The Return of Innocence

Texts: Acts 4:32-35; 1 John 1:1-2:2; John 20:19-31

Those many people today who want to pooh-pooh our Christian faith make the Resurrection of Christ their particular target.  Even people who are reasonably sympathetic towards the Christian tradition, such as Ian Harris, also take aim at the Resurrection story.  They are right to do so.  It all depends on the Resurrection.  If Christ was raised from the dead, as the Church has always insisted from the very beginning, then our critics are wrong and they need to sort themselves out.  If he was not raised from the dead, then we are wrong and it's time to stop fantasising and grow up.  There is no Christian faith without the Resurrection of Christ.  Followers and critics alike can agree on that.

But where the critics go wrong – and Ian Harris has repeated the mistake in his latest column in the ODT – is in their apparent belief that the Risen Christ appeared only to the believers, and that therefore their witness can be discredited.  That simply isn't the case, and it isn't the case for a number of reasons.

The first reason we call St Paul.  In no sense could he be described as a believer when he was en route to Damascus.  With great respect to Mary Magdalene, and all the other witnesses whose testimony we have in our gospels, my prime witness to the resurrection is always St Paul.  Ian Harris talks about the joy and surprise the disciples experienced when they realised that the vision and excitement generated in them by Jesus was still there after his death.  That, he says, is what they meant by Jesus rising again; he rose again in their hearts and minds, and their renewed dedication to his way of life.  Well, we'll come to the disciples in a moment; but how are we to explain all this in terms of St Paul?  He didn't know Jesus, and he certainly did not share his vision and excitement.  Yet his life was transformed from persecutor to apostle by something that happened to him on the road to Damascus.

Ian Harris "explains" Easter in terms of a powerful religious myth.  But even he never goes so far to claim that on the road to Damascus St Paul was knocked flat on his back and temporarily blinded by a powerful religious myth!  So, at the very least we can say that the argument that the Risen Christ only appeared to believers is refuted by his appearance to St Paul.

But we can say a lot more than that, as our gospel readings last Sunday and this Sunday make clear.  When the Risen Christ appeared to Mary at the tomb, and when the Risen Christ appeared to the apostles on Easter night, they were no longer believers!  They were non-believers.  As we saw last week, confronted with the fact that the tomb was empty Mary assumed that somebody had removed Jesus' dead body.  Confronted by the Risen Christ, she did not recognise him but thought he must be the gardener and that he had removed the body!  Does that sound like a believer?  And, of course, the second part of our gospel reading this morning emphasises that Thomas was completely unconvinced, even by the excited testimony of his fellow apostles.

So I would say that the Risen Christ appears to those who did not believe in the resurrection, and had to be convinced by him before they could believe.  He appeared, in other words, to non-believers.

But that's only a small part of the importance of these stories.  The more important part is that the Risen Christ appeared to the guilty.  There is what Rowan Williams calls a resurrection pattern in the Scriptures, repeated over and over again.  The Risen Christ comes to his guilty disciples, all of whom have failed the test.  When the Risen Christ comes to St Paul he comes to the one guilty of persecuting the Church.  When Peter preaches in Jerusalem he goes out of his way to remind his audience that they were guilty of putting Jesus to death.  Whatever else the resurrection stories are about, they are about confronting the guilty.

And we saw a very vivid illustration of that in the media this week.  A very interesting and valuable innovation in our criminal courts in recent years has been the use of victim impact reports, where, following conviction, the guilty person must hear what impact the offending had on the victim.  It gives the victim the right to have his or her voice heard; and it ensures that whatever sentence is passed, the full weight of the offending is acknowledged.  Only when that is done, can the court, the offender and the public address the future.  The offender may deserve a second chance, but that does not lessen the enormity of the offence.

Jesus appears to the guilty as the innocent victim, and one of the first things he does is to show them his wounds – "his hands and his side", as St John puts it.  Traditionally, that is taken as producing I.D., proving it really is him.  But it occurred to me this week, after watching the news headlines from the Tony Veitch case, that what we have in this gospel account can also be understood as Jesus' victim impact report.  "Look at me.  Look how I have suffered.  Look what you have done to me."

Now such a confrontation can lead to three responses.  One may be to reject it.  It wasn't me; I was provoked, I was under duress, I was saving my own skin, I was following orders.  Tony Veitch said "That wasn't me.  I'm not like that.  I needed to understand how I was driven to it."  And that approach, or something similar, may well have occurred to some of these apostles hiding behind closed doors.

Or we might be so overwhelmed with guilt that it destroys us.  We can't live with it.  Judas is the classic example of that.  Suicide was for him the only option.  Neither of those options is the one offered by the Risen Christ to those he now confronts.  He offers them peace; not amnesia, not a false innocence, nor a crippling guilt.  But peace.  He says it twice.  Peace that brings forgiveness and acceptance; he accepts them as they are, weak and guilty, and so they can accept themselves as they are.  And as weak and guilty people they can go out into the world and confront other weak and guilty people with the extraordinary truth that they are acceptable to God despite their weakness and guilt.  So the Risen Christ sends them out into the world with a special mission of forgiveness.

I want to end this morning with this little glimpse of the community of faith as we have it in our first lesson, from the Book of Acts.  St Paul's transformation from persecutor to apostle was astonishing, to say the least.  Almost as astonishing is the transformation of this bunch of people, whose leaders cut and ran when the crunch came.  Remember what they were like immediately before the arrest and crucifixion: abusing the woman who anointed Jesus at Bethany; squabbling among themselves for pride of place in the coming kingdom; boasting about their undying loyalty to Jesus, and so on.  Then one of them betrayed him, one denied even knowing him, and all of them ran for their lives and were in hiding behind locked doors on the night of the resurrection.

