'Witnesses of these things' - A homily for the Third Sunday of Easter

 Preached at Croydon Minster on the Third Sunday of Easter 2021. Acts of the Apostles 3.12-19; Luke 24.36b-48

‘You are witnesses to these things’

 

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Do you ever wonder what you are being asked to do when, at the end of the Eucharist, the deacon or priest declares, ‘Go in the peace of Christ’ or ‘Go in peace to love and serve the Lord’ (to which in Eastertide we add the joyful ‘alleluia’)?

 

These closing words are profoundly important and they are not just an afterthought to the Eucharist. Just as the tide of the sea washes in and washes out so the Holy Spirit leads us into the church and washes us back out.

 

We are drawn in to ‘taste and see’, to immerse ourselves in the scriptures, in the life-giving power of the sacraments, to know Jesus Christ, crucified and risen, recognising him in the breaking of bread.

 

And then we are washed back out into the world in which Christ rose from the dead. And this morning’s gospel points us to the task: ‘you are witnesses to these things’.

 

In other words, when you go in peace from here you are implicated as a witness to what you have heard, seen and tasted.

 

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A witness is really important in relating the veracity of events. We are all familiar with the witness in a court of law. As the trial of the policeman accused of the killing of George Floyd is showing at the moment witnesses are called for both the prosecution and the defence of the accused.

 

Some witnesses will say contradictory things; the jury must decide.

 

Some witnesses will have a genuinely different account of the same event. The important thing is that the witness does not violate the 8^th Commandment: ‘thou shalt not bear false witness’.

 

That demands truthfulness and integrity. After all, the Greek word for witness is μάρτυς, from which comes the word ‘martyr’. A true witness can be costly.

 

When it comes to their testimony, the witness must be convinced and convincing.

 

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So when we leave the church on a Sunday morning we go out as witnesses to what we have met and encountered here in this holy place, meeting Christ in word and sacrament. And this is some task in a world that is not readily open to the Christian gospel. ‘Twas ever thus: yet the witness to Christ has filled the world!

 

The first disciples were convinced and convincing witnesses that Jesus Christ had died on the cross and was now alive and risen and eating and drinking. Theirs is an ‘in person’ encounter.

 

It would not be world changing to testify as witnesses that they had seen a ghost, or that they had seen a disembodied spiritual hologram, or that they were inspired by a memory of a charismatic leader.

 

What convinced and convinces the world is that God leads us from death to life in Christ. That is the apostolic message. The disciples had met ‘that message’ in person! That living, breathing, risen body they met now – Jesus Christ, crucified and risen - lives on in his church, in the sacraments, in you and me.

 

We have received that testimony from witnesses who have gone before us: the saints, our parents, godparents, Sunday school teachers, priests. And we see, hear and taste Christ’s body in the Eucharist.

 

That is what we are witnesses to, real and ‘in person’, in our lives. The challenge, the question to leave hanging for you this week is how will you do that? How will you be a witness?

 

Here’s a thought as you answer that:

 

Our world needs now, more than ever: the example of lives flowing with faith, hope and love; pledged to simple and generous living; not caught up in worldly achievement; sustained by the ‘lively life that deathless shall persevere’ drawn from sacramental grace; nourished by a life of prayer; all shaped by Jesus Christ.

 

That might just be the beginning of the life of the witness.

Temples, bodies, sacrifice & encounter: A Lent sermon

 Preached as a sermon at Croydon Minster. Gospel text John 2.13-22.

 

‘[Jesus] was speaking of the temple of his body’ John 2.21

 

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For centuries the temple in Jerusalem sat at the heart of Israelite religion.

 

The temple was the place of sacrifice and of encounter with the presence of God in all his holiness.

 

Housing the Ark of the Covenant, the very presence of God, the temple’s roots are deep in the story of God’s people.

 

Early on, in the account of the Exodus it is as a roving sanctuary, resting on the journey as the people of Israel moved through the wilderness before entering the Promised Land.

 

Eventually, brought by King David, God’s presence in the Ark came to rest on Mount Zion and his son, Solomon, began the work of building the temple to house God’s presence.

 

Solomon’s temple fell into disrepair when Israel was captive in exile in Babylon. Yet under the priests Ezra and Nehemiah it was restored, and by Jesus’ day it had recently been rebuilt by Herod the Great, taking some 46 years.

