Field of Dreams: if you build it, they will come!

Blessed are those invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.
Melchisedek king of Salem brought out bread and wine; he was priest of God Most High.
On the third day there was a marriage at Cana in Galilee.

It isn’t hard, is it, to see how these three readings overlap and illuminate one another. The story of Cana is one of the three great Epiphany manifestations:

“Manifested by the star to the sages from afar;
Manifest at Jordan’s stream, Prophet, Priest and King supreme;
And at Cana wedding guest, in thy Godhead manifest;
Manifest in power divine, changing water into wine.”

“This, the first of his signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee, and manifested his glory.” Nonetheless, it is possible that if we had been there we would have noticed nothing out of the ordinary, barring some whispering among the waiters and then some unexpectedly good wine. The sign was there, but only for those who knew where to look and how to look: Mary, first of all, and then the little group of disciples.

If you compare John’s Gospel with Mark’s (the one we shall mostly be hearing this year), you feel the difference straight away. Mark is full of incidents, described quickly and immediately going on to the next. In fact the opening chapters are punctuated by “and immediately”: and immediately Jesus did this or did that. John’s Gospel has relatively few incidents, but each one is told at length and reflected upon. Mark’s is the first Gospel, full of anecdotes about Jesus for new disciples who wanted to know what he was like. John’s is the last Gospel, with no need to repeat well-known stories, but more concerned to ponder more deeply upon some typical examples, but again to help disciples understand what Jesus was like. “He came to his own home, and his own people received him not.” Nevertheless the signs were there. John wants us to see them.

Can it be an accident that at this “first sign”, and at the last, when blood and water flowed from the side of Christ, and John is at pains to stress the reliability of his witness, the Mother of Jesus is present? There was a marriage, and the mother of Jesus was there; and when the wine ran out, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.” Standing by the cross of Jesus was his mother. In the first sign, water was transformed into abundant wine; in the last, water and blood poured from the side of Christ, his very life poured out for the salvation of the world. “He who saw it has borne witness- his testimony is true, and he knows that he tells the truth- that you also may believe.” “This, the first of his signs, Jesus did at Cana of Galilee… and his disciples believed in him.” Sign and belief are the two poles of revelation: God gives the sign, faith recognises it.

The signs Jesus gave were not intended as knock-down proofs of anything. In Mark, he often tells those he has helped not to say anything about it (but they do). When some Pharisees asked him for a sign, he asked why they could not perceive the signs he had already given. He chided the disciples for being so slow. The implication is surely that you need the right eyes to see, the right ears to hear. You have to be receptive and perceptive to get the point.

Young John saw the signs, old John gave us the fruit of his meditations on them. Water and blood, bread and wine, the symbols that he repeatedly holds before us are sacramental. “My flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him.” Last Sunday evening, as it happens, the second Lesson at Evensong was the passage from the Letter to the Hebrews in which the author muses on the words “a high priest according to the order of Melchisedek.” Melchisedek, as we heard in our first reading, was the priest-king of Salem, the later Jerusalem. His name (possibly it was in fact his title) means “King of Righteousness”, or “Righteous King,” and he brings gifts of bread and wine. In the account, he has no father named, and no mention of his fate. As a literary figure, he has no beginning or end: no wonder early Christians saw in him a prophetic foreshadowing of Christ; especially as Psalm 110 also refers to the Messianic King as “a priest after the order of Melchisedek.”

The author of the Book of Revelation may or may not be the same John as wrote the Gospel, but his mind works in the same way. At the close of his vision, as he sees the Holy City, new Jerusalem, coming down from heaven prepared as a bride adorned for her husband, he hears an angel crying out, “The marriage of the Lamb has come, and his Bride has made herself ready: blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb!” Did he, at that moment or afterwards, remember the simple country wedding at Cana of Galilee, at which Mary was present and the disciples of Jesus were invited? It is easy to get sentimental over weddings, but there are implications in the Scriptural texts both for our understanding of Jesus and our understanding of marriage. The Marriage Service of 1662 gets it right:

“Dearly beloved, we are gathered together here in the sight of God… to join together this man and this woman in Holy Matrimony, which is an honourable estate, instituted of God in the time of man’s innocency, signifying unto us the mystical union that is betwixt Christ and his Church; which holy estate Christ adorned and beautified with his presence, and first miracle that he wrought, in Cana of Galilee.”

