Easter 7 at St John's College Cambridge

Evensong series: "Reflections on the resurrection - Known in the breaking of bread."

Readings: Genesis 32:22-31; Luke 24 vv. 13-35

You can listen to this sermon here.

“Then their eyes were opened and they recognised him; and he vanished from their sight.” Luke 24.31

It was GK Chesterton who declared in a particularly xenophobic moment: “There is nothing like travel for narrowing the mind!”

Well although I know what he means, I got back yesterday from travelling round the world for a month, meeting exotic new people and preaching at them. It’s what retired Vicars do.

Needless to say it was enriching in so many ways, with new friendships, new ways of exploring faith, and unforgettable moments:

Celebrating mass in the cool early morning by the pool in a villa in Bali where we met to celebrate a fellow priest’s 50th birthday;

Stealing the blow-up unicorn from the villa next door at 2 in the morning;

The Christian commune on a farm outside of Melbourne Australia;

Sharing in the Annual Spam Festival in Honolulu!

Travelling can be life changing.

So in the Gospel reading, it’s Easter Sunday afternoon.

It’s been a traumatic three days for these two disciples of Christ, Cleopas and perhaps his wife Mary or his son Simeon. We don’t know. (Cf John 19.25)

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 dangerous road - there’s safety in numbers – nothing too surprising there – except that like Mary in the Garden earlier that day, they don’t recognise Jesus.

And he seems to be the only person in Jerusalem who knows 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. 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 wonderful Caravaggio in the National Gallery.

“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 vanished from their sight.” (Luke 24.30f)

They met with the risen Jesus at the end of journey, 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 that Thursday three days ago – his Last Supper. It had been the only topic of conversation for them and all the other followers since his death on Friday.

For many people, doctrine and dogma and rationality 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, the Eucharist, the mass, 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.

No wonder Christ said “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed!” (John 20.29)

In many Christian traditions, we know that liturgy and music, art and symbols can take us beyond words to an encounter with the risen Christ, unrecognised and then recognised.

In the mysterious story of Jacob travelling, with his family, staying behind on his own by the brook, wrestling with a stranger, or with the incarnate God, with the eternal Christ – Jacob begins to recognise who this clinging stranger is, and now he’s recognised him he won’t let go – but Christ wounds him with a wound of love, changes his life, Jacob becomes Israel – and doesn’t that resonate down through the centuries and the last 70 years – and then, the stranger disappears. 

The Emmaus story is about journeying, and those we meet along the way, and understanding what we have learned when we stop to break bread together. (Companions – com panis – those with whom we break bread.) Pilgrimage has always been a part of Christian formation and a part of the Christian narrative, as Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales bear witness.

In 1931, CS Lewis was on a journey with his brother Warnie, travelling pillion on his motorcycle to Whipsnade zoo.

In 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.” It was all words and reason that had brought him to conversion.

This is how he describes that journey that was to change his life and therefore the lives of many others: "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, his breaking of bread. Of course he would still have many periods of darkness and doubt through the rest of his life.

Early Christians were called the people of The Way.

Christ is not only the destination, he is the Way: he is the journey, and our unknown travelling companion, helping us to piece together all that happens to us as our life unfolds.

And sometimes, when we come to the eucharist, the breaking of bread; or evensong; or fall in love; or hold a new-born child; or go to the zoo on a motorbike; or memorably steal a unicorn…

…then this opening of our eyes helps us to 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 more deeply on being surprised by joy, by the eternal presence of the risen Christ; even if, as is the way of life and faith, the moment soon passes.

“Then their eyes were opened and they recognised him; and he vanished from their sight.” Luke 24.31

St Cecilia's Day, St Paul's Cathedral

“What can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal.”

2 Cor 4.18

We don’t know a lot about St Cecilia. She was probably martyred in the second or third century. It was said that ‘she sang’ as she was dying a cruel death and so she became the patron saint of music.

Much poetry and music has been composed in her honour, as was the anthem by Marenzio which the choir sang before the prayers: ‘While playing the organ, the virgin Cecilia sang in her heart’.

Benjamin Britten was born on St Cecilia’s day 99 years ago and composed his Hymn to St Cecilia with words by WH Auden.

Many of you will remember the former Dean of Westminster, Michael Mayne, who in his book, Learning to Dance, (DLT, 2001) suggests three abilities of the artist or musician:

• they can show us what the world discloses when we learn to give it our full attention
•  they can remind us of the hidden power of the transcendent
•  and they can enable us, in WH Auden’s phrase, ‘to break bread with the dead’.

In other words, artists and musicians use: the natural world; the spiritual realm; and our collective memory - to give us a deeper understanding and a different perspective on the here and now.

How often I’ve come here to Evensong with many things weighing on my mind, and after sitting quietly before God, listening to Scripture and bathed in the music of the centuries, I regain my spiritual balance and can again take the long view of life, the universe and everything.

God and music are very much tied up together in my own life and vocation, which is probably true for many Christians, and indeed people of many faiths.

So St Cecilia became a catalyst for reflecting on how the gift of music nurtures our faith and helps to bring integrity and wholeness to our lives.

Let’s go back to those three suggestions of Michael Mayne and apply them to the role of music in Christian life.

Music can show us what the world discloses when we learn to give it our full attention.

Much poetry and music contemplates the wonders of creation – think of Haydn “the heavens are telling the glory of God”.

And this contemplation of nature and the beauty of human ingenuity – such as music and poetry -  can point to their divine Initiator if we will listen to our hearts.

CS Lewis died on St Cecilia’s Day 49 years ago, the same day the President Kennedy was assassinated.

He takes up this point and echoes the warning of St Paul not to worship the creature rather than the creator:

“The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust in them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing... They are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.” (The Weight of Glory, SPCK, 1954, p8)

Music can also “remind us of the hidden power of the transcendent” – to use Michael Mayne’s second phrase.

Music has a remarkable ability to transport us beyond ourselves, whether it is Faure’s Requiem or dancing to industrial techno. It gives us glimpses of what could be, hints of the divine, immortal longings.

Soon it will be advent and Christmas and the song of the Church will be the coming of Jesus Christ.

It will wonder that the fabric of the temporal world has been ripped apart by the birth of a baby. The virgin conceives; the supernatural invades the natural; the dawn from on high breaks among us and John preaches that Jesus will baptise, not with natural water, but with the transcendent fire of the Spirit.

Finally, in Michael Mayne’s third point, music allows us to ‘break bread with the dead’ as Auden puts it.

In the Roman Catholic canon of the mass, there is Saint Cecilia, mentioned by name for over a thousand years and still today.

I can never forget the first time I presided at a Solemn Requiem for a dear friend: the coffin in the middle of the church, the unbleached candles, and the Duruflé Requiem with choir and orchestra. The veil between heaven and earth was very thin.