Yet here they are "one in heart and mind", sharing their possessions.  And at the centre of this little community of faith we see the apostles, those weak and guilty but forgiven men, continuing to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus.  There in those transformed lives is all the evidence we need for the resurrection, whatever our critics might want to say.

That's why (if you look at the next two verses) a Cypriot Levite called Joseph, but known to Christian history as St Barnabas, sold a field and denoted the proceeds to the church.  And that's why we're sitting in this lovely little church dedicated to his name.  His name means, Son of Encouragement.  Let us be encouraged!  Amen.

This is the Truth!

Texts: Acts 10:34-43; 1 Corinthians 15:1-11; John 20:1-18

One of the most important and helpful things we do in the Church around this time of the year is to set aside all other readings, and the sermon, and read in its entirety the Passion story as we have it in one of our gospels.  All of the various episodes in the story are important, and most of them are familiar to us, even if we can never quite remember which bit comes from which gospel.  But it's when we hear the whole account at one hit, as it were, that its full extraordinary power makes itself felt.

Perhaps the usual practice is to have the story read on Passion Sunday, the Sunday before Palm Sunday, two weeks before Easter.  But it has been my practice to have it read on Palm Sunday.  There is a cost to that; it means that we tend to overlook the Triumphant Entry into Jerusalem, and all that that entails; but I think the cost is worth paying because it sets out for us the way to the cross that we walk in Holy Week.  It enables us then to focus on a part of the story on Maundy Thursday, and another part on Good Friday, without losing sight of the fact that it is all one story that we are involved in.  So last Sunday, Palm Sunday, we had read to us the whole Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ according to St Mark.

That whole story then was in our minds and our memories – in the air we breathed in the Church - this week as we followed Jesus to the Cross and to the tomb.  And the story ended there, in death, in silence, as we were reminded in our services on Maundy Thursday and Good Friday.  We were out of words; there was nothing more to be said.  We went home in silence and sadness.  And it's because we do that – because with the Church we wait through Holy Saturday in sadness and silence – we can enter into the shock and awe of today's discovery that the tomb – against all odds and expectations – is empty!

And that is the truth the Church proclaims today.  "Ah," said Pilate to Jesus, "but what is truth?"  How modern Pilate sounds today when he asks that question!  Of course, we don't know how he asked that question.  It seems to depend on the reader!  Was he sneering when he said it?  Was he just being cynical?  Was it a genuine inquiry?  Or was he just being modern – refusing to make a personal commitment to any particular truth?  Did he believe there are any number of truths, all of which are equally valid?  That's the modern view, or perhaps I should sound clever and say it's the post-modern view.  Whatever it is, it's complete nonsense, and today of all days we need to affirm that certain things are true.  And one of those is that today, Easter morning, the tomb is empty!

One of the things that I have tried to do at regular intervals during my ministry is to re-read the order of service we use for the ordination of priests.  And there is a very interesting little bit in there that is especially important on Easter Day.  It comes in a series of questions put by the Bishop and answered by the candidate for priesthood.  The Bishop, having asked about the candidate's view of the Scriptures, now asks this:

Will you set forth the doctrines of the faith as this Church has received them?  To which the candidate is expected to reply:

Yes, I will.  My duty and my joy will be to witness to Christ crucified and risen.

There are two things in particular about that little interchange that I want to draw to your attention.  The first is that important phrase "the doctrines of the faith as this Church has received them".  We are not called to think of new ideas each year, to stay relevant or something, to get into the twenty-first century or whatever; nor are we called to proclaim our own truths as individual priests.  We are called to proclaim what we ourselves have received.  That's what it means when we say that we stand within a tradition, within a community of faith; and that tradition, that community of faith, dates back to the discovery that first Easter morning that the tomb is empty.

For the second thing I want to point out in that brief interchange between the Bishop and the candidate for ordination is found in the candidate's answer.  Remember that the Bishop has asked about "the doctrines", plural; and, of course, we have a lot of those.  We might suppose that he has in mind the Doctrine of the Incarnation, or the Doctrine of the Trinity; always fun for a Bishop who wants to test out a nervous candidate for confirmation!  But the reply by the candidate does not mention either of those doctrines explicitly.  The candidate promises, not to teach the Doctrine of the Trinity, but to "witness to Christ crucified and risen".

In other words, the nub of all the doctrines of the faith as this Church has received them is Christ crucified and risen.  The phrase, of course, comes from St Paul, and today we draw on his justly famous writing on the resurrection, found in 1 Corinthians 15.  We remember that as far as we know St Paul never met Jesus of Nazareth, as the other apostles knew him.  He met the Risen Christ, and spent the rest of his life bearing "witness to Christ crucified and risen".  And he starts by making it clear that the resurrection of Jesus is a well-attested fact.  He is not talking about his own extraordinary experience alone, as if it was entirely unique: rather he emphasises that he was merely one of over 500 people who experienced an encounter with the Risen Christ; some of which are recorded in the gospels.

But notice what else he says.  He does not say that he has reflected on all these experiences, and this is his suggestion as to what they all mean.  He says: I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand.  And then he goes on to say this: For what I received, I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures... and then he lists the various people to whom the Risen Christ appeared.

