Hosannas and Hallelujahs, Chocolate and bunny rabbits.

Posted on 4 April 2015 by Stratocastermagic

Those who know me well know that I am more at home on Good Friday than I am on Easter Sunday. And that I prefer Advent to Christmas. Some suggest it’s because I am a miserable so-and-so. I don’t contest that.

St Paul says to the Corinthians that he came among them resolved to know nothing “except Jesus Christ and him crucified”. (1 Corinthians 2:2)

The upshot is that I find it difficult to make the transition to Easter, when so much of me wants to stay at the foot of the Cross.

A couple of years ago, the Revd Dr Giles Fraser (formerly Canon Chancellor of St Paul’s Cathedral) wrote an article deriding “evangelicals” saying that they just can’t cope with Good Friday. They want a smiling Jesus. Holy Week is just an interruption in their cheesy joy, he said. He’s wrong! I felt that he had demonised a whole section of the church on the basis of an inaccurate caricature of a small number of people.

Which is not to say that there aren’t Christians who do their best to bypass the Cross. Actually, we all do! Regular churchgoers who come every Sunday, go from the cheering crowds of Palm Sunday to the good news of the Resurrection on Easter Sunday, perhaps without giving a thought to what had happened between those two dates – from Hosannas to Hallelujahs, without listening to a heartfelt, “My God, my God! Why have you forsaken me?”

In my previous parish we introduced an Easter Vigil service (on the Saturday evening before Easter Day) which gave us an opportunity to look back before going forward to Easter itself. We also did a thing called ‘Experience Easter’ in which we set up a series of ‘stations’ in the church to tell the story of Holy Week and Easter. We invited groups of primary school children to walk into ‘Jerusalem’ cheering and waving palm leaves. Then we sat them around the table and took bread and wine, to talk to them about Passover and the way in which Jesus uses the Passover story to talk about his own ‘exodus’. To this day, at Passover, Jewish families gather around the story of God’s remembering and rescuing his people. God sent them a deliverer, Moses, to lead them out of slavery and oppression towards freedom. In the brickyards of Egypt, God’s people learn that it is not Pharaoh who is ultimately in charge, but the Lord God. Their journey is from being slaves of Pharaoh the oppressor, to being servants of God, whose service is freedom.

Jesus takes that story and makes it his own: our freedom will be bought, not with the blood of a lamb, daubed on the doorpost, but with the self-offering of the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. If you have ever experienced a Passover meal you will know that it brings together bitterness and sweetness, in herbs and spices – the bitterness of God’s people’s history as slaves and the sweetness of God’s redemption; fresh parsley points towards the freshness of spring, but salt water reminds us of the tears of God’s people.

In this context, Jesus takes bread and wine and says, “this is my body, this is my blood” – our exodus will be won for us by his death on the Cross, his body broken, his blood poured out for many.

Without some sense of that, we will never know the joy of Easter. Without Gethsemane and the Cross, all that is left is chocolate and bunny rabbits. Which is not deride chocolate and bunny rabbits, but to say that the light of Easter can only be known by those who also know something of the darkness of Good Friday.

I hope you are able to join us this Easter as we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, our hope and joy.

Alan Jewell

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Lent 3 – Sunday 8th March 2015

Posted on 8 March 2015 by Stratocastermagic

John 2:13-22

Jesus Cleanses the Temple

We recently visited Westminster Abbey. It’s an amazing place, of course. But do you know how much it costs to get in? £20 for an adult. There were three of us in our party, so that’s 60 quid. And we had a cup of tea and a piece of cake in the refectory. That’s another 20 quid. So, it’s not a cheap day out! Of course, they are very keen to tell you that there is no charge to worship or pray at the Abbey: the money from visitors is a charge that enables them to maintain a historic building, a world class visitor attraction. They are very aware that it might give the wrong impression: a Christian church is not a money-making enterprise but a place of worship which is free for anyone to enter. Most places of worship that don’t charge for entry still make it very clear that they would appreciate some contribution towards the running costs. ‘Donations welcome’.

We might sympathise with the Abbey’s dilemma. Or we might quote Jesus:

“My house shall be called the house of prayer;
but you have made it a den of thieves.” (Matthew 21:13)

John tells us that Jesus is in Jerusalem for the Passover feast. (John places this incident at the start of Jesus’s ministry. Matthew, Mark and Luke all place it as part of the events of Holy Week.) In the Temple forecourt Jesus finds merchants selling animals for sacrifice and money-changers. The merchants will guarantee that their animals are suitable for sacrifice. The money-changers are there because the coins in everyday use were produced by the pagan authorities and had idolatrous images on them. They couldn’t be used to pay the temple tax but had to be exchanged for coins that were acceptable. These were legitimate activities and we may be surprised by the violence of Jesus’s response:

Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables. He told those who were selling the doves, ‘Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a market-place!’
(John 2:15, 16)

Weapons were forbidden in the Temple but Jesus makes himself a whip! Whatever happened to ‘gentle Jesus, meek and mild’? He has shut down the Temple by force!

