Sermon. "I Believe in God!" How?

 

Sermon, St Michael and All Angels, Little Ilford, 30 August 2020

Trinity 12 (Year A)

 

Matthew 16.21-28: Get behind me, Satan!

 

Last week Simon Son of Jonah named Jesus “the Messiah, the Christ”,and Jesus named Simon “Peter”. And we reflected on the meaning of names.I knew then that this week we would hear how Jesus gives Peter yet another label or name. It’s not a name that stuck. It is not hard to see why.

The name is “Satan”.

We know the story well, I suspect: Jesus says that he will suffer and be killed; Peter objects; Jesus says “Get behind me, Satan; this is all Gd’s will.” How it is Gd’s will is a big question, but all the gospels are clear that somehow Jesus’ suffering and being-killed is Gd’s will.

“Get behind me, Satan.”

Jesus’ language strikes us as so extreme that it may well be worth reflecting on what might be going on. It’s not straightforward. I’ll make three points, in growing order of importance.

 

We Christians think of Satan as being another title or name for the devil. There is, after all, a verse in Revelation [20.2] which speaks of the dragon, who is the serpent, who is the devil, who is Satan. All one.

But in fact they may have been thought of as different characters at one point.

Think of the Book of Job. Job begins with a character called ha-shatan, the satan, in dialogue. What may surprise you is that he is dialogue with Gd, and the dialogue is respectful. The satan does not speak from the bowels of hell; he seems to be part of the heavenly court. He is something like a prosecuting lawyer, taking a sceptical view on the virtues of Job. The satan in Job is a title, not a name, and just means “accuser”. We can say he is negative, cynical and hyper-critical. We can say he is bad news. But it’s much harder to say he is, in Job, the embodiment of all evil. It is just possible that Jesus’ use of the term “Satan” here means something like that.   

 

You may not be convinced by that. To be honest, neither am I. I just wanted to give you the full picture. You may say that for anyone to call anyone “Satan” must be about the harshest thing that can be said. But! But, another point: we have to understand how people argued in the ancient world. It was in fact quite rhetorically acceptable to say that your opponent was possessed by the devil and such like, when you wanted to disagree with them. It did not sting in the way it would for us. It was, frankly, quite normal. We do have a flavour of this in the New Testament. Remember in John (7.2) when Jesus says people will attack him, they respond: “You have a demon! No one is trying to kill you”. There - and I think we do sense this - “you have a demon” just means “you’re being very foolish”.   

 

Again, you may not be wholly convinced. But! Another point: we can take comfort in this. Calling  Peter “Satan” did not stick and was never intended to stick. Even as Jesus calls Peter “Satan”, he gives him a way out:

 

“Get behind me”.

 

We may think this means ”disappear”, but surely it is more likely to mean “get behind me” in the sense of “change your way of thinking and get in line; follow me again; be a true follower of mine, and stick close. Yes, your understanding of the ways of Gd has been faulty, and I have called you out in colourful language, but I still want you close by me”. So Jesus is as far from giving up on Peter – sending him away, as if he were Satan – as can be.

 

“Get behind me, Satan!”

 

We are, it is true to say, not a church that speaks a lot about Satan. I will tell you bluntly that I think that is a good thing. We are right not to.

 

True story. Back in the day, I studied Theology in Germany for a semester. I had some famous lecturers. And not only were they scholars, they were also typically ministers. One – Jurgen Moltmann, if you know your German theologians – said that any parish interviewing a minister is certain to ask them, among all their questions: “Do you believe in the devil?”. He said he always gave the same reply: “No, I believe in Gd”. It is not too hard to understand his point: it is important to keep your attention focused in the right place, on Gd. Whatever we may think about the reality and dangers of the devil/Satan, the answer lies in Gd. So keep your focus on Gd.

 

“I believe in Gd”.

 

 

We say it so often. We say it repetitively, within this very service. We may – will – find that we say it rote, without thinking about it, at least from time to time. We need not beat ourselves up for this. It is bound to happen whenever with have rituals and set forms. But it is actually a powerful thing to say. “I believe in Gd”.

