Emmanuel - St John the Apostle

"Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel, which means, God is with us." Matt 1.23

And a reading from one of my Christmas presents from many years ago – from Winnie the Pooh:

“Pooh”, said Piglet taking his paw.

“What?”

“Oh, nothing. I was just checking that you were there…” (The House at Pooh Corner)

Humans, like piglets, are social animals. We need the sense that someone is ‘there’. We are, for all of our lives, in some way dependent on others. It’s why especially at Christmas we hate to think that anyone will be ‘alone’.

You probably heard the huge response there was to the Today programme’s Christmas Eve interview with 89 year-old John Arthur who would be alone at Christmas. One listener even wanted to fly him over to Paris for the Christmas weekend.

God himself is a social being: Father, Son and Holy Spirit in the mystical, eternal intimacy of the Trinity.

And when he creates mankind in his own image, then he wishes to include them in the society of the Godhead. So Genesis tells us that he walks with Adam and Eve in the cool of the day in the Garden of Eden.

In our Old Testament lesson today we hear of his closeness to Moses; as Exodus puts it: “Thus the LORD used to speak to Moses face to face, as one speaks to a friend.”

Then in his incarnation which we celebrate this Christmastide, God became a tiny dependent baby, mewling for his mother’s milk and subject to Mary and Joseph. The boy Jesus, God enfleshed, needed them to be there.

As a grown man too he needed companionship and had many friends: men, women and children.

He had an inner circle of close friends: James and John, and Peter - there with Jesus for the transfiguration; there in the Garden of Gethsemane - Jesus wanted them with him in his most agonising hour of decision. He goes off to pray, but keeps returning: “just checking that you are there”.

And they were there at his crucifixion: his best friend John, and his mother Mary, who had bought him into the world in that stable in Bethlehem – [point to Rood Screen] there are John and Mary, at the foot of his cross as they are in churches throughout the world.

Today in the church’s calendar we remember that Apostle John. He wrote the most reflected and mystical account of the life of Jesus and although his authorship of the fourth Gospel, the three epistles and the mysterious book often known as the Revelation of St John the Divine, is much debated, there is certainly a corpus of literature that can be called Johannine.

John Keble draws from all those sources in our final hymn today. (See below)

The other disciples were obviously slightly miffed that John had such a special place in the affections of Jesus, especially the Apostle Peter. The verse before today’s Gospel reads:

“Peter turned and saw the disciple whom Jesus loved following them; he was the one who had leaned back against Jesus at the supper.” (John 21.20)

And then the recommissioned Peter goes on to ask the resurrected Jesus, who was telling them that he would be leaving them soon, “so what’s going to happen to John? Is he going with you?”

It’s a fascinating passage, but I don’t want to discuss it now, so on to the present day.

Jesus was born – we continue to celebrate that over the 40 days of Christmas and epiphany; and Jesus has died and risen again and is now ascended back to the Father. Physically, he is with us no more. No hand to hold. No one for John to lean against.

But hinted at in today’s Gospel there is an even profounder reality of God’s continuing companionship with John and with all of us.

For Mary has conceived and born a son, and his name is Emmanuel, which means, God is with us.

He is with us because he shared our joys and sorrows; he can empathise with us in all that we go through. He is not distant and unmoved, but he is with us in all the richness and vagaries of our lives.

And he has taught us that all humans are made in his image, and are to be loved and cared for. So all our kinships and friendships are part of God’s being with us.

We cannot hug God, but we can hold the hand of a friend, to ‘check that they are there’.

And in our turn we can sit with friends and strangers, and by our physical presence assure them that God is with them.

But companions leave us and Christmas is always a reminder, especially as we get older, of the empty seats around the table.

At the end of Matthew’s gospel, the disciples are filled with foreboding as they realise that Christ is leaving them, from the manger to the skies.

So the end of Matthew’s Gospel echoes the beginning where our text is written: “they shall name him Emmanuel, which means, God is with us.” At the end of the Gospel he reassures them in his words of parting: “I am with you always, to the end of the age”. (Matt 28.20)

Here is an even deeper spiritual mystery. For it has been the experience of Christians through the ages, that by God’s Holy Spirit, they sense the loving presence of God: Emmanuel - he’s here, with us.