Here, at this Table, we break bread with the dead day by day: with the innumerable company of the saints all gathered around the altar. We take the bread and the wine and remember Jesus, the centre of all history and the focal point of the human race.

And not only the poetry of the liturgy, but the power of the music draws us deeper into the unseen world of the love of God shown to us in our Lord Jesus Christ.

“What can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal.” 2 Cor 4.18

Bread from Heaven (Trinity 10)

 “Sir, give us this bread always.” (John 6.34)

When I first went as a curate to St Mary’s Bourne St, it was a church filled with both liturgical exotica and elephant traps for the unwary priest.

So I learned very early on to be careful with my intake of alcohol on a Sunday. There were drinks after church, then discussion of the sermon in the Fox and Hounds, then a lengthy lunch in the Poule au Pot where the house wine comes in magnums.

By Solemn Evensong and Benediction, you were often very grateful for a deacon and subdeacon on each elbow to hold you up. And the rythms of the Latin became so familiar that they carried you through the elaborate liturgy, and became etched in your mind.

V. Panem de caelo praestitisti eis.

R. Omne delectamentum in se habentem.

Which being interpreted leads us into the subject of Jesus’ discourse in the Gospel today.

V. Thou hast given us bread from Heaven.

R. Filled with all sweetness and delight.

The Feeding of the 5,000 is the story which we read last week and is the essential background of today’s Gospel.

It is set in the relative wilderness to the east of the sea of Galilee, the Golan Heights, and is the only story, apart from our Lord’s Passion, that is recounted in all four Gospels.

The disciples had just returned from a successful preaching tour - thousands won to the Catholic faith - and were in need of a rest. So Jesus takes them away to a quiet place.

But as usual, the grapevine soon spreads the news to the local populace and this crowd of 5,000 men, not to mention women and children, gather expectantly.

It is late in the day. And then the young boy’s picnic lunch (a typical eye-witness account mentioned only in John’s Gospel) – the 5 loaves and 2 small fishes become the stuff of history.

The thoughtful Mother who wrapped them up and thrust them into her son’s hands, no doubt with the instruction that he was to wear a vest as it got chilly on the Golan Heights, could never have imagined that 2000 years later billions of people would be spiritually fed by her simple act of motherly love.

But why did Jesus perform this miracle? The people were not about to die. They would make it to their homes.

The Jesus of the four Gospels does not do tricks to try and persuade the crowd that he is the Messiah.

Indeed, at the end of the story when the crowd want to hail him as the new Prophet, he flees into hiding.

In most miracles, Jesus responds to need, and occasionally, as in the water into wine, this story and the following sign of ‘walking on the water’, he shows his mastery over nature and also provides teaching through such an ‘enacted parable’.

In other words, the primary function of the miracle is to illustrate a concept he is trying to teach, usually to his immediate disciples.

And so it is here, that our Lord is making a simple point and, in today’s Gospel reading, another much more complex point.

The simple point may be expressed in this way: Jesus is not nearly as discouraged as we are, by the little we have to offer. In fact, one of the prerequisites of true worship is the recognition of our inadequacy.

“What can I bring him, poor as I am.”

For Philip it was hopeless - ‘how can we feed them?’ For Andrew it was a little better - he found the little that there was - and this was enough for the Lord.

We are to bring what we have in the recognition that only the Lord can multiply it to meet the needs that are there.

So in our worship: we bring our music, our liturgy, our preaching, our vestments, our art and culture; with the recognition that it is inadequate, but it is the best we can offer. Only Christ can transform it to worship in Spirit and in Truth which is acceptable to the Father and which truly prepares us for heaven.

And in our daily lives, our prayer must always be that God will take what we offer, the little we are able to do, and by his power give our acts of service significance and influence far beyond their meagreness.

But John’s Gospel also points to deeper truths in his account of this incident.

There is a little phrase back in v.4: “and the Passover was nigh”.

The Passover. Here is John’s axis of interpretation.

There is a clear movement from miracle to theological discourse, from Moses to Jesus, from bread to flesh.

Our Lord is preparing to show them that hard teaching that will make many leave him: he is the Bread come down from heaven; Panem de caelo praestitisti eis; and this bread is filled with all sweetness and delight.

Soon the Passover lamb must be slain and eaten, as a reminder that the Angel of death ‘passed over’ the Israelites as they were being released from slavery in Egypt.

And soon the Lamb of God must be slain and give his flesh and blood for the salvation of the world.

This story is not just about feeding hungry people. It is about a Saviour who alone can satisfy the spiritual hunger that is everywhere evident in the world.

And there is yet deeper truth here. For even when we have received, as we will in a moment, the Bread of Life, we are still not satisfied and as part of our human condition we will long for more.

Listen to CS Lewis:

“All joy (as distinct from mere pleasure, still more amusement) emphasizes our pilgrim status, always reminds, beckons, awakens desires. Our best havings are wantings.” (Letter to Dom Bede Griffiths, 5 November 1954.)

Our best havings are wantings.

When we have had a satisfying meal, when we linger over the port, is it not then that we most clearly realise that there is more to life than good food and drink?

And when we have truly enjoyed a spiritual meal at mass in the bread and wine, or in some private moment of spiritual revelation, do we not then most clearly realise that we are spiritual pilgrims who have as yet only just set off along the path together.

Remember the meaning of the word ‘companions’ - com (with) panis (bread) – it is those with whom we eat bread.

The 5000 were made companions by the presence of Jesus, who gave them the bread.

And so too, week by week and day by day, we are made companions by the presence of Jesus who gives us the transforming bread from heaven, filled with all sweetness and delight, which always beckons us on to know God more deeply.

So today, in the presence of the risen Christ, we understand more now than those 5000 then, when we pray to Jesus with them:

“Sir, give us this bread always.” (John 6.34)

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

Maunday Thursay

Maundy Thursday - The Last Supper, the Washing of Feet and the Stripping of the Altars.

“A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another as I have loved you.” John 13.34

As a boy I always thought that Maundy Thursday was something to do with mourning – I knew it was solemn and sad.

But of course it comes from the middle English version of the Latin word ‘mandatum’ – mandate or commandment.

It is in today’s antiphon from Jesus’ words in our text John 13.34 "Mandatum novum do vobis ut diligatis invicem sicut dilexi vos" - "A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another; as I have loved you".

There are a number of different elements in the observance of the day. Lent ended yesterday, and so at the Chrism mass this morning we sang the Gloria for the first time since Ash Wednesday. We will sing it again this evening with the ringing of bells. And then there are no more glorias or bells as we enter the Triduum, the three days from sunset this evening.