And there we have that word "receive": from the very beginning, remembering that St Paul is writing to the Corinthians within 20 years of Christ's death, we have a clear tradition, clear doctrine, that he has already received and is passing on to them.

Our second reading affords the same evidence of this foundation tradition, for it contains one of the earliest sermons from the same apostolic period.  Peter is teaching some new converts and gives a sort of "story so far" summary to them.  He includes this: "They killed him by hanging him on a tree, but God raised him from the dead and caused him to be seen."  Long before the gospels were written, Peter and Paul and the other apostles were passing on the doctrines of the faith as this Church has received them, so that today we can say with them it is our duty and our joy to witness to Christ crucified and risen.

And it all began because of the truth of Easter Day.  To be honest, part of today's gospel reading is a bit tedious and contrived.  The author is at pains to try to establish the primacy of the other disciple over Peter; and so we have these rather boyish and silly details about who ran the fastest, who got there first, who saw what and who understood most.  But the essential details are there.  Above all, no one expected what had happened.  Mary Magdalene had witnessed the crucifixion and the burial.  Confronted by the shock of the empty tomb she wailed, not with joy at the thought of the resurrection because such a thought never crossed her mind.  She cried in frustration because the body had been taken away and she now had no place to grieve.

Then the Good Shepherd who calls each one of his sheep by name called her name, and she knew his voice.  The rest, as we say, is history.

And I say, it is true.  Christ is risen!  Alleluia!

Truth and Reconciliation

Texts: Acts 3:12-19; 1 John 3:1-7; Luke 24:36b-48

I talked last week about what Rowan Williams has called "the pattern of resurrection appearances", in which, as he points out, the Risen Christ appears to the guilty.  He appears to his own hand-picked disciples who were guilty of abandoning him when the crunch came.  He appeared to Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus, who was guilty of persecuting Christ's followers (and therefore Christ himself).  And when Peter and the other disciples begin their public preaching, they start by reminding their audience that they, too, are responsible for having Jesus put to death.

But what we might expect to follow never does.  We expect condemnation: we expect the one who was murdered to demand, at the very least, an apology, if not retribution.  But we find no hint of such an attitude in the resurrection stories.  The guilty are confronted with their guilt, but then they are encouraged to move on.  The disciples are commissioned for ministry.  Saul is sent to a particular house where he will be told what to do.  Peter tells his audience to repent and be baptised.  At the heart of these stories – at the heart of Easter – is not revenge, punishment, getting even, or anything of that kind.  At the heart of Easter is truth and reconciliation.

And this last week has been a good time to ponder that phrase as I continued to reflect on these resurrection stories in the light of three particular things.  First, Trish and I joined with a huge gathering in St John's, Roslyn for the funeral of our friend, Richard Sutton.  Richard was a highly distinguished lawyer, retiring as Dean of the Faculty of Law here in Dunedin.  Like all lawyers, Richard loved to argue; but unlike many lawyers he did so without raising his voice or wagging his finger, and without anything less than complete respect for those on the other side of the argument.  Richard was also a fine chess player, having won the New Zealand championship no less than three times and gaining the status of international master.  He was competitive and enjoyed winning.  Yet if his defeated opponent ever asked for advice Richard would immediately give it.  In the tribute from the chess community it was noted that Richard was equally gracious whether he won or not.

He was, said, a close friend, "irenic".  That's an unusual word today; and I don't think I have ever before heard it used in a eulogy.  But it exactly fits Richard – he was a man of peace.  He sought always the truth of any matter he was involved in, but he always finished an argument reconciled with his opponents.

It was fitting that Richard's funeral was on St George's Day, as he was English by birth; but to me it was even more fitting that his funeral coincided with the South African General Elections.  Of course, there is still a lot wrong with that country.  There is an HIV epidemic, aggravated by the previous president's blind refusal to acknowledge it.  There is rampant crime, a huge gap between rich and poor, and corruption in the highest places in the land.

But South Africa is also the country that gave the world the wonderful example of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, whose guiding spirit, of course, was that marvellous servant of the Church, Archbishop Tutu.  That whole exercise was about uncovering the dark deeds of the Apartheid Years, bringing them into the light, confronting the guilty with their guilt, and then promoting reconciliation between the offenders and their victims.  We have all marvelled at the grace and forgiveness shown by Nelson Mandela; but equally impressive is the way in which his example has flowed out into the country through the work of that Commission.  No one has been punished by the Commission; they have been confronted with their guilt, and then invited to be part of the new community.  That's exactly the resurrection pattern Rowan Williams talks about.  It is Easter in action.

And all this has prompted me to ponder the third event this week, our own Anzac Day commemoration.  What's that about?  How does that fit with the Easter story?  We talk about Anzac Day "services", but are they religious services, or are they something else?  And are they about truth and reconciliation or not?  Over the years I have been asked to speak at some Anzac services, to lead the prayers or to give a blessing at others; and I have never been quite sure what is and what is not okay to say on such occasions.  Are they Christian services or not?  Are they occasions for telling the truth – for acknowledging before God our own guilt in waging war – for facing our guilt and being reconciled with our enemies or not?

I still don't know.  But one year in Kawhia I took a big risk.  I said it was time to strip our Anzac commemorations of the religious language we have wrapped around it.  I said I thought it was quite wrong to say of our fallen that they had laid down their lives for their country.  They did no such thing.  In the vast majority of cases they had their lives taken from them by the cruelties of war.  They did not want to die, for their country or otherwise.  They hoped to return home alive.  Most of them who died had the misfortune to be in the wrong place at the wrong time; they were aboard a ship that was sunk, an aircraft that was shot down, or in the line of fire when a bullet came their way.  When we use our religious language, when we talk of such men and women laying down their lives, we are denying them the truth of their deaths.  They were murdered by their enemies, just as Jesus was murdered by his, even though he did choose to die rather than escape or fight back.