It’s of course very subjective, but nonetheless real for being that. Loving our partners and friends is very subjective, but nonetheless real for being that.

A while back I was in Stockholm with my good friends Stefan and Helena and their third child, a young boy, Einar. We were in a flat he’d never been in before and at one point his parents left the room with our host.

He looked at me, said something in Swedish, then remembered I was that poor simple man who didn’t understand anything. So he came over, put his thumb in his mouth, and held my hand. Just checking I was there.

"Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel, which means, God is with us."

Hymn by John Keble (1792-1866) for St John the Apostle's Day

Word Supreme, before creation

Born of God eternally,

Who didst will for our salvation

To be born on earth and die,

Well Thy saints have kept their station,

Watching till Thine hour drew nigh.

Now 'tis come and faith espies Thee;

Like an eagle in the morn

John in steadfast worship eyes Thee,

Thy belov’d, Thy latest born.

In Thy glory he descries Thee

Reigning from the Tree of scorn.

Much he asked in loving wonder,

On Thy bosom leaning, Lord.

In that secret place of thunder

Answer kind didst Thou accord,

Wisdom for Thy Church to ponder

Till the day of dread award.

Lo, heaven's doors lift up, revealing

How thy judgements earthward move;

Scrolls unfolded, trumpets pealing,

Wine-cups from the wrath above;

Yet o'er all a soft voice stealing,

"Little children, trust and love."

Mary - Advent 4

“Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women.”

Luke 1.28

What is the connection between macaroni and the Virgin Mary?

Give up? It’s Christmas Carols.

I’m sure over the next few days we will be listening to lots of carols like ‘In Dulci Jubilo – Let us our homage show’ and ‘A Hymn to the Virgin’- Of one that is so fair and bright,
Velut maris stella, which both date back to the 14^th century.

And like many other mediaeval carols, they are macaronic. That is, partly in English and partly in Latin.

The adjective ‘macaronic’, is used to describe any text which is a jumbled mixture of the vernacular – English or German or whatever - and Latin or Latinized words; or indeed words from any other languages.

In the secular world this mixture of languages was often used in burlesque or satire.

The word comes from the New Latin ‘macaronicus’, literally, resembling macaroni: presumably, suggesting lack of sophistication or simple rustic wisdom.

And this is one of the hallmarks of these mediaeval carols, which makes them so attractive, and at the same time rather annoying.

They are often full of homespun devotion to Our Lady and theological naivety.

The Latin is perhaps supposed to give them a bit more weight.

But rather like putting on a posh accent while still using appalling grammar, the overall effect is one of lovable, and even laughable, simplicity.

And it is perhaps hardly surprising then that these macaronic carols were often used to depict Our Lady and the birth of Jesus. For the event is both simply profound and yet profoundly simple.

So there is something deeply mysterious and theological about Mary the Theotokos, the God-bearer, who is the focus of the readings and prayers on this fourth Sunday in Advent.

Yet, at the same time, there is something slightly risqué and ‘common’ about a pregnant teenager who claims to be a virgin. There is something of the barrack-room joke about it. We’ve all heard them and laughed at them. It is the human way to laugh at great mystery.

What does this tell us about the Christian attitude to Mary and her place in our salvation and daily living?

It was music that first began to give me an inkling of devotion to Our Lady, back in my teens.

Not surprisingly, my good puritan Baptist church had no images of any kind in the building - not even a cross until the swinging 60s.

So Mary only featured in Christmas Carols. And even then some of the words had to be changed to protect theological sensibilities.

Remember that line in Adam lay y bounden: ‘Ne had the apple taken been, the apple taken been, ne had never Our Lady a-been heavene queen’.

Well you can’t have that! So it was changed to ‘Ne had never Christ’s glory on earth ever been seen.’ A not-so-subtle Christological shift there from Our Lady to Our Lord.

But despite all this, as a teenager exploring passion and fallings in love, it was hymns and carols that often inspired my devotion. I recognised that just as Jesus was the most lovable man; the man from God; the second Adam; the man who was God;

so Mary was the most loveable woman, the woman chosen by God, the second Eve; the perfect Mother of Our Lord; a friend, a comforter, who like any good mother, understands and cares.

