The Return of the Prodigal Son

Unconditional Love (Mothering Sunday, Lent IV)

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

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

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

“Come on son. Time to get up.”

“Give me three reasons why I should get up”

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

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

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

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

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

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

For the love of God is broader

than the measure of man's mind

and the heart of the Eternal

is most wonderfully kind.

But we make his love too narrow

by false limits of our own;

and we magnify his strictness

with a zeal he will not own.

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

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

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

They drew a circle that shut me out;

Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.

But love and I had the wit to win

We drew a circle that took them in.

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

But of course there is more to it than that.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s all so wrong and so debilitating.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Love bade me welcome: yet my soul drew back,

Guilty of dust and sin.

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

From my first entrance in,

Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning

If I lack'd anything.

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

Love said, You shall be he.

I, the unkind, ungrateful? Ah my dear,

I cannot look on thee.

Love took my hand and smiling did reply,

Who made the eyes but I?

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

Go where it doth deserve.

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

My dear, then I will serve.

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

So I did sit and eat.

Forgiveness, lent 3

Forgiveness

Readings: 1 Cor 1.18-25, John 2.13-22

“the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life” 2 Cor 3.6

Religion has always been the enemy of Christianity. Sometimes I answer the question ‘are you religious?’ by ‘No, I’m a Christian’.

Now I know that such assertions as this are really playful ways of making a point, for Christianity is of course a religion. The word is almost certainly derived from religare – to bind. Religion is binding yourself to your God. I suspect St Paul, however, might have argued it’s meaning is returning to bondage!

And this is the point. There has always been a tendency in religions in general, and Christianity in particular to move from the freedom of the Spirit, with all its grown up responsibilities, to the slavery of the letter, with its infantile dependency on dogma and rules.

And it would be nice to say that religion is responsible for wars and crusades, for inquisitions and apartheid, for divisions in Northern Ireland and genocide in Serbia. But that would be an over-simplification.

Nonetheless, at a basic level, Our Lord’s cleansing of the temple, whip in hand, was a rant against religion; against the deadening effects of the letter of the law; against the cultural appropriation of faith in the living God, for commercial purposes.

St Paul may have had the etymology of religion in mind when he wrote to the Galatians: “For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.” (5.1,2)

Perhaps religion, this binding and stifling straightjacket on life, has been nowhere more successful than in identifying itself in the human mind with guilt. I only need to sit on the tube in my dog-collar, and I’m aware that half the carriage immediately feel guilty.

Why did the thief last week leave the beautiful leather holdall he had stolen from Frank in Hammersmith, outside of my vicarage door? Guilt! (He had of course removed from it anything of value, and it was only an overlooked business card that allowed me to track it down to Frank.) (Reminds me of the letter received by the Tax Inspector:“I feel so guilty, I can’t sleep; so here is £1000 of tax I owe you. If I still can’t sleep, I’ll send you the other £1000…”)

So what is at the heart of Christianity, or ‘pure religion’ as the Apostle James calls it, that distinguishes it from the bondage of false religion?

“the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life”

The ministry of the Holy Spirit enables a work of grace in our hearts that draws us on to love God and others.

By the 16th Century, at a time when cloying religion was getting the upper hand in Christiandom, the Reformation and the Counter-reformation rediscovered this great liberating truth.

‘Sin boldly!’, Martin Luther once wrote to his friend Philipp Melanchthon. This sprang from Luther’s overwhelming conviction that we are saved by grace, and that the message of the cross of Christ is, as Paul writes in v18 of today’s epistle, the power of God to those of us who are being saved.

Of course Luther was not advocating deliberate sin, but he was reminding Melanchthon, who erred on the side of legalism, the letter, that living life is a messy business and we need not be so terrified of putting a foot wrong, that we never put a foot forward!

This is the outrage of grace. No wonder it was a stumbling block (the Greek word is ‘scandal’) to the law-driven Jews of the first century. They would not trust God unless they saw signs. As they say to Jesus, whip still in hand, standing in the chaos he had brought to the Temple court:

“What miraculous sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this?” (John 2.18)

Or as Paul puts it in the epistle: “Jews demand miraculous signs.” (1 Cor 1.22)

This is walking by sight and not by faith; the very opposite of what Paul commended to the Corinthians in his second letter (2 Cor 5.7). Although we should pray to see evidence of God at work among us, we must not cross over the line and become those who only believe when we see God at work.

Paul also points out in the epistle that the message of the cross is foolishness to the Greeks and Gentiles. Not that Paul is being anti-intellectual here. This is the man who wrote the letter to the Romans!

He is pointing out another scandal of the Gospel, that it cannot be grasped by intellectual rigour alone.

You remember that verse in Luke’s Gospel:

“Jesus rejoiced in the Holy Spirit and said, ‘I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will.” (Luke 10.21)

The ‘wisdom’ that these worldly-wise Greeks and Gentiles desired, is probably the equivalent of today’s New Age pick ‘n mix; consumer religion, where you have a little bit of Christianity, a smidge of Sofi mysticism, a comforting hint of re-incarnation and an ethical shot of New Labour – and write on the form ‘Church of England’!

In the first century it was the ancient gnosticism: the speculative knowledge passed on sometimes through arcane ritual and sometimes just to those ‘wise’ enough to receive spiritual revelations and secrets. It’s instant religion. We heard lots about it through the Da Vinci Code and will no doubt hear more now the Gnostic Gospel of Judas is about to be published.

