Commentary on Torah Portion Vayechi (Genesis 47:28-end)

Our parasha brings to a close the story of Joseph with his death. This narrative is truly a unique genre within Torah; it has been called its one "novella". In this, it also concludes the whole book of Genesis/Bereshit. It is short, but packs a punch. There is never any doubt who is centre-stage. Not Joseph, but his father, Jacob/Israel. 
 
It is Jacob who gives his farewell discourse (Gen 49:1ff), blessing his sons (albeit sometimes entirely negatively), in poetry both beautiful and at times impossible to translate (as one may expect, if the impression of archaic origins is desired). It is Jacob who is expressly mourned by the Egyptians for seventy days (50.3). It is Jacob whose dying wish is fulfilled, as his remains are taken, with pomp and ceremony, to his chosen resting-place, with his ancestors in Canaan (50.7ff). What is more, in the only disagreement between Jacob and Joseph, Jacob prevails. Jacob blesses Joseph’s sons as his own, but, in doing so, privileges the second-born Ephraim over the first-born Manasseh, against Joseph’s wishes. Jacob is clear that, whatever the failings of his eyesight, he knows what he is doing (48:19f). It is Jacob’s agency which counts.
 
There is something instructive here, for any who would make plans to shape their own legacy: it can never wholly be in your control; any effort to steer others may fail, on many levels.  
 
What of Joseph’s own death – without poetic farewells, without explicit mourning, without a journey home? He dies at 110 (50.26). Robert Alter, in his notes to his translation, tells us this is the Egyptian ideal age, over against the 120 years of Hebrew understanding. Joseph is placed in a coffin – an entirely Egyptian contraption within the Bible. Is there bathos here? The story that begins with the expanses of the heavens and the earth ends with its focus reduced to a mummified corpse in a box, a box alien to the corpse, as alien as the land into which the box is laid. Is this a warning against assimilation? Is the stage being set for the Pharoah “which knew not Joseph” (Ex 1.8 KJV), and the wretchedness of slavery?
 
Something may be lost if this is our only reading of the brief account of Joseph’s death. Perhaps there is another character in this passage whose legacy is not fully honoured. I refer to Egypt itself. If we limit ourselves to Genesis, it is only fair to describe Egypt as wholly benign, a place of refuge, of rescue, for Abraham, as for Jacob and his children. We hear Joseph say of his own travails: “God intended it for good, so as to bring about the… survival of many people” (50.20, NJPS). The Hebrew is strong: lehachayot: “to cause to live/to make alive”. That giving of life was brought about by the synergies of wise Joseph, and (let it be said) attentive and responsive Pharoah, and the fertility of Egypt itself. We who know the fuller story may miss here the absence of any strictly religious animosity between Pharaohs and patriarchs. In Christian language, this has been called the time of “ecumenical bonhomie” (Gordon Wenham). So Joseph’s coffin, which is called an “aron”, may in fact be a type of the ark (“aron”) of the covenant to come; it houses a memory of divine providence.
 
Biblical Egypt, like every nation since, is not one thing, neither simply refuge, nor simply oppressor. Just as it is folly to hope – or to fear – that our own legacy will be entirely one predictable and predicted thing. This is to the good!

Written for Limmud on One Leg, 2025. 

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.   

Sermon for Bible Sunday

Sermon. St Michael and All Angels, Little Ilford. 27 October 2019 (Year C)

·       Bible Sunday

Today is unusual; it may be unique. The sheets we have delivered have determined that today is “Bible Sunday”. We don’t normally keep “Bible Sunday”. We haven’t in my time, and I doubt you did before that. I think it is obvious why: if today is “Bible Sunday” what does that say of the other 51 Sundays of the year? Are they “Less-Bible Sunday”? Yet again, if every Sunday is “Bible Sunday”, why call one Sunday “Bible Sunday”?

But… I am happy to “roll with it”, as an “one off”. So we will call today unique, and we will call it (in case you haven’t picked it up yet…) “Bible Sunday”!

