‘Man is the image of God, and his inner self is a kind of mirror in which God not only sees himself, but reveals himself... through the dark, transparent mystery of our own inner being we can, as it were, see God ‘through a glass’.
The remnant of Judah, authors of the book of Lamentations, were a people bereaved. They had seen their country overrun and their polity overthrown. They had seen their temple destroyed and their citizenry deported. They gathered in the ruins of Jerusalem’s sacred site and cried aloud of their loss: ‘I have forgotten what happiness is…Gone is my glory’.
They knew that the nature of the world they inhabited was transient. They depended on the succession of the seasons and the cycle of the agricultural year. They understood that the stone with which they built, the linen which they wore, and the iron which they worked was all mutable stuff, susceptible to being burned, or melted, or broken. They had witnessed the fleeting lifespan of proud human constructs. Empires rose and fell, kingly dynasties came and went, cultic fashions flourished and decayed.
Yet in spite of this dependence, in spite of this understanding, in spite of this witness, in spite of their cries, they could not accept their plight. They could not resign themselves to desolation and passively await the next turn of fate’s wheel. Hope stirred incessantly in their breasts. Not the gambler’s blind hope that next time things will be better, but hope invested outside the inexhaustible round of life and death, hope that ‘the steadfast love of the LORD never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness’.
In their misery, in their abandonment, in their despair, the remnant of Judah looked deep within themselves. In the words of the mystic Thomas Merton, with which I began, they there saw God ‘through a glass’. Through the glass they saw that when immortal souls, made for communion with the divine, are placed in mortal bodies, made for the cycles of a transient world, then disjunction is inevitable and brokenness and heartbreak are inescapable. Through the glass there glimmered darkly the reality of the disjunction – and perhaps the possibility of its healing.
The apostle Paul was no stranger to such disjunction. Imprisoned, chained, shipwrecked, beaten, driven from town to town, and ministering to people who had endured similar, Paul was compelled to seek an interpretation of his and their experience. Through the glass the remnant of conquered Judah saw that if an eternal soul is placed in a temporal world then the eternal soul will suffer. Through the glass Paul of Tarsus saw that if the Creator of the world is placed in the world that he has created then the Creator will suffer. Place love in a world of avarice and love will be crushed. Consequently when the church in Rome to which Paul is writing most sharply experiences the disjunction between Christ’s command of love and the world’s reality of hatred then through the glass Paul sees that it is truly being the church, for it is closely imitating the pattern of Christ. ‘We boast in our sufferings’ he writes.
But the remnant of Judah never saw their proud kingdom restored, and Paul’s converts saw their churches assailed with no apparent vindication. Is it for this alone that we are made – to peer through a glass, to flatten our faces against it, to see but never to taste or touch? Are we made to glimpse hope from the ruins of the sanctuary, and to prize our wounds as trophies of honour? Does heaven give us enough insight to comprehend the misery of our existence, and enough religion to make our pain seem noble? Are we designed for disjunction; are we knowing souls locked in declining flesh, tellers of truth trapped in a tangle of falsehood, innocent doves before the all-surrounding malice?
The words of Jesus Christ, recorded in John’s Gospel, and prefaced with the words ‘’ - translated as ‘very truly’, presaging a teaching of great significance, tell us otherwise. They invite us to a life in which there is no disjunction but one seamless whole. They invite us to step through the looking-glass within.
First, ‘the Son can do nothing on his own, but only what he sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, the Son does likewise’. The interior life of God is held before Christ’s hearers as a model of mutual co-operation and dependence. Soul is not at war with body, nor body with soul. They are made for each other and need each other. We are one, as God is one.
Secondly, ‘the Father loves the Son and shows him all that he himself is doing; and he will show him greater works than these, so that you will be astonished’. Christ’s triumph is held before Christ’s hearers. All things are in the hands of Jesus. The power of Babylon to ravage Jerusalem, the power of Rome to oppress Paul’s friends, and the power of death to tyrannize us have been given to Christ. In him all life’s possibilities – and impossibilities – coalesce.
Thirdly, ‘anyone who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life, and does not come under judgement, but has passed from death to life’. Hope is held before Christ’s hearers not as something glimpsed from afar, nor as a reward for patience during times of trial, but instead as something tangible, something in the here and now. Eternal life begins tonight. It is offered to our souls and it is offered to our bodies, in word, in prayer, and in broken bread and wine outpoured.
‘Our being somehow communicates directly with the Being of God, who is ‘in us’’ writes Thomas Merton. ‘If we enter into ourselves, find our true self and then pass ‘beyond’ the inner ‘I’, we sail forth into the immense darkness in which we confront the ‘I AM’ of the Almighty.’
Living and departed we are one flotilla sailing into the darkness, with Christ as our chart, Christ as our course, and Christ as our final destination. Amen, amen. Very truly, amen, amen.
Monday, 15 November 2010
Monday, 27 September 2010
Sunday 26 September, Michael and All Angels
When shall we three meet again
in thunder, lightning, or in rain?
When the hurlyburly’s done,
when the battle’s lost and won.
That will be ere the set of sun.
I thought about calling this the ‘Scottish sermon’: after all, it’s said that even speaking the name of the antihero of the play which opens with those lines brings bad fortune. But despite the costumes and the chorus this is a church, not a theatre, and we are not (most of us) luvvies, so: secret black and midnight hags, do your worst!
When Macbeth (for it is he) encounters the Weird Sisters he does so as an all-conquering hero. He has led Duncan’s army to victory over the invading Norwegians and their treacherous Scottish allies. His personal courage and blood-stained military prowess have been sung in glowing terms and his future as a great General and as a great Lord seems assured. Then he is hailed as the future King. The question that generations of theatregoers have puzzled over is the impact that this greeting has on him.
One interpretation is that the witches’ intervention tempts him away from the path of loyal service and sets him on his course as a usurping murderer. Another is that through the device of the three witches Shakespeare has externalized an interior debate that is raging within the troubles Thane of Glamis. Macbeth is an ambitious man who is prepared to kill his King and seize the throne - such are the plots and schemes that haunt his every waking moment. In the three witches these plots and schemes are given quasi-human form and shape. Shakespeare projects Macbeth’s turmoil onto the public stage and enacts it, enabling his audience to follow the inner conversation and to witness the growing hold that Macbeth’s dark desires have over him.
St John the Divine employs a not dissimilar technique in the book of Revelation. The heavenly struggle of Michael against the dragon mirrors exactly the earthly struggle of the Christian martyrs against their accusers that forms the context of the book’s writing. Michael first appears in our Bibles in the book of the prophet Daniel, where he is cast as the figurehead of God’s people in the celestial realms. In Revelation, we read of the victory of Michael and his angels; then we read of the victory of what St John calls ‘our comrades’. Michael wins in heaven; the Christian believers who have been tested even to the point of death win on earth. Their struggle, like Macbeth’s, is projected onto a new stage.