In contrast, the way of the cross is simply accepting the grace of God through the passion of Christ. It is of course at times painful and costly, as it was for Christ, involving a life of self-giving. But it is the self-giving that springs from love, and which results in deep inner peace and joy.

This is never very popular. Just as there were gnostic Jews in Corinth, there are always ‘quick fix’ Christians around, who want the gain without the pain. The super-apostles who were arriving in Corinth as Paul wrote, argued that Paul was weak and ineffectual. They preached the way of success and triumph. Paul gloried in following Christ in the way of suffering and hardship, weakness and dependency on God. (See 2 Corinthians 11.19ff)

Jesus’s anger against the temple-traders, leading to such uncharacteristic physical violence from our Lord, is another attack on easy religion: a religion that is all about doing the right things, rather than loving God with heart and soul and mind, and our neighbour as our self.

The disciplines of lent are supposed to help us in our struggle against ‘the world, the flesh and the devil’ (today’s post-communion prayer). But we should not finish lent feeling pleased with ourselves and with what we have achieved – we’ve lost a few pounds and been to some improving studies. That would be religion.

The result of a good and holy lent will be a greater love for God and a deeper desire to serve others. Or in the words of the epistle, knowing ‘Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God’ better.(v24) This is Christianity.

“the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life” 2 Cor 3.6

Water into Wine, Epiphany 3

Water into Wine - Epiphany 3

“You have kept the good wine until now.” (Jn 2.10)

I was down at my sister’s in rural Sussex for a new year party. I helped myself to an open bottle of red wine in the kitchen, only to find after the first memorable mouthful, that it was her neighbour’s pea-pod wine. As I smiled beneficently to the neighbour, I was thinking, ‘what a waste of good pea-pods’. The only advantage of this early petard to the palate was that everything tasted wonderful thereafter.

Professor Eric Mascall, of blessed memory to many of you, preached on this miracle some years ago at St Mary’s. He berated the heretics of the temperance movement for maintaining that there was no real transformation of the water into wine; rather the pure and noble water appeared like best claret when contrasted with the vinegary libation that was being served up towards the end of what may have been a weeklong wedding feast.

This attitude was summed up by one of our evangelical radicals, Gerald Coates: “Jesus’s first miracle was to turn 200 gallons of water into wine and the church has been trying to turn it back into water ever since!”

So what is this rather strange miracle all about? Why does our Lord choose a party where the wine’s run out to reveal his Godship? Well in a way he doesn’t choose to do it. His mother pushes him, all unknowingly, into this first miracle. I’m sure Mary never thought for one moment that he would solve the wine shortage by a dramatic intervention in the space-time continuum.

And there’s another problem with this story. Did it actually happen like this? Barnabas Lindars and others think that it probably didn’t. Many scholars suppose that the story is built around what was originally a parable of Jesus, about the new wine of the kingdom. Water into wine stories abound in Greek mythology and Pliny tells us of a spring that turned to wine on the nones of January, that is, Epiphany time. So perhaps the early church was doing another one of its Christianising pagan festivals routines.

Many other scholars, and I, think it was a miraculous incident. I have never quite seen the point of trying to explain away miracles, unless you want to explain the entire life of Christ in naturalistic terms. If you believe in the miracle of the incarnation, and the resurrection of a dead Christ, then a handful of other miracles hardly produces a stumbling block to faith. When you’ve bought your airline ticket, it seems futile to debate at length whether flight is possible or not. Well, miracle or not, what is John trying to say to us?

We have seen before how the synoptic evangelists Matthew, Mark and Luke use words to describe the miracles of our Lord in terms of portentous acts of power - miracles; while in the Fourth Gospel, John refers to them as ‘signs’. He is not concerned so much with the inbreaking of the kingdom of God; he is more concerned with what these miracles signify about the Son of God. He is not so much concerned with the coming kingdom and the return of Christ; he is more concerned with the mystery of this God made Man.

In theological terms, while the other Gospels connect miracles with eschatology, the last things; John connects miracles with Christology, the nature of Christ himself.

In this first of the seven signs around which John builds his Gospel, the evangelist is already posing the great question of his treatise: “Who is this Jesus of Nazareth?” Is he God or Man? Is he the Messiah?

Clearly this nature miracle of water-into-wine points to a Godlike control of the natural world. Archbishop William Temple puts it with poetic conciseness: “The modest water saw its God and blushed. ”

Now remember that John is writing some years after the Gospel events. He has seen what happened to the hoards who believed because they saw the miracles, and who quickly disappeared when the miracles stopped. John emphasises that Jesus is wary of those whose faith just rests on miracles. So later in this chapter in verse 23 we read: “When he was in Jerusalem during the Passover festival, many believed in his name because they saw the miracles that he was doing. But Jesus on his part would not entrust himself to them, because he knew all people.”

The firmer footing for faith is seen in the symbolism of the water into wine, which contrasted the contemporary practice of religion, with the Christian faith that Christ had come to proclaim. So let’s look at those contrasts that John alludes to.

The stone water jars were used for the many ritual handwashings which accompanied a Jewish feast. (Stone was easier to keep clean than earthenware.) John will be showing in his Gospel how these constant ritual purifications were to be replaced by the one sacrifice of Jesus, which was to cleanse permanently from sin.

