3rd Sunday of Advent – 14th December, 2008

Isaiah 61.1-4,8-11
1 Thessalonians 5.16-24
John 1.6-8,19-28

A few weeks ago the PCC met to try to think about the future of St. John's and work on the process of discerning the road that God is calling us to travel to the future he has prepared for us. Most of you will already know that as part of that process it has been decided that from February we would, once a month on the first Sunday of the month, have a different form of service – a more informal service which we hope might be encouraging for those who are already part of the family of the this church and provide an easy and welcoming 'way further in' for those who are on the fringes.

During the discussion at the PCC one of the things that emerged from our thinking was the need to explore further not just what we wanted the church to be and do but what God's purpose was for us. A few years ago there was a lent discussion course entitled "What on earth is the church for?" and remember hearing that rephrased as "What is the church on earth for?" That is the question the PCC was asking. Why has God called us to be his church in this place. What is the mission he expects us to undertake?

As these thoughts arose during our discussions I was reminded that Jesus himself began his ministry with a very clear idea of what it was that God intended for him to do. He expressed that mission when he preached at the synagogue in Nazareth and chose as his text words from the passage we read as our old testament lesson this morning –

The spirit of the Lord God is upon me,
   because the Lord has anointed me;
he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed,
   to bind up the broken-hearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives,
   and release to the prisoners; 
to proclaim the year of the Lord's favour …

And one can see clearly that in His ministry of preaching, teaching, healing and deliverance He fulfils the mission that God the Father has entrusted to him. During that ministry he called disciples to learn from him and sent them out to do the things he did. His disciples became his Apostles, a word which means "one who is sent". In our Christian life together we stand in continuity with those first disciples as part of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church and the task which is entrusted to us is the one which Jesus undertook in his ministry, for which He commissioned those first apostles and which they have passed on to us.

A few years ago it was fashionable among young Christians to wear a bracelet or a pendant with the letters WWJD on them. It stood for "What Would Jesus Do?" The young Christian, faced with a dilemma, was supposed to ask themselves "What would Jesus do in this situation?" It's a powerful question and far larger than simple personal ethics. It's a question which challenges us a Christian Community. If Jesus were physically present among us here and now in Stansted what would he do? And what does he expect us as his disciples to do?

 

John the Baptist was, of course, not a disciple of Jesus but his herald and forerunner. And yet in many ways it is John who shows us very clearly the way in which we as a community need to make following Jesus the centre of our life together. In our Collect today we prayed:

O Lord Jesus Christ,
who at your first coming sent your messenger
to prepare your way before you:
grant that the ministers and stewards of your mysteries
may likewise so prepare and make ready your way

The task of the "ministers and stewards" of the mysteries of Christ is to prepare his way. Now whilst I recognise that the clergy have special responsibilities in this area I don't believe that being a "minister and steward" of the mysteries of Christ is something which is solely for the clergy. All Christians are called to such ministry and stewardship. Just as John knew clearly exactly who and what he was so we need to know who and what we are. Sometimes I come across Christians who think the Church ought to be supported because it is somehow a good thing in itself. But the Church never exists for itself – it exists for Jesus and without him there is no point to its existence. Like John we do not proclaim ourselves but cry out "Make straight the way of the Lord"

 

Yet we do that in some very down to earth ways. The doctrine of the incarnation which we celebrate at Christmas is central to the Christian faith. The word became flesh and dwelt among us. God was man in Palestine. The Christian faith calls us not simply to hold that the doctrine and teaching of Jesus is a good idea but to live it out in the place where we dwell amongst the people that surround us. In his letter to the Thessalonians St. Paul gives a series of terse but practical commands:

Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise the words of prophets, but test everything; hold fast to what is good; abstain from every form of evil.

It's about living trustfully and expectantly but also realistically in the light of who Jesus is and what he has done. Not to quench the Spirit but to allow God to have his way in us and through us and among us. Not to complain but to be thankful. Not to do evil but good.

I've a feeling that 2009 is going to be a difficult year for many people – perhaps for many of us. In all times but especially in "such a time as this" the world needs to hear the message of hope promised by Isaiah, heralded by John and made present in the life and ministry of Jesus. I believe that God is both calling and enabling this church, this benefice and this congregation to play its part in proclaiming the message of salvation in the difficult times ahead.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu has written:

The Church of God has to be the salt and light of the world. We are the hope of the hopeless, through the power of God. We must transfigure a situation of hate and suspicion, of brokenness and separation, of fear and bitterness. We have no option. We are servants of the God who reigns and cares. He wants us to be the alternative society; where there is harshness and insensitivity, we must be compassionate and caring; where people are statistics, we must show they count as being of immense value to God; where there is grasping and selfishness, we must be a sharing community now.