The Temple system was used to enrich some and oppress others. As if access to God could be bought and sold. This is not a temper tantrum but a burst of righteous anger against a system that was weighted against the poor and vulnerable, and tipped in favour of the wealthy and powerful. The Roman powers and the Jewish collaborators with that power are an unholy alliance that prevents ordinary people from living their lives as God would have them do. Jesus says that God cannot be party to such injustice. Jesus is not speaking and acting against the legitimate business of the Temple – prayer and worship – but against the use of religion as a tool of injustice and oppression.

Accessible God

During Lent we are invited to consider our lives as Christians and the vision we have to serve our communities as Christ’s people. Jesus’s words and actions in the Temple show that his concern is that ordinary people should know that God is accessible to them, not just to the rich and powerful. How can we make sure that our worship and the life of our church is accessible? Not just to us, but to our neighbours?

In particular, we are thinking about how we can support the vision we have:

  • Sharing the love of Jesus, with all, through friendship, prayer and service. (St Matthew’s)
  • Reaching out in God’s love and friendship. (St Cross)

The emphasis on giving that we are making during Lent is an invitation to ‘buy into’ that vision of a church that shares God’s love and reaches out to all. We don’t charge anyone to come here and pray. There is no admission charge for worship. But we can only do that because of the generosity and sacrificial giving of those who are committed to the vision.

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Lent 2 – Sunday 1st March 2015

Posted on 1 March 2015 by Stratocastermagic

Mark 8:31-38

Peter Rebuked

Poor old Peter! One minute he gets it spot on:

Jesus asked them, ‘But who do you say that I am?’ Peter answered him, ‘You are the Messiah. (Mark 8:29)

The next, he’s being told:

‘Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.’ (Mark 8:33)

How can Peter go from getting it so right, to getting it so wrong? Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised. He has correctly identified Jesus as the Messiah – God’s anointed king – but his idea of what a Messiah ought to be is a very human one. He knows what he expects from God’s chosen one; and it doesn’t include suffering, rejection and death. Jesus has to work with Peter and the other disciples to help them reach the point where they understand that his mission will only be accomplished by him walking the path of suffering. Yes, there will be resurrection. But that will not come until Jesus has been humbly obedient to God, even to death on a cross (Philippians 2:8). Jesus will not get to Easter, without going through Holy Week and Good Friday.

Follow Me!

Having told them that he is on his way to death, Jesus looks at them and says, “So, who’s coming with me?”! It’s hardly a winning sales-pitch! Who in their right mind would want to follow him? Jesus seems to spend more time discouraging people from becoming his followers than inviting them to follow him!

‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. (Mark 8:34, 35)

It’s easy for a preacher to labour this: to lay on the guilt, to spread it thickly! ‘You know that you are not the Christian that you ought to be! You are not really following Jesus, are you?’ And Lent can easily become a guilt-fest. To deny yourself means putting yourself at the bottom of the pile, the back of the queue; being harsh with yourself. (Take it from me, those who preach like that probably aren’t doing it either!)
But what if to deny yourself really means to find yourself? What if, what Jesus really means is that we deny the false view of ourselves that the world has given us? The one in which we think we are worth what we earn? That our value is linked to our dress size or waist measurement? Or to the number of followers we have on Facebook or Twitter?
What if denying yourself meant denying the lies that the world has told you about yourself and discovering your true self? Who you are in Christ and nothing else? Denying that you are what you own, and discovering that you were made in God’s image; that you are someone for whom Christ died; that you are the temple in which God dwells by his Spirit. That you were baptised into the death and resurrection of Jesus; and that your old self died with Christ so that your new, true self could live?
What if losing your life meant losing the false life of material wealth, social standing, prestige and power; and finding your true life – the life in which you simply know that you are loved for who you are and not for what you might acquire or accomplish?
There is no end to human acquisitiveness. But it is costly!

For what will it profit [you] to gain the whole world and forfeit [your] life? Indeed, what can [you] give in return for [your] life? (Mark 8:36)

Priorities

During Lent we invited to reconsider our priorities. As Christians, we are invited to consider where true wealth is found. Jesus says:

‘Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. (Matthew 6:19, 20)

The trouble is that we know that… But, as John Wesley said:

“the last part of a man to be converted is his wallet”.

