Category: Sermons
What I said on Sunday
Here’s what I said this morning at our main service, which considering how bad the snow is today was amazingly well attended!
Isaiah 7.10-16; Romans 1.1-7; Matthew 1.18-end
Christmas Eve, for most people, is a time to buy or wrap last‑minute presents, to meet friends for a drink and to share the joy of anticipating Christmas Day. One person who famously refused to spend this day doing such things was Scrooge, the grasping miser of Charles Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol”. Scrooge was intent upon spending Christmas alone. He refused to celebrate, to give any money to charity and closed his eyes to the hardships suffered by his clerk Bob Cratchit and his family. Above all he refused to share himself. Only after witnessing the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come and revisiting his own youth did he change his ways. He sent a turkey to the Cratchits, raised Bob’s pay and visited his nephew. In his newly acquired humanity he experienced a real satisfaction never achieved by hoarding money.
It is tempting to believe that the way to happiness is through self‑absorption, refusing to share ourselves and our possessions with others. Many people have a fear that by revealing themselves to others, by allowing themselves to be vulnerable, they will be taken advantage of, hurt. Even if we do not live alone, like Scrooge, we can still ignore what happens outside our narrow circle of friends. And we risk developing miserly selfishness and losing much more than we gain.
In today’s Gospel, Joseph faces the temptation to keep to himself. He discovered Mary, his betrothed, was pregnant, but not by him and he was inclined to opt out of the situation by divorcing her. He appeared to be concerned that Mary should not suffer unnecessary shame, but he was not prepared to share his life with a woman of seemingly questionable virtue who might cause him shame. Then in a dream the angel of the Lord urged him to regard the situation from another perspective. He was told that the pregnancy did not simply concern his honour and his own family, it was a matter of supreme importance to the whole world.
Joseph was a man of honour and integrity, a man of God, so he accepted Mary and her unborn child into his home. In doing this he acknowledged his responsibilities not only to his family but recognised his obligations, towards the world, the whole people of God. Interesting, isn’t it, that God should choose to send his Son to enter the world in such a way as to scandalise people by the manner of his birth – he could have chosen a married woman, and made sure her husband knew what was going to happen before his wife became pregnant. But he didn’t. And Joseph, and no doubt members of both families, were shocked. And no doubt many were just as shocked when Joseph broker the news that he was going to marry Mary and raise the child as his own – such a thing was unheard of.
So it was that Jesus was born as Mary’s son, raised and cared for in Joseph’s home, as a true descendant of the house of David. But St Paul’s writing reminds us that Jesus belonged not only to this family and House but to every age. And those who call upon Jesus, in turn, belong to him. Jesus did not come to earth to keep himself to himself. He came to share our life, in all its ups and downs and to share himself with us, that we might share our future lives with God. How remarkable that God should make himself so vulnerable, as vulnerable as a tiny baby, because he wanted to be with us. Joseph, acknowledging his responsibilities to the wider world, hints at what Jesus’ life will be like. Jesus would refuse all narrowness and selfishness. He would ignore the taunts of those who accused him of eating with tax collectors and sinners. He suffered death for the sake of others, rose from the dead to lead the world to eternal life in heaven, and shared his teaching and his vision with those who chose to follow him.
We may not, like Scrooge, shun the Christmas festivities in favour of a quiet day, counting our savings. But we can often be tempted ourselves, and refuse to share our lives. How often, when someone asks “How are you” to we avoid telling the truth and just smile and say “Oh, I’m fine”. Perhaps we believe that we only belong to our family and friends and turn a blind eye to the needs of others. Or if we ourselves ask some, “How are you?” we don’t really want them to actually tell the truth. Perhaps we change the subject whenever we sense that a deep or difficult topic is entering the conversation. Or, we may be happy to share our joys and sorrows with a wide range of people, but stop short of sharing our faith with them. I’m frankly amazed at the number of times over the years that people have said to me, “We can’t come to church on next Sunday because we’ve got family or friends over.” Why not come to church – tell them that church is important and why it is important. Better still, bring them with you. Don’t give them the impression that church is just a hobby that can be set on one side when it suits.
Today’s readings remind us that we, like Jesus, belong to all people who also belong to us. We are all God’s people, we all need the salvation which Christ brings. We cannot simply leave God’s work to God alone, because God has chosen to work with us and through us. ‘Christmas Yet to Come’ will hold little promise for us if we keep our present life and our faith in Christ to ourselves. We need to share the holiness and hope we possess and then discover the joy of following in Jesus’ footsteps.
As Saint Teresa of Avila wrote in those so familiar words:
Christ has no other hands but your hands to do his work today;
no other feet than your feet to guide folk on his way;
no other lips but your lips to tell them why he died;
no other love but your love to win them to his side.
What I said on Sunday 6 years ago
In case you were wondering about the title of this post, let me explain. I have been taking a week’s holiday. At least I was, until Sunday. The priest who was due to come and take the services was unable to get to St John’s because of the weather conditions, so I found myself having to take the 10am mass. Since, being on holiday, I hadn’t written a sermon, I had a quick look on my PC this morning to see what I’d preached previously on this particular week in the lectionary. And, it turns out, the last time I preached on this particular Sunday in the three-year lectionary was in 2004. So, rather like a TV chef, here’s one I prepared earlier – well, six years earlier to be precise – and which I preached this morning since I’m never one to waste the opportunity of having a captive audience!
“Repent, for the Kingdom of heaven has come near.” Matthew 3:2
I’m sure most of you, at some time or another, have seen a cinema film about King Arthur. He has been portrayed innumerable times on the silver screen – from Richard Harris in the musical version “Camelot” to Sean Connery in First Knight. From Robert Taylor in “Knights of the Round Table” to a cartoon boy in the animated version of T. H. White’s classic novel “The Sword in the Stone”. And I suspect most of you have come to the conclusion from seeing one or more of these films that the King Arthur who is portrayed never existed in reality.
The latest film to feature Arthur and Guinevere and all the rest is the Disney blockbuster “King Arthur” starring Clive Owen and Kiera Knightley (Well, it was the latest film six years ago, though looking back I don’t think it was the blockbuster it was expected to be!) And one filmgoer who clearly didn’t believe in King Arthur took exception to Disney’s poster advertising the film, which boldly proclaimed: “King Arthur – the untold true story that inspired the legend”. So what did he do? He complained to the Advertising Standards Authority on the grounds that the poster was misleading, since there is little historical evidence to support the Arthurian legend and it implied that the film’s storyline was based on historical fact. And – to his surprise – the Advertising Standards Authority proclaimed that the film is, indeed, based on historical fact and the story it tells of King Arthur is based on true story.