The union between Christ and his Church, between Christ and each believing soul, is one of love and fidelity, permanent and unbreakable on his side, intended to be creative and fruitful, however unfaithful and failing in love we may be. It is the marriage of his divinity with our humanity, in which by sharing our weakness he enables us to share his strength, transforming (if we will let him) our watery selves into divine wine. Pope John Paul called marriage “the primordial sacrament”, because it existed before all the others as an effective sign of God’s love for humanity- as the Prayer Book says, “instituted of God in the time of man’s innocency”. In today’s Gospel we see how Christ further adorned it by the first sign of his saving mission, manifesting his glory. May it bring us to believe in him, as did those first disciples. Amen.

A sermon preached at All Saints, Clifton, 15th January 2012

Ps 96: Sing to the Lord a new song, sing to the Lord all the earth. Is 60.9-22: Jerusalem among the nations. Heb 6.17-7.10: Abraham and Melchizedek.

It is always something of a challenge, to see whether the various bits of Scripture that we are given for one service can be woven together to offer us a coherent message. The Psalm, and the two readings tonight, seem at first sight to have little in common. There’s the challenge!

Let’s start with Abraham and Melchizedek, the subject of the second Lesson, from the Epistle to the Hebrews. One of the principle points for discussion in the New Testament writings is how Jesus relates to what had gone before, in the Old Testament. To what extent is there continuity, to what extent is there discontinuity? To what extent does Jesus fulfil what has been prophesied, to what extent does he replace what has hitherto been laid down?

The writer to the Hebrews, whoever he was (no author is given in the opening, indeed it does not read like a letter at all, like the other Epistles), says, “So when God desired to show more convincingly to the heirs of the promise the unchangeable character of his purpose, he interposed with an oath.” Clearly the author here wants to emphasise the continuity of God’s purposes: they are unchangeable, and God wished the heirs of his original promise to Abraham to understand this. It becomes clear from what follows that the oath the writer has in mind is the one referred to in Psalm 110: “The Lord sware, and will not repent: Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek.” In fact, he quoted these very words earlier in the Epistle.

Psalm 110 has always been regarded as addressed to the Messiah: “The Lord said unto my Lord, sit thou on my right hand.” It is the Messiah, the descendant of David, who is “a priest after the order of Melchizedek.” But who was Melchizedek? What has he to do with Abraham and his descendants? Apart from the Psalm and Hebrews, all we know is contained in a very short passage in Genesis chapter 14. Abram (his name had not yet been changed to Abraham) had been engaged in battle with some petty local rulers who had kidnapped Abram’s nephew Lot and taken all his belongings. Abram and his servants chased the raiding party, defeated it and rescued Lot and his goods, and returned to his camp at Mamre, not far from Salem, later Jerusalem. “And Melchizedek king of Salem brought out bread and wine; he was priest of God Most High.” He blessed Abram in the name of God, and Abraham gave him a tenth of what he had won in battle. That is all. Scholars have puzzled over this enigmatic passage. Some have speculated that when David conquered Jerusalem centuries later, he took over some of the titles and functions of the earlier kings. “Melchizedek” means literally “King of righteousness”, or “Righteous King”, probably not just a personal name, but a title. David’s priest Zadok has a name of similar form, and there has been speculation that there were two lines of priesthood, one descended from Aaron and so from Abraham, the other connected with the surviving line of Melchizedek. Probably we shall never know for sure.

Psalm 110 probably implies that the Kings of David’s line were seen as having some priestly character, though not of course the Levitical and Aaronic priesthood of the Temple. For the author of Hebrews, it is a foreshadowing of the High Priesthood of the Messiah, which could not be descended from Abraham. His argument is involved, and follows Rabbinic methods of reading Scripture, but the upshot is that Christ’s authority, as priest and king, is not simply a matter of human descent, but is of divine origin. The author did not have the vocabulary and the concepts of later centuries to speak of Christ as God Incarnate, both divine and human, but he is trying to express this thought as best he can. Melchizedek as he appears in Genesis comes from no-where (no parentage is given, as would be usual), blesses Abraham, and is heard of no more! No beginning, no end! The author takes this as symbolic of Christ, who as divine has no beginning or end in a far more profound way.

In this way, the author suggests that although there is continuity between Christ and Abraham, there is also something radically new. In his own way, six centuries earlier, the writer known as the second Isaiah was wrestling with the same problem. After the Exile, there was a real conflict between those who thought that the way forward was by a narrow and exclusive approach to the Law, which led ultimately to the Pharisees, and those who accepted a broader understanding of Israel’s role  in God’s purpose for all mankind. It is the second approach that we see in Isaiah. Jerusalem is still central to to God’s plan, the Holy City in which he dwells, but all nations are to be drawn towards it in order to share in the worship of God.

