(This sermon was preached at our Memorial Service, where we're joined by the relatives of folk in the parish who have passed on in the previous calendar year. Their names are read out and family members can light a candle in their memory if they wish as part of the service.)
Two observations and a story to begin with this morning.
I wonder how many times those of you who drive have come to your senses after you’ve been thinking about something, or listening to the radio, and realised, to your horror, that you have no recollection of driving the last three or four miles you’ve just driven.
And I wonder how many of us have had the experience of chatting to someone on a Monday morning and when they ask you what you did at the weekend, your mind goes completely blank. What did I do?
There are enough smiles around to suggest this isn’t just me!
Hold on to those observations as I tell you the story, which comes from the Eastern tradition.
Tenno had completed his ten years apprenticeship in Zen Buddhism and had risen to the rank of teacher. One rainy day he went to visit his master and as was the custom, he took off his clogs and left his umbrella outside the front door before entering.
As he walked in, his master smiled and welcomed him. Then he said “Tenno, you left your clogs and umbrella outside, didn’t you? Tell me – did you place the umbrella to the right side of the clogs, or to the left?”
Tenno was embarrassed because he didn’t know the answer. He realised that he lacked awareness. So he apprenticed himself to the master for another ten years so he could learn the art of constant awareness.
Two observations and a story that help give some substance to a thought. How much in life passes us by.
We’re so busy getting from A to B that we overlook the journey.
We’re so preoccupied with getting things done that time and experience slip past almost unnoticed.
Without determined effort on our part, we don’t cultivate the discipline of awareness that adds depth and richness to our living.
To quote Pink Floyd – a phrase which gives you an insight into just how contemporary my CD collection is – “And then one day you find ten years have dropped behind you, no-one told you when to run. You missed the starting gun”.
Life runs away while we’re still tying our shoelaces. Life happens to us, whether we’re ready for it or not. We’re born into the world and before we know it we’re being swept along in a crowd that dwarfs the London Marathon, running hard, trying to keep up, focused on what’s round the next bend, keeping our heads down, puffing and panting our way to the end of the human race.
But every now and then something happens to us that makes us pull up and stop running. Something so significant that we have no choice but to pull up a chair and sit on the sidelines for a while, as the rest of humanity goes streaming by.
Sometimes it’s one of life’s great gifts that hauls us out of the fray for a while. An encounter with beauty, in music, or words; in art or in nature. The birth of a child. The blossoming of love.
Miracle as they are, these things can never be hurried along. They deserve to be savoured. And in those moments we come to our senses and realise again that the human race means very little if we don’t take time to enjoy the journey.
But, and this is why many of you are here today, there are times when what stops us in our tracks is not gift, but grief.
A phone rings, a conversation takes place, information is exchanged, and you put down the receiver a moment later in a world that is changed utterly. Someone is gravely ill. Someone has died.
You find yourself sitting at the side of the road with your head in your hands wondering how on earth all these other people can keep obliviously running, when the world – your world at least – has stopped turning.
I got a call like that in January of last year – many of you know the story.
My father was going into hospital for surgery and on the day he went in, my mother had a stomach aneurism and nearly died. I had to drop everything and go back home straight away. Poor Mary Reid stepped in to take the Sunday service, and little did we know what the rest of the year would hold in store for Mary and her family.
Mum had 3 months in intensive care, and another three recuperating in hospital before she finally got home. And within her limitations, she’s doing pretty well now, though her health is still very fragile.
But those were strange days. Normal life was on hold. In the beginning it was hard to focus on anything other than what had happened to her. The family closed ranks, pulled together and got through, but we lived in this heightened atmosphere where her illness, for a while at least, became paramount for us. We lived daily with the prospect of losing her.
Why, for so many of us, does it take a brush with death to make us really appreciate what we have in life?
It’s a year and a half on, now, and I’m back in the human race again, jogging along; but something changed for me in that time – something that’s hard to put into words.
I think it’s the realisation that time isn’t just short, it’s precious. And in the time we have left, I want to find ways to be with my folk in ways that are truly meaningful. I want to know them and be known by them.
One of the saddest things in my time as a minister in some of the tougher corners of Glasgow was the experience of going to visit families who’d lost their mother – and it always seemed to be a mother – and when I asked them to tell me about her, all they were able to say was that she liked the soaps and she loved the bingo. Seventy, eighty years of life, and that’s all they were able to say about her.
Thankfully, that was a rare occurrence and I’ve not found the same thing up here. More often than not, the problem I’ve had is trying to condense everything you’ve had to say about the person who’s passed on!
And that overflow of stories and memories and laughter and tears that pours out when I visit bereaved folk highlights the point that I’m trying to make: when death visits our families, and none of us would ever want that visit, it leaves us a strange and unexpected gift. A heightened appreciation of the richness of this thing called life. For a few days or weeks or months we get it. We understand just how precious the gift of life really is.
But that heightened appreciation doesn’t last forever. It gently fades away like the ring of a bell. In time, some of us return to a life that seems infinitely greyer because that dear person has passed on. Others tie up our laces and fall back in step with the rest of the human race. Either way, the danger is we forget what we learned in those fraught days and weeks and months: that life is precious. That our lives are precious: not to be wished away or frittered away on things that don’t really matter. We only get the one life – we need to make the most of it.
I’ve never heard that idea better expressed than in the words of a song called “When I’m Gone” by Phil Ochs.
There's no place in this world where I'll belong when I'm gone
I won't know the right from the wrong when I'm gone
You won't find me singing on this song when I'm gone
So I guess I'll have to do it while I'm here
My days won't be dances of delight when I'm gone
The sands will be shifting from my sight when I'm gone
Can't add my name into the fight when I'm gone
So I guess I'll have to do it while I'm here
I won't see the flowing of the time when I'm gone
The joys of love will not be mine when I'm gone
My pen won't pour a lyric rhyme when I'm gone
So I guess I'll have to do it while I'm here
I won't breathe the bracing air when I'm gone
I won't be worried about my cares when I'm gone
Can't be asked to do my share when I'm gone
So I guess I'll have to do it while I'm here
I won't be running from the rain when I'm gone
Won't even suffer from the pain when I'm gone
Can't say who's to praise and who's to blame when I'm gone
So I guess I'll have to do it while I'm here
And I won't be laughing at the lies when I'm gone
I won't question where or when or why when I'm gone
Can't live proud enough to die when I'm gone
So I guess I'll have to do it while I'm here
He puts it well, I think. We owe it to those we love to make the most of the time that we have been given. But where Phil Ochs and I part company is in his assumption that death is the final end.
Christianity dares to hope for more than that, and I want to finish this morning with these words from writer/minister Fred Buechner:
“Unlike the great oriental religions, Christianity takes death very seriously, which is of course why it takes life very seriously, why there is such urgency about living it right and living it now. In the New Testament there is no doctrine of endless rebirths on the great wheel of life, no doctrine of a soul which by its nature cannot die. On the contrary, by our nature we do die, as Christianity sees it, with our bodies and souls as inextricably one in death as they are in life.
But if death is the end in Christianity, it is not the final end; it is the end of an act only, not the end of the drama. Once before, out of the abyss of the unborn, the uncreated, the not-yet, you and I who from all eternity had been nothing, became something. Out of non-being we emerged into being. And what Jesus promises is resurrection, which means that once again this miracle will happen, and out of death will come another realm of life. Not because by our nature there is part of us that does not die, but because by God’s nature he will not let even death separate us from him finally.
