

And when we come to Communion, let us remember that it is given for our spiritual health and well-being, and stop obsessing over whether we dip the wafer, drink from the cup, or receive only the wafer.  It's the gift that matters; everything else is wrapping.

On a par with the cat in the cage.

Putting Theory into Practice

Texts: Isaiah 35:4-7a; James 2:1-17; Mark 7:24-37

Last week we got the theory – this week we see the theory being worked out in practice.  This whole chapter 7 of St Mark's gospel is about the division between Jews and Gentiles – Israel on the one hand, and everyone else on the other.  That attitude is not peculiar to the Jews, of course.  I have a copy of a very old map, which claims to be based on "divers explorations and discoverations of English and foreigners in recent times".  My Grandmother was slightly more broad-minded than that.  She used to talk of "British and foreigners".  And I remember a former colleague who assured me that people were either Ngati Porou or strangers; for him that was the important distinction – not Maori and Pakeha.

So the fundamental starting point for Jewish belief was that they had been especially called by God; and it was necessary for them to remain separate and distinct as a people.  There was to be no intermarriage with Gentiles – no social mixing – and no eating together.  And whenever that separation was threatened, those who were most zealous for the house of Israel became ever more insistent on those marks of the distinct Jewish way of life, including, of course, the dietary code and all the ritual that surrounded the eating of a meal.  We saw all that last week, when the Pharisees asked Jesus why his disciples did not observe the correct ritual practices relating to hand-washing.  That argument came to an end with Jesus seeming to abolish the dietary code altogether: he insisted that it is not what we eat that makes us unclean, but the thoughts of our hearts.

And that posed a great difficulty for at least two of our gospel writers, St Mark and St Matthew.  (It's interesting that neither St Luke nor St John has this story.)  The difficulty for them is that they were writing their gospels to prove that Jesus was the long-awaited Messiah; and every good Jew knew that according to their Scriptures the Messiah would come to the House of Israel, not to the world at large.  He would bring redemption (salvation) to the House of Israel.  It's true that from the time of Isaiah onwards there was a recognition that this would somehow be good news to the Gentiles as well, but it wasn't always clear quite how this would work out in practice, and it didn't really matter.  What mattered to the Jewish believers was that the Messiah would come and redeem Israel.

There's the problem for St Mark and St Matthew.  How is it to be explained that, by their time, the Christian gospel was being accepted by Gentiles far more readily than by Jews?  How were they to record Jesus' own interactions with Gentiles, if he was the Messiah and had been sent only to the House of Israel?  We can see their answer to that problem in this fascinating and disturbing story of the Canaanite (or Syro-Phoenician) woman this morning.

As I said earlier in the year, when St Mark tells us the geographical location of a story we need to take note; because what he is usually doing is to tell us whether the story is set in Jewish or Gentile country.  So both these episodes today are set in Gentile country, the first in Tyre, in the Phoenician hills (modern day Lebanon), and the second in the Decapolis on the eastern side of the Lake.  In the first story St Mark is at great pains to spell out that the woman who comes to Jesus is a Gentile: he says she "was a Greek, born in Syrian Phoenicia" (which is also very interesting, given the Syrian influence in Lebanon to this day!). 

As usual, St Mark cuts straight to the chase.  He leaves out the important preliminary that St Matthew puts in.  According to St Matthew, Jesus' first response is to ignore her: he has nothing to say to the Gentiles.  Then the disciples join in, suggesting that he should tell her to go away.  Then Jesus spells it out: "I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel."  Only after that does St Matthew give us the sharp thrust and counter-thrust that St Mark has in his version.  In both versions Jesus uses the clear insult: Gentiles are dogs.  Even today, to call someone a dog in the Middle East is grossly insulting.

And down through the ages Christians have been embarrassed by this text, which seems to show Jesus in such a harsh light; and Bible commentators have gone to very inventive lengths to explain it away.  My favourite is the one who claimed that the word Jesus used was not "dog" but "doggie", which might soften the insult a bit but at the cost of making Jesus sound condescending if not plain barmy!  The more favoured approach is to suggest that Jesus is simply testing this woman's faith, but there is nothing in either text to support that approach.

More likely, this is the way St Mark and St Matthew wish to show that Jesus' starting-point, as the Messiah, is with the Jews, and only after that is his mission to the Gentiles as well.  And, of course, the basis for the Gentiles to come to him is faith.  As St Paul puts it, salvation is for all, the Jews first and then the Gentiles.  After all, St Mark has Jesus say, "First, let the children eat all they want", the implication being that after the children have eaten others may eat, too.

