Category: sermons

Marriage and Divorce

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This is a sermon I wrote last time this passage came up in the lectionary – I’m posting it here in case anyone finds it useful for this Sunday (7th October 2012). I believe that it owes rather a lot to the very helpful, erudite, and generally fab Tom Wright.   And probably some other people too.

During the 1990s it was not uncommon for clergy, and especially bishops, to be contacted by journalists and asked about their view on divorce. Of course, this was not a general hypothetical question, but an extremely loaded one, and no matter how the bishop in question tried to make it clear that what they were saying was a general statement rather than being about a specific situation, the journalist would always end up saying, ‘so you’re saying that in the case of Prince Charles and Diana…’

Similarly when Jesus is asked the question about divorce in today’s gospel reading, it is not, in fact, a general hypothetical question at all.

Consider that the location for this whole argument is just beyond the river Jordan – that’s John the Baptist’s old stamping ground.  And consider that the reason John got into trouble with Herod in the first place, and so ended up being beheaded, was that he had dared to criticize Herod’s marriage to Herodias, his brother’s wife.  When  you bear all that in mind, the Pharisees’ question that claims to be a general one about divorce and adultery, is in fact a very specific question, designed to trick Jesus into revealing where he stands on the whole subject of Herod’s marriage, and hence, where he stands on Herod’s viability as a leader of God’s people.

As usual, Jesus is wise to the trick question.  If we needed proof that he understood that the question was really about Herod, then we need look no further than his explanation to the disciples: although it was almost unheard of for a woman to initiate divorce, Jesus includes it as a possibility in his explanation because this is exactly what happened in the case of Herodias.   Jesus undoubtedly knew what the question was about.  So in public he answers just like he did with the question of whether a Jew should pay taxes to the Romans: he widens the question back out again, and (a) asking what he law says, and (b) pointing out what really matters.

So much for the question and what lies behind it.  How about Jesus’ answer?

Well, another thing that’s easy to miss, or misunderstand, with this passage, is Jesus’ reference to Moses.  Jesus asks, ‘What did Moses command you?’  And the Pharisees answer that he permitted divorce, in certain circumstances.

But consider whether this was really what Jesus was asking them.  In Jesus’ day, and indeed for centuries afterwards, everyone believed that Moses was the author of the whole of the Pentateuch – the first five books of the Bible.  So when Jesus asks ‘what did Moses command?’ and then goes on to and then goes on to talk about the book of Genesis, this is what he really wanted them to think about: the initial command of God to Adam and Eve, as Genesis explains it.

This Genesis passage that Jesus refers to is all about the relationship between human beings, and about our relationship with God and with God’s world. Relationships, and marriages that are loving and committed are one manifestation of the image of God in us.  But it’s not hard to look around and see many, many ways in which we, as a species, have fallen short of God’s perfect creation, and marr that image.  Divorce and indeed any relationship breakdown is but one of those ways.  And indeed, all of us, in all our relationships, even when they are working well, are but imperfect and distorted versions of the divine image.  That’s who we are, we are fallen people, and in a sense, we should not seek for our relationships to be perfect – if we do that, then we set ourselves up to see in every marriage grounds for divorce.

Every broken relationship is a crack in the mirror that we were designed to be, the mirror of God’s love for the world. This is not to lay a huge burden of guilt on divorcing couples, but to ask that the whole Christian community should play its part in supporting marriage, relationships and families, because what they symbolise is so essential to our being.  That’s why in the preface to the marriage service, it talks of marriage enriching society and strengthening community.  But that’s also why later in the service, at the end of the declarations, the family and friends of the couple are asked if they will support and uphold them in their marriage, both now and in the years to come.  This is a serious responsibility, and I do heartily wish that more of the people who come to weddings realized how serious the responsibility is.

What Jesus does in this encounter, is point out, in his usual subtle way, that the Pharisees are asking the wrong question.  Yes, he says, in Deuteronomy there is a permission for divorce to happen, because human beings are not perfect and we do fall short of what God intended for us.  We each, individually and in our relationships, contain the divine image, but imperfectly and in distorted and clouded form.  But to ask whether divorce is lawful betrays an attitude to ethics that approaches all dilemmas with the question, ‘what can we get away with before God will really mind?’ rather than, ‘what is God’s deepest desire for us?  Jesus’ ministry is not characterized by a quest for ‘what people can get away with’, nor with condemning others for doing things that are just the other side of that ‘lawful’ line.

