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.

A Sermon for Holy Week (1): Jesus Makes a Space for Worship

Arguably, this could be another sermon for Palm Sunday, since the events it reflects upon take place at the end of that day. Nonetheless, since it plays such a decisive role in the death of Jesus, the Cleansing of the Temple is the first of the events that we might typically think about about during Holy Week.

Jesus Makes a Space for Worship

Matthew 21:12-17

In any reformation, or revolution for that matter, the easy bit is knowing what is wrong with the current system. The hard part is knowing what to put in its place after it has been overthrown. When we hear the story of Jesus’ cleansing of the Temple, our attention almost always seems to fall on that first part. What was wrong. And Jesus overturning it. What often falls from our attention is what Jesus creates afterwards.

After his triumphal entry into Jerusalem, Jesus goes directly to the Temple. What he finds there doesn’t please him. He passes judgement on how the Temple is operating:

“It is written: ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer, but you are making it a den of robbers.’

We don’t need the scene describing to us directly, Matthew doesn't offer us that. From Jesus’ words of condemnation we are quite capable of picturing what was wrong for ourselves. The Temple was crowded. Especially so during this most important festival, Passover. But it was crowded in a way that made its intended purpose almost impossible. The Temple was so busy and so noisy that it was almost impossible to think, let alone pray. And much of the space was taken up by activities that, to us, don’t seem to belong. The pens that held animals for sacrifice. The tables of the money changers, who exchanged profane, pagan denarii, for the acceptable silver shekels. And the crates of pigeons, available to those too poor to buy lambs to sacrifice. It resembled most of all a market, probably one busier than the pilgrims were used to seeing take place in their own village squares. And it was a market rife with exploitation and corruption.  It had a monopoly, so it could afford to inflate its prices beyond those charged in the village squares. And no doubt the Priests who, in theory, were in control of that space, profited handsomely from the permission they might give or withhold from the traders who operated there. It is easy to see what needed to be changed, what had to be got rid of.

It has never been the case, that the Church, or any church, was perfect The neat Latin phrase for the state of the Church is: semper reformenda: “Always in need of reform.” That is just as true of the church we are part of as it is of every other church that has ever existed. Everyone who has ever been a member of a church has had a list of the things they thought needed to be different. Sometimes that sensation has become so powerful and so widespread that a reformer, or a group of reformers have stepped forward and tried to bring an end to the abuses they were so keenly aware of in the life of the Church. The pattern of divided denominations that we see the Church existing as today is the residue of that. And every one of those denominations is in as much need of reform as all the rest. But as we said at the beginning, seeing that there is a problem, and even recognising what that problem is, is the easy part. 

Jesus empties the Temple court of the animals and their sellers and of the money changers.  In so doing he takes control of that space. He makes this his base of operations for his time in Jerusalem. It is here that he teaches and ministers during this last week of his earthly life, and he uses it to create a new community for the praise of God. What we so often overlook in this story, because we focus on what Jesus’ righteous indignation and what that says about him, what we overlook is what Jesus does next. He clears a space, but then Jesus does the difficult thing, he fills it with something else. He brings together people who would normally be excluded from the Temple so that they can worship God.

The poor are often excluded from organised religion because organised religion is expensive. The Temple was a magnificent building, truly a glory to God. But it costs money to run something like that. That money was the Temple Tax. That was why the money changers were there. So right away those who cannot pay the tax are excluded. Likewise the practice of religion itself was costly. The price of a lamb for sacrifice was beyond the means of the poor to pay for. Allowance was made for that, which is why there were pigeons for sale as well. But as so often happens, the accommodation that as been made for the poor becomes merely an opportunity to exploit and control them. Jesus emptied the Temple, so that worship of God could be free. Free in the sense of being open to all. But free also in the sense of the poor not having to bear its cost, or that cost being used to exclude them.