The King Arthur of legend as we now know him probably has his roots in a figure from the early 6th century. History has many examples of a people’s need, hope and desire for a powerful hero, a “saviour” figure, during difficult times. In the fourth and fifth centuries, tribes and racial groups were on the move in Europe, and the resulting upheaval destroyed the integrity of the Roman Empire. The British maintained a resistance to these barbarian attacks, independent of the tottering Empire, and, thrown back on their own resources, certain places clung proudly to their Roman heritage. During these turbulent times, inspiration was drawn from memories of past order and patterns of government. After the Roman armies had left Britain, a hero arose who successfully led the Romano-British against the Saxons at the battle of Badon in the year 516. In time he became a legend, and many stories of great exploits became attached to him. He is remembered even today as the British King Arthur. Surrounded by mystery, in origin and in life, he was believed by later generations to be the best of all knights, the richest and noblest of all kings, endowed with the princely virtues of goodness, generosity, justice and courage, and loved by all. A king who would return in his county’s hour of greatest need – the once and future king.
King Arthur is immortalised along with his Knights of the Round Table, the Holy Grail, Excalibur his sword and Guinevere his wife. The ideal of Arthur and his times may have become a fantasy, but the imagined loss of such a hero and a time clearly feeds a deeper hunger for king-like leadership for all time and all peoples. Many cultures have a legendary king who, like Arthur, will supposedly one day return when his people are in great need. That was true of the people of Israel at the time of Jesus. Several anointed and powerful “saviour” figures were expected in Jesus’ day in Israel — royal, priestly and prophetic. Chief amongst these was the expected anointed one of God, or Messiah, who would be a descendant of king David. Rather like Arthur, David had come to be seen as an ideal king, despite all his faults, and people expected his ancestor to come and rule over them. Such expectations were high when John the Baptist came on the scene – the people were waiting for this king to come and throw out the Romans. And John the Baptist was a highly significant figure at this time. His preaching had created a widespread revival movement, and his followers were quite a group within Judaism, mentioned by the historian Josephus more amply than Jesus himself.
But for John and for Matthew, John’s significance lay only in his relation to Jesus. Wherever John the Baptist is mentioned in the Gospel it is to throw light on the mission of Jesus. We learn very little of John’s life as Matthew hastens on to the coming of Jesus, the focus and purpose of John’s life and ministry. Jesus, the one more powerful than John, is coming, and that changes everything. In chapter 1, Matthew outlines the genealogy of Jesus, the son of David, the one recognised in the prophecies of Isaiah, the end-time successor of King David who was expected to restore Israel as God’s people, free and sovereign. Now, in chapter 3, Matthew records the importance of John’s preparation for Jesus’ coming. He preaches of the urgency of repentance because the Kingdom is now near, he preaches that one is coming with power to baptise with the fire of the Holy Spirit, take away sins and one day to judge the world. The Messiah is coming with power, not in the way Israel expected of the ideal Davidic King, but in the way required in the Kingdom of God. Matthew’s Gospel awakens us to the Kingdom of our God, to Jesus, as son of David and Son of God, and to the power and life of the Spirit. The one to whom John the Baptist directs us all, Jesus Christ, radically overturned and challenged what had been known and expected of a royal reign, and continues to do so as we come to know and understand Jesus, who he was and is.
Jesus is the King of kings, in both divine and human realms, and his Kingdom is with him. The prophecies in today’s readings direct us to Jesus, the son of David, the Anointed One. With his birth, life and death, Jesus is revealed as also being the Son of God, possessing the very life of the Godhead, sharing with us through the life of the Spirit. With Jesus, we have the fulfilment of the world’s dreams for kingly leadership, for a King who reigns with majesty, righteousness, compassion and holiness. Yet he is more than any royal leader has ever been, and ever will be, more than worthy of our whole allegiance and hope-filled trust.
I doubt whether many people actually believe that King Arthur will return one day in our hour of greatest need. The truth about this real figure who gave rise to the legend is lost in the mists of time – but he was an ordinary human being who came to be seen by many as an ideal king. And the rest really is legend. But the truth about the Messiah, the Son of David, is different. For the Jewish people David came to be seen as the ideal king. They believed that the Messiah for whom they waited would embody the ideals of King David and would rule God’s kingdom on earth with justice and truth. His descendant Jesus, the son of David and the Son of God, is the hope of the whole world, unlike any other king. In Jesus God’s kingdom and power have come among us and continue to do so as we recognise Jesus. What makes Jesus different from the likes of King Arthur is that he is not the stuff of legend. His promised return is not the stuff of legend.
He has returned already – he came back from the dead and left an empty tomb. He returns today – he dwells in us through his Holy Spirit and he comes to us in the bread and wine that is his body and blood. He will come again in his kingly power as he brings in the eternal reign of his kingdom. As we approach Christmas, the image of Christ as our King may allow us to be filled with awe and peace, humility and quiet as we recognise the power he inhabits for us and our world. Perhaps our Christmas preparations this year might reflect a little more reverence than before, a little more gentleness, and a little more hope, aware that our King, the Messiah of the whole world, was, and is, and is to come. Our once and future king.
What the curate I live with said on Sunday
Haven’t worked out yet how to set up the blog so that the curate I live with can post entries herself! I know it can be done, but for this week I’m posting her sermon from yesterday on her behalf. Apologies for the delay in case after my advertisement for the blog in church on Sunday meant you’ve been desperate to read her sermon. Here it is.
Isaiah 2.1-5; Romans 13.11-end; Matthew 24.36-44
Imagining a better future can be very powerful. As most of you know my Monday to Friday job is with Welcare, where we are often working with parents who are in distress or beset by overwhelming problems. One of the ways we work with them is to say “if a miracle happened overnight and you woke up tomorrow morning and your problems had disappeared, what would it be like?” It is important then that they describe this miracle future in great detail, so we ask “and what else” and “what else” and “what else”. From this picture that they build, we can then say “what one thing could you do tomorrow to bring you nearer that future”. There is a miracle future and a practical realism and between them they can begin to change lives.
Our reading from Isaiah this morning gives us a wonderful vision of the world’s miracle future, where God teaches us his ways and we walk in his paths. The weapons of war are beaten into agricultural implements, and the nations of the world wage war no more – a miracle future where the world’s resources are used to feed the world not create armaments, where the whole world walks in the light of the Lord.
So I might turn to you and ask – if that is the miracle future of God’s world, what one thing could you do tomorrow to make a difference, to bring that future one step nearer.