What I propose to do with this unique occasion is offer some teaching on the Bible, and you’ll guess that for me that means on the Bible in its original languages. This in turn means I am not going to offer an “exhortatory” sermon. (I know that’s what you were asking yourselves as you came to church today: “I wonder how exhortatory the sermon will be today”!) “Exhortatory” is just a specialist (or posh) way of saying a sermon which says how we should all be living. So you see: I am going to be even less bossy than normal. (And that’s not entirely a joke. It is also a warning: if you think I am normally bossy, you have been spoiled!) I am going to share some bits of knowledge, just to see if we can together agree that the Bible is fascinating.

And so to the Hebrew Bible, which Christians have tended and do tend to call the Old Testament (and I don’t say wrongly). This is, after all, the greater part of the Bible in terms of length, about 4/5 of the Christian Bible.  

The first thing you should know about Hebrew is that the core text does not have any vowels. This is true of every Torah scroll used in a synagogue. But it is also true of many/most newspapers in Israel today. You might think that makes things very hard. I suggest it doesn’t. You can test this. You can write some sentences down in English, but without the vowels – only the consonants – and give it to somebody else. My guess is that they will understand most of it.

Hebrew texts as such tend to have no vowels.

The second thing you must know about Hebrew is that the meaning of the words can change dramatically – utterly – depending on what the vowels in a word are.

For example

·       Lamad means “he learned” (maybe all by himself)

·       Limmad means he taught

·       Lummad means “he was taught” (by another).

That’s changing (pretty much) only the vowels.(1)  

So you can see that there is a problem: the core text has no vowels; the vowels often determine the meaning of the words.

And so it happened that, that between the 6^th and the 10^th centuries of our Common Era, some Jewish scribes started adding vowels to the text. They did this by adding dots and dashes above, below, and sometimes within the consonants. (I can show you later.) So a Hebrew text with the vowels added is called a “pointed” text. And by the end of the 10^th century, the words – the words with the vowels – were fixed. They weren’t added to the Torah scrolls themselves. The text on the scrolls was held to be too holy to have any later additions. But they were added to the books the congregation might have, or the books people practising reading or chanting the text might have.(Again, I have an example.)

Now, does this mean that until the vowels (the dots and the dashes) were added, people could just make up how to pronounce the vowels in the words, and so give the text the meaning they wanted? No, not at all. We have to remember that the early centuries after Christ, both Jews and Christians lived in what was basically an oral culture. They would be hearing these texts, year in, year out, week in, week out, or even day in, day out. So the vowels and the meanings would have been fixed (by and large) long before they were actually written down – written down in the form of those dots and dashes.

So, l am going to take a risk here. I am going to tell you something you may find boring, or you may just, like me, find intriguing. If you find it boring, you can tell me bluntly, as I won’t be preaching on “Bible Sunday” again. If you find it boring, but no more boring than any other sermon from me – that you don’t have to tell me.

Here goes. If we consider the Hebrew Bible as fixed by the addition of the vowels, how does the Bible begin? What is at the very opening of the book of Genesis? This is a real question…

Actually, the very opening of the book of Genesis does not say “In the beginning”. It does not work as a translation of the “pointed” Hebrew. The Hebrew says: “In a beginning”. The definite article – the word or the sound for “the” – is missing. But “In a beginning, Gd created heaven and earth” sounds strange in English, and more or less as strange in Hebrew. What might it actually mean? So it leads the grammarians/the translators to think creatively. So some modern translations read “When Gd began to create…” And I have to say: that is a fair translation of the Hebrew, really. “In beginning creating” might be the underlying idea.

This example also provides evidence for the point I was making earlier – that the later scribes did not invent new meanings from the consonantal text (the text that was just consonants) out of thin air. I say this because if we turn to the main Greek translation, the Greek also says: “In a beginning”. In the Greek, too, the word for “the” is missing. And this Greek text (which I also have with me) was written down a couple of centuries or more before Christ. It is unquestionably ancient.

And indeed, so fixed is this idea that the story of creation begins with the strange words “In a beginning”, that when St John wants to write his great meditation, reflecting and maybe going behind the story of creation, which he wants to relate to the Word of Gd who becomes a human being in Jesus Christ, he too writes as he starts his Gospel: “In a beginning was the Word, and the Word was with Gd, and the Word was Gd.”

Have I bored you to tears? I have really just wanted to drop the smallest hint that, if we do dig down into the biblical text in the original languages, things will become not easier, but more difficult and stranger for us, but – at least sometimes - more intriguing, deeper, richer.  