In the early Church people were attracted to it not so much by the preaching, but by the fact that they saw Christians as a community, living a new life as if what God had done was important, and had made a difference. They saw a community of those who, whether poor or rich, male or female, free or slave, young or old— all quite unbelievably loved and cared for each other. It was the lifestyle of the Christians that was witnessing.

The proclamation of that message, not just by what we say but by who we are, is the mission entrusted to us and all God's people.

So may the God of peace himself sanctify us entirely; and may our spirits and souls and bodies be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The one who calls us is faithful, and he will do this. Amen.

Bible Sunday

Nehemiah 8.1-6, 8-12
Colossians 3.12-17
Matthew 24.30-35

Today is Bible Sunday. Of course there is a real sense in which every Sunday is Bible Sunday. As we gather as God's people on a Sunday we gather around a Table and a Book, and that duel emphasis is very important. God meets us at the table; God meets us in the book. So just as every Sunday is communion Sunday so every Sunday is Bible Sunday. But just as it might be useful at some point to take a particular Sunday to look at what we think we are doing as we gather at the Table, so it is important to take time to look at what we are doing as we open the book and read the Bible together. This last Sunday in October has, in recent years, become a particular day for doing that. It is also a time when we give thanks for the Bible and we pray for the work of those who translate, distribute and interpret the Bible; and particularly a day to give thanks and pray for the work of the Bible Society.

The Bible readings which are set for today encourage us to think about the Bible and its place in the life we share together.

Our Old Testament reading was taken from the book Nehemiah. It is the 8^th of October in the year 445 BC and the Jewish people have returned from exile in Babylon. The temple has been rebuilt and the people gather to rededicate not just the temple but themselves. Ezra the priest and Nehemiah gather together all the people at Torah, the first five books of Old Testament, are read aloud to them. In some Bibles this passage is described as 'the birth of Judaism' – up to this point the worship of Israel has been based around animal sacrifices but now the reading of scripture becomes a central act of worship. The Jewish community is formed by its relationship with Scripture. And that relationship continues to this day. Today the central act of Jewish worship is the reading of scripture in a form exactly as described in the passage, and central focus of Jewish life is the study of scripture. And as Christians, particularly as Christians in a tradition which follows a liturgy, we also inherit a great deal from this moment in history.

What many Christians fail to realise is that the worship which we offer on a Sunday morning which follows a pattern which goes back to the earliest days of the church is in fact two separate services. I spoke of our duel focus, the table and the book. It is the Table that is the focus of the second service and that act of worship derives from the meals which Jesus shared with his disciples – and particularly, of course, the meal we call the last supper. The first act of worship – the one we are doing now – is focused around the book and derives from the worship of the synagogue in which Jesus participated; which in turn goes back to Ezra and Nehemiah. One sign of this separate origin for the two parts of act of worship is the fact that we say 'hello' to each other all over again half way through the service, at the peace.

Like the Jewish people since the time of Nehemiah we are called to be a people who gather around the Scriptures, allowing them to form us.

--

What would a people formed by the Scriptures look like?

The image that is often portrayed of those who take the scriptures seriously is of judgemental Bible Thumpers who are quick to condemn, slow to listen, and so assured of their own rightness that they are not simply unwilling but unable to believe that others may have a valid point of view. Sadly some Christians really are like that. I would want to say that they are not, in fact, Christians who take the Bible seriously. And less you mis-understand what I'm saying I would want to say that such an attitude is not limited to particular any particular theological outlook. Some of the narrowest minded people I have met in the Church have been so called 'broadminded liberals'. No, taking the Bible seriously means being willing to let it transform you. In our second reading today Paul, writing to the Colossians, calls on them to be transformed by the 'word of Christ'. And the qualities that the transformation will bring out are "compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, patience, forgiveness ... love ... wisdom ... worship, thanksgiving". Now that transformation is a life long journey which is undertaken through the day by day encounter with Christ. And how do we encounter Christ day by day? In many ways – but one way in particular is through our reading and study of the scriptures. We do not read the scriptures out of interest or to gain knowledge but to encounter Christ and be transformed by him.