In our reading from St Paul’s letter to the Romans, it is almost as if Paul has asked that miracle question that we ask when we’re working with families – you wake up in the morning and ….St Paul says “now you know it is the time for you to wake up from sleep, for salvation is so near.” A miracle has happened, you are so near now to being saved from all the things that oppress you. Often with parents they do want to lay aside “the works of darkness” – that may be shouting at their children, quarrelling with each other, the chaos of their homes, it may be drinking heavily or drug taking. When they describe their miracle future it can be as if they have put on “the armour of light” as Paul describes it, so that they live honourably as in the day, not in drunkenness, quarrelling, jealousy and the like. In Christian terms Paul is telling us that the miracle of Christ has come and is coming. The day is near, so look at how you are living. We may not all have had to turn to someone, a therapist, a counsellor, a priest or social worker, to help us sort our problems, but it doesn’t mean we haven’t got them. We all have things we struggle with, would rather others didn’t know about us, things we would not want Jesus to know, things we hide and may not even face in prayer.
Isaiah has given us a vision this morning of what it means for nations to walk in the light of the Lord; St Paul gives us a vision of what it is like for us as individuals and families to put on the armour of light, to live in the full glare of the light of Jesus Christ. What one thing could you do tomorrow to bring you nearer to the life that you know Jesus wants you to live? What one thing could you do tomorrow to bring you nearer to the life that you know Jesus wants you to live?
And then we come to our rather complex gospel reading, where the vision is not of how God’s world could be, nor of how we might live our lives in the full light of Christ, but is a vision of how it will be when Jesus comes again – his second coming to earth, when as we say in the Creed “He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.” I don’t want us to get too literal about what this will be like, but the vision in our gospel reading, the miracle to come is that we will all be going about our ordinary lives and suddenly it will happen. And the vision is only terrifying if you think you might be one of the ones who will be left. It is a wonderful vision if you think you will be swept up in the glory. This is the vision of judgement and the end times.
Now the very first Christians thought this would be very soon – in their lifetime. But it didn’t happen and it went on not happening and we still wait. That doesn’t mean it won’t happen, only that it hasn’t happened yet and as our gospel today said “About that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.”
So with that vision, that miracle in mind of the second coming of Christ, I ask you “what one thing could you do tomorrow to make you one little bit more ready for it happening, because it could happen tomorrow. What one thing could you do to be that bit more ready?”
From very early in the church, instead of focussing always on being ready for the second coming of Christ to earth, teachers like St John Chrysostom in the fourth century, have focussed instead on being ready to meet Christ at our death, because they realised that whilst you can’t have any certainty that the second coming will be in your life time, you can be one hundred percent certain that you will die. We can’t know the hour or the day, but we do know it will happen to every single one of us – there is no avoiding our death and it could be tomorrow.
You may have heard, or just read on your notice sheet, that this last week the wonderful Dean of our Cathedral, Colin Slee, died. I was with him in a meeting on October 12th, he seemed vigorous and well, contributing to the debate about women Bishops in his forthright, passionately committed way. That was but days before he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and five weeks later, on Thursday of this week, he was dead. We never know the moment that a speeding car, a bomb on a bus or a fatal illness can strike. What one thing could I do tomorrow to make me more ready to die tomorrow? A vision, a hope, for the future of nations, for this world. A vision, a hope, of how we should live our lives now. A vision, a hope, of how it will be when Jesus comes again or we meet him at our death.
This is Advent. A season of hope in the church, of looking forward with hope to God’s vision of this world as it should be; and a vision of meeting his glory in the world to come. But we do this looking forward with hope by thinking of the big questions – What is the point of life? What are we here for? What will happen when we die? Advent is a season we in the church regard as penitential – a season when we think of God’s vision for his world and how we have caused it to fall short – a season when we think of how Jesus taught us to live our lives but how we always seem to fall short – a season when we think of what it will be like when Jesus comes again, that day when he will come and judge the earth and us, and we will have fallen short – a season when, because for us and for generations of Christians who have gone before, that second coming of Christ may not happen in our lifetime, so a season when we think about how we will instead meet Christ at our death, how it will be when we see him in glory. So in this season of Advent we think about the way we will die and our readiness to meet our Lord and live in his light and glory for ever. The church dons purple in penitence, in recognition that corporately we have fallen short. There are no flowers, there will be no weddings, no singing of the gloria in this season of advent – signs that we are in different mode, in reflective mode, thinking about the big questions of life and death. While the world parties and thinks Christmas has begun, we in the church reflect on life and death, light and dark, good and evil.
So, isn’t this all a bit gloomy – I can almost hear your minds ticking over – “this is gloom and doom, I thought she said it was a time of hope and vision”. Well it is. Life, light, good, glory – these are the vision. Living life in all its fullness now and living life in all eternity in the future. But how ready are we to embrace the light, the good, the glory and life in all its fullness? In Advent we can face our inner darkness and reflect on those big questions of life and death, because we can look forward in hope to the vision of the miracle future; the light that Christ brings both to the world here and now, and to the life everlasting that awaits us all. Amen.
What I said on Sunday
Here’s what I preached last Sunday, the feast of Christ the King.
Luke 23.33-43
Have some Madeira, m’dear,
I’ve got a small cask of it here.
And once it’s been opened, you know it won’t keep.
Do finish it up. It will help you to sleep.
Have some madeira, m’dear.
It’s really an excellent year.
Many of you will recognise those words from Michael Flanders and Donald Swann. They’re from their famous song about Madeira, of course. I begin with their song about Madeira because I once drank a glass of it, offered to me a number of years ago by a former curate of this parish that some of you will remember. It was the first glass of Madeira I’d ever had – it’s a drink that is nowhere near as popular today as it used to be. And, I have to say, it was extremely nice, and I’ve had a few more glasses since. But the reason why I mention this glass of Madeira is that, as Flanders and Swan put it, it was from “really an excellent year”. It was bottled in 1845 – a hundred and sixty five years ago. I’ve never drunk anything anywhere near as old before or since.
The people I was with who shared the bottle started to talk about the events of the year 1845 and we quickly realised how lacking our knowledge of that period was. All we could come up with was that it was somewhere between the battle of Waterloo in 1815 and the outbreak of War in Crimea in 1854. I wonder if anyone here knows of anything that happened in 1845? Well, it was the year of the Irish Potato Famine. The first University Boat Race was held over the Putney to Mortlake Course. Cricket was first played at the Kennington Oval. John Henry Newman, in the news again this year of course, converted to Roman Catholicism. The rubber band was invented – one of this country’s great contributions to the world. And Queen Victoria was on the throne.
