A sermon by Stephen Snelling
Romans 13.11-14, Matthew 24.36-44
Happy New Year! It’s Advent Sunday the first day of the Church’s year. Like all new year’s days we look forward and backward and it is a time for resolutions!
But the church year does not start with something that has happened, such as Christ's birth or resurrection - something from the past that becomes present once again. The church year starts, instead, with a strange emptiness, a strange sense of expectation. The church year starts with waiting and wonder.
First of all we look backward and remember that the whole point of our being here is that we are Christians, followers of Jesus Christ, The child that was born in Bethlehem over two thousand years ago on that night when Before Christ became Anno Domini. In remembering we look forward to Christmas and the celebrations that surround the birth of Jesus.
Now you might be forgiven for thinking that Christmas is already here – the lights have been on in Regent Street and Oxford Street since early November, Bluewater and Lakeside are open until 11 in the evenings to make it easier for you to buy your Christmas gifts – I haven’t heard Bing Crosby singing “I’m dreaming of a white Christmas” yet but I’m sure that I will soon.
Of course Advent helps us to look forward to Christmas. But just as importantly it gives us the space and time to think about and to prepare ourselves for the return of Christ to this world – when he comes to claim us for his own.
It’s important to remember that after Jesus had risen from the dead and ascended into heaven the early Christians expected that the second coming would be sometime fairly soon. Jesus predicted the fall of the Temple in Jerusalem earlier in the same chapter as our reading – in fact it happened in AD70.
Although Jesus says that even he does not know the day and hour of his return the disciples on hearing the prediction of the fall of the Temple immediately think of the second coming and the end of the age. In their minds the events became inseparable and consequently they began to speak of them as imminent.
The disciples and followers of Jesus hoped that the second coming would be soon – they didn’t want to wait. I remember when credit cards were first introduced that one of the advertising slogans for the Access card was “it takes the waiting out of wanting” - today waiting has become something that we dislike. Only a few years ago we had to wait nine months to know the gender of a baby. Now the mother just has a scan and the secret is revealed. Not so long ago we used to send our photos off to be developed and wait expectantly for their return. Now we have gone digital and the result is available instantly. We shop whenever we want without waiting for the shops to open. On the Internet, we can shop in the middle of the night and pay instantly by PayPal or credit card; we even have a bigger and better 24 hour Tesco at Riverhead.
Email and mobile phones bring instant communication. The instantaneousness of life means that our expectations are raised. If we can't have it now, then we don't want it. If service seems slow in a shop or a restaurant, we leave. We always look for the shortest queue at the checkout and, if we do have to wait, we consider it such a complete waste of time that we shut down our mental activity and go into stand-by mode. 'Life's too short', we say. Too short for what? Too short for waiting, that's for sure. And what's wrong with that? Why should we wait?
To have it made in today's society means not waiting, not wondering. Making it means you are too busy to wait, too important. Making it means you are too smart to wonder, too adult. We want it all now. We find it impossible to wait for anyone or anything.
But then we look forward again and we do wonder don’t we? We know that Jesus said that he will come again and we wonder when it will be. Will it be today as we’re sitting down to lunch? Or tomorrow when we’re digging the garden or doing the shopping? Or next week? Or next year? When? Lord, when?
William Barclay in his commentary on this passage tells a story about an apprentice devil who is sent to earth to deceive mankind. Satan asks the little devil how he plans to go about his mission. The apprentice devil says he will try to persuade humans that there is no God. But Satan says experience has taught him that this ploy simply doesn’t work. The devil then suggests that he could discredit any kind of belief in hell. Satan commends him on his idea but insists that this approach wouldn’t be a winner either. Satan, however, is taken with the apprentice devil’s third idea and tells him to go ahead with his plan – which is simply to tell mankind that there is plenty of time.
And we do think that we have plenty of time to prepare for that day don’t we? And so we might have if we are talking about the measurement of time that we are used to. The sort of time that has a past, a present and a future. Time that has a beginning and an end.
But in the bible there are two kinds of time. The first kind is that which has to do with events in world history. The word used for it is chronos in Greek – and that is where we get the word chronology. The other kind of time in the Bible is called kairos, and this is God’s time. This is a time which humans cannot manipulate or with which they cannot interfere.
Jesus Christ being born during the reign of Caesar Augustus is a matter of historical fact, and this is the chronos time of the Incarnation but the Incarnation happens in God’s kairos time as well. It was God’s plan from eternity and human beings had no control over it.