Martin Luther said,

“Every man needs two conversions: the first his heart, the second of his wallet”.

The difficulty of preaching on these passages is the fact that you know, and I know, that the church is struggling to pay its bills! That the church needs more money! You can see how it works: during Lent we make you feel guilty about your attitude to money and material things. Then we follow that up by offering a solution: you feel bad about how much money you have? Let the church help you! Give us your money! Problem solved!
How nice it would be to preach on money in a church that had no financial difficulties! We would still have to do it, because Jesus talks about money all the time. It’s impossible to avoid, if you preach on the gospel each Sunday. Jesus knows how dangerous money is: you cannot serve two masters. You cannot serve God and Mammon (Matthew 6:24). You cannot pursue earthly wealth and spiritual life!
How good it would be to preach on that from a position where the church did not need your money! A friend who served in the RAF was a regular worshipper at the chapel on base. He told me that the chapel expenses and the chaplain’s stipend were met by the RAF. Those who went to chapel on Sundays didn’t need to contribute at all to the costs of running the chapel or maintaining its services. But they still took a collection, which was then given away to other charitable causes. They didn’t take the collection because the chapel needed the money. They took a collection because it was an important part of Christian discipleship to give.
We give to put money in its place. To show it who’s boss.

Conclusion

You sometimes hear it said that “money is the root of all evil”. You may have said it yourself. You may have said it, thinking that it is a quotation from the bible. It isn’t. What the bible says is:

For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, and in their eagerness to be rich some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains. (1 Timothy 6:10)

Not ‘money’ but ‘the love of money’. You don’t have to look far to see that some use religion to get rich. It works! But it’s ‘a root of all kinds of evil’. The love of money tempts us to wander away from the faith, and that is painful! The love of money is destructive. And so the bible warns us against it. Not against money, which can be used for beautiful and loving and compassionate purposes, but against the love of money.
How nice it would be to preach on that text without following it up with an appeal for more money in the collection plate! Sadly, we are not in that position. But Lent is as good a time as any to consider where money sits in our list of priorities. The love of money tempts us to save our own lives, to live for ourselves, for self-gratification. The gospel invites us to put money in its place, and, in so doing, to find ourselves – to live.
As a church, we have a vision of what we believe God has called us to:

  • Sharing the love of Jesus, with all, through friendship, prayer and service. (St Matthew’s)
  • Reaching out in God’s love and friendship. (St Cross)

How can we support that vision this Lent? In particular, where does our attitude to money fit in to that vision?

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In the Wilderness…

Posted on 22 February 2015 by Stratocastermagic

Lent 1 – Sunday 22nd February 2015

Mark 1:9-15

Jesus in the Wilderness

In today’s Gospel, Mark tells us that, after his baptism and before his public ministry, Jesus is driven by the Spirit into the wilderness.

At his baptism, Jesus was affirmed by God as God’s Son, the beloved, with whom God is pleased. The Spirit descends on him. But, as God’s beloved Son, led by God’s Spirit, he is driven to face the challenge of the wilderness. Unlike Matthew and Luke, Mark doesn’t flesh out the story. We are given few details: he was tempted – or tested – by Satan, vulnerable to wild beasts, but ministered to by angels.

  • Matthew and Luke tell us that Jesus fasted for forty days and that he was hungry. Unsurprisingly, he is tempted to look after his own immediate needs, by turning stone to bread. But Jesus resists, saying that it is more important to look to God than to put himself first and satisfy his own physical hunger (Matthew 4:4; Deuteronomy 8:3).
  • Jesus is tempted to throw himself from the pinnacle of the Temple, to see if God will protect him from harm. Again, Jesus resists, saying that God should not be put to the test (Matthew 4:7; Deuteronomy 8:16).
  • Jesus is shown the kingdoms of the world and told that these will all be his, if he worships Satan. Jesus counters by saying that it is God alone that he must serve (Matthew 4:10; Deuteronomy 6:13).

This period in the wilderness is one in which Jesus confirms his vision: as God’s Son, he will serve God, rather than seek his own wellbeing; he will trust God, rather than seek constant reassurance; he will worship God, rather than take any shortcut to power. In the Hebrew bible, God’s people spent 40 years wandering in the wilderness. Their experience was one of failure and rebellion (Numbers 14:26-38); but Jesus succeeds where they had failed, by remaining obedient to God, staying true to his calling.

