A Sermon for the Second Sunday of Easter (19/04/20): Believing Thomas

Believing Thomas

John 20:19-31

The first Easter day ends with the disciples gathered together. They are back in their usual meeting place. They are with one another in the house where just three nights ago they had shared a final meal with Jesus. So much has happened since then. Fear had scattered them and has kept them apart. But now good news has brought them together. The tomb is empty. Since early this morning the word has been spreading amongst them. Before dawn Mary Magdalene had been to the tomb and found it open and without Jesus inside. She had become convinced that Jesus has been raised from the dead. She told Peter and John. And the word has spread from there. By this time on Sunday Mary and perhaps some of the others have had their first experience of the risen Jesus himself. This good news overcomes the fear that has separated the disciples and kept them in solitary hiding for the last couple of days.

The good news at this point has overcome their fear, but not eliminated it altogether.

When it was evening on the first day of the week and the doors of the house were locked for fear of the Jews. . .

What is good news to the disciples, is also dangerous news. It is fearful news. Those who wanted Jesus dead presumably wanted him to stay dead. If the Priests and the leaders of the nation were prepared to kill Jesus, they would go to similar lengths to eliminate anyone that suggests that Jesus isn’t exactly where they had put him, dead and sealed behind a rock!

Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.”

The locked door is an important detail. Nothing in scripture happens, or is remembered, by accident. Jesus appears among his disciples. There is no doubting between them that his presence is real. He is as solid and present as any of them. This is a physical reality. Jesus is “there” in the same way that any other human being could be “there”. This is Jesus, not a ghost, not a projection of their shared grief, not a pious hope or simply their imaginations. The resurrection is real, and the evidence of it is standing before them. But now Jesus is unbound from the limitations that constrain other human beings. That is why the locked door is significant. Jesus is freed from the limitations that physicality imposes on human beings. He has overcome the greatest human limitation of all, death, so no other limitation now obstructs him. He will not be held outside by a locked door. Jesus is free to be present, to any one, in any place, at any time. Jesus can and will be present just as he has been to the disciples in their locked room.

But Thomas (who was called the Twin) was not with them when Jesus came.

We could sometimes wonder where Thomas was. When the disciples gathered, Thomas should have been there, but he wasn’t. Maybe he was more fearful than the rest. Maybe he was more grief stricken than the rest. Maybe he was simply better at hiding than all the others, so that the news of the empty tomb never reached him. Or perhaps it did, and it sounded too much like a fantasy or an old wives tale to make him emerge from the security of wherever it was he was concealed. Eventually though even Thomas came out of hiding. Eventually the good news reached him.

So the disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.”

Thomas seems to possess a natural scepticism. He is less inclined than some to be swept along by the excitement of others. He perhaps possessed the wisdom and self knowledge to know what he did not know, and the courage sometimes to admit it out loud. All this has earned him a slightly undeserved replacement to his nickname, when once he was known to the disciples as “the Twin”, he has been remembered by everyone ever since as “the Doubter”. Thomas responds to the good news:

“Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails, and my hand in his side. I will not believe.”

The physicality of being human, in death, has its gruesome side. Thomas wants his lack of knowledge to be replaced with knowing. For something this important Thomas senses that hearing and even seeing are not enough to convince. To know that this really is Jesus he would need more than being in the same room as him. To be sure that the one who died on the cross and the one who is now present are one and the same, Thomas feels he would need to trace the marks of that suffering with his fingers. He definitely needs more than the words of another, or a dozen others, to believe. Thomas’ search for a sure and solid ground for his faith has earned him, unfairly, the position of being ever remembered for his doubt.

Yet how different is he from Peter and John? When it was still early on Sunday morning Mary Magdalene had come to them. She had breathlessly told them that the tomb is empty. And she inferred from this that Jesus is risen. The question is how did Peter and John respond? Did they simply take Mary at her word? Was her testimony sufficient to remove their scepticism?

Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went to the tomb.

Did they go to the tomb because they doubted Mary? Or did they go because they believed her? And if they believed her, why did they need to see for themselves? Faith may start in hearing, but it is built on personal, direct experience. Peter and John heard what Mary said. Perhaps we could say that her testimony planted a seed of faith. But Peter and John did not believe until they had allowed that seed to grow by looking for direct experience of the resurrection for themselves. Which they got, when they found that the tomb is empty, exactly as Mary had stated. That is a direct experience which seems to open up the possibility of everything that follows. It begins the chain of events that gathers the disciples and allows Jesus to be present in their midst. It seems somewhat harsh to be critical of someone for needing the kind of direct experience which the other disciples were already building their faith upon.

A pattern of Christian life is established immediately. A Sunday by Sunday gathering of the believers has marked out Christian social practice from the very beginning. The next Sunday the disciple are together again:

A week later the disciples were again in the house and Thomas was with them.

Despite his scepticism Thomas does join the other disciples at their meeting place. If it was “doubt”, doubt should be the very last thing that should stop anyone from gathering with believers. Thomas is present this time. Thomas is at least willing to be persuaded. He has faith enough to think that there is at least a possibility that his scepticism may be confounded. One of the things that modern individualism has undermined is the value of social gathering. Less and less do we make time to be in the presence of others. Believers gathered together with one another is a means of grace. Which is one of the reasons the present moment is so difficult for us.  Though conversely, being prevented from being together might just serve as a reminder of what Thomas discovered. In that gathering Jesus can and will be present, and faith can and will emerge

Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.”

