5th February 2012 - The Third Sunday before Lent

Suffering is part of every human life. The renowned cancer specialist Bernie Siegel has written, "One cannot get through life without pain.  What we can do is choose how to use the pain life presents to us." When people suffer one of two things happen to them, either they grow or they diminish, and one can never tell which it will be. I have seen people descend into hopeless pits of self pity or grow into triumphant examples of courage. And sometimes it surprises you who it is that turns out to be this person of courage and triumph.

The same can be true of communities. Terrible things can happen to a community, and in one place that will leave an inheritance of bitterness and resentment which will poison that community for generations to come. And then, in another place, something equally terrible can happen and in the unpromising soil seeds of mutual care, of mutual love, can grow. And again there sometimes seems no rhyme or reason as to which way that community will go.

Isaiah chapter forty arises out of nearly a century of tragedy and loss. Most scholars believe that the section beginning at the fortieth chapter of Isaiah was written substantially later than the preceding thirty-nine chapters. Isaiah chapters one to thirty-nine were written during the collapse of the kingdom of Judah. They end with a prediction that the land of Judah will be conquered by the Babylonians and its treasures and people taken away. This prediction came true with the fall of Jerusalem in  588BC. For the people of Jerusalem and Judea it was devastating. An unknown poet wrote in the Book of Lamentations:

The people of Judah are slaves, suffering in a foreign land, with no rest from sorrow. Their enemies captured them and were terribly cruel. The roads to Zion mourn because no one travels there to celebrate the festivals. The city gates are deserted; priests are weeping. Young women are raped; Zion is in sorrow! Enemies now rule the city and live as they please. The LORD has punished Jerusalem because of her awful sins; he has let her people be dragged away.

It is a an utterly traumatic event. It would have been understandable for the Jewish people to simply have given up on their identity. To be absorbed into the general populace of Babylonian empire and to have disappeared from history. This was, after all, what had happened to the northern Kingdom of Israel – the so called ten lost tribes when they had been conquered by the Assyrian empire a hundred and fifty years before.

But that wasn’t what happened. Instead Judean’s retained their identity and remained faithful worshipers of God. In the context of their captivity their faith did not disappear but instead grew and developed. In captivity the books of the Old Testament were gather and edited together. In captivity the life of the community began to focus on those books. It was in captivity that the Jewish tradition of Biblical Scholarship began to grow and in captivity that the institution of the synagogue began to develop. In captivity the peoples vision of God was transformed from tribal deity to the one and only God. The Babylonian captivity was the furnace in which modern Judaism was forged.

After sixty years the prophet speaks again, and his words are words of encouragement:

Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God.  Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned: for she hath received of the LORD'S hand double for all her sins.

Soon the Exile will draw to a close. In 538BC Babylon itself will fall to the army of Cyrus king of Persia and he will decree that all who wish may return to lands from which they were exiled. Though after long years of exile it might seem like God has forgotten his people this is not the case, and now he will prove it:

Why do you say, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel, 'My way is hidden from the LORD, and my right is disregarded by my God'? Have you not known? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless. Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted; but those who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.

Under Ezra, Nehemiah and Zerubbabel a slow movement back to Jerusalem begins and the reconstruction of the city and temple is undertaken. The hope carefully preserved in the long years of exile becomes the seed which something even greater arises.

Those who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength. Most of us live lives of reasonable comfort and it is easy for us to take that comfort for granted. When suffering comes it can take us completely by surprise simply because it is so unexpected. And yet it should not be. One of the things we all need to say to ourselves is that “anything which can happen to a human can happen to me.” Life does not come with any guarantees. For those of us who are Christians the life of Jesus makes this clear. We follow the one who we believe fulfilled God’s perfect will at every moment of his life but who was “despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief.”

"One cannot get through life without pain.  What we can do is choose how to use the pain life presents to us." If our the times of pain and sorrow in our life become times when we draw closer to God the those times of pain and sorrow will be times of growth for us as they were for God’s people long ago.

...those who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint. 

29th January 2012 - The Presentation of Christ in the Temple

The Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple

The most disputed piece of land in the world lies on a mountain top in the old city of Jerusalem. Surmounted today by the beautiful Moslem Dome of the Rock it is the site of the Temple built by Solomon.