As for New Testament Greek, Greek does have vowels, and always has had vowels. What the oldest Greek texts do not have is.. gaps. Gaps between the words. Each word just runs on from the word before. Oh, and all in capitals, in the oldest texts. That makes like harder in another way. But – worry not – I won’t unfold all of that here. We’ll either have to keep “Bible Sunday” another year, or find another way of having some Greek for fun!  

Let us return to the Hebrew. I offer what I believe is one fair interpretation of Genesis 1, taking seriously the absence of that “the”.

When Gd began to create the heavens and the earth (you see, the earth was waste and void(2) and a darkness was on the surface of the deep, and a divine wind would sweep over the waters…) when Gd began creating, he said: Let there be Light, and there was Light.”

You may say that this sounds pretty similar to the traditional translation. Is anything at stake in preferring this new version? Oh yes. Most certainly. What? I am sorely tempted to tease you now and ask you to settle down while I outline the top twenty points why it matters. But that would indeed be to tease you. Instead, I will dare to hope that we might have seen that the Bible is a little bit more strange than we realised, and so intriguing, drawing us in. A blessed “Bible Sunday” to us all.

Amen.

(1) Readers rather than hearers will see that it also involves a doubling of the middle consonant. However, in Hebrew this too is shown not by a second written consonant, but a dot in the middle of the single consonant, i.e. here too the consonantal text does not as such determine the meaning. 

(2) The Hebrew is tohu va-bhohu, terms it is excruciatingly difficult to translate. Do they refer to some substances which predate creation as we can imagine it? The rabbis were apparently willing to imagine them as different types of slime – as one option among many, not an authoritative reading.   

Sermon: Gd-as-Infant

Sermon. St Michael and All Angels, Little Ilford.

25 December 2016. Christmas Day.

John 1.1-14

The one Bible reading you absolutely have to have at Christmas is the one we have just heard. The beginning, the opening, the 'Prologue' of the Gospel of John. It has to be this way this morning, then - though there is a part of me which wants to apologise. Apologise that is, if you came expecting to hear about Mary and Joseph, the journey to Bethlehem, the inn, the manger, the angels, the shepherds, and another journey to the new-born. I could apologise, and then undermine the apology by saying: 'Well, you should have come last night, then! Plenty of shepherds at St Mary's last night!' Or more seriously I could say that the Christmas story is found within the gospel we have just heard.

It is there at its most pure, in the deceptively simple words Christians have been pondering ever since: 'the Word became flesh and lived among us'. The Word of Gd, who was with Gd and who was Gd from the beginning, Gd-the-Word became flesh, became a human being. That's the essence of Christmas. Gd becomes a baby.

The last time I stood in precisely this place I suggested that Gd becoming Mary's child, a baby, can be seen as the logical culmination of how Gd has always interacted with us, according to the Bible. We were reflecting on Jesus as 'Emmanuel' as 'Immanu El' - as one who shows us 'Gd is with us'. (Anyone remember?)

Well, I was putting to you the idea that Gd is – always has been - willing to limit Gdself, to humble Gdself, to constrain Gdself, so as to be as it were one character within the story of humanity within the world. That idea that Gd limits Gdself to be alongside us is a thread that runs through the whole Bible. From Gd in the garden of Eden, to Gd's simple call to Abraham, to Gd speaking to Moses face to face, like one speaks to a friend, to Gd negotiating with the People of Israel about whether and how to have a King, and so on.

If Gd has always been alongside us, it is thinkable that Gd may want to be alongside us a human being himself.

But... what happens when Gd becomes a baby?

Here is a story you may or may not know:¹

[Mary] brought [the baby Jesus] to her own folk, carrying him. They said: 'O Mary! You have come with an amazing thing... O sister of Aaron! Your father was not a wicked man nor was your mother a harlot.'

Then she pointed to him.

They said: 'How can we talk to one who is in the cradle, a young boy?'

He spoke: 'Lo! I am the slave of Gd. He has given me the Scripture and has appointed me a Prophet, And has made me blessed wheresoever I may be, and has enjoined upon me prayer and almsgiving so long as I remain alive, and (has made me) dutiful toward her who bore me, and has not made me arrogant, unblest. Peace on me the day I was born, and the day I die, and the day I shall be raised alive!'