Once more Jesus is there, in his real, not imagined, physical presence. He is there still unconstrained by the grave, or by locked doors, or even by the doubts of those who knew him.

Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt, but believe.”

Jesus knows what it might take for us to put our faith in him. As it happens Thomas needed less than he himself had imagined. The gruesome scene of Thomas poking at Jesus’ wounds does not come to pass. It doesn’t happen, even though Jesus makes that experience was available to Thomas, if that was what it was going to take. But as it happens, seeing Jesus is enough for Thomas. And he goes beyond the confession that the other had yet been able to make. For Thomas perhaps his initial scepticism meant that his coming to faith was all the more dramatic. When the bow is drawn back further, the arrow travels further. Thomas answers Jesus’ invitation to touch him:

“My Lord, my God!”

Thomas is the first to make the characteristic confession of Christian faith. He declares what was to become Christianity’s first creed: Jesus is Lord. Jesus is the one who has the authority to direct the believers’ lives and bring about the kingdom of God in this world. But also the declaration that Jesus is more than just a prophet, or a great philosopher or a marvelous spiritual leader. Thomas declares what marks out Christianity from all other faiths. Thomas announces the faith that holds Jesus to be God. The belief, that may be hard to define precisely, that to experience the presence of Jesus is to experience the presence of God.

It is deeply unfair to remember Thomas for his doubt, rather than for his faith. Because Thomas is the first to announce a fully articulated Christian faith in Jesus: My Lord, my God.

From Mary Magdalene to Peter and John, from Peter and John to the other disciples, from the disciples to Thomas, and from Thomas through a long chain of other hearts and hands to us, so the good news runs. The question for all of them, and the question for us is; how do you respond to the good news? Do we go to the tomb hoping to find it empty? Do we gather with the believers hoping to have our scepticism confounded? Do we require some other sign of Jesus presence? Jesus, in that room on the second Sunday gathering of believers, looks toward us and declares a blessing:

“Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”

To encounter Jesus, and see him in the way that Thomas and Mary Magdalene and the other disciples did, is an enormous privilege. It is a privilege that has been afforded to a few dozen, hundreds at the most, of the billions of Christians who have ever lived. It is certainly something we might long for. But it is not something that our faith needs to depend upon. Because Jesus’ blessing rests on us. Seeing, they say, is believing. It certainly was for Thomas, even though he had suggested touching would be necessary. For the vast majority of us though hearing is sufficient, coupled with the experience of the living Christ we find among his people and those he calls us to serve. Jesus’ blessing rests on us: Blessed are you who have not seen, and yet believe.

Amen.

Believing Thomas by Christopher Wood-Archer is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

A Sermon for Easter Day (12/04/20): He is not here, He is risen

Christ is risen: He is risen indeed, Alleluia!

He Is Not Here, He is Risen

Matthew 28:1-10

Before the sun is even properly up, Easter morning begins. It begins in journey from a still sleeping city, resting after the excitement and terror of the past week. It begins in a journey to a quiet place where all human life seems to end:

After the Sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb.

Early on Sunday morning, on the third day of the terrible crisis that they are living through, the two Marys go to the tomb. It is faith that takes them there. We often ascribe their journey to other motives, but it is faith that draws them. Perhaps as yet it is an unformed faith. But it is faith nonetheless. They have taken Jesus at his word. They have believed what he told them. He said that he would be betrayed, and he was. Judas sold him for 30 pieces of silver He said that he would be given over into the hands of sinners, and he was. There in the dark, in the garden, on Thursday night they had come with soldiers and taken hold of him. He had said that he would suffer and die, and he did. They nailed him to a cross and lifted him up for all to see. He said that on the third day he would rise again. The women have watched it all. They have stayed, beyond the bitter end. Now they are here. Jesus has never let them down. They have stayed true to him, even as others have fallen aside. They trust Jesus to be true to his word, one more time. Faith draws them to look at the tomb, hoping that they are not the ones who were mistaken. And their faith is rewarded Their faith in Jesus, as it should, and as it always does, their faith brings them to the right place at the right time to experience the resurrection.

There are many things that can be the opposite of faith. Outright certainty can be one of them. The certainty that the world is the way it is, and cannot change. That death is death and cannot be reversed. That there is nothing to be done. That there really is no alternative.That God can and will do no new thing.

There is also unbelief. The unbelief that declares that Jesus is not the Messiah, and his words cannot be fulfilled. That Jesus was not who he said, and who he appeared to be. That his words were false. That he was lying, perhaps not to his followers, but at the very least to himself. That his promises of new life and a new world are all just fantasy. 

But fear is also the opposite of faith. It was perhaps fear for himself that prompted Judas’ betrayal. It was fear that scattered the disciples on Thursday night. It was fear that kept them away from the foot of the cross. It is fear now that keeps them shut in their room and away from is waiting for the women at the tomb. Fear ultimately is always the fear of death, directly or indirectly. It is that fear that hangs over all of human existence. It is that fear which drives so much of how we see human beings act.

