Sermon. Leave the Dead to Bury the Dead? No, Jesus, No!

1 Kings 19:15-16, 19-21

Sermon. St Michael and All Angels, Little Ilford. 26 June 2016

Trinity 5 (Year C)

Luke 9.51-61

The last time I preached I suggested we as a nation were celebrating the Queen's Birthday and a range of other things, which suggested harmony in all our diversity. What a difference a fortnight makes! Today it looks much more like we are a country divided. Indeed the divisions are themselves manifold:

• between young and old;
• between London and the provinces;
• between the four nations which make up our United Kingdom;
• and between those who have confidence in the political processes we've been used to, and those who have lost all confidence, perhaps.

Our lawmakers, negotiators and commentators will need cool heads, imaginative minds and generous hearts, if we are to make new national arrangements work. And, let's be honest, we as a Church (at whatever level) need to redouble our efforts to pray for our nation and its leaders.

One thing we won't need in the coming days is more sound-bites. You know - reducing

• complicated decisions,
• judgement calls,
• balances of arguments based on probabilities
• and genuine differences of conscience

to simple slogans.

Sound-bites, and simple slogans. The Church is not free of them of course. Indeed, some people use the Bible precisely to find sound-bites and simple slogans. They are typically meant to encourage us. If you go to a retreat house, there'll probably be a picture of a beautiful sunset on the wall and some Bible quotation about Gd being in charge and all being well. And there are some Christian traditions which have 'promise boxes'. Heard of them? A box with bits of paper in it, on which are written different positive Bible verses. Each member of the family can then pull out a Bible promise, before Sunday lunch.

I suspect you don't have a promise box. But, still, it's quite hard to fully shake off a sense that the Bible is a 'book of quotations'. That if we only had more time, learning or holiness, we could sit down and read the Bible, sentence by sentence, and find good things to build up our faith in every single sentence. But is that right?

You have realised I am hinting it is not right. It's not the case that the Bible just consists of encouraging sentences, to be consumed like a spiritual tube of Pringles, one after the other, on and on. No. The Bible is often hard to understand. It comes from an alien time and an alien place. And even people who have spent their lives studying the languages cannot always (cannot often) tell you what it actually means. There's no point hiding from this.

And... we have an example of one of those phrases which are hard to understand, and very hard to find encouraging, in today's gospel.

• Jesus says to a fellow Jew: 'follow me'.
• They reply: 'first let me go and bury my father'.
• Jesus, then: 'Let the dead bury their own dead'.

Or: 'leave [or even 'abandon'] the dead to bury their dead'.

What did Jesus mean?

Well, first let's be clear just how shocking this response from Jesus is. Throughout the world, dealing with the mortal remains of people who have died is important. No society simply leaves corpses to decay where they are (or rather, when they do, it is a measure of the horrific chaos they've descended to). All cultures have strong expectations and rituals about the right way of disposing of dead bodies - whether that means burial, cremation, or carrying off to a special place high in the mountains, and so on – and it's taboo/forbidden to go against them.

But no culture makes more of this than Judaism. There is a presumption, from Abraham and Sarah on, in favour of burial. And dealing properly with the dead is one of the most important of Gd's commandments. Failure to perform it brings shame. The rabbis stressed this. They pointed out how often Gd commands us to deal kindly and justly with the poor. And the poorest of the poor are the dead: not only do they not have money; they don't even have breath. What is more (continued the rabbis) the best kind of service is offered without any expectation of a return or thanks. And when we show proper respect to a dead person, we can be sure of this: they are not going to thank us or do us a favour back. So it's the ultimate good deed.

This means, both because every society has a horror of leaving dead bodies un-cared-for, and because in Jewish society, care for the dead is a solemn duty, and care for your own parents when they die is a family task that takes priority over anything else, today, Jesus shocks.

'Leave [or abandon] the dead to bury their dead.'

What did he mean?

We don't know. There are no details in the story to help us see the context and work out what was really going on. It is an encounter as stark and bare as it is shocking.

