Where is your Security? (2nd before Advent)

Security, 2nd before Advent

Malachi 4.1-2a; Psalm 98; 2 Thessalonians 3.6-13; Luke 21.5-19
Hymn “All my hope” (reproduced at end of sermon).

“But for you who revere my name the sun of righteousness shall rise, with healing in its wings.” Malachi 4.2

George was a devout golfer, getting ready for retirement, and one Sunday morning he said to his priest: "Tell me, Father, are there going to be golf courses in heaven? I really have to know."

"Well," said his priest, "I'm not sure, but tonight I'll say a special prayer and see if God will tell me."

Next Sunday after the service George made a beeline for the priest. "Did you get the answer, Father? Are there going to be golf courses in heaven?"

Well, George," the priest replied, "I've got good news and bad news. Which do you want to hear first?"

"Tell me the good news first," George said.

"The good news is that, yes, there are golf courses in heaven. Beautiful courses, where the sun is always shining, the rough is not too deep, there are no sand traps, and you never have to wait to tee off."

"That's tremendous!" exclaimed the golfer. "But what's the bad news?"

"Well, the bad news is that St Peter has you down to tee off this coming Tuesday morning at 8."

Today’s readings as we approach advent, are a mixture of good news and bad news.

But a common thread running through them is: ‘where do you place your confidence?’

Now we all know the correct answer is ‘God’ – the opening line of the opening hymn stated that: “All my hope on God is founded…”

But of course the right answer is not always the honest one.

Like the young boy who was asked by his particularly evangelical Sunday School teacher: “What’s red and has a bushy tail and eats acorns?” “Please miss, I know the answer must be ‘Jesus’, but it sounds like a squirrel to me!”

If we are honest, we know that our confidence, our sense of security, our hope, is bound up in a complex network of feelings and emotions – and yes, faith.

The Scriptures recognise that, but still warn us about false confidence and misplaced hope.

Today’s Gospel starts with the disciples marvelling at the magnificent edifice which was the rebuilt, Second Temple; renovated by Herod before the birth of Christ and still being decorated and finished (it was completed in 63AD.) Its foundations stretched back a 1000 years. Here was a religious centre that was surely founded by God himself!

But Jesus warns that this is a false confidence. By 70AD, the Temple would be destroyed and never rebuilt.

In the words of the opening hymn again: “what with care and toil he buildeth, tower and temple fall to dust.”

However attached we become to a particular building, or to a particular style of worship, or even to the group of worshippers who meet there week by week; it is a transitory thing.

We should be grateful for this holy place, our liturgy, our music and our fellowship, but never place the weight of our spiritual confidence in them. That is idolatry and we a doomed to disappointment.

Jesus also warns us in this passage about putting too much confidence in human relationships: “You will be betrayed even by parents and brothers, by relatives and friends…”

Now this is not to suggest that we should hold ourselves aloof from any sort of trusting relationships – indeed our Lord teaches us the opposite. But there can be a dependency on others that is nearer to an addiction than a loving, mutually supportive relationship.

Betrayal is always destructive, but if the relationship is basically healthy, either amends can be made, or the break does not leave one or the other party completely debilitated.

And sadly, death betrays us all in our relationships. It was of course in the aftermath of the death of Herbert Howell’s son, Michael, Mick, in 1935, that he wrote the tune (named Michael) to those words of the opening hymn.

They meant a great deal to him at the time, although by the end of his life in 1983, 48 years after Michael had died, aged 9, of polio, he confided in his daughter, Ursula: 'I don't believe there's anything'. I think his music tells us another story, but that’s another sermon.

The prophet Malachi railed against the oldest and commonest misplaced confidence: a confidence in ‘self’ that amounts to arrogance and pride. “The arrogant will be turned to stubble”, he bellows.

Again, this is not to discourage proper self-confidence; appropriate self-esteem. It was our Lord who said that we should love our neighbours as we love ourselves – it is right to have a healthy view of ourselves.

But when we begin to think that we are invincible; that we are self-made men and women; that we have a right to enjoy the best things in life because of who we are, or what we do, or how much money we have – then our Lord says to us: “You fool!”

And where does today’s epistle fit in? The Apostle Paul has it in for those who won’t work. But in context, we see that they won’t work, because they are living in a spiritual cloud cuckoo land.