When Christ comes again it will be in God’s kairos time – nobody knows the day nor the hour. Indeed it will be an hour we do not expect. But Jesus does tell us that it will happen at a time when people are unprepared – just as it was before the flood in Noah’s time. This isn’t to say in any way that Jesus is against us living a normal life – but rather against indifference to God’s plan, and the kairos moments of gracious opportunity given to each of us.
I’m reminded of a sketch from the 1960’s satire “Beyond the Fringe” called “Now is the end of the world” Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Alan Bennett and Jonathan Miller are all sitting on a mountain top dressed in loin cloths and waiting for the end of the world. They speculate as to what will happen and then they realize that there is only thirty seconds to go – they count down and then – silence! Nothing happens! “Never mind lads,” says Peter Cook “same time tomorrow!”
But he will come! And what are we going to do while we are waiting? Are we going to be like those people who scoffed at Noah when he built his ark? They just got on with life – they ate, they drank, they had parties, they got married, they had children. Even when Noah had finished his ark they carried on just as before. They weren’t looking for God. They were only looking for the next thing that was going to happen. And they weren’t ready when the flood came – they were swept away. We have all seen the images of natural disasters – the tsunami, the earthquake in Haiti, the flooding in Cumbria and Cornwall – we have seen the results of the unexpected.
So what should we do while we’re waiting? Waiting for the wonder that is Jesus Christ. Well we need to keep on with our ordinary everyday lives because unless we do the world would grind to a halt. But there are things that we can do – the sort of active waiting that we should be doing as Christians. St Paul gives us a list of dos and don’ts in this morning’s Epistle and in the next chapter of Matthew’s gospel Jesus tells us that we should feed the hungry, give the thirsty something to drink, welcome the stranger, clothe the naked, look after the sick and visit those in prison – we should be compassionate towards those less fortunate than ourselves.
So, that apprentice devil in the story may have chosen the best way of deceiving mankind after all. Making us believe there is plenty of time. So as our New Year’s resolution let us follow the advice of St. Paul from today’s epistle which tells us that we are nearer to the second coming that when we first became believers and that we should cast of the works of darkness and put on the armour of light To engage with God in his time, rather than the God of our earthly timekeeping.
Monday, 29 November 2010
Advent 1 2010
A sermon by Stephen Snelling
Romans 13.11-14, Matthew 24.36-44
Happy New Year! It’s Advent Sunday the first day of the Church’s year. Like all new year’s days we look forward and backward and it is a time for resolutions!
But the church year does not start with something that has happened, such as Christ's birth or resurrection - something from the past that becomes present once again. The church year starts, instead, with a strange emptiness, a strange sense of expectation. The church year starts with waiting and wonder.
First of all we look backward and remember that the whole point of our being here is that we are Christians, followers of Jesus Christ, The child that was born in Bethlehem over two thousand years ago on that night when Before Christ became Anno Domini. In remembering we look forward to Christmas and the celebrations that surround the birth of Jesus.
Now you might be forgiven for thinking that Christmas is already here – the lights have been on in Regent Street and Oxford Street since early November, Bluewater and Lakeside are open until 11 in the evenings to make it easier for you to buy your Christmas gifts – I haven’t heard Bing Crosby singing “I’m dreaming of a white Christmas” yet but I’m sure that I will soon.
Of course Advent helps us to look forward to Christmas. But just as importantly it gives us the space and time to think about and to prepare ourselves for the return of Christ to this world – when he comes to claim us for his own.
It’s important to remember that after Jesus had risen from the dead and ascended into heaven the early Christians expected that the second coming would be sometime fairly soon. Jesus predicted the fall of the Temple in Jerusalem earlier in the same chapter as our reading – in fact it happened in AD70.
Although Jesus says that even he does not know the day and hour of his return the disciples on hearing the prediction of the fall of the Temple immediately think of the second coming and the end of the age. In their minds the events became inseparable and consequently they began to speak of them as imminent.
The disciples and followers of Jesus hoped that the second coming would be soon – they didn’t want to wait. I remember when credit cards were first introduced that one of the advertising slogans for the Access card was “it takes the waiting out of wanting” - today waiting has become something that we dislike. Only a few years ago we had to wait nine months to know the gender of a baby. Now the mother just has a scan and the secret is revealed. Not so long ago we used to send our photos off to be developed and wait expectantly for their return. Now we have gone digital and the result is available instantly. We shop whenever we want without waiting for the shops to open. On the Internet, we can shop in the middle of the night and pay instantly by PayPal or credit card; we even have a bigger and better 24 hour Tesco at Riverhead.