Secondly, the law of Moses had power to convict of sin, but little power to free from the grip of sin. Even the prophets looked forward to the time when the law would be written on our hearts; when believers would want to follow the law of love, because of the indwelling Spirit. There are echos here of John the Baptist’s words at our Lord’s baptism – I baptize with water, but he who comes after me will baptize with the Holy Spirit and with fire. This was the rich wine of the Kingdom.

And thirdly, the water represented the insipid nature of a fear based religion - keep the law or else! Christ’s new wine was to build a community based on responsive love. When we have grasped that Christ has loved us and given himself for us, then we will want to show our love by obedience to his teaching.

In John’s account, Mary sets the pattern of Christian response for us. Perhaps she was part of the catering team for what must have been a family wedding. Joseph seems not to be around at this stage, and the guests have drunk more than is polite – we have all hosted those sort of parties. It’s when that waggish definition of hospitality springs to mind:

Hospitality - the art of making people feel at home when you wish they were.

So Mary looks in loving dependency to her son. The Hebrew idiom with which he responds “Woman, what have I to do with you?” is both affectionate – ‘Dear Mother’ - and yet also an indication of Christ’s changing role with respect to his family.

Mary gives him one of those knowing motherly looks and turns to the servants and says - “do whatever he says”. Mary has long followed the path of love and obedience to Jesus.

We are sometimes so used to our Christian faith that we forget how staggering it is. We forget the wonder of being alive, conscious humans in a remarkable world; we forget the mystery that, despite all our weaknesses and disappointments, God has drawn near to us in Jesus.

Epiphany is the season of revelation and in today’s Gospel, John invites us to ponder the amazing Christ – God made man for love of us; the bread of life, come down from heaven; ready to take the water of our lives which we offer, and to turn them into the rich wine of life with him.

In a moment we will echo those words read earlier from the book of Revelation. “Blessed are those who are called to the wedding feast of the Lamb.”

And as we come and receive, may we realise afresh the Gospel truth of grace and love; and respond, like Mary, in trust and joyful obedience.

Then, day after day, as we deepen our spiritual life, we will be able to pray in gratefulness to God:

“You have kept the good wine until now.” (Jn 2.10)

Immortal Longings, All Saints 2005

Immortal Longings – All Saints

“‘Who are these, robed in white…?’ ‘These are they… who have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.’” (Rev 7.13f)

‘And what do you want to be when you grow up?’ Every child gets used to that question.

My earliest longings were to be a cowboy - too much Roy Rogers and Lone Ranger!

Then I discovered music and wanted to be a conductor or a famous pianist - and then when I saw it on TV, to be a pianist who conducts from the piano!

And then I longed to be a missionary - my religious phase; and then to be a professor of mathematics - my precocious period.

And the result of all those boyhood dreams? - a Church of England Curate - some might say a combination of all those longings!

It is a part of the human condition to be absorbed by longings and desires. And as we move from childhood to middle age, we fulfil some of those longings, and realise that others are never going to be acjieved.

I know now that I shall never be a bishop by 30.

But we begin also to realise that behind all our desires and longings, there is a deeper longing; at once both inescapable, and unquenchable.

Fergus Kerr, the Regent of Blackfriars, Oxford, has written a fine book with the intriguing title: Immortal Longings (SPCK, 1997).

It looks at the philosophy of Martha Nussbaum, Martin Heidegger, Iris Murdoch... and others, through Barthian spectacles. You will be glad to know that we don’t have time to discuss it this morning.

Suffice it to say, that he examines the various ways in which philosophy has struggled with this universal human longing for transcendence - for the ‘there must be more to life than this’.

In everyday terms, we see it in the realm of beauty and mystery: art, music and the glories of the natural world. There is an inner longing to comprehend their magnificence, which is at times almost painful.

We see it in the realm of love and human intimacy - that too is an immortal longing.

Today’s readings emphasise, in our Lord’s words in the Gospel, that it is the pure in heart who will see God, whose longings will be satisfied. Now this mustn’t be confused on this All Saints day with ‘being good’, never doing anything wrong.

Our texts today makes clear that our robes are dirty – they are made white and clean by the Blood of the Lamb. The Saints are not those who have led blameless lives. They are those who have a pure heart; an attitude of godliness; or as Archbishop Temple put it ‘a passionate aspiration towards the holiness of God’.

Jesus was always concerned with the direction of the heart, the object of our longings. Do we long for God or for self-satisfaction? The Scriptures make clear that everything which stifles immortal longings and turns beauty, mystery, love and sex into objects of their own end, fosters ugliness, bitterness, hatred and violence – and the eclipse of our true selves.

Adam and Eve grasp the object of desire that they might become like gods. Their longing is not for God himself, but to usurp his power. As St Paul describes this human reversal of immortal longings: “claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God... and worshipped and served created things rather than the Creator...” (Romans 1.21-25)

Or as Shakespeare puts it in the words of Cleopatra – for Shakespeare struggled with the ambiguity of his own longings: “Give me my robe. Put on my crown. I have Immortal longings in me.” (Antony & Cleopatra, V/ii/283)

And all the Saints, known and unknown have had immortal longings.

It was Pope Gregory III (731-741) who consecrated a chapel in the Basilica of St. Peter to all the saints and fixed the anniversary for 1 November. Until then, only martyrs were regarded as worthy of a place in heaven with the Saints. Gregory IV, a century later, (827-844) extended the celebration on 1 November to the entire Church, although the orthodox still keep it on the first Sunday after Pentecost.