 

That brings us to this visit of Jesus to the Temple, as recorded in all four gospels (Matthew 21.12-17; Mark 11.15-19; Luke 19.45-48).

 

Indignant at what he finds Jesus sweeps away the buying and selling which is a spin off from the necessity to have animals to sacrifice in the temple.

 

Some see this as an example of Jesus’ anger, an example of his humanity. On one level that is right - Jesus has assumed our humanity - but it’s not that Jesus is ‘losing his rag’. As the disciples later remembered, it is ‘zeal for God’s house’ that has consumed him: it’s zeal; it’s passion.

 

Re-read today’s gospel and we see that what Jesus is doing, in the tradition of the prophets, is a purposeful, intentional act of resetting the Temple to its original purpose: sacrifice to God is not about trading animals; encountering God is not a commercial transaction.

 

The temple is to be a house of prayer, a place of encounter with the Living God.

 

What is new, and different from the prophets, is that this is a divine visitation on an institution that had become all too human: as the prophet Malachi had said, ‘the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple’ (Malachi 3.1).

 

The stone-built temple was destroyed by the Romans in 70AD, some forty years after the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ. So where is the temple now? So where is the place of sacrifice now? Where is the place of encounter now?

 

The clear statement of our gospel today is that the temple is a temple of flesh: the temple of Jesus’ body. So, that’s the place of sacrifice; that’s the place of encounter with the living God. The Body of Christ is of course profoundly what the church is: you and me together, who feed on the Body of Christ in the sacrament.

 

This is the place of sacrifice, Jesus Christ gives his life that we might live. Jesus Christ is both priest and sacrificial victim: ‘worthy is the Lamb once slain’ (Revelation 5.12), not a lamb traded in the temple precinct, but the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.

 

The temple is not abolished by Jesus but transformed and relocated in his flesh.

 

Read the letter to the Hebrews and the Revelation to John and you see that the temple, recast by Christ, feeds the Christian life and imagination.

 

In its cleansing, the liturgical life of the temple - its rituals, customs, sacrifices and services - are transformed by Jesus and embraced by the church, not to exploit God’s people but to feed them.

 

So, then, where sacrifice and encounter with God take place there is the temple. In Christ this is a temple cleansed and fit for worship.

 

So as Christians when we speak of the temple we speak of Jesus Christ, we speak of our church building and we speak of ourselves.

 

Our church is a temple, a place of sacrifice – where lives are offered and life is received – and this holy place is a place of encounter.

 

And you are too.

 

As St Paul says, ‘Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?... God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple’. (1 Corinthians 3.16,17).

 

Christ’s Mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary, is the pioneer of this reality. The power of the Most High dwelt in her body, she gave her body – her human body, her woman’s body - as the Lord’s temple; her life was opened to receive his life.

 

This all points to the reverence and honour we have for the body as Christians: we believe in the resurrection of the body, the ultimate statement of optimism about human bodies.

 

So we reject the separation of body and soul, the ancient heresy of Manicheism, which sees the soul as too good or pure for one’s body; the body is seen as a terrible encumbrance on a free spirit, and it means life is only lived through the body and physical gratification. That is the path to self-loathing. It afflicts many in our culture today.

 

We are body and soul together.

 

Christ visits the temple of our bodies and as we pray in Lent, ‘wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin’ (Psalm 51.2). That is a prayer that Christ might purge us, turn over some tables and upset some of our cosy bargains with God, so that we can become more truly people of sacrifice, offering our lives to Christ, the Lamb of God, that he might give us life in this bloodless sacrifice of the Eucharist.

 

Let us pray that we might be worthy temples of the Holy Spirit, a worthiness which is not earned but is Christ’s gift, in the words of the Book of Common Prayer:

 

We offer and present unto thee, O Lord, ourselves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and lively sacrifice unto thee; humbly beseeching thee, that all we, who are partakers of this holy Communion, may be fulfilled with thy grace and heavenly benediction. (Book of Common Prayer, Order for Holy Communion)

Incarnation: not a 'big idea'

Preached at the Community Carol Service at Croydon Minster 13.12.20 . See Luke 1.26-38

‘And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth’ (John 1.14)

 

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The Incarnation is what you could call Christianity’s ‘Big Idea’.

