John the Baptist and Politics

Advent 2

Isaiah 11.1-10; Romans 15.4-9; Matthew 3.1-12

“The earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.” Is 11.9

Tony Blair and that defender of atheism, Christopher Hitchens, debated last weekend in Toronto the proposition that 'Religion is a force for good in the world'. In a vote after the debate, the audience voted two-to-one in Mr Hitchens' favour.

This is a long way on from 2003 when an American journalist from Vanity Fair asked Mr Blair a question about belief, and his former communications manager, Alistair Campbell, stopped the interview in its tracks with the memorable shout from the side: “We don't do God.”

Even the editor of the Economist has recently co-authored the book: “God is back”. Although many of us suspect he never went away.

In Advent, the readings encourage us to think of the role of John the Baptist, imprisoned and beheaded not for his religious beliefs, but because he muddled in politics.

The Old Testament prophets knew no distinction between politics and prophecy. Generally, they were to speak to the powerful on behalf of God and the powerless. Isaiah’s vision that we read earlier was a call to the people of Israel to work towards a godly commonwealth.

St Paul’s plea in today’s epistle to the Romans was for greater international harmony and understanding. Christ, the root of Jesse of which Isaiah prophesied, was to be the hope of all nations and not just the Jews.

I greatly enjoyed Hilary Mantel’s novel Wolf Hall on Thomas Cromwell and life in the court of Henry VIII. And that led me on to start reading the CJ Sansom detective novels set in the same period.

It reminded me that the politics of different groups at different times in our history have varied enormously while all claiming to be Christian.

At present in the West, the two great shaping ideologies have become capitalism and socialism. And popularly these are both regarded with healthy cynicism.

So as one pundit has put it: capitalism is man’s exploitation of man, whereas socialism is the exact opposite.

It reminds me of that schoolboy witticism about the difference between democracy and feudalism: in democracy, your votes count, whereas in feudalism it’s the other way round.

The reason the OT prophets knew no distinction between politics and prophecy, was because they operated within a theocracy. God was Head of State. His priests and prophets spoke on behalf of God and received revelations from him in the Divine Privy Council.

Although when we look back on some of the actions they took in the name of God, it could just be possible that they misheard occasionally!

So in the days of the prophets and the judges, there was no need for a king. But Israel demanded one, to keep up with the neighbours, and reluctantly God gave them Saul which was the beginning of the end of theocracy.

Fourteen hundred years after the anointing of Israel’s first king - we’re talking about the 4^th and 5^th centuries - the church arguably became the new Israel and Christendom became the new theocracy.

But now it was no longer prophets who spoke the voice of God, it was the rulers of church and state - which were often the same men.

Another thousand years on and one of the struggles of the last three centuries in the West has been to try and separate religion from politics. In America, they have constitutionally done it in theory, although not in practice. Whereas in Europe, we have generally done it in practice, while not in theory.

So where does that leave the prophetic voice of the Church in politics?

Well some would say, nowhere. If John the Baptist had kept his head down, he wouldn’t have lost it!

But that has not been the response of the historic churches over the last couple of centuries. It has been the response of some sects - the Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Mormons, strict Calvinists, some Pentecostal groups; but it has not been the response of either mainline Protestants or Catholics.

Now we know from history that sometimes political intervention by the Church and a so-called prophetic voice has been disastrous. It has added to the bigotry and misunderstanding that divide nations and encourage mental and sometimes physical violence. And sadly that is still true in parts of the world.

The majority of that audience in the debate between Blair and Hitchens last week thought this is more often the case than not.

But sometimes the intervention of the Church in the politics of the day has been heroic and Christlike in its attempts to bring peace and justice. Think of Wilberforce, Bonhoeffer, Romero, Mandela, Martin Luther King… the list goes on.

Well theocracy is now all but dead - although it is still advocated by some fundamentalists in all three of the historic faiths – Jews, Muslims and Christians.

There are those Christians in America and a few in Britain - restitutionists they are called - who want to re-establish a state that enforces Old Testament law. I’ve read their leaflets, frightening though they are.