But whereas Shakespeare’s purposes are dramatic, St John’s are theological. He wants his readers to understand that the sufferings they are enduring even as he writes are no small matter. He wants them to understand that their cries are heard in heaven; he wants them to understand that their tribulations are of cosmic significance. When they resist their opponents on earth rebel angels are expelled from heaven. Macbeth’s strife within himself has consequences for all Scotland. The martyrs’ strife within the new Babylon, Rome, has consequences for all creation. But why? Why does the sporadic persecution of a new religious sect threaten to split the heavens asunder?
Jacob dreams of a ladder reaching from heaven to earth upon which the angels of God are ascending and descending. It’s a dream, perhaps as much the work of the subconscious as are the longings which tempt Macbeth. But Jacob awakes and finds himself alone. His dream has no external form or shape. There is no ladder and there are no angels. Jacob has to set up a stone pillar to remind himself and others of what has happened. Form and shape come only in the advent of Jesus Christ. He is the ladder, he tells Nathanael. He is the one upon whom the angels of God will ascend and descend. The dream of Jacob, who is also known as Israel, is made real in Jesus.
It is on account of this Jesus that the blood of John’s readers is being spilt; it is on account of their faith in this Jesus. But the faith that has given rise to their plight is not a longing like Macbeth’s or a dream like Jacob’s. It is not an interior belief – it is a baptismal faith. Those facing persecution have conquered ‘by the blood of the Lamb’. They have been incorporated into Christ; he is in them and they are in him. What is interior (a first spark of faith, if you will) has become exterior (the clothing of Christ) and there is no longer any distinction between them. When the martyrs suffer Christ suffers; their wounds are his wounds; as they sustain blow after blow the ladder set up to heaven from earth sustains blow after blow. Rupture between the mortal and the divine threatens. Of course the martyrs’ suffering is played out upon the most public stage of all.
Macbeth falls when the unimaginable happens. Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinane, and a man not born of woman confronts the desperate tyrant. Humankind is saved when the unimaginable happens. God in Christ bridges the gulf that separates heaven from earth. As the beliefs and acts of our martyred forebears resonated throughout the cosmos so our beliefs and acts resonate throughout the cosmos, for we too have been baptized into Christ. When we witness to truth the heavens sing; when we are false, they weep. On this feast of the angels may we be recalled to the responsibility that is ours. Amen.
in thunder, lightning, or in rain?
When the hurlyburly’s done,
when the battle’s lost and won.
That will be ere the set of sun.
I thought about calling this the ‘Scottish sermon’: after all, it’s said that even speaking the name of the antihero of the play which opens with those lines brings bad fortune. But despite the costumes and the chorus this is a church, not a theatre, and we are not (most of us) luvvies, so: secret black and midnight hags, do your worst!
When Macbeth (for it is he) encounters the Weird Sisters he does so as an all-conquering hero. He has led Duncan’s army to victory over the invading Norwegians and their treacherous Scottish allies. His personal courage and blood-stained military prowess have been sung in glowing terms and his future as a great General and as a great Lord seems assured. Then he is hailed as the future King. The question that generations of theatregoers have puzzled over is the impact that this greeting has on him.
One interpretation is that the witches’ intervention tempts him away from the path of loyal service and sets him on his course as a usurping murderer. Another is that through the device of the three witches Shakespeare has externalized an interior debate that is raging within the troubles Thane of Glamis. Macbeth is an ambitious man who is prepared to kill his King and seize the throne - such are the plots and schemes that haunt his every waking moment. In the three witches these plots and schemes are given quasi-human form and shape. Shakespeare projects Macbeth’s turmoil onto the public stage and enacts it, enabling his audience to follow the inner conversation and to witness the growing hold that Macbeth’s dark desires have over him.
St John the Divine employs a not dissimilar technique in the book of Revelation. The heavenly struggle of Michael against the dragon mirrors exactly the earthly struggle of the Christian martyrs against their accusers that forms the context of the book’s writing. Michael first appears in our Bibles in the book of the prophet Daniel, where he is cast as the figurehead of God’s people in the celestial realms. In Revelation, we read of the victory of Michael and his angels; then we read of the victory of what St John calls ‘our comrades’. Michael wins in heaven; the Christian believers who have been tested even to the point of death win on earth. Their struggle, like Macbeth’s, is projected onto a new stage.
But whereas Shakespeare’s purposes are dramatic, St John’s are theological. He wants his readers to understand that the sufferings they are enduring even as he writes are no small matter. He wants them to understand that their cries are heard in heaven; he wants them to understand that their tribulations are of cosmic significance. When they resist their opponents on earth rebel angels are expelled from heaven. Macbeth’s strife within himself has consequences for all Scotland. The martyrs’ strife within the new Babylon, Rome, has consequences for all creation. But why? Why does the sporadic persecution of a new religious sect threaten to split the heavens asunder?
Jacob dreams of a ladder reaching from heaven to earth upon which the angels of God are ascending and descending. It’s a dream, perhaps as much the work of the subconscious as are the longings which tempt Macbeth. But Jacob awakes and finds himself alone. His dream has no external form or shape. There is no ladder and there are no angels. Jacob has to set up a stone pillar to remind himself and others of what has happened. Form and shape come only in the advent of Jesus Christ. He is the ladder, he tells Nathanael. He is the one upon whom the angels of God will ascend and descend. The dream of Jacob, who is also known as Israel, is made real in Jesus.
It is on account of this Jesus that the blood of John’s readers is being spilt; it is on account of their faith in this Jesus. But the faith that has given rise to their plight is not a longing like Macbeth’s or a dream like Jacob’s. It is not an interior belief – it is a baptismal faith. Those facing persecution have conquered ‘by the blood of the Lamb’. They have been incorporated into Christ; he is in them and they are in him. What is interior (a first spark of faith, if you will) has become exterior (the clothing of Christ) and there is no longer any distinction between them. When the martyrs suffer Christ suffers; their wounds are his wounds; as they sustain blow after blow the ladder set up to heaven from earth sustains blow after blow. Rupture between the mortal and the divine threatens. Of course the martyrs’ suffering is played out upon the most public stage of all.
Macbeth falls when the unimaginable happens. Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinane, and a man not born of woman confronts the desperate tyrant. Humankind is saved when the unimaginable happens. God in Christ bridges the gulf that separates heaven from earth. As the beliefs and acts of our martyred forebears resonated throughout the cosmos so our beliefs and acts resonate throughout the cosmos, for we too have been baptized into Christ. When we witness to truth the heavens sing; when we are false, they weep. On this feast of the angels may we be recalled to the responsibility that is ours. Amen.
Monday, 6 September 2010
Sunday 5 September, Fourteenth after Trinity
I could never be justly accused of being a dedicated follower of fashion; for that matter I could never be justly accused of being a casual follower of fashion. However in the summer of 1982 baggy T-shirts with slogans printed on them in bold capital letters were all the rage. ‘ARM THE UNEMPLOYED’ screamed one. ‘RELAX’ shouted another. ‘CHOOSE LIFE’ proclaimed a third. That was the one I chose, in bright turquoise. I blush at the remembrance, and so entranced was I at my own elegance that I gave little thought to the provenance of the slogan. I certainly never thought it had its roots in the book of Deuteronomy.