 

The ‘Big Idea’ is actually not an idea at all. It is not an idea, if that’s something dreamed up in the human mind, the Incarnation’s origins are deep in the generative will of God.

 

And it is not a ‘thought’ that only exists in the mind: it is utterly embodied. So, it is not a thought or idea at all! It’s entirely reliant on human bodies.

 

Incarnation, not ideas about God and who Jesus Christ is, but the en-fleshed, embodied presence of God, is at the very heart of Christmas. It is the generator of Catholic Christian faith.[1]

 

Incarnation is the proposition that God has taken human flesh, caro in Latin, meaning ‘flesh’: from which we get the word ‘carnal’, things of the flesh; and ‘carnival’, a festival of eating flesh before the Lenten fast and ‘incarnation’ the en-fleshing of the Word of God.

 

Jesus Christ assumes human identity in the flesh, in person, whilst at the same time losing nothing of his divinity.

 

The Incarnation is the decisive hinge of the story of salvation, but it has a long back story.

 

That back story is what we have heard tonight. Quietly yet insistently declared through the prophets we hear of the one who will be born in Bethlehem as Micah declared; the one who will fill the world with splendour as Haggai announced; the one who springs from the line of Jesse; and as we heard the text set by Handel, ‘for, unto us a child is born’.

 

And tonight’s gospel is the hinge of the story of the New Creation. It begins with a woman’s ‘yes’. Through the angel Mary says, ‘Yes! Let it be to me according to your word.’ (Luke 1.38). This woman is indispensable to the Incarnation because her body is integral to it all. That is why Christmas features birth in all its blood and bodies and beauty.

 

It is Mary’s body, in her womb, that gives Jesus Christ his DNA, chromosomes and life blood. This is very fleshly.

 

The Eucharistic Prayer for the Annunciation puts it like this:

 

We give you thanks and praise

that the Virgin Mary heard with faith the message of the angel,

and by the power of your Holy Spirit

conceived and bore the Word made flesh.

From the warmth of her womb

to the stillness of the grave

he shared our life in human form.

 

Et verbum caro factum est habitavit in nobis: ‘And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us’ as St John puts it.

 

Christ comes down to us to raise us to the ways of heaven in human flesh: may we, like Mary, say ‘yes’ this this Christmas, and every day of our lives, so that God is not an idea but our life, our hope, our salvation.

 

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[1] But, you might say, what about the crucifixion, the resurrection, the ascension? Sadly countless men and women have died hideously agonising deaths at the hands of oppressive regimes, even, like Jesus, by crucifixion. Others in the Scriptures were raised from the dead, for example, the son of the Widow of Nain (Luke 7.11-17) or Lazarus (John 11:38-53). Even ascension into heaven had happened before, notably the prophet Elijah (2 Kings 2:11). But that’s not the point. The significance of Jesus’ crucifixion, resurrection and ascension is not whether or not they happened uniquely to Jesus Christ, but because he is the Incarnate Son of God.

A sermon for the Presentation of Christ in the Temple

First preached as sermon at Croydon Minster on the feast of The Presentation of Christ in the Temple

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A community - spanning the generations - with the eyes of all fixed upon Jesus Christ.

That is a pretty reasonable working definition of what a church is called to be: a community, those who break bread together - spanning the generations - with the eyes of all fixed upon Jesus Christ, God Incarnate.

It is something of the scene described in this morning’s gospel reading. A woman and a man - Anna and Simeon - both advanced in years; both expectant and full of hope praying in the Temple: a woman and man, Mary and Joseph, two young parents expectant and full of hope bringing their child to the Temple as required by the Law of Moses.

Anna and Simeon are in the Temple, the place of encounter with God, looking for the coming Lord.

They could have said, as the psalm puts it, ‘we wait for thy loving-kindness, O Lord: in the midst of thy Temple’ (Psalm 48.8).

In the arms of his Mother, Jesus Christ is brought into their midst: the Hope of the Nations, the Light to Enlighten All People, God’s Own Salvation.

The words of the prophet Malachi are fulfilled for Anna and Simeon, ‘the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple’ (Malachi 3.1).

So we have the elders, Anna and Simeon, and the young parents, Mary, Jesus’ mother and Joseph, her husband and Jesus’ guardian.

