Emmanuel - God is with us - Christmas Day

Emmanuel

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

I’ve just moved flat and seriously ‘downsized’. It meant getting rid of about 4,000 books to various good homes, and of course you begin to look at them once you start bidding them farewell.

And so it was that last night I found myself reading The House at Pooh Corner, the Latin version of course, Domus Anguli Puensis.

“Pooh”, said Piglet taking his paw.
“What?”
“Oh, nothing. I was just checking that you were there…”

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 upon others.

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

Then in his incarnation which we celebrate at Christmas, God became a tiny dependent baby, mewling for his mother’s milk. The little boy, Jesus, needed Mary to be there, to hold his hand.

As a grown man too Jesus 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 through the ups and downs of his ministry.

And there at the end of his short life 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 some 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.

So now, physically, he is with us on this planet no more. No hand to hold. But there is an even profounder reality of God’s continuing companionship. 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 lived here and 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.

Sometimes at Christmas, they show that wonderful animated version of Oscar Wilde’s lovely story, The Selfish Giant. The Giant has been taught to share his garden with all the local children by the appearance of a mysterious little boy at a very low ebb in his life.

But although he searches for this child among the children throughout the rest of his long life, he never finds him, until one day he sees him in a tree in his garden.

Downstairs ran the Giant in great joy, and out into the garden. He hastened across the grass, and came near to the child. And when he came quite close his face grew red with anger, and he said, "Who hath dared to wound thee?"

For on the palms of the child's hands were the prints of two nails, and the prints of two nails were on the little feet.

"Who hath dared to wound thee?" cried the Giant; "tell me, that I may take my big sword and slay him."

"Nay!" answered the child; "but these are the wounds of Love."

"Who art thou?" said the Giant, and a strange awe fell on him, and he knelt before the little child.

And the child smiled on the Giant, and said to him, "You let me play once in your garden, to-day you shall come with me to my garden, which is Paradise."

By being among us Jesus has also taught us that all humans are made in his image, and are to be loved and cared for – another theme of Christmas and our compassion for the poor and needy.
This means that all our kinships and friendships are part of God’s being with us, being there.

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 there 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 re-echos the beginning. 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 there, 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.

We started with the boy Christopher Robin, thought about the boy Jesus, and I end with a lesson from another little boy.

A while back I was in Stockholm with my good friends Stefan and Helena and their little 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 anyone said. So he came over, put his thumb in his mouth, and reached up and held my hand. Just checking I was there.

I hope you have a very happy Christmas, and a deepening sense in your life of the continual and reassuring presence of God.

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

Advent Hope (Advent 2)

"May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope." Romans 15.13 (Readings Is 40.1-11; 2 Peter 3.8-15a; Mark 1.1-8)

As a young boy growing up in the 1950s, Christmas night was always one of the most tantalising and frustrating. It was so near to Christmas day and yet not Christmas Day. The anticipation was amplified by the fact that Christmas Day is my birthday as well.

And although the presents were only going to be a torch and a dinky toy and a Rupert Annual – all labelled ‘for birthday and Christmas’ – the wait was nearly unbearable,

Throughout those dark December Advent days, I felt like the children in CS Lewis’s Narnia, where it was always winter but never Christmas. I would fall asleep on Christmas night, exhausted by hope.

For many children, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day still testify to the truth of the Proverb (13.12)

Hope deferred makes the heart sick,
But desire fulfilled is a tree of life.

Of course since the 1950s we’ve moved on. Increased standards of living and credit cards have taken ‘the waiting out of wanting’ – that infamous Access Card slogan of the 1970s.

And even more recently we have seen how ‘Looting takes the waiting out of wanting’. (Bricolage, 2009)

And all this means that it becomes increasingly difficult to keep a good Advent; to defer Christmas till Christmas Day.

Hope is one of the three theological virtues, as they are called: faith, hope and charity.

And hope is of the essence of our Christian faith.

The Sundays of Advent, are all waiting-in-hope Sundays. We have closed the curtain on the annual drama of the liturgical year, and start again, preparing, waiting, hoping, for the long-expected Jesus.

And it is no accident that Advent coincides with the run-up to the darkest day of the year, the winter solstice - in the bleak mid winter.

We live in hope that the winter will pass; the light will come back; spring will return.

This is at the heart of God’s message to Isaiah: ‘Comfort, O comfort my people.’