Lent

Christians have often seen Lent as a time to take stock, to confirm our vision of what God is calling us to be. We might set ourselves challenges – to fast, by giving up luxuries like chocolate or alcohol; to develop our spiritual life by attending church or giving time to reading and praying; to put our faith into practice by supporting a charity or other cause.

But as well as seeking our own spiritual development, what vision do we have of the church in our parish at this time? Some feel that the church in our day is in the wilderness. The Church of England is considering a number of reports that highlight the challenges we face:

  • Dwindling numbers and aging congregations
  • A shortage of clergy; and the fact that the number of clergy approaching retirement outweighs the number coming forward for ordination.
  • The burden of caring for our buildings.
  • The pressure of finance to support the mission and ministry of our churches.

Supporting the Vision

 

At St Matthew’s we have a vision statement:

Sharing the love of Jesus, with all, through friendship, prayer and service.

At Cross we are adopting a new vision statement:

Reaching out in God’s love and friendship.

How can we support that vision today? How can we remain true to our calling to serve God in our parish?

One thing everyone knows about church: they are always after your money! It’s difficult to get in and out of church without being asked to buy a ticket for this fundraising event, donate to that worthy cause, or purchase something in order to support the church. And that’s before the collection plate comes round! The danger of this is that we see the church as needy: begging us to cough up something. Motivated by guilt, we rummage in our purses or pockets and find something to salve our conscience. We don’t want the church to die, do we? So we find the money somehow. But does God really need my money? Is God a poor beggar?

How much better would it be to say: we have a vision for the life of the church in this parish – a growing congregation; a comfortable and welcoming building, fit for purpose; a programme of loving outreach to our neighbours, at home and in the four corners of the world. That is our vision. How can I be a part of that? By investing in it. Buying in to it. That’s why I give – to invest in the church’s mission.

Our church needs finance, of course. We are struggling to pay our bills. But we believe that God is calling us to grow, to reach out beyond our own little circles. That is the vision. Is that something that you feel called to be a part of? How can you play your part in that?

Conclusion

In the wilderness, Jesus confirms his commitment to live his life in obedience to God’s calling. In Lent, we are invited to re-affirm our commitment to a life of discipleship. As part of that, we have the opportunity to renew our vision of what God is calling the church to in our parish and to consider what we can do to support that vision.

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Ashes to ashes…

Posted on 18 February 2015 by Stratocastermagic

Each year, in my previous parish, as the Ministry Team was preparing for Ash Wednesday, we had the same conversation. Are we going to use ashes this year, or not? Some years we did, some we didn’t. It wasn’t a fixed part of our tradition.

And that seems good to me. If you have to do something every year, it can become a mere ritual. But if you never do it, you might miss out on something that could be helpful. The symbolism of ash is to do with repentance (we repent in sackcloth and ashes, Matthew 11:20-21) and mortality (‘ashes to ashes, dust to dust’, the BCP Burial Service, cf Genesis 3:19).
Lent is as good a time as any to think about repentance and mortality!

A couple of years ago, I read a book by Richard Giles, called “Times and Seasons”[1]. It’s a commentary on the church’s liturgical year from a perspective very different to my own, as Giles is from the Anglo Catholic tradition of the Church of England. (The Bishop who ordained me said, in the Church of England, there was “High Church, Low Church and ‘no church’”. No prizes for guessing he thought I was in the ‘no church’ category!)

Giles is very good at thinking through and explaining the ‘reason for the season’, from Advent to the end of the church year. And he’s very good on Ash Wednesday! He comments on the fact that the use of ashes in worship has become more mainstream than it used to be. These days, you can find it in Common Worship provision; and in the Methodist Worship Book. In the Church of England it used to be the preserve of those with more catholic leanings. There was no official liturgy so you had to borrow from the Roman Catholic Church, and that felt very naughty! So, if you prided yourself on being an Anglican with catholic tendencies, you could wear the ash on your forehead as a badge of honour throughout Ash Wednesday.

Giles is very quick to point out the irony: you come out of the service proud of your religious observance, when during the service you’ve just heard Jesus warning you about:

“practising your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven.”
(Matthew 6:1).

His liturgical suggestion is that before the end of the service we all turn to our neighbour and wipe the ash from their foreheads, reminding them that their prayers have been heard and their sin is forgiven. So they have the symbolism of the imposition of ashes without turning them into a public display of piety.

