Month: February 2016

…Now, if you have ever seen a mother hen gather chicks you’ll feel the power in Jesus’ metaphor. For, unlike unruly inner-city schoolkids rounding up hens, a mother hen gathers her chicks easily; with an economy of motion and a few well-chosen clucks of comfort and guidance she draws them to herself – she needs not chase them, they come to her, gladly, for they know that under her wings is love, warmth and protection. This is the way that Jesus longs to gather us, away from the lure of the fox. Jesus values the uniqueness of each person, of each pilgrim party, of each tribe, and longs to shelter each one just as they are, united in their diversity, under his wings.

So we hear the despair in Jesus’ voice because the scattered tribes of Jerusalem refused to be gathered together by him. Rather like a diplomat or mediator in a neighbourhood dispute, we can appreciate his sadness:

That the Sadducees would not be gathered by Jesus with all the other tribes of Jerusalem for fear of compromising their social standing; that the Pharisees refused for fear of corrupting their religious purity, the Essenes for fear of undermining their precious separateness; that the Zealots refused for fear of being accommodated to the system they aggressively opposed, the Herodians refused because they could not be seen in the same room as Zealot terrorists, and the occupying Romans refused for fear this would undermine their power in the region.

And so the way of the fox, the way of Herod, the way of all empires, prevailed, in the end, all the way to Calvary. And it is the way of the fox which seems to still prevail in Jerusalem – and in all our Jerusalems – today…

 - from my talk today, Scattering and gathering: brooding over Jerusalem.

 

Genesis 15.1-12,17-18, Luke 13:22-35

The Second Sunday of Lent, 21 February 2016

Queen Camel, Corton Denham, Sutton Montis, Weston Bampfylde

 

I once took a group of primary school children from inner-city Toxteth on a visit to an urban farm. It was one of those hands-on experiences which gave these kids contact with farm animals, possibly for the first time ever. Some of these encounters were beautiful, and some quite stressful, but the staff of the farm, who had seen it all before, were quite relaxed about our kids handling the stock. At the end of the afternoon the children were invited to go into the large free-range chicken enclosure to round up the dozens of hens and direct them into their shed for the night. You can imagine the scene. It was chaos, carnage – chickens and children scattering everywhere in a cacophony of screams and squawks, feathers flying, scuffed hands and knees. Have you ever tried gathering chickens together? Not an easy task, by any means. 

As he turned his face towards the place and time of his trial and execution, Jesus said,

‘Jerusalem, Jerusalem, city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not.’

This is a sermon about scattering and gathering: and the place on which it is focussed is that holy hellhole, that ultimate arena of gathering and scattering: Jerusalem.

Patrick Woodhouse’s book ‘Life in the Psalms’ begins by contemplating Psalm 122, which opens with these joyful words:

I was glad when they said to me,

    ‘Let us go to the house of the Lord!’

And now our feet are standing

    within your gates, O Jerusalem. [1]

It’s a pilgrim’s psalm, a song from one the scattered people of David, expressing the anticipation and the joy of travelling together up to Jerusalem, to gather in the Temple. 

Patrick shares his memory of ‘visiting Jerusalem in 1993 and being astonished at the scale, the symmetry, and the size of the Temple’. He sensed the awe a pilgrim would feel in seeing such a building at the heart of this city for the first time. ‘Jerusalem’ says the book of Lamentations, ‘was the perfection of beauty, the joy of all the world’’. [2]

The experience of this Jewish pilgrim, beholding their beloved holy city with the Temple at its heart, mirrors the experience of countless pilgrims – Jewish, Christian and Muslim – as they gather in Jerusalem today.

But even as those pilgrims gathered back then, there was the sadness of a sense of scattering, for these pilgrims would have travelled not as one unified mass but as distinctive tribes – innumerable ones, drawn from the descendents of Abraham’s eight children and the twelve tribes of Israel. Like today – where Jews gather to pray at the wailing wall, Muslims congregate to pray in the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and Christians together walk the Via Dolorosa – Jerusalem gathers the tribes. 