For instance, they advocate that gays should be given warning to ‘change their lifestyle’ and if they fail to comply, they should be summarily executed! It would certainly ease congestion in central London, but most of us would not recognise this as the prophetic voice in politics.

If the church is to speak into our society, including the political structures, in any sense as ‘for God’, then we are left with what the prophets majored on - the broad sweep of Biblical ethics, reinforced by our Lord’s own teaching, summed up in the Advent prophet Isaiah “Cease to do evil; learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; defend the fatherless, plead for the widow.” (1.16) or famously in the prophet Micah “He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the LORD require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?” (6.8)

Our Lord echoes these prophetic signposts with his command to love God with the totality of our being, and to love neighbour as self.

John the Baptist was perhaps politically naïve, but his call to repentance and holiness was a necessary preparation for the ministry of Jesus – and the ministry of Jesus would bring about in time the greatest political upheavals the world has ever seen.

The prophetic voice of the church in politics must always be to call our leaders to pay heed to those underlying truths of human authenticity which Jesus exemplifies: goodness, justice, mercy. And to remember, lest we get above ourselves, that we need God’s help and Christ’s example in ordering our society.

We need to tread carefully, but to pray for our politicians, especially those who own the name of Christ, and to work through our democratic structures for a society where:

“The earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.” Is 11.9

St Elizabeth of Hungary

“Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.” Phil 2.4

St Elizabeth of Hungary, 19th November 2010 (Preached in the Cathedral at Evensong)

Think back to when you were 24 years old – much easier to do for some of you than others of us.

What had you done with your life by 24?

I had sat a lot of examinations at school and at university. I had played a lot of rugby and cricket; done a lot of singing; spent a year teaching mathematics to boys at Lancing College; had a few iffy relationships; fallen off my motorbike too many times; generally messed around!

I’d had quite a good time really for the first 24 years of my life. I hope you did.

Today we remember in the Church calendar, St Elizabeth of Hungary, Princess of Thuringia. She was dead by 24. She died on November 17th in the year 1231.

So what did she achieve in those 24 years that made her a saint of the Church?

You don’t have to be an historian to know that Central Europe was a very different place 800 years ago.

Elizabeth was born to King Andrew II of Hungary and his wife Gertrude in 1207 and by the age of four was engaged to be married to the heir to the throne of Thuringia, Prince Hermann. At that tender age, she was taken to be raised in the court of Thuringia (central Germany).

When Elizabeth was six, her mother was murdered by jealous Hungarian nobles.

When she was nine, her fiancé, Hermann died; and when she was ten, Hermann’s father the king, went mad and died. By 14 she was married to Herman’s brother, now the 21 year old King Ludwig IV.

At 15, she had the first of her three children, and by 20, her husband had died of the plague on his way to a Crusade, and her 5 year old son became King Hermann II.

Almost immediately she was driven out of her home in the Castle of Marburg, and her three children were taken away from her.

What a life! Not much cricket and singing and messing about.

It’s hardly surprising then, that she was a very devout Christian from an early age, and in the last few years of her life became a Third order Franciscan.

There are many stories of her dedication to the poor and the infirm. She gave away much of her money and possessions and nursed the sick in her own hospitals.

Her life of self-giving, rather than what could easily have been a life of self-pity, proved an inspiration for generations and many hospitals, schools and churches have been dedicated to her name.

As recently as 2007, the 800th anniversary of her birth, the German 10 Euro coin was engraved with her image and she even had a musical which ran from 2007 to 2009 – not exactly Abba, but ‘Elizabeth – the Legend of a Saint’.

She made the most of her twenty four years, finding meaning in her tragic life by living for God and for others.

Whatever our life holds for us, let’s ask God to help us never to let self-pity drag us down; or self-congratulation puff us up; but to follow Elizabeth and Jesus in the joyful service of others.

As our patron St Paul puts it: “Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.” Phil 2.4

Review - Two books on Preaching

Teaching Preaching as a Christian Practice: A new approach to homiletical pedagogy by Thomas G Long and Leonora Tubbs Tisdale, Westminster John Knox, 238pp, 2009, £19.99
Preacher Rehab: Restoring faith in the sermon by Ron Cassidy, AuthorHouse, 368pp, 2009, £14.99

I suspect that almost the only people who read books on preaching are those who teach homiletics and book reviewers. Many American preachers still regard preaching as a skill to be honed and worked on throughout ministry, but among Anglican clergy, preaching is often regarded as a chore that goes with the job; to be endured by both priest and people.