And the same is true of those on the other side.  The Allies murdered their enemies.  Our people bombed men, women and children in Dresden and Tokyo, and of course in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, just as surely as our enemies bombed London and Coventry, Plymouth and Sheffield.  But after the war, only one side was held to account; the winners put the losers on trial.  No one can deny the guilt of those who were convicted at Nuremberg or Tokyo; but no one can assert the innocence of those who bombed the great cities of Germany and Japan.   Are we yet ready to acknowledge our guilt on Anzac Day or any other?

Jesus put no one on trial.  He came back to the guilty, showed them the damage that had been done to his hands and feet, the scars of the war they had waged against him, and said, "Peace be with you".  He is the true irenic man whose example our friend Richard followed so faithfully.  He is the author of all truth and reconciliation, whose example the great leaders of South Africa, Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Tutu, followed so faithfully.   He is our Lord and our God who says to his followers, "Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you that you may be children of your Father in heaven", which, of course, is precisely what St John said we are in our second lesson.

When we exchange the Peace, all this is what should be in our hearts and our minds as we do so; for the Risen Christ is among us as surely as he was among those guilty apostles that first Easter night.  He is not interested in whether or not our hands are cold.  He wants to know only that our hearts are warm, towards him and to one another.

He seeks truth and reconciliation here in our midst today and every day.  Amen.  

The Importance of Tradition

Texts: Malachi 3:1-4; Hebrews 2:14-18; Luke 2:22-40

The first question we might want to ponder this morning is, why on earth did St Luke feel it necessary to include this story in his gospel?  None of the other gospel writers did, so why did St Luke?  We can see why St Matthew and St Luke decided to include the so-called birth narratives: people naturally started to ask for more background of Jesus of Nazareth.  Where did he spring from, at the age of 30?  Where was he born; who were his parents; what had he been doing all those years before he became a public figure?

It was very common in those days to attribute extraordinary births to great figures; and many scholars, even those of deep faith, have supposed that the birth stories were created by St Matthew and St Luke (or perhaps created by the early church and recorded by those authors) to fit the pattern, and to meet the expectation that a great prophet like Jesus must have had an extraordinary birth.

But St Luke takes it all a few steps further.  First of all, in verse 21, immediately before today's passage, he tells us that Jesus was named and circumcised on the 8^th day.  And we needed to know that because?  And now he goes on to tell us in considerable detail about this rite of purification and consecration.  He starts with a curious phrase, "the time of their purification", and in the context "their" seems to refer to Joseph as well as Mary.  There is no doubt that the law required the purification of the mother after childbirth, but nothing seems to suggest that this extended to the father as well.  Possibly St Luke means "Mary and Jesus", but it's not clear that the law required the child to be purified.

Be all that as it may, the Law prescribed a period of 40 days of purification after childbirth, so the infant Jesus is now (at least) 40 days old.  Joseph and Mary (says St Luke) took him to the Temple "to be consecrated to the Lord" – the requirement of the Law in respect of the firstborn male child.  The second requirement was to make a thank-offering, and different rates were prescribed according to the wealth of the parents: the "rich rate" was a lamb, the "poor rate" was a pair of doves or two young pigeons.  St Luke makes it clear that Mary and Joseph paid the poor rate.

Again we might ask, and we need to know all this because?  It may be that there was a dispute going on in the local church about whether or not Jesus had been a proper Jew, and all this detail was given as part of that argument.  But that's unlikely.  St Luke is the most Gentile-friendly of the gospel writers: if St Matthew, the teacher steeped in Jewish tradition, thought it unnecessary to describe all this it would be odd if St Luke felt the need to satisfy Jewish sensibilities on such minor details.

Much more likely is the idea that St Luke was showing how Jesus was the fulfilment of the first covenant, as well as the instigator of the new one.  All this detail reminds us of Abraham's covenant with God; circumcision is the mark of that covenant.  Those admitted to the covenant through circumcision are bound to follow the Law.  Hence St Luke seems to be saying there is no break with tradition here.  God hasn't started a brand new approach in Jesus; Jesus entered into the same covenant as all of us did, but it is he who is fulfilling it ready for the next stage of God's unfolding story.

This idea is picked up particularly in Simeon's speech of welcome.  He is an old prophet, and a man of wisdom and understanding, in a culture with a huge respect for advanced age.  He is described as "waiting for the consolation of Israel", a phrase taken from Isaiah and referring to the coming of the Messiah.  Simeon is well-versed in Scripture, and a man of faith.  He has believed in God's promises of redemption, and has been looking forward to the fulfilment of that promise.  He believes he has been promised by God that it would happen in his lifetime.  What's he doing there on this particular day?  Is it mere coincidence?  No, of course it isn't.  He has been led there by the Holy Spirit, and under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit he recognises in the infant Jesus the fulfilment of God's promises.

Also there is Anna, also of very great age, who had long been a widow and had dedicated herself to fasting and praying in the Temple.  She, too, recognises Jesus, gives thanks to God, and speaks "about the child to all who were looking forward to the redemption of Jerusalem" (there's that phrase again).