Such was Jesus, son of Mary: (this is) a statement of the truth concerning which they doubt.

Do you know or might you guess where this story comes from? It is actually from the Qur'an, the Muslim Scriptures. But don't dismiss it on those grounds alone – I know you wouldn't. For it resonates with earlier texts which Christians had preserved. It seems that, before Muhammad, Christians were puzzled by the lack of stories of the baby Jesus growing up. And so to fill the gap, they invented – or I suppose you might prefer to say 'found' – stories. Among them is this one about Jesus speaking from his cradle. In another he miraculously brings to life a clay bird he has made. And that is also in the Qur'an [3.49].

Brothers and sisters, from a Christian perspective, it does make most sense to think of such stories as made up. After all, what is an infant? A little adult? Try having a discussion with an infant, and you will be reminded that an infant is not a little adult. The word 'infant' comes from the Latin and means 'non-speaking'. An infant is a young human being who does not, cannot yet speak. So, from a Christian perspective, what we are marking – celebrating – today is this:

Gd, the Word, the Very Communication of Very Gd, limits Gdself to become one who cannot speak. One who can gurgle and giggle, cry and shriek, mouth nonsense sounds ('babababab'). But not speak.

And that is what is different from all the earlier communications from and by Gd. Here Gd restricts Gdself in a new way. To gurgles, to giggles, to cries, to shrieks, to nonsense sounds. Gd the Word gives up words (at least for a time and a season – or rather for years). Others speak, not Gd. The angels speak; the shepherds speak; the wise men speak. And, yes, Herod speaks with his murderous intent. Gd-as-baby speaks not.

Why did Gd do this? Brothers and sisters, there is no 'why?'. It is quite simply Gd's good pleasure to be that close to us, to be that aligned with us. We just have to receive that.

And, if we receive it, what now, for us? Do we have a speaking part, or are we too speechless?

In the first place, let us make sure we always value silence. We should be open to silence as a natural part of our worship and our praying. It is nothing to be scared of (though it does scare us).

Then we should make sure we do not speak out just to have something to say. If we as a national Church don't really know how to untie all the knots we've tied ourselves into over sex and gender, let's not gabble to pretend we do. If we have no idea how to solve the Syrian crises, let us not grandstand with many words. The old joke says something seriously true: it is better to remain silent and make people question whether you are a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.

But! But there are still times when we must speak out. I give an obvious example. In the year to come, there will be more racism and hatred of difference in our own country. The political climate is going to make such things easier. (I am not making a party-political point, I am talking about the context, the culture for all the debates.) And because we are all terribly silent (reserved, passive) by nature in the big, modern city, catching no one's eye, it is going to feel wrong, or at least difficult, to challenge racist statements when they are made in our hearing. But, well, then, we must, at least often, speak.

But, here and now, let us strip away the words of the world, and of the Church. Let us even strip away the words of Mary and Joseph, angels, shepherds and wise men, and Herod. And let us reflect – meditate – on the sheer fact (if we can receive it), that Gd became a baby, a speechless infant, just to be with us.

Just to be with you.

And he is... with you.

[Silence is kept.]

Amen.

1Quran Sura 19.27-34

Sermon for Advent 4

Sermon. St Michael and All Angels, Little Ilford

Advent 4 (Year C)

Isaiah 7.10-16; Matthew 1.18-25

Among the things that are haunting me is... How... Trump? How Trump? I probably don't need to say any more. I'm speaking about the President Elect of the USA and how he got to be that. Well, one line among the commentators is that some took Trump literally, and some took him seriously.

• Those who took him literally saw a man of misogyny, racism, treason indeed and voted against him.
• Those who took him seriously heard him as a change-maker, and they voted for him, as they wanted change above all else.

Personally, I doubt that works (though it would be nice in some ways if it were that). But! But it's a good distinction to make - when it comes to today's readings.

Let's be clear about the difference.