Above all the Church exists for the poor. But in subtle ways the Church still often excludes them. The social pressure to wear one’s “Sunday best” in order to attend church is much reduced. But there is still a sense - whether it is real or not - that one needs to be respectable to attend church. The way we look as we go into church week by week sends a subtle message about the kind of people who attend church, and those who shouldn’t. We have also made our churches shockingly expensive exercises. We are painfully aware of just how much it costs, in terms of money, but also in terms of effort and skills, to keep our churches running. It is worth observing that almost the only churches which seem to thrive are suburban ones. The ones in relatively comfortable, affluent communities. Without putting too fine a point on it; we have a church which requires middle class incomes and middle class skills to run. The contrast with what Jesus does in the Temple should worry us. Jesus creates a space in the Temple for the poor to worship God.

One group who had always explicitly been excluded from the Temple’s worship were the disabled. The Temple regulations in the book of Leviticus state:

No one of your offspring throughout their generations who has a blemish may approach to offer the food of his God. [Lev. 21:16-24]

The regulations go on to list who it means cannot offer sacrifice. This includes the blind and the lame. But among others also includes those with a mutilated face, a limb too long, and hunchbacks. King David likewise excluded the blind and the lame from his house - the immediate predecessor of the Temple - he said:

The blind and the lame shall not come into the house. [2 Sam. 5:8]

The very first group who join Jesus in the emptied Temple are the blind and the lame:

The blind and the lame came to him in the Temple and he cured them.

In the last generation great strides have been made to make all public spaces accessible to everyone regardless of their physical or other abilities. But it often took secular anti-discrimination legislation to make churches respond as fully as they should. Our buildings were often difficult to access. There were four or five steps up to the front door, and then numerous steps up and down inside. Things are for the most part better now, level access into and throughout the building through wider doors. Though not always! The physical obstacles have been removed. But perhaps the issue is not so much ability as difference. It was difference as much a ability that kept the disabled out of sight and excluded in the past. The community that gathers around Jesus for worship in the Temple is diverse. Its diversity is highlighted by the presence of the disabled, but it is not limited to them. Something that our churches often lack is diversity. Not just the absence of people whose abilities may be limited. For the most part our churches are filled with people who are just like ourselves. Few of our congregations could be called diverse. Which means we seldom have the opportunity to see the power of Jesus to heal and reconcile. Again the contrast with what Jesus does in the Temple should worry us.

Jesus creates a space in the Temple for a diverse community to gather and to have its differences reconciled by his healing presence.

The other group who had always been excluded from the Temple were children. They too are suddenly present and included in the space which Jesus has created. Children were effectively non-persons, and were excluded from everything in public life. The disciples themselves had attempted to keep children away from Jesus. In so doing they merely reflected the attitudes of their society. Children though, were irresistibly drawn to Jesus. They grasp what Jesus is about more readily than do the adults. Jesus could see this. Children were always a focus of his ministry. And he pointed to children to show what being a citizen of the Kingdom of Heaven should look like. Now the voices of children are praising God, in the Temple:

“Hosanna to the Son of David” 

They sang. Of all the things that could have made the Priests angry; disrupting the business of the temple, bringing the lame and the blind into the temple, contrary to what was written. It was the voices of children singing that prompted the Priests' fury! Showing conclusively that they were incapable of entering the kingdom Jesus is establishing. Since they can neither receive the kingdom as children do, nor welcome children as Jesus does.

Overall we would like to think that our society has a more positive attitude to children. We devote a great deal of resources to the care and development of children. The safety and well-being of children is probably the number one priority in church and quite possibly in society at large. Safeguarding has made us more willing to listen to the voices of children. And we tell ourselves that we long more than anything else to have more children in church. But every parent who has ever taken their children into church still knows the sharp looks and tutting they receive when their children aren’t silent and practically invisible. And even when it is not that blatant, we often sense that children being children in church would disrupt the way we want to worship. And we welcome them only on the basis that we won’t have to change anything to accommodate them. So that, often whilst we want children in church, we don’t want them in church with us. When we do have children we separate them off into activities of their own. Once more the contrast with what Jesus does in the Temple should worry us. Jesus creates a space in the Temple where it is the voices of children who take the lead in guiding the worship of the people of God.