This is the image from the icon of the Presentation of Christ in the Temple that you have on the prayer cards distributed this morning.

From left to right:

Joseph stands holding the two young pigeons for the sacrificial offering in the Temple and gazing over at Jesus.

Next to him is Anna, pointing at Mary, whose role was always to be the Mother of God, in Greek Theotokos, also translated, Godbearer. And Anna looks at Mary’s Son and holds in her hand an unfurled scroll with words of prophecy and expectation about Christ.

Then there is Mary herself, who has handed over her child - from the vestibule to the sanctuary - and like Anna, she has a gesture of pointing towards Jesus.

Then the heart of the icon: all eyes are directed at Jesus, who gives the appearance of tugging Simeon’s beard (just like when I have baptised babies and had my nose pinched, lapel microphone torn off and eye poked: yes, all that has happened).

And Simeon bears in his hands his Saviour and ours. It is almost as if he is receiving Holy Communion, and indeed he is, and look at the warmth of his loving gaze, and the reverence of his receiving of Jesus.

This is an inter-generational scene if ever there was one. The church is one of the few places that young and old come together, not graded by precedence but on an equal footing, because we are all here as children of the Most High, children of God.

Receiving Jesus is at the heart of Candlemas and the Christian life. And it has a practical outworking that we’ve been pondering in this church over since the Feast of the Epiphany.

How we receive children in church is a measure of our delight, valuing and welcome of the youngest into our midst, even if they figuratively pinch our noses, poke our eyes, or, more likely, bellow and wail.

Modern re-working of the traditional icon
of the Presentation, seen in a church in Ghent

Last Sunday leaders and helpers from our groups for children and young people at this church met to consider how best our children and young people might be served here, and how they remind us all of the call to be welcoming and hospitable to everyone.

That is what our Candlemas prayer card is for, that we might pray for the whole church family so that we may all, young and old, grow in wisdom.

So Candlemas tells us to welcome the young, appreciate those nurturing the young, and also value the precious wisdom that can come with years.

On one level that just gives us a sociological insight into the church; that is, if we fail to see that what is being presented in Christ is the mystery of his incarnation and the fullness of the Gospel. That’s what Simeon and Anna, Mary and Joseph see in the Temple when Christ is presented there.

The presentation of Christ in the Temple moves us on from any sociological observations and takes us deep into the realities of life and mortality, love and loss, hopes and pain.

Avoidance of the cost and pain of life and Christian discipleship does no one, least of all our children, any favours. The gospel is cheapened when we airbrush out the radicalism of its power, and try and blunt its dramatic message and full implications. That would be to proclaim Easter with the Cross. It’s what the twentieth century German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer calls ‘cheap grace’:

Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession... Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate. (Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship)

Grace is free, but should never be cheapened; that’s Bonhoeffer’s point. Cheap grace does not equip us to handle the predicament of being human, loving and losing, cherishing and weeping:

Anna knows God’s free gift of grace, having lived a life in loneliness as a widow for many years, worshipping and fasting, yet until this moment never having her hopes truly fulfilled. 

Simeon, a righteous man, knows God’s liberating grace as he sees his mortality in a new and liberating way: he can now die, knowing he has seen the Lord’s Messiah.

Mary learns of the costly grace that will come with the redeeming death of her son on the cross, as a sword pierces her own soul.

This is profoundly realistic about life. Christians do not live in cocoons. If we walk the way of the cross we can’t.

That is what the Candlemas Procession tells us: knowing Christ as Emmanuel, God with us, through his incarnation - and bearing candles signifying that light - we turn – young and old - from the Crib to the Cross, from the birth to the death of Jesus. Mortality is never far from our doors. Yet marked with the sign of the cross, recipients of the blood of Christ, our hope is well placed in the Light to enlighten the nations, Jesus Christ, our hope and our salvation.

Simeon glimpsed this truth and will have recognised its coming in every fibre of his being, for, as he knew from the psalms:

‘… this God is our God for ever and ever: he shall be our guide unto death’ (Psalm 48.13)

'You stand on holy ground' A sermon for Trinity Sunday

First preached as a sermon at Croydon Minster on Trinity Sunday 2019

‘You stand on holy ground’ (Exodus 3.5)

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Tonight’s readings (Exodus 3.1-15; John 3.1-17) present us with the mystery of God: God in wind and flame, and yet also a God found in silence and indefinable.