And today we keep it, anticipated from Tuesday, to rejoice with all those with a pure heart who now see God – the object of their life’s deepest desire.

But in the question posed at the beginning of our text today: ‘Who are these, robed in white…?’

Well, the theological world has moved on since Gregory IV and we live, we hope, in a more generous Christian church. The Feast of All Souls which we will keep on Wednesday, was instituted to pray for all those Christian ‘commoners’ who hovered in purgatory, never receiving the Beatific vision of the pure in heart, until we, the church militant, had prayed enough for them; given enough alms; and most important, said enough masses.

But if we answer the question, ‘Who are these, robed in white…?’ in a post-reformation and more biblical way, then there is encouragement for us all.

There is Noah, who found favour in the sight of the Lord, and who shortly after landing the ark, was found naked, drunk and unconscious by his children.

There is Rahab the prostitute who helped the Israeli spies in Jericho, and who finds her way into the genealogy of King David and so of Christ.

There is King David himself, who killed 100 philistines to gain one of his wives; who committed adultery and had the woman’s husband killed; who lied and feigned madness to escape from king Abimelech, and who wrote a Psalm about it which we sang today.
The Old and the New Testament record God’s verdict: “This is a man after my own heart.”

There is the common thief who was crucified next to Christ – “today you will be with me in paradise!”

And seeing some of our friends from St Mary’s Bourne Street here today, there is Mildred Steele – a dear companion whose loss we are mourning.

Any of you who have visited St Mary’s would remember her: the 5 foot Hollywood actress with a ten foot personality; married three times – forty years to her last husband; with many Hollywood adventures recorded in the obituaries last week which recalled her MGM sobriquet, 'the pocket Venus'.

But Mildred had a pure heart, and a deep devotion to Christ, and now her colourful clothes, hardly spotless after 94 years, have been washed in the blood of the Lamb. She has joined the great army of saints triumphant, worshipping the Lamb that was slain, who yet lives.

And so let all our immortal longings, our pure hearts, our singleminded devotion, lead us to the immortal God and his overwhelming love and care for us. Then we will join with All the Saints, as we do this day around this table, and rejoice in the Lamb.

“‘Who are these, robed in white…?’ ‘These are they… who have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.’” (Rev 7.13f)

Jonah

Jonah

Jonah prayed “I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful.” (4.1)

The Welsh preacher: "There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth." Plaintiff voice from the back: "What if we have no teeth..."
"Teeth will be provided!"

Many of us within and without the church have difficulty in understanding a God of love who wants to punish wrongdoers. But then poor God can’t win, because when it comes down to it, we also have difficulty in understanding how he can let evil men and women ‘get away with it’ – often at the expense of the good and the poor.

Jonah is a story on this theme; on what has been called ‘The Outrage of Grace’.

This enigmatic little book with its 48 verses, carefully worded and skilfully constructed, is full of surprises and amusing improbability.

Let me remind you of the story. Jonah is not a false prophet but a disobedient one, sent to pronounce judgement on the wicked city of Nineveh - a city that flayed it’s captives alive and whose atrocities are recorded in extra-biblical writings about the Babylonians.

The conversion of Nineveh was not high on the good Jew’s weekly intercessions list. So Jonah, as a good Jew, runs away from the Lord and his duty - to take a cheap Spanish holiday at the opposite end of the Med - in Tarshish.

God brings his ship near to destruction in a fierce storm. The sleeping(!) Jonah is woken, reveals all, and finally persuades the reluctant sailors to throw him overboard: for the storm is his fault. (We’re already detecting a self-destructive streak in Jonah’s personality.)

Now the enormous fish (which is all that most people remember about Jonah) swallows this unlikely servant of Yahweh and after three days vomits him up on the sea shore not a million miles away from Nineveh. That’s package holidays for you.

(The NT draws a parallel between these three days and those of Jesus in the tomb – we read about this in Matthew.)

Thus the fish, as an instrument of God’s grace and mercy, allows Jonah a second chance to obey. He takes it, probably grudgingly, although he is wise enough to realize that God has his mind set on this mercy mission to Iraq – for Nineveh was in modern day Iraq.

So he announces the fate of Nineveh to its wicked inhabitants. To a man they repent - what effective preaching! So God has compassion on them and spares them destruction. But is Jonah pleased with this magnificent story of missionary conversion? Of course not! He’s a religious bigot!

1 But this was very displeasing to Jonah, and he became angry. 2 He prayed to the LORD and said, “O LORD! Is not this what I said while I was still in my own country? That is why I fled to Tarshish at the beginning; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing. 3 And now, O LORD, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.

He sits down, still hoping for a thunderbolt or two. Then the bush, then the worm (appointed - like the big fish) and the sun and the anger again...

10 Then the LORD said, “You are concerned about the bush, for which you did not labour and which you did not grow; it came into being in a night and perished in a night. 11 And should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?”

And that’s the end.

This fourth chapter now leaves the hearers puzzling over the message of the book and the future of this reluctant prophet. Where is the denouement of a chapter 5 with its resolution of the story and the moral for its listeners? There can be none, for that would defeat the purpose of the book.

Voltaire and lesser known sceptics have mocked the apparently farcical elements of the book, and some Christians, like Luther in his day, would rest easier at night if Jonah had just failed to get into the canon of Scripture.

As a prophecy (Jonah finds himself amongst the twelve minor prophets ion the Bible) it’s almost an oracle free zone. In fact in the Hebrew, there are only 4 words of prophecy in all 48 verses. “Forty - Days - Nineveh - Destroyed” (3:4) (Now that’s a short sermon!)

