Month: February 2019

2 Corinthians 3.12-4.2, Luke 9.28-43

The Sunday next before Lent

3 March 2019 – Eldroth, Keasden; 27 February 2022 – Austwick

We call it The Transfiguration – and whether it was a cleverly devised myth or an extraordinary event with three disciples as eyewitnesses, The Transfiguration said so much about what the glory of God actually means. It added to Jesus’ mythical status, placing him alongside Moses, Israel’s lawgiver, and Elijah, Israel’s great prophet, who stood with him on that mountaintop that day. 

Yes, Moses, who had previously met God on a mountain, in thunder and lightning, trumpet-sound and smoke. Moses who had brought the Ten Commandments down from the mountain to the people, ten words of justice for the people to live their lives by. When Jesus stood by Moses on the mountaintop that day, he stood with Moses and those laws he brought to the people. 

And Elijah, who had met God on a mountain, in the storms and the earthquakes and the fire which passed by Elijah hiding in a mountaintop cave, a fugitive on the run from enemies whose prophets he had condemned to death because they refused to worship Israel’s God. In ancient times when people’s justice was measured by the sacrifices they made to God, Elijah’s harsh message made perfect sense: if you break your covenant with God then you bring condemnation on yourself. And on the mountaintop, Jesus stood with Elijah in all his prophetic righteous power. 

So Peter, James and John saw that day: Jesus as the Son of God, standing in the glory of God with the lawgiver and the covenant-keeper. But notice that his transformation happened before Moses and Elijah appeared on the scene. The glory of Jesus that day wasn’t a reflected glory based on the status of Moses and Elijah who came to stand with him – the glory of Jesus came first, before those two greats even showed up. When God the Father spoke he said, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!’ ‘Listen to him!’, he said. Not to Moses, not Elijah, not to all three equally, but ‘listen to him!’

Beyond the witness of Moses and the words of the commandments he brought, beyond Elijah’s urging the people to live justly before God, from now on it is Jesus who the people should listen to, from now on it is Jesus who they should look to for guidance and inspiration. From now on God the Father of Jesus wanted all to take notice – first and foremost – of him. So what is it about Jesus which sets him apart from Moses and Elijah? There’s a clue in what each of them did when they came down from the mountain after their encounters with God. 

The book of Kings tells us that after Elijah came down from the mountain after his encounter with God he got angry with his people who were making sacrifices to Ba’al; and went straight off and in his righteous anger slaughtered four hundred and fifty prophets of Ba’al. To stop these people’s sacrifices he enforced his own brand of human sacrifice. [2]

And the book of Exodus tells us that after Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the stone tablets of the law, his face shining with God’s glory, he found his people worshipping a golden calf. In judgement he turned the sons of Levi on the people, commanding them to kill their brothers, friends, and neighbours – three thousand dead as punishment for worshipping the calf. Thus just like Elijah, to stop one form of sacrifice, Moses enforced his own brand of human sacrifice. [3]

Remember how on the mountain together Peter had offered to set up three altars in honour of Jesus, Moses and Elijah? Now, Jesus rejected his offer because Jesus knew what trouble altars cause. Altars are sacrificial places justified by the myth that one brand of human sacrifice can stop someone else’s brand of human sacrifice. The glory of Elijah and Moses was tainted by their adherence to this myth of righteous violence. It’s the same myth at work today in the borderlands of Russia and Ukraine where innocent lives are sacrificed in the cause of redeeming territory for one side or another. It’s the myth we serve when we judge the safety and welfare of key workers as being less important than our own wellbeing and comfort.

Now when Jesus came down off the mountain of Transfiguration he returned to a people who, just like their ancestors, were still disobeying God’s laws and in many ways breaking their covenant with him. A ‘faithless and perverse generation’, he called them. But in sharp contrast to how Moses and Elijah had acted, Jesus took his place in the crowds who followed him, and when he heard the cry of a father desperate for his son to be healed of a form of possession, Jesus released the boy.