If we pause there we can see how brilliantly St Luke has composed this story.  He has reminded us of Abraham and the Law, and now he has set alongside all that the Prophets represented here by Simeon and Anna.  When else in the Scriptures do we find Jesus in the presence of representatives of the Law and the Prophets?  On Mount Tabor, at the time of his Transfiguration.  So the story looks ahead to the revelation of God's glory in Christ on that occasion; and that's strengthened by the language in Simeon's song ("a light for revelation to the Gentiles and glory to your people Israel").

Then, of course, the welcoming party is gender-balanced, as we would say today, represented by Simeon and Anna.  In Genesis we are told that God created humankind, "male and female he created them".  St Luke is reminding us that in Christ the new creation is for male and female, too.

Thirdly, and most obviously, the story directs our attention forward to Jesus' saving death on the cross.  Simeon announces Jesus' divisive role: "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."  Then he adds, ominously, to Mary: "And a sword will pierce your own soul, too", foreshadowing her agony at the foot of the cross – and, possibly, the sword piecing Jesus' body on the cross.

Above all, this story as framed by St Luke is Trinitarian.  The Son is consecrated to the Father in the presence of the Spirit.  But St Luke finishes with both feet planted firmly on earth.  "When Joseph and Mary had done all that was required by the Law of the Lord", they went home and got on with their lives.

We often hear today but the Church must get with it, must get into the 21^st century.  We must get rid of our fuddy-duddy ways, etc., etc., and there's some truth in all that.  But this story this morning tells us of the importance of knowing our history, of keeping our traditions and practices.  Last week as I read the baptismal liturgy in Holy Trinity I marvelled again at how much of all that is summarised in that liturgy.  In half a page we are reminded of creation, the covenant, the Exodus, and Jesus' baptism, death, resurrection and ascension.  St Luke has achieved a similar feat in the telling of this story this morning.

As we look back so we feed our hope for the future; as we look forward so we see God's ancient promises being fulfilled.  Yes, the Church must change; yes there is much that we can and must discard along the way.  But we must retain our stories, our liturgies, our Scriptures and our history.  They feed us and nourish us and build us up.  As we hear them over and over again, so, like Joseph and Mary, we marvel at what we are told, and store it up in our hearts, and ponder it.

In that way we, too, become presentable to God and consecrated to his service.  Amen.

 

Living in the Real World

Texts: Genesis 9:8-17; 1 Peter 3:18-22; Mark 1:9-15

I have spoken a lot about baptism in recent times, and today the readings raise another question: into what does baptism lead us?  That is particularly the issue that is addressed in our gospel passage this morning.  As soon as we think about the temptation of Christ we recall the story.  We know there were three specific temptations; we might be a bit hazy about the order – even the gospel accounts are not consistent in that respect – but we probably can recall what they are.  There's one about turning the stones into bread; another about bungee-jumping off a high place without a rope; and a third about assuming all political power over the world.

Except that St Mark either does not know there were three specific temptations, or has forgotten.  He gives us a typically terse but very interesting alternative account.  First of all, he links it even more closely than the others with the Jesus' baptism; and the linking agent, so to speak, is the Holy Spirit.  Jesus comes up out of the waters of baptism, he hears the voice from heaven proclaiming him as the Beloved Son of God, and he sees the Spirit descend on him like a dove.  And immediately, says St Mark, the Spirit drove Jesus out into the wilderness where he was tempted for 40 days.

So now we can begin our answer to the question, into what does baptism leads us?  We might be tempted sometimes to think that the answer is into a sort of improved version of Disneyland or Camelot, where all our problems have magically disappeared and everyone lives happily ever after.  That is the slap-happy gospel we sometimes hear preached by American televangelists.  Come to Jesus and all will be immediately put right in our lives.

The picture painted by St Mark is very different.  He says some to Jesus, be baptised, and enter with him into the real world, and he uses very powerful symbols to tell us the nature of the real world.  He says that in the wilderness Jesus was "with the wild animals".  Think about that expression for a moment and notice the feelings it engenders in you.  Do you feel like exclaiming, "Oh, how lovely!"  Perhaps you see a safari park, with David Attenborough pointing out how close the pride of lions is in that reassuring half-whisper he uses.

Or are you less of a romantic and more of a realist: do you get an immediate sensation of danger when you reflect on St Mark's expression?  Jesus was "with the wild animals".  I recently read a commentary on this gospel by a Jungian scholar who assured his readers that St Mark is using a classic symbol here; he said wild animals represent "of course" Jesus' emotions, his feelings as the full horror of his unique calling began to dawn on him in the wilderness.  Well, in your dreams, I thought as I read that account.

It may well be that the wild animals are intended to carry a symbolic meaning as well as the obvious one; but if that is so, I think it is far more likely that they represent the danger of chaos, of untamed nature, we might say.  If we think about the human predicament in general there are two major sources of threat to our existence.  One is natural disasters – earthquakes, storms, floods, etc.  The sheer raw power of these events is completely overwhelming – we are powerless to resist.  However much we might try to tell ourselves that we live in a safe environment, there can never be any guarantees.  Volcanoes erupt, the earth quakes and opens up, tsunamis cover whole islands, and fire razes whole communities.  I often think that those who try to make theological sense out of human evil ought to try doing the same with natural phenomena.  If God is the Creator of all things and God is all-loving and powerful, how is it that Creation itself is often so horribly destructive?  Answers on a postcard, please!