Queen Victoria had come to the throne in 1837, so she had been on the throne just 8 years when the Madeira was bottled, and what strikes me especially was how different our attitude to royalty is now. Victoria was to become the ruler of the largest empire the world has ever known, and most of her subjects never saw her, or even saw her picture. Had they found themselves in her presence they would have been extremely careful not to put a foot wrong, and, on the whole, Queen Victoria usually got her own way. And as for the kind of publicity members of the royal family get today – well, Queen Victoria would most definitely not have been amused! And she certainly wouldn’t have approved of a future king marrying anyone other than royalty – not even a member of the aristocracy and most definitely not a commoner. Unthinkable!
In recent years, of course, our attitude to royal families has changed considerably. The British royal family, in particular, has been under scrutiny in most countries in the world as people follow their fortunes in tabloid newspapers and glossy magazines. What emerges is that there still exist very high ideals for members of a royal family, and at the same time there is a very critical attitude towards their human weaknesses.
Today we are celebrating the feast of Christ the King – a king very different from the kind of monarch that we usually think about.. Jesus was a man who was both respected and despised. At times, it was almost impossible to see any trace of majesty in him; but even so, he was a king. He is Lord of the Universe. And we, the New Testament tells us, are his brothers and sisters. It is important to realise that as brothers or sisters of the king, we are also members of the royal family. And we are members of his royal family because through our baptism we have become full members of the Lord’s family and therefore we are truly royal people – a royal priesthood the Bible says. And – like members of our own royal family – we have high ideals to live to and official duties to carry out. We are called to love and to serve each other, to work for justice and peace in our world, to relieve the needs of the poor and the suffering, and first and foremost to worship and pray.
However, we are all human. Just look at the royal families which still exist in our age. They fail, their weaknesses often emerge, at times they cannot live up to the ideals expected by those around them. Like them we are also broken and needy people. Those around us are the same. Being part of the kingdom of God means respecting also the brokenness of others. It means being with them in their weakness, even recognising their sovereignty in the midst of much confusion and pain. Think of the good thief hanging beside Jesus on the cross. There wasn’t much in the figure of Jesus, hanging on the cross, that spoke of royalty and kingship. Yet somehow, perhaps intuitively, the good thief recognised it. He honoured Jesus. He asked to be a member of his kingdom. And in return he was promised membership of the royal family of the Lord.
Christ the King is in heaven at the right hand of the Father. But you and I, the members of this royal family are here among his people. Today’s feast challenges us to live out our royal responsibilities and duties as completely as we can. It is ultimately about doing the will of our Father in heaven. For it is only in doing so that we can inherit the kingdom that has been prepared for us.
What I said on Sunday
Here’s my sermon preached at our Remembrance Service.
On Thursday 31st August, 2006, the BBC released an unexpected piece on news on its website. Peter Jackson, the director of the Lord of the Rings films and King Kong, was intending to make a new film. In fact, a remake of a film first made in 1955. Jackson says he first saw the film as a child and “really loved it”.
“There’s that wonderful mentality of the British during the war – that heads-down, persevering, keep-on-plugging-away mentality which is the spirit of Dambusters,” he said. For that, of course, is the film in question. The film is based on the true story of the raids on the dams in the Ruhr Valley in Germany in 1943, and will have a script written by Stephen Fry and has as executive producer Sir David Frost. Filming was due to begin, said Jackson, in 2007. As things stand, I gather filming hasn’t yet started – it will probably now be 2011. By the time the film is released the length of the production process will have been as long as the war itself. Amazing, isn’t it, that it can take so long to produce a film of a historical event.
The original film, of course, has achieved almost iconic status in this country. It’s scenes of the Lancasters flying in along over the reservoirs, the pilots having to aim carefully as they lined up their bomb sights with the turrets on the dams before releasing the now famous bouncing bombs, was copied almost exactly for the final scenes of the attack on the Death Star in the original Star Wars film. Just as iconic is the famous Dambusters March, written by the composer Eric Coates, also famous for writing the theme tune to “Desert Island Discs”. Instantly recognisable, it’s even sung at England football matches. But it was over 65 years ago – so one cannot but wonder why Peter Jackson wants to make another film about the event.
Well, perhaps an answer is given to us by another piece of film – this time from the BBC. Last weekend the BBC show a programme called “The First World War from Above”. What was significant about this film was that it showed recently discovered footage of the devastation Western Front shot from the air in 1919, as well as aerial photographs taken by pilots during the war. You can see the sheer devastation that resulted from the trench warfare of the First World War. Towns and villages completely devastated. Today, of course, that devastation is gone. The countryside has recovered and former places of conflict have been built over, and except where parts of the trench system have been preserved, you probably wouldn’t notice today anything to show that such dreadful conflict and loss of life had taken place. Until you look from the air. And you can see the massive shell-holes left where the British exploded mines beneath the enemy lines. The scars of war still clearly visible. The film was shot from an airship piloted by a frenchman, Jacques Trolley de Prévaux, and he is seen in the film. At the end of the programme his daughter is shown the newly discovered film for the first time. She has never seen her father. He and his wife were shot as spies by the Germans in the Second World War shortly after she was born in 1943. The scene where she sees him, in this film shot at the end of the First World War, is quite moving. And it reminds you that the effects, the scars, of war, are still felt nearly a hundred years later.
I remember that, even though my primary school years were around 20 years after the end of the Second World War it stilled seemed so close – its shadow still hanging over the world in which I grew up. But the First World War still affected the lives of those we knew. There were still thousands around who had fought in the Great War – I remember my grandfather proudly showing me a photograph I still have – of him in the uniform of the 1st Royal Dragoons, sitting on his horse after he joined up at the beginning of the war. And yet, other than that, he never said a word about his experiences – and he wasn’t one to keep quiet about the past. He was my grandmother’s second husband. They were married in 1919, her first husband having died in the war. She never spoke about that – I only found out when researching my family tree. There’s a part of my grandparent’s lives that is closed to me because they couldn’t talk about it – and sometimes even now I wonder about what they experienced, and how it affected them throughout their lives. Were they different people because of what they had gone through? So, though the First World War may have been over years before I was born, it is still relevant to me today. The scars of war last long after the events themselves have passed.