What’s good about Giles’s observation is that he is making it about himself. We often use passages like the one in Matthew 6 to point the finger at others. (As has often been said, when you point one finger at someone else, you have three fingers pointing back yourself!) It’s not difficult to spot religious hypocrisy in other faiths, in other parts of the church, in other Christian traditions, or even elsewhere in our own congregations. What’s difficult is to spot it in ourselves. But if it wasn’t going to be an issue, then Jesus would never have spoken in the way that he does in Matthew 6.

We might read this chapter as a critique of other Christians, whose practices we don’t entirely trust. We might even read it as a critique of the Judaism of his day (conveniently forgetting that Jesus was a faithful Jew). But we ought to read it as a critique of ourselves. In fact, that’s the only way to read it. The only way to read scripture is as God’s word to us. God doesn’t need to speak to us about what others are getting wrong! He needs to speak to us.

The fact that Jesus is not talking to others should be clear: he says “when you give alms”, “when you pray”, “when you fast”. He’s talking to his disciples, and through them to us, assuming that they and we will give, pray and fast. And when we do those things we need to make sure that we are not among the hypocrites. Jesus has plenty to say about hypocrisy. It’s easy to think he’s talking about others. But he’s not. He’s talking about us.

When you give, don’t blow your own trumpet. When you pray, don’t expect an Oscar. When you fast, don’t expect others to be impressed by your display of worthy humility. (Incidentally, I plan to write a book on humility. When I do, it will be the best book on humility ever. Ever!)

But there’s another twist: you may give, fast and pray in secret, in order to receive God’s reward. But that may be equally self-serving. We may do it in secret to give ourselves the comfort of self-righteous gratification. Ideally, we are to give, fast and pray, simply because it is what Jesus expects of us. We need to be able to pray for grace:

“To give, and not to count the cost
to fight, and not to heed the wounds,
to toil, and not to seek for rest,
to labour, and not to ask for any reward,
save that of knowing that we do thy will”.

(Ignatius of Loyola)

In Lent, we often talk about giving something up. One of my favourite cartoons shows a vicar slumped in front of the TV, surrounded by crates of beer. “What are you giving up for Lent?”, someone asks him. “Religion”, he replies. It’s not a bad idea.

[1] Times and Seasons: Creating Transformative Worship Throughout the Year, Richard Giles

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Transfiguration

Posted on 16 February 2015 by Stratocastermagic

Sermon preached at St Matthew’s, Stretton on Sunday 15th February 2015

In today’s gospel (Mark 9:2-9), Jesus takes three of his apostles – Peter, James and John – to the top of a mountain, where Jesus is ‘transfigured’ before them. The Greek word is ‘metamorphoses’ – Jesus changes before their eyes. Matthew says that “His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white” (Matthew 17: 2). The two key figures from the Hebrew bible – Moses the lawgiver and Elijah the prophet – appear with him.

Peter is terrified, as you would be. But he has a plan: set up three gazebos, tents or tabernacles. In the Hebrew bible (Exodus 25) God’s people built a tabernacle as a place where God could be encountered. Then, on the mountain, a cloud descends – reminiscent of God’s appearing to Moses (Exodus 34:5) – and a voice is heard. God speaks, not about Moses or Elijah, but about Jesus:

‘This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!’ (Mark 9:7)

These words remind us of the baptism of Jesus:

“a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’” (Mark 1:11)

This is one of those moments, like the baptism, when heaven cannot help but break through! The gospel writers struggle to put into words what is happening. Jesus’s clothes are whiter than white, dazzling. Whiter than anyone on earth could get their washing. Better than the Daz challenge!

Luke says:

“they saw his glory” (Luke 9:32)

But how do you picture glory? Imagine getting that in Pictionary or charades! What does glory look like?!

Luke also tells us that what Jesus talked about with Moses and Elijah. He says they spoke about his ‘departure’, which he would accomplish in Jerusalem. The Greek word for departure here is ‘exodus’. He spoke to Moses about his exodus! The key story in the Hebrew bible is of Moses leading God’s people out of slavery in Egypt to freedom in the Promised Land. Jesus is talking to Moses about his ‘exodus’ – how he will lead God’s people out of slavery into freedom. He will do that in Jerusalem, the city where he will face death. It’s the place where the tabernacle was replaced by the Temple as the locus of God’s presence. There, Jesus, whose own body is the temple, will accomplish his exodus.

It’s a key moment and it must have had an impact.

For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we had been eyewitnesses of his majesty. For he received honour and glory from God the Father when that voice was conveyed to him by the Majestic Glory, saying, ‘This is my Son, my Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.’ We ourselves heard this voice come from heaven, while we were with him on the holy mountain.