Yet ‘I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live, loving the LORD your God, obeying him and holding fast to him; for that means life to you and length of days.’
Choose life. The context in which those words are spoken is important. They form part of Moses’ farewell, part of his final counsel to his people. He has led Israel through the wilderness for forty years, and he knows that his own death is drawing near. The land that God has promised is stretched out before the people. They are poised to enter it. Moses tells them that they have a choice. They can choose God, who has sustained them through their years of exodus, and live; or they can choose the idols of Canaan, the false gods of the land they are being given, and die. ‘Choose life’, Moses urges.
The context in which Jesus speaks the words of this morning’s Gospel is also important. They are addressed to the large crowds travelling with him, travelling towards Jerusalem, travelling to the city to which Luke tells us that Jesus has set his face, in which Luke tells us Jesus will accomplish a new exodus. The parallels are obvious and irresistible. Like Moses, Jesus is leading his people out of slavery. Like Moses, Jesus knows that his death is drawing near. Like Moses, Jesus believes that beyond death is the liberty that God has promised.
So Jesus too offers a choice to Israel, but the choice he offers appears to subvert the choice offered by his famous forebear. ‘Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple’ he says. ‘Choose God; choose life’ says Moses. ‘Choose God; hate life’ says Jesus.
This appears to be a subversion, a turning upside-down of Israel’s tradition. And this subversion, this turning upside-down continues in the two illustrations Jesus sketches out for his listeners. A person building a tower must count his money carefully; a king going out to wage war must count his troops carefully. Builder and warrior must ensure that they have resources that are adequate for the completion of the task. The implication is that would-be disciples of Jesus should do the same. Discipleship needs preparation. Disciples should not embark upon the journey that is prefigured by the journey to Jerusalem unless they are ready for it. But this readiness consists not in saving up funds or packing a rucksack. It consists in stripping everything back and letting everything go. ‘None of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions’.
Choose life. Jesus re-fashions the teaching of the patriarchs for his audience. To win everything you must surrender everything; to choose life you must choose death; you must carry the cross. And we see the ramifications of that choice played out in the little drama of Paul, Philemon and Onesimus.
Onesimus is in all probability the heathen slave sent by his Christian master, Philemon, to care for Paul while he is in prison, as a token of thanks for Paul’s ministry. In the course of attending to Paul’s needs Onesimus has become Paul’s child: that is, he has been baptized. Now Paul is sending him back to Philemon, together with the letter that we heard as our second reading. Although it is not couched in the sharp terms of Moses or of Jesus, Paul is nonetheless offering Philemon the same choice that they offer. The name ‘Onesimus’ means ‘useful. In fact, says Paul, Onesimus has formerly been useless. He has been, in the Greek, ‘achrestos’. Philemon would have read that word and heard the similar-sounding ‘achristos’, ‘without Christ’. Onesimus was useless before his baptism. Now he is with Christ; only now he can live up to his name; only now he is truly useful.
The choice before Philemon is whether he receives back a useless slave, or a true brother in Christ; whether he plays the master or the fellow-believer; whether he behaves like the owner or the companion redeemed sinner. The choice before Philemon is whether he will give up what is rightfully his, whether he will give up his possession. The choice before Philemon is whether he will choose the way of Christ, whether he will surrender his proper claims, whether he will forego his rightful dues. Will Philemon hate life and choose death, in order to win the life that Christ promises?
That T-shirt was revived a couple of years ago, now printed, in typical Noughties fashion, on organic cotton in various pastel shades, and retailing at prices way in excess of its gaudy, mass-produced forebears. It was a rebellious, feel-good catchphrase for my generation, for Thatcher’s children in the era of nuclear proliferation and unprecedented unemployment, and, I suppose, for the same generation now approaching middle-age in the era of the war on terror and the global financial crisis. Choose Life. Well, we have the T-shirt, but dare we give it away? We can talk the talk, but can we walk the walk? Can we set our faces to Jerusalem? Amen.
Yet ‘I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live, loving the LORD your God, obeying him and holding fast to him; for that means life to you and length of days.’
Choose life. The context in which those words are spoken is important. They form part of Moses’ farewell, part of his final counsel to his people. He has led Israel through the wilderness for forty years, and he knows that his own death is drawing near. The land that God has promised is stretched out before the people. They are poised to enter it. Moses tells them that they have a choice. They can choose God, who has sustained them through their years of exodus, and live; or they can choose the idols of Canaan, the false gods of the land they are being given, and die. ‘Choose life’, Moses urges.
The context in which Jesus speaks the words of this morning’s Gospel is also important. They are addressed to the large crowds travelling with him, travelling towards Jerusalem, travelling to the city to which Luke tells us that Jesus has set his face, in which Luke tells us Jesus will accomplish a new exodus. The parallels are obvious and irresistible. Like Moses, Jesus is leading his people out of slavery. Like Moses, Jesus knows that his death is drawing near. Like Moses, Jesus believes that beyond death is the liberty that God has promised.
So Jesus too offers a choice to Israel, but the choice he offers appears to subvert the choice offered by his famous forebear. ‘Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple’ he says. ‘Choose God; choose life’ says Moses. ‘Choose God; hate life’ says Jesus.
This appears to be a subversion, a turning upside-down of Israel’s tradition. And this subversion, this turning upside-down continues in the two illustrations Jesus sketches out for his listeners. A person building a tower must count his money carefully; a king going out to wage war must count his troops carefully. Builder and warrior must ensure that they have resources that are adequate for the completion of the task. The implication is that would-be disciples of Jesus should do the same. Discipleship needs preparation. Disciples should not embark upon the journey that is prefigured by the journey to Jerusalem unless they are ready for it. But this readiness consists not in saving up funds or packing a rucksack. It consists in stripping everything back and letting everything go. ‘None of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions’.
Choose life. Jesus re-fashions the teaching of the patriarchs for his audience. To win everything you must surrender everything; to choose life you must choose death; you must carry the cross. And we see the ramifications of that choice played out in the little drama of Paul, Philemon and Onesimus.
Onesimus is in all probability the heathen slave sent by his Christian master, Philemon, to care for Paul while he is in prison, as a token of thanks for Paul’s ministry. In the course of attending to Paul’s needs Onesimus has become Paul’s child: that is, he has been baptized. Now Paul is sending him back to Philemon, together with the letter that we heard as our second reading. Although it is not couched in the sharp terms of Moses or of Jesus, Paul is nonetheless offering Philemon the same choice that they offer. The name ‘Onesimus’ means ‘useful. In fact, says Paul, Onesimus has formerly been useless. He has been, in the Greek, ‘achrestos’. Philemon would have read that word and heard the similar-sounding ‘achristos’, ‘without Christ’. Onesimus was useless before his baptism. Now he is with Christ; only now he can live up to his name; only now he is truly useful.
The choice before Philemon is whether he receives back a useless slave, or a true brother in Christ; whether he plays the master or the fellow-believer; whether he behaves like the owner or the companion redeemed sinner. The choice before Philemon is whether he will give up what is rightfully his, whether he will give up his possession. The choice before Philemon is whether he will choose the way of Christ, whether he will surrender his proper claims, whether he will forego his rightful dues. Will Philemon hate life and choose death, in order to win the life that Christ promises?