Which brings me back to the Dambusters. I can still remember vividly the excitement surrounding the 50th anniversary of the Royal Air Force, founded originally, of course, as the Royal Flying Corps during the Great War. My local cinema, caught up in the celebrations, showed a special double bill that we all eagerly went to see. The two films showing were “Reach for the Sky”, the story of Douglas Bader, and “The Dambusters”, Guy Gibson who led the Dambusters raid was awarded the Victoria Cross, and he wrote a book about it and his time with 617 Squadron called “Enemy Coast Ahead”, a book I read as a teenager. It was republished a few years ago but retitled: Enemy Coast Ahead – Uncensored. It seems that when Gibson first wrote the book it was heavily censored by the authorities. Gibson never survived the war – he was shot down and killed in 1944 – and his book was never published with the full story as he wrote it. Only now, we are told on the back cover, can the full story be told. Peter Jackson has said that he intends, in the new film, to tell the full story. Even when the original film was made much was still classified – even the shape of the bombs was changed for the film.
In a way, Gibson’s original story – with all the bits missing as a result of the censor’s black pen – reflected the experience of so many caught up in war. There is so much that people have experienced, lived through, suffered – and yet like my grandparents it is simply not possible to talk about or share with others. Things experienced in combat or at home, at the front or in hospital, losses of family members, friends and comrades. Experiences often too difficult to put into words. Many of those who fought in the trenches in the Great War were never able to talk about their experiences when they came home – they were just too dreadful. Everyone who is caught up in war – whether combatant or civilian – has their own story to tell, and often a story that – just to cope – has to be censored. In Gibson’s republished book, and in Peter Jackson’s remade film, the full story can be told. And yet for ordinary people caught up in war, for their families, for their descendants, the full story may never be told, or is still only unfolding as in the case of the aerial film made by Jacques Trolley de Prévaux – and the scars of war continue to affect us.
So, today we remember. Because difficult though past experiences may be, by coming together each year as a nation we can remember together. We come together to honour the memory of those who never returned and who still do not return, and share with those who mourn them. We pray for and with those who still have difficult and painful memories. And we can join together in pledging ourselves to work for a better world, a better present and a better future for everyone – a world where peace reigns and war becomes a distant memory.
We remember too that British Forces are still called upon to engage in combat – families across the country today, as well as in other countries, anxiously watch for news, worried that it is their son or daughter who won’t be coming home. And just as the full stories of those in our own lives – our parents, our grandparents, our brothers and sisters, our friends – may never be told, so we are conscious that the same is true of those involved in war and conflict today. Even when peace comes, the effects change people’s lives – and the lives of those around them – with the scars of war reaching out into the future for years to come.
This is why remembering is not just about looking back – and thinking of the present – it spurs us on to look forward too, to look forward and to ask ourselves what contribution we might make to the future. To ask ourselves what we can do to make our world a better place. To ask – in 20, 50, 100 years time how will we be remembered – will our children and their children still have to deal with the scars of war or enjoy a world of peace? To ask ourselves what we can do to help and support our armed forces and their families – no matter what our own individual beliefs about the rights or wrongs of any particular conflict.
The Christian message is that God sent his son Jesus, the Prince of Peace, to bring the good news of salvation to a world that is in so much need. We all still need to hear that message, to know the love and peace that only Jesus can give in our own lives, and to share that love and peace will all around us. So, as today we remember, as we offer prayers and thanksgivings for all those – combatants and civilians – who have given their lives in war, as we honour the memory of all who have given and still give their lives to protect our way of life, we commit ourselves anew to the service of God and humanity. And we pray that God will use us to bring the peace to our world for which so many in all kinds of ways have striven, and for which so many have sacrificed their lives.
What I said on Sunday
In the name of the Living God; Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.
Job 19.23-27; Luke 20.27-38
It’s always been the same. People like to identify with groups, or factions, or gangs, or whatever you want to call them. And of course it’s much more fun if there’s another group of people that you can disagree with – violently if necessary. Wherever you look in history, they’re there, some more influential than others. Normans and Saxons at the Conquest. Roundheads and Royalists, in the Civil War. Mods and Rockers in the Sixties. English and French, for 900 of the last 1000 years. Montagues and Capulets in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, or the Sharks and the Jets in the musical version West Side Story. It was just the same in the Jewish society of Jesus’ day – only then it was Pharisees and Sadducees. We tend to refer to them together and assume that they were really much the same. Far from it. Pharisees and Sadducees were two quite distinct and often diametrically opposed parties.
Take today’s gospel reading. This is often read as an attack by the Sadducees on Jesus – trying to catch him out as the Pharisees often tried to do. But take a closer look at the reading and you begin to see that this wasn’t really the case. They are trying to get one over on the Pharisees and what they are doing is attempting to manoeuvre Jesus into their corner by getting his support. So how did they plan to do this?
One of the age-old human questions is: do we live again after we die? Job, whom we heard from in our first reading, asks that very question earlier in the book: If mortals die, will they live again? (Job 14.14) Well, one of the key differences between the Pharisees and the Sadducees was their answer to this question. The Pharisees believed that after death you were raised back to life to be with God. The Sadducees believed that there was no such thing as resurrection. And to understand what is going on we need to go back a bit into the history of Jewish understanding of life after death.
At this point belief in an actual resurrection was a fairly recent development in Jewish religious thought. The traditional belief was that when you died you lived on in your descendants. This was why, given the patriarchal nature of Jewish society, it was vital for a man to have children. Without them he wouldn’t live on. So, in order to give him the best possible chance of having children, the law stipulated that if a man died childless, his brother had a responsibility to take his widow as his own wife and father a child on behalf of his brother. It was also a way of ensuring that property stayed within the family and that the widow was cared for.
Remember, the Sadducees didn’t believe in resurrection. And to them the Law was important. So they come up with this story of a woman whose husband dies childless, so she has to marry his brother, who also dies – and so the story goes on. She marries seven brothers, all of whom die with no children. So, at the resurrection, they ask, whose wife will she be?
This is actually an attempt by the Sadducees to show how ridiculous the Pharisees belief in resurrection is – the idea, they are suggesting, that this women can have seven husbands at the resurrection shows how resurrection is just a joke. No intelligent person, they are trying to say, could possibly believe in such a ridiculous concept!
Jesus, though, is far too insightful to be drawn into the argument, and turning the tables on the Sadducees he shows them how it is they – not the Pharisees – who have got things completely wrong. There is no marriage in the resurrection, Jesus points out. Those who take part in the age of the resurrection neither marry nor are given in marriage. And then he goes on to tackle that question of Job’s: if mortals die, will they live again? It’s a question we cannot answer from reason or experience alone, but it is a question we all want an answer to. And the answer that Jesus gives is a resounding yes. And the way that he does it is to refer the Sadducees back to their own Law, the Law that they held so highly, the Law that their whole belief system was grounded in.