This is where we come to the crux of the problem, whether we’re talking about Jesus’ own time, or our own.  For the fact is that divorce is something that it is almost impossible to talk about in general terms, because it isn’t an abstract idea that one can pronounce upon from the pulpit, or from anywhere else for that matter.  It’s a very human tragedy, that happens one case at a time, to people we know and love, and perhaps even to some of us.  Jesus spent enough time in his ministry with those who had been hurt by life to be very aware of this.  A broken marriage is a tragedy, and causes untold hurt, no matter whose fault it was, and no matter how mutual or otherwise the decision to end the marriage.  And doing it all ‘by the book’ and on the right side of the law can never take away that pain and hurt.

What Jesus says is tough; it’s hugely tough – almost so much so that it makes one want to preach on something other than the gospel!  But I don’t believe it is the sort of tough that we have sometimes believed it to be.  I don’t believe that Jesus is saying that a marriage cannot be ended, that second marriages after divorce are not marriages at all, as in the traditional Roman Catholic position, though of course I know that many do believe that, and that many people who have been left by their husband or wife do not feel in themselves that they are unmarried.  As I read Jesus’ response, it seems to me that he is saying, yes, there is a provision there in the law, but know how serious it is to tear two people apart who have given themselves to each other. Don’t get sucked in to asking merely what is legal.  Don’t let society, or the law, or anyone else, tell you that it doesn’t matter.  It does matter.

Jesus says to them, it’s wrong to ask ourselves how and to what extent we can break and damage the image of God in us without God minding too much, because every way in which that image is marred matters, and it all causes pain to us and to others, and to all of God’s creation, and grieves the heart of God.  Each of us, individually and corporately, break that image again and again, every day.  Our energies would be better spent it we stopped thinking legalistically and working out how to justify ourselves before God, asking ‘is it lawful’, and instead concentrated on coming before God in all our brokenness – with the cracks in the divine image that our own sin has made, and the cracks that have been made in us through the sin of others – and asking for God’s healing.

What God can and can’t use

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Trinity 17 B (2012) Mark 9.38-50

‘Whoever is not against us is for us,’ says Jesus when his friends worry that there are people doing miracles in Jesus’ name who aren’t part of their posse.  The disciples’ worry is a very human one, it’s about control.  It’s a very similar one to the story in Acts when it turns out that a whole load of Gentiles are showing all the fruits of the Spirit, despite not having been baptised.  In both cases, the proof of the pudding seems to be in the eating, or perhaps, by their fruits they are shown to be of God.

‘Whoever gives one of these little ones even a cup of water because they are a believer, then they will not lose their reward,’ Jesus goes on to say. There’s at least a basic lesson here for the disciples: they, the twelve, the inner circle, are by no means the only followers of Jesus, and there is a role in the building of the kingdom not only for apostles, prophets, missionaries and teachers, but for the quieter, less spectacular ministries of hospitality and care.

But this whole passage is about more than that. It’s not completely straightforward reading at first, but there is a hugely important nugget of truth in this reading which needs teasing out. It’s in three parts.

The first part is that God is very good at taking what we do offer and using it to do something amazing. Look at the feeding of the five thousand, when he turned one person’s packed lunch into a hearty meal for a whole crowd. Look at the wedding at Cana when he turned hard work and plain water into finest wine. Look at the parable of the sheep and the goats when he takes the basic human kindness of people who don’t even consider that they’ve been serving God and counts it to their salvation.  God is brilliant at finding in us something good, something worth using, worth encouraging, worth celebrating, seeing even in our hesitant offerings the potential to build his kingdom.

The second part concerns the very real truth that there are things that get in the way of all that. There are things we do and think and say that pollute our kindness, that subvert our good intentions, that poison the good fruit that we might otherwise offer to God.  These things will be different for each of us, but there are certainly some popular besetting sins: anger and resentment, being quick to take offense or slow to forgive, assuming the worst of each other, rather than the best – it is for each of us to discern within ourselves what stumbling blocks we lay down both for others and for ourselves, for these are the things that risk stopping us being able to offer the simple things we have to God.