The College of Preachers and CODEC (based at St John’s College, Durham) have just completed a preliminary research project into how preaching is received in the pews and what congregations think its role should be. Two striking conclusions are: that people look forward to the sermon; that it makes little difference to their attitudes or behaviour. Both of these books try to address these issues of connecting with the congregation and aiming for a Christ-like transformation.

Long and Tisdale’s book is clearly aimed at the academy although its 14 contributors provide something for everyone, especially in the section on the Components of the Practice of Preaching. The burden of the book is a plea to take preaching seriously as an honourable practice which can be taught and learned in a similar way to law or medicine. The problem of course is that in the modern curriculum there is hardly any time devoted to homiletics and it is often regarded as something ‘you will pick up’. There is no bibliography but good endnotes after each of the 15 chapters, which cover topics from the Preaching Imagination, to a very rapid overview of Voice and Diction, to the more spiritual Marks of Faithful Preaching. It’s idiosyncratic, embedded in the USA and moderately useful.

Cassidy’s book is robustly British and, as the title suggests, is a cri de coeur for a renewed confidence in the power of preaching. The emphasis of this book is the ongoing journey of the preacher after the academy, learning ‘on the job’ and with the ever changing demography of the congregation. There are ten chapters: the Preacher’s Problems, Predecessors, Preparation, Privilege, Perseverance… almost a complete set of alliterative Sweet Ps. And it’s all good stuff, well illustrated with helpful overviews of recent homiletic thought and contemporary culture as well as historical insights. At the same time Cassidy’s 40 years in Anglican ministry means it is very realistic and earthed. So there are tips about using and choosing a PA system as well as a critique of Craddock (Fred, not Fanny) and tips on preaching on special occasions. I liked his exploration of John Wenham’s aim of a sermon: placere (to please), docere (to teach), and movere (to motivate). This is certainly a book for the preacher, but it should also be on the booklist of the academy. There is a good select bibliography and helpful endnotes. Neither books have an index which is unhelpful.

I wouldn’t spend £20 on the American book but I might spend £15 on Cassidy’s. So perhaps you should save your money and continue muddling through as dilettantes, but don’t use that word in a sermon and never use irony.

Church Times

Cost of Discipleship

Trinity 14

Deut 30.15-20; Psalm 1; Philemon 1-21; Lk 14.25-33

“Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.” (Luke 14.27)

After the Pope leaves Britain in a couple of weeks time, his next European visit will be to Spain - to Santiago de Compostela and to Barcelona.

I came back last week from a very enjoyable week in Barcelona and I would like to think that the Pope might follow in my footsteps along the beaches; into the wonderful restaurants and noisy bars and clubs;

the local festivals with their dangerous fireworks and human pyramids with small children defying every health and safety regulation known to the European Community; or perhaps a day out to the vineyards where they make Cava around Vilafranca. I remember the start of that day so well, but am much less clear about the ending of the day.

One place where he will certainly follow in my footsteps is into Antoni Gaudi’s magnificent Expiatory Church of the Holy Family, known to most of us who cannot pronounce Catalan as: Sagrada Familia.

On November 7th Pope Benedict XVI will consecrate the Temple as a Basilica.

Gaudi began work on the Church in 1883 and he devoted the last 15 years of his life, until he died in 1926, entirely to the venture.

There was a provisional completion date for 2026, the anniversary of his death. But others think the construction will last into the 22nd century.

When Gaudi was asked why he designed something that would take so long to build he remarked that his client was in no hurry.

Jesus says in our Gospel: “For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and estimate the cost, to see whether he has enough to complete it?” (Luke 14.28)

In fact I think Gaudi had estimated the cost. He knew that it would take his entire life and energy and then some. For him, the cost of his Christian discipleship was to give all he had to laying the foundations of a building dedicated to the Gospel.

All the readings today are about major life choices; about the cost of discipleship.