And he goes back to Moses whom the Sadducees have already claimed as their own at the beginning of their question. Moses, when he encounters God in the burning bush, hears God say, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” (Exodus 3.6) When God speaks to Moses, he makes it clear that to him Abraham and Isaac and Jacob – though dead to this world – are alive to him. So, Jesus says, resurrection is clearly a reality. As Jesus might have put it to the Sadducees: “the Scriptures that you cite as the basis of your authority say that the Lord is [present tense] the God of the patriarchs, whom we know to have died. How could God be the present-tense God of dead people, unless they are alive in the resurrection?” (Quoted from New Proclamation Year C 2010 – Fortress Press – page 273)
Jesus actually says almost nothing in the gospels about what the resurrection will be like. But he does assure us that it is real, that we have something to look forward to beyond the physical constraints of this world. The Sadducees had no hope of life after death – that’s why they were sad you see. Death, Jesus tells them and us, is not the end. Like Job, we can answer that question: if mortals die, will they live again? Like Job, we are able to say: I know that my Redeemer lives … and after my skin has been destroyed, then in my flesh I shall see God. (Job 19.25f)
The Bible teaches us that life comes from God. And Jesus shows us that for those who respond to the love of God, God has provided for life after death, a gift from him for all those who have accepted his love and entered into relationship with him. We can all look forward to that time when, beyond the uncertainty of death, we embrace the certainty of being, as Jesus puts it: children of God … children of the resurrection.
What I said on Sunday
Here’s what I said on Sunday for the Feast of All Saints.
Luke 6.20-31
It was a dark and stormy night. The rain fell in torrents – except at occasional intervals.
So runs one of the most famous – if not the most famous – first line in literature. A much parodied first line that is everything that a first line is not meant to be. For who today has any idea who wrote that first line, or what work of fiction it introduced us to? In fact, it is most famously used by Snoopy – Charlie Brown’s dog in the long-running Peanuts carton strip. Snoopy – unusually for a dog – would from time to time decide to write a novel. He would sit down at his typewriter and begin – usually with the words It was a dark and stormy night.
The first line of a novel is so important. It can grab the reader’s attention – or it can put them totally off. And some first lines are so memorable that people often known them when they haven’t read, or don’t even know, the rest of the book. But a classic first line will immediately draw the reader in and give a very clear hint as the what the rest of the book will bring.
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife: Jane Austen, of course, from Pride and Prejudice. One of the most famous first lines in English literature.
My own favourite first line, from one of my favourite books is Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again – from Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier – which immediately conveys the sense of foreboding and mystery that pervades the rest of the book.
Some first lines of course, are a total giveaway:In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. The hobbit, of course, by J R R Tolkien. And how about I am an invisible man – The invisible man, by H G Wells. And as for It was a dark and stormy night… it is, in fact, from the 1830 novel Paul Clifford by Lord Lytton – who was more famous for writing The Last Days of Pompeii.
Our gospel reading this morning is important, because it contains a great and highly significant first line. More of that in a moment. In these days of film and TV, the great first line is becoming a forgotten art. It’s only in films and television shows with commentary that it still exists. As soon as, for example, you hear the words These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise you know exactly what you’re going to get. But the usual practice in TV these days – so that you can make sense of what is to come, is to begin with those words “Previously on …” and then they let you know what has happened previously so that you don’t get lost and confused.
Well, in order to make some sense of today’s gospel reading, we need to do just that – have a quick recap on what has happened before. So … Previously in Luke’s Gospel. It’s still very early on in Jesus’ ministry. And we hear how Jesus goes up a mountain and prays – and he prays all night. And at soon as daybreak comes he calls his disciples to him – and from those disciples, his followers, he chooses twelve whom he names apostles. And that name – apostles – it important. For it literally means ‘one who is sent out’ – Luke is reminding us that these twelve particular disciples were chosen for a special task.
Then he goes with the twelve down to what Luke calls ‘a level place’ and gathering the twelve and, Luke says, a great multitude of people, he begins to talk to them. And this brings us to today’s gospel. For by understanding what has gone before, we now know that the words that Jesus speaks are the first words that Luke reports Jesus as saying after he chooses his apostles. The opening scene, as it were, of this week’s episode – the very first line of the script – Jesus stands up and says: Blessed are you who are poor …
This, for Luke, is setting the agenda for the rest of gospel. He is telling us what Jesus is about.
Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.
Blessed are you who hunger now, for you will be filled.
Blessed are you who weep now, for you shall laugh.
And so begins the section in Luke know as the Sermon on the Plain, with Jesus giving the Beatitudes. It corresponds with the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew’s gospel, which of course also begins with the Beatitudes. With one highly important difference. We are so familiar with Matthew’s version:
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn …
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness.
And we miss what Luke is saying. For Matthew’s version – the one we all think about when we talk about the Beatitudes, is spiritual. Luke’s isn’t. In Luke Jesus is dealing with economic and social conditions. And he is so blunt that we deal with the harsh reality of what Jesus is saying by spiritualising it and assuming he meant what he meant in Matthew. But Luke is very clear.
Blessed are you who are poor. Not blessed are you poor in spirit but blessed are you poor, blessed are you who have little or no money, nowhere to live.
Blessed are you who hunger now. Not blessed are you who hunger and thirst after righteousness, but blessed are you who are starving, who cannot get enough to eat.
Blessed are you who weep. Not blessed are you who mourn but blessed are you who live any kind of life where you are oppressed or downtrodden or uncared for.
And, Luke, unlike Matthew, goes on and shows Jesus presenting us with a challenge. For Jesus has harsh, uncomfortable, uncompromising words for those who are not economically poor or unable to feed themselves.
Woe to you who are rich – for you have received your consolation. Nothing there about those who are in the middle and reasonably comfortable – your one or the other according to Jesus.
Woe to you who are full – for you shall hunger.
And so, having chosen the twelve apostles, Jesus sets out his manifesto in his opening words in the Sermon on the Plain. And the rest of Luke’s gospel is spent showing us how Jesus has come for the materially poor and the physically starving and the oppressed.
So where does that leave us? For we cannot avoid the reality that many – though not all – of us are comparatively well off. We are certainly rich when compared to most in our world. While there may be times when we feel we are struggling to make ends meet most of us have a roof over our heads, and manage to feed and clothe ourselves. But many in our own country today go without basics that others take for granted.
To go back to our TV theme – many programmes now end with “Next time on…” and we get to see what is happening next week.
Blessed are you who are poor … woe to you who are rich
Blessed are you who hunger … woe to you who are full
Blessed are you who weep … woe to you who laugh.