Knowing what needs to change is the easy bit. Sweeping away everything that we don’t like might be relatively easy to accomplish. Putting the right thing in its place is much more difficult. Not only does Jesus clear the Temple, but he restores and reforms its worship by what he puts into the place he has cleared. Jesus intends to establish a community for the praise of God. A community that is fully inclusive. Inclusive of the poor, since they are the chief focus of God’s concern. Inclusive of the disabled, and of diversity more widely, since in that diversity is revealed God’s power to heal and to reconcile. Inclusive of children, since it is their response which shows us all  how to worship God. In emptying the temple or in reforming us and our church, Jesus want to create the space for that community and that worship.

Amen.

Jesus makes a space for worship by Christopher Wood-Archer is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

A Sermon for Palm Sunday (05/04/20): A Political Drama - Part 2

The second of my Palm Sunday sermons picks up the theme of the second gospel reading for the day, Matthew 27:11-26. It also makes quite extensive reference to other parts of the Holy Week narrative. So you might also like to look at: Matthew 21:12-17, 26:47-68

A Political Drama - Part 2

Matthew 27:11-26

The events of Good Friday bring to a climax the political drama that began the preceding Sunday, Palm Sunday. What was begun on that day plays out to the drama of the trial that takes place early on Friday morning. What brought things to this point was Jesus’ ministry in the city during the days in between. On Sunday the citizens of Jerusalem had known very little about Jesus. He had arrived with the excitement of the crowds coming for the festival. The crowds announced him as:

"The one who comes in the name of the Lord."

They were convinced that Jesus is the one who is going to bring about God’s reign on earth. Or at the very least they were convinced that he is a prophet. Since, when the crowd was asked directly:

"Who is this?"

They responded:

"This is  the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee."

The peasants from Galilee were sure this was the one, but peasants are easily fooled. The smart, urbane citizens of Jerusalem were more sceptical, they would need convincing.

In those few days between Sunday and Friday, Jesus spent his time in and around the Temple.  All that the people of Jerusalem would come to know of Jesus, and everything that they might use to assess him, happened here. Very quickly Jesus made it plain what he was about. From beginning to end Jesus’ ministry has proclaimed the imminence, the immediacy, the closeness of God. His preaching could very nearly be summed up in a single sentence: 

"Repent for the kingdom of heaven has come near."

It all comes down to the nearness of God and how we should respond to that reality. Fundamentally Jesus’ message is one of how close God is to human beings. Therefore he was deeply opposed to everything and everyone who stood in between, who got in the way of people’s access to God. The Temple was the physical embodiment of God’s presence with his people. But it had become an obstruction. Standing in the middle of the Temple, Jesus, blending the words of the prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah had declared:

"My house shall be called a house of prayer but you are making it a den of robbers"

Jesus’ accusation, which is leveled against those in charge of the temple, the Priests, and his actions there, clearing the temple of the commerce which benefited the Priests, are what make this a political drama. If you believe, as the descendants of Abraham do, if you believe that there is one God who rules over everything. And that God is deeply concerned with how people live with one another. God is political. Since politics is merely the science of people living together in large numbers. Then speaking about or for God is always political. And it is always about the nature of power and authority. Jesus challenges the self-appointed and self-perpetuating elite and their claim to stand between the people and God. He challenges the wealth and power they have acquired by placing themselves in that position. Jesus’ offer of unmediated access to God in him, the closeness of the kingdom, will always undermine the authority of any group of people, or any institution that claims a position between the children of God and the Father, which is any group which claims authority over any community of people. 

This is what the citizens of Jerusalem have seen of Jesus. There is an inevitable confrontation coming, between Jesus and the Priests. They are on a collision course. The citizens of Jerusalem know there is going to be a fight. And they probably already know that they will have to choose sides. As always the presence of Jesus creates a crisis where people have to choose. That is judgement.

In contrast to the citizens of Jerusalem, the Priests already know a good deal about Jesus. They cannot resist the authoritarian impulse to know all the goings on in their domain They have been observing Jesus since soon after he had fed 5000 in the middle of nowhere. They had known for some time he had the power to bring people to follow him.

The drama had been brewing for a while even before last Sunday. The collision happened overnight on Thursday.