Isaiah was to give fresh hope to the Israelites in exile in Babylon, weeping by the waters, losing hope that they would ever return to rebuild Jerusalem.

He’s to comfort them, stir them up. The word originally means ‘to give great strength to’.

So you remember in the Bayeux Tapestry, that 230 foot picture which tells of everything leading up to the Battle of Hastings in 1066 – there’s a section with the caption “Harold comforteth his troops” - the picture shows him jabbing a spear into a soldier’s backside.

He is comforting them, giving them great strength, encouraging them.

Similarly in the collect today ‘with your great might succour us’. Again literally, ‘run up to us’.

This is the ministry of comforting, of reviving hope.

John Watson was a great Scottish preacher of the second half of the 19th century. He was the product of a Highland Jacobite, Roman Catholic mother, and a strict Free Church father. Shortly before he died in 1907 he told friends: ‘If I had to begin my ministry again, I would preach more comforting sermons.’

Why do we lose hope and need so much comforting?

Three reasons strike us from today’s readings.

Firstly, our thinking is often too short-term. So Peter has to remind the church in his letter ‘that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day.’ Jesus had said he would return again – so where was he? Where is he?

It was the American screenwriter Ben Hecht who said: “Trying to determine what is going on in the world by reading newspapers is like trying to tell the time by watching the second-hand of a clock.”

Waiting, the weeks of Advent, seem dull and negative. Why can’t we cut to the chase?

I always find that little comparison about the age of the earth a healthy way of keeping my historical perspective.

If the 6 billion years of planet earth’s existence were put on a 24 hour clock, then humankind appeared on the planet less than a second ago.

Hope requires a long-term vision.

Secondly, people lack hope because of their personality. Some of us are optimists and some pessimists.

You probably know the story of the brother who was a pessimist and his sister who was an optimist.

Just to see what would happen, on Christmas Eve their father loaded the boy’s room with every imaginable toy and game while he filled the sisters room with horse manure.

On Christmas morning he found the boy sitting amid his mountain of new gifts, wailing:
“I'll have to read all these instructions before I can do anything with this stuff. I'll constantly need batteries. My friends will be jealous and my toys will all eventually get broken."

Next door, the father found his daughter dancing for joy in the pile of manure and shouting, "There's got to be a pony in here somewhere!"

Most of the prophets were pessimists, and often depressives. When the Lord gives Isaiah this upbeat message, what does Isaiah want to cry?

“All flesh is grass. The grass withers, the flower fades, when the breath of the Lord blows upon it.”

It’s another reason why we need each other to counterbalance either excessive pessimism, or naïve optimism.

And a third reason why people lack hope is because they don’t know, or won’t see all the facts.

John the Baptist was a prophet and therefore given to pessimism and depression. He recognises Jesus as the Messiah, and yet in the depths of his despair before his own death he sends his disciples to ask Jesus: “Are you the one who was to come, or should we expect someone else?”

We need to understand our world and our personal situation so that we can be realists about life.
The hope that we try to nurture during this waiting period of Advent, is the hope that should comfort us in all the ups and downs of our daily lives.

We know that ‘hope’ does not usually mean getting what you want. The illness doesn’t go away, we do lose our job, the loved one does die. Yet despite what happens, life and hope go on.

Did you hear photographer Giles Dules on Richard Coles’ Saturday Live yesterday? He lost both legs and an arm earlier this year in Afghanistan and said how he felt he was in a better place now than he was a year ago. That’s the product of hope!

And that is why in this Advent season Christ’s first coming as a baby is always set against the backcloth of his second coming in glory. Wars have not yet ceased and we have not beaten our swords into ploughshares. But we live and work in hope, not just of outcomes in this life, but of all that is yet to be in God, now and forever.

There’s a poem by Sheena Pugh which expresses this advent hope of waiting and watching expectantly through all the changing scenes of life. It’s called Sometimes.

Sometimes

Sometimes things don’t go, after all,
from bad to worse. Some years, muscadel
faces down frost; green thrives; the crops don’t fail,
sometimes a man aims high, and all goes well.

A people sometimes will step back from war;
elect an honest man; decide they care
enough, that they can’t leave some stranger poor.
Some men become what they were born for.

Sometimes our best efforts do not go
amiss; sometimes we do as we meant to.
The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow
that seemed hard frozen; may it happen for you.