Today we commemorate the institution of the Lord’s supper, the Eucharist, the Mass – although we celebrate it more specifically on the first Thursday in Ordinary time – after Trinity Sunday.

This morning in the Cathedral, because priestly ministry is so bound up with the Lord’s supper, deacons, priests and bishops renewed their ordination vows. It is a time for the renewal of priesthood.

Then again, because priests and bishops use holy oils at Baptism, confirmation and for anointing the sick and dying; the new oils are presented by deacons and blessed by the bishop in the Cathedral and the distributed to all the priests.

After the Last Supper with his disciples, Jesus went to the Garden of Gethsemane, and agonised in prayer for us. So we build a garden, an altar of repose, and take the blessed sacrament, the symbol of our Lord’s presence with us, and leave Jesus resting among the lilies and candles.

We keep watch with him. “Could ye not watch with me one brief hour’.

And then as Jesus was stripped and humiliated by the soldiers, we strip the altars and the chancel of all coverings and Christian symbols. The choir sing penitential psalms. There are no more blessings from priests, no more holy water, no more sacred fire or altar candles.

Nothing awaiting us now but the Cross and the Death of Death in the Death of Christ

And in the midst of all this movement, priests follow the example of Christ and wash the feet of the disciples of Christ.

For everything else is as a clanging cymbal, empty ritual, if there is no love, no serving the Common Good.

So on this night, here is the very tangible, and down-to-earth symbol of God’s saving grace: the washing of feet, the enactment of the Gospel truth that we are saved to serve.

Jesus sets the pattern for us – the life we receive from God, the Body and Blood of Christ, are to sustain us in service of one another and of the world around us.

This was the great Anglo-Catholic mission of the 19th century – to exalt the sacrament of the mass, in order to serve the needy and the outcasts of society. That was why St Paul’s founded St Mary’s and St Barnabas. That was why the slum priests spent their lives ministering to the poor and disadvantaged.

At this Last Supper we rejoice in a God who gives us his flesh to eat and who washes our feet as an example of the servant love we are to proclaim and demonstrate to the world.

“A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another as I have loved you.” John 13.34

The Wedding Banquet - Justification

The Wedding Banquet. Matthew 22.1-14

“I will greatly rejoice in the Lord… for he has clothed me in the garments of salvation.” Isaiah 61.10

As a young working class lad, I remember being very nervous in my first few terms at Cambridge, every time an invitation appeared in my pigeonhole to some dinner or lunch or blessing of the university beehives... What was I to wear?

Sometimes the invitation would bear the enigmatic phrase: “Doctors will wear Scarlet.” But I wasn’t a doctor. That didn’t help.

Gradually I learnt the dress codes and visited the charity shops where I picked up tail coats and dinner jackets and patent leather shoes – all of which I still have in my wardrobe. They have survived the last 40 years considerably better than my body has.

Many of us have dreams about being inappropriately dressed on posh occasions. Or worse still, there is the nightmare that we are completely naked. Of course Mr Freud had plenty to say about that.

And this surprisingly common feature of human dreams around the world, is what gives something of an edge to today’s parable of Jesus – and to the plight of the poor man being bound in the picture by Merian the Elder which adorns the front of our service sheet.

This parable, sometimes called the Great Banquet or the Wedding Feast, has a twist at the end which is not in Luke’s version of the same parable. (Lk 14.16-24)

Let’s do a little Bible study on the Gospel this morning.

The context of the story is Jesus’ teaching that many of the Jewish leaders had rejected the message of the Gospel that he was proclaiming. “He came unto his own and his own received him not” as John put it. (John 1.11)

Matthew also used a perfectly legitimate Jewish teaching method of interpretation – called pesher – which embellished the original parable in the light of what had happened since Jesus delivered it.

So the slaves being beaten and killed is a description of what happened to many in the Christian church in the four decades after Christ – especially the early missionaries.

Matthew adds too that the King was furious and sent troops to destroy the City. Certainly Christians after the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple in 70AD could not see this as anything other than God’s judgment on a nation that had rejected the Messiah.

So Jesus came to the Jews and they did not want him, and the Gospel was then thrown open to the whole world. The servants were to bring in good and bad, Matthew tells us – everyone was welcome to the Banquet in honour of the King’s Son.

But what about this man without a wedding robe?

The king immediately spots him: ‘Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding robe?’ And he was speechless. Then the king said to the attendants, ‘Bind him hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. For many are called, but few are chosen.’ (Matt 22.12-14)

Now that’s worse treatment than you get if you turn up at the Athenaeum wearing trainers!

But why does Matthew add these curious verses?

Well think for a moment about how the other guests managed to get wedding robes. They were dragged in off the streets.

I can remember my embarrassment at turning up to a friend’s club for dinner, one summer evening, without jacket or tie. It was like the scary dream.

But very politely I was ushered into some cubby-hole where there was a selection of ill-fitting jackets and hideous ties – they certainly didn’t want to encourage you to do it again! But they clothed you in an acceptable way for dinner, even if you felt the style police were about to arrest you at every mouthful.

The simple part of this parable, in both Luke’s and Matthew’s version, is that we are invited to the Gospel party and should accept the invitation.

The more complex part, has to be teased out, and contains a doctrine explained most fully in the subsequent writings of St Paul – the doctrine of justification.

The King in the parable is hugely generous.

He provides his Son - whose wedding feast it is.

He provides the food and the wine.

But what Matthew adds in his version, is that the King provides also the fine wedding robes.

“In this way, nobody need be ashamed of their rags, and nobody can be proud of their party frocks; there is room neither for embarrassment nor for pride in the feast of the kingdom – at this Table. Both attitudes ruin the enjoyment.” (pace Michael Green)

In the words of one of Charles Wesley’s great hymns: “Clothed in righteousness divine, bold I approach the eternal throne.”

Or as our text from the prophet Isaiah has it: “I will greatly rejoice in the Lord… for he has clothed me in the garments of salvation.”

The biblical doctrine of Justification is simply this: that when we feel all unworthy of stepping into the presence of God; when we feel, again in the words of the prophet Isaiah, that “all our righteousness is as filthy rags” (Isaiah 64.6); when we feel stripped and naked before the loving gaze of the Judge of all the earth – then God clothes us in the righteousness of Christ; he looks on us with unreserved acceptance, because we are in Christ; in the Beloved Son in whose honour the wedding banquet is spread.

The offending guest was offered wedding robes like all the rest. But he chose to wear his own robes – he was good enough for God and didn’t need any charity from the King; any grace and forgiveness from God. He was arrogant and proud in his heart.

So this parable is not a threat or a warning, that if we don’t make the grade we will get bound and cast into hell.

Rather it is a loving invitation, that whether good or bad, as long as we come pleading only the merits of Christ our Saviour, clothed in his righteousness, then we are welcome to enjoy the banquet.