Jesus was in a garden praying.  When the the Priests exercised their earthly power. They continued their politics by other means, brute force. Which just shows how little they really understood about Jesus. Jesus in the end came quiet as a lamb. He stood before them to answer their charges. But they were having trouble pinning anything on him. After all there really is no law against doing good Eventually they did find two witnesses who provided the necessary testimony that agreed.

“This fellow said I am able to destroy the Temple of God and in three days rebuild it.” 

The priests anger is understandable. The accusation is that Jesus threatened the base of the Priests’ power. The conflict remains an essentially political one. The Temple needs the priests. Though actually, as it so often turns out when it comes to those in power, the reality is the reverse: The priests need the temple. No temple - no institution - no one is needed to maintain that institution - no priests. And it's not like it hasn’t happened before. This after all is the Second Temple. The first, the original, the slightly less spectacular one that Solomon had built, had been destroyed more than 600 years ago. And the outcome of that was? The emergence of the synagogues, first in Babylon and afterwards everywhere where the Children of Israel were scattered. A different institution, with different politics, and a different leadership, an alternative power base. The Priests were already jealous of the authority of the scribes who ran the synagogues. And many of them were Pharisees whom the Priests loathed. The priests were certainly not prepared to risk leaving all the authority to the scribes in their synagogues.A threat to the Temple was a threat to their power, a political threat.

But Jesus had promised to rebuild it! Even if the priest believed that Jesus could - and they almost certainly didn’t - this if anything would have been worse. That would make the new Temple his, not theirs. Their ministry, even though it would continue, would depend on him. Their power therefore would be subject to his. We may not like it but the gospel comes down to authority. Who speaks for God? Whose voice must but heard and acted upon as people work to live together in a large number? Which voice determines our politics?

Finally the priests get what they are looking for. Jesus incriminates himself.Having remained silent through all the false and distorted testimony, Jesus at last makes his claim to authority:

“From now on you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power and coming on the clouds of heaven.” 

Jesus announces himself as the one who shares God’s authority. And as the one who establishes God’s reign in the world. This has essentially been the whole content of Jesus’ ministry up to this point - for those with the eyes to see it. It is this claim of Jesus to rule which Christians accept, and which make him and his teaching our politics. But it is the claim which gets Jesus killed!

Much as they want rid of Jesus, the Priests are shrewd enough politicians to recognise that it would not be good for them to take the blame for destroying someone so popular. The action of rash, thoughtless leaders would have been to give into their anger, take Jesus out and have him stoned to death there and then. That is after all the penalty for blasphemy.But they know how to spin the story. They can take Jesus to Pilate. They can dress the accusation up in a way that Pilate would understand, and in a way that would leave Pilate with no choice.

Jesus stands before the governor who asks him:

"Are you the king of the Jews"

Pilate’s question reveals the subtle change that the Priests have made in the accusation against Jesus. In the journey between Caiaphas’ house and Pilate’s headquarters the charge has shifted from being apparently theological to something more explicitly political. The change is from claiming to be the Messiah, to claiming to be King. Though of course the two may amount to being pretty much the same thing. The Priests know Pilate would not understand who the Messiah might be. But they also know he cannot ignore anyone who claims to be a king. The charge which is made against Jesus before Pilate is political in the most obvious way. Within the Empire the source of all authority is the Emperor. Only the Emperor can make someone a king. Claiming to be a king is to deny the authority of the Emperor. And truth be told Jesus is guilty of that charge. Jesus’ presence in the world does deny the authority of all earthly rulers. But Pilate can only hear this as an explicitly political accusation. An accusation which he cannot fail to take seriously. Pilate and the Emperor above him are no less jealous of their power than were the Priests or anyone else who ever held power in the world. Jesus is accused of the most political of crimes, treason. Which is a crime which those in authority always treat with more seriousness than even murder.

Pilate though is confused. He sees in Jesus nothing that justifies the charges made against him. He is frustrated by Jesus' refusal to offer a defence.

“Do you not hear the accusations they make against you?” 