Email and mobile phones bring instant communication. The instantaneousness of life means that our expectations are raised. If we can't have it now, then we don't want it. If service seems slow in a shop or a restaurant, we leave. We always look for the shortest queue at the checkout and, if we do have to wait, we consider it such a complete waste of time that we shut down our mental activity and go into stand-by mode. 'Life's too short', we say. Too short for what? Too short for waiting, that's for sure. And what's wrong with that? Why should we wait?
To have it made in today's society means not waiting, not wondering. Making it means you are too busy to wait, too important. Making it means you are too smart to wonder, too adult. We want it all now. We find it impossible to wait for anyone or anything.
But then we look forward again and we do wonder don’t we? We know that Jesus said that he will come again and we wonder when it will be. Will it be today as we’re sitting down to lunch? Or tomorrow when we’re digging the garden or doing the shopping? Or next week? Or next year? When? Lord, when?
William Barclay in his commentary on this passage tells a story about an apprentice devil who is sent to earth to deceive mankind. Satan asks the little devil how he plans to go about his mission. The apprentice devil says he will try to persuade humans that there is no God. But Satan says experience has taught him that this ploy simply doesn’t work. The devil then suggests that he could discredit any kind of belief in hell. Satan commends him on his idea but insists that this approach wouldn’t be a winner either. Satan, however, is taken with the apprentice devil’s third idea and tells him to go ahead with his plan – which is simply to tell mankind that there is plenty of time.
And we do think that we have plenty of time to prepare for that day don’t we? And so we might have if we are talking about the measurement of time that we are used to. The sort of time that has a past, a present and a future. Time that has a beginning and an end.
But in the bible there are two kinds of time. The first kind is that which has to do with events in world history. The word used for it is chronos in Greek – and that is where we get the word chronology. The other kind of time in the Bible is called kairos, and this is God’s time. This is a time which humans cannot manipulate or with which they cannot interfere.
Jesus Christ being born during the reign of Caesar Augustus is a matter of historical fact, and this is the chronos time of the Incarnation but the Incarnation happens in God’s kairos time as well. It was God’s plan from eternity and human beings had no control over it.
When Christ comes again it will be in God’s kairos time – nobody knows the day nor the hour. Indeed it will be an hour we do not expect. But Jesus does tell us that it will happen at a time when people are unprepared – just as it was before the flood in Noah’s time. This isn’t to say in any way that Jesus is against us living a normal life – but rather against indifference to God’s plan, and the kairos moments of gracious opportunity given to each of us.
I’m reminded of a sketch from the 1960’s satire “Beyond the Fringe” called “Now is the end of the world” Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Alan Bennett and Jonathan Miller are all sitting on a mountain top dressed in loin cloths and waiting for the end of the world. They speculate as to what will happen and then they realize that there is only thirty seconds to go – they count down and then – silence! Nothing happens! “Never mind lads,” says Peter Cook “same time tomorrow!”
But he will come! And what are we going to do while we are waiting? Are we going to be like those people who scoffed at Noah when he built his ark? They just got on with life – they ate, they drank, they had parties, they got married, they had children. Even when Noah had finished his ark they carried on just as before. They weren’t looking for God. They were only looking for the next thing that was going to happen. And they weren’t ready when the flood came – they were swept away. We have all seen the images of natural disasters – the tsunami, the earthquake in Haiti, the flooding in Cumbria and Cornwall – we have seen the results of the unexpected.
So what should we do while we’re waiting? Waiting for the wonder that is Jesus Christ. Well we need to keep on with our ordinary everyday lives because unless we do the world would grind to a halt. But there are things that we can do – the sort of active waiting that we should be doing as Christians. St Paul gives us a list of dos and don’ts in this morning’s Epistle and in the next chapter of Matthew’s gospel Jesus tells us that we should feed the hungry, give the thirsty something to drink, welcome the stranger, clothe the naked, look after the sick and visit those in prison – we should be compassionate towards those less fortunate than ourselves.