Never believe the self-deception that you are unworthy to receive the bread and the wine. Of course you are unworthy. We all are!

As I shall say in a few minutes as I invite you to receive the Bread and Wine of the kingdom: “Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Happy are those who are called to his supper.”

And we will all respond, priests and people: “ Lord, I am not worthy that thou shouldest come under my roof, but speak the word only and my soul shall be healed.”

The Banquet and the wedding robes are gifts, to be received joyfully.

As the choir will sing as we eat and drink:

O sacred banquet, wherein Christ is received;
the memorial of his passion is renewed;
the soul is filled with grace;
and a pledge of future glory is given to us.
Alleluia!

[O sacrum convivium a 6
Tomás Luis de Victoria (1548-1611)

O sacrum convivium, in quo Christus sumitur;
recolitur memoria passionis ejus;
mens impletur gratia;
et futurae gloriae nobis pignus datur.
Alleluia!

Words: Antiphon to the Magnificat, Second Vespers, Corpus Christi]

Corpus Christi

Corpus Christi
Preached at St Paul's Cathedral on the Feast

“Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.” John 6.53

Think of all the things that have changed in our world since Jesus spoke those words nearly two thousand years ago.

Some have been shallow changes – hair styles, shoes, music, MacDonalds. They have not greatly affected the world we live in.

Other changes have been deep and far reaching – paradigm shifts – the way we understand the universe, the nature of time, our ability to manipulate the human body and the human mind, the rise of science and technology.

These changes continue to shape our world for better or for worse.

And all these changes mirror what goes on in our own lives.

There are superficial changes over the years: hair styles (if you have any hair left to style) and clothes, putting on a bit of weight, needing glasses to read, voting for Boris instead of Ken.

And then there are the deep changes: learning to accept ourselves for who we are; coming to faith or losing our faith; loving someone so much that it changes the way we live; personal suffering and illness; or the changes wrought by years of loneliness.

Our journey through life is marked constantly by these changes: both the superficial ones, and sometimes without realising it, the deep changes.

And what is true of ourselves, is true of this meal, of this bread and wine, of the Eucharist, the Mass, the Holy Communion.

Since Jesus first took Bread and Wine nearly two thousand years ago, the form of this service has undergone many superficial changes: whether in Aramaic or Latin or English; whether in soaring cathedrals with sublime music or in homes with a handful of believers simply sharing the bread and wine.

But beyond the form of this service, and all the outward changes we can trace back through Christian history, there is the deep change which this bread and wine effects in our lives.

The church has struggled over the years to try and give theological explanations of what is going on.

Transubstantiation was the doctrine developed most fully by St Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century. He had been educated in Aristotelian metaphysics, and so he taught that although the elements still appeared to be Bread and Wine (the ‘accidents’ as Aristotle would have called it) they were, in a deeper reality, the Body and Blood of our Lord (the ‘substance’ in Aristotle’s terms.)

Martin Luther re-interpreted this in the 16th century and used the word Consubstantiation: the Body & Blood of our Lord coexist in the Bread & Wine. But there is no transformation of the elements.

At the same time, Ulrich Zwingli was the People’s Preacher in Zurich. He stressed the purely symbolic value of the bread and wine. In contrast to the Anglican ‘harmonisation’ described as the Real Presence, Zwinglianism, or Memorialism as it became known, was caricatured as the Real Absence.

Of course you will still find all these views, and others, represented in the Christian church today.

ARCIC (which is the Anglican Roman Catholic International Commission) tried to avoid all troublesome descriptions of process in their report of 1971. They simply referred to ‘the mysterious and radical change’ which takes place at the consecration of the bread and wine.

And this deep or radical change is not just about the physical bread and wine, but about how it deeply changes us.

This was why Jesus used such stark language: “Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.”

He had already, in the earlier verses of this chapter, linked this ‘life’ with ‘believing’: “ Very truly, I tell you, whoever believes has eternal life”. (John 6.47)

John is stressing that Christian mystery is not like pagan mystery, nor is it like the magic of the many cults around in the first century. There is no hocus pocus, no hoax – both phrases derived from the words of the Latin Mass, hoc est corpus meum - this is my body.

The miracle of this meal, is not in what changes happen to the bread and the wine when the priest says the words of consecration.

No the miracle of this meal, is what changes happen to us as we eat and drink in obedience to Christ’s command.

Jesus said that he came so that we might have life and have it more abundantly.

This meal, this Eucharist is a constant reminder of all that Jesus did so that we can enjoy fullness of life.

And more than that, in a way that we cannot fully understand, we are drawn into the life of God as we take the very life of Jesus into ourselves.

As we shall sing in the recessional hymn: “Faith alone the true heart waketh to behold the mystery.” (Of the glorious body telling.)

This is a deep change. This is being born again. This change, changes the way we deal with all other changes of our life.

We may have very little faith. We may not always believe what we think we should believe. We may think ourselves to be poor examples of Christianity. All the more reason why we should take the bread and wine, trusting in the love God, daring to believe the words of Jesus.

We come to this table not because we must, but because we may.
Not because we are strong, but because we are weak.
Not because we have any claim on God’s blessing, but because we stand in constant need of God’s mercy.

In this Feast, we eat the Bread from heaven, until one day we will drink with Christ and all the saints in Glory.

Thanks be to God for this Most Blessed Sacrament.

Eucharist & Life

Eucharist and Life

‘Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.’ John 6.53

It’s a very stark statement of our Lord - “no life in you”. It has led the church into great debates which have largely missed the point of the words. But then the church is good at great debates that largely miss the point...

This verse became a proof text for receiving the Eucharist in 2 kinds: bread and wine. It encouraged the practice of feeding the sacraments to babies, lest they die with no life in them.

But what is the life that Jesus speaks of here and how do we receive it?

These verses 51- 58 from John 6, form a later, cogitated part of John’s teaching, already beginning to reflect early church eucharistic practice.

It is always difficult in John’s discourses to tell where the words of Jesus end, and where the pondered theology of John begins. And often the words of Jesus are selected from different times in his ministry and then run together thematically.

In fact the earlier verses from 35 - 50 form the backbone of our Lord’s teaching, and so help us to understand our text in its context. Raymond Brown, the great Roman Catholic commentator on John puts it this way:

“The juxtaposition of the two forms of the discourse teaches that the gift of life comes through a believing reception of the sacrament” (cf.47 - “he who believes has eternal life.”) (Raymond Brown p.292)

John is stressing that Christian mystery is not pagan mystery, nor is it like the magic of the Jewish gnostic cults. There is no hocus pocus, no hoax (which despite most lexicographers who think the phrase derives from the magician’s nonsense bit of dog-Latin hax pax max Deus adimax, I and others think comes from the words of the Latin Mass, hoc est corpus meum - hocus pocus).