Isaiah’s language is echoed in the Book of Revelation, where the City of God comes down from God, a city that has no need of the light of sun or moon, because the glory of God himself enlightens it. This belongs to the End-time, the World-to-come. There is continuity between the world-that-is and the world-to-come, because the former is a foreshadowing of the latter. The People of Israel, the Davidic kingship, the Temple, the priesthood: all of these are brought to fulfilment in the priestly kingship of the Messiah, and the Holy People which is itself the City, Temple and dwelling-place of God, precisely because God has taken human nature to himself.

That is why we are told to “sing unto the Lord a new song,” to “declare his honour unto the heathen [the Gentiles].”

“Ascribe unto the Lord, O ye kindreds of the people: ascribe unto the Lord worship and power.

“Ascribe unto the Lord the honour due to his name: bring presents and come into his courts.

This is Isaiah’s vision, that the nations should bring their tribute to God in a renewed Jerusalem.

“O worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness: let the whole earth stand in awe of him.” The well-known hymn makes the meaning explicit:

“Fear not to enter his courts in the slenderness of the poor wealth thou wouldst reckon as thine: truth in its beauty and love in its tenderness, these are the offerings to lay on his shrine.

O worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness! Bow down before him, his glory proclaim; with gold of obedience, and incense of lowliness, kneel and adore him, the Lord is his name!”

Truth and love, obedience and humility: these are the gifts of Christ our High Priest according to the order of Melchisedek, the sacrifice he makes to the eternal Father, and in which he enables us to share.

A sermon preached at All Hallows, Easton, 15th January 2012

The reading from the Book of Revelation gives us a vision of heaven. It’s a dream, of course, full of symbols and signs, not a description of real events. John the dreamer sees a glorious figure enthroned, holding a scroll- a rolled up parchment- fastened with seven seals so that no-one can read what is written on the scroll. John is told that no-one has been able to open the scroll, which causes him to weep with frustration, because he knows that the message is of vital importance to mankind. An angel tells him not to cry, because “the Lion of the tribe of Judah” will open the message. When he looks, he sees not a Lion but a Lamb, who is able to reveal the hidden message of God because he has been sacrificed, and so purchased the whole human race for God.

Well! That is some dream! I don’t know what a psychiatrist would make of it! The John who dreamed is traditionally supposed to be the same John who wrote today’s Gospel, the brother of James who with Peter and Andrew was called from his fishing boat to follow the Lord. In today’s reading, we are in the days following the Baptism of Jesus, which we were thinking about last week. John has described how the other John, John the Baptist, has referred to Jesus as “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.” This is an important clue to the dream: the Lamb who reveals the secrets of God because he has been sacrificed to save all people is none other than Jesus!

The Gospel tells us that soon after his Baptism, Jesus decided to go to Galilee, the home area of Peter and Andrew, and several others who were in the group that had been with John the Baptist. Jesus invites Philip to join him, and Philip goes to find his friend Nathanael (just as the previous day Andrew had gone to find his brother Peter). Nathanael is very doubtful that anything good can come from a place like Nazareth, the back of beyond, but he agrees to humour Philip and come and see. On meeting Jesus, he is so impressed that he calls him “Son of God” and “King of Israel”, in other words the Messiah. Jesus tells him that he will see greater things: heaven opened, and angels going up and down over the Son of Man.

I doubt if Nathanael understood at that time what Jesus was talking about; but the point is that Jesus himself claims to be the one for whom the secrets of heaven are an open book, and whom the angels serve. It is interesting to note that, although John does not tell of the temptation in the wilderness, it is at this point in their Gospels that Matthew and Luke show Satan quoting to Jesus the text, “He will give his angels charge of you to bear you up,” while both Mark and Matthew say that after his temptation, angels came and ministered to Jesus.

Christianity is about Jesus: what he taught, and even more about who he is and what he has done. Nathanael gave him titles of dignity, “Son of God,” “King of Israel”. Jesus himself gave himself a title of humility, just “the son of man”, human and vulnerable like everyone else. John the dreamer heard “the Lion of the tribe of Judah” proclaimed, but when he looked he saw only a gentle Lamb, and not just a lamb, but one that had apparently been sacrificed, wounded and yet still alive. In coded form, the message was that Jesus has saved mankind not by power and majesty, but by self-sacrifice and humility.