So, that apprentice devil in the story may have chosen the best way of deceiving mankind after all. Making us believe there is plenty of time. So as our New Year’s resolution let us follow the advice of St. Paul from today’s epistle which tells us that we are nearer to the second coming that when we first became believers and that we should cast of the works of darkness and put on the armour of light To engage with God in his time, rather than the God of our earthly timekeeping.
Romans 13.11-14, Matthew 24.36-44
Happy New Year! It’s Advent Sunday the first day of the Church’s year. Like all new year’s days we look forward and backward and it is a time for resolutions!
But the church year does not start with something that has happened, such as Christ's birth or resurrection - something from the past that becomes present once again. The church year starts, instead, with a strange emptiness, a strange sense of expectation. The church year starts with waiting and wonder.
First of all we look backward and remember that the whole point of our being here is that we are Christians, followers of Jesus Christ, The child that was born in Bethlehem over two thousand years ago on that night when Before Christ became Anno Domini. In remembering we look forward to Christmas and the celebrations that surround the birth of Jesus.
Now you might be forgiven for thinking that Christmas is already here – the lights have been on in Regent Street and Oxford Street since early November, Bluewater and Lakeside are open until 11 in the evenings to make it easier for you to buy your Christmas gifts – I haven’t heard Bing Crosby singing “I’m dreaming of a white Christmas” yet but I’m sure that I will soon.
Of course Advent helps us to look forward to Christmas. But just as importantly it gives us the space and time to think about and to prepare ourselves for the return of Christ to this world – when he comes to claim us for his own.
It’s important to remember that after Jesus had risen from the dead and ascended into heaven the early Christians expected that the second coming would be sometime fairly soon. Jesus predicted the fall of the Temple in Jerusalem earlier in the same chapter as our reading – in fact it happened in AD70.
Although Jesus says that even he does not know the day and hour of his return the disciples on hearing the prediction of the fall of the Temple immediately think of the second coming and the end of the age. In their minds the events became inseparable and consequently they began to speak of them as imminent.
The disciples and followers of Jesus hoped that the second coming would be soon – they didn’t want to wait. I remember when credit cards were first introduced that one of the advertising slogans for the Access card was “it takes the waiting out of wanting” - today waiting has become something that we dislike. Only a few years ago we had to wait nine months to know the gender of a baby. Now the mother just has a scan and the secret is revealed. Not so long ago we used to send our photos off to be developed and wait expectantly for their return. Now we have gone digital and the result is available instantly. We shop whenever we want without waiting for the shops to open. On the Internet, we can shop in the middle of the night and pay instantly by PayPal or credit card; we even have a bigger and better 24 hour Tesco at Riverhead.
Email and mobile phones bring instant communication. The instantaneousness of life means that our expectations are raised. If we can't have it now, then we don't want it. If service seems slow in a shop or a restaurant, we leave. We always look for the shortest queue at the checkout and, if we do have to wait, we consider it such a complete waste of time that we shut down our mental activity and go into stand-by mode. 'Life's too short', we say. Too short for what? Too short for waiting, that's for sure. And what's wrong with that? Why should we wait?
To have it made in today's society means not waiting, not wondering. Making it means you are too busy to wait, too important. Making it means you are too smart to wonder, too adult. We want it all now. We find it impossible to wait for anyone or anything.
But then we look forward again and we do wonder don’t we? We know that Jesus said that he will come again and we wonder when it will be. Will it be today as we’re sitting down to lunch? Or tomorrow when we’re digging the garden or doing the shopping? Or next week? Or next year? When? Lord, when?
William Barclay in his commentary on this passage tells a story about an apprentice devil who is sent to earth to deceive mankind. Satan asks the little devil how he plans to go about his mission. The apprentice devil says he will try to persuade humans that there is no God. But Satan says experience has taught him that this ploy simply doesn’t work. The devil then suggests that he could discredit any kind of belief in hell. Satan commends him on his idea but insists that this approach wouldn’t be a winner either. Satan, however, is taken with the apprentice devil’s third idea and tells him to go ahead with his plan – which is simply to tell mankind that there is plenty of time.
And we do think that we have plenty of time to prepare for that day don’t we? And so we might have if we are talking about the measurement of time that we are used to. The sort of time that has a past, a present and a future. Time that has a beginning and an end.
But in the bible there are two kinds of time. The first kind is that which has to do with events in world history. The word used for it is chronos in Greek – and that is where we get the word chronology. The other kind of time in the Bible is called kairos, and this is God’s time. This is a time which humans cannot manipulate or with which they cannot interfere.