There is an element of parable in the story. The opening chapter allows the hearer to distance himself from this foolish and disobedient prophet of Yahweh, but as in Nathan’s parable to King David (2 Samuel 12), the closing verses of Jonah round on the hearer with that accusing “Thou art the man!”

Like Jonah you want to limit God’s loving-kindness to Israel alone. You cannot see that his compassion reaches out to all who repent and turn to him; a foreshadowing of the Messiah’s universal mission, the inclusiveness of Pentecost – the Spirit poured out on all flesh.

How just is God? This is the undercurrent of Jonah.

If in God’s world, as the Old Testament recognises it, good is rewarded and wickedness is punished, how can God forgive Nineveh and overlook their sin? To let iniquity go unpunished is as unjust as punishing the innocent.

In Jonah’s eyes it was dishonouring to God for him to show mercy to obvious wrongdoers, even after repentance. For if God is the supreme moral being he must punish or at least demand some penitential good deed or cultic sacrifice to restore the balance.

Like the psalmist, he wonders that the wicked are sleek and fat while he suffers in godly innocence (eg Psalm 73.12.13). Jonah was outraged by grace - the apparent contradiction in God’s moral nature. And he wanted to die and be free from this confusion of mind and from all his self-pity and longings for vengeance.

So finally God points out to Jonah through the incident with the bush, that Jonah’s concern for the plant was motivated by self-interest - whereas God’s concern for all that he had created sprang from the compassion which is God’s very nature.

Perhaps too Jonah was ultimately concerned to vindicate his own theological view of God, rather than to trust obediently in a God whose ways could not always be understood. How could God justify his actions on the grounds of compassion alone? The hearers (you and me) are left to wrestle in their own minds with the tension between crime and punishment: between repentance and forgiveness; and in a latter day Iraq, between Tony Blair & Clare Short.

Is there a New Testament solution? Well, not really. But there is significant further development, shedding light on God’s justice, or lack of it, and his mercy.

The tensions in Jonah’s and the narrator’s theology are partly resolved in the cross of Christ. Here justice and compassion meet as God’s absolute holiness is satisfied by his overwhelming love.

Yet the principled and God-fearing part in all of us wants Christ to come down from the cross and smite the Pharisees and scoffers; to vindicate the honour of a just God and a sinless Son. But in that sense, God is not just - if he were, there would be no hope for us.

Jonah wanted no forgiveness for Nineveh and asked that he might die. God forgave Nineveh and let Jonah live.

But Christ cried ‘Father forgive them’ and God let him die. This is not so much a resolution of the tensions in Jonah, as a call for us to live with that uneasy outrage of grace and mercy in our own lives, in our dealings with others, and in ordering our society.

I spent the New Year in Cape Town enjoying the summer sun, sea, sand and wine. I visited Robben Island where Nelson Mandela was incarcerated for many of his 27 years in prison. As I stood at the door of his cell, I wondered if I could emerge after 27 years, when comrades had been tortured and killed, to smile and forgive and demonstrate the Outrage of Grace; this radical mercy which we are called to show, whether it makes sense or not.

May God’s Holy Spirit allow you to follow Christ in living lives of outrageous grace to all you meet.

Jonah prayed “I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful.” (4.1)

Serpents & Symbols

The Serpent in the Wilderness

“And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.”
John 3.14,15

Typology has a long and quirky tradition. It is a theologically risky practice. Typology has nothing to do with amateur printers; nor computer nerds obsessed by fonts - and there are many of them - you know who you are…

It is a system of biblical interpretation which the New Testament often uses in treating the Old Testament. The word is derived from the Greek word tupos, meaning pattern or figure. So Paul says in Romans 5.14 that Adam was a ‘type (tupos) of the one to who was to come’, ie of Christ.

The NT also uses the word ‘antitupos’ antitype. The writer to the Hebrews, a letter full of typology, says that “Christ did not enter a man-made sanctuary that was only an antitype of the true one; he entered heaven itself, now to appear for us in God's presence.” (Hebrews 9.14) And in Hebrews we learn that the mysterious Melchizedech, King of Salem who appears to Abraham, is an antitype of Christ.

The type or antitype, prefigures or foreshadows some historical event, or person, or object.

The Passover and the Exodus from Egypt provide a rich vein of material for NT typology.

The Passover foreshadows this meal; the Exodus sets the pattern for Christian salvation and the life of a pilgrim disciple.

Wherever you look in the world around us there are symbols: things that carry meaning beyond what they actually are. Eg. The Union Flag; Big Ben; even colours like pillar box red, or ORANGE! And of course, rainbows!

Churches of our tradition are full of symbols: and this church more than most and certainly more than the tin tabernacles of my youth - although so deep is the urge in humans to find and use symbols, that even there there were unmistakable symbols: the table, the open Bible, the pictures of Jesus on the cradle roll, the brass plaques on the walls.

When I was young, I always thought the serpent on a pole was a curious Christian symbol. Somehow it looked as if it should be in the local Satanist Temple and not with the other sacred symbols around the altar.

I stared at it at mass each day on the cross in the Seven Sorrows chapel at St Mary’s Bourne Street. And Bishop Richard has two serpents intertwined on his pastoral staff.

This is the symbol that Jesus uses when he’s talking to Nicodemus, who came to him at night to find out some of the answers to his questions about faith.