Following his Transfiguration Jesus continued going about among the people, preaching peace and forgiveness to them, healing many. In compassion Jesus stood above Jerusalem and wept for its people, he challenged those whose stern application of the religious laws made the people’s lives difficult, and whose harsh if righteous judgement on those who strayed from God’s ways brought trouble to the land. Jesus put the ‘last’ ones first, taught the meek they would inherit the earth and the poor they would be satisfied. His life and teachings stirred up the people’s hearts – for he never condemned them, never insisted on them making sacrifices or being sacrificed for him. His  intentionally anti-religious ways so scandalised the lawmakers and the prophets of Israel, for it was such a radical departure from their ways, that they had him sacrificed, had him crucified. 

But the story did not end there. It only just began. The Transfiguration is a sign which points us to the Resurrection as the sign that God sent his Son into the world not to wield a righteous violence in a vain attempt to end all righteous violence, not to have others sacrificed on the altar of God, but instead to suffer being sacrificed for our sake, to forgive us for it, and in so doing to show us the way of God’s totally nonviolent way of love. 

Moses and Elijah were great leaders of the people, but they were trapped in the same myth which still directs the decisions and strategies of generals and freedom-fighters and presidents and conspiracists today, and even ourselves: the deadly myth that sacrificial violence redeems. Jesus stands out from all of these in offering a different way, a non-violent way of love. His death and resurrection make it possible for us to know that we are held – and can thus hold others – in love.  

The message from heaven on the mountain of Transfiguration singled out Jesus from those other two heroes of the faith as the voice of God said, “Listen to him!” When we do so, as St Paul says, it is like a veil being lifted from our minds. ‘To this very day whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their minds; but when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed’, he said. 

So whenever we take time to ‘listen to him’, to hear the message of the scriptures like we are doing here today, and whenever in prayer we’re silent, to give God room to speak to us, then the effect is that, ‘with unveiled faces, (we) see the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror’, and this transforms us into ones who know we are held – and can thus hold others – in love. “Listen to him!” Might this be our intention, this Lent?

 

Notes  

[1] Edited 2022. Adapted from Transfiguration – breaking the myth of sacrifice preached in Devon in 2011, which borrows heavily from Paul Nuechterlein, Following Jesus means learning not to ‘follow cleverly devised myths’. 

[2] 1 Kings 18.20-40

[3] Exodus 32.28-29

 

Genesis 2.4b-9, 15-25, Luke 8.22-25

The Second Sunday before Lent, 24 February 2019

Austwick, Clapham, Keasden

 

I’m going to go where many men fear to tread today. I’m going to give you the ‘patriarchal’ reading of Genesis. Here it is:

Before feminism, everyone in the garden of Eden knew their place. At the top of the pyramid, even though the garden wasn’t in Egypt, was God. Under him was his under-gardener Adam, created to carry on the maintenance of the garden that the master-gardener had planted. On the next rung down, the pyramid having mutated to a ladder, came Eve, who had not originally been thought of, but had been created out of Adam as a ‘helper’ once all the animals had been paraded before Adam without a single helper being found among them. Beneath Eve were the animals, obviously unsatisfactory as helpers, but not in every respect inferior to her; for the cleverest of them has theological insight that Eve lacks. [1]

Well, the theologian Phyllis Trible calls the second chapter of Genesis ‘a love story gone awry’ [2], because our familiarity with this simple tale of origins has bred stereotypes, mistakes and contempt, and has nurtured the impression that male superiority and female inferiority is proclaimed as the will of God. She says,

It portrays woman as “temptress” and troublemaker who is dependent upon and dominated by her husband. Over the centuries this misogynous reading [became the accepted norm] so that those who deplore and those who applaud the story both agree on its meaning. [3]

So it’s commonly assumed that Genesis tells us that a male God creates first man and last woman; first meaning superior and last meaning inferior or subordinate. It’s assumed that Genesis tells us that woman is created for the sake of man, a helpmate to cure his loneliness. Genesis tells us that it is man who gives birth: that contrary to nature, woman comes out of man: she is denied even her natural function of birthing. As the rib of man, she is dependent on him for life; taken out of man, woman has derived from him, she has no autonomous existence. Man names woman and thus has power over her; man leaves his father’s family in order to set up through his wife another patriarchal unit so as to keep the male dominated world going. It is God’s world after all. And throughout most of scripture, God, as we know, is called a male.