The third part is that God is also simply amazing at spotting what he can use, and purging away what he can’t use. He sees our sins far more clearly than we do. He knows the difference between real current sins that are actively acting against him, and the memories of past sins that are long forgiven by God and yet still haunt us and cripple us. He is adept at sifting through the complexity of our lives and finding in us things that are worthwhile, precious, priceless… and of identifying those things that need to be excised.  God is the great divider: but the division between the sheep and the goats, and between the wheat and the tares, is not between one person and another, but within each of us, separating out what can be used in the building of the kingdom and what cannot.

And yes, we may be amazed by what it turns out God can use. For even some of our memories of past hurts and wrong-doing can become the cup of water that we offer to a fellow pilgrim.

Trust in God, that he can use far more of each of us than we can possibly imagine. And in that trust, find also the courage to ask God, once and for all, to free us from those few things that really do stand in the way.

For whatever is not against God, can be  used in his service and to his glory.

Sermon for Trinity 14 (B) 9th September 2012

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Based on James 2.1-17 & Mark 7.24-30

There are various explanations out there that try and soften the story of Jesus and the Syro-Phoenecian woman. And it’s no wonder: at first glance it simply seems that Jesus is simply being appallingly rude, and changes his mind on a whim when the woman comes up with a cleverer response than he was expecting.  I’m sure I’m not alone in wanting an explanation as to why Jesus doesn’t exactly look very Christ-like in this story.

With my slightly ropey Greek, I can see where people are coming from when they home in on the word ‘dogs’ – they may well be right when they say that the word doesn’t mean ‘nasty wild dogs’ but more like ‘pet puppies’.  Well, that may cut down on the offensiveness of Jesus’ words, but it’s still pretty patronising, so I’m not sure it helps much, on the face of it at least.

Then there are those who say that Jesus knew right away that there was more to this woman than met the eye, that he always intended to heal her daughter, and his words were only ever intended to provoke her into an insight of faith – he was giving her a chance to prove herself.  Again, fair enough, but it still sounds a bit mean.

When I try and understand this story, I find it helps me to think about why it’s been included in the gospel, and why the gospel writer told it in this particular way.  If we assume that every word of the gospels is there for a reason, then we can ask ourselves why these particular verses  are here, and what we can learn from them. 

If this is where we start from, we can start to speculate a bit more, especially if we focus not so much on what Jesus says, but on what the woman says: ‘Even the dogs feed on the scraps that fall from the children’s plates’.  There’s so much in that sentence! 

Why are there leftover scraps?  Are the children not eating their food carefully enough?  Are they leaving the bits they don’t like, perhaps?  Are the children perhaps not very good at eating a healthy balanced diet, and are only eating the parts that appeal to them?  Whether she knows it or not, the woman is critiquing those of the chosen people (largely the religious leaders and teachers of the law) that Jesus himself spends much of his time critiquing.  The woman’s words are very much in line with so much of what Jesus has to say about the Jewish leaders’ rejection of his words.  It’s as if the woman and her daughter, and her clever retort, are an enactment of Jesus’ own words in so many of his parables.  The children have been given a feast of stories and miracles and love and they’ve dropped half of it on the floor, uncaring of the one who made them the meal.

Meanwhile, there seems to be plenty left for the dogs to eat, and perhaps the dogs are in the same room, sitting alongside the family, part of the household. Eating together, eating the same food, sharing a meal – these are powerful symbols of unity and fellowship.  The gospels are full of parables of banquets, stories of Jesus and his friends sitting down to eat together, and our own celebration of the Eucharist is a memorial and re-enactment of the last supper itself. When we share food, we share something far more significant.  We affirm that we are indeed of the same household, the same family, and what family does not include the pets as part of that fellowship? 

Perhaps what this story offers is yet more evidence that it’s the definition of the household that’s being extended.  So many times Jesus reminds the crowds and the leaders, who believe they’ve been born into the right to a special relationship with God, that he can raise up children of Abraham from the very stones under their feet – there is no birthright, no short cut, being part of the household of God brings responsibilities and demands an ongoing loving relationship, not just an accident of birth. 