2 Peter 1:16-18

So why doesn’t John mention it? In John’s gospel, if it was written by the John who went up the mountain with Peter, James and Jesus, why no mention of this extraordinary episode? Maybe there is. In the Prologue to the gospel (John 1:1-14) which we hear at Christmas (and again last week!) we read:

And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory,
the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth (John 1:14).

We saw his glory, when the Word of God became flesh and lived among us. One more Greek word: where John says that the Word of God ‘lived among us’, the word translated ‘lived’ literally means ‘tabernacled’. The word of God set up his tent among us. In the Hebrew bible, God lives in a tabernacle, a tent – a temporary structure that can move from place to place. In the gospel, God’s glory is seen in the ‘tent’ of the Incarnation. The flesh of Jesus is the tabernacle or tent in which God is met and known.

Conclusion

In the second century, Saint Irenaeus wrote:

“the glory of God is a live human being and a truly human life is the vision of God”.

We see the glory of God in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. Here, in the story of the Transfiguration, God’s glory shines through. We are invited to participate in that glory, to be transformed by God’s Spirit:

And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit.

2 Corinthians 3:18

  • When people look at my life, how much of God’s glory do they see?
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Water Into Wine

Posted on 25 January 2015 by Stratocastermagic

Some years ago, at a communion service, I read the gospel story of the wedding at Cana (John 2:1-11), and was about to speak about it when a young guy in the congregation, who was there with his mate – they’d just come in off the street, we’d never seen them before nor since – interrupted and said, “Excuse me. Why did Jesus turn water into wine?” As I was just about to launch into a sermon on that very subject, it wasn’t too difficult to offer an answer to the question. I’d come up with:

1.    His mother told him to.

Which is a good enough reason to do anything! Jesus’s relationship with his mother is not exactly straightforward. She had been warned when he was a child that he would break her heart (Luke 2:35). Jesus’s mission is to the whole world and his own family was sometimes eclipsed and mystified by that, to the point where they thought he was mad (Mark 3:21). Here, his conversation with his mother is at least a bit strained – she says, ‘They have no wine’; he says, ‘Woman, what’s that to you and me?’ (v4). Rude!

But he does it! Mary knows that Jesus can make a difference, so ‘Do what he tells you…’

2.    He had seen a need.

In Jesus’s day, weddings would last a week. Imagine picking up the bill for that – a week’s worth of eating and drinking! And the unthinkable happened, the wine gives out. Imagine the embarrassment! We’re not told whose wedding it was but it might have been a relative. Whoever it was, they are in danger of looking mean or foolish in front of the whole village. Jesus sees the need and steps in to meet it. Actually, he does more than that. He doesn’t just provide wine, he supplies good wine, and gallons of it – 6 jars, each holding 20 to 30 gallons of water, used in a rite of purification. That’s 120 to 180 gallons of wine, or 800 to a thousand bottles! And it’s good stuff! Not the plonk that you might get away with after everyone has had skin-full!

That’s more than meeting a need, that’s exuberant, extravagant abundance! It’s a picture of grace: that God more than meets our needs.

3.    In this, the first of his ‘signs’, Jesus ‘revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him’ (v11).

This is the real point: this is a moment of revelation. John tells us it’s the first of Jesus’s ‘signs’. Not miracles. Not magic tricks. But signs. A sign points to something. The signs of Jesus point to who Jesus is. In John’s gospel we’ll see him healing people, feeding people, walking on the water and raising Lazarus to life (John 11). These are signs that God is at work in the life and ministry of Jesus. The ultimate sign will be his own death and resurrection; but we start here with the abundance of God’s grace.

Jesus’s ‘hour’

At the start, Jesus says “My hour has not yet come” (v4). He’s talking about his death on the cross. In John 7.30:

“Then they tried to arrest (Jesus), but no one laid hands on him,
because his hour had not yet come.”

And in John 8.20 we read that Jesus

“spoke these words while he was teaching in the treasury of the temple,
but no one arrested him, because his hour had not yet come.”

It’s not until John chapter 12 that Jesus says:

 23‘The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified’.

And in John 13, before Jesus washes the feet of his disciples, we are told that Jesus

“knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.”

This is where the abundance of God’s grace will be made known. The pouring out of wine at the wedding was a sign of God’s grace. On the Cross, in the pouring out of his very lifeblood, Jesus pours out the grace of God.

At the crucifixion, John tells us:

A jar full of sour wine was standing there. So they put a sponge full of the wine on a branch of hyssop and held it to his mouth.

When Jesus had received the wine, he said, ‘It is finished.’ Then he bowed his head and gave up his spirit. (John 19: 29, 30)

Jesus gives the best wine to others, starting with the guests at the wedding in Cana.

