Greater Love has no man... Easter 6

Gospel Reading, Easter 6, John 15.9-17

“There is no greater love than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” John  15.13

I hope you enjoyed the great British Bank Holiday last Monday. If you were in London you will remember that it was cold, wet and dark.

Unfortunately I was entertaining a guest from out of town. So instead of staying indoors with books, films, fortifying spirits and unhealthy food, I found myself battling through the rain and heading for the Museum of London in the Barbican.

The Barbican is seen at its best I feel in driving rain under leaden skies.

So ever the cheery host and like thousands of families out on the streets with girning children, I put on a brave face and tried to take the scenic route to the Barbican from the Tower where I now live.

And that’s how I found myself in that little-known patch of grass called Postman’s Park, the old churchyard of St Botolph Aldersgate. It was next to the General Post Office and many postmen took their breaks in the park.

The park came into being when, to mark Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee in 1887, the aspirational Victorian painter GF Watts decided to build a Memorial of Heroic Self Sacrifice commemorating ordinary people who died while trying to save others.

There are 53 ceramic tiles, decorated and bearing a simple and often poignant sentence. Although nothing much was added after 1931, the Diocese of London gave permission for another tablet to be added in 2009.

That memorials reads: ‘Leigh Pitt, Reprographic operator, Aged 30, saved a drowning boy from the canal at Thamesmead, but sadly was unable to save himself. June 7 2007’

Some of the early memorials sound rather quaint to our ears – locally, across the roadhere, ‘William Drake lost his life in averting a Serious Accident to a Lady in Hyde Park whose horses were unmanageable through the breaking of the carriage pole. 2 Apr 1869’

Jesus says to his disciples in a phrase that has entered into our cultural consciousness, “There is no greater love than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”

Now many of the incidents recorded in the tablets on the Memorial wall tell of men and women who laid down their lives for strangers, not friends.

And of course most of these heroic deeds were not premeditated. They were spur-of-the-moment decisions to take bold action without thinking too much about the consequences.

You stand and read the wall and can’t help but think: “What would I have done?” And of course you don’t know.

Maybe we would be heroic and act instantly. But maybe we might hesitate long enough to consider the possible outcome of any action and simply wring our hands.

Most of us recognise and admire those who take such actions. And of course the children and men and women who were saved will always carry a burden of gratitude to their saviours.

But what was Jesus talking about in today’s Gospel? He was certainly talking about the heroism that Watts sought to encourage by his memorial.

And he was certainly talking about his own impending death, which was to be a means of ‘saving’ his friends and indeed the whole world.

Yet the death of Jesus was different. It was not like these people listed on the tablets.

It was not like brave St Alban, the first English martyr, feigning to be the Christian priest he was protecting and executed by the Romans in the priest’s place.

No one was about to be killed when Jesus was crucified.

Yet still Jesus taught, and Christian theology has insisted, that it was necessary for him to die.

There’s a Jesuit theologian, Jack Mahoney who has recently attempted to look more deeply into the issue of Christ’s death and how it is traditionally interpreted.

Especially to look again at that idea of an angry God who will not forgive us unless blood is shed to appease him. It somehow doesn’t ring true to the God we see in Jesus.

This is a particular aspect of a doctrine known as penal substitution. Philip Bliss’s hymn, written at about the same time that Watts was planning his wall, has these lines: “In my place condemned he stood, sealed my pardon with his blood.” (Man of Sorrows)

The theology of the redemption of you and me through Christ’s sacrificial death is at the heart of Christianity and of this mass.

And as we ponder it there are always more layers of understanding to uncover.

So Fr Jack Mahoney in his book Christianity in Evolution: an Exploration (Nov 2011) develops what he calls "a Christian theology of altruism".

He emphasises that Christ’s death was not so much to deal with ‘original sin’ but that it was to teach us how to imitate Trinitarian altruism – giving ourselves for others.

We are "prone to self-concern and even self-obsession", he writes, but this is not attributable to "some primordial moral disaster" in a garden of Eden.

Christ by example shows us how to overcome these natural evolutionary characteristics so that his death and resurrection – and here I quote Mahoney -  "can be seen as a major evolutionary step in the moral advancement of humanity, and an indication that universal altruism is the moral invitation and evolutionary destiny of the human species." (The Tablet Blog.)

Well it’s an interesting book, but you’ll be relieved to hear that there are limits to what you can do in ten minutes on a Sunday morning.

Sufficient to say that Mahoney is encouraging a fresh understanding of living for others.