The Jewish Temple on this site had been planned by King David but was built by his son Solomon. We read about the dedication of this Temple in the Second Book of Chronicles in the Old Testament which records the prayer which Solomon prayed at its dedication. We hear that after that prayer:

 ... fire came down from heaven and burned up the offerings. The Lord's dazzling glory then filled the temple, and the priests could not go in. When the crowd of people saw the fire and the Lord's glory, they knelt down and worshiped the Lord.

This sign of the Lord’s glory was called the Shikinah glory or the glory of his presence. It had been seen in the tabernacle which Moses had built.  This was the place where God was worshiped during the forty years in the wilderness. Its presence at this point is a sign of God’s continued presence with his people.

The Temple and its worship continued for over 400 years but in the year 598BC the Temple was destroyed when the Babylonians conquered Jerusalem. The prophet Ezekiel describes a vision which took place shortly before the destruction of the temple in which the Glory of the Lord rises from the Temple and departs from it. The Temple was not rebuilt for more than 80 years. However when the Temple was finally reconsecrated in the year 516BC there was no appearance of God’s Glory. One of the questions that was being asked was ‘when would God’s glory return to the temple?’ The prophet Malachi was one of those who looked forward to the day that that would happen.

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At the time when Jesus was born the Temple was a busy place. First of all it was a building site. Herod the King was enlarging and renovating the Temple as part of his major building project. Also the Temple courts would be filled with the greatest Jewish teachers and their disciples. When he was twelve years old Jesus would visit the temple again and become so enthralled by the words of the teachers that he would forget to return home when the time came. Then there were the many hundreds of priests who were trained in the rituals and ceremonies which needed to be performed. Finally, even then, the Temple courts would be filled with the traders selling animals for sacrifice and the money changers who specialised in exchanging the normal everyday currency for the special money required to pay the temple taxes. And there also were a group of the pious in the courts. Mostly elderly they were people who devoted the rest of their lives to prayer and worship in this most special of places. I’ve met people like them today and they glow. Amongst these were Simeon and Anna

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Like all first born Jewish boys of his time Jesus was presented in the Temple forty days after his birth. The law of Moses stated that the first born of humans and of domestic animals belonged to God. An animal should be sacrificed but a human being was to be redeemed, that is, bought back by the paying of a price and the offering of an alternative sacrifice; for the rich a lamb, for the poor two doves or pigeons.

So Joseph and Mary come to the Temple in Jerusalem carrying the baby Jesus. I love David Kossoff’s description of this moment in his Book of Witnesses:

Then a poorly dressed couple approached. The woman rather younger than the man and carrying her baby son. The man carrying the most modest offering allowed by the Laws of Moses. A pair of doves. Simeon got to his feet. He was trembling, and I went nearer in case he should need help. He went forward, not as I thought to bow low to the man, but to take the baby in his arms. He stood and lifted his face and spoke to God, as to a loving friend who’d kept a promise. He blessed God, and thanked him. ‘Now I can die in peace,’ he said. ‘I have seen him – and held him in my arms.’

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This was the moment when Malachi’s prophecy was fulfilled, ‘The Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple.’  But amongst the busyness of the temple no one noticed. The priests had far more important things to do. The teachers were too engaged in imparting wisdom to listen for it, and the workers were simply too busy. Only amongst the small group of the pious, the devout, did two people realise that the day they had been longing for had arrived. Simeon and Anna alone amongst the vast crowd recognised the Lord when at last he came to his temple.

What about us? One of the things which everyone recognises today is how busy we all are. The French Priest, Michelle Quiost wrote:

They pass by on earth, always rushing, hurrying,
jostling, weighed down, snowed under, nearly demented.
And they never get there, there's not enough time.
Despite all their efforts, there's never enough time.

That was written forty years ago, and if anything things have got worse. Yet the truth is often busyness is a choice we make. We cannot make time for anything, for time is not ours to make, but we can choose how the time we are given is deployed. To quote Quoist again:

I don't ask this evening Lord,
for time to do this or that.
I ask for the grace to do conscientiously,
in the time that You gave me,
the thing that You want me to do.

One of the questions that our Bishop is asking of us is how we can become more and more a people of prayer.

More than anything else, we need to become a people of prayer; whose daily lives are formed and punctuated by our relationship with God in Jesus Christ.

Let’s not be like those in the temple who missed the point of the whole thing because they were too busy to see it. Today let’s take as our example Simeon and Anna so that we can say with them, “My eyes have seen your salvation”.