But the tribes keep apart from each other, each praying in their own place, each staying in their own rooms, huddling together to protect their group against the others, whilst each mirroring the other’s intensity of belief and devoutness, and each mimicking the others’ desire to claim Jerusalem as their own. This city of disunity reminds us that this is the way in which human beings have always gathered – together in tribes, their faces set against other tribes.

This is the way that the world gathers: under a religious sign, under an ideology, under a flag. It has the appearance of being unifying; but it is divisive. It is why Jerusalem is split apart by security walls and checkpoints today, and why in Jesus’ time Herod had his forces on alert, fixated on ensuring that when the tribes gathered in the city, potential troublemakers would be isolated and eliminated.

This is the way of the fox, whose way is always to divide, isolate, attack. Whenever we gather under the sign of a crucifix, or a crescent, or a star, when we do so in opposition to others, the fox stalks among us. [3]

So as the world gathers tribally, self-identifying in hostility to other groups, being prepared to kill  the prophets who question this way of gathering, and stoning those sent to try for unity, as the world adopts the way of the ruthless fox, Jesus models a different way of gathering.

For Jesus is no inner-city child chasing hens around an enclosure. In his own words Jesus is the mother hen who gently lifts her wings so that all of Jerusalem can snuggle under them – the high-priestly, politically conservative Sadducees, the pious and morally conservative Pharisees, the contemplative Essenes and the revolutionary Zealots, the Herodians and the occupying Romans – ‘How I desire to gather you all together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings…’ he said. 

Not the mighty eagle of Exodus, or Hosea’s stealthy leopard; not the proud lion of Judah, mowing down his enemies with a roar. No, the mother hen is what Jesus chooses, which ‐ if you think about it ‐ is pretty typical of him, who is always turning our expectations upside down. So of course he chooses a chicken, which is about as far from a fox as you can get. That way the options become very clear: you can live by licking your chops or you can die protecting the chicks. Jesus won’t be king of the jungle in this or any other story. Jesus will be a mother hen, who stands between the chicks and those who mean to do them harm, who has no fangs, no claws, no rippling muscles, just her willingness to shield her babies with her own body. [4]

Now, if you have ever seen a mother hen gather chicks you’ll feel the power in Jesus’ metaphor. For, unlike unruly inner-city schoolkids rounding up hens, a mother hen gathers her chicks easily; with an economy of motion and a few well-chosen clucks of comfort and guidance she draws them to herself – she needs not chase them, they come to her, gladly, for they know that under her wings is love, warmth and protection. This is the way that Jesus longs to gather us, away from the lure of the fox. Jesus values the uniqueness of each person, of each pilgrim party, of each tribe, and longs to shelter each one just as they are, united in their diversity, under his wings.

So we hear the despair in Jesus’ voice because the scattered tribes of Jerusalem refused to be gathered together by him. Rather like a diplomat or mediator in a neighbourhood dispute, we can appreciate his sadness:

That the Sadducees would not be gathered by Jesus with all the other tribes of Jerusalem for fear of compromising their social standing; that the Pharisees refused for fear of corrupting their religious purity, the Essenes for fear of undermining their precious separateness; that the Zealots refused for fear of being accommodated to the system they aggressively opposed, the Herodians refused because they could not be seen in the same room as Zealot terrorists, and the occupying Romans refused for fear this would undermine their power in the region. [5]

And so the way of the fox, the way of Herod, the way of all empires, prevailed, in the end, all the way to Calvary. And it is the way of the fox which seems to still prevail in Jerusalem – and in all our Jerusalems – today.