They are so convinced that Jesus is about to return in the next few months, to bring the universe to a climactic end, that they don’t bother to work.

They busy themselves with church and spiritual affairs while sponging off the less spiritual who still go in to the office every morning.

Strangely, their false confidence is in Christianity itself. Or at least, they are so confident of their own interpretation of Christianity, that they have no time for others who suggest they might have misunderstood.

So neither can our confidence be completely in a particular brand of Christian faith alone, for as yet we see through a glass darkly.

While all these other things then, in their proper place, help to make us feel secure and to give us hope, our ultimate confidence can only be in God himself, and even then we have to acknowledge our inability to comprehend him fully.

So that profound opening hymn has it right again:

God unknown,
he alone
calls my heart to be his own.

It is with this humble, searching faith that we come to God, and in so doing, especially as we come to this Table, we find that his love embraces us and re-assures us of the presence of Christ in our lives:

Christ doth call
one and all:
ye who follow shall not fall.

This was the purpose of Jesus’ teaching in today’s Gospel which ends with our Lord’s words: “ By your endurance you will gain your souls.”

And it is the hope infusing Malachi’s prophecy, to reassure those who revere and trust in God. The Light of Christ will uncover what is now unknown and will bring a sense of healing and wholeness which is beyond mere human understanding.

Our proper confidence is in God alone, as revealed in Jesus Christ, foretold by the prophets:

“… for you who revere my name the sun of righteousness shall rise, with healing in its wings.” Malachi 4.2

All my hope on God is founded;
he doth still my trust renew,
me through change and chance he guideth,
only good and only true.
God unknown,
he alone
calls my heart to be his own.

Pride of man and earthly glory,
sword and crown betray his trust;
what with care and toil he buildeth,
tower and temple fall to dust.
But God's power,
hour by hour,
is my temple and my tower.

God's great goodness aye endureth,
deep his wisdom, passing thought:
splendor, light and life attend him,
beauty springeth out of naught.
Evermore
from his store
newborn worlds rise and adore.

Daily doth the almighty Giver
bounteous gifts on us bestow;
his desire our soul delighteth,
pleasure leads us where we go.
Love doth stand
at his hand;
joy doth wait on his command.

Still from man to God eternal
sacrifice of praise be done,
high above all praises praising
for the gift of Christ, his Son.
Christ doth call
one and all:
ye who follow shall not fall.

Words: Robert Bridges (1844-1930); based on the German of Joachim Neander (1650-1680)
Music: Michael by Herbert Howells

True Righteousness - Anger

True Righteousness - Anger

Psalm 137; Matt 5.17-21
Lunchtime series on Psalms, King's College London

This is a sermon that didn’t quite go the way I expected. When I chose Psalm 137 I was going to elaborate on platitudes like ‘it’s alright to get angry with God’; and ‘bashing babies against rocks is wrong!’ And maybe give my own rendition of Boney M’s “By the waters of Babylon…” But then I thought, ‘you know all that’.

So that set me thinking about righteous anger, and that led me eventually to laughter. So let’s set out with a good Gospel text and see where it takes us in exploring raw emotions, which is what this series on the Psalms is about.

“Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” Matt 5.20

And from my holiday reading, Euphemia MacFarrigle & the Laughing Virgin (Christopher Whyte, Indigo,1995 p144 - a refreshing and scandalously funny book especially for those who feel the Church has messed up their life):

“Her old beliefs and way of praying were obsolete, and she was uncertain whether this new force was an emanation of the devil or whether a saner, more mischievous and playful deity had entered her life.”

“the devil... or a saner, more mischievous and playful deity”

When you reflect on the straightforward reading of our Psalm, and don’t try to nicify it, it reveals one of the frightening but commonplace observations about religion: that is, it is sometimes hard to tell whether it is good or bad; whether it reflects the character of the devil or the character of God.

I have been a pastor for too many years not to know that people use Christianity constantly to screw themselves up - or others - or usually both!

And such people are often quite unable to see in the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, “a saner, more mischievous and playful deity.” Indeed, for many of them the very idea is blasphemous. God is austere and demanding, and never laughs. They are the sort who take the swing out of the budgie’s cage on a Sunday.

And those who worship this humourless God, constantly misinterpret the Bible’s call for righteous living.