In many ways that fear is natural enough. Death seems to bring an end to who we are. It robs us of our loved ones. It is the greatest, most fearful unknown, the dark abyss we cannot look into. But it is that fear that leads people to try to build lives of security in the face of death. It is the source of the futile attempt to drown out the yawning silence of death with noise and busyness and things, anything to anaesthetise that fear. It is that fear that is used by some to dominate and exploit others. It is that fear that enables the many to be held captive by the few; and both sides of that relationship are equally terrified of dying. It is fear of death that keeps the disciples at home, and away from the place that will remind them of death, the tomb.

The resurrection destroys certainty. If being dead isn’t certain, then absolutely nothing is certain! The resurrection dispels unbelief. Jesus is vindicated, he is exactly who he said, and who he appeared to be! And most of all the resurrection takes away the fear of death. Death does not have the last word over Jesus. Death, in Jesus, need not have the last word over us. Whatever lies in that abyss that we cannot see, it need not be feared, because Jesus can bring us through it.

The two Marys have their faith rewarded. After the earthquake which opens the tomb, an angel descends and announces to them:

“Do not be afraid. I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. He is not here; for he has been raised. Come see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples, ‘He has been raised from the dead, and indeed is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him.’ there you will see him.”

The angel’s extraordinary speech contains the whole gospel. The angel proclaims to the women the gospel in its purest and simplest form. Jesus was crucified; now he has been raised. That is the good news which dispels fear. And proclamation leads to exhortation. The gospel always contains within itself the need to pass it on. After fear is gone, one thing is left to be done. The women must carry that good news to those who need to hear it. They must give it to the disciples so that their fear can be dispelled as well. To receive the gospel, to know that Jesus is not dead but alive, to be released from the crushing  fear that hangs over all human existence, always implies the necessity of carrying the message to others who still need to hear it.

Yet just as the gospel dispels the fear of death it puts two different fears in its place. The earthquake which brings the two Marys to life, leaves the guards as if they were dead. The dazzling appearance of the angel terrifies the servants of the forces of death. Their fear of death is still in place. But now it has been joined by another fear. That Jesus overcomes death strikes fear into those who rely on that fear, and into those who are enmeshed in its system. If death is not final, if death is not to be feared, then death’s power has vanished. And those who would use death to control and exploit have nothing left. All that is left to them is the condemnation of the one who they killed but who would not stay dead; Jesus. The good news, even this the best news of all, is always accompanied by judgement. Those who are certain that God can do no new thing, that there is no alternative, those who do not take Jesus at his word and do not believe what he says and those who are motivated by fear to live lives of destruction all stand condemned by the resurrection.

But the two Marys are gripped by another sort of fear.

So they left the tomb with fear and great joy and ran to tell his disciples.

There is not better expression of the appropriate response to an encounter with the power of God: Fear and great joy. The women experience a different kind of fear. They are awed, astounded, amazed by what they hear and see, and now know. The words fall short of the experience. The world proves to be fundamentally different from the place of cold despair we are so often told exists. This fear is a kind of dizzying vertigo. An exhilarating fear that spills over into joy. Nothing else is left to be afraid of. The Marys, and everyone who shares their faith, and goes with them to find that the tomb is empty, are set free. That is a fearful joyful experience. It is the freedom that empowers them to obey. The Marys turn away from the tomb, they leave the place of death for the last time and head back into life with good news. As they do so:

Suddenly Jesus met them and said, “Greetings.”

Jesus’ presence confirms the angel’s announcement, and when he speaks he confirms the angel’s instructions:

“Do not be afraid. Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee, there they will see me.”

The gospel in its purest and simplest form, Christ is alive. And if you go where he sends you, he will meet you there. The resurrection is not an idea. It is not a theory nor an explanation nor even a philosophy. It is not simply a moment in history. The resurrection is an ongoing reality. It is solid enough to take hold of for ourselves. On Easter morning we discover and proclaim that Christ is risen. It is good news which dispels our fear and sets free. It is a reality that fills us with fear and joy.

Amen.

Again many thanks to Sylvia Fairbrass from Normanby who provided the photograph of her Easter flower arrangement which is at the start of this post. She explains it like this:

"This is my attempt to tell the story of Easter using materials from the old railway path and my garden as I am self-isolating.The arrangement is made up the following:

Yew - Trinity, Euonymus - Evergreen, Gold Heart & Variegated Ivy.

Flowers: - Followers, Family & Romans.

Blue, Rosemary, Hyacinth.

Orange, Crown Fritillaria - Crown of thorns,

Purple, Everlasting Wallflowers. 

Red, Tulip & Wallflowers, Pink & Blue, Yellow Kale. 

White Hyacinths & Narcissus, Hellebore - Angels

Purple candle, Palm Crosses, 30 pence in Silver coins."

He Is Not Here, He is Risen by Christopher Wood-Archer is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

A Sermon for Good Friday (10/04/20): Why Can't Jesus Come Down from the Cross?