That T-shirt was revived a couple of years ago, now printed, in typical Noughties fashion, on organic cotton in various pastel shades, and retailing at prices way in excess of its gaudy, mass-produced forebears. It was a rebellious, feel-good catchphrase for my generation, for Thatcher’s children in the era of nuclear proliferation and unprecedented unemployment, and, I suppose, for the same generation now approaching middle-age in the era of the war on terror and the global financial crisis. Choose Life. Well, we have the T-shirt, but dare we give it away? We can talk the talk, but can we walk the walk? Can we set our faces to Jerusalem? Amen.
Monday, 12 July 2010
Sunday 11 July 2010, Sixth after Trinity
‘A lawyer stood up to test Jesus’.
My career as a lawyer spanned a brief seven years. Those seven years did include, though, one case in which the threat of the death penalty hung over the head of the party I represented. His name was Bandit, and his crime was that he was alleged to be a pit-bull terrier. The allegation, I must admit, was hardly helped by the name which his thoughtful owner had bestowed upon him. The prosecution was brought under the infamous Dangerous Dogs Act 1991, a knee-jerk response from the then Government to serial reports of supposedly domesticated pets visiting terror upon our fellow citizens.
The Act was widely reviled as one of the most spectacularly ineffective pieces of legislation in history. It outlawed the ownership of various types of dog instead of addressing those dogs’ vicious conduct. So long as I could establish that Bandit was not a pit-bull he would in theory be free to go and maul whoever he chose. It was a bonanza for dog-breeding experts, who found themselves in demand up and down the land, giving their opinion on whether the dog under investigation was or was not a Japanese Tosa. Type, or category, was everything; conduct, or behaviour, was not.
Successive Governments have since 1991 repented of the haste with which the Act was passed, but they have not repented of the legal principle which underpinned it. This is that it is within the competence of the law to define almost anything, and that such definition is inevitably for the common good. The last Government created more new crimes than any of its predecessors has ever done. To take an obvious example, there are now no fewer than seventy sexual offences on the statute book. This rush to law, this urge to codify is not confined to the civil authorities. The General Synod of our Church is spending this weekend debating not whether women should in principle be ordained as bishops, but what consideration should be afforded those who cannot in conscience accept their ordination. The particular focus is whether such consideration should be enshrined in law, whether those who object should be a legally-entrenched constituency.
It is in response to a lawyer’s question that Jesus tells one of the most famous of his parables. ‘Wanting to justify himself’ writes Saint Luke, the lawyer asks Jesus ‘And who is my neighbour?’ Lawyers are trained never to ask a question to which they don’t know the answer, and this was doubtless forming on his lips even as the question left them. My neighbours are the people with whom the Lord has made his eternal covenant. My neighbours strive to love him as I strive to love him. My neighbours worship him in Jerusalem, the sanctuary of his choosing. My neighbours can be easily identified.
It is to such a mindset that Jesus speaks of the man who was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and message that he speaks is scandalous. It is not the priest or the Levite who is moved with pity at the plight of their fellow Jew. No: they are holy men, mindful that contact with his corpse will destroy their ritual cleanliness. It is a Samaritan who is moved. A Samaritan: one of the schismatics who challenged the authority of Jerusalem, one of the heretics who turned their backs on its temple, one of the slanderers who held that the orthodox faith of the Jews was a corruption of God’s truth. The lawyer would certainly have had a category for Samaritans, and it would equally certainly not have been labelled ‘neighbour’.
Yet in his parable Jesus insists that neighbourliness is not like dog type. It cannot be defined in the terms beloved of lawyers. It is not dependent on ties of blood or ancestry; it is not regulated by ethnicity or class; it is not restricted by faith or tradition. The action of the Samaritan reveals that neighbourliness has no bounds.
The action of the Samaritan also reveals that neighbourliness means not complacent, stultifying obligation, but unprompted loving action. The traveller’s neighbour turns out to be the one who had shown him mercy. To be a neighbour is to respond to need. To be a neighbour is to demonstrate purposeful, practical care.
To act as the Samaritan acts is to tear up every category and to re-draw both the bounds of neighbourliness and the duties of neighbourliness. Under the Dangerous Dogs Act, remember, type is everything; for the lawyer in the story, type is everything; but for Jesus type is nothing and action is everything. It is for this reason that I will be unhappy with any legislation for women bishops which resorts to legal categorization and creates the sort of apartheid that has bedevilled the preaching of the Gospel for two thousand years. The parable of the Samaritan calls us to act generously to those who are not like us. The parable of the Samaritan challenges us not to take refuge in unbridgeable enclaves of purity. The parable of the Samaritan asks us to cross the road and kneel alongside the one whom we fear. Neighbourliness means unprompted, loving action.
My part in Bandit’s story had a happy ending. The Court allowed him to live (although I hope not to fight) another day. Today we celebrate a happy occasion - a baptism. The Samaritan has the courage and the clear-sightedness to see past the wounded traveller’s race and religion. He refuses the easy categories - strange foreigner, hated enemy, worthless victim. He sees the need and responds. In baptism God sees past our humanity’s frailty and sin. He refuses the easy categories – faithless weakling, distracted wretch, biddable miscreant. He sees the need and responds.
Today God crosses the road, reaching out to this child and holding him up as surely as the Samaritan did the robbers’ prey. In God’s response to the promise of this child’s life we see enacted the limitless bounds of neighbourliness and the work that it demands. So let’s go to it. Amen.
My career as a lawyer spanned a brief seven years. Those seven years did include, though, one case in which the threat of the death penalty hung over the head of the party I represented. His name was Bandit, and his crime was that he was alleged to be a pit-bull terrier. The allegation, I must admit, was hardly helped by the name which his thoughtful owner had bestowed upon him. The prosecution was brought under the infamous Dangerous Dogs Act 1991, a knee-jerk response from the then Government to serial reports of supposedly domesticated pets visiting terror upon our fellow citizens.
The Act was widely reviled as one of the most spectacularly ineffective pieces of legislation in history. It outlawed the ownership of various types of dog instead of addressing those dogs’ vicious conduct. So long as I could establish that Bandit was not a pit-bull he would in theory be free to go and maul whoever he chose. It was a bonanza for dog-breeding experts, who found themselves in demand up and down the land, giving their opinion on whether the dog under investigation was or was not a Japanese Tosa. Type, or category, was everything; conduct, or behaviour, was not.
Successive Governments have since 1991 repented of the haste with which the Act was passed, but they have not repented of the legal principle which underpinned it. This is that it is within the competence of the law to define almost anything, and that such definition is inevitably for the common good. The last Government created more new crimes than any of its predecessors has ever done. To take an obvious example, there are now no fewer than seventy sexual offences on the statute book. This rush to law, this urge to codify is not confined to the civil authorities. The General Synod of our Church is spending this weekend debating not whether women should in principle be ordained as bishops, but what consideration should be afforded those who cannot in conscience accept their ordination. The particular focus is whether such consideration should be enshrined in law, whether those who object should be a legally-entrenched constituency.