In Deuteronomy, the People of God are on the edge of the Promised Land and faced with a significant choice:
“I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity… Choose life so that you and your descendants may live.”

The Psalm is about the simple choice of the company you keep. Are you nurtured by life affirming friends? Or are you constantly with people who bring out the worst in you?

Then Paul’s brief letter to the wealthy Philemon, who ran a house church in Colossae, is again about choosing the right way. Paul wrote from prison in about AD62 and within a few years he would be beheaded for his faith.

Onesimus (the name means ‘useful’) was a runaway slave who was converted and whom Paul was sending back to his master, Philemon. So Paul makes a little joke about his name: “Formerly he was useless to you, but now he is indeed useful both to you and to me.” (Philemon 11)

Paul reminds them of his own choices which have led him to prison, and urges them to make the right choices – Onesimus to return to his master, and Philemon to welcome him as a Christian brother as well as his slave.

My sister was in Atlantic City yesterday, with crowds of others waiting for hurricane Earl to hit the East coast of America. They were glad that no one was hurt, but they were all a bit disappointed that there wasn’t more to see.

In the Gospel, the crowds are following Jesus, not just for his teaching, and not even just for the occasional miracle; but because they hoped he was the Messiah and was going to rout the occupying Roman army.

So Jesus makes it clear he is calling for recruits and not just spectators.

Using typical Jewish hyperbole, our Lord tells his disciples that their love and commitment to him must make their love for family look like hate in comparison!

Their love and commitment to him must mean that their possessions, their talents, their time are at his disposal.

(Although there are relatively few who are called to follow the way of sister poverty.)

So how does all this cost of discipleship work out for most of us in our western culture?

As with much of Christ’s teaching it is about the place of the heart: the root of our affections. It is about the attitudes that we carry through life.

So making the pursuit of possessions or the love of money is the ultimate folly. For we can’t take it with us, despite the misprint I once spotted in ‘Guide me O thou Great Redeemer… land my safe on Canaan’s side’.

So we work hard to make money, but knowing it is always at God’s disposal. We must be cheerful givers.

And of course we love our families, but we must not idolise them – turn them into gods.
Because they are not. They have feet of clay like us and will sometimes fail us as we sometimes fail them.

Our Christian faith gives us a bigger backdrop and wider concerns to protect us from self-absorption, or absorption by the immediate family.

Learning to listen to God is one of the hardest disciplines of the Christian life. But it is essential if we are to count the cost of discipleship and understand what God is calling us to do.

Mother Teresa died on this day in 1997 and I remember her being interviewed once by the American journalist Dan Rather. He said: “Mother Teresa, what do you say when you pray?”

She replied; “Sometimes I don’t say anything. I just listen.”

So Dan presses her further: “Well when you listen, what do you hear?”

Mother Teresa answered: “Well if I listen long enough and patiently enough, I begin to hear what God is calling me to do, and what it might cost me to do it.”

We come to the altar of God to remember what it cost Jesus.

The occasional inconvenience, embarrassment, generosity, or self rebuke for the sake of Christ is hardly too much to bear.

“Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.” (Luke 14.27)

Thomas, Doubt, Easter 2

(Preached at St Paul's Kay Street, Washington DC, on Easter 2)

“See my hands... my side; stop doubting and believe.” John 20. 27

I’m going to tell you two stories today, and here’s the first one:

A man is walking down the road 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 across the road.”

The next day, the policeman bumps into the same man, 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.”

Now you probably don’t believe that story. And there’s nothing wrong in doubting its authenticity.

The human ability to doubt, to distinguish fact from fiction, is part of our self-consciousness. It’s part of what makes us human. We are always critical observers of the world.

When I left my Baptist theological college 30 years ago, I was young and very certain of what I believed and of what I knew; but rather uncertain of who I was.

Thirty years on, I’m much more confident about who I am (and who I am not), but far less certain about what I know. (That’s probably why I’m an Anglo-Catholic Priest today!)

So today in this Easter season, when we think about the post-resurrection appearances of our Lord, I want us to think for a few minutes about this appearance of Jesus to Thomas.

He is always remembered as ‘doubting’ Thomas, although this is a little unfair. We don't forever remember ‘denying’ Peter; nor the beloved disciple as ‘streaker’ John.