This is a truth that the crowds don’t find it easy to understand.  And which the religious leaders find offensive and threatening.  And it’s a truth that the story of the Syro-Phoenecian woman lives out.  The household is being redefined, expanded; walls are being torn down between those of different races and backgrounds, because the gospel that Jesus brings turns out to be not only for the chosen people but for all the people.

Perhaps the woman herself is telling Jesus, “I get it – I get that you’re here for us as well as for them – your own chosen people, God’s children, may not understand that, but the dogs are listening and understanding.” 

Or perhaps it is the gospel writer himself who puts those powerful words into her mouth to show that he gets it.  Look at this, he says. Look at this person, a woman, and a foreigner, a gentile, at that. And she’s got a difficult child.  She’s about as much an outsider as we’re likely to come across, and she’s there in the story to show you all that the thing about the gospel being for everyone, not just for the chosen people really is true.  She’s the evidence.  She and her daughter.

Time and time again the gospel writers give the best bits to the outsiders.  Think about the woman at the well in John chapter 4, with her string of ex-husbands and her boyfriend, and who evangelises a whole city. Think about the centurion right at the end of Mark’s gospel who is the one to look at Jesus on the cross and acclaim him as the Son of God.  Think about the centurion who asks Jesus to heal his servant, and makes the astounding declaration of faith, ‘only say the word and he will be healed’.  

The gospels embody this message: that Jesus is for everyone, not just for the chosen people.  They embody that message in stories, in parables, in healing miracles, in offhand comments, in questions, in arguments, in cameo roles and walk-on parts for strangers. And they show time and time again the wealth of teaching and love and healing offered by God, poured out by God onto his people, being rejected and dismissed by the very people who should have lapped it up. 

The dogs would have had rich pickings even with the leftovers.  And we know what Jesus’ attitude is towards leftovers from the story of the feeding of the 5000: not only is there lots to spare, but also none of it gets wasted. 

In all these ways, the gospels subtly build up a picture of God’s generosity, and the way that the household of God grew and encompassed more and more people. It’s a generosity that even today we sometimes find hard to live out in our own lives.  Human beings build walls, we judge, we segregate, even if we don’t mean to. We find those who are different from us difficult.  It may or may not be consoling to find that in today’s epistle, James is writing to a church who clearly need the subtle message of the gospel spelling out for them just as we sometimes do.

Mercy is better than judgement, James writes. It’s what you do that matters more than what you say.  Love your neighbour as yourself, even if your neighbour is different from you and somehow challenging or difficult.  Treat everyone equally and don’t get dragged into the world’s hierarchical view that some people are more significant than others.

Yes, James tells us plainly what Jesus demonstrated and hinted.  The question is not whether we grasp it from the gospel reading or the epistle reading, but whether we accept it, and feast on it, making its wisdom part of our lives, and letting it fuel our words and actions.  In the end, it doesn’t matter whether we’re children or dogs. There’s plenty of food on offer, for any and all that choose to be part of the household when God tells us that the feast is ready. 

 

John 6… again

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We’ve been loitering around John chapter 6 for several weeks now.  Jesus has fed the five thousand, and his miracle has led into a lengthy and sometimes difficult theological discussion about the bread of life, which in today’s gospel has proved to be too much for some of the crowds. While Jesus was still making one packed lunch feed a crowd and even making the leftovers laughably miraculous, they were more than happy to follow him; now he’s started talking about them drinking his own blood and eating his own flesh, they’re not so sure. And small wonder – the very idea of cannibalism is abhorrent to most human cultures and societies, and for those who couldn’t get past the literal words of Jesus, what he was saying in today’s gospel was beyond what they could comprehend or accept.

For these last few weeks that we’ve been spending with John chapter 6, the lectionary has gradually immersed us in one of the most significant themes of John’s gospel account of the life and ministry of Jesus: namely, how does the physical, material reality of the incarnation, relate to the spiritual reality of what Jesus came to do?

When we ask ourselves this question as we read John 6, it’s helpful to remember something.  In John’s gospel, his account of the Last Supper doesn’t give us a version of what we call the ‘institution narrative’ for Holy Communion.  Where the other gospels give us Jesus breaking bread with his friends and saying ‘this is my body’ and pouring wine and sharing it with them saying ‘This is my blood – do this in rememberance of me’, John instead tells us the story of how Jesus washed his friends’ feet.