But, hang on, what was that joke I heard those women say the other day? Why did God make Adam before Eve? Because everyone needs a rough draft before they make the final copy.

So can Genesis be read a different way? The book’s first chapter offers a contrast. In that creation story no distinctions of status or role are drawn between women and men; there, male and female are created in God’s image, together, and blessed, together. 

There’s no doubt that that ‘Biblical religion is patriarchal’; ‘Hebrew literature … comes from a male dominated society’. But surely our biblical faith doesn’t intend to divide people from each other but rather to offer salvation for both women and men. Surely it is possible ‘to translate biblical faith without sexism’. It is possible for Genesis to be ‘redeemed’ to a reading which challenges the sexist approach. [4] 

So when we read that woman is created last we must remember that in the bible often the last is regarded as ‘first’. In Genesis 1 for instance, humankind is created last but is immediately given dominion over all other living things. Taking this line of reasoning, woman may be seen as the culmination of creation. Why did God make Adam before Eve? Saving the best till last. [5]

About the idea that woman is to be a helper, ‘while the English word helper suggests an assistant, a subordinate’, ‘the original Hebrew word ezer is often used to describe God, a superior who creates and saves Israel. So a ‘helper’ is not an inferior. In close translation Genesis here speaks of ‘a helper who is a counterpart’. This man-woman relationship is about ‘identity, mutuality, and equality’.[6]

While it is true that woman is taken from the man’s rib, it is not man who created woman, it is an act of God. For both man and woman ‘life originates with God’. When the man says ‘bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh’ he is not implying that woman is derived from him or subordinate to him but rather that woman shares equally with him and the dust of the ground in owing their origin to a ‘divine mystery’. [7] 

And it may be a misreading of Genesis to assume that Adam named Eve. The text states that ‘she shall be called woman’. By contrast, when Adam named the animals in Genesis 1 he called them by name. Because the formula of the words is different in this instance, we can conclude that ‘in calling the woman, the man is not establishing power over her but rejoicing in their mutuality’. [8] Later on, Eve herself names her firstborn son. So naming is thus not only Adam’s prerogative. [9]

Maybe the most important words in this passage of Genesis are these:  “It is not good that the man should be alone.” The whole passage can be read as an affirmation that God created us to be communal beings, a celebration of fellowship between people. It is good news today, at a time of growing loneliness in our world – a problem recently described by the prime minister, Theresa May as “incredibly damaging to our humanity” when she launched a national loneliness strategy, creating a government-backed fund to support projects across England which bring people together. [10]

“It is not good that the man should be alone.” – is the good news in Genesis Chapter 2. When you read into it deeply you realise that it goes way beyond reinforcing an ancient culture’s particular idea of marriage and family. It takes us into the realisation that ‘God created us to live with and for others. God has planted in each of us an instinctive longing to achieve a closer likeness to him, a longing that urges us toward love, community, and unity.’ [11] From this right through to Jesus’ two commands to love God and love our neighbours, the message is the same. ‘If we are filled with God’s love, we can never be lonely or withdrawn for long; we will always find someone to reach out to. God and our neighbour will always be near us. All we need to do is find them.’ [12]

 

Notes

This talk draws on my Ridley Hall Year Two external essay, Is Genesis 1-11 irredeemably sexist? [pdf]

[1] David J. A. Clines, What Does Eve do to Help? p.25

[2] Phyllis Trible, God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality, p.72

[3] Phyllis Trible, God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality, p.72. My paraphrase bracketed.