In Revelation 19 we hear of the marriage supper of the Lamb (Revelation 19:6-10), when we will eat and drink in God’s presence. We anticipate that in our eucharist, where we take bread and wine in remembrance of the one who tasted the sour wine of death for us and offers the good wine of the kingdom to us.

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It’s No Secret…

Posted on 22 January 2015 by Stratocastermagic

In 1901 a German Lutheran theologian called William Wrede wrote a book called The Messianic Secret. It was an attempt to answer the question, Why does Jesus spend so much time forbidding people (and demons) to tell anyone that he is the Messiah?

As in today’s gospel reading (Mark 3.7–12):

Whenever the unclean spirits saw (Jesus), they fell down before him and shouted, ‘You are the Son of God! ’ But he sternly ordered them not to make him known.

Perhaps here, it’s because not all publicity is good publicity. If you are the Son of God, you might not want a bunch of demons doing your PR.

Wrede’s argument was that Jesus never claimed to be the Messiah, which was a bit embarrassing to the early church which believed that he was, and so the evangelist made up the idea that Jesus had claimed to be the Messiah, but told everyone to keep schtum.

Wrede’s view was that we know very little about who Jesus was; all we know is what the early church wanted to say about Jesus. There are still people who hold similar views. It is true that the gospel writers are more interested in preaching the gospel than they are in giving us a history lesson. But there’s no need to take such a negative view.

I think that the dynamic of the so-called ‘messianic secret’ goes like this:

You have a group of people who are looking forward to the coming of God’s promised messiah. They have a clear view of what God’s messiah will do when he comes. He will kick out the Romans and put himself on the throne in place of the pagan emperor. And God will be back!

When Jesus arrives on the scene, looking and acting like the messiah, some will see in him as their best hope of getting an army together and re-establishing the kingdom of Israel.

In John 6, in the story of Jesus feeding the multitude, we read

When the people saw the sign that he had done, they began to say, ‘This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world.’

When Jesus realized that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, he withdrew again to the mountain by himself.

The book of Acts starts with the disciples asking Jesus that very question:

So when they had come together, they asked him,
‘Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?’ (Acts 1:6)

Jesus has to deal with that question – after his resurrection and before his ascension into heaven. They still haven’t grasped it! That God’s messiah is not the warrior king, but the suffering servant, the one who wraps himself in a towel and washes feet; the one who, rather than attacking Pontius Pilate with a sword, submits humbly. As Philippians (2:6ff) says, Christ Jesus:

…though he was in the form of God,

did not regard equality with God

as something to be exploited,

but emptied himself,

taking the form of a slave,

being born in human likeness.

And being found in human form,

he humbled himself

and became obedient to the point of death—

even death on a cross.

Therefore God also highly exalted him…

You think you know what the messiah will be like? Let me enlighten you. You think you know what sort of God you want? Let me paint you a picture: that God is humble and gives up the way of power, choosing rather the path of suffering.

So, in order to paint that picture – the messiah as humble, suffering servant – Jesus needs to make sure that the news doesn’t get out too quickly. If all the world hears that Jesus is the messiah, before he has had chance to define what messiah is, then Jesus will not be able to walk the path that will lead him to the Cross, to death and resurrection. They’ll want an earthly king, not a humble servant.

Jesus’s kingdom is “not of this world” (John 18:36), as he tells Pilate. If it was, my disciples would be fighting you with weapons. Its values are not those of earthly power but of heavenly love, compassion and mercy. Jesus’s kingship will be established only the other side of the cross and resurrection.

What do we want from God? A mighty king who will sort out our problems? Or one who humbly loves us and shares our earthly life with us?

As a footnote, let me say that the church has invented its own version of the messianic secret. We believe in the God whom Jesus makes known, but we keep it to ourselves. It’s a little secret, just for us. Let me tell you the embargo has been lifted. Please feel free to share your faith with those around you!

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Come and See!

Posted on 22 January 2015 by Stratocastermagic

In John 1:35-51 Jesus calls his first disciples. They had previously been followers of John the Baptist, but John points them towards Jesus.

Jesus asks them:

“What are you looking for?”

They ask where he is staying, and Jesus says:

“Come and see.”

Then we read that they “came and saw where he was staying and they remained with him that day”. One of them was Andrew. His first action was to find his brother, Simon, and bring him to Jesus.

The story is of those searching for truth, finding it in Jesus and sharing it with others.

One of my favourite bible quotations consists of those three words:

“Come and see”.