Jesus spoke of Jerusalem killing the prophets, and we are reminded of the assassination of Folke Bernadotte, Swedish diplomat, wartime rescuer of thousands of Jews, postwar United Nations Middle-East mediator, killed in West Jerusalem in 1948 by the militant Zionist group the Stern Gang, for his advocacy of a Palestinian settlement. [6]  

Jesus spoke of Jerusalem stoning those who are sent to it: and only weeks ago The Times of Israel reported a senior United Nations official in the Palestinian Territories, Mounir Kleibo, sustaining  serious injuries to his jaw after coming under attack by Palestinian rock throwers in East Jerusalem.  ( ‘Allah will forgive them’, he is later reported to have said). [7] 

The power in this gospel passage, today, lies in the question it raises for us. In a divided world, will we persist in gathering only in our tribes, posturing behind our religious dogmas, clinging to our market certainties, aggressively waving our flags – clinging to the way of the fox, vulnerable to the attacks of the fox?

Are we happy for Jerusalem to continue being a holy hellhole where Jews, Muslims, and Christians gather together in tribes, their faces set against each other? Or will we be drawn, and encourage others to be drawn, to the way of the mother hen? Remembering our common ties as children of Abraham, and finding common ground in our vulnerable chicken-ness, will we commit to learning  the way we can shelter together under the wings of love, warmth and protection, united in our diversity? 

This is not about Christians assimilating people of other faiths – it is about people of all backgrounds finding common ground. Standing today over Jerusalem, Jesus, the once-and-always Jew is not coercing the Jewish people to ‘accept him as messiah’ but longing to embrace them in safety; Jesus, revered as a prophet in Islam, is not forcing Muslims to ‘worship him as Lord’, just yearning to include them in his way of peace and protection. Jesus, the subject of Christian devotion, is not asking us to gather in a huddle, faces set against those of other faiths, but to learn to embrace the goodness of unity, with our scattered brothers and sisters.

Even as he celebrated the wonder of Jerusalem, the writer of Psalm 122 felt the need to pray for the peace of the city. It’s just as true now as it was back then: if we pray for the peace of Jerusalem we pray for our own peace.

So let us pray for the peace of Jerusalem. May they prosper – all Jews, Muslims and Christians, who love and gather in that place. May peace reign among all those within her walls and palaces, for the sake of all pilgrims of the earth, so that God will continue to dwell among us. [8]

 

Notes

I am indebted, as ever, to Paul Neuchterlein whose notes and references on this passage have been invaluable in preparing this sermon: Girardian Lectionary, Lent 2C.

[1] Psalm 122.1-2.

[2] Patrick Woodhouse, Life in the Psalms: Contemporary Meaning in Ancient Texts: The Mowbray Lent Book 2016, p.38, altered.

[3] This section inspired by Sydney Carter’s song ‘The devil wore a crucifix’, sung here by Franciscus Henri.

[4] Barbara Brown Taylor, As a hen gathers her brood. 

[5] This section was inspired by part of Jesus the Mother Hen, a Sermon on Luke 13:22-35, posted on the Holy Ground Holy Space Facebook page, 25 February 2013. It is unclear, but the author of this particular passage may be Barbara Brown Taylor.

[6] Wikipedia: Folke Bernadotte.

[7] UN official hurt in stoning: ‘Allah will forgive them’, Times of Israel, October 12, 2015.

[8] Patrick Woodhouse, Life in the Psalms, p.39, altered.

 

The devil roamed the moral wilderness of the international food industry, and met a supplier, hungry for profits. The devil said to him, ‘As you have the means to do it, why don’t you substitute horsemeat for beef?’ And the supplier said, ‘That sounds like a profitable idea, I’ll give it a try’.

Then the devil came across the executive of a multinational supermarket chain and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And the devil said to him, ‘To you I will give their glory and all this authority, if you do things my way, exploiting the land and the poor to maximise your profits.’ And the executive said, ‘Show me the contract, I’ll get our lawyers to approve it straightaway’.