So Jesus is led into the wilderness representing the real world as it is estranged from God; and there he is in the company of "wild animals" representing all the threats of the natural world.  Secondly, says St Mark, Jesus is in the presence of Satan, the embodiment of evil.  Here is the twin threat to human existence; here we have the evil that works in and through us so that we might properly call it "human evil".  Think for a moment what the world would be like if there was no natural threat to our existence, and no human evil in the world.  We would be at peace – there would be no more fear, no more pain or suffering or death, exactly as the prophets have promised.  But that's not the world in which we live, and it is not the world into which we are lead by baptism.

Fortunately, St Mark assures us that Jesus is not only in the presence of untamed nature and incarnate evil.  He is also in the presence of angels who minister to him.  They represent, surely, the presence of God.  And there we have the complete picture of the life of faith.  Jesus is in the real world; he is in danger; he is in danger from natural phenomena and from incarnate evil.  But he is not alone.  He is guarded, looked after, ministered to, by God's angels, by God's providential care.  And that's surely the world into which we pass through baptism.  We are not plucked out of this dangerous world; nor is this dangerous world magically transformed.  We are given the promise that, no matter what, God is with us and is ministering to us.

Our temptation is to want more; to ask God to wipe out the threat of harm and evil.  Well, our first lesson reminds us that God had that very thing in mind at one stage, but relented.  The cost was too great, and he promised never to go down that track again.  In a lovely little touch in this morning's reading, God says that when he sees a rainbow he will remember his promise.  I wonder if we do the same.  When we see a rainbow do we focus only on its beauty?  Do we remember fairy stories about pots of gold, and all the rest of it?  Or do we remember that God has sworn never to give up on this world, no matter what?  Never to give up on us, no matter how far we might fall away from him?  That's the assurance we need to hang onto as we journey through Lent.

Which leaves this strange little passage from the First Letter of Peter.  Even the most confident Bible commentators seem to become a little less assertive when they get to this passage; and we're not helped by the fact that there is nothing else remotely like it in the New Testament.  The classic Jewish belief was that at death all people passed into a shadowy realm called Sheol, the purpose of which was never very clear; and no distinction seemed to be made between the righteous and the unrighteous.  One of the common pleas in the psalms was for a long life to put off passing into Sheol for as long as possible.  That belief was certainly undergoing revision during the last century or so before Christ; and this passage does seem to suggest that there was a special realm where the unrighteous were held, represented especially by the depraved human beings that were wiped out in the Flood.

So perhaps the Risen Christ was sent down into that realm to proclaim God's forgiveness even of them; in other words, to proclaim salvation for all.  That has a better tone to it in my ears than the suggestion that he went to show them what they had missed out on through their disobedience!  Anyway, Holy Saturday is traditionally the day for contemplating that particular mystery, so let's leave it for then.

In the meantime, let us continue our journey through Lent reflecting on our baptism and the salvation we have received through it.  The world remains a wilderness, inhabited by wild animals and other natural dangers, and by incarnate evil.  But we are not alone, and never will be.  Never again will the forces of destruction prevail.  That is the promise given to Noah and fulfilled in Christ.

Next time you see a rainbow remember this promise and give thanks.

 

 

Keeping the End in Sight

Texts: 2 Kings 5:1-14; 1 Corinthians 9:24-27; Mark 1:40-45

Once again the Scriptures have demonstrated their extraordinary ability to be timely!  When Vestry at our last meeting before Christmas decided 15 February would be the date of our parish AGM, none of us knew, or even gave a thought to, what Scriptures may have been set for this day.  And yet, here we are, on the day of our AGM, being given a series of reminders of the importance of keeping our eyes on the goal, the aim, the ends we have in mind as Christians and not to get too hung up on the means we use along the way.  Our places of worship, our styles of worship, in fact, all our religious practices, only have value if they bring us closer to God, deepen our faith and our relationship with God, and promote our healing, our wholeness, our salvation, in and through Jesus Christ our Healer, our Redeemer, and our Saviour.

I have given this sermon the title of "Keeping the End in Sight" because it appeals to my love of ambiguity, the power of words to say more than one thing at a time.  The word "End" is a classic example.  Remember how, in the good old days, authors believed their readers were so dumb that they always wrote at the end of their stories "The End", so we would know that the book had finished?  The same was true of films in those days, too, I seem to remember.  At the end of the film, those words would appear, meaning that the film had finished and you had a maximum of 15 seconds to leave the cinema before the National Anthem started!

So one meaning of "End" is "Finished".  "This is the end of an era" we often say, unless we have given up clichés for Lent or something.  Then there's "The End (of the world) is Nigh".  And thinking of that, I can't resist re-telling the story of our friend, Bishop Richard Randerson, who was once asked by some fundamentalist parish nominators if he was a "pre-millennialist or a "post-millenniallist", which has something to do with whether Christ's return is preceded by 1000 years of tribulation, or inaugurates 1000 years of heavenly rule, or something.  Richard said he was neither: he was a "pan-millennialist", which meant that if we didn't get hung up on such issues everything would pan out alright in the end!

But "End" also means "goal, aim, or purpose".  When we get up at some horrendous hour and pound the pavements, or swim hundreds of lengths, or ride a bike around Mount Cook, the end we have in mind is to get fit enough to survive the Coast to Coast, or an ironman event.  We have some particular object in mind, and that object we may call "the end", the purpose for which we are doing whatever it is we are doing.

And the curious thing is that for the Christian those two meanings come together.  God is the beginning and the end, the alpha and the omega, we say in one of our liturgies.  Our end is God, we seek to come to God, to share for ever in his eternal life.  The end of history comes when all things are unified in Christ and brought back to God.  Those are high and lofty thoughts, and we are constantly tempted in our everyday lives, and (it sometimes seems to me) especially in our church meetings, our Vestry meetings, our AGM's, and our seemingly endless(!) review meetings.  So, I repeat, we need to hear what the Spirit is saying to this church this morning through these readings as a prelude to our AGM.