[4] Based on a summary of Phyllis Trible’s approach to biblical criticism in Clines p.26/27.

[5] Phyllis Trible, Depatriarchalizing in Biblical Interpretation’ (Journal of the American Academy of Religion 41, 1973) pp.30-48, quoted in Clines, p.27 [pdf]

[6] Phyllis Trible, God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality, p.90

[7] Phyllis Trible, God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality, p102

[8] Phyllis Trible, God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality, p.99-100

[9] Ilana Pardes, ‘The Politics of Maternal Naming’ in Athalys Brenner, ed, A Feminist Companion to Genesis, p.174

[10] Robert Booth, England to tackle loneliness crisis with £11.5m cash injection. Guardian, 22 December 2018.

[11] Johann Christoph Arnold, It Is Not Good for Man to Be Alone. Plough.com. 

[12] Johann Christoph Arnold, It Is Not Good for Man to Be Alone. Plough.com.

 

Hebrews 2.14-18, Luke 2.22-40

The Presentation of Christ in the Temple, 3 February 2018

Eldroth, Keasden

 

It was an ordinary day in the Temple for Simeon. But then he had the most memorable moment of his life. I wonder if you feel as I do, that sometimes, at the most unexpected times and in the most unlikely places, things can happen to give you a hint of heaven, a glimpse of glory? A Simeon moment? 

I once stopped at a McDonalds on a very busy major junction, one of those drive-ins mostly built to cater for passers-by. It was full of business travellers, and other local customers too, carers with a young woman in a wheelchair, young apprentices on a construction job nearby. Normally in places like this you don’t expect strangers to bother with each other. But that day something happened to change that. 

The hint of heaven, the glimpse of glory, the Simeon moment, came to all of us there when another customer came in, a young mother, holding her very young baby in her arms. One of the assistants behind the servery squealed with delight when she saw this mum and baby come in and – ignoring the queue and breaking all protocol – the assistant held out her arms across the counter, and the mum – obviously her friend – came to the front and passed the child over to her for a cuddle. 

It seemed like this was the first time that that McDonalds assistant had seen her friend’s child and she couldn’t help share her delight with everyone else there. Suddenly everyone in the fast-food restaurant were united in a beautiful moment. It might have been the first time that young mother had taken the child out to show her off to people, and – just by being there, just by exchanging a few smiles – all of us, finding ourselves gathered around a baby in the middle of that McDonalds helped her to celebrate her new-born pride and joy. [1]

The parent passing the baby over to the one who had been eagerly awaiting their first sight of this child. A Simeon moment. Just like that ordinary, glorious day in the Temple all those years ago.

Do you recognise the reality that sometimes, from the most unexpected people and in the most unlikely places, something happens which feels like a flash of real insight, a vision of heaven? Can you recall any Simeon moments in your life?

I’m a firm believer in what I call ‘Heaven in the ordinary’. The idea that God will show himself to us in the middle of our everyday lives, if we open our eyes to him; that that we can find Heaven not just in the afterlife but in the here and now, if we open our hearts to that possibility. [2]

After all, didn’t Jesus say that ‘The Kingdom of Heaven is ‘in your midst’, or translated another way, The Kingdom of Heaven is ‘within your grasp’. [3] Scripture is full of this idea, especially the gospels which are dominated by the concept of the Kingdom of Heaven, or the Kingdom of God – the central idea of Jesus’ teaching, and one which he unfailingly taught by telling stories which are deeply rooted in ordinary life: 

• stories of the mustard seed and the yeast and the fishing net, which illustrate to us that the Kingdom of Heaven starts very modestly but keeps on growing; 
• stories of the wedding banquet and the many other meals which he talked about or took part in, all of which illustrate to us that the Kingdom of Heaven is a festive, joyful and communal event; 
• a story about a vineyard owner who pays equal wages to all his staff regardless of the hours they worked, which illustrates to us that the Kingdom of Heaven is a scandal of grace; 
• and stories about lost sheep and lost coins and treasure hidden in a field, which help us to know that in the Kingdom of Heaven small things are valued highly, and ought to be sought out. 