Then the devil appeared at a supermarket checkout, and said to the customers purchasing processed food, ‘If you throw yourself wholeheartedly into consuming food full of additives, fat, sugar, and calories, you have nothing to fear, for the angels of God will protect you from cancer, heart disease, obesity and tooth decay.’ And they said, ‘I believe you, here’s my loyalty card’.

The three temptations of Jesus in the wilderness are the very same temptations which we all succumb to today:

First, the temptation to turn stones into bread – or horsemeat into beef: in other words to manipulate nature for our own gain; a temptation which troubles our delicate relationship with the earth;

Second, the temptation to gain power and authority over others in the world: to stop at nothing to increase our wealth and improve our social status; a temptation which troubles our delicate relationship with others; and

Third, the temptation to jump from the temple: that is, to behave in self-destructive ways, believing that however noxious our lifestyle, we will be saved; a temptation which troubles our delicate relationship with God. … 

– the start of my talk today, The temptations of Jesus and the horsemeat scandal (2016 version). Surprisingly fresh three years after the scandal first broke and I preached on it then. Thanks to Brian D. McLaren this version might be called 'The temptations of Jesus and how to overcome our complicity in corporate sin'.

Jacques Ellul, a twentieth-century Reformed theologian, wrote that

A major fact of our present civilisation is that more an more sin becomes collective, and the individual is forced to participate in collective sin. Everyone bears the consequences of the faults of others.

When, in the words of David Korten, ‘ordinary people find their choices controlled by the hierarchies of big business, big government, big education, big unions, big media’, a small gospel will seem pathetic and incredible.

[Brian D. McLaren, Everything Must Change: When the World's Biggest Problems and Jesus' Good News Collide] 

 

Psalm 91.1-11, Luke 4.1-13

First Sunday of Lent, 14/2/2016

Queen Camel, Corton Denham

 

The devil roamed the moral wilderness of the international food industry, and met a supplier, hungry for profits. The devil said to him, ‘As you have the means to do it, why don’t you substitute horsemeat for beef?’ And the supplier said, ‘That sounds like a profitable idea, I’ll give it a try’.

Then the devil came across the executive of a multinational supermarket chain and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And the devil said to him, ‘To you I will give their glory and all this authority, if you do things my way, exploiting the land and the poor to maximise your profits.’ And the executive said, ‘Show me the contract, I’ll get our lawyers to approve it straightaway’.

Then the devil appeared at a supermarket checkout, and said to the customers purchasing processed food, ‘If you throw yourself wholeheartedly into consuming food full of additives, fat, sugar, and calories, you have nothing to fear, for the angels of God will protect you from cancer, heart disease, obesity and tooth decay.’ And they said, ‘I believe you, here’s my loyalty card’.

The three temptations of Jesus in the wilderness are the very same temptations which we all succumb to today:

First, the temptation to turn stones into bread – or horsemeat into beef: in other words to manipulate nature for our own gain; a temptation which troubles our delicate relationship with the earth;

Second, the temptation to gain power and authority over others in the world: to stop at nothing to increase our wealth and improve our social status; a temptation which troubles our delicate relationship with others; and

Third, the temptation to jump from the temple: that is, to behave in self-destructive ways, believing that however noxious our lifestyle, we will be saved; a temptation which troubles our delicate relationship with God.

The horsemeat scandal and other recent events in the food supply industry, the need for a Fair Trade movement, the revelation that for over 25 years the Exxon corporation has buried the research findings of its own scientists and worked at the forefront of climate denial [2], the Volkswagen cars emissions cheating scandal [3] – all these bring home the point that our relationships with the earth and its creatures, with each other and with God, are deeply affected by the way we give in so readily to temptation. 

The earth, each other and God are the three fundamental elements in each of our lives. They are not separate entities either, but fully intertwined. My friend and colleague Stuart Elliott talks about them as soil, soul, and society:

Soil is literally the planet earth on which we stand. Though we seldom acknowledge it, earth and its creatures provide for us everything we need to live. Our connection with this earth is vital and we must recognise our interdependence with all life on the planet, learning to tread lightly.