 

We’ll misunderstand it, if we think it means the same as “I have worked out - come to the conclusion – discovered the fact - that Gd exists”. It isn’t about an objective fact out there. I will go so far as to say it doesn’t describe a state of affairs at all. Because it is so much closer to: “I place my trust in Gd”.

 

“I believe, trust in Gd.”

 

Some say that the English word “belief” is related to the word “beloved”. So it might almost be like saying: “I declare my love for Gd”. And they say much the same about the Latin word for belief. You will actually know the Latin for “I believe”, because it’s “credo”, which gives us our word “creed”. And there is the school of thought that says “credo” ultimately comes from “cor” and “do”. Cor – heart; do – I give. “I give my heart to.” Something similar can be said about the Greek and the Hebrew: to believe in Gd is to trust in Gd, and to act accordingly.

 

So here is an invitation to take the creed seriously, perhaps more seriously than we have done, but/and/but not as a set of propositions, a set of facts we think we have stumbled upon. We can think of the threefold pattern of the creed as saying:

“We place our trust in the Father, whose story is this…”;

“We place our trust in the Son, whose story is this…”;

“We place our trust in the Holy Spirit, whose story is this…”.

 

I am not suggesting this is easy. What it means to trust in Gd – what we actually do – is a big question. And, let’s be honest, whether we are right to trust Gd is going to be a live question for all of us at times. Believers no less than unbelievers can see the world as godforsaken, can really struggle to believe Gd is in charge of it all.

 

But what I am really saying is, all of that notwithstanding, we can come to the creed, week by week, and indeed in just a moment, seeing it each time as an invitation to consciously place our trust in Gd, in whatever ways are right for us, and, if we can hear it, even a chance to celebrate our trust in Gd. I say to myself as well as to you: consider yourself invited.

 

We believe in Gd.   

Gd's Offer of Love and Our Response

Sermon. 8 October 2017. St Michael and All Angels, Little Ilford

Trinity 17 (Year A)

Isaiah 5.1-7

Psalm 80.9-17

Matthew 21.33-end

Isaiah 5.1-7 - own over-literal translation [not preached]:

Let me sing now for my beloved

the song of my love, about his vineyard.

A vineyard there was for my beloved

on a ‘horn’ a ‘son of oil’ [of a hill].

And he dug it over, and he de-stoned it, 

and he planted it [with] [a] vine.

And he built  a watchtower in its midst, 

and even a wine-press he dug in it. 

And he hoped for [it] to make grapes,

but it made stinking things.

And now, dweller of Jerusalem, and man of Judah,

judge [ye] now between me and [between] my vineyard.

What [would be] to do more for my vineyard

that I did not do it in it?

Why did I hope for [it] it to make grapes

and it made stinking things? 

And now let me make you know now

what I myself am on the point of doing to my vineyard.

Making turn away its hedge, and it will be for devouring;

breeching its wall, and it will be for a trampling. 

And I will make it a desolation [Hebrew uncertain - Greek: I will forsake my vineyard]

and it will not be pruned and it will not be hoed

and there will grow up thorn and thistle.

And to the clouds I will command

away from raining upon it rain. 

For the vineyard of YHWH of Forces is the House if Israel

and the Man of Judah is the planting of his delightful-delight.

And he looked for fairness but behold blood-flow;

for rightness but behold roaring! 

There is a school of thought in Christian teaching which has been very influential and powerful. I’ll give you its names. It is known as ‘supersessionism’ or ‘replacement theology’. (Those two tend to mean the same thing.) The terms may sound abstract or complicated. But it’s not hard to say what it means. 

It’s this: the Old Testament, the Hebrew Bible can be divided up. Systematically. 

All the blessings and promises move from the People Israel to the Church; 

all the curses and threats stay with the People Israel. 

• Blessings, promises - Church
• Curses, threats - Jews. 

I say this because our First Reading and our Gospel today (they hang together, remember) have been used to reinforce this line of teaching. In the first reading, a vineyard goes to seed, or goes wrong. And the text is clear: the vines are the Houses of Israel and Judah, and are judged for it. Even: devoured and trampled on. The gospel clearly echoes precisely this story (even down to some of the vocabulary), but the parts are altered. Now it’s the people in charge of the vineyard who mess up. And Jesus is just as clear: these represent the leaders of the Jewish people, and the kingdom is to be taken away from them. 