God as mystery; God in history; God through love.

Wind and flame evokes our celebration of Pentecost last week.

Then we recalled the coming of the Holy Spirit, a Person of the Trinity, who is the fullness of God, without denying the divinity of the Father and the Son, who comes in mighty rushing wind and tongues of flame.

Today we celebrate the Holy Trinity, a celebration of the Unity and the fullness of God, a fullness and plenitude that spills into our lives and is made known in encounter-in-love with Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

The flames of our first reading speak of the mystery of God to be encountered and yet not touched. Moses encounters the fullness of God, the One who speaks and says ‘I am who I am’.

Moses is told to remove his sandals for he stands on holy ground. The sense of the holiness of God is palpable in this encounter. In it too is the full presence of God. The Father, the source of all, speaks: ‘I am’.

The flames point us to the Holy Spirit, the voice that speaks of the redemption and deliverance of Israel places the Son, the Eternal Word, Jesus Christ as the heart of this, before his incarnation. Herein is the Trinity: Father, Son and Spirit.

The wind of our second reading, blowing where it will, speaks of God who is beyond our grasping, beyond holding on to, beyond categories that we understand.

Nicodemus encounters Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is not concept, Jesus Christ is a person, a human being, yet the fullness of God is pleased to dwell in him.

A most beautiful icon captures this divinity and humanity in Jesus Christ. It shows the Blessed Virgin Mary bearing Jesus in the midst of the flames of the Burning Bush: neither his divinity nor humanity is compromised or consumed in who he is.

We see that describing God (who cannot be described), describing God as Trinity states the Unity of God, and the Diversity of God.

How can we describe mystery? How can we describe love? We can describe its impact, we can use the most beautiful and evocative of language, but that language quickly runs out.

That’s why there is a strand of theology known as apophatic, or negative, theology, which acknowledges that as soon as we start speaking of God we become tongue tied.

The language of Trinity guards how we speak of God, constantly checking and restraining our fantasises and projections onto God. The Book of Common Prayer contains the Creed of St Athanasius. It is a dense, but rich, account of the Trinity and guards any language we put on God at every turn.

When we speak of God we have intellectually to remove the sandals from our feet, not because our minds don’t matter, but because ultimately our quest to search out God, to measure, categorise, handle, label God is fruitless. We move from mind to heart: comprehension to apprehension.

This is how we journey into the Mystery of God.

As the Letter to the Hebrews puts it: ‘You have not come to something that can be touched, a blazing fire, and darkness, and gloom, and the sound of a trumpet, and a voice whose words make the hearers beg that not another word be spoken… but you have come to the city of the Living God (Hebrews 12. 18, 19, 22)

The Trinity roots us in the life of the Divine, and that’s what we celebrate today: God as mystery; God in history; God in love.

Love-shaped Church

First preached as a sermon at Croydon Minster on the Fifth Sunday of Eastertide. The readings were Acts of the Apostles 11.1-18; John 13.31-35

‘I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you should love one another’ John 13.34

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Love beyond distinction; love beyond discrimination: boundless love.

What is the Gospel, what is the church, when everything is stripped away? Surely it is love beyond distinction; love beyond discrimination: boundless love. St Paul says ‘faith, hope and love endure, these three; and the greatest of these is love’ (1 Corinthians 13.13).

This is expressed in the new commandment that Jesus gives to his disciples and, by extension, to us. This new commandment is called in Latin, the Mandatum Novum, which is where we get the word ‘Maundy’ from, as in Maundy Thursday.

This new commandment lies at the heart of the Maundy Thursday liturgy. Flowing from that commandment and the Last Supper is Christ’s action of loving service, washing his disciples’ feet, demonstrating that it is in acts of loving service that we see the deepest revelation of love.

The remarkable Jean Vanier, who has very recently died – and may God grant him eternal rest – embodied this loving service. He founded the L’Arche communities in which people with disabilities of body and mind live, with those we call able, in communities of mutual support. Out of his obedience to the new commandment, and his deep love for the church and scriptures, he exemplified the Gospel imperative to love. Today L’Arche communities around the world live out the command to love one another.

Reflecting on our gospel passage, in his remarkable book Drawn into the Mystery of Jesus through the Gospel of John, Vanier writes:

Peter, Judas and the ‘beloved disciple’: three men who react in different ways to Jesus’ love.