Soul is our ‘inner being’. We might think of ourself as an individual, as ‘I’, but in reality our selves are the ultimate ‘We’. Deeply, we are all connected at an intrinsic level to the source of life – to God, the creator and sustainer of the earth, who places us here alongside others, and this deep connection makes us the soul we are.

Society describes our interdependence with other humans and with all living things, our global neighbours. Society is what we create together. We each have responsibility for our relationships with all: humans, creatures, all living things. [4]

There is a delicate ecology which holds us together in this detailed set of relationships. The balance of this ecology is easily upset when we succumb to one or more of those three fundamental temptations. 

We organise the market to turn stones into bread – to produce cheap food of poor quality, exploiting poor producers overseas or struggling farmers here, exploiting creatures, exploiting the land. These practices are an abuse of nature which primarily affect the poor, and so they are about global justice; and what does all of this do to our spirit? 

The recent – and ongoing – protests over the pricing of milk show how our farmers and country folk have a keen appreciation of these issues. [5] Of course your view on this may differ if you are a shareholder in a food industry supplier or an employee of a supermarket chain; or if you are a consumer at the checkout looking for – expecting – low prices. But whatever our perspective we understand how our spirits can feel crushed by the weight of the pressures on us to maximise our profits, to take the easy option, to consume and to conform. 

You might recall situations when you and others have been lured by the persuasiveness of such temptations and acted in ways which have knowingly damaged others, putting soil, soul, or society at risk. And we are all conscious of our failure to act when we have seen injustice at work, our reluctance to change our ways or challenge our system for the sake of others and the earth, our resistance towards being crucified.

Jacques Ellul, a twentieth-century Reformed theologian, wrote that

A major fact of our present civilisation is that more an more sin becomes collective, and the individual is forced to participate in collective sin. Everyone bears the consequences of the faults of others.

When, in the words of David Korten, ‘ordinary people find their choices controlled by the hierarchies of big business, big government, big education, big unions, big media’, a small gospel will seem pathetic and incredible. [6]

But the good news is that the gospel of Jesus is big enough to deal with our complicity in the corporate sins of our day.

The good news is that we have the power to resist such temptations; for Jesus has been there before us – into the moral wilderness to contest these issues with the devil. And the outcome of that contest shows us that the devil can be overcome.

And so we thank Jesus for resisting temptation by saying ‘One does not live by bread alone’: encouraging us that it is possible for us to withstand the lure of cheap and easy food, using our imagination and compassion to work out other ways in which we can feed and finance ourselves without harming the earth or others.

We thank Jesus for resisting temptation by saying ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him’: showing us that we needn’t expend our time trying to gain wealth at the expense of the truth,  we needn’t expend our energy trying to gain status at the expense of others, if we commit ourselves first and foremost to deepening and strengthening our relationship with our God; to gaining our sense of self-worth from God alone, letting our prayer life affect our outward life, learning to walk this earth with integrity. 

And we thank Jesus for resisting temptation by saying ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test’: helping us to see that we can repel the urge to find salvation in things which will ultimately destroy us, if we put a loving, caring God at the centre of our lives.

God’s ecology is a gentle and generous one which reunites us with the earth, with others and with our own selves. 

To nurture God’s ecology in our lives we have to be alert to those things which tempt us away from it: as the Psalmist said, ‘Your eyes have only to behold to see the reward of the wicked.’ But, the Psalmist continues, ‘If you [make] the Lord your refuge, and the Most High your habitation [Then] shall no evil happen to you, neither shall any plague come near your house’. [6]

And to nurture God’s ecology in our lives we have to be alert to those things which draw us back to it: constantly, prayerfully, asking the Father to help us connect more keenly with the soil, the soul and the society which together make up our lives.