Our first reading is another beautifully told comedy sketche from the Old Testament.  Naaman is a very important man.  He is supreme commander of the Syrian army, but he has developed leprosy.  Understandably, he is desperate to get rid of it but does know to whom he can turn for a cure.  But in his household there is a servant girl (well, actually a slave), captured on a previous raid in Israel and now serving Mrs Naaman.  She has heard of a great prophet in Israel with astonishing powers of healing.

So a tricky diplomatic situation arises.  How can Naaman , the Syrian army commander, safely enter Israel, his enemy?  So he gets a letter from the Syrian King to Israel's King, and part of the fun of this story lies in the terrified reaction of the King of Israel who believes he is being set up to fail.  However, that is all eventually sorted out and Naaman arrives at the home of this great prophet, Elisha.  At this point, of course, Naaman has only one end in mind – a cure from leprosy.  Nothing else matters except that.

But now the story takes a lovely twist, and Naaman becomes like us.  He has a very clear idea in his mind about how this healing should be conducted.  Hear it again in his own words: I thought that he would surely come out to me and stand and call on the name of the Lord his God, wave his hand over the spot and cure me of my leprosy.  Instead, of course, the prophet doesn't bother to appear himself; he sends out his minion with instructions for this mighty military man to jump up and down in the River Jordan seven times in full view of any curious bystander who happened to be around.  And, human nature being what it is, he is not greatly pleased.

What has happened is that he has forgotten the end he had in mind: he has forgotten that he has come seeking wholeness, healing, and salvation from leprosy, and is now hung-up over the correct ritual to be followed.  This is not, of course, a scientific argument about the alleged healing qualities of the waters of the Jordan compared to those of the rivers of Syria.  No such claim is made for the River Jordan.  This is about whether Naaman will get off his high horse, forget who and what he is, and submit himself to God acting through his chosen prophet.  And for us it is about remembering that the correct ritual is the one that brings us closer to God, and not necessarily the one that we use because we always have used it.

St Paul uses the image of athletic training to make this point very strongly in our second lesson.  The goal of an athlete is to win the race – the means are what he or she does in training.  An athlete may be fortunate enough to enjoy the training regime devised by the coach, but if it does not enable that athlete to win the race, it must be changed, even if a new type of training is less enjoyable than the old one.  Here again the question for us is clear: is what we are doing in the church today bringing the desired results?  Is the church becoming fitter and healthier, or is it growing tired and in decline?  And if we are honest enough to answer that question, what does it tell us about our training regime and the need for change?  Again, those are important questions for us to take from these readings into our AGM and beyond.

Our gospel reading is an even stronger challenge for us along these lines.  We were surely tempted last week to take Peter's side when he told Jesus off.  The more Jesus healed people, the bigger crowds he drew to him.  The same remains true to this day.  People who are believed to have healing powers are still the best drawcard the church has; and the temptation is to assume that anyone who can draw a big crowd to the church must be on the right track.  But Jesus didn't see it that way last week and we can see why this week.

He ministers to one individual leper – in common parlance, he heals him.  And then he instructs the man to re-connect with the religious community, from which he has been excluded by his leprosy.  Don't go shooting your mouth off about your physical healing; go and resume your religious practices that will lead you back to God and wholeness and salvation.  Of course, the man does the complete opposite, which results in Jesus becoming the outcast instead of the leper.  It is now Jesus who has to remain "outside in lonely places", because of the crowds.

What a message that is for the church!  Our constant temptation is to find some way of attracting the crowds, and it sometimes sounds to me that we are not too fussed about what that way may be.  If it works, let's do it.  Give the punters what they want and, who knows, our parish may be able to afford a full-time priest.

But, despite what one or two clergy apparently believe, the end of the church is not to provide employment for them, nor to draw vast crowds to some spectacular magic show.  The end of the church is to worship God, and to proclaim his message of freedom and reconciliation, to promote the kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven.  It has never been a popular message – it always leads, not to vast crowds, but to Good Friday.  We are, after all, only 10 days away from Lent.

The good news is that Good Friday is followed by Easter Day – death is followed by resurrection.  To proclaim that message is for the Church –

The End.

Doing a New Thing

Texts: Isaiah 43:18-25; 2 Corinthians 1:18-22; Mark 2:1-12

Today we in the Church stand on the brink of Lent – Ash Wednesday is this week.  And as I started to ponder this it occurred to me that the whole world is also standing on the brink of a Lenten Season.  Lent is a time to pause, to take stock, to acknowledge our failures, our weaknesses, our need to confess our faults, to seek forgiveness, and to prepare for a fresh start.  Lent is a time to let go of the past and prepare to embrace the future.  Lent is a time to look to God, the source of hope, who has promised to make all things new.  Lent is a time of self-restraint, of sombre reflection on the direction of our life.

How much the world needs its own Lent this year!  How many people in the banking and financial industries around the world need to pause, to reflect, to acknowledge their wrongdoings, their greed, and, in many cases, their criminality!  How many of them need to reflect on the direction their lives have been taking in recent times as they have chased after the mighty dollar to the exclusion of all other considerations.  How many people in regulatory agencies and Governments around the world turned a blind eye, and perhaps sought to enrich themselves, instead of blowing a loud whistle and calling a halt to the insanity of it all.  Now they face, we all face, a Lenten period of self-restraint and sombre reflection.

