The faith of Gd; Gd's faith in us

Sermon. St Michael’s and St Mary’s, Little Ilford, 29.11.20

Advent 1

 

Isaiah 64.1-9

Mark 13.24-end

 

Happy New Year!

 

It is indeed a new church year, and today’s sermon might dwell on that. Today we enter today into the Year of Mark. However, there’s been quite a lot of chatter out there, about how people cannot wait for this year, this calendar year, 2020, to be over, as if some accident of the diary will make our problems go away. I think – I know – that is doesn’t work like that. Viruses, in particular, don’t do diaries. So I’ll wish you all the blessings of the new year, the year or Mark, and move on.

 

Today’s Gospel, and the First Reading which mirrors it, speak of hard times, times of tribulation, times of trial. This is, let us be clear, one strand of the Bible, running from the Prophets through to the Book of Revelation. Gd does not say that life will be easy. Today’s sermon might dwell on that. Sometimes the Church finds itself in such comfortable calm, such that it really needs to face up to the prospect of hard times. But! But that really isn’t us. We are already in a hard and narrow place, and we know it. We need some word of comfort, not of hardship.

 

Today’s Gospel ends with a command. The command: Keep awake! This is a timeless message. So today’s sermon might dwell on what it really means to be awake, to be vigilant. Only vigilance is a theme we are only too used to. We are vigilant, when we wash our hands, We are vigilant, when we take put on our masks. We are vigilant about everyone we meet, making sure we don’t get too close. We are vigilant when we choose not to meet people – a strange thing indeed. The very last thing we need is yet another demand to be vigilant, to keep awake.

 

Looking for some comfort, then, today’s sermon might turn to the Second Reading, the opening of St Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians. St Paul praises the Corinthians in glowing terms. Here, then, is a word of encouragement for us. Except, except it’s not that simple. What may seem to be praise may not be. St Paul says the Corinthians are gifted in speech and knowledge, and every spiritual gift. But some say that this is St Paul damning with faint praise, because St Paul can’t think of any virtue to attribute to the Corinthians.

 

We need a compare-and-contrast exercise to bring this out.

·        St Paul gives thanks to God for the faith and witness of the Romans;

·        He gives thanks to God for the Philippians’ sharing of the Gospel;

·        The writer of the Letter to the Colossians commends them for their faith and love;

·        The Thessalonians are praised for (brace yourselves…) their work of faith and labour of love and steadfastness of hope, and again for their growing faith and love;

·        Philemon is reminded of his own faith and love.

 

No such mention for the Corinthians. No faith, no love to mention, rather just spiritual gifts. Spiritual gifts are good things, but they are not faith and they are not love. St Paul is under-complementing the Corinthians, and is setting them up for the harsh words he’ll have to say to them later in the Letter. They love their “spiritual gifts”, but they neglect what really counts. So it may well be that there is no comfort for us, not even here.

 

Is there, then, anything, which might be of real comfort to us, now, now in our Coronavirus times? I suggest that there is. St Paul also says: “God is faithful, by him you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.”

 

Gd is faithful.

Gd is faithful and has called us.

Gd is faithful and has called us into friendship with Jesus Christ and one another.

 

Sisters and brothers, are these not the words we need to hear right now? We are at the beginning of a new Church Year, and/but with that we know that the strangeness and the pain of yesterday will be with us today and tomorrow, and – let’s name it – until around Easter.

 

Gd is faithful. Pistos ho theos, in Greek. It is worth dwelling on this, the faith of Gd. Yes, I got that right. There is faith in Gd, but there is also the faith of Gd, Gd’s own faithfulness. There’s a constant danger that we think of “faith” as something abstract. Some people have it. Some people don’t. It’s a thing. This is not the biblical way of thinking about it. Faith is always – always – relational. So it’s often said that a better translation is “trust”, because no one “trusts” in the abstract, but you “trust in” something or someone.

 

Pistos ho theos. Gd is trustworthy. That is our solid ground.

·        Whether the virus grows or diminishes in the coming weeks and months, Gd is trustworthy.

·        However different (small, narrow, unpeopled) our Christmas turns out to be, Gd is trustworthy.

·        However much we long for the chats we used to have over coffee, tea and toast, Gd is trustworthy.

·        Whether our supermarkets are full-to-busting or not, Gd is trustworthy.

 

I cannot persuade you that Gd is trustworthy, and, by the way, you can’t convince anybody by your words, either. We don’t believe that God is trustworthy because of some sort of scientific experiment we’ve run. It’s not as if we prayed for one thing, and refrained from praying for another thing, only to find that we got the first thing and didn’t get the second. It doesn’t work like that, at all. But our confidence that Gd is trustworthy is not nothing. We are those who find that the whole of life, of life itself, of the world itself, just makes more sense, just finds its shape, finds its depth, when we say and celebrate that Gd is trustworthy.

 

The scary thing about the trustworthiness of Gd – the bizarre thing about it – is that our trustworthy Gd trusts us. Even more bizarre is that Gd knows what Gd is doing. Gd willingly and knowingly places trust in us, feeble people and failing Church. That is the Christmas story that we are now inevitably thinking about. Gd comes to us as a human being, a baby, to be with us, as one of us, to show us what it means for us to be the trustworthiness of Gd in the world.