However, the really important thing about the way this story is told is that it gives a strong hint that Jesus' understanding of his mission as Messiah was growing as he went along.  And, what a wonderfully liberating story it is for women!  A bunch of men have been to see Jesus over the behaviour of his disciples and he has routed them in argument.  Now this lone, desperate Gentile mother has come to him and apparently won him over.  Next time anyone tries to tell you the Scriptures are hopelessly patriarchal and anti-women, rub their nose in this story – either version will do!

St Mark follows this story with another healing story, this time of a man who is deaf and unable to speak easily.  Again it is a Gentile, and that may be one reason why St Mark spells out the procedural details involved in the healing.  Jesus touches the man, which would make him ritualistically unclean.  Probably, this is also about proving Jesus is the Messiah because much of the language in this story is taken from Isaiah's messianic prophesies, including the one we have in our first reading this morning.  Jesus the Messiah casts out demons, heals the deaf and empowers the mute to speak again.

And we should note that the hearing is healed first.  Only when the man can hear properly is he able to speak plainly.  That's probably to be understood on the spiritual, as well as the physical, level.  Only when we have heard God speak, should we presume to say anything.  Again, Jesus urges the crowd to keep this to themselves, and of course they take no notice.  The problem of his fame and popularity getting in the way of his ministry is a common theme in St Mark's gospel.

So we have had the theory and now the practice, and that gets me to one of my favourite authors of the Bible, St James.  If there was a prize for the clearest piece of Scripture his letter would bolt in!  To him it's all very simple.  Don't play favourites.  Minister to the needy.  Walk the talk.  Now get on with it.  No need for conferences and seminars and mission statements and all the rest of it; just do it. Despite his critics, St James does not deny that faith in Christ is essential.  What he says is that true faith is manifested in action.  It is not enough to believe that the hungry should be fed; we must actually feed the hungry.    As he puts it, "faith by itself, if not accompanied by action, is dead".

And no amount of hand-washing will make any difference to that.

Prepare to be Unpopular

Texts: Ezekiel 2:1-6; 2 Corinthians 12:2-10; Mark 6:14-29

I've mentioned from time to time that a friend of mine is doing some scholarly work on the theological implications of the holocaust.  He sends me some drafts and I send back some comments, and so on; and one of the things I have urged him to do is to think about the holocaust in terms of the exile to Babylon.  We think of the holocaust as being uniquely horrific, in part, because it took place in living memory – it's part of modern history – the wounds from it are still very raw.  Think of the furore that ensues whenever any prominent person casts doubts on the holocaust.  Would there be the same hue and cry if an historian doubted that the exile to Babylon took place?

But if we place ourselves back at the time of the exile – if we put ourselves in the shoes of the Jews of that time – would it have seemed any less terrible than the holocaust seems to us today?  What could be worse than your capital city destroyed, your temple pillaged and left in ruins, and your people – those who had survived the siege and then the slaughter that followed defeat – carted off as prisoners by the invading army?  Wouldn't it have raised some of the same questions about the providence of God for those people as the holocaust does for the people of today?

And here's where things get worse.  Suppose a prophet were to arise in Israel today and started to tell the people that the holocaust was all God's doing, and they deserved it because of their disobedience to God's Law  How would that go down?  But that's exactly what happened at the time of the exile – not after it was all over and the remaining exiles had been set free – but while the exile was still in force.  That's precisely what we are dealing with in our first lesson this morning.  Although scholars can't agree on the exact dating of this episode, because the dates given don't exactly add up, it is clear that Ezekiel's vision and call came to him in Babylon – in exile.  And his calling was to do exactly what I have just been talking about.

He was to tell the exiles that they had it coming to them – that it was God's way of punishing them for their disobedience.  No words of comfort or reassurance here.  No words of regret.  No words of hope.  Just blunt words of condemnation and a call to repent.  And I say it again, to get some idea of the force of these words, transpose them to the context of the holocaust – it doesn't bear thinking about, does it?  Yet this was Ezekiel's calling, and the message he was to preach.

No wonder he was warned that the task would not be easy!  He was told that the people were stubborn and rebellious – perhaps they were – but wouldn't they have some grounds for it?  Might they not be wondering where their God was when the Babylonians came calling?  Don't we often feel most like questioning God when something has gone disastrously wrong?  We can't match Job's eloquence, but we understand his feelings!