The church has spent much of the last 500 years arguing over what actually happens in the Eucharist.

Transubstantiation was the doctrine developed most fully by St Thomas Aquinas in the 13thC: the conversion of the Bread & Wine into the Body & Blood of our Lord, only the ‘accidents’ (appearances of bread & wine) remaining. This fitted well into the Aristotelian metaphysics that so greatly influenced Aquinas.

Consubstantiation was Luther’s re-interpretation in the 16thC of the mediaeval doctrine: the Body & Blood of our Lord coexist in the Bread & Wine. But there was no transformation.

Memorialism, or Zwinglianism - Zwingli was the People’s Preacher in Zurich in the early 16thC - stressed the purely symbolic value of the elements. In contrast to the Anglican ‘harmonisation’ described as the Real Presence, Zwinglianism was caricatured as the Real Absence.

The ARCIC (Anglican Roman Catholic International Commission) report of 1971 tried to avoid all troublesome descriptions of process and simply referred to ‘the mysterious and radical change’ which takes place at the consecration.

One of my friends - Nick - spends all his time on the internet. Most of his waking hours are spent in Virtual Reality; in Cyberspace - there is no ‘there’ there.

Sometimes theologians live too long in doctrinal cyberspace. To take Kant’s words out of context: ‘God is not an it to be discussed, but a Thou to be met.’ The Blessed Sacrament is not a doctrine simply to be analysed, it is a meal in which we encounter the living God.

This very earthy, everyday stuff of bread and wine, is to remind us that reality, that eternal life, that starts from this moment and goes on into the glory beyond death, is ours through Christ. The everyday act of eating, is in this sacrament, the assurance that we share in the eternal life of the Son of God, who loved us and gave himself for us.

It was Archbishop Temple who remarked that Christianity is the most materialistic of all religions. We worship a God who became flesh – like us. And the central act of our worship is in the very human act of eating and drinking these everyday elements of bread and wine.

It is such a real and earthy re-assurance that despite all our doubts and fears and feelings of unworthiness, we are forgiven and deeply loved by God.

And it points ahead as well, to a love that is so strong that it continues after death and holds us in life for all eternity.

In this Feast, we eat the Bread from heaven so that one day we will drink with all the saints in glory.

‘Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day’. John 6.53

Maundy Thursday 2006

Maundy Thursday

“Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you.” John 6.53

It’s a very stark statement of our Lord - “no life in you”. It has led the church into great debates which have largely missed the point of the words. But then the church is good at great debates that largely miss the point...

This verse became a proof text for receiving the Eucharist in 2 kinds: bread and wine. It encouraged the practice of feeding the sacraments to babies, lest they die with no life in them.

But what is the life that Jesus speaks of here and how do we receive it?

Corpus Christi is the day we give thanks for the blessings of the mass. It should logically be today on Maundy Thursday, but the Passion of our Lord overshadows this day. So in the 13thC the church took the first ‘free’ Thursday after Eastertide - the Thursday after Trinity Sunday - as the Feast Day.

This text from John 6, forms a later, cogitated part of John’s teaching, already beginning to reflect early church Eucharistic practice.

It is always difficult in John’s discourses to tell where the words of Jesus end, and where the pondered theology of John begins.

And often the words of Jesus are selected from different times in his ministry and then run together thematically.

In fact the earlier verses from 35 - 50 form the backbone of our Lord’s teaching, and so help us to understand our text in its context.

Raymond Brown, the great Roman Catholic commentator on John puts it this way:

“The juxtaposition of the two forms of the discourse teaches that the gift of life comes through a believing reception of the sacrament” (cf.47 - “he who believes has eternal life.”) (Raymond Brown p.292)

John is stressing that Christian mystery is not pagan mystery, nor is it like the magic of the Jewish gnostic cults. There is no hocus pocus, no hoax (which despite most lexicographers who think the phrase derives from the magician’s nonsense bit of dog-Latin hax pax max Deus adimax, I and others think comes from the words of the Latin Mass, hoc est corpus meum - hocus pocus).

The church has spent much of the last 500 years arguing over what actually happens in the Eucharist.

Transubstantiation was the doctrine developed most fully by St Thomas Aquinas in the 13thC: the conversion of the Bread & Wine into the Body & Blood of our Lord, only the ‘accidents’ (appearances of bread & wine) remaining. This fitted well into the Aristotelian metaphysics that so greatly influenced Aquinas.

Consubstantiation was Luther’s re-interpretation in the 16thC of the mediaeval doctrine: the Body & Blood of our Lord coexist in the Bread & Wine. But there was no transformation.

Memorialism, or Zwinglianism - Zwingli was the People’s Preacher in Zurich in the early 16thC - stressed the purely symbolic value of the elements. In contrast to the Anglican ‘harmonisation’ described as the Real Presence, Zwinglianism was caricatured as the Real Absence.

The ARCIC (Anglican Roman Catholic International Commission) report of 1971 tried to avoid all troublesome descriptions of process and simply referred to ‘the mysterious and radical change’ which takes place at the consecration.

One of my friends - Nick - spends all his time on the internet. Most of his waking hours are spent in Virtual Reality; in Cyberspace - there is no ‘there’ there.

Sometimes theologians live too long in doctrinal cyberspace. To take Kant’s words out of context: ‘God is not an it to be discussed, but a Thou to be met.’

The Blessed Sacrament is not a doctrine to be analysed, it is a meal in which we encounter the living God.

This very earthy, everyday stuff of bread and wine, is to remind us that reality, that eternal life, that starts from this moment and goes on into the glory beyond death, is ours through Christ. The everyday act of eating, is in this sacrament, the assurance that we share in the eternal life of the Son of God, who loved us and gave himself for us.

And on this night, there is an even more tangible, more down-to-earth symbol of God’s saving grace: the washing of feet. The enactment of the Gospel truth that we are saved to serve. Jesus sets the pattern for us – the life we receive from God, the Body and Blood of Christ, are to sustain us in service of one another and of the world around us. This was the great Anglo-Catholic mission of the 19th century – to exalt the sacrament of the mass, in order to serve the needy and the outcasts of society.

At this Last Supper we rejoice in a God who gives us his flesh to eat and who washes our feet as an example of the servant love we are to proclaim to the world.

“Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you.”

Remembrance

“Do this in remembrance of me.” 1 Cor 11.24

The fourth Harry Potter film is upon us. Another classic battle between good and evil.

Central to the Harry Potter books is the theme of Harry recovering his memory - his personal history - and in so doing realising who he really is and the powers that he has.

Memory is a strange but very important human ability. It creates the substance of our being. There can be no ‘What I Am’ without the memory of ‘What I have been.’