And it’s unfair because we ALL doubt.

And I don’t mean thoroughgoing scepticism - doubting everything as a view of life.

Like the man who is on his first parachute jump. The instructor says: "you just jump out of the plane, the chute automatically opens, you land in that field - there'll be a nice cup of tea waiting for you." The man is sceptical. "What if the chute doesn't open?" "No problem. You pull the emergency chute cord. Another parachute opens, you land in that field - there'll be a nice cup of tea waiting for you.

The man jumps. Nothing happens. He pulls the emergency cord. Nothing happens. As he plummets to earth he's muttering to himself: "Bet there's no cup of tea either..."

This scepticism is almost part and parcel of our postmodern society, but it shouldn't stop us from believing; it should only alter our attitude to believing.

Now when I say: 'we all doubt', I don’t mean ‘unbelief’. Whether we believe or not is an informed decision of the will. It is a rational choice.

No, I mean, just letting hard questions float around in our mind. We all doubt in that way.

Questions like: “Is God really there or have I just fooled myself?”

Questions like: “Why do such bad things often happen to good people?”

Questions like: “Am I really called to be a priest?”

And a host of others.

Why do we doubt? What’s behind it?

Well, sin - distrusting God - is at the root of many of the problems of our human condition.

Questioning is not a sin. Distrust of God is. It’s the ancient sin of Adam and Eve in the Garden. 'Has God really got the best intentions for us in this Garden? Is he really good? Or is he selfishly holding something back from us?'

As long as we struggle with sin - and we will always struggle with sin - we will struggle with the doubt of whether God is really good. How can we look at our hurting world and not doubt his goodness sometimes?

To compensate for this we may often fall into another sin - the sin of certainty. For the opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty.

It is our doubts that unite us. Our convictions divide us.

Which of course doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have convictions - but it does mean you should hold them with a degree of humility.

We all know the sort of person for whom there are only two positions on all subjects – theirs; and the wrong one!

Listen to Luther’s ‘doubter’s’ prayer:

Dear Lord,

Although I am sure of my position,

I am unable to sustain it without thee.

Help me, or I am lost.

And here we acknowledge another factor leading to doubt: human frailty - our limitations in grasping the infinite. And our temptation to think we know it all. We know better than God. Job and Ecclesiastes and good St Thomas remind us of this.

Until, like Thomas, we meet the risen Christ face to face, we will always be those who walk by faith, and not by sight. We will always need to ‘keep on believing’, despite the doubts. “Happy are those who have not seen me” says Jesus “ and yet believe”.

Tennyson put it rather well in The Ancient Sage:

For nothing worthy proving can be proven,

Nor yet disproven: wherefore be thou wise,

Cleave ever to the sunnier side of doubt.

And that brings us on to another factor in doubt: personality. Some Christians find it very hard to ‘cleave to the sunnier side of doubt’.

They are by nature prone to look on the gloomier side of most things. They lie awake at night worrying about everything.

(Like the man who wrote to the IRS: “I can’t sleep at night so I’m enclosing the $5,000 I forgot to declare. PS. If I still can’t sleep I’ll send the rest.”)

I’ve never spent a lot of my time absorbed in metaphysical angst. But I have friends who are constantly plagued by stuff that goes on in their head. St Thomas may have been such a man.

That sometimes-tormented priest, Gerard Manley Hopkins, was certainly such a man. He pleads with himself in one of his poems:

My own heart let me more have pity on; let

Me live to my sad self hereafter kind,

Charitable; not live this tormented mind

With this tormented mind tormenting yet…

Soul, self; come poor Jackself, I do advise

You, jaded, let be; call off thoughts awhile…

And how do we call off thoughts awhile? That's another subject, but we have to recognise that some personalities are prone to be plagued, tormented, by doubt.

We read the account from John's gospel today, but Luke gives us another reason for Thomas’s doubt in his gospel. And indeed this reason may be behind the doubt of all the disciples, and all of us who have followed them in choosing to believe.