 

Conclude with Psalm 69 from Jim Cotter, Out of the Silence … Into the Silence, Prayer’s Daily Round:

‘The earth and the people decay: we breathe but a whisper of prayer…

‘The earth and the people stir: we breathe our prayer into life.’

 

Notes

[1] This sermon was originally preached in Devon during a period when the news was full of scandal over the contamination of meat products, see eg, Felicity Lawrence, Horsemeat scandal: the essential guide, The Guardian, 15 February 2013.

[2] Exxon: The Road Not Taken, Inside Climate News, 2015.

[3] Russell Hotten, Volkswagen: The scandal explained, BBC News, 10 December 2015

[4] Extracted from Stuart Elliott, A Place on Earth which speaks of Heaven?, unpublished paper, 2013 (altered). Stuart was at the time responsible for the work in Ecology of the Diocese of St Asaph Board of Church and Society: read his blog here. In adopting the ‘Soil, Soul, Society’ model Stuart affirms the work of some fellow-travellers: Soil Soul Society: A New Trinity for Our Time is also the title of a 2013 book by peace and environment activist Satish Kumar, expressing the vision that ‘We are members of a one-earth society, and caring for the earth and soul is interrelated!’ And similarly, Soil and Soul: People versus Corporate Power by Scottish writer and campaigner Alastair McIntosh ‘shows how it is still possible for individuals and communities to take on the might of corporate power and emerge victorious’. All excellent reading!

[5] Johann Tasker, Dairy farmers prepare to march on London, Farmers Weekly, 31 January 2016.

[6] Section quote from Brian D. McLaren, Everything Must Change: When the World’s Biggest Problems and Jesus’ Good News Collide, p.243-244.

[7] Psalm 91.8-10.

My atomic take on the Transfiguration of Christ, featuring Joni Mitchell and Takashi Nagai, the Saint of Nagasaki: The Transfiguration: taking notice of clouds, my talk today.

Exodus 34.29-35, Luke 9.28-36

The Sunday next before Lent, 7 February 2016

Sutton Montis, Weston Bampfylde

 

Introduction: Joni Mitchell, ‘Both Sides, Now’, first two verses and chorus.

 

Of all the odd events in the gospels The Transfiguration of Jesus is one of the oddest of all.

We see it through the eyes of the disciples Peter, John and James, watching Jesus’s face changing, his clothes becoming dazzling white, his whole being shining brighter than the sun. We receive it through what those disciples thought they heard of Jesus’s conversation with Moses and Elijah beside him. But the testimony of Peter, John and James adds up to little more than astonishment and confusion. 

Strange to say, but the clarity in the Transfiguration story comes in the cloud – the cloud which overshadowed them, frightening them. In their tiredness, confusion and fear Peter, John and James encountered something in the cloud – a voice. And the clarity in the Transfiguration story comes in what the voice in the cloud said to them.

So this is a sermon about taking notice of clouds. What’s in a cloud? Who’s in a cloud? What is the cloud saying to us?

Now Joni Mitchell sings about the beauty in clouds:

‘Rows and flows of angel hair

And ice cream castles in the air

And feather canyons ev’rywhere’ – she’s looked at clouds that way.

But she also sings about the terror and misery in clouds:

‘But now they only block the sun 

They rain and snow on ev’ryone

So many things I would have done

But clouds got in the way.’ [2]

Clouds can be beautiful or terrifying; they can bring peace and wonder or misery and destruction.

Now at times in our lives we may find ourselves living with our head in the clouds. Determined to embrace the beauty – by ignoring the hard reality of life. Christians do this by saying that everything will be all right one day in Heaven – which is fine as far as it goes, but scant comfort in the hard here-and-now, insufficient resource to deal with the complicated present. 

And sometimes we find ourselves living under a cloud. When the hard realities of life weigh down on us so heavily that we lose faith, we lose hope, we give in. Christians are not immune to this by any means, indeed the clouds may weigh even heavier on those who feel the pressure of thinking that they ought to be feeling better about things than they do.