Here again is an earthiness that the common man understands. Here in this straightforward peasant girl is a mystery almost too great for us to bear.

In today’s Gospel we read of the Visitation, when Mary visits her older cousin Elizabeth, already six months gone with John the Baptist, to talk about pregnancy and birth, and pain and Joseph and hopes and fears.

She had gone because of the Annunciation (depicted in Arthur Hacker's wonderful painting on the front cover of the service sheet – it looks better in the Tate)

– when the angel Gabriel visited Mary to tell her she was to be the bearer of the Word made flesh – Jesus.

Whatever happened between Mary and God, between this Angel and Mary; it was such an exceptional happening that no other human being has ever experienced such, before or since.

And the words of these mediaeval, macaronic poems pile up epithets and allegories to draw us out in love of God, and love of this simple woman who became such a channel of grace. Deep, unfathomable mystery and simple, animal, mother-love, for Jesus - and for us.

So what is our response to this remarkable woman who is at the heart of the unfolding Christmas story?

It should surely be the same as hers – astonishment at God’s intervention, complete lack of comprehension – how could this happen? And yet complete trust that God is working his purposes out in our lives and in our world – ‘be it unto me according to thy word’.

Rainer Maria Rilke in his poem on The Annunciation from Das Marienleben, catches the cosmic significance of this pregnant young woman. He suggests that even the Angel Gabriel cannot believe the message he is to deliver to this young Israeli woman. He is astonished.

When the angel stepped in,

he did not take her by surprise,

It was as though a ray of sunlight or moonlight

had entered her room,

No, she did not even blink!

But when he bent close his youthful face

she looked into eyes that looked into hers,

their gaze so powerful that the world outside

was suddenly empty

and the multitudes' visions, their deeds

and their burdens

all were crowded into them: just she and he;

this girl, this angel, this spot.

And they were both astonished.

Then the angel sang his melody.

“Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women.” Luke 1.28

(Rainer Maria Rilke, from Das Marienleben

translated & adapted by Alice Van Buren and Russell Walden)

Advent Sunday

“May God so strengthen your hearts in holiness that you may be blameless before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints.” I Thess 3.13

My guess is that most of you haven’t been to see the big new apocalyptic disaster film 2012 which was released earlier this month. The posters have the strapline “We were Warned!”

But warned of what? Well warned that the world was more or less going to end in a Doomsday string of cataclysmic disasters in 2012. I won’t bore you with the details, but it could properly spoil the Olympics.

It reminds me of brother George who leads this Christian Sect who are sure that the second coming and the end of the world will be on December 31st at midnight. He and his followers gather on a local hilltop, ready to greet the returning Lord. Midnight comes and they look to the skies – nothing happens. Quarter past midnight – still nothing. 1am – still nothing, even if the Lord were running on European time!

Br George’s followers gradually begin to go back down the hill until only his right hand man is left. At 2am, even he leaves – and as he passes George, he pats him on the shoulder and says “never mind George. It’s not the end of the world.”

It’s Advent Sunday again, the beginning of the Church’s liturgical year: no flowers, no Gloria, we’re wearing sober blue and the choir are singing a lot of unaccompanied plainchant.

And once again we have all these readings about the end of the world, the day of judgement, the parousia – meaning the second coming of Christ, and the apocalypse – the revelation of Christ.

So what is it all about? Men with sandwich boards in Leicester Square proclaiming ‘The End is Nigh’? Will the universe be brought to an abrupt and cataclysmic close?

The Gospel reading from Luke is typical of much apocalyptic writing of the first century. But in Jesus’ words there is more hope than usual, with a purposeful rather than pessimistic view of history.

And there is exhortation included, albeit with an uneasy tension that we still live with: “the end is not yet – don’t believe the prophets of doom” and “these are the end-time signs – like a good boy scout – be prepared!”

I ventured into the foothills of the Atlas mountains last month when I was in Marrakech. As we drove towards them (stopping off at so many of the taxi driver’s cousins who wanted to do us special deals on pots and carpets and Berber coffee tables) we realised that although we could discern the individual peaks we were not always sure which peak was in the foreground and which peak was further off in the background.