It is in response to a lawyer’s question that Jesus tells one of the most famous of his parables. ‘Wanting to justify himself’ writes Saint Luke, the lawyer asks Jesus ‘And who is my neighbour?’ Lawyers are trained never to ask a question to which they don’t know the answer, and this was doubtless forming on his lips even as the question left them. My neighbours are the people with whom the Lord has made his eternal covenant. My neighbours strive to love him as I strive to love him. My neighbours worship him in Jerusalem, the sanctuary of his choosing. My neighbours can be easily identified.
It is to such a mindset that Jesus speaks of the man who was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and message that he speaks is scandalous. It is not the priest or the Levite who is moved with pity at the plight of their fellow Jew. No: they are holy men, mindful that contact with his corpse will destroy their ritual cleanliness. It is a Samaritan who is moved. A Samaritan: one of the schismatics who challenged the authority of Jerusalem, one of the heretics who turned their backs on its temple, one of the slanderers who held that the orthodox faith of the Jews was a corruption of God’s truth. The lawyer would certainly have had a category for Samaritans, and it would equally certainly not have been labelled ‘neighbour’.
Yet in his parable Jesus insists that neighbourliness is not like dog type. It cannot be defined in the terms beloved of lawyers. It is not dependent on ties of blood or ancestry; it is not regulated by ethnicity or class; it is not restricted by faith or tradition. The action of the Samaritan reveals that neighbourliness has no bounds.
The action of the Samaritan also reveals that neighbourliness means not complacent, stultifying obligation, but unprompted loving action. The traveller’s neighbour turns out to be the one who had shown him mercy. To be a neighbour is to respond to need. To be a neighbour is to demonstrate purposeful, practical care.
To act as the Samaritan acts is to tear up every category and to re-draw both the bounds of neighbourliness and the duties of neighbourliness. Under the Dangerous Dogs Act, remember, type is everything; for the lawyer in the story, type is everything; but for Jesus type is nothing and action is everything. It is for this reason that I will be unhappy with any legislation for women bishops which resorts to legal categorization and creates the sort of apartheid that has bedevilled the preaching of the Gospel for two thousand years. The parable of the Samaritan calls us to act generously to those who are not like us. The parable of the Samaritan challenges us not to take refuge in unbridgeable enclaves of purity. The parable of the Samaritan asks us to cross the road and kneel alongside the one whom we fear. Neighbourliness means unprompted, loving action.
My part in Bandit’s story had a happy ending. The Court allowed him to live (although I hope not to fight) another day. Today we celebrate a happy occasion - a baptism. The Samaritan has the courage and the clear-sightedness to see past the wounded traveller’s race and religion. He refuses the easy categories - strange foreigner, hated enemy, worthless victim. He sees the need and responds. In baptism God sees past our humanity’s frailty and sin. He refuses the easy categories – faithless weakling, distracted wretch, biddable miscreant. He sees the need and responds.
Today God crosses the road, reaching out to this child and holding him up as surely as the Samaritan did the robbers’ prey. In God’s response to the promise of this child’s life we see enacted the limitless bounds of neighbourliness and the work that it demands. So let’s go to it. Amen.
Monday, 28 June 2010
Sunday 27 June 2010, 4 after Trinity
It’s forty-five years since Bob Dylan recorded Subterranean Homesick Blues, a raucous, joyous stream of words and images articulating his profound unease at the staid conventions of American life.
Girl by the whirlpool looking for a new fool, he sang, don’t follow leaders watch the parking meters. Bob Dylan’s generation is beginning to draw its pension; it is being succeeded by a generation which grew up listening to its parents’ records; and on the evidence of the last few weeks it has listened hard.
Don’t follow leaders. The Commander of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan has found himself out of a job after expressing doubts about the team surrounding his Commander-in-Chief. His Commander-in-Chief has found himself battling to maintain his credibility as oil pours into the Gulf of Mexico, growing (to some ears at least) ever more shrill and ever more belligerent in his treatment of the Chief Executive of BP. The Chief Executive of BP has found himself under attack for what he has said and for what he has not said, for what he has done and for what he has not done. Don’t follow leaders. Fabio Capello knows what his fate will be if his side does not trounce the Germans in Bloemfontein this afternoon. The power of the great man to rally his people and convince them to follow him in a common endeavour has never seemed weaker.
This ought to make the Church pause, for we are a company of followers. We are those who have heard a call and have responded, as surely as Elisha heard the call of the prophet Elijah and followed him, and as surely as the men and women of the Galilean villages heard the call of the prophet Jesus and followed him. And as a company of followers we are asked to call others. Don’t follow leaders. How can we hope to set about this task in the cynical, coalition-governed twenty-first century?
Tomorrow Nigel Moreland, Carl Boswell and PJ Luard will arrive at Land’s End. They will have run there from John O’Groats in just seventeen days, completing a double marathon on each of those days. Moreland, Boswell and Luard were all comrades of Captain Mark Hale, killed in Afghanistan last August while attempting to rescue an injured soldier. Their record-breaking fund-raising run is a tribute to their fallen friend, and they reckon that the compound fractures and muscle injuries they have sustained are worth it. Meanwhile crowds numbering tens of thousands are passing up the conveniences of the iTunes era to spend the weekend camping in Glastonbury. This year the weather is being kind to them, but they won’t have known that when they bought their tickets. The music festival, a child of the age of Subterranean Homesick Blues, has not gone the way of the beehive hairdo or the kaftan. It has grown and grown in popularity.
We will not follow political leaders who are unable to control events, whether that inability is their fault or not; political leaders will not follow military leaders who speak too freely to the press, whether they speak the truth or not; the markets will not follow business leaders who appear out of touch with reality, whether that appearance is fair or not. Yet we will follow Mark Hale all the way to Land’s End and we will brave heatstroke or trench foot at Glastonbury for the sake of Kylie, Dizzee Rascal and Seasick Steve.
Why follow these leaders? Mark Hale’s comrades do not offer a political ideology. They offer one man’s story, a story of authentic heroism, a story of personal valour. The story connects in a way that the ideology does not. Glastonbury does not offer a business strategy. It offers a shared experience, an experience of common life, an experience of common celebration. The experience connects in a way that the strategy cannot. Long-distance run and open-air festival do not offer a military solution. They offer, through the good-will and the funds that they generate, an opportunity to effect real and positive change to the world. The opportunity connects in a way that a proposed solution never can and never will.
Our age follows leaders who offer an authentic story; the possibility of a shared experience; and opportunity to make a positive change. Our Church is built around the story of Jesus Christ, who gave his life for love of us and was raised on the third day; around the shared experience of prayer and worship, which gathers saint and sinner, prostitute and priest to gather at one table; around the transforming power that is released through those glass doors into our community week by week. You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows sang Dylan. But perhaps we do; perhaps we need to be reminded of the story we share, the experience we offer, the power we wield. We have a Gospel to proclaim. Haven’t we?