We don't know, but some suggestions are often made. One is that the first reference is - or both references are - not actually to the literally dead, but to the 'spiritually dead', meaning people who are not at all drawn to Jesus. There are those who feel compelled to follow Jesus, and there are those who are unmoved. And you have to decide which group you are in.

This is possible of course. But one problem with it is that it does seem to mean that Jesus is spectacularly insensitive. If anyone were to say to us: 'I've got to bury a relative', we would not say 'Ah, that gives me a good illustration on how to live properly, how to be Christian'. No. We'd find some words of consolation and offer help.

So indeed another interpretation is that nobody is really literally dead in this scenario. The person's father isn't dead. He may be seriously ill. But this means that what the person is asking for is not permission to perform a quick ritual but 'indefinite leave' from following Jesus, while they tend for his father. He is then asking to join-yet-not-join the disciples in their work. And it is that double-mindedness Jesus is objecting to. So he finds a colourful way to ask the person if they are serious. Or, even, on this reading, the father isn't ill, and the person called to follow is inventing an excuse which they think will work, will be unanswerable. They are fibbing, and Jesus is calling them on it.

Again, either of these is possible. But it is pure surmise. There's nothing in the text to require such a reading. And we might still ask: Why then if it is so, did Jesus not simply say: 'But your father isn't dead'? Why instead this phrase that rings out through the centuries? A phrase which, taking the words at their most literal and straightforward, every Christian community everywhere has always ignored:

'Leave [or abandon] the dead to bury their dead.'

Well, I offer one more interpretation. It says this. Jesus (or Luke, who wrote it down) knows how difficult the saying is. Indeed, it seems horrible, and calls us to the impossible. That is neither accidental, nor regrettable. It's actually the point. Humanly speaking, the Christian life is impossible. It calls for an abandonment of all comfort, security, custom and decorum. When the call from Christ comes, it is utterly urgent, and relativises everything, absolutely everything else. As Jesus in another place says: 'Greet no one on the way'. What we actually do to care for dead bodies is not the issue here. Not remotely. It is rather that we feel ourselves shocked to the core by Jesus's radical message. Not 'gentle Jesus, meek and mild', but 'fierce Jesus, rude and upsetting'.

In other words, it is there to get us to face with all starkness the question:

Are we willing to find Jesus upsetting?

Given that Jesus is so prepared to shock,

that Jesus is not to be domesticated,

that he does not offer us simple rules to live decently

but calls us on an all-demanding adventure into the unknown,

do we (do we, the readers and hearers or this gospel) do we today...

leave Jesus, or do we remain with Jesus?

In another context, it's a question we are all very tired of, for sure.

But, given what Jesus says, it is today's question.

Amen. 

From Fishers of Fish to Fishers of Folk

Sermon. 8 November 2015. All Saints, Forest Gate.

3^rd Sunday Before Advent/Remembrance

Mark 1.14-20

Picture the scene. I wonder if you can. Some forms of Christianity encourage us to imagine ourselves within a biblical scene, in all the detail we can. It's an approach associated especially with Ignatius Loyola and the Jesuits. So... can you picture the scene? Imagine the Sea of Galilee lapping by your feet... fishermen mending their nets... and the arrival of Jesus himself...

Even if you can, often, picture the scene, I suspect you may find it difficult today. Things move just a bit too fast; we don't have much to go on. Jesus appears, announces his mission or purpose, walks by the Galilee, says one sentence to Simon and Andrew, and immediately they drop everything and follow him. He sees James and John, immediately says another few words to them, and they, too, drop everything (including, as it were, their own father) and follow him. 'Immediately... immediately.' Commentators point out that 'immediately' is one of Mark's favourite words. His gospel is the 'action movie' among the gospels. He doesn't have any interest is helping us 'picture the scene'; he is all about the speed of the action, and the urgency of Jesus.

But this brings more force to the question: what is going on in today's gospel? What was it about Jesus that made these four men immediately give up their jobs, their livelihoods, their security, to live (as far as they knew or could predict) the lives of 'religious extremists', or beggars, or both. (Don't think for a moment that, as fishermen, Simon, Andrew, James and John were poor people with nothing to lose. They had nets, boats, and staff! They were small-business people.)