In love he made us and in love he will mend us. In love, he will have us his true children before his work is done”.
Thanks be to God for life now, and the promise of life hereafter. Amen
Monday, 30 May 2011
Sunday, 22 May 2011
Jesus Wants To Ruin Your Life
This morning, with the help of the apostle Peter, I want to try and explain why it’s Jesus’ intention to ruin your life for you and why, in the long run, that’s actually a very good thing.
The passage we read together this morning is strange for a whole host of reasons, some of which we’ll dip into later. But the strangest aspect of this passage is why it’s there at all.
Last week we read the story of doubting Thomas in John chapter 20, and if we’d read right on to the end of the chapter, we’d have heard these words:
“In his disciples' presence Jesus performed many other miracles which are not written down in this book. But these have been written in order that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through your faith in him you may have life.”
Now could that sound any more like a conclusion? John is surely winding things up, here, isn’t he? I’ve told you about some of the things that happened through Jesus, I could have told you lots more, but I’ve put these down so that you yourselves can believe in him.
A perfectly good way to end a gospel. But it’s not the end. It’s the gospel equivalent of a false summit, because after chapter 20 comes chapter 21.
And there are some strange discontinuities between chapters 20 and 21 which have puzzled careful readers for hundreds of years.
Why does John end his gospel, only to keep going?
How come the disciples are suddenly in Galilee when in the previous chapter they were in Jerusalem?
How come they don’t recognise Jesus if he’d already appeared to them twice in the upper room?
But the most pressing question is why, if they’ve already seen him, been convinced of his resurrection, been empowered by his Spirit and commissioned to continue Jesus’ work in the world, why are they heading back to their boats and their nets?
Well there are plenty of hypotheses, but no one definitive answer to that particular puzzle, and for that reason alone we probably shouldn’t lose too much sleep over it.
What’s fascinating, though, is that John, or someone from his religious circle, thought fit to add what amounts to a PS to the entire gospel. Someone came to the conclusion that the material recorded in John 21 was just too important to leave out.
So let’s reflect on why that might have been.
“After this”, John tells us, “Jesus appeared once more to his disciples at Lake Tiberias” which is just another name for the Sea of Galilee.
Seven disciples were there – five named and two unnamed. Peter, James, John and Nathanael were all locals in Galilee, and it’s possible that the other three were as well, although we can’t be sure.
After three years on the road, these men were coming home, but it’s a strange kind of homecoming. They’d risked everything to go off after this itinerant preacher, and everyone knew what had happened to him, though there were whispers that he’d come back to life somehow.
And my guess is that the returning disciples had a muted kind of reception.
Mothers would embrace them and look into their eyes with concern.
Long-suffering wives would sigh and shake their heads; pounding the dough just a little bit harder.
Children would smile but keep their distance, trying to gauge if these men they once knew were still the same.
Neighbours would look them up and down, and long to know more, but respect, or fear, meant few dared to ask anything of them.
Everywhere they went, eyes would follow.
I wonder how many days it took of feeling like a square peg in the round hole you used to call home before Peter decided he had to go fishing.
We all do it, don’t we?
When life’s uncertain and we don’t know how things are going to pan out, we always seek out the comfort of what we know best.
We can do it positively – we ring or visit people we trust; we throw ourselves into work or leisure that preoccupies us for a while.
Or we can do it negatively by hiding in our addictions.
But when the going gets tough – we all head for that place where we can forget the world for a while and lose ourselves in something.
For Peter, it was the freedom of pushing away from the shore and leaving behind everyone and everything but the task in hand. The slap of water against the sides of the boat; the weight of the nets in his hands; the wriggling silver treasure stolen from the depths. This was what he knew. He was a fisherman. He needed to be back on the water.
And so that’s where he went; and the others followed him.
What would you give for a conversation with Peter at this point in his life?
What was he thinking?
Had the pressures of the last three years, and most especially the last few weeks brought him to the place where he just wanted to hide for a while?
Did his heart surge when he saw Jesus alive again after the resurrection, and crash almost immediately when he remembered how he’d betrayed him?
Should we think of his going fishing as a kop-out, or as a long deep breath that might allow him to find his bearings?
Did he think he could just return to his old life and pick up the pieces again?
He certainly tried. But as luck would have it, they spent the whole night fishing and caught nothing.
And we know how that feels too., don’t we? When the places we run to for solace don’t deliver on their promises.
“Have you caught anything lads?” a voice calls from the shoreline.
“No” they bark – tired and frustrated.
“Try casting your nets on the right side of the boat” says the voice. And because, as commentators will tell you, it’s sometimes easier to spot a shoal of fish from the shore than on the sea itself, they do what he says. And the nets instantly fill.
“It’s the Lord” says John. And in that moment, something snaps within Peter. He jumps over the side and starts swimming to shore, and there they find Jesus barbecuing some fish and baking some bread for them. Not the acts of a ghost or an hallucination, and this, perhaps is part of the reason John wanted to include this story.
But go back to that moment in the boat where Peter hurls himself into the lake and starts swimming for the shore.
To my mind, that’s the moment when Peter realises that Jesus has, in the nicest possible way, ruined his life for him.
Ruined how?
Ruined in the same way my tolerance of instant coffee was ruined the first time I tasted a cup made with freshly ground coffee. Having experienced the real thing, I could never willingly go back.
Ruined in the same way Hugh Grant was ruined in Four Weddings and a Funeral. Having fallen in love with the enigmatic American played by Andi McDowell, no other woman would ever be good enough; not even the woman he was standing beside at the front of the church and mistakenly about to marry….
Ruined in the same way I was ruined when I first heard the Australian guitarist Tommy Emmanuel, who is, in my humble estimation, the greatest acoustic guitar player in the world. Ruined because having heard him play I long to be as good as him, but I know fine well I could practice from now ‘til Kingdom come and never come close. But for all that, part of me still wants to try.
Jesus, in the nicest possible way, has ruined Peter’s life for him because having spent time with Jesus, the things Peter loved which gave him his identity, good though they were, could never have the same allure again. The ground of his being had shifted. His centre of gravity had shifted irrevocably toward Jesus.
Knowing what he knows; seeing what he’s seen, he can’t go back to his old life even if he tries. And the moment he realises that, he leaps out of the boat like a salmon and swims to shore, because if his old life’s ruined, he wants his new life to begin as soon as possible.
I am glad to be able to stand here today and say to you that - in that sense - Jesus has ruined my life and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
This collar counts for very little; it’s certainly not a guarantee of holiness. I stumble my way through the days like everyone else and most of the time I don’t think I do an especially good job of being a Christian. But the little I’ve got to know Jesus by keeping company with him over the years has convinced me that I can’t build my life on any other foundation.
In that respect, I’m ruined, thank God.
Like Peter, there are times when I want to run away, to put distance between myself and God, to retreat into the comfort of what I know for certain and can manage. But as I sit there, like Peter, bobbing up and down on the water, I know in my heart of hearts that I won’t find what I’m looking for anywhere else other than in the company of God. I always end up swimming back to shore.