There are times when our judgment is clouded by the ambitions and desires of life which crowd in on us through family pressure, peer pressure, the longing to be liked, the yearning for comfort and security – and lacking clarity we take the easiest or most attractive route, even though we feel deep down, this is not the best way for us, or for those around us.

Where is the voice in these clouds? And what is it saying?

We might observe that our world, our society, is prone to living with its head in the clouds at times. As the frequency, intensity and duration of hurricane storm clouds continue to increase across the globe as an effect of our ever-warming oceans we continue in denial about the causes of global warming – two hundred years of industrialisation – convincing ourselves that we need do nothing as everything will be all right one day in Heaven. [3]

At the same time we understand, of course, that the judgments we make in society are clouded by the ambitions and desires of life, to be the wealthiest corporation, to be the most powerful nation, and the easiest or most attractive route towards such ends invariably tramples on the lives of the poorest and most vulnerable ones. [4]

And so sometimes we find ourselves living under a cloud, as a people. In a world where 62 billionaires are as wealthy as half of the world’s population while refugee children wash up on the shores of the Mediterranean, we all know that something is badly wrong; and in turns saddened, angry and impotent our collective mental health increasingly suffers. [5]

But another kind of cloud has made its way quietly through history – I like to think of it as being ‘the cloud of God’.

Sometimes the cloud of God is a cloud of judgement, like:

• the cloud which gathered over the ark as Noah and his sons completed their work and the earth prepared to drown; [6]
• the cloud which Elijah saw from the top of Mount Carmel, rising from the sea, after his contest with the prophets of Baal, bringing to an end the famine in the land. [7]

And sometimes the cloud of God is a cloud of liberation and direction, like:

• the cloud which led God’s people on their exodus from Egypt; [8]
• the cloud which showed them the glory of God in the desert, raining down bread to feed them; [9]
• the cloud which covered Mount Sinai, the place where Moses and the people met with God; [10]

As God’s people were led by Moses out of slavery, through the wilderness, towards the promised land, God showed them that he was with them, God led them, through a cloud.

Was that the very same cloud which followed Jesus:

• at his baptism, from the cloud, the spirit descended on him like a dove and the voice of God said, ‘This is my son, my beloved, in whom I am well pleased.’ [11]
• and again at his Transfiguration, on a mountaintop not far from Sinai, where Jesus, Moses and Elijah, Peter, John and James were all swallowed up in a cloud – and they heard the voice of God, saying ‘This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!’ [12]

This is a sermon about taking notice of clouds. What can we learn from the clouds in our lives, in our world? The voice in the cloud at the Transfiguration – what clarity can it bring us?

What sense can we make of it today? When we look to the skies do we seek to learn from the cloud of God? Is it too strange and supernatural, too far removed from any part of our experience, do the words that came from the cloud on the mount of Transfiguration have any impact on us now, the words: ‘This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!’

Listen to him saying what? Well, just before Jesus led Peter, John and James up the mountain to pray, he had been trying to teach them about his forthcoming fate, and the salvation which would come through it for all who chose to walk his way. 

‘The Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised’, [he said]. [13]

And on the mountain, Jesus, Moses and Elijah were ‘speaking of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem’ …. they were discussing his horrible death to come, and yet at the same time as his earthly fate was being sealed, on that mountaintop his heavenly glory was also being revealed: no wonder the disciples struggled to understand.  His teaching was difficult.

‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me, [he said]. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it.’ [14]

How could his suffering bring salvation? And how could wanting to lose one’s life help to save it?

Peter, John and James came down from that mountain still confused and questioning; it wasn’t until after the events which Jesus warned them about, had passed, that they began to get some clarity.  It was only after the resurrection – possibly the ascension – that they really embraced the words which came from the clouds: ‘This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!’