“... they still did not believe it because of joy and amazement…” (Lk 24.41)

At the heart of our faith is something almost too incredible to believe. Thomas dared not believe it. And every time we consider the risen Christ, it’s as if Jesus says to us again: “See my hands... my side; stop doubting and believe.”

As we shall say in the mass in a few minutes:

This is the mystery of faith:

Christ has died

Christ is risen

Christ will come again.

The late John Betjeman, a former poet laureate, reflecting on the mystery of Christmas, clung on to that faith, although he hardly dared to believe it:

And is it true? For if it is,

No loving fingers tying strings

Around those tissued fripperies,

The sweet and silly Christmas things...

Can with this single Truth compare -

That God was Man in Palestine

And lives today in Bread and Wine.

(Christmas)

We always hold on to our faith, through doubt. It is the safe way to believe, and allows us to explore our faith with humility and proper confidence.

I said I would tell you two stories, and so here is the second – and a very different story from the first. It is a true story.

I visited an elderly lady some years ago, Elsie, who had just come out of hospital in my home town in Shoreham- by-Sea on the Sussex coast. Southlands Hospital was a dilapidated, run-down old 1930’s building, that was due to be rebuilt after the war. It was a dump!

Elsie had been close to death at one point, and a bright young doctor had asked her, if she lapsed into unconsciousness, whether she wanted to be revived?

“I ask you Father” Elsie said, “I’m at the gates of Paradise and he asks me if I’d like to come back to Southlands!”

This is proper confidence! This is the Resurrection hope of those who have not seen, and yet believe.

May you know this hope and confidence this joyful Eastertide, and always.

“See my hands... my side; stop doubting and believe.” John 20.27

The Return of the Prodigal Son

Unconditional Love (Mothering Sunday, Lent IV)

“This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.” Luke 15.2

It’s a typical family scene. The mother is knocking on her son’s door: “Come on Jimmy. Time to get up. It’s Sunday and time for church.”

“I don’t wanna get up. Church is boring. And I don’t like the people; and they don’t like me!”

“Come on son. Time to get up.”

“Give me three reasons why I should get up”

“Well. It’s 10 o’clock. You’re 43 years old and you’re the Vicar”

I know it’s an old one. But suitable for Mothering Sunday and for opening up today’s Gospel about love in a rather dysfunctional family.

Remember what we have often said of a parable – there is usually only one main point, although there can be other aspects of the parable that often explore the same point in a deeper way.

One of the reasons Jesus used these stories as a teaching tool was because the meaning of a parable is rarely exhausted. We’re still preaching about them 2,000 years later.

So what is the primary point of the parable of the Prodigal Son?

Well it is unconditional love. As we have just sung in Faber’s great hymn:

For the love of God is broader

than the measure of man's mind

and the heart of the Eternal

is most wonderfully kind.

But we make his love too narrow

by false limits of our own;

and we magnify his strictness

with a zeal he will not own.

[Frederick Faber was the first Superior of the Brompton Oratory along the road here, from its formation in 1849 until his death at the age of 49 in 1863.]

The religious authorities were scandalised by this unconditional love of Jesus: ‘This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.’

It reminds me of that other little verse I’ve often quoted by Edwin Markham:

They drew a circle that shut me out;

Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.

But love and I had the wit to win

We drew a circle that took them in.

The Pharisees wanted Jesus to condemn the sinners and praise the religious. Instead he partied with the sinners and called the religious ‘whitewashed sepulchres’.

But of course there is more to it than that.

Today’s parable is a tale of three men: two sons and a father. It is only as we look at all three that we begin to get an understanding of God’s unconditional love; his outrageous grace.

Henri Nouwen was a great spiritual writer who died in 1996 and one of his short and profound works is entitled The Return of the Prodigal Son (1992). It was based on Rembrandt’s painting of the same name. [Look it up here or visit the Hermitage in St Petersburg – painted in 1662, shortly before the artist's death; the year of the Book of Common Prayer.]

Henri Nouwen explores each son’s response to the all-loving father.

The younger son is the Prodigal one, or the Lost Son – the verses we missed out of today’s Gospel were the parables of the Lost Sheep and the Lost Coin.

[I guess like many of you I was well into my teens before I realised that prodigal didn’t mean ‘wicked’ or ‘immoral’ – the parable is best called the Lost Son.]