• To take a statement literally is to understand each of the words in their simplest, plainest most obvious sense. Nothing can 'stand for' something else. If you say 'it's literally raining cats and dogs' you can only mean furry animals are falling from the sky, woofing and miaowing as they fall.
• On the other hand, to take a statement seriously is to look at it as a whole, and think about what the speaker meant in the whole string of words. So someone can't literally have meant 'it's literally raining cats and dogs'. I take that statement seriously as meaning: 'it's raining very heavily'.

There are of course Christians - many millions of them perhaps - who think (or think they think) that to take the Bible seriously, you must take the Bible literally. A literal and a serious reading of the Bible are the same thing, they'd say. But today is one of the many occasions when they are – not to be unduly diplomatic about it – proved wrong.

Take the Gospel. Matthew tells us that Jesus' birth is to fulfil Isaiah's prophecy

'the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel'.

Literally - taking this prophecy literally - this does not happen. This passage is clear. The child is, we know, called Jesus. Not Emmanuel. If you say: 'But surely his other name (middle name, nickname, whatever) was Emmanuel', I'd say: When? Where is the evidence? When is Jesus ever called Emmanuel?' You'll have guessed the answer is never. If we try to read Matthew today literally, we tie ourselves in knots. The text denies us. The prophecy is of a child called Emmanuel; The fulfilment is a child called Jesus.

But it gets worse for the literalists. Go back to the first reading, and you'll see that Isaiah actually says 'the young woman is with child and shall bear a son'. Young woman, not virgin. There is no implication here of a virgin birth. This is because the first reading we have looks to the classic Hebrew text. But Matthew was almost certainly looking instead to an ancient Greek translation. In that Greek translation, the word for virgin is indeed found. But the people that want to take the Bible literally (or think they want to take the Bible literally) tend not to value the Greek translation, but stick to the Hebrew. So they have another problem.

And such problems as these happen time and time again, whenever anyone one tries to take the Bible literally. What about: 'If your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off'. What about: 'Leave the dead to bury the dead?' Which Christian community has ever taken these phrases 'literally'?

So let us take today's gospel not literally but seriously. That the name of the Christ-child, of Jesus, is also Emmanuel, or Immanuel (Immanuel gets us closer to the underlying Hebrew). Immanu El means literally 'With us Gd'. But biblical Hebrew does not have a word for is. So if you want to say 'Gd is with us', what you say is 'with us, Gd'. So indeed Immanuel means 'Gd is with us'.

Gd is with us. There is no sentence in the history of language and of languages that is more worthy of being taken seriously. And it's perfectly natural that we attend to this now.

Where are we? There's a lovely (I think it's lovely) Irish expression (from the Irish language): 'to be in the mouth of Christmas'. And we are 'in the mouth of Christmas'. Almost there. On the point of. And with today's gospel, the sense that Gd is with us is intimately linked to Christ's birth, to Christmas. But it's worth remembering that for Isaiah too it was possible, natural, encouraged to think that 'Gd is with us'. It's not an idea that enters into history with Jesus, as if all others thought that Gd was uninterested, distant, too busy with His own majesty.

I'm going to go further. I'd say it can be said that the conviction that Gd is with us is a theme that runs naturally between the Old and New Testaments. It runs through the whole Bible, from Genesis to Revelation. Genesis. Think about that evocative phrase that in Eden Gd was walking in the garden in the cool of the day. You can say that's a crude idea about Gd that we need to get over. Or you can say it's dropping the hint, right at the beginning of the Bible, that Gd is with us. Of course, Gd is not like us. Gd does not benefit from taking an early evening stroll. But Gd chooses to do what is necessary to come to us, as if one us, to communicate to us, to be with us.

Think of the call of Abraham (or Abram as he then was). The text says simply 'And Gd said to Abram'. Nothing more complicated than that. Think of Moses. We are told 'Gd spoke to him face to face, as one speaks to a friend'. And so on, and so on. Jews and Christians, sharing this biblical heritage, take heart time and time again from hearing that Gd is with us. Things go wrong when we think 'Gd is with us' means 'and not with them'. No. Surely, we are meant to hear and proclaim that Gd is with us, human beings.

Gd is with us human beings. We need to hear this now. Even more than Trump, another thing is haunting me. Aleppo.

