Sermon Christmas Day

Sermon. Christmas Day. 2015. St Mary's, Little Ilford.

Luke 2.1-14

Merry Christmas! I bring warm Christmas greetings from St Mary's, Great Ilford to St Mary's, Little Ilford. The point here is not – not! - that they are great and we are little. We'd have to think through if that's the case in any meaningful sense! The point is that we have a Christmas bond with fellow Christians. And I think also that we have another bond – St Mary herself.

I am not going to apologise for beginning with Mary, even though I bored some of you with my sermon on Mary, at St Michael's last Sunday. I will say again that Mary truly is that important.

You know, if we choose to, we have the option of marking, later in the year, the Feast of St Joseph the Worker (on 1 May). We could celebrate Joseph as carpenter, as craftsman. But today, the Feast of the Birth of Jesus, we could fairly call the Feast of Mary the Worker. Mary does the hardest work. Not for nothing is it called 'labour'. However we understand the virginity of Mary (and that's a discussion for another time, surely), the Church does not take it to mean that the birth of Jesus required less effort or pain than any other birth. So there is risk and pain and blood and howls and mess, and no doubt tetchiness and worse, here. These are the things that belong to a birth.

And this is telling us something. I suspect (and in some cases I know) that as you look back at past Christmasses, you see pain as well as joy, disappointment as well as delight. Rows as well as raucous laughter. In particular, you see grief, feel the loss of those who are no longer with you to enjoy the day. Christmas is a potent mix of the positive and the negative. And what Mary's first Christmas tells us is that it was ever thus. Christmas is the fulfilment – or better, the first fulfilment – of Mary's Yes to Gd, as expressed at the Annunciation: Be it unto me me according to your word. So there is joy. But it is also a birth in a cow-shed utterly unsuited for a human birth. So there is agony too. Joy and agony in one. That is the nature of this day. And – I have to add this - meant to be that way, in fulfilment of Gd's plan.

Whether or not Mary's story resonates with you just now, it is true that in the Christmas story, as in all biblical stories, we are invited to see something of ourselves in all the characters. So who are you in today's gospel? It is up to you, and there are no limits. Options are emperor, governer, Joseph, Mary, Jesus, shepherds, and angels. Why do you find yourself?

It's not a question you have to answer now. You can take the sheet with you, and when you have a quiet moment in the days ahead (and, you know what, you probably will at some point), you can read this story slowly, and see what resonates - what strikes a chord - with you. I offer you that not as option for an idle distraction. It's a powerful way of praying.

Here is a different question: what character might we as the Church in this time and place be called to be, in the year ahead?

I have a possible, tentative answer to this question. I don't know, but I think we might be called to be the angels. I don't like telling anybody that they should be angels, as I fear that that will be heard as saying that we should be bodiless as angels are bodiless. That is not what I am intending to say at all. All that I want to say is that we might be called to be the embodied human beings (the human bodies) who say the words of the angels in today's gospels.

The angel and the angels say:

'Do not be afraid.

'Here is good news.

'Here is salvation – which is to say, healing.

'Healing is hidden in the things you already know, like the birth of a child.

'Give glory to Gd in the highest – for you know you are more yourself when you praise.

'And on earth, peace.'

Now, there is no getting around that there is a translation issue here. From early days, from the oldest manuscripts, there have been two ways of taking the underlying Greek of the last bit:

And on the earth peace, good will among human beings

or

And on the earth peace among human beings of goodwill.

The translation we have is different again. I'll be honest, and say I can make no sense of it. But no doubt Fr Brian will take me to one side at some point and explain it to me. But here may be a version which pays some homage to all the translations: peace on earth to human beings, for here is goodwill'.

'Peace on earth to human beings, for here is goodwill.' That will be a message I fear will be hard enough to say in the months and years ahead. We know of all the uncertainties about how things will unfold in Syria, but not only in Syria, but as much (perhaps) in Iraq and Afghanistan. We know of all the uncertainties about how we are to live together as a community of communities in this country, and this city. In all of this, there is a danger of demonisation – the very opposite of goodwill – towards particular neighbours of ours. I mean (and it's important to say it) our Muslim neighbours.

What I fear is that many politicians and press people are going to go to new lengths to make us suspicious of Muslims in this country, and Muslims abroad. That in turn will actually encourage a small but signficant number of disaffected Muslims, here and abroad, to feel they have nothing at all to lose by resisting. By fighting back. And so the cycle of violence will grow and grow.