22nd January 2012 - Epiphany 3

When people plan a wedding they often have huge expectations of what a perfect day it will be. Most of the time things work out OK but sadly sometimes the wires get crossed and disasters happen. I’ve taken my fair share of weddings over the years and thankfully the church service has always gone to plan but I have had a couple of weddings when the arrangements after the church have not gone as well as the church service. On one occasion the police had to be called to the reception when someone took out a gun and began waving it around, and at another the caterers had failed to turn up so that when the bride and groom arrived at the hall they had hired, it was bare and empty.

There are two weddings in our readings today. The first is the wedding feast at Cana in Galilee at which the wine runs out. The second is the wedding feast at the end of the age when Jesus comes again to claim his bride, the church.

The story of the wedding feast at Cana in Galilee is told only in St. John’s Gospel. It is a familiar story. Like the stories with which I began the wedding was a disaster. A middle-Eastern wedding would last several days and the time would be spent feasting and drinking. It was a point of honour for families of the bride and groom that they should be able to provide for their guests. In the middle-east hospitality is an overwhelming priority and to fail in the provision was to be disgraced in the eyes of your neighbours. And such disgrace would adhere to the couple down through the years. When the wine ran out it was a disaster.

It has been suggested that those being married were members of Jesus’ extended family since Mary seems to be in the know about what is happening behind the scenes. She tells Jesus, “They have no wine”. Jesus seems reluctant to draw attention to himself but he acts. In the place where the wedding is being held there are six large jars of water each holding twenty to thirty gallons of water. Somehow, through Jesus’ action, the water is transformed into wine. I make that 150+ gallons of wine which works out at coming up to a thousand bottles. I think that would have lasted them a while.

I’ve said before that when you hear a story like this it is no use asking “What really happened?” That is a question we can never answer. What we can do is ask, “Why are we being told this story?” John seems to answer this question by filling the story with symbolic detail. It is a wedding feast because God is seen as being like a loving husband to his people. The water for rites of the law of Moses is transformed into the new wine of God’s Kingdom inaugurated in Jesus. The new wine of God’s grace is infinitly better than the old wine of legalism and fear.

All of this is important and commentators go to great lengths to draw out these and other details. But I want to lay that aside for a moment and focus on one thing. The difference that the presence of Jesus made.

Yesterday a number of us from this benefice attended a conference called together by Stephen our Bishop. It was an exercise in listening – listening to our Bishop, listening to one another, and above all listening to God. The conference was part of a process in our diocese entitled “Transforming Presence” in which the Bishop asks us to consider the priorities for the Church of England in Essex and East London over the next 10 to 15 years. Those priorities began with the fact that we are called to inhabit the world distinctively. It is no use us being Christians if that makes no difference to the way we live our lives and to the impact that we have on the society we inhabit.

Jesus’ presence at the wedding feast was a “transforming presence”. Things changed for the better because Jesus was there. The water was transformed into wine; and not just any wine but the best wine. The shame and humiliation of the family was transformed back into rejoicing as they were saved from the disaster which threatened to overwhelm them. The disciples were transformed by seeing Jesus’ action – he “revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.”

When Jesus is present nothing remains the same. His presence is a transforming presence.

In his opening words yesterday Bishop Stephen asked us to consider two questions.

• How can my life be a blessing to those amongst whom I live?
• How can my church be a blessing to the community in which it is set?

My heart rejoiced when I heard those questions. You see, I don’t believe that the church is meant to be a refuge from the world around it. I believe the church is meant be a Transforming Presence in the world. We are called to show through our presence the presence of Jesus. The challenge that has been set before us is to ask how we do that. The answer, I believe, is that we do it by doing the things that Jesus did; proclaiming the good news, reaching out to those in need, and confronting the evil powers which oppress.

The second marriage feast in our readings today is the marriage feast at the end the age when Jesus comes for his people. I believe that there will come a time when Jesus will return physically to this earth as Lord and King, and that we his church are called to live now in the light of that future coming. When he comes he will come for his bride the church – for those who have followed him in every place and time.

Now in all the weddings I’ve ever taken one of the most important features of the day was the dress worn by the bride, and Jesus’ bride is also clothed in a wonderful dress.

Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready; to her it has been granted to be clothed with fine linen, bright and pure'--for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints.

The saints – that’s us folks, you and me. At the coming of Jesus the things we do now will be the garb that we wear then.

We’ve got some exploring to do together but it’s clear that we need to look at every aspect of our life in this place so that we can do the righteous deeds that are needed for us to be a transforming presence in this place – living together the life to which Jesus calls us, and doing together the deeds he would have us do.