One of Nouwen’s themes is ‘belovedness’ – being forgiven, accepted and loved by God.

The younger son's life shows how the beloved lives a life of misery – eating the pigswill - because he thinks he can only earn the Father’s love; he can only truly be the beloved by living up to the qualifications laid down by his lover.

Some of us are caught in this trap in our family life, our relationships, and usually therefore, in our spiritual life as well.

It may start with a pushy mother or father who have plans for our life. And we become only too aware that we disappoint them and don’t live up to their expectations, and so whatever the reality, we feel unloved.

And continuing in the pattern of learned behaviour, we often choose partners who also make demands on us, and struggle again to live up to them so we can somehow deserve their respect and love.

It’s hardly surprising then that we listen to the wonderful love story of the Gospel of Christ, and interpret it as another set of demands about the way we live. Only by living an exemplary Christian life will we be worthy of the love of God.

It’s all so wrong and so debilitating.

On the other hand, the elder son's actions show how the beloved can be miserable and depressed, unable to enjoy the party, because he thinks he deserves more. He’s kept the rules and struggled all his life to please his father.

And yet he feels unable to enjoy the father’s love, because it only springs from what he thinks he deserves.

Henri Nouwen suffered from great depression at times and put himself in this category of the elder brother. A life of obedience as a Catholic priest and dedication to the church, and yet he felt an inability to enjoy the love of others or of God. Rather he felt anger – why can’t I have intimate relationships with others; why does God let all this happen to me?!

Needless to say, neither of these two responses represent the Christian response, although we all too often follow them at different times in our lives.

The Father in this parable, he alone understands how to give unconditional love and to forgive, and so is able to rejoice and be truly happy that the lost son has returned.

He is our model for both giving unconditional love and receiving it. This is at the heart of living in fulfilled relationships and in enjoying our Christian discipleship.

And then our obedience to God, our ‘wanting to please’, stems from a realisation of how much he has done for us and how much he loves us. When we come to worship, we do not go away and want to lead better lives for fear of punishment – we are justified by faith in Christ. ‘There is now no condemnation for those that are in Christ Jesus’. This is the message of Paul’s words to the Corinthians in today’s epistle.

No, we want to lead better lives because we love God and know the comfort and assurance of being forgiven, accepted and loved by him.

This was the experience of the godly priest-poet George Herbert. He felt all unworthy to come to the altar, to the Table of the Lord, and had to be reminded of the Love of Christ, Love himself, who had born the blame and justified him through faith, and who welcomed him unconditionally to the Table.

Love bade me welcome: yet my soul drew back,

Guilty of dust and sin.

But quick-ey'd Love, observing me grow slack

From my first entrance in,

Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning

If I lack'd anything.

A guest, I answer'd, worthy to be here:

Love said, You shall be he.

I, the unkind, ungrateful? Ah my dear,

I cannot look on thee.

Love took my hand and smiling did reply,

Who made the eyes but I?

Truth, Lord, but I have marr'd them: let my shame

Go where it doth deserve.

And know you not, says Love, who bore the blame?

My dear, then I will serve.

You must sit down, says Love, and taste my meat.

So I did sit and eat.

Transfiguration

Glory, Postmodernity & Transfiguration

“Now Peter and his companions were weighed down with sleep; but since they had stayed awake, they saw his glory” Luke 9.32

It was a residential Board of Trustees meeting in midsummer, and my first mistake was to suggest that we held the after lunch session out on the lawn.

My second mistake was deciding not just to sit on the grass, but to lie down on the grass. And the third was when I thought ‘I’ll just close my eyes, but I’ll still be able to concentrate’.

I might just have got away with this had I not: one – been Chairman of the Board; and two - started snoring.

We’ve all had those situations where we are desperately struggling to stay awake – I’ve been with some of you at Glyndebourne after the dinner interval!

We would not have had this account of the Transfiguration of our Lord in the Gospels, if the disciples had succumbed to sleep.

And as they reflected on it after the resurrection and ascension of Jesus, they realised what they had seen

· They saw Moses the lawgiver and Christ as the fulfilment of the Law.