They listen to the typically Jewish, hyperbolic language of our Lord in the Gospels, and are unable to supply the undercurrent of mirth which is present in all God’s dealings with the pride of man.

In taking themselves too seriously, they fail to take God seriously. I think Jesus might have agreed with Malcolm Muggeridge that: “Next to mystical enlightenment [laughter] is the most precious gift and blessing that comes to us on earth.”

So how does this assertion that the pervading humour in our human condition is a reflection of the playful creativity of God help us to interpret our text today?

“unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”

“Righteousness” here in Matthew means faithfulness and obedience to the law of God. Our Lord said as much in the previous verse: “Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments… shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven…” (v19)

The Scribes (some of whom were also Pharisees) were the legal eagles: the solicitors and lawyers who developed the law and practised it in court.

The pharisees, on the other hand, made the law’s demands less demanding and the law’s permissions more permissive. They were casuists. They were spinners. They were like most of us.

And they were not popular with Matthew who probably agreed with the Qumran sect that they were ‘the seekers of smooth things’.

Nonetheless, they still only managed to narrow the Mosaic law down to 248 commandments and 365 prohibitions. And they kept most of them.

So what did Jesus mean when he told his followers that their righteousness was to exceed that of the scribes and pharisees?

That we should add a few extra prohibitions - Number 366: musicians may not slip out for a drink & a ciggy during the sermon… Or that if the Pharisees broke 5 commandments, we should go for a maximum failure rate of say, 4?

If this is what he meant, then what hope is there for any of us? Like the man standing in church staring at the Ten Commandments on the Wall, muttering: “well at least I haven’t coveted my neighbour’s ox…”

Jesus goes on to illustrate what he means by a ‘greater righteousness’ with six antitheses; six contrasts introduced with the formula: “You have heard that it was said… But I say…”

You will be relieved to hear that we are only looking at the first antithesis today.

“You have heard it said - thou shalt not kill (better - commit murder)…”

Now there’s a box we can probably all tick.

“But I say… Do not be angry with one another without cause”

This is not just getting angry. Our Lord became angry at times. Like the psalmist weeping in Babylon, we know that’s ok. This is that anger that stems from pride and malice, selfishness and spite, frustration, revenge and jealousy… It’s a killer and destroys families, communities, churches… not to mention the disintegration of the self.

And then there is the matter of insults. “Whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council: but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire.”

Raca - the commentaries are full of possible translations of this Aramaic word: nitwit, blockhead, numskull, bonehead - I think most of the commentaries are too polite to use the obvious contemporary phrase for a man who thinks with an inappropriate part of his anatomy.

‘Fool’ is from the same root as moron. In fact the pair of words perhaps refer to someone’s intelligence and character. “You’re a stupid scoundrel.”

So may we not call each other names? How dull life would be. And lovers’ tiffs would be so colourless and unsatisfactory.

No. This is name-calling that stems from arrogant sneering. This is verbal abuse that wounds the soul. This is linguistic sadism. It corrupts both speaker and hearer. This is sarcasm – from the Greek sarx, flesh; the rending of the flesh.

So what is this righteousness that outdoes the pharisees?

It is a deeper obedience of mind and motive with a constant undercurrent of self-mockery, to save us from the deadly pride. It is honest about feelings, like the psalmist, but with a more Christ like understanding of ourselves.

It is not the abolition of the law. The Mosaic law informs many of our decisions and legal codes and is still the well-spring of our ethical choices. But in Christ’s fulfilment of that law, and with the help of his promised Holy Spirit, we enter more deeply into the loving heart of God and of his laws. And he enters more deeply into us to bring healing and wholeness.

We see that the way we live in a world still torn and disfigured with evil, is important. And it must be Christ like, especially in our relations with one another.

The Psalmist is right to express his anger and grief to God about the brutal Babylonians who had subjected his people. But as a stand-alone Psalm, he was wrong in proposing a solution that simply continues the cycle of violence.

The true righteousness which our Lord calls us to, is a deep inner orientation to love God and neighbour and not to treat enemies as they have treated us.

Like the Psalmist, we will sometimes get it wrong in the heat of the moment.