What is “Next time…” for Saint John’s church? What is “Next time…” for you? How will Jesus’ words this morning make a difference to your life so that next week is different from this week? Can we learn to start getting a right perspective about the good things we have – seeing them as God-given and to be shared – not self-earned and to be held onto. Can we learn that as followers of Christ we are called to join the poor and the hungry and the weeping so that together we can share that happy ending in the eternal kingdom of God with all the saints – so that we can be ranked among the blessed?
What I said on Sunday
Last Sunday we kept the feast of Saint Luke, which is really on 18th October. We usually keep it, though, on the following Sunday and follow it with prayer for healing, accompanied by the laying on of hands and anointing.
Here’s what I said.
Isaiah 35.3-6; 2 Timothy 4.5-17; Luke 10.1-9
If there is one word that could summarize the readings for the feast of Saint Luke it is action. All these three passages have something to teach us about activity, about being busy – about our response to God, God the Creator, who himself is always active. The Old Testament reading from Isaiah urges us to: Strengthen the weak hands, and make firm the feeble knees.
That is what the Church’s social action should be doing! And such an appropriate reading for Luke, the physician. Given that Luke was a doctor, it is traditional to think particularly about the Church’s healing ministry on his feast day, and today we take those words from Isaiah to heart as we finish our service with prayers for healing.
Then there is the reading from Paul’s second letter to Timothy. Paul is older now, an old man calmly facing death – he knows he is going to be taken to Rome, he knows the result of the “arranged” trial there long before he even starts on the journey. He looks back over a ministry packed with action – and he still would like to fit in some reading, and some further writing up of his memoirs – if only Timothy will bring the books and his notebooks he left in Troas.
Above all the Gospel makes us conscious of activity in the service of God; Jesus is shown sending out thirty-five couples of disciples, telling them to prepare the way before him. Luke is the only evangelist who mentions this episode; it seems to go in with his special interest in activity. He is very strong on action, as we have seen as we have worked our way through the gospel this year in the lectionary.
It is in Luke’s gospel that we have the story of the Good Samaritan, who was certainly active – the story of Lazarus the beggar and the rich man, who was certainly not active at all, and Zaccheus, who so badly wanted to see Jesus that he was prepared to make a fool of himself and climb a tree. It is also Luke who gives us the stories of Gabriel coming from God to announce the news of a birth to Mary, and of Mary’s visit to her cousin Elizabeth, and of the birth of Jesus himself among the animals. Since Luke never knew Jesus and since only Mary could have known the circumstances surrounding the birth of Jesus it has been the tradition since the early church that Mary knew Luke and told him these things. And part two of Luke’s gospel is of course the book of the Acts of the Apostles, which tells us everything by its name – more action.
These are not just examples to follow. All three readings are deeply theological. That is, they give us the reason why we should be active. The reason is, that this is the way we respond to God, who is also active. It was best put by Saint Teresa of Avila. She wrote:
Christ has no body on earth but yours,
no hands but yours,
no feet but yours.
Yours are the eyes through
which he is to look out into the world;
yours are the feet with which
he is to go about doing good,
and yours are the hands with which
he is to bless us now.
Probably she was talking to a priest when she first said that but she might just as easily have been talking to any Christian man or woman.
But when the writer of 2 Timothy says “Do all the duties of your calling” he means more than that. He means prayer – and this is where we often slip as Christians. When we are under pressure, when time seems short or life particularly difficult, the first thing that often starts to go is prayer. We think that God will understand and forgive. So he does. But that is not an excuse. Prayer is not for God’s benefit, it is for ours. One of the best definitions of prayer that I know also comes from Saint Teresa:
Prayer is knowing, remembering, considering,
that I am always in the presence of God,
who is closer than breathing,
Closer than hands and feet.
If we are too busy to take that to heart, too busy to pray, we are letting go of the very thing that make us Christian – being in communion and communication with our creator.
It is a most remarkable thing that Luke is the most “active” and least theological of all the gospel writers. But he is the one who is most bothered about prayer. He is always showing us Jesus at prayer. And he is the one who gives us that story about Martha, who rushed around, and Mary who chose the better part and sat at the feet of Jesus and listened.
Our prayer life is absolutely crucial. Each of us needs to ask ourselves – are we praying enough – at home – or with our brothers and sisters in Church? Could we pray more? Could we spend an extra few minutes each day in prayer? For prayer must undergird everything we do for Christ. It is for our sake and the sake of the work we are doing as Christ’s body in this place.
What I said last Sunday
Last week was just one of those weeks – so by the time I got around to thinking about posting my sermon it was this week! So – a week late, but here it is.
Luke 18.1-8
Pray always,” Jesus tells us. That isn’t easy, of course. We have all had the experience of praying without receiving the answer that we wanted. At some point, it is difficult to keep our enthusiasm when it seems that prayer has got us nothing.
That happened to Huckleberry Finn, the boy in Mark Twain’s books. Miss Watson told Huck to pray every day, promising that he would get what he asked for. Huck tried it, but it didn’t work. “Once I got a fish-line, but no hooks,” he said. “It warn’t any good to me without hooks. I tried for the hooks three or four times, but somehow I couldn’t make it work.” So Huck gave up on prayer. “There ain’t nothing in it,” he concluded.
We have all been tempted to come to the conclusion that “There ain’t nothing in it.” We have prayed for things far more important than fishing hooks without result.
But Jesus told the parable that we read today to encourage us “to pray always and not to lose heart.” The parable has two principle characters – a judge and a widow. The widow has suffered injustice, and has come to the judge for help. But this was not a good judge. Jesus said that he “neither feared God nor had respect for people.” He didn’t care what anyone thought – including God.
The widow came to this judge to win justice. And the fact that she was a widow tells us a lot. For widows were totally helpless. They were not allowed to inherit their husband’s estate, so they were completely dependent on other people – and if they had so son to support them, destitute. But this judge did not fear God – and he didn’t want to help this poor woman. And so she has to keep coming back and coming back, until she begins to get on his nerves. In the end her constant badgering begins to wear him down, so he says: “Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.” And that is the end of the parable. Then Jesus comments: “And will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night?”
Jesus contrasts the bad judge with a good God. He says that, if this bad judge will help this widow, we can be sure that our loving God will help us. That does not mean that God will give us everything that we ask. Can you imagine the chaos that would result if God gave everyone unlimited power? If God were like a genie responding to every wish, it would be a disaster! Imagine the chaos at home if parents just allowed their children to do everything they wanted! A loving parent cannot behave like that, and neither can a loving God. But Jesus promises that God will grant justice to those who cry to him day and night. That was a special promise for persecuted Christians in Luke’s day, but it is a promise to us too. God will hear us when we pray. God will help us when we pray.