Judas rejects and fears love. He pushes Jesus away.

Peter cannot understand Jesus. He loves Jesus but wants to do things his own way.

The beloved disciple surrenders to Jesus’ love and becomes his intimate friend.

These three attitudes are in each one of us at different moments of our lives.[1]

What an accurate summary of how Judas, Peter and John respond - or not - to love. And how searing and honest to observe that we are each prone to all three in our lives: rejection and fear of love, lack of comprehension of love and the embracing of giving and receiving love.

Understanding what love is all about is Peter’s challenge, and is it something picked up on in the reading from the Acts of the Apostles.

This is Peter’s ‘now I get it’ moment. In that slightly bizarre and unsettling vision Peter comes to a ‘penny drop’ moment: he fully understands now that ‘God shows no partiality’ (Acts 10.34).

God’s love is love beyond distinction, love beyond discrimination; boundless love.

And Peter asks, ‘who was I that I could hinder God’?

The task of the Church is to work with the movements of the Spirit, and not to go against.

Peter, representative of authority in the church, understands that any that varieties of service, structures and tradition, what has been handed on to us, is the scaffold that supports our proclamation of the message of God’s love.

The washing of feet by Jesus embodies the command to love: what of the feet to be washed around us? What does it mean to be the parish church of this local community and a Minster at the ancient heart of Croydon?

In a parish that has a local government ward with the highest percentage of young adults in any ward of London, that has the third highest incidence of mental health issues, that has areas in the bottom 5% of deprivation index, that is ethnically and religiously very mixed, that has high levels of loneliness and isolation, that has many complex lives: what does loving service look like?

In the light of all that is on our doorstep how do we respond without partiality and with the loving service of Christ?

From these two readings this morning we can see that the church is to be characterised by love: love of God and love for one another, and that loving service flows from that love.

Love is a resource we will never run out of and the more we give it away the more we receive it. That is true in our personal lives and true for the church. Be lavish in sharing love, and be ready to receive much.

All this helps inform our coming Vision Day as we reflect on who we are as a church so that we may 1) proclaim the Good News of the Kingdom, 2) teach, baptise and nurture new believers, 3) respond to human need by loving service, 4) seek to transform the unjust structures of society, to challenge violence of every kind and to pursue peace and reconciliation and 5) to strive to safeguard the integrity of creation and sustain and renew the life of the earth.

Three figures personify the characteristics of the church for us to keep in mind: Mary, Peter and John.

Mary is radically obedient to God: saying ‘yes’ to God’s will; giving her humanity to the service of the Kingdom; pointing constantly to Christ; patiently standing at the foot of the cross; anticipating the coming Holy Spirit. May we be a Marian church.

Peter, the Rock, is entrusted with authority in the church: given of the keys of the kingdom; forgiving and releasing; shepherding and, with Christ, laying down his life for the sheep; connecting the apostolic church in her mission of love into the whole world. May we be a Petrine church.

John, the Beloved Disciple, is the Apostle of the Love of God: nestling in the love of Jesus; telling us that ‘those who live in love live in God and God lives in them’; passing on to us Jesus’ new commandment that we love one another as Christ has loved us. May we be a Johannine church.

In that way we become a Christ-shaped church, attentive to God, connected in mission and filled with love.

Almighty God,

throughout the ages

you have blessed our church

with your presence and love:

Help us to cherish

all that you are doing in our midst,

that as young and old, women and men,

we may embrace your future with hope,

serve our parish

and sing your praises

now, and to all eternity.

Through Jesus Christ,

our risen and ascended Lord.

Amen.

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[1] Jean Vanier, Drawn into the Mystery of Jesus through the Gospel of John (DLT: 2004) p. 240.

Open minds to Scripture

First preached as a sermon at Croydon Minster at Choral Evensong, Fourth Sunday of Easter.

‘Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures…’ (Luke 24.45)

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If the church is to have a future it has to open up. As I suggested at Easter, a church community that is locked in and introspective is doomed, whereas a church that unbolts and opens up has the chance to become, in Christ’s words at the end of the second lesson, ‘witnesses of these things [ the things about Jesus Christ]… and to be clothed with power’ (Luke 24.48, 49)

A refrain running through the gospels is about opening up.