Girl by the whirlpool looking for a new fool, he sang, don’t follow leaders watch the parking meters. Bob Dylan’s generation is beginning to draw its pension; it is being succeeded by a generation which grew up listening to its parents’ records; and on the evidence of the last few weeks it has listened hard.
Don’t follow leaders. The Commander of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan has found himself out of a job after expressing doubts about the team surrounding his Commander-in-Chief. His Commander-in-Chief has found himself battling to maintain his credibility as oil pours into the Gulf of Mexico, growing (to some ears at least) ever more shrill and ever more belligerent in his treatment of the Chief Executive of BP. The Chief Executive of BP has found himself under attack for what he has said and for what he has not said, for what he has done and for what he has not done. Don’t follow leaders. Fabio Capello knows what his fate will be if his side does not trounce the Germans in Bloemfontein this afternoon. The power of the great man to rally his people and convince them to follow him in a common endeavour has never seemed weaker.
This ought to make the Church pause, for we are a company of followers. We are those who have heard a call and have responded, as surely as Elisha heard the call of the prophet Elijah and followed him, and as surely as the men and women of the Galilean villages heard the call of the prophet Jesus and followed him. And as a company of followers we are asked to call others. Don’t follow leaders. How can we hope to set about this task in the cynical, coalition-governed twenty-first century?
Tomorrow Nigel Moreland, Carl Boswell and PJ Luard will arrive at Land’s End. They will have run there from John O’Groats in just seventeen days, completing a double marathon on each of those days. Moreland, Boswell and Luard were all comrades of Captain Mark Hale, killed in Afghanistan last August while attempting to rescue an injured soldier. Their record-breaking fund-raising run is a tribute to their fallen friend, and they reckon that the compound fractures and muscle injuries they have sustained are worth it. Meanwhile crowds numbering tens of thousands are passing up the conveniences of the iTunes era to spend the weekend camping in Glastonbury. This year the weather is being kind to them, but they won’t have known that when they bought their tickets. The music festival, a child of the age of Subterranean Homesick Blues, has not gone the way of the beehive hairdo or the kaftan. It has grown and grown in popularity.
We will not follow political leaders who are unable to control events, whether that inability is their fault or not; political leaders will not follow military leaders who speak too freely to the press, whether they speak the truth or not; the markets will not follow business leaders who appear out of touch with reality, whether that appearance is fair or not. Yet we will follow Mark Hale all the way to Land’s End and we will brave heatstroke or trench foot at Glastonbury for the sake of Kylie, Dizzee Rascal and Seasick Steve.
Why follow these leaders? Mark Hale’s comrades do not offer a political ideology. They offer one man’s story, a story of authentic heroism, a story of personal valour. The story connects in a way that the ideology does not. Glastonbury does not offer a business strategy. It offers a shared experience, an experience of common life, an experience of common celebration. The experience connects in a way that the strategy cannot. Long-distance run and open-air festival do not offer a military solution. They offer, through the good-will and the funds that they generate, an opportunity to effect real and positive change to the world. The opportunity connects in a way that a proposed solution never can and never will.
Our age follows leaders who offer an authentic story; the possibility of a shared experience; and opportunity to make a positive change. Our Church is built around the story of Jesus Christ, who gave his life for love of us and was raised on the third day; around the shared experience of prayer and worship, which gathers saint and sinner, prostitute and priest to gather at one table; around the transforming power that is released through those glass doors into our community week by week. You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows sang Dylan. But perhaps we do; perhaps we need to be reminded of the story we share, the experience we offer, the power we wield. We have a Gospel to proclaim. Haven’t we?
Friday, 14 May 2010
Ascension Day, 13 May 2010
Where did they put the body?
Perhaps it’s Father Mustard in the organ loft with the candlestick. Perhaps it’s Douglas the Verger in the Crypt with the collection plate. Every game of Cluedo - and every murder mystery - poses the same question.
Where did they put the body?
It’s a question for Hercule Poirot and for Miss Marple, for Morse and for Gene Hunt. And it’s a question for us too as we celebrate the Ascension of Jesus Christ.
Where did they put the body?
It is not a straightforward matter. For after the crucifixion the body, the wounded body, could no longer be seen by the disciples. Death had taken it from their sight, and sealed it in the tomb. Yet three days later they saw it again. The wounded body was raised; the wounded body was transformed. It was the same body: it bore the marks of the nails, its hands broke bread, and its mouth spoke peace. Yet it was not the same body: it was mistaken for that of a gardener, it passed through locked doors, it came and went at will. The wounded body had become the resurrected body.
Where did they put the body?
After the Ascension the body, the resurrected body, could no longer be seen by the disciples. Cloud had taken it from their sight, and carried it up into heaven. The resurrected body was exalted. So where did they put it? Where was the body of Jesus?
Where is the wounded, resurrected, exalted body?
Our forebears in faith had no doubt. The body of Jesus was in heaven. It was up there. It was in a realm which we cannot see. It was in a realm which is spread beyond the sky. There Jesus sat in glory, ready to return on the Last Day. The body of Jesus lived on, it lived on somewhere that is within the created universe; it lived on somewhere that is invisible to us. It lived on where we could not travel.
This belief we cannot share. Air-travel and interstellar exploration inform us that, in John Lennon’s words, above us there’s only sky. Journey (boldly go, if you will) to the reaches of the earth’s atmosphere and beyond and you will find yourself not in a place called heaven but in the wilderness of space, the boundless expanse of the universe. There is nowhere up there for the body to go.
Where did they put the body?
In the years since Copernicus and Galileo began to explain the universe to us we have mythologized the question. We duck the embarrassing Ascension story and read it as an allegory for the final vindication of Jesus. We ignore the resurrected body that led the disciples out to Bethany, and point instead to the sacrament of the Eucharist and to the reality of the Church and say that the body is there.
But we do this at our peril. The risks are twofold. If we cannot say where they put the body then we cannot answer those who scoff at our faith as flaccid and unhistorical spirituality. And if we cannot say where they put the body then we are careless of our own reality. Jesus is an embodied presence in the world; we too are an embodied presence in the world. If Jesus’s embodied presence becomes unimportant forty days after his resurrection; if Jesus’s embodied presence simply disappears; if Jesus’s embodied presence is a passing necessity for God that serves its limited purpose and is discarded then what are we to make of our embodied presence? Is that too unimportant; will that too disappear; must that too be discarded?
We must reclaim the Ascension of Jesus Christ. It vital for our redemption, and prophetic of our sanctification. In short, we must work out where they put the body. The clues are all there. The clues are there in the transformation of the body that is foreshadowed at the Transfiguration; the clues are there in the transformation that the body undergoes at the resurrection. The body evolves; the body is changed. The body evolves and the body is changed because it is the body of Jesus of Nazareth and it is also the body of God.
And at the Ascension the body undergoes its final transformation. It is exalted, yes, it is glorified, yes, but it is still real. It is seen by Stephen in the hour of his martyrdom; it speaks to Saul of Tarsus as he travels to Damascus; it is experienced by countless Christians across the generations who know that Jesus has not left the earth and that Jesus’s body has not left the earth. The body has ascended; the body has been glorified; and now there is no place from which the body is absent. It fills ‘all in all’. Yes, we are the body of Jesus; yes, we receive the body of Jesus; but in the Church and in the sacraments the Holy Spirit distils and focuses the body which is everywhere.