But answers to prayer often come slowly – or in a form that we might not recognize. And it is difficult to keep praying when we don’t see quick results. And like Huckleberry Finn we are tempted to give up on prayer.
Martin Luther knew that. He once wrote about prayer using his god as an illustration. He spoke of seeing his dog at the dinner table, waiting expectantly for some morsel from his master. The dog would sit at attention, every fibre of his body focused on his master, hoping for a bit of food. If you have a dog, you will know the way they look at you. During dinner, you have the dog’s rapt, unwavering attention. Luther said, “Oh, if I could only pray the way this dog watches the meat!” To pray with our whole attention focussed on God. It isn’t easy to do that when it seems that our prayers are not answered quickly or how we want.
Perhaps we need to think a little differently about prayer. Take Jesus as an example. Jesus knew only too well that prayer is not always answered in the way that you ask. Think about the Garden of Gethsemane. Jesus prayed that the cup of death might pass him by. That prayer wasn’t answered in the way that he asked – he had to drink that cup of death – but something else did happen. Through prayer, Jesus was strengthened, prepared for what lay ahead. His prayer was answered after all.
Perhaps we wish that prayer were like a genie in a bottle – awaiting our summons to do our will. Perhaps we think life would be so much easier if God always gave us what we wanted. But any parent knows that you cannot always give what your children want – sometimes you have to refuse, or talk things through, or give something else instead. But you do want your children to ask, to have a conversation with you.
Our prayers are precious to God, because we are precious to God. He invites us to come back again, and again, and again, because he loves to hear from us. He loves to communicate with us. He loves to have us near. He loves us. And while he might not always give us everything we want – anymore than we give our children everything they want – he promises to bless us when we call on him day and night. Make prayer a regular part of your life. Spend time with God. Then wait to see how he will bless you.
What I said on Sunday
Here’s what I said – more or less – last Sunday. It was a particularly busy week last week, so as well as using the usual commentaries, I also used the excellent resource from Redemptorist, Living Word.
When I was young it simply wasn’t the done thing to tell your parents exactly what you wanted for Christmas or birthday presents. These days everyone makes sure beforehand that you know exactly what presents they want, which to my mind rather takes the fun out of giving. When I was young you simply had to wait to find out what you were getting – which of course just increased the temptation to go looking beforehand while your parents weren’t around to see what they had bought. My father took to hiding all the Christmas presents in the loft, which was inaccessible without a step-ladder, so there was no way a small child could investigate – rather sneaky on his part, I thought.
Of course, an important lesson that parents try to teach their children is to say “thank you” when they receive gifts. We like to be thanked and we may feel disappointed or hurt when our gifts are unacknowledged. When a gift is received with gratitude a significant exchange is completed and the relationship between the giver and the one who has received is strengthened. And in the days when presents were actually a surprise, sometimes a thank you had to be said for something that you actually really didn’t want, but that a well-meaning relative had bought you.
When thanks are not expressed, there is a sense of incompleteness. Did the gift mean anything? More importantly, does the giver mean anything to the person who received the gift? The story in today’s Gospel echoes our experience of giving and being thanked – or sometimes giving and not being thanked.
Jesus is travelling in border country along a frontier between Galilee – Jewish territory – and Samaria, a place of strangers, people of alien beliefs and customs. As he approaches a village, ten lepers come as close as they can, crying out to him to have mercy on them. Jesus tells them to go and show themselves to the priests. They do so and on their way to the priests their healing becomes apparent. They are made whole and can belong to their families and their village again. So the healed lepers hurry to the priests.
But one of them knows that something else must happen first: before he can truly enjoy what he has received he must thank the giver. So he returns, praising God, and prostrates himself in gratitude before Jesus. And Jesus asks: “Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they?” Although God doesn’t give just to those who are likely to respond gratefully, God’s gifts do come in order to create and deepen relationship. So gratitude, which is a sign of someone responding to God and not just enjoying what God gives, does matter to Jesus; there is a sense of disappointment or sadness as he asks about the other nine. Didn’t they get the point?
But this story isn’t just about the importance of gratitude. Its punchline is that the leper who returned to give thanks wasn’t a Jew (as the others presumably were) but a Samaritan. As elsewhere in the Gospels – think of the Canaanite woman, the Roman centurion, the good Samaritan – it is the despised foreigner, the religious outsider, who becomes a model to challenge the disciples. It is only the Samaritan who completes the exchange of salvation celebrated with thanksgiving. It is he who embodies true humanity before God, humanity healed and grateful. This is worth pondering: are we open to what God might teach us through those beyond our own community, those we might easily regard with fear and suspicion?
George Herbert was an Anglican priest and poet who lived in the first part of the 17th century. Among other things he wrote the hymn “King of glory, king of peace” with its line “Seven whole days, not one in seven, I will praise thee,” reflecting his desire that everyone should be in church every day of the week to say the daily offices, and not just attend church on Sundays. He would have been shocked to learn that these days many people don’t attend every Sunday. He died in 1633 at the age of 40 and his feast day is the same day as my birthday, which will give you a clue as to when it is.
George Herbert once prayed: “Thou who hast given so much to me, give one thing more, a grateful heart.”
Words echoed in the chorus we sang before the gospel reading. We must pray for a grateful heart because ingratitude is never far away and grumbling often comes much more naturally than thankfulness. But how do we cultivate a grateful heart like that of the Samaritan leper? Perhaps the clue lies in the very fact that he is a Samaritan. A Samaritan (especially a Samaritan leper) can expect no favours from a Jew. He has absolutely nothing to offer Jesus. He cannot put Jesus in his debt; he has no hold on Jesus, not even shared race. So what the Samaritan receives from Jesus is sheer grace – and he knows it. He is a model for us because he knows his need; he knows he can do nothing; and he knows that he has received grace. So he is grateful.
Misuno Genzo, a severely disabled Japanese Christian, writes poems – communicated through the movements of his eyelids – which make the same point: he knows that he himself can do nothing for his family, or for his people or for God. But what he can do is give thanks for God’s love for all those people. “I just give thanks,” he writes.
To understand grace, and so become truly grateful, it does help to be in a situation of utter dependence. This makes it harder to have any illusions about what we have to offer God. We are not lepers and outcasts from society – and most of us are not conscious of being in severe need of difficulty – and so we may struggle fully to recognise our total dependence on God; but we can recognise that this is what we need to learn.
I can do nothing. “Thou who hast given so much to me, give one thing more, a grateful heart.”
View from the Valley 