Sheena Pugh (b.1950)

"May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope." Romans 15.13

Review - Think, John Piper

Think: The Life of the Mind and the Love of God

Author John Piper

IVP, £8.99

978-1-84474-488-6

This is more an insight into the American evangelical psyche than a book about thinking. There have been some notable other books addressing this topic over the past 50 years and indeed Piper helpfully lists some of the evangelical ones in contradistinction to his own. So his book is "less historical than Mark Noll's Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, less punchy than Os Guinness's Fit Bodies Fat Minds, less philosophical than J P Moreland's Love Your God with All Your Mind, less vocational than James Sire's Habits of the Mind and less cultural than Gene Veith's Loving God with All Your Mind."

So what is Piper's book 'more of' than these or say Harry Blamire's classic The Christian Mind? Well, much more of Scripture. And much more of the 18th century theologian Jonathan Edwards with nothing of Hooker, Lewis or Pinker. It was a disappointing read for me, rehearsing old arguments that still seem to preoccupy much of North American evangelicalism. I liked Anna Moyle’s comment in her Amazon review; “Piper has a tendency throughout the book to get caught up in stale agendas and arguments… He thus devotes two entire chapters to the subject of relativism, which could have been better used to write positively about the rise of scholarship within the Christian community in the past few decades.”

There is a chapter on the meaning of ‘thinking’ where Piper explains that his main understanding of it is “working hard with our minds to figure out meaning from texts.” There are chapters on rationality and three chapters combatting anti-intellectualism. And he concludes by commending a humble attitude to Christian knowledge that will result in love of God and Man. It is a triumph of the cataphatic over the apophatic; of statements of faith and two sentence positions on abortion, divorce and homosexuality; with little of the struggle of faith seeking understanding, of acknowledging our limited rational powers before the Divine Mind. There is scant room for mystery or bewilderment and consequently not much engagement with how to work alongside other Christians who also ‘think’ but who come to very different conclusions about so many things.

Piper writes well and although I suppose he does set out with an admittedly limited agenda, this probably made better sermon material than a book. My guess is that the people who will benefit most from reading this book are not reading this review.

Published in the Church Times on 4th November 2011

Be Prepared! (3rd before Advent)

“But we have the mind of Christ.” 1 Cor 2.16

1896 was an interesting year. The first ‘modern’ Olympic Games were held in Athens. Blackpool pleasure beach was opened. Queen Victoria became the longest reigning monarch. The speed limit was raised from 4 to 14 mph.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Edward Benson, died suddenly in church in Wales. Now he, his six children and wife could be the subject of a whole series of sermons.

Here at St Paul’s, the statue of the Virgin and Child was added above the Chapel of St Luke.

And in America, Charles Sheldon, a Christian socialist, wrote a novel called ‘In His Steps’. It was subtitled, ‘What would Jesus Do?’ It was hugely popular and translated into 21 languages by 1935. As recently as 2010, there was a film, WWJD, based on the book.

I remember in the 1990 when the bracelets with WWJD on them began to appear in the theological college where I taught. Some of the more reformed students also wore the answer to the question – WWJD? – it was FROG – fully rely on God.

FROG bracelets, despite the name, never really took off.

And then came all the spoof badges and bracelets.

WWCD – what would Cliff do? That’s Cliff Richard. Or what would Arnie do? - if that was more of your take on life.

And now, in the thousands of headline pictures and comments on the St Paul’s Cathedral débâcle, there’s that poster again – What Would Jesus Do?

Of course, through the century or so that this challenging little aphorism has been used, it has generally been employed by those who already know the answer to what Jesus would do in this or that particular moral situation, and it tends to be what they would do.

Jesus is just dragged in as a way of re-enforcing some particular message and trying to make any of us who disagree with them feel guilty.

We don’t know what Jesus would do, although if the Gospels are anything to go by, he would probably do nothing that anyone was expecting him to do.

This takes us back to our text. How do we know the mind of Christ as St Paul asserts we do?

Well the first thing to notice is that it is ‘we’ have the mind of Christ. Not ‘I’ have the mind of Christ.

It is to do with the corporate accumulation of Judaeo Christian wisdom and experience, extoled in today’s reading from the Book of Wisdom.

We celebrated Richard Hooker in the church calendar last week, the great 16th century Anglican theologian who gave us the three legged stool model of wisdom.

So we approach situations with the Scriptures, the traditions of the church and our God-given gift of reasoning.