Stand inches from an advertising hoarding and you cannot read what it says. The text is distended. Put your ear up against a stereo speaker and you cannot hear the music that it plays. The sound is distorted. Fill your mouth with good claret and you cannot savour its complexity. The taste is obscured. Juxtaposition does not guarantee understanding; proximity does not guarantee recognition; closeness does not guarantee comprehension.
Open your eyes. Open your eyes to the suffering of the innocent; open your eyes to the self-giving of the poor; open your eyes to the forgiveness of the abused; open your eyes to Jesus’s embodied presence in the world; open your eyes to the body of Jesus.
Where did they put the body? Here; there; everywhere. Amen.
Perhaps it’s Father Mustard in the organ loft with the candlestick. Perhaps it’s Douglas the Verger in the Crypt with the collection plate. Every game of Cluedo - and every murder mystery - poses the same question.
Where did they put the body?
It’s a question for Hercule Poirot and for Miss Marple, for Morse and for Gene Hunt. And it’s a question for us too as we celebrate the Ascension of Jesus Christ.
Where did they put the body?
It is not a straightforward matter. For after the crucifixion the body, the wounded body, could no longer be seen by the disciples. Death had taken it from their sight, and sealed it in the tomb. Yet three days later they saw it again. The wounded body was raised; the wounded body was transformed. It was the same body: it bore the marks of the nails, its hands broke bread, and its mouth spoke peace. Yet it was not the same body: it was mistaken for that of a gardener, it passed through locked doors, it came and went at will. The wounded body had become the resurrected body.
Where did they put the body?
After the Ascension the body, the resurrected body, could no longer be seen by the disciples. Cloud had taken it from their sight, and carried it up into heaven. The resurrected body was exalted. So where did they put it? Where was the body of Jesus?
Where is the wounded, resurrected, exalted body?
Our forebears in faith had no doubt. The body of Jesus was in heaven. It was up there. It was in a realm which we cannot see. It was in a realm which is spread beyond the sky. There Jesus sat in glory, ready to return on the Last Day. The body of Jesus lived on, it lived on somewhere that is within the created universe; it lived on somewhere that is invisible to us. It lived on where we could not travel.
This belief we cannot share. Air-travel and interstellar exploration inform us that, in John Lennon’s words, above us there’s only sky. Journey (boldly go, if you will) to the reaches of the earth’s atmosphere and beyond and you will find yourself not in a place called heaven but in the wilderness of space, the boundless expanse of the universe. There is nowhere up there for the body to go.
Where did they put the body?
In the years since Copernicus and Galileo began to explain the universe to us we have mythologized the question. We duck the embarrassing Ascension story and read it as an allegory for the final vindication of Jesus. We ignore the resurrected body that led the disciples out to Bethany, and point instead to the sacrament of the Eucharist and to the reality of the Church and say that the body is there.
But we do this at our peril. The risks are twofold. If we cannot say where they put the body then we cannot answer those who scoff at our faith as flaccid and unhistorical spirituality. And if we cannot say where they put the body then we are careless of our own reality. Jesus is an embodied presence in the world; we too are an embodied presence in the world. If Jesus’s embodied presence becomes unimportant forty days after his resurrection; if Jesus’s embodied presence simply disappears; if Jesus’s embodied presence is a passing necessity for God that serves its limited purpose and is discarded then what are we to make of our embodied presence? Is that too unimportant; will that too disappear; must that too be discarded?
We must reclaim the Ascension of Jesus Christ. It vital for our redemption, and prophetic of our sanctification. In short, we must work out where they put the body. The clues are all there. The clues are there in the transformation of the body that is foreshadowed at the Transfiguration; the clues are there in the transformation that the body undergoes at the resurrection. The body evolves; the body is changed. The body evolves and the body is changed because it is the body of Jesus of Nazareth and it is also the body of God.
And at the Ascension the body undergoes its final transformation. It is exalted, yes, it is glorified, yes, but it is still real. It is seen by Stephen in the hour of his martyrdom; it speaks to Saul of Tarsus as he travels to Damascus; it is experienced by countless Christians across the generations who know that Jesus has not left the earth and that Jesus’s body has not left the earth. The body has ascended; the body has been glorified; and now there is no place from which the body is absent. It fills ‘all in all’. Yes, we are the body of Jesus; yes, we receive the body of Jesus; but in the Church and in the sacraments the Holy Spirit distils and focuses the body which is everywhere.
Stand inches from an advertising hoarding and you cannot read what it says. The text is distended. Put your ear up against a stereo speaker and you cannot hear the music that it plays. The sound is distorted. Fill your mouth with good claret and you cannot savour its complexity. The taste is obscured. Juxtaposition does not guarantee understanding; proximity does not guarantee recognition; closeness does not guarantee comprehension.
Open your eyes. Open your eyes to the suffering of the innocent; open your eyes to the self-giving of the poor; open your eyes to the forgiveness of the abused; open your eyes to Jesus’s embodied presence in the world; open your eyes to the body of Jesus.
Where did they put the body? Here; there; everywhere. Amen.
Monday, 19 April 2010
Third Sunday of Easter, 18 April 2010
‘So Simon Peter went aboard and hauled the net ashore, full of large fish, a hundred and fifty-three of them; and though there were so many, the net was not torn’.
A great deal of scholarly sweat has been expended and a great many scholarly ink bottles have been emptied in attempts to interpret the extremely precise number of fish that Simon Peter hauled ashore. The tradition of interpretation began in the late fourth century when the great Biblical translator Jerome recorded that ancient opinion was that there were 153 species of fish in the world’s oceans. The net therefore represents the Church’s embrace of all peoples and all nations. Jerome’s friend Augustine of Hippo adopted a more mathematical approach. 153 is the sum of the numbers one to seventeen, and ten and seven are both Biblical numbers of mystical significance. Moses receives Ten Commandments and John of Patmos receives a vision of seven spirits of God. The net therefore represents God’s self-revelation to his people both old and new.
This debate continues, and although it is extremely tempting to view it with a mixture of bewilderment and suspicion as Dan Brown territory the fact that it continues requires us to recognize that when we read the twenty-first chapter of John’s Gospel we read something complex and multi-layered. In the twenty-first chapter of John’s Gospel have an allegorical epilogue to the original text.
In the twentieth chapter Jesus sends his disciples out, full of the Holy Spirit, and says to doubting Thomas, ‘Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe’. That is surely the closing benediction that John intends for us, his readers, who are among those who have not seen. That is surely the original end of the Gospel. Then comes what we have heard this morning, the afterthought, the story of the fishing trip and the seaside breakfast, the story of Jesus’s questions to Peter and of Peter’s protestations of love, a story replete with symbolism and brimming with prophecy.