Other parts of scripture – particularly the Old Testament – promote strongly the sense that heaven is a transcendent ‘other’ place where God lives. Jesus himself affirms this when he tells his friends that he is going to prepare a place for them ‘In my Father’s house [where there are] many rooms’. [4]

But his chief concern of Jesus’ life and teaching is to break down any supposed divisions between a heavenly, spiritual kingdom and an earthly, physical kingdom. That’s the whole point of the incarnation of course, that’s why he lived the human life. To bring heaven and earth together. To completely and intimately connect the spiritual and the physical. And, though we hold to the hope of a final wondrous home where we will live with God, Jesus teaches us that our foretaste of that heaven, and our preparation for it, are to be found in the here and now, and in the closest, tiniest things which are so familiar to us that we generally neglect or undervalue them. Heaven is not ‘within us’ or ‘in our hearts’, but in the tangible stuff of ordinary life. 

Remember when you first took hold of a child – your own, maybe, or a nephew, niece, grandchild, god-child: that feeling, that heavenly moment when your eyes met the child’s eyes and your fingers felt the warmth of their tiny body through their clothes, and those hopes and dreams for the baby, fears and apprehensions for its mother, welled up inside and spilled out from your heart. The moment when Mary and Joseph appeared in the Temple was just one of those ordinary moments of everyday life. The moment when Simeon took the child Jesus in his arms, part of the tangible stuff of which all our experiences are made, and though which we learn more about ourselves, and the divine.

We often think that it is major events which most determine a person. But we are more deeply and lastingly influenced by the tiny events of which everyday existence is made up. [5] 

It takes the imagination of faith to be able to see heaven in the ordinary. May God give us the  imagination of faith which Simeon displayed and Anna expressed in the Temple that day, when they saw, in an ordinary child, something special, something to praise God for. May God help us keep our eyes open for Simeon moments, so that all our daily lives can become like a communion, as we allow Jesus the human one to come to meet us where we are.

 

Notes 

[1] Revised version of Jesus in the Temple and the baby in McDonalds: finding Heaven in the Ordinary preached in Somerset in 2016 and partly based on Simeon moments and Simeon sayings, preached in Liverpool in 2009. The McDonalds incident took place in Basford, Nottingham – a story I first blogged about in England and nowhere on January 22, 2009. 

[2] Much of the following content is based on my talk, Heaven in Ordinary, given at the Greenbelt Festival, Cheltenham, August 2007.

[3] Luke 17.21.

[4] John 14.2.

[5] Siegfried Kracauer: ‘We must rid ourselves of the delusion that it is major events which most determine a person. He is more deeply and lastingly influenced by the tiny catastrophes of which everyday existence is made up.’ Quoted in Joe Moran, Queuing for Beginners, p.60.

 

Luke 5.1-11

St Columba’s Church, Gruline, 

The Fourth Sunday Before Lent, 10 February 2019

 

I wonder if you’ve ever considered that if Peter and his colleagues had not been fishermen, but doctors, then Jesus would have called them to be healers of men; that if Peter and his colleagues had been bakers, then Jesus would have told them their calling now was to bring people the bread of life; or if Peter and his cohorts had been plumbers, Jesus would have said that from now on they would serve people by supplying them with living waters.

For the metaphor which Jesus used to describe the disciples’ new vocation related directly and deeply to their existing vocation. 

And this must have surely come about through Jesus observing the fishermen at work, contemplating the ways they went about their days, training his eyes to see the nuances in the skilled tasks they performed, appreciating their teamwork – and then, as their teacher, affirming their everyday skills and encouraging them of their value, in the work he was now inviting them to share: the gentle, generous task of furthering the kingdom of God.

