Category: sermons

John 2.13-22 (Lent 3 B, 2012)

We’re used to hearing this story as part of Holy Week, because the other gospel writers place the event towards the end of Jesus’ ministry.  The fact that John puts it right at the start shows us that it’s a crucial part of Jesus’ manifesto. It shows us who he is and what he is about, in a dramatic way – and it shows the other side to his identity from that which was revealed at the wedding at Cana, earlier in chapter 2.

Today, we see someone outspoken, courageous, prophetic, unafraid to challenge authority, and concerned to get to the heart of what really matters, whatever it takes.

THis is a story about the Temple, but it’s very much a story about Jesus himself. In fact, Jesus’ choice of the Temple as a metaphor for his own body adds another layer: when he entered the Temple and saw what was going on, he must have ‘named and shamed’ a whole list of sins, sins which, left unchecked, would eventually corrupt and erode the fabric of the worshipping community perhaps beyond all repair. Perhaps Jesus saw in that moment that many of those same sins would be on show again in the run-up to his own passion and death.

We, as Chrisitians and as a church, call ourselves the body of Christ. This reading makes me wonder what sins we could ‘name and shame’ as we look around at that body (both locally in our own congregations and in the national church, and beyond).  What sins are contributing right at this moment to the tearing down of the body of Christ on earth?  Disunity, certainly, a distraction from the gospel in favour of concern with our own institutions, apathy… we could all list the sins that we see around us in our own churches.

What would the cleansing of these Temples look like?

Recently my two congregations created a wordle about how they felt in church, and about church, and I was really heartened by the words that were highlighted: peace, calm, friendship, community…

But are these things that we say about ourselves the whole story?  Are there sins and divisions and pains that we dare not name?  If Christ were to walk into our church communities, are there thnigs that he would tear down, cast out, and condemn?

But take heart.  If this sounds like a very disheartening message, remember that Jesus spoke not only of the destruction of his body, but of its resurrection.  Can God bring forth life from death?  Can God turn destruction into creativity?  Can God bring unity from fractured lives and relationships?  Yes!  This is the gospel that we need to bring to our church congregations, and to every community of which we are both glad and frustrated, challenged, and disturbed to be a part.

Some ramblings that may constitute a little talk-ette for the 10am Family Communion:

There are so many ways that we’ve told this story over the last few days and weeks. We’ve been gradually filling this crib scene with figures (and it’s not finished yet  – the wise men are still on a window ledge in the chancel!); we’ve dressed up in our crib service yesterday, we’ve had bible readings, poems, and carols galore.

The story we’ve been telling is a story of how heaven touched earth.

Heaven touched earth when Mary was visited by the angel, and heaven touched earth in the angel’s reassuring dream to Joseph.

Heaven touched earth all the long months of Mary’s pregnancy, as the baby grew inside her, and heaven touched earth in every minute of the family’s journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem, as they were kept safe.

Heaven touched earth when the angels visited the shepherds on the hillside, and again when they ran to the stable and saw Jesus for themselves. And heaven touched earth every time they told the story.

Heaven touched earth when God sent the star to guide the wise men, and again when they laid their gifts at his feet and saw that he was King and God and sacrifice.

All of those moments in our story were moments of heaven touching earth.

But there are more moments, and they still happen.

Heaven touches earth every time we sing a carol and feel that the hopes and fears of all the years are being met in Christ.

Heaven touches earth every time we, like the shepherds, share the story.

Heaven touches earth every time we pray, ‘be near me Lord Jesus’.

Heaven touches earth in the nice, glittery bits of life (the triumph), and in the dark dingy bigs, too, in the war zones, the illnesses, and more…

In a moment the children will sing to us ‘Away in a manger’.  As they do, think about all the people who are praying ‘be near me Lord Jesus’ at this moment, and all the people who don’t know that they can ask or pray.

Think of those people as we sing, and pray in your hearts that heaven will touch their little bit of earth as it has touched ours this morning.

Amen.