 

How we fail! We fail, but the invitation to become what we are called to become still stands.

 

Gd is trustworthy.

Gd is trustworthy, and has called us.

Gd is trustworthy and has called us into friendship with Jesus Christ and one another.

 

Happy New Year! Amen.

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.   

Love (and faith and hope) in a time of Corona.

These things let me remember,  

and let me pour out my breathing-self within me: 

oh, how I went along with the throng,  

how I’d process to the House of Gd, 

with the sound of ringing shouts and thanks,  

a crowd keeping the festival.  

Why are you cast down, my own breathing-self,  

and in turmoil within me? 

Wait for Gd, for yet will I thank him,  

whose very gaze brings rescue.1 

Bultmann once said that all theology is “theanthropology”: we can at best attend only to the relationship between the human and the Divine. Rabbi Tony Bayfield has recently refined this point, in insisting that all authentic theology must start with autobiography.2 A large part of the discernment process of “testing a vocation” to ordained ministry in the Church of England is repeated articulation of one’s own story. I am in a time of flux, which involves me in telling that story at interviews. All in all, locating myself in the wider narrative of our days (warts and all, on all parties) should come easily enough to me. Yet here I am struggling.  

Am I primarily a weak, fleshly human being, indeed one who himself almost certainly has a very mild form of the virus, and so must self-isolate? Am I a witness-bearer and truth-teller in my neighbourhood? (On some counts, half my parish is the epicentre of the epicentre – Newham – of the epicentre – London – of my country.) Am I one waiting to be taken on as an emergency bank health care support worker, with very focused hopes and fears? Am I a Church of England minister, adjusting to a strict ban on all corporate worship, and learning to play my role in building up a “virtual church”, lamenting the loss and celebrating the surprising gains at once? Am I co-minister and friend of my priest-in-charge, who bears responsibility as chaplain to the staff of the principal emergency mortuary, in our parish? Am I a particular pastor, with very particular responsibilities: for D., M., A., V., etc; for those whose burden differently pains me daily: funeral directors, prison staff? Am I an unsettled citizen – or just maybe a struggling Christian prophet – reacting to what I can only see as evasions and the rewriting of history by powerful politicians? The UK government, after all, seems to be passing all responsibility – blame – to the people. Their literal command is: “Be alert; control the virus...”. We are encouraged to return to work, but mocked for entering crowded tube-trains. Am I one who prays to Gd (or intends to, who is more myself when I pray), who can most authentically comment on changes to my prayer life? Do I “find” Gd “here”? 

Of course, the answer to these questions is consistently: Yes. So not so much a network of concerns, as a child’s scribble-drawing, perhaps. Little wonder that I know not what to say. But then I note that I do speak. One of the first things I did, after the government banned public worship with the Church’s full support and blessing (our Archbishops’ strong guidance went further than the government’s, I think with prudence), was draw people to the Psalms (Tehillim). I insisted (as many do) that all human life is here – joy, praise, naivety, contemplation, bewilderment, rage, hate, despair – and so here is the assurance that there will be ways to pray through this. I drew attention to Psalm 42/43 (treating them as one unit), because it is, inter alia, a psalm of lament, from one who clearly misses embodied and large-scale worship; who mourns that they no longer go “along with the throng”; who yet insists that waiting upon Gd (maybe with tears or gritted teeth) is good, valid, timely, and possible. I wrote my own translation, seeking nothing polished or poetic, but just to see what a return to the Hebrew might throw up. 

There is one other thing about this psalm-unit. Since a discussion with my spiritual director just before I was made priest (2006), it has been my custom, more often than not, to recite these psalms before I preside at the eucharist. So, more than a decade before this crisis, I was taking all the distress and lament and lostness of humankind in it as the raw material that is turned into thanksgiving (eucharisto!), through the encounter with Gd in it. This was in the first place because of the line (43.4a): ve-avo'ah el-misbach elohim el el-simchat-gili - “Oh let me go to the altar of Gd, to Gd, the joy of my rejoicing”. But, as soon as I started reciting it, I realised it was as much because of the opening (42.2): ke-ayyal ta’araog al-afike-mayyim, ken nafshi ta’arog elekah, elohim. “Just as a deer will pant for water channels, so it is my breathing-self which pants for you, O Gd”.  

Frightened and needy and desperate thirsting for Gd and Gd’s help may well be norm for human beings. This is bearable. This is met with.  

1, Psalm 42.5f. This is my own translation. For the whole psalm-unit, see http://frpatrickponders.blogspot.com/2020/03/psalm-42-and-43-bloggers-translation.html. Here also is a defence of my novel translation of nefesh as “breathing-self”, which I find unpoetic and even ugly, but still better than “soul”, and of the deliberate defective spelling of “God” as “Gd,” which strategy is indebted to R. Kendall Soulen in The Divine Name(s) and the Holy Trinity: Volume One, Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville, Kentucky, 2011