If we want to find a ‘this is my body’ and ‘this is my blood’ moment in John’s gospel, we look not to the Last Supper, but to John chapter 6,  Seeing the chapter this way can help us understand why John wrote his gospel in the way he did, and shed some light on how Jesus’ words and actions in chapter 6 relate to the rest of the gospel.

So, what do we find in chapter 6? Two things spring most readily to my mind, though there are many more.

First, we find an exploration of Jesus’ place in the history of salvation, of God’s love for the world. Just as the Last Supper makes the link between the Jewish Passover meal (remembering how God freed his people from slavery in Egypt) and our Holy Communion, so John 6 makes Jesus into a new Moses, contrasting the purely physical nourishment that the people of Israel ate in the desert, and the spiritual nourishment that Jesus can offer them.

Second, we find an exploration of the relationship between the physical reality of Jesus’ birth and earthly life, his miracles, and his coming suffering and death, and their spiritual meaning (on a purely metaphorical level) and effectiveness (in terms of God’s work of salvation).

So Jesus’ words in today’s gospel do rather challenge us with a question: what do we think is actually going on when we celebrate Holy Communion together?  I suspect that if we all wrote our answers down on a piece of paper right now, we’d get as many different explanations or understandings as there are people, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

But there might well be some common threads.

Firstly, that we’re taking part in something that’s bigger than we are, that has its roots in something that predates the time of Jesus’ earthly life, but that recorded and celebrated as one of the most significant moments in God’s relationship with his people. If you’ve ever had the privilege of taking part in a Jewish passover meal, or a Christian version of it, you will have been, I’m sure, acutely aware of the weight of history and the richness of tradition, of knowing that you are part of something that is far bigger than any of us. To sit down with one’s brothers and sisters in faith, and to share a simple meal is one of the most significant things that we can do together. It puts us in touch with one another and with God in a way that is profound and personal, simple and yet beyond our full understanding.

Second, we might find that between us we’ve tried to find words to express something of idea that the physical bread and wine and the words of the service are not all that is going on, that there is something deeper at work, through the grace of God.  When I see wedding couples, I often show them how the wedding service has four interwoven strands: words, actions, the couple’s own thoughts and feelings, and what God is doing in them and for them – together, those four strands make a wedding one of life’s most overwhelming experiences. It’s easy to see this at work in a wedding, but we can also see something similar happening in Holy Communion, in which we have Jesus’ own words of institution: this is my body, this is my blood; we have the bread and wine themselves, and the way we experience them with our senses; we have our own thoughts and feelings, understandings, doubts, questions, faith and so on; and we have the work of God in our lives through that moment that he has given to us that we call a sacrament.

John’s gospel is brilliant at highlighting the spiritual reality of Jesus’ actions and words.  This makes it inspiring and mysterious to read, and not always easy to understand. Some have even said that the balance is so far over to the spiritual that we lose some of Jesus’ humanity.  But even in chapter 6 I think there are real signs of Jesus the man even in the midst of all the theology: we have his frustration that the crowds can’t see beyond the free food, we see his despondency at the idea that some of his disciples may leave him, and that they may ultimately betray him; we see him trying everything to get them to understand what he is really about, what matters most.   Again and again we see his very willingness to use the ordinary stuff of life – fish, bread, wine, water – to unwrap the mystery of God’s love for his people. And ultimately, chapter 6 gives us a pretty heavy hint about the very real and physical death that Jesus is willing to endure in order that we might be raised up to participate in eternal life. ‘Lord, to whom shall we go, for you have the words of eternal life.’

John 6 shows us Jesus the teacher, Jesus the pastor, Jesus the leader, the new Moses, Jesus the sacrificial lamb, and Jesus the way to life eternal. As we receive the bread and wine today, may we experience the true closeness of the Son of God in bread and wine, and fine ourselves raised up and able to hear those words of life for ourselves and share them with others.

The Beheading of John the Baptist

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Sermon for Sunday 15th July 2012 (Mark 6.14-29 & Ephesians 1.3-14)

I so often begin a sermon by saying that the gospel of the day is one of my favourites. This is not one of those times. In fact, it’s pretty hard to find any good news in this gospel.