At Jesus’ baptism the heavens were opened.

He opened the ears of the deaf (Mark 7.34) and the eyes of the blind (John 9.1-12 passim).

At his resurrection the tomb was both empty and open.

After his resurrection he opens up minds. From our second lesson, again, ‘Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures…’ and on the Road to Emmaus it was after Jesus has opened up the scriptures to two bewildered disciples that we read, ‘then their eyes were opened…’ (Luke 24.31)

‘Then he opened their minds to the scriptures…’ One of my great sadnesses is that much of the treasure of the church has remained locked up. I don’t mean glittering, gilt chalices or mediaeval manuscripts, I mean the gift of the Word of God, witnessed to in the scriptures.

This was a treasure the early Bible translators wanted to open up to people in all languages. St Jerome for example translated scripture from the Hebrew and Greek into the, then, universal language of Latin. Even before the Reformation translations were being made in the vernacular, the common tongue by the likes of John Wycliffe in the fourteenth century, and then in the sixteenth century by William Tyndale. Later Bible translation has opened up this treasure in almost every written language.

The challenge for us today is how we understand and handle the scriptures and open up the treasures of the gospel to our contemporary world.

The Bible is available but what does it mean for people?

As has been widely suggested, we live in ‘a disenchanted age’.[1] In such an age it is often assumed that someone who has a holy text or sacred scripture is either delusional – “how can they believe all that ancient rubbish from a superstitious era?” - stupid – “what’s all that rubbish about angels, creation etc?” -  or dangerous – “their books tell them to stone adulterers and gay people”.

Where does one start with that?

One of the most helpful books I have read in a long time is by the theologian Walter Moberly. It’s called The Bible in a Disenchanted Age: The Enduring Possibility of Christian Faith.

Moberly has made the study of the scriptures his lifetime passion and helps us to interrogate what scripture really is.

Why does anyone bother to read scripture? Why do people who have never read it feel free to opine about it? Why do we read it in church, actually at every act of worship ever offered?

Some see the Bible as good for historical knowledge, a classic text, albeit one amongst many, and a key to understanding western civilisation, culture, literature and art. That is a very western centred idea, of course, and also begs the question why bother with the Bible any more than say, the Greek Myths or the works of Shakespeare.

Others see the Bible as a means to wisdom and the knowledge of God and that it is when it is Scripture.

It is not contradictory to hold both views: knowledge of the Bible does open up many cultural avenues, as well as being a resource for faith, but as Moberly says ‘the distinction is real, since the Bible, approached as Scripture, is not only a text in a class or perhaps an exhibit on display but belongs also in the life of Christians as a fundamental resource for understanding the realities of God and of life’.[2]

The problems come when we detach scripture from a living tradition and human reason and when we detach the Bible from the Living Word of God, Jesus Christ. It is an enduring question about which came first the bible or the church, and which carries greater authority, the Bible or the Church. It’s perhaps as futile as asking whether the chicken preceded the egg or vice versa.

A sixteenth century Vicar of Croydon, Rowland Philips, was being interrogated by Archbishop Thomas Cranmer (probably just next door in the Old Palace) on just this question and was asked, ‘whether the apostles preached to the gentiles that which the evangelists wrote?’ In other words did the apostles, the early church, have a Bible from which they preached? Philips answered that ‘the evangelists wrote what the apostles preached’.[3] In other words, the proclamation preceded its writing down.

I hold to Philips view. That said: it matters little which preceded which because what matters is fidelity to Christ. The Bible never describes itself as the ‘Word of God’ but it does describe Jesus Christ as the ‘Word of God’.

‘Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures…’

The proclamation of the Resurrection precedes the written text. All scripture is to be read in the light of the Word of God, Jesus Christ, for Christ, who in the power of the Holy Spirit, it is who opens up the words on the page, such that they become the ‘lively oracles of God’ (cf Acts 7.37, 38).

May God’s holy word be ‘a lantern unto our feet and a light unto our paths, (Psalm 119.105) and may it be ‘sweeter than honey unto my mouth’ (Ps 119.103).

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[1] R W L Moberly The Bible in a Disenchanted Age: The Enduring Possibility of Christian Faith.

[2] Moberly, p. 172.

[3] Peter Marshall, Heretics and Believers: A History of the English Reformation. p. 257.