This is what St Paul did. It isn’t easy, and it leads to a degree of messiness and latitude, but it helps us to move forward and in some senses, know the mind of Christ.

Let’s turn to the bridesmaids in today’s Gospel (Matthew 25.1-13). I must avoid the classical parson’s rhetoric here, based on the Authorized Version of course: “will you stay awake with the wise virgins, or will you sleep with the foolish virgins?”

Although, unlike the incident of Jesus with his disciples in the garden of Gethsemane, this is not about staying awake. Both sets of women fall asleep.

Rather it is about being prepared when they awoke. (Luke's final phrase, 'keep awake' (25.13) can be translated 'be prepared'.)

Only the five wise bridesmaids had thought to bring extra oil in case the bridegroom was delayed for a long time.

Like most of Jesus’ parables, this one has a slightly puzzling edge to it.

There would be a good argument for the wise women being generous with the poor women who had not thought to bring extra fuel. They could share it out a little, and would it matter if one or two lamps eventually went out?

Although I’m generally against trying to work in too many levels of symbolism or allegory within a parable, it is unavoidable here.

The oil and the light that it produces, represent the accumulated experience and wisdom of life - the light that Jesus tells us we must not hide under a pot.

The women were wise, not because they brought extra oil, but rather, they brought extra oil because they were wise.

And this oil, this wisdom, this accumulated common sense of life, can’t be given to another in a ‘moment’ – poured into their empty vessel.

There are no quick and infallible ways of knowing what Jesus would do, knowing the mind of Christ.

In other words Jesus is saying, there is no way in which the foolish guests could be given insight into life by cadging wisdom from the wise. It is a lifetime’s work.

The early Christians expected the return of Jesus at any time – an Advent theme we will take up in coming weeks – but his return would be delayed till an indeterminate midnight.

So the constant encouragement to the disciples to be vigilant, to stay alert, to be prepared – was indicating a manner of living.

Live to make each day count – carpe diem – grasp the day.

The unexamined life is not worth living, as Plato observed.

So reflect on your life and experiences, in prayer, with other fellow travellers, through reading and conversation.

Then you will have oil and enough to keep your light burning and as you do that, then you will also be passing on your accumulated wisdom to family and friends, little by little, and to all the pilgrims you meet along the way.

Being ready for whatever life brings us, and in the end, being ready for death, is only achieved by a lifetime’s experience and wisdom.

What would Jesus do? We don’t know.

But together, as the Body of Christ, we have the mind of Christ, and we walk in faith, believing that the church is a presence for good in our world, despite its mistakes and weaknesses.

We break this bread to share in the body of Christ.
Though we are many we are one body, because we all share in one bread.

And as we do that, day by day, we can trust that, with Paul, the saints and all our brothers and sisters,

“we have the mind of Christ.” 1 Cor 2.16

Baptism - Easter 5

Like newborn infants, long for the pure, spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow into salvation.”

(1 Peter 2.2)

Well I’m sorry if you had hoped for the end of the world last night at 6pm. Although I did wait to prepare my sermon till after 6pm - you wouldn’t want to waste all that preparation would you.

I sent a brief facebook message of consolation to the American Baptist, Harold Camping, who predicted with such certainty that yesterday would be Doomsday.

It just said, ‘Never mind Harold. It’s not the end of the world.’

Not all American Baptists are like Harold.

My first baptism in an American Southern Baptist church was a revelation. No unseemly dunking and splashing for them, like English Baptists. The candidate held a cloth over their nose and mouth and was very gracefully and slowly eased back under the water as the lights dimmed and the organ played seraphic music.

The pastor of the church explained to me that, as baptism represented being buried with Christ, it was more appropriate to lower the candidate lovingly into the water, the grave, rather than to follow the English Baptists who appeared to throw them into it.

Of course babies were baptised by total immersion for many centuries in the worldwide church and still are in some parts of the church.

The normal procedure in the Book of Common Prayer, given in the rubric says:

(If [the parents] shall certify the priest that the Child may well endure it), he shall dip it in the water discreetly and warily… But if they certify that the child is weak, it shall suffice to pour water upon it…

Well baby Cyr may be strong as an ox, but Fr Alan will be pouring and not dipping.

Nevertheless, there’s no doubt that baptism by immersion is a very dramatic re-enactment of the heart of our Christian faith.