As a moral tale, one can read it politically: point out that corruption and sleaze are nothing new, but have always been there, and that when those in power try to save face rather than face up to their mistakes, there are often casualties. We may lament at this, and at how those who speak up and speak out so often seem to pay too high a price for their integrity.

But there is no good news in any of that, no gospel, merely confirmation of what our sometimes-cynical minds know represents some of the worst of humanity. If anything, this shows us how much we – just as the world in Herod and John’s day – need the gospel.

And that gospel had been the whole meaning of John’s life. He’d spent his adult years preaching essentially three things:

  • Repentance and forgiveness are real, and necessary, and they are for everyone
  • The kingdom of God is coming closer, and this a promise of hope and a threat of judgement
  • There is someone greater coming: Jesus the Messiah.

These three messages were John’s whole reason for being.

The last one, that Jesus was coming, had finally started to be fulfilled.  The story of John’s beheading is told by Mark between the account of Jesus sending out his twelve disciples to begin their ministry, and their return, full of stories of success. The baton has well and truly been passed on.  John’s role as the last great prophet has been accomplished, and his work is done.

But the other parts of John’s message are not yet finished. And Herod stands as the final person to whom John brings them, and with whom he tries to share them.

John brings Herod the gospel of repentance, the truth about sin and forgiveness.  John’s right, Herod should not have married Herodias, it broke the laws that were there for a reason. And if Herod didn’t like it being pointed out, Herodias liked it even less. But Herod, at least, seems interested and ambivalent enough to listen. Were there stirrings of guilt and a desire for change somewhere in his heart, that could, eventually have found expression in the way he lived his life?  We will never know. But undoubtedly John’s last act was to keep on preaching repentance to Herod, and keep offering him the chance of God’s forgiveness, the chance to make things right. John never gave up his calling to show Herod the reality of God’s mercy, even though in the end, no mercy was shown to him.

And John also spend his last days showing Herod what the kingdom of God was like. This, I think, must have been what really intrigued the king. It’s as if he caught a glimpse of a different way of doing things, of a different kind of power, or a different world order, and was both fascinated and frightened by it. No doubt Herod would have kept John around far longer to see more of this kingdom of God at work, had he not made that rash, wine-fuelled promise to Salome and offered her anything up to half his kingdom.

So Herod was faced with a choice. Save John, and keep alive the glimpse of another kind of kingdom, or sacrifice John to save his own kind of kingdom, his own political reputation. Herod fails the test, just as Pontius Pilate would fail his own test when Jesus showed him a glimpse of the kingdom later. Herod, like Pilate, chooses the values of his own kingdom over the glimpse of the kingdom of God, and rejects his own shot at receiving mercy by failing to show it to others.

There are so many pre-echoes in John’s story of the story of the passion of Jesus. Not only the corrupt leader who can’t seem to make the morally right and spiritually right choice, the condemnation on a whim – but above all the way in which both John and Jesus approach their deaths offering to those who are hurting them a glimpse of the kingdom and a chance at forgiveness.  Right up til the end.

Jesus and John lived their lives as a blessing from God to the world.  But God’s blessing was not always straightforward or painless. They brought life and truth and mercy, and these values are sometimes so much at odds with the ways of the world that they may seem impossible to accept.  Jesus and John showed how to make good choices even when bad choices were easier, and they showed integrity even when self-interest was easier. But above all they showed us that there is nothing that God would not do, no length to which he would not go, to keep on giving his people glimpses of the kingdom and offers of forgiveness.

If we want a glimpse of that today, then we need look no further than the epistle reading: Ephesians will go on to talk at length about how to lead a moral life and how to live as a Christian community, but all of that is in the context of what Paul puts at the start of the letter: God’s love for the world is eternal, his blessing is beyond our imagining.  If we can keep that vision alive in our own hearts, truly grasping that the kingdom of heaven is not something far off and unattainable, but as something that is bigger than any of us, too powerful to be held back even by the corruption of the world, and is our whole purpose for being since the creation of the world, then we, like John and like Jesus, may find the strength and inspiration never to give up our calling, offering with every breath we have a glimpse of God’s mercy and blessing and forgiveness – to those around us.