But Jesus does not not speak. He could only speak the truth. But how could the truth be heard in this place of lies. The truth will set you free, but liars could only hear it as self-incrimination. What Pilate and the powers of this world practice as justice is not just at all. It still all comes down to politics. And what is a crime and who is guilty of that crime is always decided by politics. “Justice” is merely the fig leaf that conventional politics places over its naked use of power. And in this courtroom it really is little more than an arbitrary assertion of power.

Now at the festival the governor was accustomed to release a prison for the crowd, anyone who they wanted. 

This is really powerful evidence that justice under this system has nothing to do with fairness, or protecting society, or even punishing wrongdoing. It is about demonstrating who has power. The governor can detain or release whoever he wants. It is quite arbitrary. But what he does do is use his power towards a political objective. He uses it to appease the crowd. And those in power fear the crowd. The Priests were afraid of the crowd who came into Jerusalem with Jesus. Pilate has reason to fear the crowd of Jerusalem’s citizens gathered in front of his headquarters. Pilate offers that crowd the choice between two men called Jesus;  One from Nazareth, who is called the Messiah, The other a notorious criminal, who is called Barabbas. Jesus and Barabbas don’t matter to Pilate. He sees neither of them as a real threat. Pilate is not directly the victim of Barabbas’ crimes, whatever they are. And Barabbas possesses no power to change the established order of the world. Jesus, as far as Pilate is concerned, is even more powerless, he is nothing more than a dreamer and a fantasist. It really makes no difference at all to Pilate which one is released and which one dies. So long as everyone recognises that it was always in Pilates control. Pilate believes in the absolute power of the system he is part of to control the world All he has to do is assert that power. And demonstrate to everyone that there is no alternative. 

Pilate leaves the decision to the crowd. At this point the crowd stands at a crossroads. The choice which they have is a real one; To  acquiesce in the politics of the world as it is, to accept that there really is not alternative to that politics, or to open themselves to the possibility that God’s kingdom might indeed be very close. It is the choice which is created by Jesus' presence in the world that is faced by every gathering of people who in their very being together find they must practice politics. The politics of the world? Or the reign of God through his Son Jesus the Messiah? A politics of power and the almost arbitrary use of violence? Or the peaceable Kingdom of Christ. That crowd, on that Friday morning, made the wrong choice When Pilate asked:

"Which of the two do you want me to release for you?"

The crowd replied:

"Barabbas!"

The man of violence is released The innocent is condemned to die. Jesus dies because of the politics of the world. His death condemns the way in which human beings have chosen to organise themselves. And particularly the way humans have chosen to organise themselves apart from the loving concern God has for all people. The climax of the political drama that has been playing out between Palm Sunday and Good Friday is Jesus’ condemnation to death.

Jesus’ arrival in Jerusalem had present the city with a set of political questions:

Who will lead this people?

What kind of leadership will they provide?

What kind of people will they be?

What is the destiny of this people?

By Friday the citizens of Jerusalem were ready to give their answer, whether they realised what they were doing or not. They decided that it would be the conventional politics of the priest, the governor and ultimately the Emperor, those who wielded the power of this world, which is in the end always death

They decided that there was no alternative than to accept being ruled over by coercion and violence.

They decided - as their ancestors had decided before them - to be a kingdom like all the other kingdoms of the world

They decided - though they couldn’t know it at the time - to have their city destroyed and to become another footnote in history

This political drama is a tragedy which reveals the failure of the power of this world to speak the truth or do justly But this is not the end of the story. The politics of the world stands condemned. But the world awaits God’s answer.

Amen.

A Political Drama - Part 2 by Christopher Wood-Archer is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

A Sermon for Palm Sunday (05/04/20): A Political Drama - Part 1

The lectionary offers two gospel readings for the 6th Sunday in Lent. The first is the obvious one, the account of Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem, the second is the Passion Narrative. So for Palm Sunday I have two connected sermons. The first, here, on the Triumphal Entry and the second, later, on Jesus' trial.

A Political Drama - Part 1

Matthew 21:1-11

Palm Sunday flowers by Sylvia Fairbrass

The triumphal entry into Jerusalem is the opening act of a political drama that will play out in the coming week. The events of Holy Week revolve around a number of questions. These questions are essentially political in nature:

Who will lead this people? 

What kind of leadership will they provide? 