But what is “salvation”? Each person must look into his or her own heart, and ask what they are most afraid of. Illness? Lack of money? Death? We all have things that worry us. Maybe there are things we are ashamed of, and that worries us too. When we say that Jesus is the Saviour, we mean that we can take all our worries, all our weaknesses, to him. If we trust him, he will sort it all out. We are safe with him. What does the hymn say? “Just as I am, though tossed about with many a conflict, many a doubt, fighting and fears, within, without, O Lamb of God, I come… Just as I am, thou wilt receive, wilt welcome, pardon cleanse, relieve: because thy promise I believe, O Lamb of God, I come.” Jesus is the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.

A sermon preached at All Saints, Clifton, Sunday 13th November 2011

1Kings 1.15-40; Rev 1.4-20

Before we take a look at this evening’s readings, I should like to muse a little on the topic of memory and remembrance. Today is, after all, Remembrance Sunday, a day for recalling the dead of the great wars of the last century, as well as various smaller conflicts since. Given that few of us, now can actually remember the fallen, in the sense of having any personal memory of them in their lifetime, we may ask what the function of such annual remembrance is in our national life. The great Silence, at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, is tied historically to the Armistice of 1918. We remember those who died in later wars, but we do not pretend to remember those of earlier conflicts- the Boer War, the Crimean War, let alone the Napoleonic Wars and so on. In their day, those struggles loomed large in the national consciousness, but no longer. We have, as it were, drawn a line. So what is our deliberate act of remembrance for?

Ancient philosophers saw the human power of memory as a key factor in our sense of self-identity. This is true both at the personal level, and at that of communities. It is by remembering the past that we confirm that we are the same people now, as experienced these things. I remember where I was, and what I was doing, on “nine eleven”, for instance. The memory is an important part of what makes me “me”. Once a year, at this time, we re-affirm that we are, collectively, the same people who suffered the Blitz, who rejoiced at the Normandy landings. The lapse of time is unimportant: we are the same people.

As Christians, we remember partly through reading and meditating on the Scriptures, as well as through participating in the Liturgy. This is how we come to understand “who we are”. Although it is not our history in a secular sense, we “adopt” it in faith, and so identify ourselves with the people to whom it historically happened. With this in mind, let’s now take a look at the readings offered to us tonight.

The Books of Samuel and Kings form a comprehensive history of the Israelite people from the foundation of the kingdom to its destruction. Composed during the Exile in Babylon, it asks and attempts to answer the question, “How did things go wrong?” Beginning with the demands for a king while Samuel was the principal religious leader, it traces the unsuccessful reign of Saul, and his replacement by David. It then follows the establishment of the Davidic dynasty and its history through the following centuries until the Exile. The History ends with the release of the exiled king Jehoiachin from prison, and his rehabilitation by the Babylonian authorities, and event possibly contemporaneous with the publication of the History, a little glimmer of hope for the future.

In this total context we can appreciate the significance of the episode recounted in this evening’s first lesson. David had replaced Saul as a result of the latter’s death in battle, having been at loggerheads with him during most of their previous careers. David was for long not accepted by Saul loyalists. The historian wanted to show David as the founder of a proper dynasty, a dynasty which was still a focus of loyalty for Jewish exiles. It was important to show how the kingship passed, not by violence, but in a smooth and constitutional way from David to his first successor, Solomon.

Much of his previous narrative had been concerned with the rivalry between David’s sons, with various plots and attempted coups. He had also shown David to be no saint, but a flawed leader not above seducing an army officer’s wife, and having the officer himself conveniently removed. The present narrative is important in establishing that Solomon was David’s own choice as successor, and that the dynasty that emerged was undoubtedly legitimate.

The climax of the story, after all the political manoeuvring, comes with Zadok the priest and Nathan the prophet taking the young prince to the spring of Gihon, there to anoint him in the presence of the people. And the brass did clash, and the trumpets brayed, and he cut a dash on his coronation day, as everyone shouted, “God save the King! Long live the King! May the King live for ever!”

Let us leave Solomon there for a moment. We move on about a thousand years, where an old man is in prison on the island of Patmos in the Aegean. It is Sunday morning, and he is at prayer, when he hears behind him not a trumpet, but a voice like a trumpet, telling him to write down what he sees. He turns, and sees a glorious human figure, robed in white. His eyes are like a flame of fire, his feet like burnished bronze, his voice like the sound of the roaring sea. A truly awesome sight! This kingly figure identifies himself as “the first and the last; the living one who died yet lives for evermore.” Surrounded by the accoutrements of the ancient Temple, he also claims to hold the key (that is, in effect, the sceptre) of David. John, the visionary, recognises this as the Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth who died and rose from the dead, who is now enthroned in heaven, from whence he watches over his followers and calls them to account.