The whole of the catastrophe which is the violence and militarism and the lies in and around Syria. And Aleppo quite specifically. In the unspeakable horrors that are taking place there – unfilmable, let us be clear about that; any shocking footage we see on our screens is but the bits which are safe to be shown – in these current horrors, we are reminded that it is not natural in the sense of obvious to think that Gd is with us, with humanity. It seems that Gd has left humanity to it. And indeed it seems that our bit of humanity has left that bit of humanity to it. As one commentator has put it: Let us never again say 'never again'. For we don't mean it. We let it happen again and again.

Now, I don't know quite what 'letting it happen' means in this context – quite how we could have stopped it. There may some myth of the West's omnipotence revealing itself here. As if we could solve all problems with a bomb here and a stern word there. Nevertheless, how can we not feel not only grief but also shame, as the news of yet more children killed – they are not just dying; they are being killed – comes in.

I have no answers. What I am saying is that to believe that Gd is with us can be an act of defiance, the defiance we need – and are going to need in abundance

• in the face of those who want us either to resign ourselves ('there's absolutely nothing I can do, so I won't even pay attention...')
• and in the face of the calls to vengeance ('we've got to teach them a lesson; ultimately only violence works...').

So I am quite simply going to invite us all to say it now.

Not shout it, we can say it softly. It's more a prayer than a battle-cry. Say it with me.

Gd is with us human beings.

Gd is with us human beings.

Gd is with us human beings.

Amen.

Sermon. Jesus vs Commonsense?

28 August 2016. St Michael and All Angels, Little Ilford

Trinity 14 (Year C)

Luke 14.1, 7-14

I don't very often give practical advice in sermons. That's deliberate. I tend to think it is often for each of us to work out for ourselves the practical consequences of Christian teaching. But, here I go. Can we do this...? Can we do our best to invite and bring to church, on at least one Sunday between now and the end of the year, someone who does not normally go to church or another house of prayer?

This isn't a novel idea, of course. There's a whole 'Back to Church Sunday' theme out there. This year's 'Back to Church Sunday' may be on 18 September - though interestingly, it wasn't easy to track down on the internet. But, whenever we do it, let us try to bring to church one friend, colleague or acquaintance who hasn't been to church for some time, if at all.

I'm suggesting this for two reasons. First, we might hope that it will be a good thing for them. They will realise that we Christians are not all weird – or, more realistically, no weirder than anybody else. They may, Gd willing, get a sense of what we are about, which, in case there is any doubt, is the love of Gd,

• our intimations that Gd loves each of us,
• in all our mess,
• and them in all of theirs,
• more than we/they could ever yearn for,
• more than we/they could ever imagine.

But also for a second reason. Those of us who do come to church a lot can learn from the questions of those who don't. You know:

• Why do you do that?
• What does that mean?

And especially...

• What on earth is going on in that Bible reading?

I'll say it again: those of us who do come to church a lot can easily let the Bible readings wash over us. For what it is worth, I don't think that's laziness, really. I think we sense that there are such difficult things in the biblical texts, and we feel we cannot 'do justice' to them. We feel, as they say, 'under-resourced'. That is a shame. But it is also a call to do this: with or without our non-churchy friend next to us, let us hear Bible readings as if for the first time. Let us turn our attention to Bible readings -

• expecting not some gentle waves to wash over us,
• but rather that we are entering a minefield,
• and mines may go off at any minute.

For, sisters and brothers, that is, in truth, what the Bible is like. It is like a minefield, and the mines may go off at any moment. What do I mean? Well, you'll have guessed I am suggesting there is an example of an explosive in today's readings, in particular in today's gospel.

It's a gospel passage of two halves. Jesus is dining in a Pharisee's house. The Pharisees, I'll remind you in passing, are the Jewish group probably closest to Jesus and his disciples (but that's for another sermon). Jesus gives some advice to the company.

I paraphrase: When you're invited to someone's home, think of yourself as the least important person in the room. Then, if your host wants to honour you, giving you a special place, or cup, or whatever, then that will be a real honour. Whereas if you presume you are the special one, and your host then treats someone else as more special, you'll feel humiliated, and probably look humiliated to others.