What kind of people will they be? 

What is the destiny of this people? 

We would recognise these as “political” questions. They form part of the discussion that lies behind the politics of any and every body of people who gather themselves together with a shared identity for a common purpose. These questions apply to any nation, just as they apply to the people of God.

Overall, throughout his ministry, Jesus has been quite reticent about the claims he has made of himself. The most obvious he has been is to have spoken of himself in the third person using the enigmatic title: the Son of Man. But now his claim has become bold, it becomes obvious. Jesus makes a very explicit claim to lead the people of God. Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem is a claim to leadership and it is a kind of acted manifesto. It is his declaration before the nation of what he offers to them. Riding into a capital city is a very explicit claim to authority. The one who rides into a capital city claims to rule from here and over all the people whose lives are focused on this place. Jerusalem is home to the temple to the only true and living God. In claiming authority here, Jesus claims authority over all who look to God.

But Jesus’ entry is more than a claim simply to rule, it also portrays the character of his rule. Jesus rides into Jerusalem but he does so on a donkey. First of all this is the boldness of his claim. He wants the people to recognise an allusion to a promise made to them by God. A promise which Matthew helpful reminds us of in his recollection of the event:

“Look your king is coming to you humble and mounted on a donkey” 

A promise made by God that their true leader would come to them in this fashion. Jesus could hardly be more blatant in announcing himself Lord over God’s people How can you have a triumphal entry and yet remain humble at the same time? You do it by riding on a donkey. The point is that it is not a horse. Triumphal entries were a familiar event in the ancient world.They were displays of power. Conquering Roman Emperors rode back into Rome display their strength of their military force and bringing with them the spoils of their victory. Or victorious generals entered conquered cities, surrounded by their army mounted on their war-horse, to further humiliate those they had vanquished. A donkey is not a horse. The contrast is a deliberate one. Jesus claims to rule. But his rule will be the opposite of that of emperors and conquering generals. Their rule is legitimated only by overpowering force. There is no coercion in Jesus’ claim to rule. Jesus’ claim to authority is not that of conquest. He doesn’t simply destroy and replace one tyranny with his own reign. He makes a moral and spiritual claim to authority among God’s people. Jesus' authority is based on his access to the truth, his insight into what is really happening.

Time and again Jesus is shown in the gospel knowing things that others don’t and can’t know. This insight is one of the characteristics that mark him out as distinctive and special to those who meet him. As Jesus approaches Jerusalem we glimpse this again. Jesus grasps the world and its working and understands people with unmatched clarity. So he can send disciples into a village and know that what he needs will be available for him there. It is divine insight. Jesus sees the world and its people as God sees them. The prophets were prophets because they were given glimpses of the world as God sees it. Jesus possesses that vision for himself. Just rule can only be established by complete knowledge of all the circumstances in each situation that arises. It is Jesus alone who possesses that knowledge. There is no coercion to Jesus’ rule. His authority is established on the truth. And those who recognise the truth respond to Jesus’ claim to rule.

And the crowd does respond. They answer Jesus’ claim with recognition and acceptance of that claim: "Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord." The crowds with Jesus aren’t all, explicitly, his followers. This isn’t simply the crowd of fisherman and tax-collectors and outcasts, the cleansed lepers, the walking lame, the hearing deaf, the seeing blind, and women, who have followed Jesus everywhere he has gone. These people haven’t come to Jerusalem because of Jesus. They have come for the same reason anyone would go to Jerusalem. To be with God. They have come to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover, the great festival of liberation. They are people who have come from all over - out of the countryside to be here. They are the ordinary folk. To use Jesus’ own phrase they are “the salt of the earth.” They are the humble, the faithful and the pious. They are the people amongst whom all of Jesus' ministry has taken place. So in another sense, they are his people. And they are the people on whom the burden of rulers weighs heaviest.They are the ones who would answer those those political questions:

Who will lead this people? Someone else.

What kind of leadership will they provide? A just and kindly one.

What kind of people will they be? To be people like us at our best, a community of mutual love and support.

What is the destiny of this people? To live life and life in all its fullness.