The NT imagery of Baptism is of dying and rising in Christ; of being buried with him in death and reborn to a new life in his resurrection. This is why the language of the baptismal liturgy is so stark and uncompromising: ‘Do you reject? Do you turn? Darkness and light.’

Or in the words of 1 Peter which we read earlier and which were always read at early Christian baptisms:

Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. (I Peter 2.10)

And this is why traditionally we baptize during this Easter season in which we celebrate new life springing from the death of Good Friday; from the cold hard winter; from the empty tomb.

Baptism is also symbolic of the new life we dare to hope for, when, one day, we each pass through the uncertain waters of our own death.

Of course Stephen Hawkins, the physicist, caused a stir last week when he likened the human brain to a computer and added:

There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark.

In today’s Gospel, Thomas wrestles with this. How can anyone know what comes after death? How can we know where you’re going Jesus? (John 14.5)

Now I admire Stephen Hawkins at lots of levels and enjoy his writings. But please, don’t patronise millions of us by saying the afterlife ‘is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark.’

Say ‘I think it is a fairy story…’ by all means, but you don’t know Stephen, any more than Thomas the apostle did. You’re a scientist Stephen. You can’t prove it’s a fairy story any more than I can prove it’s true.

Whatever else we do or don’t believe in Christianity; however many doubts we have - and some of us are plagued by more of them than others –

This one, central, historical fact is more important than any other.

It is the crux of Christianity, and if it is true, it is the crux of human history – God raised Jesus from the dead, in a resurrection body.

The witness of Christian history is that it wasn’t just a ‘nice idea’ or a ‘fairy story’ that the disciples dreamed up because they were ‘afraid of the dark’.

If it was, then I think they would have abandoned it when they were faced with torture and death, as most of them were. Stephen, the first martyr that we read about in Acts earlier, might have decided not to have died horribly for a fairy story. It’s not proof, but it’s part of the evidence.

I’m with my brothers and sisters down through the centuries, who although they were often wracked with doubt, nevertheless chose to believe. If I didn’t believe – well I’d have better things to do with my time.

And as Jesus says to Thomas later in our Gospel, ‘happy are those who have not seen [what you have seen, Thomas] and yet believe” – that’s us!

But of course baptism is only a first step along the road to spiritual maturity.

Peter reminds us in this letter, that just as babies quite naturally crave for their mother’s milk, so we should continue to long for spiritual nourishment throughout our lives.

It’s nourishing our faith, not re-enforcing the fairy tale, which deepens our appreciation of life; and strengthens our hope that the love we enjoy within our family here today is something that endures beyond death.

We have all been given the gift of new life in our baptism. Do we pursue this spiritual life and feed it with these other sacraments of bread and wine? Or do we starve our spiritual life, until it simply withers away to religious sentimentality – a fairy tale?

Baptism is a reminder to all of us of our baptismal vows. It is a reminder that if we wish to live life fully, then we must live by the power of the risen Jesus and in loving, daily dependence upon him.

“Like newborn infants, long for the pure, spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow into salvation.”

(1 Peter 2.2)

The Emmaus Road - Easter 3

“Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road?” Luke 24.32

You know what it’s like. You’re invited out to supper and you gladly agree and put the date of the Friday night in your diary.

But when that Friday comes, you’re exhausted. It’s the end of a long week. You just want to get home, open a bottle of wine and settle down to watch Coronation Street and CSI and wake up half way through newsnight.

The last thing you feel like doing is dressing up and getting back on an overcrowded tube train again.

But, you can’t get to supper without making a journey.

So in today’s Gospel, it’s Easter Sunday afternoon. It’s been a traumatic three days for these two disciples of Christ, Cleopas, and perhaps his wife, Mary. (Cf John 19.25)

But they can’t get home for supper without making a journey.

They are despondent, confused, disappointed and exhausted as they set out on the two-hour walk from Jerusalem to Emmaus, hoping to arrive home before nightfall at about 7.

A stranger joins them on the road – nothing too surprising there. There’s safety in numbers on a dangerous road.

But he must be the only person in Jerusalem who seems to know nothing of the events of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and the rumours which flew about this morning that some women had found the tomb of Jesus empty with angels telling them he was alive. Clearly they were deluded and confused.

So Jesus gives them a Bible study for an hour or two. He explains to them what Scripture says about the Messiah – about himself.

But they still don’t get it.

At last they reach Emmaus and Jesus looks as if he’s travelling on beyond the village. Cleopas and Mary are unwilling to see this stranger go off into the dangerous night and press him to stay for supper and sleep on the couch.