This we can, I guess, all get. It is good, practical advice. It makes sense, because it is commonsense. It is a reminder about manners. Manners work; they 'oil the wheels' of all our interactions. We'd be lost without them. Every culture throughout time says as much. Not least Jewish culture. And so we have already in Proverbs [25.6f], before Jesus:

Do not put yourself forward in the king's presence

or stand in the place of the great;

for it is better to be told, 'Come up here,'

than to be put lower in the presence of a noble.

So far, so calm. Jesus expands on the point: in any circumstance, it is good to be humble, not exalted. Still calm. No explosions here.

But then! Then Jesus says... what? He says (my version again):

When you're having a party, don't invite family, friends, or neighbours or others you want to impress. Invite people who are poor, or very ill, or can't get around easily, or who are considered a problem or failures in some way. Invite them, precisely because you know they cannot repay you in any obvious way. That way, you'll get a different sort of repayment.

Now... Do you get it? Do you see how that is a mine going off before your eyes and ears. No commonsense here! Commonsense says you hold a party in order to bring friends together, and/or to impress people. Commonsense says you don't invite people you don't know, may not get on with, and are considered problem people, Commonsense says that's a recipe for disaster. If word gets around that you hold those kinds of parties, things can only get worse for you,- says commonsense.

Yet this is what Jesus calls us to do.

It's also something his disciples have said, through the centuries. Let me quote one contemporary writer (he just died in 1996). He was a European. He was a Henri-spelled-with-an-i-not-a-y. As such people often thought he was French, and so pronounced his name [French pronunciation] Henri Nouwen. But in fact he was Dutch. So his name looked like it was [English pronunciation] Henri Nouwen, and in Dutch was pronounced [same] Henri Nouwen. It's a long quotation I want to share. Here goes.

My whole life I have been surrounded by well-meaning encouragement to go 'higher up,' and the most-used argument was: 'You can do so much good there, for so many people.' But these voices calling me to upward mobility are completely absent from the Gospel. Jesus says: 'Anyone who loves his life loses it; anyone who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life' (John 12:25). He also says: 'Unless you become like little children you will never enter the kingdom of heaven' (Matt 18:3). Finally he says: 'You know that among the gentiles the rulers lord it over them... this is not to happen... anyone who wants to be first among you must be your slave...' (Matt 20:25-28).

This [it is still Henri Nouwen speaking] is the way of downward mobility,

the descending way of Jesus. It is the way toward the poor, the suffering, the marginal, the prisoners, the refugees, the lonely, the hungry, the dying, the tortured, the homeless - toward all who ask for compassion. What do they have to offer? Not success, popularity, or power, but the joy and peace of the children of God.

(End of quotation.)

So... invite people you don't know and have no reason to like to your parties, people who can do you no favours? And try your best to be, throughout your life, downwardly mobile? Is this the gospel message?

If it is, can we, after all, invite non-churchgoing friends to church? Are we not embarrassed and discomforted by this message which is about as far from commonsense as it is possible to be?

Maybe. And of course, how we imagine another person reacting to these commands is surely how a large part of us reacts. We too will be thinking (in part): It's just not a serious message. It sounds good, radical and challenging. Fine for a sermon, but not seriously for living. We are not meant to actually do it. But... are we?

Well, to cut a long story short, I think I can genuinely offer some reassurance. I'd say Jesus here is speaking in prophetic mode. And the prophets loved to see everything in black-and-white terms, to exaggerate, to say: 'no x, all y' when they were really talking about getting a balance in life. So in fact I do think we are allowed to have parties where we invite our friends. I also think we are allowed to be ambitious about our careers and so on; there's nothing intrinsically sinful about having ambitions and in that way being upwardly mobile.

But! But we get it wrong if we allow ourselves to shake off Jesus' message to his disciples then and now. This is saying that commonsense (including about how to behave at parties, and about how to develop your career) is just fine. But even more important is that we are ready to put commonsense aside, even if it be just for a moment, for one encounter

• when we help someone who cannot possibly help us back
• when we do so unseen, so that no one else is going to praise us
• when we do so uncomplainingly and eagerly
• when we do it even if the person we help is a thumping crook (because Jesus nowhere says we are only to help people in need who are also saints or well-behaved)
• when we do so purely and simply because we know that in such an encounter, Jesus is among us
• and (if we can here it) joy is among us too.

Amen.