Not in that joyless way that CS Lewis describes: “She's the sort of woman who lives for others - you can tell the others by their hunted expression!” (Screwtape Letters)

A moment before Jesus spoke of laying down one’s life for friends he had said: “I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.” (John 15.11)

This talk with his disciples is all about joy and loving one another – giving ourselves to one another – laying down our lives for our friends.

It was the outspoken journalist and literatus Malcolm Muggeridge who said in a moment of candour:

I can say that I never knew what joy was like until I gave up pursuing happiness; or cared to live until I chose to die. For these two discoveries I am beholden to Jesus. 

 “There is no greater love than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” John  15.13 

Redeemer

Redeemer

“I know that my Redeemer liveth.” Job 19.25

I was looking through John Cleese and Robin Skynner’s now rather dated book, Families and How to Survive Them this week. Not that I’ve fallen out with my siblings, nor is there trouble in the Presbytery.

But it reminded me of how very diverse the practice of family life has become in the West. Some seem so close that it is nauseous to be in their company for too long. You feel you are playing gooseberry.

Others casually remark that they haven’t spoken to their brother for five years and ought to ring sometime, ‘if he’s still in Saskatchewan...?’

Throughout the period of the biblical authors, kinship, the clan, or for Israelites, the tribe, were the backbone of social structure, law, community care, and religion.

And as an integral part of that structure, the concept of the go’el, the kinsman redeemer, became deeply ingrained in Jewish and Christian theology.

The go’el, the kinsman-redeemer, usually translated simply as ‘redeemer’, had a number of responsibilities within the ordering of daily life.

He (and it was a he, often the brother, or uncle, or male cousins) - the kinsman was responsible for avenging the death of a murdered relative. The network of ‘cities of refuge’ grew up in Israel to protect people from an overzealous, or overhasty interpretation of this function of the redeemer. This allowed for the differentiation between murder and manslaughter.

Then the kinsman-redeemer was also responsible for ‘buying back’ (this is the Latin root of the English word ‘redeemer’) a clan member sold into slavery, often because of bad debts.

Land ownership was particularly important in this society and so the go’el was also responsible for buying back land that had gone from the traditional holdings of the family.

In the case of Ruth, it was the go’el’s responsibility not only to buy back the land that Naomi was selling, but also to marry the widowed Ruth. The go’el was unwilling to do this and so Boaz gladly stepped in as the next kinsman-redeemer in line.

You can see why, very early on, the Lord became known as Redeemer of the house of Israel - his kinsfolk. He redeems his people from slavery in Egypt and avenges their persecution. So the Psalmist says: From oppression and violence he redeems their life; and precious is their blood in his sight.” (Ps 72.14)

And all this redeeming effort flows from a sense of love and responsibility for the family. “You shall be my people, and I shall be your God.”

But in Job this is given a new twist. Because there is no obvious redeeming work going on in poor Job’s life, as his world crashes down around him, and his body is eaten up with disease.

So Job takes a leap forward, perhaps not really understanding what he is articulating, but asserting that, in the end, ‘at the last day’, he will see God.

For he knows that his Redeemer is alive, even if presently he appears to be inactive in Job’s troubles.

It is not difficult to see how Christians have always interpreted these words as pointing forward to Christ, our loving Redeemer. This is how Handel famously uses them in his oratorio.

And in the words of consecration later, this blood sacrifice of Christ is referred to as redemption - we are ‘bought back’ from sin and death by the precious blood of Jesus.

Let me end with an extract from that great nineteenth century preacher, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, preaching on this verse in 1863 and combining all these aspects of the go’el, the kinsman redeemer.

“Now, our Lord Jesus Christ, who once has played the kinsman's part by paying the price for us, liveth, and he will redeem us by power. O Death, thou tremblest at this name! Thou knowest the might of our Kinsman! ... he slew thee, Death, he slew thee! He rifled all thy caskets, took from thee the key of thy castle, burst open the door of thy dungeon; and now, thou knowest, Death, thou hast no power to hold my body... Insatiable Death, from thy greedy maw yet shall return the multitudes whom thou hast devoured. Thou shalt be compelled by the Saviour to restore thy captives to the light of day... The Most Mighty in majesty girds on his sword. He comes! He comes to snatch by power, his people's lands from those who have invaded their portion.
Oh, how glorious the victory! No battle shall there be. He comes, he sees, he conquers. The sound of the trumpet shall be enough; Death shall fly affrighted; and at once from beds of dust and silent clay, to realms of everlasting day the righteous shall arise.” (CH Spurgeon, Met Tab 504, 12/4/1863)

As we come to this altar of death and resurrection, covered in the righteousness of Christ, our next of kin, may we have the confidence of Job to affirm:

“I know that my Redeemer liveth.” Job 19.25