Why Can’t Jesus Come Down From The Cross

Matthew 27:33-54

Jesus’ death is a puzzle to us. Even though we know Jesus dies. Even though we have been told, and try to tell ourselves, it was always part of the plan. Even though we know that in three day Jesus will rise again, that it turns out alright in the end. Jesus’ death bothers us. It raises questions, which when we ask them we find hard, if not impossible to answer. We end up feeling like the resurrection is a correction of what went wrong on Good Friday. Deep down, for all our belief in the power of what God accomplishes through Jesus’ death, deep down we harbour a nagging suspicion that really Jesus shouldn’t have to die. We would probably deny it, but we probably share with most of Jesus’ contemporaries the view that the Messiah really ought to win. That if Jesus is the Messiah it should have been possible for him to come out victorious and not end up on the cross. We suspect there must have been some other way for God to accomplish God’s will without a cruel death. 

This certainly was the expectation of Jesus’ contemporaries, both his followers and his opponents. If Jesus is the Messiah; If he is the Son of God; If he is King of the Jews; For those titles to mean anything, in a conventional sense, Jesus has to win.  He has to thwart the chief priests. And ultimately he has to overthrow the Romans. He definitely can’t die. Winning means not dying. He has to get to the end of the contest, the one between God and the powers ranged against God which we might call Empire, he has to get to the end of that contest and still be alive. By that measure, the cross and Jesus’ on it is a defeat. And if this is God’s plan then it is a puzzle, a mystery.

It is clear from the words that were hurled at Jesus hanging on the cross, that this was the view of those who saw him there. They viewed Jesus crucified with a mixture of disappointment and contempt.Those who had heard him teach in the Temple said:

“You who would destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself. If you are the Son of God come down from the cross.”

They clearly assume that the Son of God should not and cannot die. And he certainly should not be dying in this humiliating manner and at the hands of those they were expecting him to liberate them from. Their assumption is that one who has the power to destroy and rebuild the temple, must also have the power to avoid crucifixion. And therefore they reason, since Jesus is dying, he cannot possess that power. Much to their disappointment and hence irritation it is clear to them Jesus is not who he claimed to be. Hanging on a cross he cannot be the Messiah. One of the last temptations which Jesus faces and resists, is the same as the first. Like turning stones into bread, the temptation is to use his power for his own benefit. To do his own will, particularly to use it to avoid suffering, rather than stay his course and allow God’s will to be done through him.  

For the Chief Priests of course, this is exactly as they had intended. Along with the scribes and the elders they regard him with contempt and mock him:

“He saved others yet he cannot save himself, let him come down from the cross now, and we will believe him.”

For Jesus’ fiercest opponents this is their moment of vindication. They were right. He was wrong. Him hanging on a cross is the conclusive evidence of that. They like everyone else are convinced that the Messiah could not fail in this way. The Son of God cannot die.  Jesus is not who he claimed to be! Yet there is, even among the Priests and the elders and the scribes, a hint of wistful disappointment. Part of them, even Jesus’ bitterest enemies, part of them longs for the Messiah, even if it is Jesus, just so long as he could lead them to victory. Again Jesus is offered a temptation that he had faced and resisted at the beginning. His enemies, unsurprisingly, speak with the voice of Satan. Like leaping from the highest pinnacle of the Temple and surviving the fall, coming down from the cross could be seen as a convincing display of divine power. Yet such a display would still be unconvincing, and not actually accomplish the new beginning God is looking for.

Even as Jesus dies, some in the crowd expect things to turn out differently. With his penultimate breath Jesus cries out in the words of the Psalm:

“My God, My God why have you forsaken me”

Words which were misunderstood by those who heard them. So Matthew leaves us with the untranslated Aramaic which Jesus spoke:

“Eli, Eli lema sabachtani”

He does so to show us where the misunderstanding comes from. Some of the bystanders misunderstood Jesus’ appeal to God and thought he was asking for Elijah to come and rescue him:

“Wait let us see whether Elijah will come to save him.”

Perhaps what they expected to happen was that Elijah would come. Elijah was the greatest prophet of old who was so loved by God that, in contrast to Jesus, he was taken directly into heaven without dying. Perhaps what they expected was Elijah to arrive on God’s chariot of fire, wielding a flaming sword of righteousness, and bring Jesus down from the cross, and with that power establish God’s reign. Again their misunderstanding reveals their real expectations. It perhaps could almost be called a Freudian slip. They reveal what they really hoped for from Jesus and God’s kingdom. They expected that it would be established in a war of conquest. Once again one of the temptations which Jesus had faced and resisted in the wilderness is embodied at the foot of the cross; that God’s kingdom could be established like any other kingdom of the world. But God’s kingdom is nothing like those other kingdoms. And it cannot be established in that way.

Curiously what everyone in fact appears to do is underestimate the power of God. Death is the limit of all human decision and action. It is the final boundary of human power. Strangely everyone seems to place the same limit to God’s power. They assume that death must mean defeat, since it must mean an end to decision and action. Yet no such limit exists for God’s power. God’s power to decide and act through Jesus is not ended by his death. And what is more most of them should have known this. It was what God had been promising all along, that on the last day the righteous would be raised. Only the Sadducees rejected the resurrection and placed death as the formal limit of God’s power. That perhaps explains why the Priests who were mostly Sadducees thought that killing Jesus would work. But it doesn’t explain why everyone else failed to recognise what God might still do.