Let me tell you a secret. I feel like an alien and a stranger in this community quite a lot of the time. There is such conspicuous consumption. I sit in my car at the school some days and watch these enormous shiny automobiles roll up, many of them costing more than our first flat did.
So many people seem to live for these things; it’s like their identity is bound up not in who they are, but in what they own. And I feel neither envy nor admiration as I watch them climbing down out of these fantastic wagons. It’s more like a kind of sadness I feel.
In that world, I’m a dead loss and I know it. I don’t really care what I drive as long as it gets from A to B reasonably fast and reasonably economically. I don’t really care what kind of shoes my 4 year old wears as long as they keep her feet warm and dry. I don’t really care where we go on holiday, as long as we’re together and we have a good time.
Jesus has ruined my chances of ever feeling at home in the world of competitive consumerism – thank God
I’m reminded of an old spiritual we used to sing in Sunday School when I was a child:
“Turn your eyes upon Jesus – look full in his wonderful face.
And the things of earth will grow strangely dim
In the light of his glory and grace”.
The things of earth will grow strangely dim – that’s a good way of putting it, I think.
One way of living has been ruined for me; and a new life, a different kind of life, is slowly emerging from the rubble.
I wish I could tell you it was all plain sailing and wonderful, but that would be a lie. I have days when it feels like it’s coming together and days when it feels like it’s falling apart. But in the middle of it all I’ve become convinced in the core of my being that the secret to the kind of life I want to lead is found in this man cooking fish and baking bread on the shoreline.
I’ve come to see that life is not about what I can make of myself, but what God, in his generous hospitality, can make of me.
He’s woken something up inside me. A longing to live well. And I know that even if I practiced from now ‘til Kingdom come, I’d never get to where he wants me to be. But for all that, part of me still wants to try. The ground of my being has shifted.
How about you?
Have you tasted enough of Jesus, have you been with him enough for him to begin ruining your life a little? Messing with your priorities and your plans? Rocking your boat?
Has the tantalising scent of baking bread and barbecued fish reached you across the water, sometimes? Giving you a sense of the possibilities that lie elsewhere if you dare to leave behind the security of what you know.
Has your knowledge of Jesus inflamed any desire in you for a different way of living?
It seems to me that today, Peter in the most vivid way possible is showing us the heart of the existential decision we all must make. To keep a tight grip on the lives we have with all their comforting familiarity, or to plunge into whatever the Galilean might have in store for us, and put our lives into his hands.
“Whoever wants to save his life will lose it” says Jesus “But whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it.”
The good news today is that Jesus wants to ruin this thing you call your life. But only so he can draw you into a better one.
Thanks be to God for the promise and the challenge of his word.
The passage we read together this morning is strange for a whole host of reasons, some of which we’ll dip into later. But the strangest aspect of this passage is why it’s there at all.
Last week we read the story of doubting Thomas in John chapter 20, and if we’d read right on to the end of the chapter, we’d have heard these words:
“In his disciples' presence Jesus performed many other miracles which are not written down in this book. But these have been written in order that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through your faith in him you may have life.”
Now could that sound any more like a conclusion? John is surely winding things up, here, isn’t he? I’ve told you about some of the things that happened through Jesus, I could have told you lots more, but I’ve put these down so that you yourselves can believe in him.
A perfectly good way to end a gospel. But it’s not the end. It’s the gospel equivalent of a false summit, because after chapter 20 comes chapter 21.
And there are some strange discontinuities between chapters 20 and 21 which have puzzled careful readers for hundreds of years.
Why does John end his gospel, only to keep going?
How come the disciples are suddenly in Galilee when in the previous chapter they were in Jerusalem?
How come they don’t recognise Jesus if he’d already appeared to them twice in the upper room?
But the most pressing question is why, if they’ve already seen him, been convinced of his resurrection, been empowered by his Spirit and commissioned to continue Jesus’ work in the world, why are they heading back to their boats and their nets?
Well there are plenty of hypotheses, but no one definitive answer to that particular puzzle, and for that reason alone we probably shouldn’t lose too much sleep over it.
What’s fascinating, though, is that John, or someone from his religious circle, thought fit to add what amounts to a PS to the entire gospel. Someone came to the conclusion that the material recorded in John 21 was just too important to leave out.
So let’s reflect on why that might have been.
“After this”, John tells us, “Jesus appeared once more to his disciples at Lake Tiberias” which is just another name for the Sea of Galilee.
Seven disciples were there – five named and two unnamed. Peter, James, John and Nathanael were all locals in Galilee, and it’s possible that the other three were as well, although we can’t be sure.
After three years on the road, these men were coming home, but it’s a strange kind of homecoming. They’d risked everything to go off after this itinerant preacher, and everyone knew what had happened to him, though there were whispers that he’d come back to life somehow.
And my guess is that the returning disciples had a muted kind of reception.
Mothers would embrace them and look into their eyes with concern.
Long-suffering wives would sigh and shake their heads; pounding the dough just a little bit harder.
Children would smile but keep their distance, trying to gauge if these men they once knew were still the same.
Neighbours would look them up and down, and long to know more, but respect, or fear, meant few dared to ask anything of them.
Everywhere they went, eyes would follow.
I wonder how many days it took of feeling like a square peg in the round hole you used to call home before Peter decided he had to go fishing.
We all do it, don’t we?
When life’s uncertain and we don’t know how things are going to pan out, we always seek out the comfort of what we know best.
We can do it positively – we ring or visit people we trust; we throw ourselves into work or leisure that preoccupies us for a while.
Or we can do it negatively by hiding in our addictions.
But when the going gets tough – we all head for that place where we can forget the world for a while and lose ourselves in something.
For Peter, it was the freedom of pushing away from the shore and leaving behind everyone and everything but the task in hand. The slap of water against the sides of the boat; the weight of the nets in his hands; the wriggling silver treasure stolen from the depths. This was what he knew. He was a fisherman. He needed to be back on the water.
And so that’s where he went; and the others followed him.
What would you give for a conversation with Peter at this point in his life?
What was he thinking?
Had the pressures of the last three years, and most especially the last few weeks brought him to the place where he just wanted to hide for a while?
Did his heart surge when he saw Jesus alive again after the resurrection, and crash almost immediately when he remembered how he’d betrayed him?
Should we think of his going fishing as a kop-out, or as a long deep breath that might allow him to find his bearings?
Did he think he could just return to his old life and pick up the pieces again?
He certainly tried. But as luck would have it, they spent the whole night fishing and caught nothing.
And we know how that feels too., don’t we? When the places we run to for solace don’t deliver on their promises.
“Have you caught anything lads?” a voice calls from the shoreline.
“No” they bark – tired and frustrated.
“Try casting your nets on the right side of the boat” says the voice. And because, as commentators will tell you, it’s sometimes easier to spot a shoal of fish from the shore than on the sea itself, they do what he says. And the nets instantly fill.
“It’s the Lord” says John. And in that moment, something snaps within Peter. He jumps over the side and starts swimming to shore, and there they find Jesus barbecuing some fish and baking some bread for them. Not the acts of a ghost or an hallucination, and this, perhaps is part of the reason John wanted to include this story.
But go back to that moment in the boat where Peter hurls himself into the lake and starts swimming for the shore.