The twin peaks of this prophecy of Jesus appear to be the relatively imminent destruction of Jerusalem in 70AD and the more distant close of the age, the Parousia which we still await, his return to earth.

Now which descriptions belong to which event is not at all easy to sort out. Let’s briefly look at that first peak – the destruction of Jerusalem.

And to do that we have to go back to 168BC when Antiochus Epiphanes was King of Syria.

He desecrated the glorious Temple in Jerusalem, setting up an altar to Zeus on the burnt offering altar and sacrificing pigs. It was still raw in the memories of the Jews.

So Jesus uses the apocalyptic imagery that calls up the common memory of this horrendous event before he looks forward to an even worse event – the complete destruction of the Temple; and perhaps even further forward to the then unthought of terrors of the holocaust in the 20th century.

And in such days of suffering and confusion, our Lord warns us of false christs and prophets. False christs never seem too difficult to spot – I have had a number of people tell me over the years that they are Jesus Christ – and I have never felt the need to get a second opinion from another priest about them.

But false prophets are altogether harder to identify. Perhaps there is something in the way that they parade their miracles and signs and wonders. It is significant that Jesus never ‘did tricks’ or performed miracles on demand.

The apocryphal Gospel of Thomas, wisely left out of the New Testament canon, has Jesus making clay pigeons and throwing them in the air where they spring into life. Jesus never uses signs and wonders to compel faith or confound sceptics. They spring from compassion for the sick and needy and are often accompanied by a plea to “tell no one”.

It contrasts starkly with some of the tele-evangelists and miracle workers who are still busy around the Christian world.

But let’s move on to the verses we read today.

They are full of familiar Old Testament imagery but also use Jesus’ favourite teaching technique - the parable.

The fig tree is very common in Palestine where most other trees are evergreen. So it is one of the clearest indicators of the passing seasons. Perhaps too Luke is hearkening back to Christ's cursing of the fig tree in an earlier chapter (Luke 11:12-20) which was a pronouncement of judgement on the Temple and religious establishment.

In contrast, the fig tree of this parable is a sign of summer and hope.

In testing and depressing days it’s hard to hold on to hope. (I read on a staff notice board in school: "To make savings during government cut-backs, the light at the end of the tunnel has been switched off...")

So Jesus reminds them and us that his words are more certain than the seasons and will endure longer than the physical universe: Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away. (v.33)

There are still groups of Christians around the world obsessed with trying to predict the date and mechanical niceties of the Second Coming.

Jesus puts an end to all such 'almanac discipleship' by asserting that he, the Son, does not know the timetable, and that if he doesn't know, then no one can know.

The pre-occupation of Christians should be with how to conduct themselves in these end times - between Christ's first coming and his Second Coming – this is the Advent theme.

Now of course some of us have become so blasé about all this that we don’t really believe the words we will say in the Nicene creed in a moment: “And he shall come again with glory to judge both the quick and the dead.”

If we are theologically minded we may have bought into some form of ‘realised eschatology’ – often attributed to Albert Schweitzer and CH Dodd earlier in the 20th century – the idea that everything has already happened in the first coming of Christ. There’s nothing else to wait for.

But more commonly, we just can’t imagine an ‘end of the world’, and hope it doesn’t come before our holidays!

Scientifically, the world will certainly end, and the earth will collapse into the sun – although not while there is a labour government. And of course, through the good services of technology, we are perfectly capable of destroying all life on the planet ourselves. It’s the stuff all these apocalyptic films and novels are made of.

But this is to miss the point of our Lord’s teaching.

On the ‘how’ or the ‘when’ this parousia will happen, we must remain agnostic. We just don’t know.

Rather it means there should be a sense of 'edge' in our Christian living; a knowledge that we may not have all the time in the world, that we should ‘carpe diem’ – seize the day. We should plan for our spiritual future, by investing spiritually in the present.

Advent is about preparation for the joy of Christmas, and the church and indeed most religions have learnt that the best preparation for a feast is a bit of self-denial and spiritual self-examination.

So spend a little more time on your spiritual disciplines in the next month, in between the office parties and soirees, and see how much more you enjoy Christmas when it comes.