However, we have started Ezekiel's story in the wrong place today.  We have literally started in chapter 2, with him lying face down in the dirt.  We need to remember why he is lying face down in the dirt.  He is lying face down in the dirt because he has just received the most amazing vision of the glory of God – not in the temple where Isaiah received his – but there in exile in Babylon!  The God of Israel has not stayed behind weeping over the rubble that was once his holy resting place; but has gone with his people into exile.  That's the wonderful news – the good news – that is given first to Ezekiel.

And what does that remind us of as Christians?  The resurrection appearances of the risen Christ, doesn't it?  All was defeat and hopelessness on Good Friday – where was God when this terrible thing happened – when our enemies prevailed?  Has he abandoned us?  No, here he is – he has raised Jesus up – put him back on his feet by the same Spirit that lifted Ezekiel back to his feet.  That's what makes the good news good – not that all opposition has been vanquished – not that everybody is now a believer – but that belief in God is once again made possible.  Ezekiel saw God and believed despite the exile and all the terrible suffering associated with it; Mary Magdalene and the disciples saw the Risen Christ and believed, despite the terrible suffering that reached it's conclusion on the cross on Good Friday.

With that confidence in God, Ezekiel was able to carry out his mission to his fellow exiles, to call them to repent, to call them to turn back to God.  And the same is true of the Christian message.  At the time of Christ the people had reason to feel sorry for themselves.  They were in their own land, of course, but under foreign domination.  In a real sense, they felt exiled from God.  Yet when that great prophet, John the Baptist, appeared he brought no word of comfort or reassurance.  He brought the same message Ezekiel brought; repent, turn back to God.  Was his task any easier than Ezekiel's?  Were not the people of his time every bit as stubborn and rebellious as those of Ezekiel's time?  Jesus found them so.

And so did St Paul; and when we think of him, suddenly we hear those echoes again of that earlier story of Ezekiel.  Like Ezekiel, St Paul finds himself face down in the dirt; like him, he hears a voice calling upon him to get up and get going.  Like him he is to go to forth and proclaim God's message.  And like him, he will find himself facing every conceivable form of hostility and opposition.  But he never wavers, because he has seen the Lord, he has heard him, and so his faith is made strong.  As the God of Israel was with Ezekiel in Babylon, so he is with Paul in Corinth and all the other Gentile, unbelieving places in which Paul finds himself.

And the pattern is the same in the gospel reading.  First comes Jesus, who builds up the faith of the disciples in him; and then he sends them out into the disbelieving world, knowing that they too will face hostility and opposition.  They do their best and meet with some success, but something is missing.  The Spirit has not yet come upon them; they have not yet been clothed with power from on high.  They have not yet seen the vision of one like a Son of Man raised up.  But when they have – when they have seen the risen Christ – when they have been empowered from on high by the Holy Spirit at Pentecost – they are unstoppable.

And they have one great advantage over Ezekiel.  The exile is finally over for ever.  In Christ, God was reconciling himself to the world.  That's how St Paul put it.  He might just as easily have put it in terms of the restoration, the return of the exiles to the holy land.  We are no longer estranged from God.  We have been set free to come home.

That's the message the Church has been given to proclaim to the stubborn and rebellious people of our time.  Of course, we face hostility and opposition – at least, we would do if we were true to our calling.

But compared to Ezekiel, we've got it easy.

Hard Line on Holy Communion

Texts: Proverbs 9:1-6; Ephesians 5:15-20; John 6:51-58

We are now on the fourth leg of our journey through chapter 6 of St John's Gospel, and we have covered a lot of ground.  When we started out four weeks ago we did so with one of the best-known and best-loved miracles, the Feeding of the Five Thousand.  That was a good, comfortable place to start.  Even if we have a little 21^st century voice whispering in the back of our minds, "you don't believe in miracles, do you?" we can still listen to the text and feel warm about it.  It doesn't really challenge us.

On the same Sunday, we also had the story of Jesus walking across the lake to catch up with the disciples in their boat.  Again, we may not be anxious to defend the veracity of the story with some of our secular-minded friends, but safe within our places of worship where most of us either believe the story or at least keep our disbelief to ourselves, the story is also rather nice in a safe sort of way.  It doesn't challenge us.  It doesn't suggest that as followers of Christ we ought to be able to walk across the waters as he did.

But from that feel-good start, things have begun to get more difficult as the journey through this chapter has continued.  When Jesus got back to Capernaum and started teaching in the synagogue the mood started to change.  You might remember that the crowd started off with the practical issue of how on earth Jesus had managed to get back across the lake without a boat.  They were intrigued, bewildered, genuinely seeking an explanation of the mystery.  What they got was a bit of a telling off from Jesus who questioned their motives for following him.  They didn't really want to hear his teaching: what they wanted was for him to heal their sick and feed their hungry.