To my mind, that’s the moment when Peter realises that Jesus has, in the nicest possible way, ruined his life for him.
Ruined how?
Ruined in the same way my tolerance of instant coffee was ruined the first time I tasted a cup made with freshly ground coffee. Having experienced the real thing, I could never willingly go back.
Ruined in the same way Hugh Grant was ruined in Four Weddings and a Funeral. Having fallen in love with the enigmatic American played by Andi McDowell, no other woman would ever be good enough; not even the woman he was standing beside at the front of the church and mistakenly about to marry….
Ruined in the same way I was ruined when I first heard the Australian guitarist Tommy Emmanuel, who is, in my humble estimation, the greatest acoustic guitar player in the world. Ruined because having heard him play I long to be as good as him, but I know fine well I could practice from now ‘til Kingdom come and never come close. But for all that, part of me still wants to try.
Jesus, in the nicest possible way, has ruined Peter’s life for him because having spent time with Jesus, the things Peter loved which gave him his identity, good though they were, could never have the same allure again. The ground of his being had shifted. His centre of gravity had shifted irrevocably toward Jesus.
Knowing what he knows; seeing what he’s seen, he can’t go back to his old life even if he tries. And the moment he realises that, he leaps out of the boat like a salmon and swims to shore, because if his old life’s ruined, he wants his new life to begin as soon as possible.
I am glad to be able to stand here today and say to you that - in that sense - Jesus has ruined my life and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
This collar counts for very little; it’s certainly not a guarantee of holiness. I stumble my way through the days like everyone else and most of the time I don’t think I do an especially good job of being a Christian. But the little I’ve got to know Jesus by keeping company with him over the years has convinced me that I can’t build my life on any other foundation.
In that respect, I’m ruined, thank God.
Like Peter, there are times when I want to run away, to put distance between myself and God, to retreat into the comfort of what I know for certain and can manage. But as I sit there, like Peter, bobbing up and down on the water, I know in my heart of hearts that I won’t find what I’m looking for anywhere else other than in the company of God. I always end up swimming back to shore.
Let me tell you a secret. I feel like an alien and a stranger in this community quite a lot of the time. There is such conspicuous consumption. I sit in my car at the school some days and watch these enormous shiny automobiles roll up, many of them costing more than our first flat did.
So many people seem to live for these things; it’s like their identity is bound up not in who they are, but in what they own. And I feel neither envy nor admiration as I watch them climbing down out of these fantastic wagons. It’s more like a kind of sadness I feel.
In that world, I’m a dead loss and I know it. I don’t really care what I drive as long as it gets from A to B reasonably fast and reasonably economically. I don’t really care what kind of shoes my 4 year old wears as long as they keep her feet warm and dry. I don’t really care where we go on holiday, as long as we’re together and we have a good time.
Jesus has ruined my chances of ever feeling at home in the world of competitive consumerism – thank God
I’m reminded of an old spiritual we used to sing in Sunday School when I was a child:
“Turn your eyes upon Jesus – look full in his wonderful face.
And the things of earth will grow strangely dim
In the light of his glory and grace”.
The things of earth will grow strangely dim – that’s a good way of putting it, I think.
One way of living has been ruined for me; and a new life, a different kind of life, is slowly emerging from the rubble.
I wish I could tell you it was all plain sailing and wonderful, but that would be a lie. I have days when it feels like it’s coming together and days when it feels like it’s falling apart. But in the middle of it all I’ve become convinced in the core of my being that the secret to the kind of life I want to lead is found in this man cooking fish and baking bread on the shoreline.
I’ve come to see that life is not about what I can make of myself, but what God, in his generous hospitality, can make of me.
He’s woken something up inside me. A longing to live well. And I know that even if I practiced from now ‘til Kingdom come, I’d never get to where he wants me to be. But for all that, part of me still wants to try. The ground of my being has shifted.
How about you?
Have you tasted enough of Jesus, have you been with him enough for him to begin ruining your life a little? Messing with your priorities and your plans? Rocking your boat?
Has the tantalising scent of baking bread and barbecued fish reached you across the water, sometimes? Giving you a sense of the possibilities that lie elsewhere if you dare to leave behind the security of what you know.
Has your knowledge of Jesus inflamed any desire in you for a different way of living?
It seems to me that today, Peter in the most vivid way possible is showing us the heart of the existential decision we all must make. To keep a tight grip on the lives we have with all their comforting familiarity, or to plunge into whatever the Galilean might have in store for us, and put our lives into his hands.
“Whoever wants to save his life will lose it” says Jesus “But whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it.”
The good news today is that Jesus wants to ruin this thing you call your life. But only so he can draw you into a better one.
Thanks be to God for the promise and the challenge of his word.
Monday, 16 May 2011
Christian Aid reflection - Doubting (?) Thomas
Doubting Thomas.
That’s a harsh way to be remembered, isn’t it?
I’ve always felt a bit sorry for Thomas. It’s kind of unfair to have one moment define your whole life story, but that’s what’s happened with him.
Doubting Thomas.
Nobody remembers him as Faithful Thomas; Courageous Thomas.
You’ll probably know the story of how Jesus’ friend Lazarus, the brother of Mary and Martha, died. What you may not know was that for Jesus to return to Bethany to be with the mourners was risky. He was persona non-grata in that part of the world, his enemies had already tried to stone him, and when they first heard this news the disciples tried to talk him out of going back there.
But when it became clear that his mind was made up, Thomas said to the rest of them: “Let us go also, that we may die with him”.
But we don’t remember that part of the story. We remember this part. And we forget that until the rest of the disciples saw Jesus with their own eyes, they were doubting too. Thomas was no different from all the others, in that respect.
Late on that first Easter Sunday evening, Jesus appeared among his followers as they cowered in a locked room. These were the men who had fled and deserted him at the crucial moment, but there are no recriminations. Instead, he blesses them with his peace, his presence and his Spirit. John tells us that on seeing him, they were filled with joy. But Thomas isn’t there to receive the blessing. He didn’t get to see for himself.
We don’t know where he’d got to. Maybe he was on an errand. Maybe he’d kept his distance from the rest of the disciples after Calvary.
Whatever the reason for his absence, when he finally gets to hear this incredible news, his reaction is, I dare say, exactly what yours or mine would be. Incredulity.
People don’t come back to life after crucifixion, and I hear more than a little anger in his voice when he growls “unless I see the scars of the nails in his hands and put my finger on those scars and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”
You can live in your fantasy world, he seems to be saying. If I’m going to believe this I need the evidence of my own senses. Your words aren’t enough for me.
And who can blame him? Words are cheap, aren’t they?
It’s only when the Christ appears among them once more, and Thomas sees him with his own eyes, that he finally believes. Interestingly he doesn’t seem to need to go as far as putting his fingers into the wounds, as he said he would.
And with one eye on the future, Jesus gives a word of encouragement to the likes of you and me, though it also sounds like an admonishment for Thomas: “You believe because you have seen – blessed are those who have not seen, and yet have believed”. I’ve always appreciated those words.
Now, in the context of today’s Christian Aid service, what does this story have to say to you and to me? We’ll I’ve held it in my mind this week, and as I’ve turned it over and over, different facets have caught the light.
The first time round, I found myself thinking about the fact that words are cheap.