“May God so strengthen your hearts in holiness that you may be blameless before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints.” I Thess 3.13

Bible Sunday

The Bible

“Heaven and earth shall pass away; but my words shall not pass away.” (Matt 24.35)

A man is walking through Regents Park with a penguin. He meets a policeman and says: “I’ve found this penguin and I’m not sure what to do with it.” The policeman says: “Well take it to the zoo. It’s just over there.”

The next day, the policeman bumps into the same man in Tottenham Court Road, still with the penguin. He says: “So what happened at the zoo yesterday?” The man says: “We had a lovely time thanks. We’re going to the cinema this afternoon.”

Well it’s a nice story – but of course you don’t believe it. It’s a made up story.

Today is Bible Sunday when we give thanks to God for his Word, the Bible. Some of my friends think that the Bible is full of ‘made up’ stories that Christians somehow convince themselves to believe.

So what do we mean when we say we ‘believe in’ the Bible, or ‘trust God’s Word’?

And how do we do what the collect today prayed for, that we would ‘read, mark, learn and inwardly digest’ the Holy Scriptures?

Does it mean that we have to screw ourselves up to believe things that we know aren’t true?

And how do we avoid the sort of fundamentalism which is so dangerous and yet so pervasive within the three great monotheistic faiths: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. All three religions claim to be people of The Book.

The real debate is between Revelation and Reason: between God’s revealed truth in the Book, and the human mind’s capacity to deduce things from the outer world - to reason. Can we harmonise the Book of God’s words - the Bible; and the book of God’s works - the external world and the inner mind?

The debate goes back thousands of years as the early Jews struggled with the spoken, and later written words of priests and prophets such as those we have just read from Isaiah. What did they mean?

A whole school of Midrash grew up to give the Rabbinic (and therefore correct) view of what we would now call the OT. There were halachic (= of the law) Midrashim and haggadic (= of the narratives/non legal) Midrashim, and these commentaries on Scripture were written to harmonise and expound the Word of God. These writings flourished from 800BC to 800AD and you can still read many of them.

(Jesus often referred to these when he said ‘you have heard it said that… but I say unto you...’)

The process of arguing about the meaning of Scripture has continued through the great councils of the church.

The Nicene creed, which we always say after the sermon, was an attempt in the 4^thC to clear up any ambiguity about the person of Christ - to establish the doctrine of the Trinity, not explicit in Scripture, but deduced by our reason from the Scriptures.

(Which books actually got into the Bible was also determined in this period of the Church’s history.)

Then later, through the celebrated disputes between the Curch and Galileo Galilei in the 17^thC;

the Church debated the motions of the solar system and how they related to the teaching of Scripture – did the earth go round the sun, or the sun go round the earth as Scripture appeared to teach?

The 19^thC saw the great evolution debates and the rise of a new form of Biblical analysis which came out of Germany and the so-called ‘higher criticism’.

In the last twenty years we have seen the Bible brought in to defend or attack, women priests, remarriage of the divorced, gay relationships, New Labour, stem cell research, euthanasia - the list is endless.

Like most polarisations, the simple ‘Reason versus Revelation’ is a false dichotomy – much loved by Richard Dawkins of course.

For the Christian, Revelation certainly informs our reason ; yet we cannot understand Revelation, or indeed discuss it, without the use of reason.

Over recent years, there have been a number of unhealthy approaches to the Bible. And by ‘unhealthy’ I mean they are not my approach to the Bible!

There is ‘The Bible as Scientific Document’ - that atomistic dissection of Scripture to which both Liberals and Fundamentalists are prone. CS Lewis mocked the approach in his essay ‘Fernseed and Elephants’ [In the collection of essays of the same title] where he supposes that a similar critical approach to the much more recent documents - say the plays of Shakespeare - would be ridiculed by the literary world.

[Post-liberals have realised the foolishness of trying to discern whether, for instance, Genesis 12.4 was written by J, E, P or D - the supposed 4 sources of the Pentateuch - the first 5 books of the OT.

And Post-evangelicals have moved away from building theologies based on the 29 tent-pegs of the Tabernacle or on a single verse of St Paul.]