From there Jesus started talking to them about the bread of heaven, with its echoes of the miraculous feeding of the Israelites in the wilderness when manna came down from heaven.  But his understanding of all that was very different from theirs.  Moses did not feed them in the wilderness; the manna came down from heaven.  And now, in the same way, he had come down from heaven as the new Bread of Heaven.  Again, their initial response to this was one of bewilderment; what on earth is he talking about?  He's a local, one of us: his parents live here in the town.  How can he claim to have come down from heaven, and why does he call himself "bread"?

But far from trying to calm them down by explaining that he was talking figuratively Jesus ploughed on; and last week he really let the cat out of the bag with the saying that starts today's passage: I am the living bread that came down from heaven.  Whoever eats of this bread will live for ever.  This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.  We can surely understand the consternation that such a saying would have caused at that time.

So what was this all about?  I said last week that there is clear evidence that the community of faith from which St John's Gospel emerged was split, with many members walking out; and we'll see part of that evidence next week.  I also said that one of the major issues over which the split occurred was the claim that Jesus was divine.  The many references to Jesus coming down from heaven or from the Father were code for that very claim; that in some way or other Jesus was God in human flesh, or God incarnate as we might put it today.  Part of the problem there was caused by misunderstanding: many Jews thought the claim was that Jesus was "also God", in the sense that there were now two gods.  That was the issue we explored last week.

This week we have the second issue, that of the Eucharist.  There was a time when people tried to argue that this passage is not about the Eucharist, but thankfully that argument seems to have died a natural death.  There are at least two principal reasons for arguing that it is about the Eucharist.  First, as I said last week, St John does not include the institution of the Eucharist in his account of the Last Supper, as the other three gospels do.  If today's passage is not about the Eucharist, then there is no mention of it in this gospel, which seems incredible.  We know from St Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians that the practice was already formalised in the church in Corinth by 50AD; why would St John not know about it 40 years later?

The second reason is even more straightforward.  If this passage is not about the Eucharist, what on earth is it about?  In what other way are we to understand Jesus telling his followers to eat his flesh and drink his blood?

So it's about the Eucharist.  That's the easy bit to say, but what this passage says about the Eucharist is very far from easy, and I always approach it with some trepidation because I have upset more people preaching on this passage than on any other I can think of.  This is the problem.  According to this passage, the Eucharist is essential to eternal life.  Think about that for a moment; and think about its implications.

It would be easy for us, given the classic words of administration in our Eucharistic liturgies, to look upon the Eucharist purely in terms of remembrance, rather akin to laying a wreath at the War Memorial on Anzac Day, something we do simply to bring Jesus to mind.  But that's not the teaching of the Church, and it's certainly not the teaching of St John.  We believe that the act of receiving Communion is "efficacious", to use a technical word.  Something happens to us in and through Communion, just as something happens to us in and through baptism.  In baptism we receive the gift of the Holy Spirit; in the Eucharist we receive the gift of eternal life.  That's what this passage this morning is saying.

Eternal life is that which survives death.  If we do not have eternal life we perish, we do not survive death.  That's what this gospel is talking about in the famous verse, 3:16: "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life."  For some reason everybody loves that verse and never seems to be troubled by it.  Nobody has ever said to me, "Does that mean that non-believers perish and do not have eternal life no matter how 'good' they are?"  And yet, the answer is "yes", isn't it?  The clear implication of the much-loved verse 3:16 is that only Christian believers have eternal life.  But that doesn't seem to worry people, and I think the reason for that is that it seems to allow some wriggle room.  It seems to allow us to say of our own loved ones, well, they are Christians in God's eyes because they are good people, even if they don't think of themselves as Christians.  I have lost count of the number of times someone has told me that there is no doubt that X has gone to heaven because he/she was such a good person.  That's not the teaching of Scripture, but it's what many Christians prefer to believe; and perhaps there is an element of vagueness in that verse that allows us to avoid taking it too seriously.

But now we come to this passage from St John and we find no such wriggle room.  Here are verses 53 and 54: Jesus said to them, "I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.  Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day."  And there's the problem; that's why this passage has often got me into trouble.  Because now we are dealing with observable facts: either somebody does receive Communion, or they do not.  And if they do not, they do not have eternal life.  On death, they perish.

That is not a palatable teaching today; and as we shall see next week it was no more acceptable in St John's community of faith.  In the meantime we do well to ponder it and pray about it.  If St John has got it right, there are people we need to warn in our closest circles.