The German theologian and martyr, Dietrich Bonheoffer, wrote:

God's speech in Jesus Christ meets us in the Holy Scriptures. If we want to pray with assurance and joy, then the word of Holy Scripture must be the firm foundation of our prayer. Here we know that Jesus Christ, the Word of God, teaches us to pray. The words that come from God will be the steps on which we find our way to God.

Bonheoffer was writing at a time when he saw his nation descending into apocalyptic chaos. He knew that in such a time only a faith grounded in a deep knowledge of the Scriptures could have any chance of withstanding the anti-Christian forces at work in the society around him.

Bonheoffer writes:

How often we hear innumerable arguments 'from life' and 'from experience' put forward as the basis for the most crucial decisions, but the argument of scripture is missing. And this authority would perhaps point in exactly the opposite direction.

In our society in which abortion is now a normal thing, and which is rapidly towards the acceptance of euthanasia these words from the Germany of the late 1930's seem very relevant.

So let us respond to this call to be a people formed by the Scriptures, as the people who herd Nehemiah responded in their time. And to do that you can take some practical steps.

Firstly get a Bible you can read. I don't care if its the King James Version, or the New Revised Standard Version, or any other good translation. I do care if the print is so tiny that you can't see it. Get a Bible you can read.

Secondly, why not bring it to church? Instead of following the Bible readings on the sheet you follow them in your own Bible. You could mark the places before the service so you can find them quickly.

But thirdly and most importantly, read the Bible. Start with a Gospel –a chapter a day of Matthew, Mark, Luke or John. Mark is the shortest so a good place to start. After you've read one read another one for a different perspective – perhaps after Mark read John next. You might need some help – there are plenty of books to help you. Tom Wright has produced a whole series called 'for everyone' that guides you through the New Testament. Tom is Bishop of Durham and one of the best Bible expositors in the Church of England. And be prepared to be challenged and transformed. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly. Heaven and earth will pass away but the word of Christ will not pass away.

Sunday 12th October, 2008 – The Parable of the Wedding Feast

Isaiah 25.1-9
Philippians 4.1-9
Matthew 22.1-14

Today's gospel reading is actually two parables. One of them appears in Luke's Gospel as well. It's known as 'the Parable of the Wedding Banquet' and as we have heard tells the story of someone – in Matthew it is a king – who invites guests to a wedding feast. To understand this parable we need to understand two things about meals in Jesus time. The first is how important sharing food together was. We still have some of this today: to invite someone to a meal is more than just to invite them to take nourishment – it is to invite them to enter into a relationship with you. When someone visits our house the first thing we say to them is, "Would you like a cup of tea?" It's not because we think they might be thirsty particularly, it's because we want to make them feel welcome. We use the tea as a way of building the relationship with them. Now in Jesus' time and place – and in this still true in many places in the Middle East – to share a meal was to forge a bond with someone which was unbreakable. And indeed the whole purpose of sacrifices in the in the Old Testament and in Jesus' time was not that the animal's body was burnt but that it was cooked, part of it burnt as God's share, the rest eaten by human beings as a meal shared with God establishing a relationship of peace with him. We have a sense of this in the familiar words of the twenty-third psalm where we read, "You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies". The psalm writer is not saying, "I can eat my dinner with arrows flying over my head." He is saying that God is the one who reconciles enemies and makes peace between them. So that is the first thing to understand. By inviting the guests to this important meal the host is seeking to build up that relationship between him and the guests.

The second thing to understand is that by the time we get to this story, (and everyone who originally heard the story would understand this); by the time we get to this story the guests will already have said that they are coming to the party. You have to remember that in the ancient world there were no clocks or other reliable ways of telling the time. If you were holding a dinner party was a standard procedure which you would undertake. Firstly, some time before the party, you would invite your guests. Now to say no at that stage would be tricky but possible if you had a good reason. There were carefully nuanced ways of expressing regretfully your inability to come. But if you said 'yes' at that stage then you were committed, and you could not withdraw without it being deeply insulting to the host. Once the host knew who was coming he could then prepare the meal and when the meal was ready the host would send his servants to inform the guests it was time to come to the party. Now to refuse to come at that point would be to deliberately insult the host. Remember that the meal establishes the relationship with the host, so to refuse the meal is to reject the relationship. To reject the invitation at this stage is a deliberate insult. It is to say, I have no wish to be at peace with you; it is a declaration of war.