It is a story written down many years after the crucifixion, a story intended to portray the mature Christian community that has grown under the leadership of the martyred Peter. The fishing trip is the community’s mission; the unbroken net is its unity; the seven disciples listed represent the totality of the faithful (that magic number again); Jesus’s command to Peter to shepherd the flock authenticates the role that Peter has in fact had; Jesus’s dark prediction of Peter’s future validates the death he has in fact suffered on a cross. The chapter assures the people to whom it is addressed that their common life has its origins in Jesus’s risen life.
Interpreting the story in this way is a satisfying exercise, but if we do no more than interpret it in this way then it will remain a self-referential puzzle, theological Sudoku, and its impact upon us - its power to change us - will be negligible. We hear the Gospel as good news, not as food for our intellectual curiosity, or we do not hear the Gospel at all. And in this strange story of experienced fishermen who catch nothing and of apostles commissioned by Jesus who fail to recognize Jesus, at least two themes emerge which speak to us through a swirling mist of symbolic gesture and oracular sign.
The first is encapsulated in those 153 fish. The net brought to shore was full of their quivering, silvery, shimmering forms. It was a substantial haul, a huge haul. It far exceeded what seven hungry men needed for their breakfast. Yet this was the last of the signs that Jesus performed; perhaps the disciples looked upon the net and remembered the first of the signs that he performed. After all, one of them was Nathanael of Cana in Galilee, the town where Jesus had turned water into wine all those years before. He had turned water into a substantial amount of wine, a huge amount of wine, an amount far exceeding the needs of the most boisterous of wedding parties. At the beginning of his ministry and at its end Jesus deals in profusion: he reveals the reckless bounty that God lavishes upon the world even when the world has hung his Son on a cross; he reveals the love that is without limit, the goodness that has no boundaries.
The second is encapsulated in the responses Jesus makes to Peter’s increasingly desperate pledges of love. They resonate oddly in the ears of the soap opera generation. When a lover in Albert Square or even Ambridge asks the beloved ‘do you love me?’ and receives the answer ‘yes’, he or she is likely to say ’I don’t believe you’ or ‘prove it’. What Jesus says is ‘Feed my lambs…tend my sheep…feed my sheep’. Jesus does not play a lover’s games with Peter, and he will not allow Peter to hug his love to himself, as something to warm his heart and cheer him up. He wants him to turn his love into love for others. ‘If you love me’ says Jesus ‘then love my people’.
Scholarly sweat and scholarly ink will never precisely identify identified a date and a place for the writing of this afterword to John’s Gospel. But perhaps we can imagine a community, cowed by the death of its great leader Peter, hearing it and through it being reminded that they originate in the miraculous resurrection of God’s Son. Perhaps we can imagine them being reassured that God’s care for them is endless; perhaps we can imagine them resolving that the only possible response to that care is to care for others.
It was Gospel for that far-flung, long-lost community, and it is Gospel for ours. Amen.
A great deal of scholarly sweat has been expended and a great many scholarly ink bottles have been emptied in attempts to interpret the extremely precise number of fish that Simon Peter hauled ashore. The tradition of interpretation began in the late fourth century when the great Biblical translator Jerome recorded that ancient opinion was that there were 153 species of fish in the world’s oceans. The net therefore represents the Church’s embrace of all peoples and all nations. Jerome’s friend Augustine of Hippo adopted a more mathematical approach. 153 is the sum of the numbers one to seventeen, and ten and seven are both Biblical numbers of mystical significance. Moses receives Ten Commandments and John of Patmos receives a vision of seven spirits of God. The net therefore represents God’s self-revelation to his people both old and new.
This debate continues, and although it is extremely tempting to view it with a mixture of bewilderment and suspicion as Dan Brown territory the fact that it continues requires us to recognize that when we read the twenty-first chapter of John’s Gospel we read something complex and multi-layered. In the twenty-first chapter of John’s Gospel have an allegorical epilogue to the original text.
In the twentieth chapter Jesus sends his disciples out, full of the Holy Spirit, and says to doubting Thomas, ‘Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe’. That is surely the closing benediction that John intends for us, his readers, who are among those who have not seen. That is surely the original end of the Gospel. Then comes what we have heard this morning, the afterthought, the story of the fishing trip and the seaside breakfast, the story of Jesus’s questions to Peter and of Peter’s protestations of love, a story replete with symbolism and brimming with prophecy.
It is a story written down many years after the crucifixion, a story intended to portray the mature Christian community that has grown under the leadership of the martyred Peter. The fishing trip is the community’s mission; the unbroken net is its unity; the seven disciples listed represent the totality of the faithful (that magic number again); Jesus’s command to Peter to shepherd the flock authenticates the role that Peter has in fact had; Jesus’s dark prediction of Peter’s future validates the death he has in fact suffered on a cross. The chapter assures the people to whom it is addressed that their common life has its origins in Jesus’s risen life.
Interpreting the story in this way is a satisfying exercise, but if we do no more than interpret it in this way then it will remain a self-referential puzzle, theological Sudoku, and its impact upon us - its power to change us - will be negligible. We hear the Gospel as good news, not as food for our intellectual curiosity, or we do not hear the Gospel at all. And in this strange story of experienced fishermen who catch nothing and of apostles commissioned by Jesus who fail to recognize Jesus, at least two themes emerge which speak to us through a swirling mist of symbolic gesture and oracular sign.
The first is encapsulated in those 153 fish. The net brought to shore was full of their quivering, silvery, shimmering forms. It was a substantial haul, a huge haul. It far exceeded what seven hungry men needed for their breakfast. Yet this was the last of the signs that Jesus performed; perhaps the disciples looked upon the net and remembered the first of the signs that he performed. After all, one of them was Nathanael of Cana in Galilee, the town where Jesus had turned water into wine all those years before. He had turned water into a substantial amount of wine, a huge amount of wine, an amount far exceeding the needs of the most boisterous of wedding parties. At the beginning of his ministry and at its end Jesus deals in profusion: he reveals the reckless bounty that God lavishes upon the world even when the world has hung his Son on a cross; he reveals the love that is without limit, the goodness that has no boundaries.
The second is encapsulated in the responses Jesus makes to Peter’s increasingly desperate pledges of love. They resonate oddly in the ears of the soap opera generation. When a lover in Albert Square or even Ambridge asks the beloved ‘do you love me?’ and receives the answer ‘yes’, he or she is likely to say ’I don’t believe you’ or ‘prove it’. What Jesus says is ‘Feed my lambs…tend my sheep…feed my sheep’. Jesus does not play a lover’s games with Peter, and he will not allow Peter to hug his love to himself, as something to warm his heart and cheer him up. He wants him to turn his love into love for others. ‘If you love me’ says Jesus ‘then love my people’.
Scholarly sweat and scholarly ink will never precisely identify identified a date and a place for the writing of this afterword to John’s Gospel. But perhaps we can imagine a community, cowed by the death of its great leader Peter, hearing it and through it being reminded that they originate in the miraculous resurrection of God’s Son. Perhaps we can imagine them being reassured that God’s care for them is endless; perhaps we can imagine them resolving that the only possible response to that care is to care for others.
It was Gospel for that far-flung, long-lost community, and it is Gospel for ours. Amen.
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