Yet the question remains. Given God’s unlimited power, why did Jesus die? Why was it that another path to the establishment and victory of God’s kingdom not taken? Why couldn’t God save, except through the terrible suffering inflicted on Jesus on the cross?

The answer in fact is quite simple: Jesus dies so that no one else has to. 

Now this is true in some fundamental theological sense. To say, “Jesus dies so that no one else has to” is one way of putting into words what the cross accomplishes between God and the human race as a whole and forever. But it is also true in a much more immediate and historical sense. Jesus died so that no one else had to.

It is easy to imagine what would have happened if the Priests’ or the bystanders implicit expectations had been fulfilled. Jesus’ descent from the cross, or Elijah’s arrival in a fiery chariot would have resulted in death. The first group to die would have been the detachment of soldiers guarding the cross. Their sworn duty was to ensure that the execution was carried out. They would have to defend the assertion of Imperial power with their lives. For Jesus to live would have required their deaths. But it would not, and could not have stopped there. Both the religious establishment of the Priests and the power of Empire were committed to Jesus’ death. A lethal conflict would have ensued. Violence would have spiralled out from the foot of the cross until it consumed the whole world.

It is in the infinite grace and mercy of God that God chooses a path to salvation, to the establishment of victory of the kingdom of God that involves no one else's death, apart from the death that God chooses to take on himself. In contrast to the human use of power, God uses his power in a way that doesn’t destroy what he is trying to save. With God there is no collateral damage. Jesus dies so that no one else has to.

The path to the establishment and victory of God’s kingdom begins with those who would have been the first victims had any other path been chosen. The path to the kingdom of God begins with the Centurion and the soldiers at the foot of the cross. They were witnesses to Jesus’ death and the terrifying events that accompanied it, the darkened sky and the earthquake. When they had seen it all they testified:

“Surely this man was God Son.”

It is a confession made by those most directly and immediately responsible for Jesus’ death. It is made by the men who drove nails into his hands and his feet and who thrust a spear into his side. But they are also the first to recognise that it is indeed possible for the Messiah, for God’s Son to die. It is a confession which needs to be made by all those who have opposed God. It is a confession which needs to be made by all those who have been held captive by the world’s system of oppression and violence. It is a confession which needs to be made by those trapped by the religion of the Priests and the politics of Empire. It is a liberating confession. It is the confession which leads to the establishment of God’s peaceable kingdom in those who make it, and in the world. Painful as it is to accept, Jesus did not come down from the cross, he dies so that no one else has to.

Amen.

Why Can’t Jesus Come Down From The Cross by Christopher Wood-Archer is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

A Sermon for Maundy Thursday (09/04/20): When We Can't Take and Eat and Drink

When We Can’t Take and Eat and Drink 

Matthew 26:26-30

Jesus says to his gathered disciples as he offers them bread:

“Take, eat, this is my body.”

And as he hands them the cup of wine he says:

“Drink from it, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.”

This is a very familiar reading, but a particularly poignant one for us just at the moment.  For it describes what we cannot do now. These verses describe the moments in Jesus last supper with his disciples that establishes something that followers of Jesus have done ever since. They set up for us the practice of taking bread and a cup and calling to mind what Jesus does for us. But the scene also reminds us of what makes the communion service so powerfully symbolic. Its reminder of what Jesus does for us is built into a reminder of all the family and friendly gatherings we have ever taken part in. Jesus takes our gatherings and our shared meals and uses them to remind us of himself. It calls to mind the communities we are part of, as families and church. Communities that are built on closeness, in every sense of that word. And this is something which can’t happen for us now. 

The reading pictures a scene for us of Jesus and his closest companions gathered together. They sit down at a table with one another. And they share a meal. As it happens it was the last meal they were going to share with one another like this. And perhaps at least some of them were already realising this. And during this meal Jesus shows them in an acted parable the way in which he gives himself to and for them and the way in which they will be bound together as a community. This is such a powerful moment that the church has done it ever since. There is an unbroken chain between that evening and us. A repeated sequence of gathering, taking bread and cup and remembering, which joins them with us and every Christian who has ever lived. A chain, a sequence, which has for now been temporarily interrupted.

But more than that, those ordinary family and communal occasions, the meals and the times together, which the communion service builds on, have also been taken from us for the time being. No wonder these present days are so uncomfortable for us.

Time was when we used to tell ourselves something about our practice of communion. We said: “we honour the rite by its infrequency.” We said we made it special by not doing it as often as some traditions within the church do. That actually was always untrue. It was a fib we told ourselves, to justify the fact that we couldn’t hold communion services more often. But it turns out that Methodists do value communion. Some years ago church-goers of all denominations were surveyed about what they valued in their tradition’s practices. It came as a surprise to some, but Methodists valued what we call the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper more highly even than Roman Catholics value what they call the Mass. We certainly wouldn’t think of ourselves as “sacramental” people. But perhaps communion does what cannot be put into words. It reminds us of what we treasure most, closeness to Jesus and closeness with one another. 