St Anthony would call the juxtaposition of these two passages a “concordance”, a divinely intended parallel, in which each text sheds light on the other. Solomon foreshadows Christ, Christ is the true Solomon. Once we accept this, we can see meaning in other details of the story; for instance:

Solomon is the beloved son, chosen by his father;
His mother plays a key role in his succession to the kingship;
He is anointed and proclaimed beside the flowing waters of Gihon.

It is not hard to see a likeness to Jesus, receiving his human nature from his mother, and proclaimed as beloved Son by his heavenly Father, anointed with the Spirit at the River Jordan. The message of John’s Revelation is that this same human Jesus, once crucified and rejected, is alive and reigns in glory as successor of David and universal King.

Both David and Solomon came to be “idealised” in Jewish tradition. The Books of Kings, closer to the historical reality, paint them “warts and all” as very human, very flawed rulers. The “idealisation” of them that took place was not just nostalgia for an imagined past golden age: the record could not be ignored. Rather, they became types of a hoped-for future Ruler, who would free Israel and inaugurate an era of universal peace and justice. Memory of the past was somehow “flipped over” to become an anticipation of the future. This too is an important key to understanding what we read.

Group memory is wholesome when we use it to identify ourselves with others, rather than distinguish ourselves from others. The Scriptures start with the creation of the world and of the human race. We have a common root, a common humanity, symbolised in the figure of Adam. The story of the Fall expresses the gap between mankind as it should be, as God wants it to be, and mankind as it actually is, in all its ignorance, frailty and sometimes malice. The historian of the kings of Israel wanted his exiled compatriots to accept his work as their story. He wanted them to understand where they had come from, how and why they had got to be where they were. To acknowledge and accept the past, to learn from it and so go beyond it.

The history of Israel both is, and is not, our history. It is not ours in the way that a modern Jew can regard it as his or hers. It is not part of English history as such. But it is ours, inasmuch as (as we read it) it leads up to Jesus of Nazareth, whom we believe to be not only the Jewish Messiah or Christ, but the Divine Saviour of all the world. The human race is one in its origin, and one in its destiny. Memory of the past becomes ground for hope in the future. John the Divine shows us the eternal Christ, the living Christ that you and I can speak to every day.

A sermon preached at All Saints, Clifton, Sunday October 30th, 2011

Daniel 7.1-7; Luke 6.17-26

Our readings tonight give us contrasting pictures: the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven, and the humble Rabbi teaching his disciples. Can these refer to the same individual?

Let’s start with Daniel. The Book of Daniel is an example of what is called “Apocalyptic” literature (the Book of Revelation in the New Testament is another). “Apocalypse” is often understood as relating to the End of the World, Judgement Day and so on, but strictly it just means the Revelation of hidden truths. In fact, it is often the concealment of truths that it was dangerous to state openly. Apocalyptic literature in both Old and New Testament appeared in times of persecution, giving a message of hope in a form understood by the persecuted minority, but which would not be obvious to the persecuting authorities.

The Book of Daniel appeared at a time when the Jewish nation was being oppressed by the Syrian Greek Empire that followed Alexander the Great, round about 165 years before Christ. It is presented as a series of visions had by Daniel, a man of God who is supposed to have lived some four centuries earlier, in the time of the Babylonian Empire. What is presented as a vision of the future is in fact a retrospective view of the past.

Daniel sees four monstrous beasts emerge successively from the sea. The first represents King Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonian Kingdom; the second and third are the Medes and Persians. These are treated very briefly. The fourth beast, particularly horrible, stands for the Greek regime that was persecuting the contemporaries of the author.

Just as the fourth kingdom is at its most rampant an boastful, Judgement Day comes. The visionary sees a heavenly courtroom, presided over by a judge of venerable appearance, sitting on a fiery throne. The books are opened, and soon the boastful beast is executed and burnt. The hidden message is, “Look out, tyrant! Your time is up, your fate is sealed!” Other visions in the book have the same meaning: the kings and kingdoms of the earth are all under the judgement of God, who will cast them down.