Then there is that approach known as ‘The Bible as Literature’ – it’s just like all other great literature and equally valid for helping us in our understanding of life, the universe and everything. We might as well study Charles Dickens or Iris Murdoch. This has never been the position of the Church which sees the Bible as unique and fundamental to its very existence.

Or there’s ‘The Bible as Instruction Manual’ - rather like those computer manuals, only without an index, no logical structure, and written by foreigners - come to think of it that’s just like my computer manual! How to create a universe. How to discipline children.

There are other approaches we could explore – ‘The Bible as horoscope’ – ‘The Bible as systematic theology’ – ‘The Bible as Beautiful Prose’ (we’ll get a lot of that in 2011!) – ‘The Bible as Doorstop.’

So what is it? Well, it is unique and defies any clear and simple definition - which is what we might expect from a mysterious God, who wants to communicate with us.

‘The Bible as Word of God’ is as good a description as any. [Some prefer a finer Barthian distinction, that the Bible ‘contains the Word of God’.]

The important thing is made clear by Jesus in today’s Gospel: through God’s Word and the people of God we meet the Word made Flesh - Jesus - the divine communication which transcends and complements the knowledge and wisdom of reading the Book.

It is an encounter with the Source of human communication, the author of the Book, if you like, which puts the book in context and helps us to understand it and act upon it.

It’s a bit like watching Jamie Oliver on TV following one of his own recipes – the instructions come alive and you can see what he means by things.

But of course Jesus doesn’t appear on TV and so this approach is very subjective and is why we need to encounter Christ in his Word, but also in the context of the Church. One man and his Bible usually lead to the foundation of a new sect!

How then do we approach the Bible in order to know Christ, and in order to live lives pleasing to God?

Well of course we must approach it theologically and rationally. We must try to understand what it meant when it was written and what it might mean to us today: ‘The Two Horizons’ as Georg Gadamer calls them.

And then personally, as we read it and hear it read, we ‘ingest’ it, and begin quite naturally to act upon it. We shouldn’t worry too much about the detail, for the devil is truly in the detail.

It was Mark Twain who remarked, “I am not worried about the bits of the Bible I do not understand. I am worried about the bits I do understand!”

And in either case, reading the Bible theologically or personally, we must approach the Word of God with a right attitude, with humility - ‘faith seeking understanding’ as Augustine put it; and not pride seeking confirmation of prejudice.

The Bible has shaped our world and our British culture like no other book.

We honour it in our church - in the Gospel procession and the way we handle it; and in our liturgy that is based upon it.

We honour it in our lives when we follow the teachings of our Lord, and of his Father, guided by the Holy Spirit and by the whole people of God as we try to 'read, mark, learn and inwardly digest'.

“Heaven and earth shall pass away; but my words shall not pass away.” (Matt 24.35)

Faith, Trust and Dawkins

“Who do people say that I am?” (Mark 8.27)

Last Saturday I went back to my old College, to celebrate 40 years since we matriculated: a hundred bright eyed public school boys with a smattering of grammar school boys like me.

It was the end of the 60s when, as Philip Larkin reminded us, sex was invented, although we didn’t let that trouble us in Selwyn. We wore flares, long hair and our gabardine macs.

All my contemporaries at our dinner last Saturday seem to have aged an enormous amount and most of them are now at least ten years older than me. We reminisced.

There were twelve Engineers in Selwyn College in my year, part of the 300 engineers in the Cambridge Mechanical Sciences department.

We had to work with laboratory partners, and mine was one of the two women amongst the 300 – I think they thought she would be safe with me because I was a Baptist. In fact she was safe with me for a number of other reasons...

…but why only half a dozen women among the 1000 engineers.

Even today, women are very much in a minority in the engineering faculty.

Is it perhaps because men and women’s brains are hard-wired in different ways? A lot of research would suggest that.

You probably heard in the news last week the findings of Bruce Hood, professor of developmental psychology at Bristol University. He suggests that magical and supernatural beliefs are hardwired into our brains from birth, and that religions are therefore tapping into a powerful psychological force already there.

We have a propensity to believe in God, or at the very least in Santa Claus or the tooth fairy.

Of course this argument can run both ways.

For those of us who are theists and have always thought that it is more natural to believe in God than not to – and that does count for the very great majority of the human race - this comes as no surprise.