So you can perhaps see how the idea arose:

• Blessings, promises - Church
• Curses, threats - Jews. 

Sisters and brothers, we know each other fairly well by now. You will know that I think this school of thought is wrong, very wrong. It is wrong for all kinds of reasons. The most fundamental reason is this: if Gd is such a Gd that Gd makes a promise, and then changes Gd’s own mind when people fail and fall into sin, withdraws the promise, and hands it over to others, then how do we know that Gd is still with us? After all, Christians have sinned, and the Church has failed, in all kinds of ways. Surely (if Gd changes Gd’s mind), we too deserve the curses and the threats, and Gd’s best bet is to try again with a third people, a fourth community? 

No, Gd as Gd is not like that. Gd does not change Gd’s mind. Gd is, as we say (and mean), faithful. When Gd makes a promise, the promise stands, whatever people do or don’t do. When Gd calls a people, called is who they are. It is their nature to be called. And if that is true of the Church (as we believe it is), then it must also be true of the People Gd called first (as, to exaggerate slightly, pretty much every page of the Bible insists), the People Israel. 

There are many other reasons why that division (blessings/promises - church; curses/threats - Jews) is so wrong.  One I want to draw out from the First Reading from the Hebrew Bible, from Isaiah. It is summed up by this phrase 'more in sorrow than in anger'. It’s a phrase we might hear in all kinds of contexts. I want to suggest it is a phrase which sums up how Gd is, when Gd makes negative statements. Gd speaks more in sorrow than in anger. 

For that first reading is a poem (isn’t it?). And as a poem it is a lament. It is a song of grief for a vineyard which had such great promise. It was made with the kind of care and attention which is love. Indeed, quite explicitly, this is the ‘song of my love’ about and for “my beloved”. Two terms are used (yadid and dod). The second we find throughout the great Love Song of the Bible, the Song of Songs. And here the repetition is quite intentional: ‘my beloved... song of my love... my beloved’. There is love here, intimacy (or a desire for intimacy), passion. That Gd loves us is not an idea which first comes with Jesus and in the New Testament. Isaiah (and other prophets) already knew of Gd’s love. Which is why it is so painful - for Gd, for people, for all parties - when human beings mess up - spurn Gd - when they do not respond to Gd’s love with love for Gd and one another. 

Our translation speaks of grapes and wild grapes. Gd loved the people so that they had every chance to build a community of love. They could have been fruitful. Indeed more than fruitful:  we are talking about grapes for wine; they could have been joyful, feasting, full of wine, company and song, we might say. 

But instead…  well, wild grapes doesn’t capture the Hebrew. The Hebrew means more literally ‘stinking things’ - so ‘foul fruit’, maybe. That’s the imagery that fits how wrong is the response of the people. It is summed up in that last line: the beloved hoped for ‘justice but saw bloodshed; righteousness, but heard a cry’. Again, the Hebrew is more powerful, with a play on words: 

he hoped for mishpat and got mispach, for tzedekah and got tza’akah.

So the message here is not that Gd is giving up on Gd’s People, and moving on. 
It is Gd’s own cry, urgent cry, desperate cry (we might almost say) 
for justice and righteousness - 
to and from the People Gd is sticking with. 

This cry has been Isaiah’s burden from the very beginning. In Isaiah’s opening chapter, he has Gd saying that Gd cannot abide the People’s religion - not even their prayers - and commands: 

‘cease to do evil, 

learn to do good; 

seek justice, 

rescue the oppressed, 

defend the orphan, 

plead for the widow.’ [1. 16bf] 

The message then is strong. Let me put it like this: 

‘Only worship me as much as you care for one another. 

Anything more than that stinks, stinks like rotten fruit. 

And if you want to know whether you are caring for one another, 

don’t look in the obvious places, 

like among your family and friends or people you are drawn to;

look to, well, “widows and orphans” in biblical language -

those who are weak, who are different, who are pushed out.

Only worship me as much as you care for the un-cared-for.’