And then there’s the famous revelation; the subject of a thousand paintings, of sculptures and stained glass windows and the Caravaggio on the front of today’s Service Sheet.

When he was at the table with them, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them. Then their eyes were opened and they recognised him, and he disappeared from their sight. (Luke 24.30f)

They met with Jesus in the breaking of bread. (Luke 24.35)

The breaking of the word, his explanation of the Scriptures, had not been enough. They had not understood it until his actions took them back to the scene in the upper room on Thursday a few days ago – his Last Supper. They had been talking with the other disciples about it all since his death on Friday.

For many people, doctrine and dogma and Bible verses are not enough. Indeed, they sometimes obscure the presence of Jesus. He is not recognised in them.

It is in the mystery of the Breaking of Bread that he is both recognised and disappears from our sight: the hiddenness of God; the Cloud of Unknowing; the believing and seeing and hoping; yet doubting and wondering where God is and why he seems so silent.

In our Anglo-Catholic tradition, we know that liturgy and music and symbols take us beyond words.

I am afraid to admit that I knew Pavlova as a tooth-pulling, meringue dessert long before I knew she was a ballerina. She died far too young some 20 years before I was born.

After one of Anna Pavlova’s great performances, one of her admirers, who had been moved to tears, asked her what the dance meant.

Pavlova replied simply, but profoundly: “If I could have said it, I wouldn’t have had to dance it.”

Today’s Gospel is about journeying, and those we meet along the way, and understanding what we have learned when we stop for supper.

CS Lewis has always been a great inspiration to me in the intellectual pursuit of God, faith seeking understanding in Anselm’s memorable phrase.

In the year that Anna Pavlova died, 1931, CS Lewis was on a journey with his brother Warnie, travelling pillion on his motorcycle to Whipsnade zoo.

In a now famous passage of his autobiography, Surprised by Joy, Lewis related his final step into real joy, for his intellectual conversion two years earlier had been a miserable affair and he described himself as “the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England.”

This is how he describes the journey that was to change his life:

I know very well when, but hardly how, the final step was taken. I was driven to Whipsnade one sunny morning. When we set out I did not believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and when we reached the zoo I did.

That journey to Whipsnade Zoo was Lewis's Emmaus Road.

Writer Terry Lindvall, in a fascinating article Joy and Sehnsucht: The Laughter and Longings of C.S. Lewis, explains Lewis's conversion like this:

C.S. Lewis was drawn into the kingdom of God by joy - by a taste of this blessed fruit and divine gift. Joy was the divine carrot that persuaded such a self-proclaimed donkey as Lewis to plod down the road toward Jerusalem. It was the soft, disturbing kiss of God that unmade all of Lewis's world. Joy compelled Lewis toward the resurrection laughter of Easter…

Early Christians were called the people of The Way. Even the fact that you have travelled to church today is a symbol that our meeting and understanding of Christ is in travelling as well as arriving.

For Christ is not only the destination, but he is the Way, the journey and our travelling companion helping us to understand all that has happened to us along the winding path of our life.

And sometimes, when we come to this supper; this breaking of bread; this opening of our eyes; this mass; we look back on the ups and the downs of our life journey so far, and although we did not recognise the presence of Jesus with us at the time perhaps, we can now reflect with those early disciples:

“Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road?” Luke 24.32

Beyond the Law, 4 before Lent

“Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Matt 5.48

Fourth Sunday before Lent: Ecclesiasticus 15.15-end; Psalm 119.1-8; 1 Corinthians 3.1-9; Matthew 5.21-37

At face value, this is one of the most depressing verses in the Bible.

At the end of this section of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says to his followers: “in short, just be perfect and as good as God is!”

Well that’s life sorted then! No more problems with doing anything wrong. Just got to be perfect.

This is right up there with saying to someone in the depths of depression: “come on, cheer up!”

Or to someone whose life is in a mess: “pull yourself together!”

Or to bolshie teenagers: “why don’t you just grow up!”

Here we are, struggling with sin and all the inconsistencies of our complicated lives and Jesus says: “just be as good as God is!”

When most of us feel like the man standing in church staring at the Ten Commandments on the Wall, muttering to himself: “well at least I haven’t coveted my neighbour’s ox…”

The Old Testament lesson from Ecclesiasticus and today’s Psalm and then all these Gospel commands of Jesus, leave us feeling guilty and hopeless.