I hope and pray it will not be so.

I hope and pray that the Church will find new ways (and the ways will have to be new) to say with conviction:

peace on earth to human beings, for here is goodwill.

The good news is that we will have countless hosts of angels with us.

Merry Christmas. Amen.

'We enjoyed you!' Sermon on the overcoming of death

Sermon. Trinity 4 2015 (Year B). St Michael and All Angels.

Wisdom of Solomon 1.13-15; 2.23

2 Corinthians 8.7-15

Mark 5.21-43

There's so much in today's Gospel reading. But I don't know if you realise that the First Reading shares some theme(s) with the Gospel. It's intended to. One of those shared themes might be this: death and the overcoming of death.

Hear again:

[First reading:] 'God did not make death and he does not delight in the death of the living.'

[From the Gospel, Jesus said:] 'The child is not dead but sleeping.'

'He took her by the hand and said to her: “Talitha qum!” Which means little girl get up.'

Or little one, rise – rise - as if/as in from the dead; both the Hebew (qum) and the Greek use the normal language for resurrection.

Death and the overcoming of death. It is good for us to think of these things, because death will come to us all, whether we face up to that or not. However, we also need to think of death because our news reports are drenched in talk of the taking of life, of death by killing. When we now hear of Tunisia, Kuwait or France (and there are other countries getting less publicity), we will not think of lovely holiday destinations of various degrees of exoticness. Our stomachs may tighten, and we fear news of new atrocities. Not only of killing, but of brutality, of people chopping heads off and displaying them on spikes! Lord, have mercy!

Clearly people are coming under evil influences to see violence as the answer to everything. That they have a duty to commit vile acts of violence, wherever and however they can. That they must teach others this too. That this pleases Gd even. We might add they fall in love with their own rightness, and that they get addicted to violence. Many, but my no means all of these people call themselves Muslim and say they're acting in the name of true Islam - not least when they kill other Muslims.

But to take a step back: it is not that this is a uniquely violent and violence-loving period in world history. In saying that, I am not saying 'things aren't that bad, just relax'. Quite the contrary. I am saying that there has always been violence and brutality in the world, including on industrial scale. This is scary and heartbreaking and unbearable. But there are two things we are forbidden to do.

The first is we are forbidden to take comfort (or add to our fears for that matter) by falling into prejudice against our Muslim neighbours, or against the 1-2 billion Muslims in the world. I wish the media would not speak about 'Islamic State' as they are not an Islamic. IS murderers revel in their violence. They film themselves killing people, quickly and slowly, and put the films on social media set to music. Apparently (I think one should not watch but I read from others) their film-making skills are high. 

Let us not do them the service of thinking they act out of piety. What they're saying is really: 'Look what a big boy am I! Look how frightening I am! My team are bound to win, and compared to me, you are not worth anything.' Let's be clear: Islam is against all of that. Alongside all the quotations in the Qur'an about peace and good relations, it is also the case that humility – against self-aggrandisement - is a cardinal virtue in Islam.

The second thing we are forbidden to do is despair. Violence will not win. Again, from the Wisdom of the first reading:

'God did not make death, and he does not delight in the death of the living. For he created all things that they might exist; the generative forces of the world are wholesome and there is no destructive poison in them.' 

So the world and its people were and are made, at heart, wholesome. How can we find and draw strength from that wholesomeness?

Well, let us think of another act of terror, which it seems was committed by an American White-Supremacist terrorist, in Charleston South Carolina. If things are as they seem (and no one has yet been found guilty), it seems that Dylann Roof entered the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, attended Bible study for an hour, and then shot nine of the people there dead. Apparently he thought that to make white people stronger, you have to kill black people.

Once he was arrested, the families of those he had killed had chances to speak directly to him. Did you hear or read it? What they say, repeatedly is 'I forgive you. My family forgives you.' Extraordinary. This has nothing to do with politeness, niceness, softening or indulgence. But something profound about the Christian faith, and something revolutionary.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e26Eysq22Yg]

Now, please don't mishear me. What I am not saying is that if someone kills your nearest and dearest, it's your Christian duty to say to them: 'I forgive you'. It's not, because forgiveness means six or seven different things, and some are acts of will, and others are inclinations that come only over time, and after internal conflict. The only form of forgiveness Christians must offer is (and this is what the word literally means): 'I forgo – I forgo any instinct or plans for vengeance. The cycle of vengeance stops here.' (That is, of course, what is revolutionary about it.)