In human evolution, it was the creatures with memory that won over those early creatures with no memory.

It is the foundation of all our deep relationships: shared history; shared memories. How often in our conversations with friends do we start a sentence with “Do you remember?” (It binds us to people of our own age-group. Fireworks yesterday.)

The short-term memory is the most vital and sometimes the most fragile. Sentences begun but unended with ‘what was I saying?’ There is, by the way, a fascinating website called shorttermmemoryloss.com which celebrates at the moment the 60th Anniversary of Housmans Bookshop in the Caledonian Rd by King’s Cross – it’s been the home of the peace movement for these past 60 years. “60 years of peace” it proclaims “but little quiet”. Indeed more have been killed in wars over these past 60 years of peace than in the previous two terrible World Wars.

Remembering where we have been, helps us to make sense of where we are no. So music has no beauty without the memory of what was. The resolution of the chord or the conclusion of the book is meaningless without the retention in your memory of what has gone before.

Long-term memory is even more of an enigma. A cameo appearance of an old friend 35 years ago is there in all its vividness: the flares, the tie, the bicycles on the tow-path with the Sturmy Archer 3-speed gears. But what happened in 1964 when you were in the fourth form? - the entire year is a complete blank. [Of course my older sisters say that if you remember the 60s then you weren’t there?!]

Then there is communal memory, passed on from one generation to another. Two Millennia seems half of the age of the earth. But the age of the earth is in fact about two million times two millennia.

The psychology of historical recall means that 500 years ago has as much relevance to our three score years and ten lives as 500 million years ago. Shakespeare is as alien to us as dinosaurs.

There is another complication. We live in an accelerated culture where the rate of change in so many aspects of our daily lives is always increasing. Young people now suffer from premature nostalgia. The nineties is already ‘retro’ - history. There have been more inventions and changes in these last 60 years of peace than in the previous 5,000 years! The slide-rule that got me through Cambridge engineering is now in the Science museum!

And we all know the experience of looking at old family photos. There is a 17 year old you, in braided jacket with a school prefect’s badge. But how is that you/me? I’m a stranger to myself. Every cell in my body has changed many times since then and half my brain cells have already died - and the other two are feeling queasy.

The Bible and the Church have always placed a strong emphasis on the integration of our memory - commonly owned history - into the present reality. Indeed there can be no present reality without a sense of what was. The postmodern assertion that yesterday is another country, is a denial of the Christian view of personhood and Heilsgeschichte - Salvation History – which shapes our present.

These vestments, the liturgy, the music, the art and symbols of recent and long past centuries - these all give greater reality to the ‘now’.

Why has Remembrance Day become arguably of greater significance in the last decade than, say, in the 60s and 70s? There were calls for its abolition back then.

Many of us now have no direct memories of the world wars, yet the act of remembrance - the liturgy at the Cenotaph, the poppies, the veterans, the engraved walls, the war poems - all these give substance to the reality of the war dead, and a poignancy to the new struggles with terrorism and the daily casualties in Iraq or the latest location of indiscriminate violence.

These yearly community remembrances; the counting of the decades of uneasy peace; these 60 years of nervous optimism that we will never fall into another world-wide conflagration – these ceremonies of thankfulness and hope. They help to give expression to our inner longings for peace and a better society; for an end to violence and hatred. They are a shared history, which guides us in shaping the present.

Of course there are cultures whose communal remembering is rooted in vengeance and hatred which prolongs the relentless cycle of bloodshed. This sort of remembering must be expunged if the culture is to survive.

Well few of us now have direct experience of war, but of course none of us have direct and experiential memories of the man Christ Jesus; who lived and died and rose again these two millennia past - 50 generations ago. Yet we believe that our remembering of this man, deeply affects our present and future.

Catherine Pickstock at Cambridge wrote a startling but difficult book a couple of years ago entitled After Writing: On the Liturgical Consummation of Philosophy. It is an attack on the floating, postmodern self, detached from history and memory. She wrote of this service, the mass:

“… the worshipper’s forward journey is precisely its journey towards memory: the occasion of our meeting God is our memory of him.” (p.231)

“Do this” says Jesus, “in remembrance of me.”

I remember, as a young teacher, standing in the memorial cloister of Lancing College at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, 32 years ago.

And looking at the 500 young men and masters around me, and then at the 500 names etched in the cold November walls in front of us. The lesson needed no words of explanation.

Today we remember and honour the war dead. We give thanks for their sacrifice and pray to God that we will not let such carnage happen again. It is Remembrance Sunday. Our communal memory encourages us to work for a better present reality – and if we remember rightly, it brings that reality into being.

Which is why for Christians every Sunday is Remembrance Sunday. Our communal memory allows God to make himself a reality among us in bread and wine and fellowship.

So, a deep understanding, a deep sense of who we are; what we are doing on this war-riven planet; why our relationships have any value; how the suffering and death of God in Christ nearly two thousand years ago affect us today; the conviction that the Risen Lord is with us now, and that we will be with him and all those who have gone before; and the hope that 60 years of peace will lead to that time when the lion will lie down with the lamb, and they will study war no more…

…this is all bound up in the profound utterance of our Lord which we and the church universal repeat in every hour, of every day, of every century:

“Do this in remembrance of me.” 1 Cor 11.24

Spiritual Satisfaction

“This is the Bread from heaven.” (John 6.58)

A Scotsman moved into the area and started drinking at his local pub. He ordered 3 double whiskies and then spent an hour sipping a little from each of them until they were gone, then he ordered three more. The landlord looked puzzled until the Scotsman explained that he always used to drink with his brothers and now they’ve emigrated to America. So he always has the three glasses of whisky to remind him of the good old times. He became quite an institution in the pub.

Then one day he just ordered two whiskies. There was a hush that fell over the pub and the Landlord, sensing the mood, offered his condolences to the Scotsman for his deceased brother.

The Scotsman smiled and said; “ Och no. My brothers are fine. But it’s Lent, and myself, I've given up drink.”

Part of the discipline of self-denial in lent is to remind ourselves that there is more to life than food and drink. And in an inverse sort of way, that is one aspect of today’s Gospel - the Feeding of the 5000.

This is a strange story, set in the relative wilderness to the east of the sea of Galilee, the Golan Heights. It is the only story, apart from our Lord’s Passion, that is recounted in all four Gospels.

It was obviously an important part of early Christian tradition, and although there have been various attempts to ‘explain away’ the miraculous heart of the story, most Christians have always accepted it, as I do, as one of the miracles of our Lord.

The disciples had just returned from a successful preaching tour - thousands won to the Catholic faith - and were in need of a rest. So Jesus takes them away to a quiet place. But as usual, the grapevine soon spreads the news to the local populace and this crowd of 5,000 men, and presumably at least that number again of women and children, gather expectantly.