What does it take to be a fisherman? Intelligence in understanding the ways of fish and their whereabouts. A strong stomach and the ability to keep going in all weathers. Patience above all, I imagine. The willingness to be alone, adrift, a long long time, living in hope of a catch. 

“All goes back to the earth”, writes Wendell Berry, 

“and so I do not desire

pride of excess or power,

but the contentments made

by men who have had little:

the fisherman’s silence

receiving the river’s grace” [1] 

And so in contemplating the qualities of the fisherman, Jesus discerned there also the latent qualities of the disciple, the apostle.

And so the phrase “fishing for men” is how Jesus encourages his friends the fishermen to the exercise of a soft power in their world, utilising the gifts they had been given in the service of the kingdom. 

For Jesus’ phrase “fishing for men” – or women – is not a way of forcing the idea that the chief goal of a Christian life is to “catch” human beings by proselytising. That would be to rather oversimplify how human interaction and exchange really works; somewhat diminishing the humanity of both the one caught and the catcher whilst reducing Christian activity to something like a Ponzi scheme; a sales pitch which can only build a pyramid of hope and disappointment. [2]

Rather Jesus’ fishermen metaphor invites us to consider vocation as something which evolves over time, in which the gifts and character we develop continue to be reshaped and reused by God in the ongoing work of service.

When asked, as you’re being asked today, to consider your vocation in life, many of us respond like Peter responded at first, to Jesus. You recall that he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, ‘Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!’ 

We may have taken onboard the falsehood that our particular vocation is somehow unworthy of God; that God’s work is way above and beyond anything we can do. Nothing could be more wrong; as the entire gospels show – Jesus is interested in being alongside everybody, affirming and valuing people from all walks of life and gifts of character, from those skilled at sea to those gifted in finance; from widows minding their minute household budgets so tightly to priests receiving the abundance of sacrifices at the holy altar. All are one in Christ Jesus, one in their diversity of vocations.

I like to suggest to those of us who are maturer in years that an important part of our own service of Christ now involves identifying, affirming and developing the vocations of others, particularly the young. How much the young need the advice, experience and encouragement of the old to help them find their way through the unchartered waters of their lives, today with all its distractions and challenges. How wonderful when old ones give time and effort to the young. 

This scripture story invites us to discern signs of the kingdom of God in the lives of those around us, to honour them, and to nurture them to maturity.  This is about empathy and the celebration of God at work in the everyday. This is an encouragement to walk alongside others out in their world, and together “to find out what God is doing and join in”. [3]

Part of my Christian formation was as an apprentice welder, creating in metal and fire; it was the first job I had on leaving school at sixteen, and at that time I was especially impressed that part of Jesus’ own formation was as a craftsman. 

Some years  later I was drawn to the Iona Community, whose ethos is rooted in a keen affirmation of the deep connection between work and worship; as you doubtless know, begun with a collaboration between respectably-educated trainee ministers and rough-edged craftsmen who rolled up their sleeves and together got on with the task of rebuilding that Abbey, and saying their prayers together each day too. They have a lot to offer when it comes to contemplating vocation.

I close with this prayer from the Iona Community’s daily liturgy, a prayer of George Macleod. Perhaps you might make it your own:

O Christ, the Master Carpenter, who at the last, through wood and nails, purchased our whole salvation, wield well your tools in the workshop of your world, so that we who come rough-hewn to your bench may here be fashioned to a truer beauty of your hand. [4]

 

Notes

‘On vacation’ because this sermon was preached whilst on locum minister duty at St Columba’s, Gruline, on the Isle of Mull. I’ve given previous versions of this talk to a Deanery Clergy Chapter and on the occasion of the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh’s 70th wedding anniversary, both in Somerset in 2017.

[1] Wendell Berry, The Want of Peace, New Collected Poems.

[2] Robert Hamerton-Kelly, Fishers of Men, February 4, 2007.

[3] A phrase widely attributed to Archbishop Rowan Williams.

[4] Iona Community, Iona Abbey Worship Book (2001 edition), p.19, and various other titles of Wild Goose Publications.