And another family member said this to the man (here I warn you I may do a bad American accent and I may cry):

'We welcomed you Wednesday night in our Bible study with open arms. You have killed some of the most beautiful people I know. Every fibre in my body hurts. But as we say in Bible study, we enjoyed you. And may Gd have mercy on you.'

'We enjoyed you.'

I think what this wonderful Christian woman is saying may be something like this: I do not seek vengeance. And I am not going to re-invent history. Evil though your act was, it does not define you. Because we already had enjoyed your presence. We saw in you some of the wholesomeness that is at the heart of all creation, and we did what we could do to honour it. We refuse to take that back because of your actions. Through all the pain, through all that we are dealing with in living after your still-most-definitely-evil act, we say we were right. At the heart of our faith is the idea of welcome, and we enjoyed you. 

Let me add if we don't enjoy the people we welcome, heaven is going to be a form of hell. Of course, that can be hard. (Leaving aside sin, we are all very we are different.) But our faith trains us in the ways of welcome and the enjoyment of the another. Gd trains us in the ways of welcome and the enjoyment of the other, if we let Gd.

This – welcome and enjoyment of the other - is what will drive violence out of the world. This is the overcoming of death. May it come speedily and in our days. Amen. 

Was Jesus a Prophet?

Sermon. St Anne’s Brondesbury. Second Sunday Before Advent, B.

Gospel: Mark 13.1-8

If you walk up and down the lovely Kilburn High Road on enough Saturday afternoons, you will be invited to become a Muslim. You may be filmed doing so. There’s a group of men who gather there, and – in a very friendly and approachable way – invite people to think about the claims of Islam. The group is called Dawa is Easy – dawa being an Arabic word meaning something like inviting people to embrace Islam. They put their successes up on YouTube. I myself have been stopped, addressed and filmed. I failed them. I did not become a Muslim. My interviewer’s final advice was: ‘Well, if you’re not going to become a Muslim, at least be an Anglican Unitarian. Give up the doctrines of Incarnation and Trinity’. I replied that asking me to become an Anglican Unitarian was like asking me to draw a square circle. It cannot be done.

I wonder: Was I right? Was I brave? Foolhardy? Conservative? Stick-in-the-mud? Too theological, abstract and pedantic? Too Church-bound? Truthful? Was I saying anything of any importance whatsoever?

*

Why do I ask this today? Well, in today’s gospel Jesus prophesies the destruction of the Temple. This is an event which did come to pass. So today’s gospel does give us scope to say this: Jesus was a prophet. So now is as good a time as any to ask: Is that right?

That Jesus was a prophet is an idea with ancient pedigree. Remember when Jesus asks, at Caesarea Philippi: ‘Who do people say that I am?’ ‘Some say… a prophet.’ They said it then, and they’ve been saying it, perhaps, ever since. Indeed, it might be said they’ve been saying it more and more, given the rise of Islam in our days. In Islam, Jesus is the prophet second only to Muhammad. It also might be said to be part of the Baha’i faith. And, as my Muslim friend was well aware, the prophethood of Jesus sits comfortably within Unitarian Christianity. And some would say (it’s a bit or a harder claim) it’s pretty much what liberal Protestantism and a lot of revisionist theology is about, truth be told.

And here we are, in a church with an interfaith centre attached (praise God). And I am going to dare to make an assumption. The assumption is that at least once in the history of the interfaith centre, one Christian has apologised for the intricate and abstract Christian doctrines of Incarnation and Trinity, with all that talk of natures and persons, and has agreed with someone else that, yes indeed, it would be easier if Christians dropped all that philosophical stuff, and just understood Jesus as a prophet. As the prophet for Christians. Jesus is nothing more than the prophet for Christians. Just imagine what we’d gain? What would we lose?

Well, I am not sure you would gain as much as you might think. Prophethood is not the easiest category for the Eastern religions. It makes little sense in Hinduism and Buddhism, at least. That Jesus was a prophet is also impossible in rabbinic Judaism. The rabbis were clear that the time of prophecy had come to an end, centuries before Jesus’ birth. Religious leaders could be inspired and wise; they could not be prophets. You’d also have to answer the question what, other than the destruction of the Temple, did Jesus actually prophecy? I mean: even in today’s gospel, it is not a flippant summary of what Jesus says that the end of the world happens when the end of the world happens, and things get a lot worse first. That may be worth saying, of course. But, if we are thinking strictly in terms of prophecy and prophethood, how does Jesus’ record compare with the majestic prose and poetry of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel?