We sometimes think that being a Christian is about going to church, believing certain things, behaving in certain ways… But here it seems that discipleship is an open-ended invitation to “come and see”. As the song lyric has it,

“Who knows where the road will lead us?
Only a fool would say!”[1]

The invitation is to walk the road with Jesus: no guarantees about what lies ahead, other than the promise that Jesus accompanies us in this life and offers something better in the life to come.

I became a Christian in 1979 at St Aldate’s Church in Oxford. It was my first Sunday as an undergraduate. I had arrived as an agnostic, from a non-church family; not a church-goer of any kind, but some members of the college Christian Union asked me to go to church with them. At St Aldate’s, I heard a sermon which ended with an invitation, and I responded. I joined a Beginners’ Group (‘Alpha’ hadn’t been invented yet!) and became a regular worshipper.

I joined the college Christian Union. The following year, I was leading the college Christian Union and helping to run a Beginners’ Group at St Aldate’s. After graduation, I spent a year working as the Verger at St Aldate’s – a post that acted a bit like an internship, giving hands-on experience of working with the church. Like a number of vergers before me and since, I went on to ordination. I had no idea at the beginning that that is where my journey would take me. Ordained ministry led to me serving in parishes as diverse as Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire, Clock Face and Sutton Manor in St Helens, Halewood in Liverpool, and Stretton and Appleton Thorn in Cheshire!

And that’s my point. Who knows where the road will lead us when we respond to the invitation from Jesus to “come and see”? Christian discipleship is an adventure, a call to follow Jesus wherever that might take us. How on earth have we managed to turn that call to adventure into the duty of attending church on a Sunday morning?!

Which is not to say that I am against people going to church. I’m all in favour of it! Theoretically. But I’m sure that’s a long way from the call to discipleship that Jesus makes. Church on Sunday is there to encourage us to live as Christians from Monday to Saturday. What we do from Monday to Saturday is to live out the stuff we say, hear and sing on Sunday morning!

Where will your journey take you? The invitation from Jesus is “come and see”.

[1] “All The Way”, Lyrics by Sammy Cahn (1957), song made famous by Frank Sinatra

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Strange Visitors

Posted on 6 January 2015 by Stratocastermagic

Strange visitors, these! ‘Magi’ – exotic wise men from the East. They have travelled a long, long way and arrive in Jerusalem, the big city 9 or 10 kilometres away from Bethlehem. Astrologer priests, they have been reading the stars and learned that a king has been born. They want to honour him, but where will they find him?

Another king, King Herod, is in Jerusalem: he is a cruel and violent man. When he hears that wise visitors are in Jerusalem looking for a new king, he is afraid that his days are numbered. And so he asks his advisors where is the best place to look for a king. They’ve read their Bibles so they know that Bethlehem is the very place where God’s king will be born.

Cruel Herod tries to outsmart the wise men from the East: he sends them to Bethlehem and says,

“When you get there, let me know exactly where this new king is – so that I can come and honour him too!”

But, of course, Herod doesn’t want to honour the king – he wants to destroy him, to get rid of him. (I told you he was cruel!)

The wise men set off on the last few kilometres of their journey, to the place indicated by the star. There they find their king, the baby Jesus, with his mother, Mary. They worshipped him and opened up the treasure chests they had brought with them. They have gifts for the little king: Gold, frankincense and myrrh.

Precious, rare, expensive things but not the most obvious presents to give to a child! The gifts are rich and fragrant with meaning:

Gold is a gift fit for a king:

Born a King on Bethlehem’s plain
Gold I bring to crown Him again
King forever, ceasing never
Over us all to reign

The aroma of Frankincense is used to worship God:

Frankincense to offer have I
Incense owns a Deity nigh
Prayer and praising, all men raising
Worship Him, God most high

Myrrh can be used to bring healing, or to honour the dead:

Myrrh is mine, its bitter perfume
Breathes of life of gathering gloom
Sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, dying
Sealed in the stone-cold tomb

The wise men are wise indeed! They have brought gifts to honour Jesus – the King who reveals God to us, and whose life and death will bring healing.

Christmas is all about gifts. But we lose out if we think only of the presents that we get and give. Today, we may think about the gifts that the wise men gave to Jesus. But the greatest Christmas gift of all is Jesus himself; God’s gift to the world he made, the world he loves, the world he longs to save.

Glorious now behold Him arise
King and God and Sacrifice
Alleluia, Alleluia
Earth to heav’n replies.

O Star of wonder, star of night
Star with royal beauty bright
Westward leading, still proceeding
Guide us to Thy perfect light.

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