The Sheep and the Goats This Sunday’s gospel reading, from Matthew 25, used to really worry me. If it was all about the final judgement, then it seemed to say that everything was black and white, and that you were either a sheep or a goat, either all good or all bad. I’ve always reckoned that I’m a bit sheep and a bit goat – there have been plenty of times when I’ve fed the hungry, visited prisoners and the rest, and plenty of times when I could have done, and didn’t. Where does that leave me? And how would any of us know whether we’d done enough of the good stuff to be called a sheep rather than a goat at the last judgement? In fact, since Jesus is elsewhere pretty clear that the judging isn’t up to us, it would be odd if he’s provided us here with a formula that we could apply ourselves.

That’s just one of the things that makes me think that perhaps this parable isn’t fundamentally about the last judgement at all, but is about something else. It’s about several other things, in fact, but two of them are particularly intriguing: It seems pretty clear that it’s generosity, kindness and self-giving that are the characteristics the king wants to commend. Faith without works is nowhere in the picture. Is there hope here for those who lived lives of kindness, but who never expressed an overt faith in Christ? ‘When did we ever feed you or clothe you, or visit you?’ they might say, and yet still find that Christ recognises their service to their fellow human beings as being service to him.

That’s how we get to the climax of each part of the story: ‘whenever you did (or didn’t) do this for the least of my children you did (or didn’t) do it for me’. To serve one another is indeed to serve God, because each of us is made in God’s image. For me, this is the parable that best unpacks the two great commandments: love God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength, and love your neighbour as you love yourself. Because these two commandments are not two, but one. To love God is to love what God has made; to love one another is to love the one in whose image we are made. And to love our neighbour as ourselves is to recognise the divine image in others and in ourselves.

There is, in essence, only one great commandment, the commandment of love, and real love is always manifested in action. And, when it comes down to it, it’s living lives of love that will build the kingdom of God here on earth. The more we have, by God’s grace, built a little bit of heaven on earth, the less we have to fear any kind of final judgement.

A sermon preached at St Mary’s, Buckden, 13th November 2011

For many of you here today, you are here because of a promise: the silent agreement that those who come back will remember those who do not. You’re here out of solidarity with all who share in the fellowship of arms, those alongside whom you have fought, at the very brink of life and death, with the certainty that you would die for them, as they for you. Greater love have no man than this, to lay down his life for his friends. You’re here because as long as you live it’s your responsibility to be here, to remember, to ensure that the act of remembering continues.

You’re here, perhaps, because you fear that if you don’t do this, nobody will. There are fewer and fewer people who have any first hand memories of the first world war, and in another generation there will be nobody left who remembers world war two. Every year the number of first hand witnesses dwindles, and every year there is concern that the will to remember may dwindle with them.

Yet, the remembering goes on. This church today is packed. Every year another generation of young people from our uniformed organisations turn out to pay their respects.

On Friday I was at Buckden School for their Armistice Day service. Everybody sang – the whole school had learned the same hymn with which we opened our service this morning. Everybody – even the four-year-olds in reception – honoured the silence with seriousness and respect. A young lad in the Beavers read the famous words by Lawrence Binyon in a voice with a clarity and dignity that would make any of you proud. 250-odd children, and dozens of adults – staff and visitors – the vast majority of whom have no personal experience of serving their country, all engaging in an act of remembering. It seems that the will and desire to remember is as strong here in Buckden as it has ever been.

I guess that like me, many of us here today also have no direct memories of conflict to bring to mind today. We may have the stories of spouses, parents, grandparents, friends, and we may have our own imaginings of what reality lies behind the news reports from Afghanistan; but we come here not because we have our own memories to process, nor because of a promise to fallen friends and comrades, but because we recognise a collective need and desire to remember, for everyone’s sake.

For remembering is more than recalling. Today is a chance to re-member, to reaffirm that even if we have not seen action, we stand in solidarity with those of you who have, knowing that you have stood for us. Look around you now. If you, like me, have no direct experience of war, know that you share this space today with those who have risked everything in the service of their country and in the pursuit of peace. If you are among those who have seen active duty, whether in current conflict or in years past, look around you now and see that your risks, your courage, your sacrifices, are honoured today by so many.

All of us are called today to re-member. To reaffirm that we are members one of another, united in our common humanity, members of one body, and that when one part of that body suffers, the whole body suffers with it. You are here to pray for all those who are in the midst of that suffering at this very moment – to pray for our service men and women who are risking life and limb this very day in the quest for peace and stability.