“And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.””

So what did Nicodemus make of it? He was an intelligent Pharisee, member of the Sanhedrin and prominent teacher. He would certainly have known the story of the murmuring rebels who got fed up with Moses and God.

The basic imagery is clear. The Israelites had sinned by rejecting God’s chosen leader, Moses. They were condemned to death by the snake bites (literally the ‘burners’ - inflammation?). Moses is instructed by God to make a copper effigy of the serpent and to raise it aloft on a pole - a standard for all to see, and so to live and be healed.

(This is why it’s the symbol for a chemist’s shop - where you get medicine for healing - & sometimes for doctors (although cf Asclepius) - and Barbers - who were the surgeons).

The story as you can read it in Numbers 21 contains deeper levels of imagery as well. The fiery serpent on the pole didn’t stop the people from being bitten, but it stopped them from dying if they looked with the eyes of faith to the pole.

The writer uses two different Hebrew words for ‘see’ (vv 8,9), and although this may be just literary style, the words do have significantly different emphases.

The second word carries overtones of perceiving, paying attention, even, looking with spiritual insight.

So there is nothing automatic about the deliverance - no magic - there is a degree of intentionality about the action of looking.

Sin infects us all, as the opening act of penitence of this Mass remind us. We are all bitten.

But we need not die spiritually – we need not be separated from God. God loves us so much, the Bible tells us, that he did something about it – he sent Jesus into our world, to be our Saviour & Friend.

There is an antidote to the bite of sin. Jesus had to be lifted up - on the cross - and in this sacrament - when the priest says ‘this is my body’ & ‘Jesus is the lamb of God’.

But it’s not magic - this is not the wonderful world of Harry Potter, where you can wave a wand and make everything alright.

The Christian life is about growing in faith. When we see how much God loves us, and what he went through in Jesus to put things right between us and God, then we choose to believe and follow him - living for God and living for others. The disciplines of Lent are to reinforce this within us.

It’s not saying the right words or doing the right things in themselves that save us - although they are important - it’s simply trusting God as Abraham did.

It’s believing in Christ, and however often we fall and sin again, coming to say sorry and making a fresh start. That’s what this mass, and confession, is all about.

It’s interesting to reflect on what happened to the bronze serpent. It was around for a few hundred years and then good king Hezekiah when he came to the throne at the age of 25, smashed the bronze serpent of Moses. (2 Kings 18.4)

The people had turned to vain idols and superstition and now worshipped the bronze serpent as ‘Nehushtan’ - they weren’t trusting in God any more, but in the magic of the gods.

We must always remember that all the symbols, all the imagery, everything we do in devotion - is not magic, or worse still, superstition. It’s to point us to Christ, to bring home that simple fact, that God loved us so much, that he gave Christ to die for us, so that we could live with him in heaven.

The symbols which we can see and grasp point to the eternal verities which we cannot easily see or grasp. The night in which Nicodemus came to Christ is replaced by the light of Christ in our Lord’s final words to Nicodemus – “whoever lives by the truth, comes into the light.” v.21

Well, there was obviously a long conversation with Nicodemus that went on far into the night. John has only summarised it here and shaped it to suit his purposes of unfolding the mystery of Christ. He has been careful with his use of language also.

The phrase ‘lifted up’ is ambiguous in the way John uses it, for it can mean both exaltation (triumphant heroes on shoulders) and – crucifixion.

Christ was bitten for us by the Serpent (one of the symbols for the Devil) and so raised to the glory of heaven where we will also sit and reign with him. (Ephesians 2.4-6)

So in just these few words, John paints a picture rich in Jewish history and Biblical imagery.

As we look again today at the crucified, glorified Christ, lifted up before us in the Sacrifice of the Mass - so we are healed.

We are not worthy, but he speaks the word and we find salvation, that deep inner wholeness which will only be fully realised when we are lifted up, and share in his glory in heaven.

“And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.”
John 3.14,15

Faire is the Heaven - Spenser

Faire is the Heaven

“One thing I ask of the LORD, this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to seek him in his temple.” Ps 27:4

I think I have discovered the worst automated telephone exchange in the world.

We are all used to the annoying electronic lady, with a transatlantic voice, who gives us a menu of buttons to push for services which are not quite what we want. And we know that our conversation may be recorded for training purposes. And we know that after we have push-buttoned our way through several layers of menus, and more than several pence of phone bill, we will eventually hear that, our call is very important to them, but all their operatives are currently busy and we will be held in a queue. And we will listen to Eine kleine Nacht music played on a Woolworths music centre.

Until we hear with dismay that we are talking to a stranger in Gallowshields called Tracey, and despite what she says, in such a heavy accent that we hardly understand a word, we suspect that she will not be able to assist us.

But on my nightmare exchange, whatever combination of buttons you pressed, you eventually came in at the beginning again.

Which brings us on to Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite. These were writings, probably from the early 6th century, which claimed to have originated with the first century Christian bishop, Dionysius of Athens. (Acts 17.34)

It’s a mystical strand of theology which, in one aspect, resembles our infuriating telephone exchange. You never get straight through to God.

Indeed God is mediated to humanity through three orders of Angelic beings, each divided into three choirs. So from the top, next to God, we have Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones; then Dominations, Virtues and Powers; and finally Principalities, Archangels and Angels - and only these last two, Archangels and Angels, have a direct mission to men and women.