But as we reflect in God’s presence, as the Psalmist often does, for instance in Psalm 73: “When my soul was embittered... I was stupid and ignorant; I was like a brute beast towards you.” (vv 21f) - when we reflect on our outburst of anger, we see it requires a deep inner humility which is fuelled, in all the greatest saints, by the gift of self-mockery and laughter.

Let me end with a creation poem by Paul Bunday:

In the beginning… God laughed
And the earth was glad.
The sound of laughter
Was like the swaying and swinging of thunder in mirth;
Like the rush of the north on a drowsy and dozing land;
It was cold. It was clear.
The lion leapt down
At the bleating feet of the frightened lamb and smiled;
And the viper was tamed by the thrill of the earth,
At the holy laughter.
We laughed, for the Lord was laughing with us in the evening;
For the laughter of love went pealing into the night;
And it was good.

All Souls Day Solemn Requiem

All Souls Day

Duruflé Requiem

“I will raise them up on the last day.” John 6.40

I fell into conversation with a woman while I was on holiday this time last week. When she discovered I was a priest, she started asking me questions about the recent death of her young mother and about her miscarriage a few months later.

Why had this happened? Was it punishment for something she had done wrong? Was her premature baby in heaven? What age were people in heaven?

All Souls and All Saints tide is one of the times in the church calendar when we are encouraged to ponder these questions which affect us al.

‘Why did this happen?’ the woman asked. We can answer that question. We don’t know. Bad things happen. It’s the experience of life we all share in one way or another. And some people, for no apparent reason, endure more than their share of bad things – and we don’t know why.

What about the other question: what happens after death? Here, we don’t know all that we’d like to know, but as Christians we share a hope that has been given to us by our Lord Jesus Christ himself.

Because we believe in the death and resurrection of Jesus - what we celebrate at this mass tonight - we believe in the resurrection of the dead.

We do not believe in re-incarnation or the transmigration of souls;
We do not believe in the absorption of the soul into the great soul of the universe, like a drop of water returning to the ocean;
We do not believe in existential oblivion – in Sartre’s words: “There is darkness without, and when I die, there will be darkness within."

These are all respectable beliefs, held by many people, but they are not Christian beliefs.

Jesus said to his disciples and to all of us who follow in their footsteps: “I will raise you up on the last day”. He has already blazed the way for this.

Jesus appeared in a resurrection body; there was continuity with his old body and he was still the same Jesus – not a disembodied spirit, recognizable to his disciples.

I was listening to some tapes of my father the other day. He died five years ago. He was a radio ham and one of my earliest memories is of my father sitting in his ‘shack’ – in fact the larder of our little terraced house – surrounded by huge radios with glowing valves, tapping out in Morse code ‘This is G2DPY – George, two delta, Peter, yoke. The handle is Stan, the location is Sussex…’

50 years on, when he was in his 80s, and I in my 50s, he sat with his compact little solid state transmitter, sending out the same message, only by voice now rather than Morse (although he still used Morse with his old friends as it was quicker than talking!): ‘This is G2DPY – golf, two, delta, papa, Yankee (the new politically correct phonics). The handle is Stan the location is Sussex…’

It was the same message, the same Stan, but expressed through different media – a new transmitter, and the body of an old man.

Now, as they say in the world of Amateur Radio, he is a ‘silent key’.

Although there is much we cannot grasp about heaven, and much we cannot understand about the meaning of our lives here on earth…

Jesus shows us that there will be personhood; there will be recognition of one another; we will be raised up and not simply absorbed back into some universal life force.

From the point of view of our loved ones who have already died, many of whom we shall remember in a few moments, it is already the last day and they are raised up: a little sleep and then the dawn.

From our perspective, we still await the last day.

But the assurance is that whether we are alive, or as St Paul puts it, asleep in Christ; we shall all be raised up.

This is the Christian hope in the face of the death of our mortal body; what the former Dean of Westminster, Michael Mayne in the title of his book calls ‘The Enduring Melody’, the cantus firmus of our lives, the tune that weaves through all the changing scenes of life, and eventually, of death and new life.

Here is John Donne using different imagery, but making the same point. (It’s earlier on in that passage with the familiar words, ‘no man is an island’ and ‘ask not for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.’)

All mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated; God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice; but God's hand is in every translation, and his hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again for that library where every book shall lie open to one another.

Or in the words of our Lord:

“I will raise them up on the last day.” John 6.40