It is late in the day. And then the young boy’s picnic lunch (a typical eye-witness account mentioned only in John’s Gospel) – the 5 loaves and 2 small fishes become the stuff of history.

The thoughtful Mother who wrapped them up and thrust them into her son’s hands, no doubt with the instruction that he was to wear a vest as it got chilly on the Golan Heights, could never have imagined that 2000 years later billions of people would be spiritually fed by her simple act of motherly love.

But why did Jesus perform this miracle? The people were not about to die. They would make it to their homes.

The Jesus of the four Gospels does not do tricks to try and persuade the crowd that he is the Messiah. Indeed, at the end of this story when the crowd want to hail him as the new Prophet, he flees into hiding.

In most miracles, Jesus responds to need, and occasionally, as in the water in to wine, this story and the following sign (in John’s Gospel), walking on the water, he shows his mastery over nature and also provides teaching through such an ‘enacted parable’.

In other words, the primary function of the miracle is to illustrate a concept he is trying to teach, usually to his immediate disciples.

And so it is here, that our Lord is making a simple point and, as it turns out later, another very complex point, to his disciples.

The simple point may be expressed in this way: Jesus is not nearly as discouraged as we are, by the little we have to offer. In fact, one of the prerequisites of true worship is the recognition of our inadequacy.

“What can I bring him, poor as I am.”

For Philip it was hopeless - ‘how can we feed them?’ For Andrew it was a little better - he found the little that there was - and this was enough for the Lord.

We are to bring what we have in the recognition that only the Lord can multiply it to meet the needs that are there.

So in our worship: we bring our music, our liturgy, our preaching, our vestments, our art and culture; with the recognition that it is inadequate, but it is the best we can offer. Only Christ can transform it to worship in Spirit and in Truth which is acceptable to the Father and which truly prepares us for heaven.

And in our daily lives, our prayer must always be that God will take what we offer, the little we are able to do, and by his power give our acts of service significance and influence far beyond their meagreness.

But John’s Gospel also points to deeper truths in his account of this incident.

There is a little phrase (in v.4): “and the Passover was nigh”. (Mark’s account makes the same point by another eye-witness touch - they sat down on the green grass. Any of you who have been to the Holy Land will know that about the only time there is any green grass on the Golan Heights is before Passover.

The Passover. Here is John’s axis of interpretation.

If you read on in John’s version, there is a clear movement from miracle to theological discourse, from Jesus to Moses, from bread to flesh.

Our Lord is preparing to show them that hard teaching that will make many leave him: he is the Bread come down from heaven; the panis angelicus; the bread that satisfies the human heart and feeds the soul.

Soon the Passover lamb must be slain and eaten, as a reminder that the Angel of death passed over the Israelites as they were being released from slavery in Egypt.

And soon the Lamb of God must be slain and give his flesh and blood for the salvation of the world.

This story is not just about feeding hungry people. It is about a Saviour who alone can satisfy the spiritual hunger that is everywhere evident in the world.

And there is yet deeper truth here. For even when we have received, as we will in a moment, the Bread of Life, we are still not satisfied and as part of our human condition we will long for more. As CS Lewis says:

“All joy (as distinct from mere pleasure, still more amusement) emphasizes our pilgrim status, always reminds, beckons, awakens desires. Our best havings are wantings.”

Our best havings are wantings.

When we have had a satisfying meal, when we linger over the port, is it not then that we most clearly realise that there is more to life than good food and drink.

And when we have truly enjoyed a spiritual meal at mass in the bread and wine, or in some private moment of spiritual revelation, do we not then most clearly realise that we are spiritual pilgrims who have as yet only just set off along the path.

In Epstein’s wonderful representation of Jacob wrestling with the angel (which you can visit in Tate Britain) you can see another metaphor for this giving and yet holding back of God. The Angel, while injuring Jacob, is yet supporting him, solidly holding him up, blessing and renaming Jacob for the next stage in the journey.

The 5000 were fed and we are fed. Like them, we bring the little that we have and that we are, and offer it to Jesus. We will do this symbolically in a moment in the offertory.

But like them we will only truly find sustenance for our journey when we realise that although our needs are met, there is a divine dis-satisfaction in us which always beckons us on.

Because this is miraculous bread.

“This is the Bread from heaven.” (John 6.58)

Good Shepherd

The Good Shepherd

Ezek 34.11-16; John 10.1-20; 1 Peter 2.19-25

“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” John 10.11

Politics – ‘in it for themselves’
- lucky in Britain – not fleecing us (etymology)

Jesus arguing with Pharisees – the supposed spiritual leaders – the shepherds (like bishops)

More like hirelings – the hired hands (vv 12, 13)

In the scriptures of the Old Testament, the image of the shepherd is a symbol of divine government, and of human government, too, as an imitation of the divine.

Jesus' authority as shepherd, as governor of our lives, is established in his great act of paschal sacrifice: "I lay down my life for the sheep."

The idea of Jesus as the good shepherd is a popular and attractive image, which has inspired centuries of Christian devotion, and I suppose there is no passage in the whole of scripture better-known or more loved than the twenty-third Psalm, with its picture of divine shepherding.

But the image is almost too cute. It is too easy to be sentimentally attached to the image, and thereby overlook the deeper levels of meaning it implies.

In the earliest expressions of Christian art, the paintings which adorn the walls of the catacombs - those narrow labyrinthine tunnels which served as burial places in the early Christian centuries - a favourite theme is Jesus as the good shepherd.

It is natural and obvious enough, of course, that the Risen Lord should be represented as shepherd of the dead. But it's not just that. Jesus is represented there as shepherd of the stars - the universal, cosmic shepherd: the Son of God. He is shown as "the power of God and the wisdom of God," (1 Corinthians 1.24) that is, the good governor of all that is, shepherding all things to their appointed end. Even the mighty Roman Empire which was busy oppressing the church.

The image of the good shepherd is fundamentally an image of divine government, an image of the universal providence of God in Christ. But it is infused with the meekness of the Lamb of God, for Christ is both shepherd and lamb.

One of Dr Spooner’s celebrated ‘spoonerisms’ was to remember that ‘God is a shoving leopard!’ This is the strength and moral demand of God; and yet the loving shepherd displays the self-giving and careful patience of God with human waywardness.

When I lived in Torquay, I knew a young couple who were sheep farmers out on the moors. I would often spend my day off with them.

At lambing time, there were sometimes orphans left, whose mothers had died in giving birth. And then of course there were those mothers whose lambs were still-born or who died soon after birth.

Hungry little lambs and mothers with no young to suckle; want and plenty side by side.

But to match up these needs, the shepherds had to undertake a rather gruesome operation. They must take blood from the dead lamb and smear it all over the little orphan. Only then would the mother accept the lamb as her own and feed and nurture it.