This sort of neo-Platonic theology had great influence in the Western church, but after the Reformation by the late 16th century, it was beginning to be doubted and freely modified. This is the era of Edmund Spenser who wrote the words of our communion motet, Faire is the heaven, towards the end of his life in 1596. This is the era of Richard Hooker, one of the first great Anglican theologians. It is the era of a Reformed Protestant Catholicism.

Spenser is most famously remembered for his epic work, The Faerie Queene, his great allegory of the Virgin Queen Elizabeth who ruled from when he was six until after his death. He’s buried here in Westminster Abbey.

Spenser’s Hymnes of Heavenly Love and Heavenly Beautie are a poetic reflection on what was happening in theology at this time.

Heavenly Love begins in the Divine Trinity and moves toward creation, embracing humanity and drawing them into the motionless motion of the everloving Trinity.

The contemplation of Heavenly Beautie starts from the opposite end of the cosmos and through stages takes us from the earthly realm, through the heavenly spheres to arrive at the very Godhead. It is from this work, An Hymne of Heavenly Beautie, that William Harris selected these words for his motet.

Now Spenser seems deliberately to have reversed the Dionysian order of the Angelic choirs. This can be no accident, or a lapse of memory.

The Seraphim and Cherubim are furthest from God, and ‘fairer than they both and much more bright’ are the Angels and Archangels, ‘Which attend on God’s own person without rest or end.’ This was an outrageous thought to a church schooled in Dionysian thinking.

Later on in the poem (beyond the words that will be sung here) we see the thinking behind this reversal.

You see, Spenser was also deeply influenced by the Reformation rediscovery of Augustine. It is by grace that we are saved. We have immediate access to God through the mediation of Christ alone. Immediate means ‘nothing in the middle’.

Further on in the poem Spenser writes that we must

lowly fall before his mercie seate,
Close covered with the Lambes integrity

It is the Lamb who was slain, it is Christ who allows us to approach the beauty and perfection of God.

This motet expounds that great biblical truth of our faith: all may approach God through the finished work of Christ.

It is not for those who discover hidden knowledge and mystical ways. It is not for those who persevere up rungs of the celestial ladder of powers. It is not for the top of the hierarchy of Cherubim and Seraphim, of aristocracy or intelligentsia, of clerics or prelates.

It is a direct spiritual transaction: Emmanuel, God with us.

But of course there is much more to a poem than a theological treatise, or an exposition of doctrine.

And this is why William Harris picked up these words for his motet.

Harris was born in 1883 and studied at the Royal College of Music, where he later became a professor. He was organist of New College, Oxford, Christ Church Cathedral and St. George's Chapel, Windsor, where he gave piano lessons to the young princesses, Elizabeth and Margaret.

He composed this in 1925, recovering from the horrors of the First World War and nostalgically musing on his privileged Edwardian boyhood, surrounded by beauty and optimism.

The motet is full of yearning, for lost innocence and the beauty of youth; for the release of death and the ascent to Beauty beyond compare - ‘that Highest’... ‘endless perfectness’.

And here we see that Augustinian immediacy does not completely negate Dionysian hierarchy, because there is a hierarchy of longing; of longing for God. The Christian soul who seeks the Beloved, is drawn ever higher and nearer to the Cloud of Unknowing, to Dionysius’ ‘dark ray’.
Spenser wrote at great length on human beauty and love, but this was as a prelude to that consummation of beauty and love found in Christ and echoed in these words.

And Harris’s setting, for double choir - perhaps reflecting the choirs of Angels & Archangels - is also richly romantic and evocative, drawing us into the very presence of God.

It does what music and poetry is supposed to do in Christian worship: it gives voice to what is inexpressible. It takes us far beyond the rational arguments about the existence of God or the nature of the incarnation. It resonates with that deeply implanted image of God within every human being. Perhaps as a Lenten discipline some of you need to make time to sit down and listen to music, that it may rekindle your longings for God.

Music and poetry express our immortal longings for him who is Love, who is Beauty, whereof one cannot speak thereof one must be silent. (Wittgenstein)

And after we have received these earnests of his love, the bread and the wine, and listened to those closing words:
How then can mortal tongue hope to express
The image of such endless perfectnesse?
we too will fall into speechless silence.

And the silence will be permeated with the presence of God, because of what has gone before.

“One thing I ask of the LORD, this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to seek him in his temple.” Ps 27:4


LENT 2 March 16
Faire is the heaven
Edmund Spenser (1552-99)
William Henry Harris (1883-1973)


Faire is the heaven where happy soules have place
In full enjoyment of felicitie;
Whence they do still behold the glorious face
Of the Divine, Eternall Majestie;

Yet farre more faire be those bright Cherubins
Which all with golden wings are overdight.
And those eternall burning Seraphins
Which from their faces dart out fiery light;

Yet fairer than they both and much more bright
Be the Angels and Archangels
Which attend on God's owne person without rest or end.
These then in faire each other farre excelling
As to the Highest they approach more neare,
Yet is that Highest farre beyond all telling

Fairer than all the rest which there appeare
Though all their beauties joynd together were;
How then can mortal tongue hope to expresse
The image of such endlesse perfectnesse?

Chosen

Chosen

2nd after Trinity: Gen 12.1-4; 1 John 3.13-24; Lk 14.16-24

“God said to Abraham… I will bless you… so that you will be a blessing.”