Jesus Christ being born during the reign of Caesar Augustus is a matter of historical fact, and this is the chronos time of the Incarnation but the Incarnation happens in God’s kairos time as well. It was God’s plan from eternity and human beings had no control over it.
When Christ comes again it will be in God’s kairos time – nobody knows the day nor the hour. Indeed it will be an hour we do not expect. But Jesus does tell us that it will happen at a time when people are unprepared – just as it was before the flood in Noah’s time. This isn’t to say in any way that Jesus is against us living a normal life – but rather against indifference to God’s plan, and the kairos moments of gracious opportunity given to each of us.
I’m reminded of a sketch from the 1960’s satire “Beyond the Fringe” called “Now is the end of the world” Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Alan Bennett and Jonathan Miller are all sitting on a mountain top dressed in loin cloths and waiting for the end of the world. They speculate as to what will happen and then they realize that there is only thirty seconds to go – they count down and then – silence! Nothing happens! “Never mind lads,” says Peter Cook “same time tomorrow!”
But he will come! And what are we going to do while we are waiting? Are we going to be like those people who scoffed at Noah when he built his ark? They just got on with life – they ate, they drank, they had parties, they got married, they had children. Even when Noah had finished his ark they carried on just as before. They weren’t looking for God. They were only looking for the next thing that was going to happen. And they weren’t ready when the flood came – they were swept away. We have all seen the images of natural disasters – the tsunami, the earthquake in Haiti, the flooding in Cumbria and Cornwall – we have seen the results of the unexpected.
So what should we do while we’re waiting? Waiting for the wonder that is Jesus Christ. Well we need to keep on with our ordinary everyday lives because unless we do the world would grind to a halt. But there are things that we can do – the sort of active waiting that we should be doing as Christians. St Paul gives us a list of dos and don’ts in this morning’s Epistle and in the next chapter of Matthew’s gospel Jesus tells us that we should feed the hungry, give the thirsty something to drink, welcome the stranger, clothe the naked, look after the sick and visit those in prison – we should be compassionate towards those less fortunate than ourselves.
So, that apprentice devil in the story may have chosen the best way of deceiving mankind after all. Making us believe there is plenty of time. So as our New Year’s resolution let us follow the advice of St. Paul from today’s epistle which tells us that we are nearer to the second coming that when we first became believers and that we should cast of the works of darkness and put on the armour of light To engage with God in his time, rather than the God of our earthly timekeeping.
Wednesday, 24 November 2010
Christ the King. Breathing Space Sermon. Who'd be a Royal?
Jer 23.1-6, Luke 23.33-43
Today is the last Sunday of the Christian year, the end of that long story which encompasses Christ’s birth, ministry, death, resurrection and ascension. It is the feast of Christ the king, when we think about the reign of God in our lives now and in the world to come, when we ask ourselves what a good ruler should look like, what it means to have power and use it well.
It’s a good week, as it happens, to be thinking about kingship. In fact it’s been hard to escape all things royal, what with a certain engagement dominating the news. Whatever we think of all the hysteria that seems to surround royal weddings – and I’m fed up with it already – we can’t fail to be happy on a human level for two people who have found love and want to make a commitment to each other. But mixed in with that happiness, I think many people – myself included – feel an undercurrent of anxiety for this particular couple because of all the expectations which will inevitably be thrust upon them. One newspaper article I saw this week was headed, “Does Kate know what she’s doing?” Marriage is always a journey into the unknown, of course, but we all know this one will have more challenges than most.
Ancient Celtic and Germanic tribes sometimes had what was called a Tannist king, who was appointed for a fixed period – usually a year – and then killed off by his subjects as a human sacrifice to the gods; they believed the giving of his life force strengthened the tribe. It seems horrendously barbaric and wasteful to us, but when I look at the way the Royal family is sometimes treated, I wonder whether that urge to set someone up on a pedestal so that you can later knock them off again has really ever gone away. There’s a sense in which we still sacrifice our monarchs; it’s just that now we do so to the gods of public opinion instead.
Power is a strange thing. People will manoeuvre and scheme to climb to the top of the heap, but when they get there, the reality is often not as attractive as it looked. It brings with it responsibilities that can soon start to feel burdensome; all eyes are on you, the buck stops with you, you are the one everyone blames when things go wrong. No wonder so many leaders try to ignore those responsibilities and just take the power on its own. Saddam Hussein, Idi Amin, Hitler – the list is endless of those who ruled by stamping the life out of those beneath them.