And so this rich imagery of shepherding; of death and life, is seen supremely in this mass; we are redeemed by the blood of the Lamb; accepted in the beloved; clothed in the righteousness of Christ.

This is the Good Shepherd who is Governor of all things and who orders our universe; this is the Good Shepherd the bishop and guardian of our souls, our loving friend and brother; this is the Good Shepherd who loved us and gave himself up for us. This is the Good Shepherd who calls us to follow his example in self-giving care of one another, in our exercising of authority here in church; or in the workplace, or in the home

“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” John 10.11

The Passion

The Passion

“How much more shall the blood of Christ... purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?” Heb 9.14

I’ve never been good with blood. It probably stems from an unpleasant boyhood incident which started with an empty tobacco tin at bath time and ended in hospital.

I was reminded again the other day of the wonderful line in that cult film Withnail & I. As the louche, Uncle Monty, persuades someone else to prepare the meat for dinner, he declares his horror of blood saying: “As a youth I used to weep in butchers’ shops!”

So I have been forced into a culturally deprived life, never having seen any of the Texas Chain Saw Massacre films and constantly suffering the disdain of waiters in French restaurants as I have whispered ‘medium to well’.

And all this is by way of explaining why I have never seen that film which came out just a year ago, Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ.

On Passion Sunday, when the readings are about new life in Christ, we are nonetheless bracing ourselves for the horrors of Holy Week as we begin to enter into the passion of our Lord.

Why did Mel Gibson produce such a visceral film of those 18 most bloody hours of our Lord’s life, from Gethsemane to Calvary?

The cynics will say that it was to make £200 million. And I’m sure he hoped to make a buck or two. But I am more inclined to believe what Gibson himself says:

“My aim is to profoundly change people. The audience has to experience the harsh reality to understand it. I want to reach people with a message of faith, hope, love and forgiveness. Christ forgave them even as He was tortured and killed. That’s the ultimate example of love.”

But do we really need all this blood and gore to achieve such an aim? The unequivocal answer of Christianity is ‘yes’.

I’m reminded of William Cowper’s hymn which always made me blanch as a boy:

There is a fountain filled with blood
drawn from Emmanuel's veins;
and sinners plunged beneath that flood
lose all their guilty stains.

Old Testament religion, was certainly authenticated by blood – the life principle of all animals. As the writer to the Hebrews says a few verses after my text for today: “without the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sin.” (Heb 9.22)

Jewish temple worship was messy and bloody. The congregation brought birds and animals for slaughter. They were sprinkled with the blood. The priests were ritually smeared with blood and smelled of blood. Blood was poured out on the altar.

In other words, the people of Israel were left in no doubt that the sins they committed were not dismissed lightly by God. The principle was firmly established that it was costly to maintain the moral purity of the universe.

Now the ‘principle’ here is the important thing.

The blood and sacrifices themselves were culturally determined. They were the lingua franca of ancient near eastern religion. Angry gods were to be appeased by blood sacrifice. Although the children of Israel were always forbidden to make the ultimate blood sacrifice: the ritual slaughter of a human being.

The willingness of Abraham to contemplate this, even with his own son, makes it clear how blood sacrifice was deeply ingrained in the religious mentality. It was a sign of devotion.

But the revelation of God through Judaism was always trying to go deeper. The prophets constantly reminded people that sacrifices alone were not enough.

Yahweh was a God of compassion, mercy and love, and he longed for heartfelt sorrow and wilful love from his children. And yet there was still to be sacrifice.

You will remember at the end of the penitential Psalm 51, which we read so often during lent, the condition of a contrite heart did not vitiate the need for sacrifice, rather it was the precondition of the sacrifice being acceptable:

“The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise. Then shalt thou be pleased with the sacrifices of righteousness, with burnt offering and whole burnt offering: then shall they offer bullocks upon thine altar.” (Ps 51.17,19)

So in the Old Testament the compassion of God and his willingness to forgive those who repented did not obviate the need of sacrifice. But all this was pointing to what was to come.

It was sign and symbol, type and foreshadowing of the greatest sacrifice in the history of the cosmos, the one final and full sacrifice: Deicide. God made flesh would offer himself up to the bloodlust of sinful humanity.

The principle had been firmly established over those centuries of tabernacle and temple sacrifices: the principle that it was costly to maintain the moral purity of the universe; this principle was all but incomprehensibly exploded by a dying God.

For the cost was to be born, not by those who paid for the animals, not by their anguished repentance, nor by the animals unwittingly offering up their life blood. The cost all along had been the precious blood of Christ. As Peter puts it in his epistle:

“Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, ... But with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot." (1 Peter 1.18f)

It was the blood of Christ that justified Abraham. It was the blood of Christ hysopped on the door lintels that saved the children of Israel in Egypt. It was the blood of Christ that atoned for King David’s sins. It was and still is the blood of Christ which validates any act of contrition and repentance.

And the blood was real blood. As Archbishop Temple reminds us, ‘Christianity is the most materialistic of all religions.’

So Christ, the Man of Sorrows, drained the cup of very real, physical suffering.

This reality has been depicted in Christian art and literature, film and music in so many different and sometimes graphic ways down through the centuries.

The flagellation of Christ displayed in the current Caravaggio exhibition portrays the cold brutality behind the passion of our Lord.

But having said all this, it was not the blood of God which undid and began to undo Adam’s sin and rebellion. It was the love of God, expressed in terms that we as humans can grasp.

For we all shy away from physical suffering. We all hope for a kind death for ourselves and for our loved ones. We all instinctively fear inflicted pain and torture.

And yet this is all part of the flaw in the universe and in the human heart. And, in a way we cannot understand this side of that cold river death, pain and suffering are part of the Godhead. There is a bloodied man at the heart of the Holy Trinity.

And so not only with our minds, but with our bodies we understand redemptive love. The passion of Christ which soon we will rehearse again in the annual cycle of our salvation, speaks to us of love beyond telling. There is a visceral response to the suffering of Jesus.

Here is Mel Gibson again:

“But when you finally see it and understand what He went through, it makes you feel not only compassion but also a debt. You want to repay Him for the enormity of His sacrifice. You want to love Him in return.”

So every time you come to the mass, you are reminded of the physical horror and cost of your redemption. Broken Body. Shed blood.

Occasionally, in our sanitized society, and especially on this Passion Sunday and during the next fourteen days of passiontide, we should remember, amidst the beauty, the terrible fleshly suffering of God.

Never was love, dear King!
Never was grief like Thine. (Samuel Crossman)

And as we ponder his Passion, so our love for him should draw us into the glad service of God.

“How much more shall the blood of Christ... purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?” Heb 9.14