And so we come because we know that the world needs to be reminded that peace is not easy, and it is not cheap. A few years ago a friend of mine, who is an army chaplain and now approaching retirement, was preaching at a civic Remembrance service, his 5 medals pinned to his preaching scarf. The dean of the local cathedral asked him about them. “For a man of my age this is a lot” he replied. “But look at young soldiers today – within a very short time they have 5,6,7 medals. You have to look back to WWII veterans to see lads wearing as many – and that speaks volumes about the state of the world.”

Behind those medals is the human cost: the lives lost, the injuries sustained, the mental scars from experiences beyond most of our imaginings, the marriages lived hundreds of miles apart, the constant nagging fear that mummy or daddy may not come home this time. These cannot be quantified.

The God who went to the cross and suffered some of the worst that humanity has ever invented to inflict upon himself knows that peace is neither easy nor cheap. Every day the news reports can only hint at the truth that war is ugly, and complicated, and that, in the words of Mahatma Ghandi, “peace is not something that we can wish for, but is something that we make, that we do, something that we are, something that we give away”.

Among those who have ever put on a uniform and known what it is to fight, there are very few indeed that would ever glory in war itself. All of us here, I think, long for a time when the sword might be beaten to a ploughshare.

But in the mean time, the reading from the letter to the Romans, is honest about the present reality – a reality of hardship, distress, persecution, famine, sword; a reality in which people are ‘being killed all day long’.

And yet this same reading tells us again a well-rehearsed but still startling truth: nothing – not even all these horrors – can separate us from the love of God.
If we want to find God, of course we can find him here in church today. But he is not only here. He was in the trenches in the two world wars, and at the Somme. He was there when telegrams bearing news of tragedy and loss were opened and read back at home. He was there in the hospitals and there in the silent poppy fields.

And today he is also on the dusty, pot-holed roads of Afganistan, and in the smoke-filled air.

However dark the world seems to be, the light of God is stronger. When hatred seems to be taking over, the love of God is stronger. And when all around is destruction and death, the life of God is stronger. For there is nothing that can separate us, or our brothers and sisters in the field, from God’ love – not in this world, and not in the world to come.

We know that there is nothing that cannot be transformed by God…and as we wait for the ultimate transformation of our battered world, there are smaller transformations going on…each of them a sign of hope.

I heard from a friend about a project in Mozambique, in which former rebels could bring their Kalashnikovs to a church-based charity, and swap them for a plough, or a sewing machine, the means to make a living and start again. Those same weapons are then decommissioned and dismantled, and used by a group of Mozambiquan artists to create works of art, and even chairs and tables. “It is a practical solution based on the Bible”, says Mozambican Bishop Dinis Sengulane. ”We tell people we are not disarming you. We are transforming your guns into ploughshares, so you can cultivate your land and get your daily bread.
We are transforming them into sewing machines so you can make clothes. The idea is to transform the instruments of death and destruction into instruments of peace and of production and cooperation with others.”

The big picture seems to be one in which world peace is a far-off dream, a political and practical impossibility. And yet, even in the most dire situations, there will be such small signs of peace breaking out. Sacrifices made, risks taken, second chances offered, humanity and yes, love, triumphing in tiny ways, against all the odds. I hope and pray that those serving in Afghanistan today are seeing those same fragile signs of hope. We must continue to pray for all those whose duty and service it is to nurture those seeds to take root and grow, in the most unpromising conditions.

Our focus today is quite rightly on those whose lives have been given and taken away, and those who today still risk life and limb in the service of their country, and in the pursuit of peace. But we must not do is fall into the trap of thinking that peacemaking and peacekeeping can be left solely to the professionals: the army, the navy, the air force, the marines, the politicians, the decision makers of the world, as if the pursuit of peace were a specialist activity that can safely be left to others. It is our duty – all of us – as children of God to be peacemakers, to work to break the continual spiral of violence and aggression which causes so much destruction and death and grieves the heart of God.

Peace does not begin and end in Afghanistan. In the conflicts of our lives here, in this village, in our workplaces and schools and homes and neighbourhoods, these are also places in which we are called to be bringers and forgers of God’s peace.

So let us commit ourselves to work as hard as we can for it, both here and throughout God’s beautiful but broken world, and as we do, let us remember again all those who pay the price. Amen.