It was the Preacher in Ecclesiastes written nearly 3,000 years ago who said:

“God has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in their hearts; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.” (Eccles 3.11)

Or the famous quotation of Augustine in the 5^th century:

“Thou awakest us to delight in Thy praise; for Thou madest us for Thyself, and our heart is restless, until it repose in Thee.” (Augustine of Hippo, The Confessions of Saint Augustine, Chapter 1)

And so through the centuries many have argued that there is a God shaped void in everyone.

On the other hand, the hard-wired argument can also play into the hands of evangelical atheists like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens.

They assert that brave atheists need to lead the way in overcoming the hard-wiring of our brains so that we are not poisoned by religion.

Humans have will-power and rationality and we must smother our inner propensity for religious belief before it destroys all humankind.

The High Mass this morning led by a bunch of militant and deluded priests is part of the mumbo jumbo that supports the destructive forces of religion in the world.

So, hard-wiring or not, there is no scientific proof of God, but the world of science generally reinforces the faith of those who do already believe.

Unless of course you set up some opposition to scientific discovery, as Archbishop Ussher unwittingly did in the 17^th century. He deduced that the first day of creation began at nightfall preceding Sunday October 23rd, 4004 BC – he wasn’t willing to be more specific than that!

But very few Christians take such a needlessly confrontational stance.

So science isn’t in itself going to lead us to God.

Many others have tried to argue for belief in God from reason.

The Quinque Viae, Five Ways, or Five Proofs are five arguments for the existence of God summarized by the 13th century theologian St.Thomas Aquinas in his book, Summa Theologica.

Descartes, Newton, Pascal and many others have worked to develop this branch of apologetics.

But although, like science, reason reinforces the belief of believers, it cannot present a compelling case for belief in God. The argument is ultimately as sterile as the scientific one.

CS Lewis, a reluctant convert to Christianity in the middle of last century, is more famous for The Lion the Witch and Wardrobe now than for all his Christian apologetics; especially his influential book, Mere Christianity.

He came nearer to the crux of Christian belief by focusing not on the general idea of God, but on the uniquely Christian idea of God in Christ.

He famously sets up the argument by saying that when you consider the teaching of Jesus in the Gospels, he must be either mad, bad, or who he said he was - the Son of God.

He argues that you cannot read a Gospel like today’s and decide that Jesus was just a good man, or even a prophet.

He must have been a great fabricator of lies, or so delusional that he should have been in psychiatric care.

Attractive as this line of reasoning is, it too is ultimately sterile. A postmodern response to CS Lewis’s ‘mad, bad or who he said he was’ is a dismissive shrug and a ‘so what’!

In today’s Gospel Peter answers Jesus’ question of “who do people say that I am?” with a simple affirmation of trust in the man he is following – you are the Christ, the Messiah, the Chosen One.

It is not scientific proof, or clever reasoning, but a transforming relationship with the man, Christ Jesus, that sustains his belief and elicits his trust.

And when Thomas makes a similar affirmation after the Resurrection – my Lord and my God – Jesus says: “because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

Why do people like me and many of you, believe in God, and come to worship in a service like this? Is it because the scientific evidence has swayed us? No.

Or is it that rational argument has left us no other reasonable course of action? No.

It is because we believe that Jesus loves us, and when we commit ourselves to loving God in response, it brings us an inexplicable sense of well-being and rightness.

In Kant’s words, God ‘is not an ‘it’ to be discussed, but a ‘thou’ to be met’. When we approach him in faltering faith and trust, we find he had seen us from a long way off and had run to meet us.

He prepared a simple feast for us of bread and wine, and as we rehearse his dying love, Jesus asks a further question of us as he did of Peter – not ‘who do people say that I am?’ – but ‘who do you say that I am?’

Hypocrisy (Wednesday teaching mass)

Hypocrisy

Matthew 23.27-32

Beati quorum via integra est, qui ambulant in lege Domini. Ps 119.1

Blessed are the undefiled in the way, who walk in the law of the Lord.

I love Alan Bennett’s line in A Cream Cracker under the Settee, when Thora Heard has been visited by the Christian sect who push tracts through the door and call through the letterbox that Jesus loves her. She remarks with fine British bathos: “Shouting about Jesus and leaving the gate open - it’s hypocrisy is that!”