In Matthew's version of the story that rejection is violent. Some of the invited actually kill the servants sent to call them to the feast, and the king is furious. Matthew's is the most Jewish of the Gospels and it seems that as Matthew writes he is straying out of allegory in to history. Throughout history God has sent the Old Testament prophets and Christian Teachers of the New Testament to call people to join in the feast that God prepares for his people, the feast that Isaiah spoke about. But the ruling clique, in Jerusalem, have constantly rejected those teachers; sometimes violently. When Matthew writes his Gospel the memory of the destruction of Jerusalem by the army of the Roman general, Titus, is still fresh in peoples memory. It was a horrible time and Matthew clearly sees it as a consequence of the rejection of the offer of God's peace made through God's messengers.

Today we are not happy with the idea of judgement. We would prefer that our deeds and actions didn't have unpleasant consequences. I remember one Simpson's cartoon where, as usual, Homer's foolishness has landed him and everyone else in trouble. Homer sits on his doorstep and complains, "this is everyone fault but mine". Homer is a kind of everyman figure and reflects a very common unwillingness today to accept responsibility for our own deeds and actions. Deeds and actions, and even the choice to not to act, have consequences. To be grown up is to recognise that fact – it is part of the infantalisation of our society that so many people fail to recognise this. Matthew's telling of this story makes the consequences of rejection the invitation of the king very clear. This is not a pleasant thing to hear but I believe it is something we desperately need to hear today. How comfortable might we be in seeing the current economic woes of the western world as a Judgement upon it for putting the pursuit of wealth ahead of the pursuit of justice, and of putting greed in the place of God?

Back to the parable: the king is left with the feast which those who have been invited have rejected. What is he to do with it? He sends out his servants again, this time to invite anyone who will come. In Luke's telling of this parable it is "the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame" who are invited. Matthew is less specific. It is anyone who will come, good or bad. Remember that this is not simply about nourishment. It is about relationship. Because those who were originally invited have turned their back on the invitation it is now open to any who will respond. There is a wonderful discussion of this in Paul's letter to the Romans where he sees the failure of Israel to accept that Jesus is Messiah as being part of God's plan for the salvation the gentiles, of you and me. But Paul also looks forward to the day when both Jew and Gentile will rejoice together in the salvation that God gives.

And there, in Luke's account, the story ends. Matthew combines another story with it. A man is at the wedding feast but not dressed appropriately. When the host challenges him he has nothing to say and is summarily evicted from the banquet. When we read this story in combination with the previous one, something within us protests. It's a bit unfair if he's just come of the street to expect him to be wearing a wedding garment, we think. Again we need to understand that at a wedding feast in Jesus time there might well be festive garments made available for the guests to wear. It's not that this man has no garment; it's that he refuses to wear it. We are back to this idea of consequences. Being a follower of Jesus has consequences. It's not enough to talk the talk; you have to walk the walk. "As God's chosen ones," says St. Paul, "clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. Above all clothe yourselves with the new self, created according to the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness." Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And this is love, that we walk according to his commandments; this is the commandment just as you have heard it from the beginning--you must walk in it.

Once again the Bible faces us with challenges. God's invitation is open to all but it is an invitation into a life of relationship with God. And if we accept that invitation God has expectations of us – the expectation that we grow in holiness and righteousness and in the likeness of Jesus Christ. It's not enough just to say the words - God has infinitely more to offer us than that. He calls us to a relationship with him that begins here and now and lasts eternally. How sad it is that so few in our time are willing to respond to that call. Truly, many are called but few are chosen. How about you?

I don’t know how many of you have been watching the TV series “The Tudors” on Friday evenings. If you haven’t it’s too late for now because last Friday’s was the last episode of the present series, though I understand that there will be more. The series tells the story of Henry the Eighth and his Wives in a very powerful and raw way. It’s not a historical drama in the tradition of merchant Ivory films but a very contemporary telling of the story which makes clear that power and sex and politics were the driving forces of the very human people involved, and of the ultimate destructiveness not just for others but for all who are involved in the story. It’s a story of high ideals being used to disguise base motives and of the slow degeneration and disintegration of the people involved. As I watched the final episode on Friday what struck me most was pomposity and puffed up self importance of everyone who was involved, and the way in which they were trapped by their own decisions, and made captive by their own unwillingness to let go of that self importance.

It’s a familiar story and one that has been repeated again and again down through history. It is the kind of story that is the background to today’s gospel reading.