They are people who want change. People who have a reason to want to see a transformation in the way the world is ordered. They want that new direction that will take them away from the oppression and deprivation they experience into a community that frees them from economic and social burdens. They know what Jesus is about, even if they aren’t formally his followers. They have been witnesses to everything Jesus has done so far. They have seen his deeds of power. They have heard him teach about the Kingdom. And now they see yet another sign from Jesus, that confirms what they had longed and hoped for from him. He rides into Jerusalem. On a donkey. They know the prophecy. They know what this means. He has come to claim the throne of David:

"Hosanna to the Son of David." 

They are caught up in the excitement of the moment. They find expression in the hope of the reestablishment of an ancient kingdom. But their hope goes far deeper than than that:

"Hosanna in the highest heaven"

Hosanna is a word that loses something in the lack of translation. We lose sight of what it means. So we lose sight of what the crowd is asking from Jesus. Hosanna means, “Save, please.” The crowd are calling on Jesus to bring about salvation. They call on Jesus to establish the Kingdom that brings about heaven’s reign on earth. They call for the transformation of the world that they long for. This is what they want to see happen and they can see that their hopes could be about to be fulfilled. Jesus is the leader they want.

A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road.

They acclaim Jesus and give him the “red carpet” treatment.They are looking for him to transform them into that holy nation that knows no king but God.

Passing through the gate into the city itself the crowd perhaps could have expected the story to end there. Immediately the Kingdom of God established for them and everyone else right there. But this is not a fairy story. As we observed, this is a political drama. And there is no drama without opposition. To begin with opposition to Jesus in Jerusalem is not obvious, but it will quickly emerge. The citizens of Jerusalem observe the arrival of the crowds and their excited mood.

When he entered Jerusalem the whole city was in turmoil asking, “Who is this?”

In contrast to the people from the countryside, Jesus is as yet unknown to the citizens of Jerusalem. But his arrival has an unsettling effect. They see the crowd, its energy, its excitement. And they sense its desire for change. And at its centre they see someone who they don’t know.

Who is this?

Jerusalem hasn’t heard Jesus speak? Jerusalem hasn’t seen Jesus’ deed of power? They know nothing about him? But what they do know is that they are happy with the way things are. The fundamental contrast between the crowd and the citizens of Jerusalem is their desire or lack of it for the revolutionary change that God’s kingdom will bring about. It is this opposition which creates the drama in the story. It is what determines people’s reception of the Gospel. It is what determines how the rest of Holy week plays out. The citizens of Jerusalem have something to lose. They have wealth. They have prestige. They have power. And because they have these things and they are afraid of losing them they dislike disruption and they resist change. One thing people with wealth and prestige and power love above all is order. Order means their position is secure. Disruption threatens what they have. The reign which Jesus is announcing and the crowd is demanding is one based on justice and on truth. But the citizens can’t accept such a reign because it exposes the fact that their position in society is based on falsehood and injustice. The citizens of Jerusalem and especially the Priests at it centre claim that the way things are, are the way God intended them. Their wealth is a sign of God’s favour. Their prestige is so that they may be an example that others may aspire to or be judged by. And their power, is power which God gave them to use as they please. The drama which plays out in the following days is a contest between truth and justice claimed by people with no power against the falsehood and injustice of those in power. And we already know how such dramas always seem to turn out!

Amen.

A note of thanks to Sylvia Fairbrass, from Normanby, who made the flower arrangement and provided the photograph at the start of this page. She says: "This arrangement at home is my attempt to tell the story for Palm Sunday using materials from the old railway path and my garden as I am self-isolating. The arrangement is made up the following:Gold Heart & Variegated Ivy, Lawson Cyrus, Pussy Willow, Euonymus, Purple Everlasting Wallflowers, Rosemary in flower, Orange Broom, Yellow Wallflowers, Green Hellebore, White Piris Bells. 3 Purple fir cones donated by my neighbour Jacki Severs represents collaboration of churches. Did you spot the following? Purple candle, Sacrificial lamb, Ass /Donkey the final Journey, 30 pence in Silver coins, Bread & Wine last supper."

A Political Drama - Part 1 by Christopher Wood-Archer is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.