It’s not so long ago that in the light of the Empty Tomb we were proclaiming hallelujahs and declaring that Jesus is risen. Holding out the truth that in Christ’s death and resurrection something of cosmic proportions has taken place. These are the words that the church is called to proclaim. And they are true.
But I wonder how many ears in the world receive those words with scepticism or disbelief because they seem to have precious little evidence backing them up.
If in the resurrected Christ, and the church that gathers around him, the hearts and minds of men and women are turned back to God and to their fellow human beings, why are over a billion people in our world still living on less than a dollar a day, when the vast majority of the world’s resources are concentrated in the nominally Christian west?
Can the poor be blamed if in response to our claim that Jesus is risen, they turn round and say ‘So what? Until we see the evidence of his goodness for ourselves, manifest through you as you help feed our bodies and minds and souls what tangible reason do we have to believe? If your faith in God doesn’t move you to work for change and for justice in a desperately unfair world, isn’t it just empty words?'
Perhaps the third world is rather like Thomas, waiting for hard proof that our faith is real, because fine words aren’t enough.
Or perhaps – and here’s a shocker – perhaps it’s we in the west who, like the disciples, are in trouble. Locked in the prison of our materialism. Locked into cycles of consumption we can’t get out of. Desperately fearful, though we have less to fear than 90% of people on the planet.
And perhaps, just perhaps, the third world plays the role of Christ here – coming to us wounded, and yet full of joy and faith. Because the truth of the matter is that Christian faith is actually at its most vibrant in the emerging world, for all its problems.
Time and again, as we hear from Christian Aid each year, I’m struck by how much people in the third world have to teach us about generosity, joy and community, though in material terms they have so little. Think of the vitality and the vibrancy and the colour and the music that comes out of these places, for all their poverty.
On the surface it’s obvious who the needy partner is in this annual exchange between ourselves and the poor of the world. On reflection it’s not nearly so obvious.
One last thought – and it comes in the form of a question. Where do we find Jesus?
It strikes me, not just from this story, but from the whole Biblical witness, that we find Christ among those who need him most.
A small group of fearful disciples, hiding behind locked doors and wondering what on earth the future holds for them.
An elderly group of Christian Aid volunteers, gathered in a church in an affluent suburb; trying hard to live with a different agenda to their near neighbours.
A young group of Nicaraguan workers, putting in a hard shift in the factory and the marketplace so that a whole community can eat, and their kids can be educated.
A congregation in North East Scotland, gathering for worship as they’ve always done, and wondering how to keep being the church in a culture that refuses to stand still.
Christ, who sees our needs, stands in our midst, shows us the wounds he bore for our sins, and speaks his peace over us.
And we are blessed, in the midst of our doubt, and given good, solid reason to believe.
Thanks be to God.
That’s a harsh way to be remembered, isn’t it?
I’ve always felt a bit sorry for Thomas. It’s kind of unfair to have one moment define your whole life story, but that’s what’s happened with him.
Doubting Thomas.
Nobody remembers him as Faithful Thomas; Courageous Thomas.
You’ll probably know the story of how Jesus’ friend Lazarus, the brother of Mary and Martha, died. What you may not know was that for Jesus to return to Bethany to be with the mourners was risky. He was persona non-grata in that part of the world, his enemies had already tried to stone him, and when they first heard this news the disciples tried to talk him out of going back there.
But when it became clear that his mind was made up, Thomas said to the rest of them: “Let us go also, that we may die with him”.
But we don’t remember that part of the story. We remember this part. And we forget that until the rest of the disciples saw Jesus with their own eyes, they were doubting too. Thomas was no different from all the others, in that respect.
Late on that first Easter Sunday evening, Jesus appeared among his followers as they cowered in a locked room. These were the men who had fled and deserted him at the crucial moment, but there are no recriminations. Instead, he blesses them with his peace, his presence and his Spirit. John tells us that on seeing him, they were filled with joy. But Thomas isn’t there to receive the blessing. He didn’t get to see for himself.
We don’t know where he’d got to. Maybe he was on an errand. Maybe he’d kept his distance from the rest of the disciples after Calvary.
Whatever the reason for his absence, when he finally gets to hear this incredible news, his reaction is, I dare say, exactly what yours or mine would be. Incredulity.
People don’t come back to life after crucifixion, and I hear more than a little anger in his voice when he growls “unless I see the scars of the nails in his hands and put my finger on those scars and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”
You can live in your fantasy world, he seems to be saying. If I’m going to believe this I need the evidence of my own senses. Your words aren’t enough for me.
And who can blame him? Words are cheap, aren’t they?
It’s only when the Christ appears among them once more, and Thomas sees him with his own eyes, that he finally believes. Interestingly he doesn’t seem to need to go as far as putting his fingers into the wounds, as he said he would.
And with one eye on the future, Jesus gives a word of encouragement to the likes of you and me, though it also sounds like an admonishment for Thomas: “You believe because you have seen – blessed are those who have not seen, and yet have believed”. I’ve always appreciated those words.
Now, in the context of today’s Christian Aid service, what does this story have to say to you and to me? We’ll I’ve held it in my mind this week, and as I’ve turned it over and over, different facets have caught the light.
The first time round, I found myself thinking about the fact that words are cheap.
It’s not so long ago that in the light of the Empty Tomb we were proclaiming hallelujahs and declaring that Jesus is risen. Holding out the truth that in Christ’s death and resurrection something of cosmic proportions has taken place. These are the words that the church is called to proclaim. And they are true.
But I wonder how many ears in the world receive those words with scepticism or disbelief because they seem to have precious little evidence backing them up.
If in the resurrected Christ, and the church that gathers around him, the hearts and minds of men and women are turned back to God and to their fellow human beings, why are over a billion people in our world still living on less than a dollar a day, when the vast majority of the world’s resources are concentrated in the nominally Christian west?
Can the poor be blamed if in response to our claim that Jesus is risen, they turn round and say ‘So what? Until we see the evidence of his goodness for ourselves, manifest through you as you help feed our bodies and minds and souls what tangible reason do we have to believe? If your faith in God doesn’t move you to work for change and for justice in a desperately unfair world, isn’t it just empty words?'
Perhaps the third world is rather like Thomas, waiting for hard proof that our faith is real, because fine words aren’t enough.
Or perhaps – and here’s a shocker – perhaps it’s we in the west who, like the disciples, are in trouble. Locked in the prison of our materialism. Locked into cycles of consumption we can’t get out of. Desperately fearful, though we have less to fear than 90% of people on the planet.
And perhaps, just perhaps, the third world plays the role of Christ here – coming to us wounded, and yet full of joy and faith. Because the truth of the matter is that Christian faith is actually at its most vibrant in the emerging world, for all its problems.
Time and again, as we hear from Christian Aid each year, I’m struck by how much people in the third world have to teach us about generosity, joy and community, though in material terms they have so little. Think of the vitality and the vibrancy and the colour and the music that comes out of these places, for all their poverty.
On the surface it’s obvious who the needy partner is in this annual exchange between ourselves and the poor of the world. On reflection it’s not nearly so obvious.
One last thought – and it comes in the form of a question. Where do we find Jesus?
It strikes me, not just from this story, but from the whole Biblical witness, that we find Christ among those who need him most.