But then the dreamer sees something else. Coming on the clouds of heaven- so not out of the chaotic sea, like the beasts- he sees a human, not a bestial, form. This personage (whoever he is) is presented to the great Judge, and royal dignity is conferred on him, a kingship that will last for ever. Probably, in the first meaning of the book, we are not meant to identify this with anyone in particular: the point is that the True Kingdom comes from God, not from below; that it is marked by humanity in the broadest sense; and that it is destined to last. Human pride and power will not have the last word.

That is a good message for any downtrodden and oppressed people. The tyrants of the world- Hitler, Stalin, Saddam, Gaddafi- will not last. Sooner or later their judgement will come. But that is only half the story. In their place, God will establish a very different order, a kingdom “not of this world”.

For the author of Daniel and his readers, this was all in the future, expressed in symbolic language, with its manner of fulfilment hidden. The Gospels show us how, in actual historical fact, God has begun to establish his reign on earth, in Jesus Christ, Jesus of Nazareth, Jesus the Messiah.

Luke is writing for a Gentile rather than a Jewish readership. Consequently he universalises the message, making it applicable to all human beings, not just one nation. Matthew gives us the Sermon on the Mount, deliberately shaping it to present Jesus as the new Moses, giving the new Law to his people. He starts with Jesus going up the mountain, and ends with him coming down again. Luke, by contrast, shows Jesus going up to pray and choose the Twelve, and then coming down to speak to the crowds. What is more, Luke includes people from Gentile areas, Tyre and Sidon, among the audience.

Matthew begins with eight blessings. Luke gives four blessings and four “woes”. Matthew refers to the recipients of blessing in the third person; Luke has them addressed directly; Matthew “spiritualises” the recipients- poor in spirit, hungry for righteousness and so on. For Luke, they are the literal poor, the literal rich.

In both sets, blessings and woes, the existing order is to be reversed. As in the Magnificat, the hungry and poor are to be uplifted, the rich and powerful cast down. The hungry are fed, the full-fed will go hungry. Those who weep will rejoice, those laughing now will have their smiles wiped off their faces. The poor have something to look forward to, the rich have already had all they are going to get. To be persecuted is a sign that one is on the right side- the prophets and martyrs suffered in the same way. To be popular and praised by the world- that was how the false prophets were treated.

What Luke shows Jesus doing is passing judgement. What is more, he is passing God’s judgement on the world. This is no cheap revolutionary, who overthrows one tyrant just to set up a worse tyranny. That was the pattern of Daniel’s four beasts, each worse than the last. That is the pattern of today’s dictators, who come to power as rescuers of their people, but then cling to power in despite of their people. Luke presents a Jesus who is, on the one hand, a “son of man”, as human as we are; yet who receives his authority and kingship from above, who manifests the justice and the goodwill of the Creator towards humanity.

Daniel’s “son of man” (at least as conceived at the time of writing) was a symbolic figure, just as the beasts were symbolic figures. For us, the Son of Man is not a symbol, but a real person who lived at a particular time and in a particular place, but who still lives and reigns, still a real Person, Divine and human in nature, who has received Kingship from the Father, the “Ancient of Days”, and now as the representative of the Father himself sits as Judge upon the throne.

Yet we must never forget: the awesome King and Judge is still the same person as the humble Rabbi, the man of sorrows who shared all the grief of his people. To the poor, the hungry, the mourner he will always be the gentle and loving Saviour.

A Sermon preached at All Saints, Clifton, Sunday 16th October 2011

Proverbs 4.1-18; 1 John 3.16-4.6

“Hear, O sons, a father’s instruction.” “Little children, let us not love in word or speech, but in deed and in truth…. Little children, you are of God.”

One of the first things that struck me, on reading tonight’s two lessons, was that each is couched in the form of a father speaking to his children. The unknown Rabbi who compiled the Book of Proverbs, and St John the beloved disciple writing to his own disciples, each thought of himself as not just a teacher but a parent. St Paul too writes somewhere to his disciples, “Though you have countless guides in Christ, you do not have many fathers. For I became your father in Christ Jesus through the gospel.” (1Cor 4.15). What he meant was that, by bringing the good news of Jesus to them, he had engendered a new life in them, just as truly as a natural father does. Precisely because God is the Ultimate Father of us all, we can share in his parenthood in relation to our natural or spiritual children. And that means that we have a continuing responsibility for them, at least until they reach adulthood and can take responsibility for themselves. Paul and John stood in a long tradition  of rabbi-hood, stretching back to the ancient Rabbis of the Exile and beyond.