A strong challenge. And one we can only bear if we remember the context. 
Remember: more in sorrow than in anger. 
The warning always comes within a love song. 
It is a song of unrequited love, for sure, and so is also lament. 
Gd loves us, and we… 
we do not hate Gd. 
But we somehow never quite get round to loving Gd back with any kind of consistency. 
So the fruit we might be bearing sometimes turns foul. 
As and when this happens, we don’t beat ourselves up.
We return to the love-song of Gd:

‘Let me sing for my beloved my love-song concerning his vineyard: 

My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill. 

He dug it and cleared it of stones, and planted it with choice vines; 

he build a watch-tower in the midst of it, and hewed out a wine vat in it’

so that it has all that it needs, to yield finest grapes.

Amen. 

Good Friday Sermon

Sermon. St Mary's Little Ilford.

Good Friday 2016

Passion: John chapters 18 &19.

Did you spot it? We did it last year. We (clergy) didn't comment on it, and I don't think anyone did. And we did it this year again. This year I am going to comment on it. But first – did you spot it?

What I am talking about is that we slightly changed the text of John's Passion narrative as we've just heard it. We are treating it not as a radical change but a subtle nuancing of the passage. We changed many (not all) of the references to 'the Jews' in John's Passion to 'the religious authorities' or 'the Judean leaders' or some such. This we can justify, because the underlying Greek, hoi Ioudaioi means both 'the Jews' and 'the Judeans' and, further, 'the Judeans' could stand for 'the leaders'.

A good analogy today might be 'Brussels'. If we say 'we are praying for Brussels' (as we are) we are very likely to mean we are praying for the people, the inhabitants of Brussels. But if we say 'politician X wants us to pull out of Brussels' we are likely to understand that as meaning the institution, the European Union. And we can make that shift in interpretation without even thinking about it. 

And I am saying that a similar range of different meanings of hoi Ioudaioi make best sense of the text of John. It can mean 'the Jews', 'the Judeans', 'the Judean religious leaders' based in and around the Jerusalem Temple. That's what we've tried to reflect.

But so what? Well, in the first place we have to remember that historically Holy Week was a hard time for Jews in Europe. They were often confined to the ghetto – or chose to remain in the ghetto – for protection. Yes, the idea that 'the Jews killed Christ' was never formally taught, but was so strong, and very soon meant 'all Jews everywhere, throughout time'. We as a Church need to face that, and repent.

We need to repent because of Christian ill-will towards other human beings. But that's just the beginning of it. The more we allow the idea to build up – even when it's not explicitly said – that 'the Jews killed Christ', the less we get a sense that it is we who killed Christ, by our sins, by our betrayal of Christ. In fact, that is what the Church has formally taught. All human beings, being sinners, share in the responsibility for the death of Christ, but when we Christians by our actions betray Christ, we have less excuse, because we (in one way or another) know what we are doing.

This can be hard to hear. But this is the day to hear it. The day when we face up to who we are. Most of us are not murderers (unless I've misjudged you). But we all probably know murderous hate, at least at extreme moments. And we are all betrayers. We all betray others, by overconsuming in a world of need, not confronting racism, allowing gossip... the ways are endless. We betray our vocation, by preferring habit, comfort, or acting out of fear (again the ways are endless). This is who we are – treacherous so-and-sos. I say again: this is the day to face it.

But! Even that isn't the message of today. Even that is only the first part. And the greater part is this: Gd knows this. Gd knows who we are. And – it's not that Gd does not mind. Gd does mind, because we count for something with Gd. Gd doesn't think of us as infants who could do no better. We really do have our vocations, and the freedom we need to fulfil them. But, still, to Gd, our betrayals, though real, do not define us. They are not the first or the last thing Gd sees when Gd gazes on us. Gd's love is such that what Gd sees is when Gd gazes at us is... the beloved.

Some of you may know that the Bishop of London greets people from the pulpit with a booming 'Beloved!' Sometimes it can seem as if he's cornered that particular market. But he hasn't. However you want to say it, however you need to hear it, you are Gd's beloved. And that is why today is good. Gd shows his love for us, in that while we were yet sinners (yet traitors), Christ died for us. Willingly. Out of delight in our company.

Strangely, this can be hard to hear. It can take a lifetime to absorb this truth. That is why Gd gives us the Church. And the Church is here. Amen.