· They saw Elijah the chief of prophets and Christ as the One to whom all the prophets pointed.

· They heard the voice of Almighty God, reiterating Christ’s Baptismal affirmation that this was his beloved Son and that they should listen to him.

· And they saw the Shekinah cloud, a theophany of the God of glory, and the reflection of that glory in the face of their teacher, Jesus the Messiah.

There’s a little Jewish joke here as well - a sort of pun. Blink and you miss it.

The Hebrew word for ‘glory’, ‘kabod’, was the word for weight, heaviness, gravitas. Here the disciples are weighed down with sleep, Luke tells us, but they remained awake and so were weighed down with glory.

One of my fellow students at theological college was good at everything. And he knew it. So nobody liked him very much. So there was much Schadenfreude when he was rusticated for a term for driving a mini car through the front doors of the college.

He was good at Hebrew of course as well, so someone pinned a large notice above his door with the single word in Hebrew: Ichabod - the glory has departed.

It was the name given to Eli’s grandson Ichabod, who was born just after a particularly crushing defeat by the Philistines who also stole the Ark of the Covenant which represented the glory of God – atheme running through all the readings and prayers today.

[In fact it’s a rather tragic story that the Jewish writer turns into another little joke at the end.

“And it came to pass, when the messenger made mention of the ark of God, that Eli fell from off the seat backward by the side of the gate, and his neck brake, and he died: for he was an old man, and heavy.” (I Sam 4)

So the grandson, born at the same time is called Ichabod, the glory has departed - the Ark of the Covenant has been carried off. But it could mean, the heavy one has departed - the fat man has died!]

Ichabod might be a suitable epitaph for the last 25 years: postmodernity as we are coming to call this period of history.

There’s much spiritual interest but little spiritual depth or weight. Believe but don’t belong. (70% of people claim to be Church of England – they believe, but they don’t belong to our congregations in any meaningful sense.)

Postmodernity describes, not so much a movement, as a mood in contemporary society. It is image with attitude; inner emptiness covered up by all the good things money can buy. Tesco ergo sum - I shop, therefore I am. Retail therapy doesn’t give meaning, but it makes me feel better!

The loneliness and ennui is eased by friendships and music, sex, alcohol and other drugs; and lots of idle humour. Veni, vidi, velcro - I came, I saw, I stuck around. Try and think of an advert that doesn’t use humour.

And one of the characteristics of postmodernity, is that it denies transcendence. So there is little focus to all that spirituality around, and indeed often a denial that there is any objective ‘other’ - the transcendent God of Glory. Spirituality is seen as something purely internal, subjective and personal.

Because of this absent substantiator in postmodern society; an absence of the One who gives weight to human existence, there is a lack of solidness in society, of glory, of weight.

We are in danger of becoming all surface and image.

Let’s go back to our Gospel – the transfiguration of Jesus.

As Jesus goes down the mountain with the disciples, he speaks to them of his impending suffering and of his resurrection. And he has already told them, although they do not understand, that his Passion will be the greatest display of God’s glory. That’s why we read this Gospel passage always on the last Sunday before Lent.

We celebrate this Mass to the Glory of God. As we bring the gifts of the world at the offertory - our bread and wine and money - so we celebrate God’s glory in all he has given to us.

And as we lift up our Lord’s broken body, so we celebrate his victory over death and the glorious hope he has given us.

It is hard to celebrate the glory of God when we are suffering, in body mind or spirit; or watching those whom we love suffer. Yet as we look at the suffering of God in Christ, and remember that we will share in his resurrection glory, then even suffering and death become part of the path to glory.

The Westminster Catechism reminds us that “The chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy him for ever.”

Secular drowsiness, the stupor and busyness of 21st century life, must not rob us of seeing God’s glory and delighting in his creation. Part of the reason for the disciplines of Lent is to keep ourselves spiritually awake and alert.

And here at the mass, as Christ is present in another Transfiguration, not with Moses and Elijah, but with bread and wine; here is weight and depth in an increasingly light and shallow culture. Let us be awake to the presence of the Glory of God.

“Now Peter and his companions were weighed down with sleep; but since they had stayed awake, they saw his glory” Luke 9.32