“Hear, O sons, a Father’s instruction.” The instruction does not pretend to be original. It is a wisdom passed down through the generations. “When I was a son with my father, tender, the only one of my mother, he taught me.” The entitlement to teach comes from having been taught oneself. We pass on what we have received.

The nub of the Rabbi’s instruction is this: get wisdom. What follows is one of several poetic praises of Wisdom, personified as a beautiful and noble woman. (This, by the way, is why these passages are sometimes used in the Liturgy in reference to our Lady.) The personification is at least partly derived from the fact that in ancient languages, abstract known such as “wisdom” (sapientia, sophia) are of the feminine gender. We should not read too much into this.

The Rabbi tells his disciple, his spiritual son, “Prize her highly; guard her, for she is your life.” The pursuit of true wisdom is something like a courtship, a love-affair. The medieval troubadours would have understood such language; St Francis, pursuing Lady Poverty, would have understood.

For the old Rabbi, Wisdom was in fact identical with Torah, the Teaching which had come from God, which we often (but misleadingly) translate as “Law”, but is more accurately “Way of Life”.  It was God’s own guidance for a fulfilled human life. It was God’s own word.

And here, of course, we find a cross-over point with St John. For the Evangelist, the Word of God that was in the beginning with God was the light of men. “The path of the righteous is like the light of dawn, which shines brighter and brighter until full day:” that is from Proverbs. “The true light that enlightens every man was coming into the world:” that is from the Evangelist. “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth.” For St John, the Word and Wisdom of God has taken human form in Jesus of Nazareth. The Torah was indeed the way; Jesus is the way, the truth and the life. Jesus exemplifies the Law of God, summed up in the commandments to love God with all our heart, mind and strength, and to love our neighbour as ourselves.

“By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. But if anyone has this world’s goods, and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him?” The new Law is as down-to-earth as the old Law, they are in essence the same: “This is his commandment, that we should believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another.” What “believing in the name” means is that we should place our trust and confidence in the fact that Jesus of Nazareth, a particular man like ourselves, who died a particular (and atrocious) death at a particular time and in a particular place- that man is to be identified as Messiah, as the Emissary of God, and as indeed the very revelation of God. It is because God has come among us, even though he was not recognised by his own people, that we can both know and live the way of life that God has always intended for us, namely that we should love one another, not just in word or speech, but in deed and truth.

For the old Rabbi, the Torah of God was a light to lighten our steps: “When you walk, your step will not be hampered; and if you run, you will not stumble.” But there is another way, against which he warns: “Do not enter the path of the wicked, and do not walk in the way of evil men. Avoid it… for they eat the bread of wickedness and drink the wine of violence.” John too warns against false prophets, false guides who would lead us astray, were we to follow them. “They are of the world, therefore what they say is of the world, and the world listens to them.”

“Hear, O sons, a father’s instruction.” Hear, in fact, the very Word of the Father. Hear his commandment of love, generous, overflowing and universal. Not for us the bread of wickedness and the wine of violence! Rather, our reliance is in the Bread of Life, and the wine which is the Blood of Christ, shed for us upon the cross. We draw near and worship the Body of the Lord; we bow down and ask for his blessing.

A sermon preached at All Saints, Clifton, Sunday October 9th, 2011

“Jesus spoke to the chief priests and Pharisees in parables.” The word parable means a comparison or likeness, drawing a parallel. “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding banquet.” What exactly is the comparison our Lord is making? If you look in St Luke’s Gospel, you will find a story which is clearly another version of this one, but with interesting differences. It is much softer, much gentler. St Matthew gives us a version much harsher and much more bloodthirsty. In Luke, the first people invited accept the invitation, but then can’t be bothered to turn up. Here, they won’t come from the start, and eventually beat up and even kill the messengers. In Luke, they are simply replaced with other guests; here, the troops are sent to destroy the murderers and burn their city. Luke has nothing about the guest without a wedding garment; here, the man is bound hand a foot and thrown into outer darkness. Violent stuff indeed.

Which is the more authentic version? We can’t say for sure. Possibly Luke, writing for an educated Gentile readership, has toned down the gory parts of the story. Equally possibly, Matthew, writing for a Jewish-Christian readership after the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in AD70, has beefed the story up a bit to reflect that. It doesn’t really matter, but it is Matthew’s version we have this morning.