We joke that if Methodists ever do anything together it has to involve a cup of tea and a piece of cake afterwards. In reality this is merely an extension of what we are valuing in our communion service. We may not think of ourselves as sacramental people, but our real sacrament is food and sociability. And this is what we are prevented from experiencing now Perhaps not holding communion so often did in a rather backhanded way make us value it more. We created a situation of repeated absence, making our hearts grow fonder. So perhaps when we are able to gather a share again it will be all the more precious and meaningful.

Perhaps also, this time of deprivation will bring into clearer focus what sharing bread and cup means, what it is they symbolise. Not gathering, not sharing, perhaps points us to something that is easy to overlook. Christianity is the most “materialist” of all religions. Of all religions it is most concerned with life as it actually lived in human bodies in a world made of matter. The gospel is not a philosophical truth that can be known apart from its embodiment. Christianity has to be seen, and even touched, to be believed. What we are being forcefully reminded of just now is the sheer physicality of what being a Christian is. Knowing how to be a Christian comes from us being physically present to one another, in shared practices like eating and drinking together. The very things which Jesus’ actions at the the last supper point us to. And which the communion service seeks to remind us of, in a quite physical and material way.

Bread and Cup express for us, in symbolic fashion, our broader sacramental experience, of food and sociability. Jesus took a loaf of bread and after blessing it he broke it and gave it to the disciples.  Bread we recognise is a stand-in for all food. We call it the “staff of life.” It represents everything that sustains us. And sharing food together is one of the foundations of community. The word “companion” means literally, someone who we share bread with. The people we eat with are our companions. The sum of our companions is our community. But Jesus in his action points us to a very specific community, one which he is forming around himself. He says:

“Take, eat, this is my body.” 

Sometimes we have struggled to grasp what Jesus is saying here. Which perhaps why performing his action works so much better than talking about it. He tells his followers that it will he who feeds and sustains them, in the way that bread does. We do sometimes use the metaphor of eating about our faith. We talk about what “feeds” our faith. That may be all kinds of things. But Jesus intends that by sharing bread, both symbolically at communion, and practically in actual meals together, we should remember that the source and sustenance of our life is him. And the context in which his words are spoken given them particular significance. Jesus says these things on the very last night before he is crucified. We cannot fail to understand that when he gives the bread, he is pointing those who receive it to him giving himself utterly on the cross. He is telling us that he dies to give us life.

After sharing bread with his disciples Jesus also took the cup, and said:

“Drink from it all of you, for this is the blood of the covenant which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.”

A little later in the evening, in the garden of Gethsemane Jesus prays alone. There he pleads with his Father:

“If it is possible let this cup pass from me.”

And a little earlier in his ministry he had challenged James and John:

“Are you able to drink the cup that I am about to drink?”

The “cup” is a well established metaphor for suffering. Jesus’ invitation to his disciple is always this stark. Put another way he says:

“Take up your cross and follow me.”  

Jesus says: Come with me and die! He offers his followers a cup of suffering and invites them to drink from it. To be a follower of Jesus is to put our bodies in harm's way. Christianity is concerned with life as it actually lived in human bodies in a world made of matter. Jesus suffered because he lived the life God intends for all human beings. But the world extracts a price on people who live like that. And the price extracted from Jesus and many others who have followed him has been death. And for every Christian, whose faith is genuine, it comes at some cost. 

But it is a shared cup. It is perhaps to be regretted that for historical reasons Methodists no longer share in a single cup at communion. Since once more this is a symbol of community. The life which Jesus invites us into is not one we can live on our own. The cost of discipleship is a shared burden. We live in a community where an injury to one is an injury to all. Which returns us to our problem. Because we can’t gather at the moment this has become difficult for us to symbolise and to see.

The challenge of the present moment is that Christianity is a shared endeavour. Discipleship is collective and communal. The current circumstances have taken from us many of the ways we both symbolise this, and put this into practice. What we do still have are Jesus’ words spoken to his disciples at the most difficult and most decisive moment of his life. Words which draw us into a recognition of what he does for us, and what he creates amongst us. We are a people who are sustained by him, and who share his suffering with him and with one another. So that when we can gather once more, as we surely shall, we will be able to experience the symbols of life and community that he has given us, with greater joy and greater clarity.

Amen.

A Sermon for Holy Week (3): The Son of Man and the Glory of God

The Son of Man and the Glory of God

 John 12:20-33 

The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.

This is the high-point of Jesus' earthly ministry The moment when his popularity among the people was at its greatest. If there had been opinion polls in the 1st century,Jesus would have been heading them. His opponents the Pharisees have just bitterly observed: 

"You see, you can do nothing. The world has gone after him." 

And as if to prove their jealous point, a group of foreigners, Greeks, approach one of the disciples, who has a Greek name, looking for an interview with Jesus. Philipp and Andrew the other disciple with a Greek name, both of whom were from the same half Greek city in Galilee, Bethsaida, approach Jesus with the foreigners’ request. Jesus recognises that the high point has arrived. Again and again through his ministry, beginning at the wedding feast at Cana, he has had to deflect the ambitions of his supporters and declare that his hour has not come. Well the time is now His hour has come.  

"The Son of Man is about to be glorified." 