Did you hear that the Queen was shaking hands with someone in the crowd on Tuesday, when the person’s mobile phone went off. The Queen quickly said; “You’d better answer it. It may be someone important.”

We were singing in the Fox last week, for purely educational purposes, one of the expunged verses of All things bright and beautiful...

“The rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate;
God made them high and lowly, and ordered their estate.”

Is it God who orders our destiny? Prince or pauper? Famous or infamous? Is it indeed God’s “good providence” which we invoked in the opening collect today, which governs all our lives?

In that wonderful legal ecclesiastical language, George is Archbishop of Canterbury by Divine Providence; whereas poor Richard is Bishop of London, merely by Divine Permission.

A cynic of course might say that both phrases boil down to ‘Tony Blair’.

And then there is today’s text from Genesis 12, where God chooses Abraham to become the father of the Chosen Race.

How odd of God to choose the Jews.

This little aphorism enshrines a very disturbing theological principle of the Judaeo-Christian tradition: divine choices often leave both the subject of the choice and those who observe it, bemused or bewildered.

In the words of the book of Proverbs: “Man proposes; God disposes.”

Or in our Lord’s words: “You did not choose me; I chose you.” (John 15.16)

The doctrine of predestination was an unsuccessful attempt to give theological shape to this part of the character of God that is basically unfathomable.

This is the ‘u’ in ‘TULIP’ - the little mnemonic for remembering the central tenets of Calvinism: total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible calling, perseverance of the saints.

But you end up with a capricious and almost vicious god, and a view of life that is fatalistic. (Like the Calvinist who fell down stairs and said “Thank goodness that’s over with.”)

Paul begins to get to the nub of the matter when he talks of God’s choosing in the same sentence as he says - lest any man should boast.

“For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast.” (Eph 2.8, 9)

There is at the heart of God’s dealing with humanity, a desire to confound; and at the same time to reveal. It seems it is the only way to deal with us in order to save us from self-destruction - both individually and perhaps as human kind.

So at Babel there is the confusion of languages, the confounding of the superstate’s plans, in order, Genesis 11 tells us, to save humanity from the dangerous consequences of its own folly.

Our Lord quotes the prophet Isaiah when explaining why he uses parables such as today’s Gospel lesson.

“That seeing they may see, and not perceive; and hearing they may hear, and not understand; lest at any time they should be converted, and their sins should be forgiven them.” (Mark 4.12)

To confound and to reveal - this is the mystery of our faith. The mystery of this Sacrament. It is what calls us to walk by faith rather than by sight. (2 Cor 5.7)

But, unhappy with the loose ends our faith throws up, we attempt to justify everything; to square the circle. At one level that is what theological debate and trying to understand life is all about. But part of our childlike faith is being able to accept that there are some things, however hard we struggle, that we will never understand.

Mortals are contingent to the universe. They are not the authors of it. We rightly wrestle to increase our knowledge of the way things are. But that knowledge, by definition, can never be exhaustive.

I met up with a lad I taught at Lancing the other day (he’s now 45...) and we were remembering all the justifications boys came up with for not doing their work. One boy whose looks and charm made up for what he lacked in brains smiled as he told me “I had to go to lunch with my broker in Brighton, otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to pay your salary.”

So we want to justify God (what theologians call a theodicy).

And we want to justify ourselves.

Sometimes we try to justify God by saying he chooses ‘the good’ for special blessing and special purposes. There seems to be lots of evidence in Scripture for this, especially in the OT.

It’s the righteous who are blessed and used.

But even Scripture struggles with this and isn’t it in the book of Hezekiah that we read that the rain falls on the just and the unjust, but mainly on the just because the unjust have stolen their umbrellas?

The wisdom literature of the Bible knows that plenty of bad things happen to good people. And Scripture is also brutally honest in showing us that many of the saints were bigger sinners than you and I will ever manage to be.

Ahh, but deep down God knew they were good at heart? This is why he chose them and blessed them.

Well, yes and no. The heart is wicked and deceitful above all things. The heart is fickle. Actions and the state of our heart are bound up together in a complex way. This is what today’s first epistle of John is labouring to say.

We cannot ignore the plain truth that the men and women that God has chosen to do remarkable things in the history of the world, have by and large been flawed humans - sometimes ordinary, sometimes exceptional, but always flawed.

The fact is, that there is no justification of God. His dealings with us are always mysterious.

But we also try to justify ourselves. And by this I mean that we say, we’re not holy enough or good enough to be used by God.

We keep a sort of mental hierarchy of whom God will bless and use - Our Lord - Mary - saints & martyrs - bishops - missionaries - priests - deacons - churchwardens - PCC members - right down to advertising executives.

“God can’t use me.” And that lets us off the hook.

But the mysterious workings of God mean that he can use even earthenware jars (as St Paul puts it) such as we are. We presume too much when suppose he cannot use us in some way to bring in the kingdom of God. We are all chosen and blessed. And so that, like Abraham, we can be a blessing to others.

Today’s parable of the Great Banquet is not primarily about God rejecting the stubborn pharisees and taking the Gospel Banquet to the Gentiles. Nor is it an endorsement of the pharisees’ chosen status as the children of Abraham.

Rather it is about the wideness of God’s grace. The invitation goes out far and wide. There need be no ‘outsiders’ for the Messianic Banquet. All are invited to enjoy God’s blessing at the Table. Those who would, may come.

God said to Abraham and he says to each of us: “I will bless you… so that you will be a blessing.”