So today, that voice – what clarity can it bring us? Let us remember that we are still living under the atomic cloud of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that mushroom cloud which is an icon of our times. 

As Parliament debates the £100 billion proposal to renew the Trident nuclear missile system [15], I am minded of the story of  Takashi Nagai, a doctor seriously injured by the Nagasaki bomb but who in the aftermath, devoted himself to rescue work. He died from leukaemia in 1951. [16] But before that he dedicated himself to the work of healing and reconstruction in Japan because, remarkably, he came to regard that nuclear cloud as the cloud of God.

In his book The Bells of Nagasaki, an account of his experiences of living through the aftermath of that atomic cloud, Takashi Nagai expresses his feeling that God had somehow sent the nuclear cloud; as a judgment on war, and as an end to war. And he saw the suffering which the nuclear cloud caused as an invitation to share in the sufferings of Christ, because through Christ’s sufferings came resurrection. [17]

Of the difficult task of reconstructing post-war Japan, he wrote, ‘We will get inspiration from the example of one who sweated blood and carried his cross to Calvary. As his cross had value, ours has value too.’

Nagai recalled how, after virtually every other building had been destroyed on the day of the bomb, the Nagasaki cathedral bells kept ringing, and the burned-out cathedral was one of the first buildings to be reconstructed in the city. He saw this as a sign of resurrection, saying:

‘And so our story of the bomb is one of triumph. It is a story of resurrection in the very moment of crucifixion.It is a story of chiming bells that announce good news as they peal across the atomic waste.’ 

Nagai became a central figure in the spiritual and moral reconstruction of Japan. He was partly responsible for the deeply rooted idea that the Japanese, the first and only people to have suffered the atomic holocaust, have a vocation and mission to abolish war, especially nuclear war, from the face of the earth. [18]

Through one man and others with him, out of the horror of that bomb, came hope; out of that terrible cloud came a hint of God’s glory. It came because Nagai believed in what the voice of God had said so clearly on that mount of Transfiguration centuries earlier: that Jesus is God’s Son and should be listened to, the One He has Chosen to show us the way through life. 

Though to walk that way will bring us a share in his sufferings, it will also bring us a share in his glory.

 

 

Notes

[1] This sermon is a fairly substantial rewrite of The Transfiguration (Hiroshima Day) preached at Holy Trinity, Wavertree, 6 August 2000.

[2] Joni Mitchell, Both Sides, Now, from the LP “Clouds”, 1969.

[3] Al Gore, An Inconvenient Truth: The Crisis of Global Warming, p.81

[4] See for instance, Owen Jones, The Establishment: And how they get away with it.

[5] Eoin Flaherty, Was there ever a time when so few people controlled so much wealth?, The Guardian, 29 January 2016 – thanks to Robert Gallagher for that link; World Health Organisation, ’the sheer lack of respect and understanding given to the disadvantaged in Britain is highly corrosive of wellbeing and all the more so because it is constant and overwhelming’ (Holmes, 2010), quoted in Psychology in the Real World: Toxic Mental Environments 2013.

[6] Genesis 6.

[7] I Kings 18. 

[8] Exodus 13.21.

[9] Exodus 16.

[10] Exodus 24:16.

[11] Matthew 3.13-17.

[12] Luke 9.28-36.

[13] Luke 9.22.

[14] Luke 9:23-25.

[15] Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament: No to Trident. No apologies for my source here, or the bias it –  rightly – suggests I have in this issue.

[16] Wikipedia: Takashi Nagai. See also Frank Weathers, The Conversion of Takashi Nagai, And His Vocation of Love, Patheos Blogs, 28 April 2013, and David Alton, Nagasaki, the atomic bomb and Takashi Nagai, 17 February 2011

[17] Takashi Nagai, Bells of Nagasaki.

[18] William Johnson, translator, Takashi Nagai, Bells of Nagasaki, p.xx.