We like glory. We like success, triumph. We like a procession. Jesus offers this thought, the declaration that the time is now, shortly after his arrival in Jerusalem The high tide of his popularity is reached just after the crowd has sung their "hosannas." This is the kind of Jesus we like Jesus the triumphant king. True, he was humble enough to come riding on a donkey. But he still appears to be  the kind of king who is sweeping all his opponents before him. Jesus the king who is enthroned and crowned by us to fulfil all our longings. The crowd welcomed Jesus because they expected that Roman rule was about to end. We still sing about a Jesus who will take power, assume glory in the world, who will conquer this land. So much of our effort is directed towards demonstrating the power and success of our beliefs in the world’s terms. We want the church to be able to display size, influence, even wealth and power. The final week of Jesus' earthly ministry is about the collision between what the world thinks of as glory, and the true glory of God. And in the world's terms there is a precipitous plunge from this moment, when all the world seems to go after Jesus, to the conclusion of the week's events on Calvary, the apparent abject failure and defeat of the cross. In a normal year, by accident or design few of us are in church between Palm Sunday and Easter morning. Few of us follow the story of the events of Holy Week day by day. We jump directly from the excitement of Jesus arrival in Jerusalem to the surprise and joy of the resurrection. We go from one Sunday of triumph to the next without experiencing the plunge into despair in between. We feel comfortable with a Christianity that moves from triumph to triumph. A faith that promises success after success. The trouble is that kind of glory, the kind which the world knows and understands, is an illusion. That kind of Christianity is false. Jesus himself says "Beware when all speak well of you." He knows his hour has come, but his glory does not lie in success. It lies in the humiliation and failure of the cross.

You will sometimes see  signs in a shop, evidently placed there by the staff, that humorously comment upon their circumstances. So next to the sign that says, "You don't have to be crazy to work here, but it helps," there is also the sign that declares, "This is a non-profit organisation. We didn't plan it like that. It's just worked out that way." Both of which might appear to be signs we could hang up in church. But God is not committed to human failure,  in the world's terms,  it just works out that way.  We are not saying that God positively encourages or looks for failure. What we are saying is that God and the world may have rather different ideas about what success and failure might look like. Those who are faithful to God seldom gain success in the worlds terms Indeed the invitation of the Gospel is an invitation to apparent failure that ends in death. The glorious names of Christian history are not names of people who triumphed in the world's terms. As it happens the anniversaries of the martyrdom of three modern saints occur, at this time of year, within a few weeks of each other; Oscar Romero on March 24; Martin Luther King on April 4; And Dietrich Bonhoeffer on April 9. Whilst they are remembered and celebrated, glorified even, by Christians and others beyond, in historic or biographical terms the lives ended in apparent failure. Bonhoeffer was hanged by the Nazis for his part in a plot to kill Hitler that failed. It was not his actions which defeated the evil he saw,  nor was he able to prevent the destruction of his homeland which was a large part of his aim. Oscar Romero did not end the killing of the poor in El Salvador, nor indeed was he able to protect very many of them from the death squads which ravage his country. And for all the success which the civil rights movement did have, Martin Luther King, as he expected, did not live to see the promised land where children would be judged not by the colour of their skin but by the content of their souls. And even 50 years on, even after black man has sat in the White house, the racism and poverty which Martin Luther King fought have not been defeated in America, let alone the rest of the world. The conclusion of Jesus’ final week of ministry in Jerusalem  was not the defeat of the Romans and the re-establishment of an Israel that was free to worship God. The conclusion of that week was Jesus’ betrayal by a friend, the dispersal of his supporters and his death by the most painful and humiliating means possible.

But this is not because God is cruel or contrary. Jesus knows that: 

“Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies it remains a single grain” 

The church knows: “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.” Failure and weakness in the worlds terms is not what God is interested in for their own sake. But then neither is success, in the world's terms. God is interested in the Glory of God. And what glorifies God best is the strength of what he has made. Which for a human beings is obedience to God. Jesus is that strong one. His stance before God is obedience. He pays its price. Betrayal, failure, death are not what God wishes for Jesus. They are simply the world's price for his obedience to God. The hour of Christ's glory is the crucifixion. But it is so because it is the sign of his obedience to God. He does not baulk from God's plan, even though it leads to his death. He does not turn back from God's methods, the refusal to use violence or coercion, even though it seems to lead to failure. Christ's obedience gives glory to God.

Obedient men and women, like Jesus, long to be delivered from this hour. No one, not even Jesus, can walk down a road that leads to death without some hesitation. We would all prefer success and triumph. We would all rather see the positive results of our actions, instead of evident failure. But the stronger, the more faithful course is to accept God's will and God's methods. Jesus plays the debate over in his own mind and in the hearing of his followers:

“What should I say. . .” 

But he stays his course. He accepts a method that appears to be laughably weak and for practical purposes a failure. He renounces love for his own life and the desire for safety that brings, in favour of obedience to God. Since it is only in that way that God is glorified and the word from heaven is fulfilled. God speaks directly into this scene:

“I have glorified it and I will glorify it again.” 

The faithful may wish to be delivered from "failure" into "success" but they know that if obedience is to be perfect there is no ultimate earthly deliverance. Where Jesus is, there the servant must be also. The seed must die. One's life must be spurned. The follower must take up a cross and go to the extremity where Jesus is. If earthly exile is to end in glory.