You may reply that Jesus is not a prophet like that. He is a prophet after the manner of Elijah and Elisha, who healed others and brought the dead back to life. Well, maybe. But, again, would we call either Elijah or Elisha prophets, if, alongside their healing, they did not also speak devastating truths to difficult rulers? I suggest we would not. So, as a prophet, Jesus prophesies little, a miniscule amount compared to an Isaiah, and might be thought of, at best, ‘half’ an Elijah or an Elisha. Is that enough?... Well, that is – I humbly suggest – where you end up, if you start from the premise that Jesus is nothing more than a prophet.

Now, here is a harder thing to say, as most of us will feel some ambivalence. If Jesus is a prophet only, we have little reason to celebrate Christmas (I use the C word ahead of its liturgical time). Depending on the state of your emotional and practical preparedness, you may think that no bad thing. Technically, we could still celebrate Christmas. Indeed, at Portsmouth Cathedral there was at least a time when Christians and Muslims came together to celebrate the birthday of Jesus Christ/the Prophet Isa. But we’d lose Christmas as we know it.

You can pretty much pick your carol. 

• ‘Must you come from highest bliss, down to such a world as this?’
• ‘The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.’
• ‘In the bleak midwinter a stable place sufficed the Lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ.’  And indeed:
• ‘Veiled in flesh the Godhead see. Hail th’incarnate Deity’!

Something more than the birth of a prophet among prophets is being sung here.

*

Now I am going to try something even harder still. I want to suggest that the doctrine of the Incarnation – around us here as Christmas is in the air, and around us anyway, as we gather as Christians – is at heart simple. Not all of the language is simple. How could all the language be simple, when we are struggling to speak of God? But while not all the language is simple, the core claim is simple. I say it goes like this: God meets us. It is God who meets with us. It really is God. It is God as God is God. The One who meets with us is God.

I labour the point (you’ll gather), because I think that anything other than the doctrine of the Incarnation, as a way of understanding the story of Jesus, means we don’t, quite, meet with God. Not with God as God is God. Instead, we meet with… well, the variations are endless…

• We meet with one who is half-God-half-human.
• We meet with an emanation from God.
• We meet with a message from God which tells us how to live, but, in telling us how to live, ultimately tells us only about ourselves.
• We meet with an aspect of God – say, God’s power to heal, or, let’s be blunt, heal sometimes.
• And so on.

You see, the doctrine of the Incarnation – like the doctrine of the Trinity – was forged – painfully and over centuries – in Hellenistic society. This means in dialogue with Hellenistic religion. And Hellenism had great strengths, but it also had great blind-spots. One thing which I think Hellenism could not get its head around was the idea of a simple meeting between God and the human being. In Hellenism, matter, which is corruptible and corrupts, cannot be of ultimate importance. So the Creator (or the Ultimate One beyond all creating) can only meet creation, us frail creatures made of matter, through emanation upon emanation upon emanation. There is a little less of God in each emanation. It is echo upon echo, shadow reflecting shadow. That was, allegedly, how things had to be.

That was what Christians had to deal with. That is what Christians had to resist. That resistance takes the form of the doctrine of the Incarnation. The Church resisted and said: in Jesus, God meets us. In Jesus, it is God who meets with us. In Jesus, it really is God. In Jesus, it is God as God is God. In Jesus, the One who meets with us is God. Why? Because it is God’s will to be with us in this way.

I cannot present a knock-down argument why this is the case. Why in Jesus we meet God, God as God is God. I can say that this claim - or hope, or invitation, if you prefer - is the only thing that makes sense of Christianity. And this: as a hope, or an invitation, it is anything other than abstract, intricate, philosophical or finicky. It is here, now, if you will it. It is not abstract. It is concrete. It is here and it is now. The meeting with God can be here and now. Here now in word, bread, wine, company, stillness, surprise. And it is here, now, when you take the steps you have to take, to follow this Jesus. If you will it, you will get a sense of where the next (perhaps small) step lies.

I am tempted to add (since I won’t be with you again): all good wishes for the Feast of the Incarnation – Merry Christmas!

Amen.