The setting for today’s passage from the Gospel according to St. Matthew is the last week of Jesus’ ministry before he is to die on the cross. Jesus has come to Jerusalem and confronts the religious and political authorities in that city with the challenge of his presence. That challenge is made explicit when he deliberately fulfils the prophecy of Zechariah by riding in Jerusalem on a donkey on the day we have come to call Palm Sunday and it continues as day by day through the following week he goes to the temple to teach those who will listen to him. Members of the temple priesthood and the ruling council listen to his words and in this context Matthew tells us Jesus proclaims the parable of the vineyard.

Our Old Testament lesson for today is essential reading if we are going to understand that parable. Isaiah many hundreds of years before Jesus walked this earth tells the story of God and his vineyard. God, says Isaiah, has a vineyard upon which he has lavished great care expecting that the vineyard would produce a rich harvest of grapes. But instead of sweet harvest God anticipates the vineyard produces a bitter harvest of wild grapes. God say, because of this, I will abandon the vineyard and let it fall into disrepair and become overgrown. God’s vineyard, he says, is Israel and Judah – a nation from which he sought a harvest of justice but which instead produced a harvest of violence and exploitation.

Isaiah’s story of the vineyard was written a few years before the conquest of Jerusalem by the Babylonians and exile of the Jewish people from their homeland. Like the vineyard in the story Jerusalem becomes an overgrown wasteland, as we read in the book of Lamentations:

The Lord has done what he purposed,
he has carried out his threat;
as he ordained long ago,
he has demolished without pity;
he has made the enemy rejoice over you,
and exalted the might of your foes.

The point to all this is that the destruction is not inevitable. If only people will change their ways then things can be different, but they can’t. They trapped by their decisions and helplessly follow the course that they have set.

Now Jesus knows this story from Isaiah and sees its applicability to the situation confronting the people of his day. He retells the story but changes it. The vineyard is still God’s Holy Land and particularly Jerusalem and the Temple. But now the vineyard has been entrusted to tenants. They are to care for the vineyard and bring the owner his share of the produce they bring from it. The vineyard itself is not at fault but rather those who are tasked with caring for it. They are negligent and fail in their duty. When the owner sends his servants to collect his share of the produce they beet and abuse those servants. When the owner sends his son, they kill him. Now however this parable was understood at its first telling it’s clear that for the early Christian community Jesus was seen as speaking about the prophets and about himself. The tenants of the vineyard are those entrusted with the oversight of God’s people, the political and religious authorities of the temple – and we need to remember that this is not two separate groups but a single ruling elite. This ruling elite has constantly rejected those who call them back to their mission and now they will express their rejection by turning Jesus over to be crucified. In consequence they will in the end be destroyed and cast out – and that is exactly what happens. Forty years after Jesus is put to death the Temple will again lie in ruins, never to be rebuilt up until this day, and a generation later the Romans will expel the Jews from Jerusalem beginning the long exile which ended only in 1948.

Now those in authority understand exactly what Jesus is saying. What is to follow is not inevitable. But they are trapped by their own inability to see a different path. Trapped by their own decisions on the path which leads to their destruction.

And yet things could be different. In the letter to the Philippians Paul tells of how proud he was of all the things that made him so important, but he came to realise that he had to let them go. All these things that made me so important, he says,’ I regard them as rubbish’. This is an example of the modern English translation being coy. The Authorized Version says, “do count them but dung” and even that is using a far milder word than Paul himself uses. Paul recognizes that no matter how valuable something is, if it gets in the way of us experiencing the life of God then it’s just – well, let’s be coy and say “rubbish”.

The events of the past few weeks have shown us that we live in a far more fragile world than many of us thought. We hope that the decision by the House of Representatives to support the bail-out plan will at least bring some stability in the present crisis. I’m not convinced that we have seen the end of the present danger and I am convinced, anyway, that this present crises is only one of a number of political, economic and social concerns which threaten to destabilize our comfortable western world. We are living, I believe, in interesting times and we need to assess our priorities in the light of that.

In these difficult times we must hear and proclaim anew the Good News of Jesus who shows us the way forward to true life; that together with St. Paul we may forget what lies behind and strain forward to what lies ahead, pressing on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.

As one author has written:

The onus is on us, as members of God's kingdom, to cherish what we have inherited and then to re-invest what we have received in those to whom we are called to minister and to plant richly and generously in the lives of those with whom we worship and witness. The onus is also on us to re-examine our call to discipleship and, in the light of the movement towards the end of the church year, to take stock and to prune our lives so that by taking this small responsibility we might in due time produce abiding fruit.