It's hard to be a Christian when it's easy to be a Christian. Martyrdom doesn't appear to be an option for us. Faced with the massive scale of evil that confronted them, the path which Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Martin Luther King and Archbishop Romero took was easy to find. Though no doubt it was very hard for them to walk along. For us, our walk as Christians may seem easier. It is hardly more than a stroll.  But finding the right path is more challenging. The old adage is true: no cross no crown. Our difficulty would seem to be that there is no obvious cross for us to take up. And therefore no crown seems to be available. I wonder if our difficulty in locating a cross to pick up isn't simply a product of our reluctance to spurn the life we have. We still crave success. We still chase after effectiveness. We look for survival of our churches and of our own comfort, rather than embracing obedience to God's will and accepting God's methods. We are not prepared to see the death of the things we value, not least of them the church as we have known them. We are not prepared to stop doing things that look as though they might work. We won't stop planning for growth, we won't stop using 7 steps for effective leadership. We're determined to have 40 days and 40 years of purpose. The realm of Bonhoeffer, King and Romero's obedience to God was straight forward, it was facing evil expressed in Naziism, racism and poverty, and in death squads. The realm of our obedience may be in some ways more discomforting. It is the church itself. The American theologian Stanley Hauerwas has put it succinctly: "Bonhoeffer had the Nazis, we have the Church Growth Movement." All because we love our life, all because we like the parade on Palm Sunday better than we like the agony in the Garden on Thursday night and rejection and death on Friday morning. But: 

“Those who love their life will lose it.” 

There is no way to Easter from Palm Sunday except through Good Friday. There is no way to glory except through renunciation. We need to let go and let God. Stop doing what looks like it might work, because in truth it won't. And do the things of God that look as though they won't work. We need to waste our time in more worship, and not the kind of worship that is an easy shopfront to appeal to the unconverted. And we need to waste our time in more prayer, and not the prayer that asks always for what we want. We need to following Jesus into loving and serving those who won't be converted by it, won't appreciate it or be grateful for it, indeed who will resent and even hate us for it. But that way is the way to the glory of God. 

“Where I am there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honour.”

Amen. 

The Son of Man and the Glory of God by Christopher Wood-Archer is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

A Sermon for Holy Week (2): The Fragrance of What Mary Did

The Fragrance of what Mary did 

John 12:1-8 

The final stage of Jesus' journey starts here . Between the days of frantic activity Jesus rests in Bethany, the place called House of affliction. There are now just six days until the Passover. Which makes this Saturday night. The day of sanctified rest, the Sabbath, has come to an end. It is the beginning of a new week. This will be the last week of the old order. Not that anyone realises it at the moment. Jesus is present among his friends. They are together. Wherever his followers are gathered together there is hospitality, food and talk to share. But the one who gives life is on his way to his death. He is on his way to a tomb sitting beside the one he brought forth from a tomb. Jesus sits once more with the one called Lazarus. Whose name means God is my help. He is living proof of the truth of his own name. Martha waits at table. As always, hers is a ministry of service. And once again Mary is at Jesus' feet. They are the feet where she sat to listen to him teach, the feet that she clung to in the sorrow of her brothers death. Now she pours out her love and devotion on those same feet. Mary's act shows that love will be the hallmark of discipleship. Just as Jesus as loved her, so she loves Jesus. In an act extravagant love, she offers the total outpouring of the whole contents of her heart. She gives all that is in her that is genuine, faithful and pure. It is given out completely. Her love and devotion is like the ointment poured out on his feet. This an act of profound intimacy. She is unashamed to the wipe Jesus' feet with her hair. Her action already anticipates Jesus' commandment. On Thursday, as he washes his disciples feet he will tell them: 

Just as I have done for you, so you must do for one another. 

Mary is already there. Her action recognises and anticipates Jesus' death. She anoints his body. She does for him what there will be no time to do in the desperate hours at the end of Friday. She does what no one will get the chance to do because in the end death has no power. She makes the ideal good deed. She performs a kindness for the dying who will have no opportunity to repay her. Her reward will be in heaven 

Loving service starts at Jesus' feet. It has a fragrance that will permeate the whole house. It will permeate the whole world. The fragrance of what Mary does more than just cover up the stench of death emanating from Judas. The contrast between them could not be more stark. We can recognise the contrast between her act of love, and the rotting smell of his deed. We might almost be able to sense the rank odour of greed and self-interest, the smell of corruption, the reek of lies and self-deception. What Judas does stinks, its wicked action dressed up in good intentions. It is a worldly pragmatic trade off, that worries about 300 pieces of silver not given to the poor, but sells a precious human life for a tenth as much. The scent of what Mary does more than covers up that putrid smell. It is like the yeast that permeates the whole dough. It becomes the salt that flavours the whole dish. It is the lamp on a stand that lights the whole room. What Mary does, her love, the purity of her heart, brings a blessing that makes God visible. What she does joins her to her saviour. Just as as the Father is in him, so they are in her. The fragrance of her action lingers, so that the world may believe. That the one who dies brings life.

Amen.

The Fragrance of What Mary Did by Christopher Wood-Archer is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.