A small group of fearful disciples, hiding behind locked doors and wondering what on earth the future holds for them.
An elderly group of Christian Aid volunteers, gathered in a church in an affluent suburb; trying hard to live with a different agenda to their near neighbours.
A young group of Nicaraguan workers, putting in a hard shift in the factory and the marketplace so that a whole community can eat, and their kids can be educated.
A congregation in North East Scotland, gathering for worship as they’ve always done, and wondering how to keep being the church in a culture that refuses to stand still.
Christ, who sees our needs, stands in our midst, shows us the wounds he bore for our sins, and speaks his peace over us.
And we are blessed, in the midst of our doubt, and given good, solid reason to believe.
Thanks be to God.
Sunday, 8 May 2011
Love Your Enemies
Some say he’s now in paradise, enjoying the ministrations of 72 virgin handmaidens. Others are sure that God has thrown his soul into the depths of hell. Some doubt that he’s dead at all and reckon it’s all a conspiracy cooked up by the powers that be.
Some are pleased that justice has finally been done. Others argue that by killing him in this way, justice has not been done.
The death of Osama Bin Laden last weekend is one of those events that provokes a kaleidoscope of reactions and if you’ve had an eye on the media this week you’ll have seen the colourful fragments of opinion tumbling and forming and re-forming on your screen as the story is given twist after twist after twist.
And for all that it’s being presented as something of momentous importance, I’m not sure that Bin Laden’s death has really changed very much.
The hatred he represented is still at large; the myriad forces that spoil and deform our world are still at work in the boardroom and the corridors of power and the back alleys protected by gunmen.
Few believe that this is the end of anything other than the man himself. But for the few days that this story has been headline news we’ve had a rare opportunity to reflect on a matter of grave importance. A matter on which Jesus had something to say. How do we deal with our enemies? What should we wish for them?
As I’ve thought about that question this week, some other scenarios and images have come to mind.
I thought of the snarl on Neil Lennon’s face as he and Ally McCoist exchanged words after that recent Old Firm game, and the attempts someone’s been making to kill or maim him by sending him parcel bombs.
And I thought of our beloved General Assembly where next week the battle lines will be re-drawn as those gathered in Edinburgh will debate, among other things, the Special Commission’s report on Same Sex relationships and the ministry.
And we’re at a place now where, depending on the Assembly’s ruling, some may decide that they have to leave the Church of Scotland. Some may leave because we’re not supporting gay clergy, others may leave because we are. There’s a genuine possibility of schism next week and we should be facing that prospect with a heavy heart.
For what it’s worth, I think it’s important as your minister to say that I can stay with the Church of Scotland regardless of the Assembly’s ruling, as long as they maintain a ministers’ right to freedom of conscience and interpretation in these matters. If they start enforcing dogma on highly debateable subjects like this, I may have to think again.
But I digress.
We’re thinking about enemies this morning.
How does the world train us to deal with our enemies?
Well, by and large it trains us to return hatred for hatred.
In extreme circumstances, we take the enemy out. You killed our people, so we will put a bullet in your head. You bombed our country so we’ll bomb yours.
But where bullets and bombs aren’t the currency we deal in, we take them out in a host of other ways. We kill them, or their reputations, with our words. We say what’s designed to hurt or threaten or ridicule. We look for opportunities to get one-up on them or make them feel small. We shout down their arguments without actually listening to them.
And when, as often happens, the heat goes out of a situation, but the enmity remains, we settle into patterns of ignoring one another. We avoid, we minimise contact, we close down on conversation. As far as we’re able to, we live as though the enemy didn’t exist.
So that’s the world’s way of dealing with your enemies. A spectrum ranging from a bullet in the head, to doing your level best to ignore them. That’s what we are discipled in from the cradle to the grave. That’s the best we can do by ourselves, it seems.
But there is another way. A way that’s far far harder, but that leads, in the end, to a better outcome.
Even in the midst of the blood and gore of the Old Testament, we see glimmers of that other way, shining like a golden thread: running all the way through the fabric of the story ‘til it reaches its full expression in the life and teaching of Jesus. It’s the glimmer of God’s surprising mercy.
We looked at this one a few months back. Adam and Eve transgress and get banished from the garden as God’s enemies. What does he do next? The author of Genesis tells us that he makes clothes for them! They are not forgotten. They’re still within the compass of his care.
Moses and the Israelites escape from Egypt, leaving Pharaoh and his people floundering in their wake. But in the annual celebration of the Passover event – Israel’s great deliverance - the suffering of the Egyptians is also remembered.
The second cup of wine in the Passover feast is filled only half-way; Israel’s gladness, say the rabbis, is diminished by any human suffering: even the suffering of her enemies.
The writer of the Book of Proverbs says
“Do not gloat when your enemy falls;
when he stumbles, do not let your heart rejoice,
or the Lord will see and disapprove
and turn his wrath away from him.”
Later in the book of Ezekiel as, God pleads with Israel to live faithfully, he says “Why will you die, O house of Israel? I take no pleasure in the death of anyone”.
So even in the Old Testament, which is so often caricatured as bloodthirsty and unforgiving, we find this golden thread of mercy running through the text. With this God, the enemy is not abandoned for ever; the enemy’s pain and suffering are seen to matter; the enemy’s death brings God no pleasure, and should being us no pleasure too.
Totally countercultural and counterintuitive. But grace always is.
And Jesus takes this golden thread, and with it he weaves the Sermon on the Mount, from which today’s reading is taken. A manifesto for a way to live in the world which is totally countercultural.
Matthew 5: 43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your friends, and hate your enemies.’ But now I tell you: love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”
It sounds so insipid, doesn’t it. Love your enemies? Love these people who are persecuting me? Who day and night make my life a living hell? Are you kidding?
I wrote this sermon earlier in the week and then watched Newsnight which had a report from the families who lost loved ones in the carnage of the 7th July bombings in London. Part of me wanted to scrap the sermon and write about something else.
But it’s there in the text – Love your enemies – and in the face of the sheer brutality at work in our world that sounds like so much simpering do-goodism until you remember who it was who said it.
A man, the manner of whose birth allowed his enemies to label him a bastard, even if they didn’t dare call him that to his face; a man who lived out his life in the sweltering tension of a country under military occupation; a man whose teaching was so threatening to the religious establishment that they thought it best to have him killed.
A man who was beaten, flogged and crucified for no good reason, and was mocked by those who came to watch him die. He knew a thing or two about enemies, did Jesus.
And he gives us this instruction to love our enemies not to weigh us down under the burden of an impossible command, but to remind us that if we take upon ourselves the name of God and claim to be of the family of God, it behoves us to mirror the character of God. And you know what, God loves his enemies, and it’s a good job he does because sin makes all of us enemies of God, including you and me.
I tell you: love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”
WHY? So that you may become the children of your Father in heaven. For he makes his sun to shine on bad and good people alike, and gives rain to those who do good and to those who do evil.
The shocking truth is that the God we worship, far from being in the tit-for-tat business, the eye-for-an-eye business, is in the business of showing unmerited kindness to the ungrateful and the wicked. Not my words – Jesus’s words.
God bears with the enemy, not because he likes their behaviour or because he’s soft on sin. He is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked because he knows that love is the only way in which broken people are mended.
“Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.” – words of Martin Luther King.
Love your enemies, says Jesus. Why? That you may become children of your Father in heaven.
A Father who looks at us, and our enemies, and sees us for the people we are: half-formed, confused, wedded to our pet sins. But he sees further than that. He sees right down to the flickering core of his own image that’s buried deep within every human being. And he refuses to give up on us. He has determined to love us into submission. It’s the only way.
Again, some words of wisdom from Reverend King, speaking to the white supremacists whose racist thuggery was drawn out of the backwoods into the glaring light of day by the Civil Rights movement.
“We shall meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will, and we shall continue to love you. One day we shall win freedom, but not only for ourselves. We shall so appeal to your heart and conscience that we shall win you in the process, and our victory will be a double victory.”
Love your enemies, says Jesus, Pray for them. Pray not just to defeat them, but to convert them so that they recognise the divine image within themselves and within the people they profess to hate.
Hell for Osama Bin Laden? Perhaps hell for Osama Bin Laden is not the traditional lake of fire, but a long, long corridor with thousands of doors leading off it to the left and to the right. And behind every door is a husband or a mother or a sister or a son who was in one of those planes, or working in one of those towers, or enjoying a night out in one of those clubs, or travelling through one of those cities, or serving in one of the armed forces, when death came brutally, suddenly and obscenely.
Maybe hell for Bin Laden begins with the long walk down that corridor, spending as long as it takes in every single room with every single person, hearing their testimony, learning the names of their families as they show him photograph after photograph, sitting in silence before the awful monument of their pain and loss until he gets it into his atrophied heart that every single man and woman and child he had murdered bore the image of the God he claimed to be serving.
Could that kind of hell mend him? God alone knows.
All I know today is that Christ, against all our intuition, commands us to love our enemies.
And it’s important to say that that doesn’t mean we have to like them or approve of what they do. At its simplest, loving your enemy means dealing with them in the faith that somewhere deep within them there still burns the image of God, no matter how hard it might be to recognise it.
So who are your enemies this morning?
Do you hate them? Do you ignore them?
There is a better way, says Christ. Learn to love them. Learn to pray for them. It’s the only way we can break the vicious circle of hate, though it may end up costing you all you have.
I watched a remarkable film just before Easter and I think that next Easter I’ll try to find an appropriate time in Holy Week for us to watch it together. It’s called “of Gods and Men” and it’s a true story of a small community of Trappist monks living in the mountains of Algeria in the early 1990’s.
Though they are Christian they’re accepted and fully integrated into the lives of their Muslim neighbours in the local villages. The monks help with education and medicine, and in turn they’re welcome guests at weddings and birthdays and village festivals. It’s a happy picture.
But with the rise of fundamentalist Islam, the monks come under increasing threat and they reach a place where they have to decide whether to stay or to leave. And after much debate over many months, each of them comes to a peace about staying, even though they know it will not end well.
Anticipating the end, the prior of the monastery, Christian de Cherge, wrote these words to be read by his family in the event of his death. Listen out particularly for the last paragraph which anticipates his death and addresses the man who would kill him. De Cherge and six of his fellow monks were taken from the monastery and murdered by extremists in May of 1996.
Obviously my death will justify the opinion of all those who dismissed me as naïve or idealistic. “Let him tell us what he thinks now!” But such people should know that my death will satisfy my most burning curiosity. At last, I will be able – if God pleases – to see the children of Islam as He sees them, illuminated in the glory of Christ, sharing in the gift of God’s Passion and of the Spirit, whose secret joy will always be to bring forth our common humanity amidst our differences.
I give thanks to God for this life, completely mine, yet completely theirs too: to God, who wanted it for joy, against, and in spite of, all odds. In this Thank You – which says everything about my life – I include you, my friends past and present, and those friends who will be here at the side of my mother and father, of my sisters and brothers – thank you a thousandfold.
And to you, my friend of the last moment, who will not know what you are doing. Yes, for you too I wish this thank you, this commendment to God, whose image is in you also, that we may meet in heaven, like happy thieves, if it pleases God, our common Father.
Love your enemies, said Jesus. And pray for those who persecute you, that you may become the children of your Father in heaven.
Some are pleased that justice has finally been done. Others argue that by killing him in this way, justice has not been done.
The death of Osama Bin Laden last weekend is one of those events that provokes a kaleidoscope of reactions and if you’ve had an eye on the media this week you’ll have seen the colourful fragments of opinion tumbling and forming and re-forming on your screen as the story is given twist after twist after twist.
And for all that it’s being presented as something of momentous importance, I’m not sure that Bin Laden’s death has really changed very much.
The hatred he represented is still at large; the myriad forces that spoil and deform our world are still at work in the boardroom and the corridors of power and the back alleys protected by gunmen.
Few believe that this is the end of anything other than the man himself. But for the few days that this story has been headline news we’ve had a rare opportunity to reflect on a matter of grave importance. A matter on which Jesus had something to say. How do we deal with our enemies? What should we wish for them?
As I’ve thought about that question this week, some other scenarios and images have come to mind.
I thought of the snarl on Neil Lennon’s face as he and Ally McCoist exchanged words after that recent Old Firm game, and the attempts someone’s been making to kill or maim him by sending him parcel bombs.
And I thought of our beloved General Assembly where next week the battle lines will be re-drawn as those gathered in Edinburgh will debate, among other things, the Special Commission’s report on Same Sex relationships and the ministry.
And we’re at a place now where, depending on the Assembly’s ruling, some may decide that they have to leave the Church of Scotland. Some may leave because we’re not supporting gay clergy, others may leave because we are. There’s a genuine possibility of schism next week and we should be facing that prospect with a heavy heart.
For what it’s worth, I think it’s important as your minister to say that I can stay with the Church of Scotland regardless of the Assembly’s ruling, as long as they maintain a ministers’ right to freedom of conscience and interpretation in these matters. If they start enforcing dogma on highly debateable subjects like this, I may have to think again.
But I digress.
We’re thinking about enemies this morning.
How does the world train us to deal with our enemies?
Well, by and large it trains us to return hatred for hatred.
In extreme circumstances, we take the enemy out. You killed our people, so we will put a bullet in your head. You bombed our country so we’ll bomb yours.
But where bullets and bombs aren’t the currency we deal in, we take them out in a host of other ways. We kill them, or their reputations, with our words. We say what’s designed to hurt or threaten or ridicule. We look for opportunities to get one-up on them or make them feel small. We shout down their arguments without actually listening to them.
And when, as often happens, the heat goes out of a situation, but the enmity remains, we settle into patterns of ignoring one another. We avoid, we minimise contact, we close down on conversation. As far as we’re able to, we live as though the enemy didn’t exist.
So that’s the world’s way of dealing with your enemies. A spectrum ranging from a bullet in the head, to doing your level best to ignore them. That’s what we are discipled in from the cradle to the grave. That’s the best we can do by ourselves, it seems.
But there is another way. A way that’s far far harder, but that leads, in the end, to a better outcome.
Even in the midst of the blood and gore of the Old Testament, we see glimmers of that other way, shining like a golden thread: running all the way through the fabric of the story ‘til it reaches its full expression in the life and teaching of Jesus. It’s the glimmer of God’s surprising mercy.