But then again, chances are, we haven’t really understood what Jesus is saying.

Matthew gives us six antitheses in the middle of his version of our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount: six parallel sets of statements; six pericopae which follow the pattern: “you have heard that it was said… but I say to you…”

Jesus is not ignoring the law and the commandments of the Old Testament, but he is moving us on beyond them, to the law of love, which underlies them.

And he uses hyperbole – a way of exaggerating, often in a figure of speech, which creates strong feelings and reactions. Most of us felt uncomfortable as we were listening to the Gospel I read earlier.

Let me quickly run through the six antitheses without lingering too long on any of them.

The first one identifies the root of murder as anger (vv21-26). So try not to belittle people by abusive language, says Jesus. And when you come to the altar where you receive the tokens of Christ’s love and forgiveness, remember that you are to try and forgive those who trespass against you!

Notice all the hyperbolic language. It’s not literal. It’s quite impractical. This is not about avoiding certain sorts of name-calling; and of course it would be madness to leave your offering – a pigeon, or young goat - at the altar, while you went off to try and patch things up with someone you’ve fallen out with; and it’s certainly not about who you should or shouldn’t take to court.

It’s about following the example of the love of Jesus. Trying to treat others as you would like to be treated – even your enemies as Jesus will say in the sixth antithesis. (vv 43-48)

I’m sure I told you about my friend Ed, who was a rugby blue who was converted in the university mission. A few days later we were walking to a Bible study when one of his rugby friends came up and said playfully: ‘so you’re a Christian now?’ Ed said ‘yes’ and his friend then giggled and slapped him round the face.

Without hesitating, Ed slapped him back so hard that he knocked him down. As he was staggering up Ed said: ‘of course I’m not a very good Christian.’

All human love is less than perfect, less than God’s perfect love. But that’s the gold standard, which is constantly there, not to condemn us, but to encourage us to do better.

The second antithesis is about adultery and lust. The followers of Jesus are not to treat other people as objects – especially women as chattels - to gratify their own sexual appetites.

Again this is obviously not about gouging your eyes out or never having a sexual thought about anyone else.

It is the desire to be treated with respect, whether a man or a woman, and within our own culture, whether straight or gay. It was culturally revolutionary in the first century and still is in many parts of the world today.

Love, sex and relationships are bound up in a complex way, and whatever the cultural patterns, just look at the old Testament, we are to strive for integrity and mutual respect.

The third antithesis is about divorce and the purpose of marriage (v 31f.) It was, in the first century, about the rights of women in particular, and about the responsibilities and commitments of marriage in general.

It is not a law that Jesus is laying down about divorce; and certainly not an edict that all divorced people who remarry are living in adultery. Jesus is using hyperbole to drive home the point in a chauvinistic society.

It may be Jesus’ first word on divorce, but it is not his last and Matthew records a more considered discussion in chapter 19. Divorce is never an ideal way forward, but it is sometimes the best way forward.

The fourth antithesis is about oaths and telling the truth.

It’s not about whether we should or shouldn’t take an oath of obedience to a bishop or swear an oath in court. Rather, because we are to treat one another with love and respect, we must keep our word and always try to be truthful, or if we can’t, be silent.

The fifth and the sixth antitheses are about non-violent resistance (vv.38-42), the Lex Talionis, ‘an eye for an eye’ and turning the other cheek; and following on from that, about loving our enemies and not just our friends (vv.43-47).

And Jesus sums all this up by saying: “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

I remember when I first learned to play squash. I was taught by a fellow student who went on to be a remarkable national player.

He was very kind to me and always held back so that I genuinely won a few points in every game. As I got better at the game, I began to see just how good he was.

With my lazy eye and my extra stone, I knew I would never be as good as him, but playing against him was very enjoyable and always encouraged me to do better.

When Jesus says: “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect”, he is using hyberbole again, as he has done all through the preceding six antitheses. Our heavenly Father is our kind and encouraging ‘coach’ if you like.

Of course he is always ahead of us; constantly showing us the better way of love; reminding us of the way we are to live together - in the words of Duruflé’s communion motet which we shall hear later on: ‘where charity and love are, God is there.’

So take heart from the words of Jesus and don’t turn them into another law with which to beat yourself up.

They are words which should be an inspiration as well as an aspiration - he’s always there to help us, as he says, with a smile:

“Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Matt 5.48