The basic comparison is of the kingdom of heaven to a wedding-feast given by a king for his son. As you might expect, the first invitations go to the important people- big landowners, business tycoons and so on. These people are so full of their own importance that they turn their noses up even at an invitation to a royal wedding. “They made light of it and went away, one to his farm, another to his business.” From our perspective, this is quite an easy comparison: God invites us to a spiritual feast, but some people thinking making money is more important. Some are worse. Tyrants (Hitler, Stalin, Saddam, Gaddafi) actually torture and kill those who speak up for justice and compassion.

The kingdom of heaven, the royal wedding-feast, is a place where all kinds of people sit down together in peace and harmony, sharing equally in the good things that their host provides. Last week we were keeping harvest, thanking the Creator for the bountiful gifts he gives us. But we know all too well that the gifts of creation are not shared equally world-wide, we know that greedy people hog more than their fair share, we know that wicked and powerful people do maintain their unjust position by violence and oppression. So the picture rings true.

Our Lord speaks of two consequences: the punishment of the wicked, and the substitution of other guests. Some of what he says is possibly coloured by the Old Testament, where the prophets of God were rejected and sometimes killed, and Jerusalem was destroyed as a result. The priests and Pharisees would have taken the point. They knew their history. More generally, our Lord is saying that, in the long run, tyrants and torturers do not get away with it. They are answerable to God, and they will be called to account- if not here and now, at least hereafter.

The other lesson: God will often find a readier response among those who have little or nothing than among those who have a lot. Human beings need hope, they refuse to despair. The belief that ultimately right and good must prevail underpins their faith in God. In the story, the invitations go out in two batches; in reality, they go out to everyone, all the time. It is not that God loves some people more than others- even the worst are still his children- but their fate depends on how much they love him.

The postscript to the story, the man with no wedding-garment, is making the same point. Obviously, the king could not have expected beggars dragged in from the streets to be wearing morning-dress! The custom was for the host to supply suitable clothes to those who didn’t have them. So once again, we are faced with a man- this time a poor man- who simply refused what the king wanted to give him. It is a reminder that it is not just material poverty that God blesses: the beggar may by a curmudgeon as much as the miser. What God looks for is the generous heart which is open enough to receive the gift that is freely offered. That too is part of the total picture of the wedding-feast, the kingdom of heaven. The old commentators on the Gospel interpreted the wedding-garment as charity, love. Without love in your heart, you simply don’t belong at God’s table.

To sum up: the kingdom of heaven is like this: God the Father and Creator of us all wants the world to be like a party to which everyone is invited. No-one has to bring a bottle, everything is provided by the host. The whole world is God’s gift to us, as we remembered last week. The invitation comes from him, all we have to do is accept it. true, we must come wearing the garment of love: but even that is provided by our host! Theologically, the love that God wants to see in us, and without which we cannot join the party: that love is itself God’s gift to us, the grace of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Love, living within us. All we have to do is not refuse it!

“Many are called, but few are chosen.” Many, in this context, means effectively “all”: as in “This is the cup of my blood, shed for you and for many.” There is nobody God does not invite. “But few are chosen.” Who does the choosing? Is it God who, having called many, chooses only a few? I think not. In the end, the choosing is done by us, when we choose to accept or reject the invitation, when we choose to put on or refuse the garment of love. Whoever is excluded, is self-excluded.

This last week I have been in Walsingham. As many of you know, at the heart of the shrine is a copy of the little house, the Holy House, which the lady Richeldis was told to make 950 years ago. That house was itself a copy of the house in Nazareth which had been the home of Jesus, Mary and Joseph, the Holy Family. How does this connect with what I have been saying? The real Wedding to which we are all invited is in fact the wedding between God and humanity in Jesus Christ himself. Mary of Nazareth, by this world’s standards an unimportant girl in an unimportant village, was asked to become the Mother of God. In her womb, the great Creator formed for himself a human body and soul, in order that we human beings might become divine. He was not born in a palace, but in a stable. The little house in Nazareth was where he grew up, and learned the trade of a carpenter from Joseph. It is because he chose to live in poverty and humility that the high and mighty of the earth turn up their noses at his invitation.

It is the very powerlessness of Jesus that threatens the powers of the world, and makes them want to stamp him out, and all that he stands for. At Bethlehem and Nazareth, the Holy Family consisted of three people: Jesus himself, his mother Mary, and the loyal Joseph. As he hung dying on the Cross, only his mother and faithful John stood near. Again, the Holy Family consisted of just three persons: but now John stands for every one who wishes to follow Christ. The Son and the Mother are unique, but the beloved disciple may be anyone: you, me, anyone. Many are called; nobody need be excluded. God says, “Look, everything is ready; come to the wedding banquet.” Yes? Or no?