We looked at this one a few months back. Adam and Eve transgress and get banished from the garden as God’s enemies. What does he do next? The author of Genesis tells us that he makes clothes for them! They are not forgotten. They’re still within the compass of his care.
Moses and the Israelites escape from Egypt, leaving Pharaoh and his people floundering in their wake. But in the annual celebration of the Passover event – Israel’s great deliverance - the suffering of the Egyptians is also remembered.
The second cup of wine in the Passover feast is filled only half-way; Israel’s gladness, say the rabbis, is diminished by any human suffering: even the suffering of her enemies.
The writer of the Book of Proverbs says
“Do not gloat when your enemy falls;
when he stumbles, do not let your heart rejoice,
or the Lord will see and disapprove
and turn his wrath away from him.”
Later in the book of Ezekiel as, God pleads with Israel to live faithfully, he says “Why will you die, O house of Israel? I take no pleasure in the death of anyone”.
So even in the Old Testament, which is so often caricatured as bloodthirsty and unforgiving, we find this golden thread of mercy running through the text. With this God, the enemy is not abandoned for ever; the enemy’s pain and suffering are seen to matter; the enemy’s death brings God no pleasure, and should being us no pleasure too.
Totally countercultural and counterintuitive. But grace always is.
And Jesus takes this golden thread, and with it he weaves the Sermon on the Mount, from which today’s reading is taken. A manifesto for a way to live in the world which is totally countercultural.
Matthew 5: 43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your friends, and hate your enemies.’ But now I tell you: love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”
It sounds so insipid, doesn’t it. Love your enemies? Love these people who are persecuting me? Who day and night make my life a living hell? Are you kidding?
I wrote this sermon earlier in the week and then watched Newsnight which had a report from the families who lost loved ones in the carnage of the 7th July bombings in London. Part of me wanted to scrap the sermon and write about something else.
But it’s there in the text – Love your enemies – and in the face of the sheer brutality at work in our world that sounds like so much simpering do-goodism until you remember who it was who said it.
A man, the manner of whose birth allowed his enemies to label him a bastard, even if they didn’t dare call him that to his face; a man who lived out his life in the sweltering tension of a country under military occupation; a man whose teaching was so threatening to the religious establishment that they thought it best to have him killed.
A man who was beaten, flogged and crucified for no good reason, and was mocked by those who came to watch him die. He knew a thing or two about enemies, did Jesus.
And he gives us this instruction to love our enemies not to weigh us down under the burden of an impossible command, but to remind us that if we take upon ourselves the name of God and claim to be of the family of God, it behoves us to mirror the character of God. And you know what, God loves his enemies, and it’s a good job he does because sin makes all of us enemies of God, including you and me.
I tell you: love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”
WHY? So that you may become the children of your Father in heaven. For he makes his sun to shine on bad and good people alike, and gives rain to those who do good and to those who do evil.
The shocking truth is that the God we worship, far from being in the tit-for-tat business, the eye-for-an-eye business, is in the business of showing unmerited kindness to the ungrateful and the wicked. Not my words – Jesus’s words.
God bears with the enemy, not because he likes their behaviour or because he’s soft on sin. He is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked because he knows that love is the only way in which broken people are mended.
“Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.” – words of Martin Luther King.
Love your enemies, says Jesus. Why? That you may become children of your Father in heaven.
A Father who looks at us, and our enemies, and sees us for the people we are: half-formed, confused, wedded to our pet sins. But he sees further than that. He sees right down to the flickering core of his own image that’s buried deep within every human being. And he refuses to give up on us. He has determined to love us into submission. It’s the only way.
Again, some words of wisdom from Reverend King, speaking to the white supremacists whose racist thuggery was drawn out of the backwoods into the glaring light of day by the Civil Rights movement.
“We shall meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will, and we shall continue to love you. One day we shall win freedom, but not only for ourselves. We shall so appeal to your heart and conscience that we shall win you in the process, and our victory will be a double victory.”
Love your enemies, says Jesus, Pray for them. Pray not just to defeat them, but to convert them so that they recognise the divine image within themselves and within the people they profess to hate.
Hell for Osama Bin Laden? Perhaps hell for Osama Bin Laden is not the traditional lake of fire, but a long, long corridor with thousands of doors leading off it to the left and to the right. And behind every door is a husband or a mother or a sister or a son who was in one of those planes, or working in one of those towers, or enjoying a night out in one of those clubs, or travelling through one of those cities, or serving in one of the armed forces, when death came brutally, suddenly and obscenely.
Maybe hell for Bin Laden begins with the long walk down that corridor, spending as long as it takes in every single room with every single person, hearing their testimony, learning the names of their families as they show him photograph after photograph, sitting in silence before the awful monument of their pain and loss until he gets it into his atrophied heart that every single man and woman and child he had murdered bore the image of the God he claimed to be serving.
Could that kind of hell mend him? God alone knows.
All I know today is that Christ, against all our intuition, commands us to love our enemies.
And it’s important to say that that doesn’t mean we have to like them or approve of what they do. At its simplest, loving your enemy means dealing with them in the faith that somewhere deep within them there still burns the image of God, no matter how hard it might be to recognise it.
So who are your enemies this morning?
Do you hate them? Do you ignore them?
There is a better way, says Christ. Learn to love them. Learn to pray for them. It’s the only way we can break the vicious circle of hate, though it may end up costing you all you have.
I watched a remarkable film just before Easter and I think that next Easter I’ll try to find an appropriate time in Holy Week for us to watch it together. It’s called “of Gods and Men” and it’s a true story of a small community of Trappist monks living in the mountains of Algeria in the early 1990’s.
Though they are Christian they’re accepted and fully integrated into the lives of their Muslim neighbours in the local villages. The monks help with education and medicine, and in turn they’re welcome guests at weddings and birthdays and village festivals. It’s a happy picture.
But with the rise of fundamentalist Islam, the monks come under increasing threat and they reach a place where they have to decide whether to stay or to leave. And after much debate over many months, each of them comes to a peace about staying, even though they know it will not end well.
Anticipating the end, the prior of the monastery, Christian de Cherge, wrote these words to be read by his family in the event of his death. Listen out particularly for the last paragraph which anticipates his death and addresses the man who would kill him. De Cherge and six of his fellow monks were taken from the monastery and murdered by extremists in May of 1996.
Obviously my death will justify the opinion of all those who dismissed me as naïve or idealistic. “Let him tell us what he thinks now!” But such people should know that my death will satisfy my most burning curiosity. At last, I will be able – if God pleases – to see the children of Islam as He sees them, illuminated in the glory of Christ, sharing in the gift of God’s Passion and of the Spirit, whose secret joy will always be to bring forth our common humanity amidst our differences.
I give thanks to God for this life, completely mine, yet completely theirs too: to God, who wanted it for joy, against, and in spite of, all odds. In this Thank You – which says everything about my life – I include you, my friends past and present, and those friends who will be here at the side of my mother and father, of my sisters and brothers – thank you a thousandfold.
And to you, my friend of the last moment, who will not know what you are doing. Yes, for you too I wish this thank you, this commendment to God, whose image is in you also, that we may meet in heaven, like happy thieves, if it pleases God, our common Father.
Love your enemies, said Jesus. And pray for those who persecute you, that you may become the children of your Father in heaven.
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