Of course, not all the culprits are ready to confess, and who can blame them?  In the world there is no assurance of forgiveness.  Confess your sins in this world and the likelihood is a claim for millions will be brought against you.  We say we just want the truth – we want to know what went wrong so that we can learn from it and do better the next time, avoid making the same mistakes again.  But meantime the cries grow louder for heads to roll, for someone (anyone) to take responsibility, and we wonder why the real culprits are so reluctant to confess.  Besides, who among us can cast the first stone?  Certainly not the heavily indebted who now blame the banks for making credit too easy.  The greed of the bankers can only be satisfied through the greed of their customers.

All of which is a very sad commentary on unredeemed human nature.  But we in the Church have a great advantage over the world in this regard.  It's not that we are any better than anyone else – we share the same human nature, after all – it's that we are forgiven.  We know that we are forgiven.  We are assured of our forgiveness.  That is the promise that we have as we enter our own Season of Lent – that is the lamp that guides us through this dark period of reflection and confession.  Without it we would be lost in the depths of despair.  We would be without hope.  We would face a future that is simply a repetition of the past.  There would be no hope of anything better.

That is the best our economists can offer today.  The most optimistic thing I have heard any economist say recently is that we have survived recessions in the past, we will survive this one, and we will survive the ones to come in the future.  In other words, our future will be like our past; a period of foolhardy greed and inflationary bubbles, followed by a recession; an endless cycle without any real hope of changing things permanently and for the better.

That's not the biblical vision, as Isaiah makes very clear.  Listen to these wonderful words from this morning's lesson: 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?  I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wastelands.  Things do not have to go on being like this: a new approach is possible.  I don't want to sound like an advocate for the National Party but I do think their election slogan – "Towards a Better Future" – was well chosen.  We need hope.  We need to feel that we can and will do better.  History tells us that it will not come from political leadership, however skilled and well-intentioned it might be; but the yearning for it is deep in our hearts, and the promises of God are addressed to it.

According to Isaiah there are three elements to this hope for a better future.  First, it is God's doing.  It is God who is doing a new thing, and we will see a wonderful illustration of that when we get to the gospel passage shortly.  God is the initiator of our new future: our part in all this is to see what God is doing and respond.  The second element deals with the nature of our response.  In Jewish terms we need to make offerings and sacrifices to God, not so as to win his favour or secure our forgiveness, or anything like that, but out of sheer gratitude to God for all that he has already done.  And the third element is precisely that – God has already forgiven us.  In Isaiah's words, God blots out our transgressions and remembers our sins no more.  That is why we can forget the past – our former things – and look with confidence to the future.

St Paul is once again on the defensive this morning.  One of the delights of reading his Corinthian correspondence is the puzzle of working out from what he is saying what someone else must have said to him.  Here it is fairly straightforward.  He has promised to come to Corinth to speak to the believers there face to face twice, both on the way to Macedonia and on the way back, but something must have prevented him from going there.  It seems that someone has now complained that he is flighty, saying one thing and doing the other.

He responds as only Paul can.  He insists that his "Yes" means Yes"; but no sooner has he written this than he forgets his personal feelings and turns the whole thing into another wonderful opportunity for theological teaching.  Christ, says St Paul, is "Yes" to all God's promises.  How he got there from his starting-point doesn't matter to Paul, and it shouldn't matter to us.  All that matters is that in Christ God fulfils all his promises to us.  In Christ, the promise we hear through Isaiah this morning is fulfilled.  In Christ, God is doing a new thing; can we not perceive it?

All this is wonderfully illustrated in St Mark's account of the healing of the paralytic man.  Again, we would miss the point if we concentrated on the man's physical healing, as Jesus' own words make clear.  This is a resurrection story if ever there was one.  Let me briefly summarise the action as you try to visualise it.  Some men are carrying this guy on a stretcher between them.  They reach a particular place; there they dig a hole and lower the man down into it.  Now let's pause there.  What does this remind us of so far?  Surely it reminds us of a burial, a graveside interment?  Pall-bearers carry the casket to a particular place where a hole has been dug, and the casket is lowered into the hole until it reaches the bottom.

When this guy reaches the bottom he is met by Jesus, who says two things to him.  First, he tells the man that his sins are forgiven.  Then, following protest from the self-appointed guardians of the past, Jesus says, okay, then, get up and walk.  First, there is judgment; the man is acquitted and set free – his sins are forgiven.  Isaiah would say his transgressions are blotted out, and his sins remembered no more.  Then he is told to stand up again, which (as I never tire of saying) is the original meaning of the word "resurrection".  Judgment and resurrection – it's all there in this perfectly told story.

But we haven't quite finished.  St Mark wants us to note the reaction of the crowd to all this.  This amazed everyone and they praised God, saying, "We have never seen anything like this!"  Again, the echoes from Isaiah are clear.  They didn't praise Jesus, as we might have expected, they praised God.  And how were these people described in Isaiah's passage?  The people whom I formed for myself that they may proclaim my praise.  And what were these people saying?  We have never seen anything like this.  God was doing a new thing and they were having trouble perceiving it!

So as we in the Church enter our Season of Lent, let us do so humbly and thankfully, aware of our need for forgiveness and equally aware that we have been forgiven.  And let us then offer ourselves as a living sacrifice to God to work and pray for the future that is God's will for all, including those who have brought the world to the brink of financial and economic collapse.