What was it about Jesus? We are not told. When people do try to portray Jesus (from Cecil B DeMille to Jesus Christ Superstar) they tend to portray him as, you know, head in the clouds, focusing on things heavenly and divine, staring into the middle distance. To use an admittedly unfair shorthand: he was either a guru or a hippy. But this is unlikely. Jesus was a Jew, and that's not just some 'ethnic' designation (whatever that might mean), but describes his religious culture. It's likely that, rather than relying on enigmatic silence and a glimmer in his eye, he thought that arguing about things face-to-face was pretty much a religious duty. Elsewhere he does argue. Yet here at least, he makes no argument.

And here's another thing. It cannot be that the fishermen were drawn to Jesus because they knew he was bringing miraculous change to people's lives. Jesus has at this point not performed any miracles. We are still at the beginning of Mark's gospel. All we've had is the appearance of John the Baptist, the baptism of Jesus himself, and his temptations in the wilderness. No wonder-working healings; no breaking-in of peace, justice and more. So when Jesus announces (as we have just heard): 'The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God has come near' he is – let me say it – asking people to accept something on trust.

And we even have to say this: to take it on trust that in Jesus the very kingdom of Gd has come near is not easy. For rather than divine justice, Mark actually draws our attention to an all-too-human injustice – John the Baptist has been arrested (or handed over, or betrayed – the Greek can mean any of these). The world, it seems, is in just the same mess it was in before Jesus' arrival.

So what was it about Jesus that so moved the fishermen? I cannot say. Mark does not tell us, and I cannot imagine it, quite. There is a starkness to the message of Mark. His gospel begins not with Christmas and Jesus' birth. Rather we are straight into that most difficult character, the truth-teller and trouble-maker, John the Baptist. And most scholars think that the only original ending to the gospel we have describes the women fleeing from the empty tomb and saying nothing to anyone 'for they were afraid'. Today's extract, then, seems to be of a piece with this starkness. It's as if Mark is saying:

Jesus is here.

He is confronting you, and your complacency.

He is calling you to make a decision.

He is not here to negotiate with you.

He is simply calling you to follow, or walk away.

It is up to you.

Take it or leave it.

Take him or leave him.

Take Jesus or leave Jesus.

That is stark, isn't it? And I am not – really not – saying it's a good means of introducing people to Christian claims and the faith of the Church. No, we make Christianity attractive to people who know nothing substantial about it by loving them, and, when the time is right, inviting them – being open and warm. But for those of us who in one way or another already feel at home in Church - feel it's comforting like our favourite winter woolly recently pulled out from the bottom drawer for these days – we might need the bluntness of the challenge.

Take it or leave it. Take him or leave him.

As - or hopefully before - we get sucked into Christmas, and all of its excesses (shopping, eating, drinking, parties welcome and not really welcome...) before all of that, here and now, we can take a moment, to ask ourselves, calmly and in the perfect privacy of our own hearts: Am I going to take Jesus, or leave Jesus?

And it is good for us, before we properly answer that question, to be clear - crystal clear - that 'taking Jesus' won't give us charmed lives. It won't prevent bad things happening to us. It won't guarantee us success or comfort. Remember the betrayal of John the Baptist – and remember that it ends in his death – his beheading.

Remember, indeed, as we have just rightly been bidden to remember, all those who died in service in the World Wars, and, with them, all who die in whatever ways in wars before them and after them. Worse than that John the Baptist experienced, war is the ultimate betrayal of the human family. All the planning and ingenuity and industry of humankind, focused on destroying what is precious to other humans - and their very lives. Imagine if we can turn that energy - that urgency - into peace, and the ways of peace and harmony, fairness, forgiveness and fun.

Can we picture that scene? I wonder. How to get there?

That is another question I cannot answer. I cannot picture the scene. I cannot lay down the law on quite how we are to face the manifold challenges of resentments, hates, violence, terror, fear, manipulation and deception. But I can acknowledge that, here and now, I feel called to put the question to us:

This Jesus, who is called Prince of Peace – do you take him or do you leave him?

Amen.