Jesus was against hypocrisy. He roundly condemned it, especially in the religious hierarchy, the Pharisees, scribes and lawyers.

So what is it?

It’s not hypocrisy if you are a smoker, and you warn someone else that they shouldn’t smoke.

It is if you pretend that you’re not a smoker yourself.

So when people say that Christians are hypocrites – as they often do – they usually mean that we don’t live up the standards we believe God has set for us.

That’s not being hypocritical.

It would be more correct to call us sinners – and then, when we acknowledge that we are - they don’t like that either and say we are always on about sin!

In other words, hypocrisy is not simply an inconsistency between what is advocated and what is done. Samuel Johnson made this point when he wrote about the misuse of the charge of "hypocrisy" in Rambler No. 14 in the mid 18^th century

“Nothing is more unjust, however common, than to charge with hypocrisy him that expresses zeal for those virtues which he neglects to practise; since he may be sincerely convinced of the advantages of conquering his passions, without having yet obtained the victory, as a man may be confident of the advantages of a voyage, or a journey, without having courage or industry to undertake it, and may honestly recommend to others, those attempts which he neglects himself.”

Hypocrisy is the act of pretending to have beliefs, opinions, virtues, feelings, qualities, or standards that you don’t actually have. It’s a sort of lie that is often coupled with a desire to hide how you really are from others, and in its more complex forms, to hide it from yourself.

Etymology:

Hupo – under

Krinomai – sift, decide (middle voice, iquid aorist, critic, crisis)

Not an easy or certain etymology: from "separate gradually" to "answer" to "answer a fellow actor on stage" to "play a part."

So hypocrisy is in a sense play-acting

And why is Jesus so against it?

1. It can lead to self-deception – and pride. Two sides of the same coin.

2. It makes others feel bad about themselves. It loads them down, as Jesus makes clear in Matthew 23, today’s Gospel, and Luke 11 where he accuses the lawyers of this

3. It can make us physically ill.

As Boris Pasternak has Yurii say in Doctor Zhivago, "Your health is bound to be affected if, day after day, you say the opposite of what you feel; if you grovel before what you dislike... Our nervous system isn't just fiction, it’s part of our physical body, and it can't be forever violated with impunity."

So what is the remedy, the positive virtue to counteract this destructive sin?

Well it is authenticity (being yourself); integrity (being of one thing, whole).

Now this is easier said than done because we are not culturally free agents – in other words we live in a society where we cannot always be ‘authentic’.

We only have to think about the ‘gay’ issue to see that.

Living with parents, families, in society, in a church, in an office… all these place constraints upon us, so being authentic is a constant compromise.

Sometimes we rebel against the compromise, especially in our teenage years when we are trying to find the ‘authentic me’.

But also later – me with blond hair, earrings, tattoos in my 40s… This is as much me as this dog collar, the chasuble. I am something ‘whole’ – an integrity.

And this is true of all of us in the different roles we play in life.

So how do we get the balance right between conforming and asserting what we see as our authentic self?

If we look to Jesus as our guide we get some help.

In general he appears to have conformed in most ways to his Jewish culture; more so than John the Baptist.

But when he was trying to ‘set the captives free’, to liberate men and women from the burdens the religious set upon them, he was more likely to rebel:

The use of the Sabbath

The moneychangers in the temple

Pointing out hypocrisy

His attitude to women and children

In other words he did not assert his own authenticity just for the sake of it – for his own sake; he asserted it when it would be part of a liberation of others; an enabling of them to be authentic.

And this was of course at considerable cost to himself. The cost we celebrate at this mass tonight.

This is perhaps a guide for us as

we struggle to avoid hypocrisy, but not to be self-congratulatory about our authenticity;

about being ‘me’ while still respecting those around us who may be in a different space, a different place.

Stanford’s translation, wherever he got it from, (it’ not in any of Jerome’s Vulgate versions) has a deep truth in it.

Beati quorum via integra est, qui ambulant in lege Domini. Ps 119.1

Which we might paraphrase:

Happy are those who can live authentically, and yet still walk with integrity before God.