The complicated nature of power featured in both our readings tonight. Jeremiah denounces the leaders of Israel, who have cared only for themselves. They have scattered the sheep and left them vulnerable, and the result has been disaster. Jeremiah was writing around the time of the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians, and the exile of its people –he knew whereof he spoke. But God, their true king, hadn’t forsaken them. He promised to raise up a new leader, one worthy of the name. That was a promise which the people cherished and dreamed of, not only through the exile, but long afterwards too. Though they came back to their own land, they were still ruled by foreign powers, subject to the whims of tyrants, and they longed for the arrival of a Messiah who would deliver them.
Christians believe that Jesus fulfilled that promise, but you have to admit that, from tonight’s reading at least, you wouldn’t pick him out as Messiah material. He hangs on the cross under a sign which proclaims him the “king of the Jews”, but it is an ironic title, a reminder from Pilate that anyone who thinks they can rival the rule of Rome will be brutally set right. It is hard for anyone to see in this battered, dying man, anything that resembles a king, someone who will enable his people to “live in safety” as Jeremiah put it. He can’t even protect himself, something which the bystanders take cruel delight in pointing out.
And yet , there is one man – even here - who recognises his power and authority. The thief who hangs beside him realises that here is someone – the only one – who loves him enough to come to the place where he is, not because he must but because he chooses to. He exercises his power by laying it down for the sake of others. “Remember me when you come into your kingdom” – says the thief. To have a kingdom, you have to be a king, and that is who Jesus is for him. Jesus’ love has transformed his life, enabled him to see himself truly, even at this late hour, given him hope for the future. The power to heal the human heart is surely a far greater power than that of any despot, no matter how many armies he has at his disposal. You can conquer by force, but you can only really change someone for the better by love.
Tonight in the silence, then, let’s think of rulers, the burdens they bear and the temptations they face. Let’s think of our own power and how we use it. And let’s remember Christ, the king of love, who laid down his life that we might fully live.
Amen
Today is the last Sunday of the Christian year, the end of that long story which encompasses Christ’s birth, ministry, death, resurrection and ascension. It is the feast of Christ the king, when we think about the reign of God in our lives now and in the world to come, when we ask ourselves what a good ruler should look like, what it means to have power and use it well.
It’s a good week, as it happens, to be thinking about kingship. In fact it’s been hard to escape all things royal, what with a certain engagement dominating the news. Whatever we think of all the hysteria that seems to surround royal weddings – and I’m fed up with it already – we can’t fail to be happy on a human level for two people who have found love and want to make a commitment to each other. But mixed in with that happiness, I think many people – myself included – feel an undercurrent of anxiety for this particular couple because of all the expectations which will inevitably be thrust upon them. One newspaper article I saw this week was headed, “Does Kate know what she’s doing?” Marriage is always a journey into the unknown, of course, but we all know this one will have more challenges than most.
Ancient Celtic and Germanic tribes sometimes had what was called a Tannist king, who was appointed for a fixed period – usually a year – and then killed off by his subjects as a human sacrifice to the gods; they believed the giving of his life force strengthened the tribe. It seems horrendously barbaric and wasteful to us, but when I look at the way the Royal family is sometimes treated, I wonder whether that urge to set someone up on a pedestal so that you can later knock them off again has really ever gone away. There’s a sense in which we still sacrifice our monarchs; it’s just that now we do so to the gods of public opinion instead.
Power is a strange thing. People will manoeuvre and scheme to climb to the top of the heap, but when they get there, the reality is often not as attractive as it looked. It brings with it responsibilities that can soon start to feel burdensome; all eyes are on you, the buck stops with you, you are the one everyone blames when things go wrong. No wonder so many leaders try to ignore those responsibilities and just take the power on its own. Saddam Hussein, Idi Amin, Hitler – the list is endless of those who ruled by stamping the life out of those beneath them.
The complicated nature of power featured in both our readings tonight. Jeremiah denounces the leaders of Israel, who have cared only for themselves. They have scattered the sheep and left them vulnerable, and the result has been disaster. Jeremiah was writing around the time of the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians, and the exile of its people –he knew whereof he spoke. But God, their true king, hadn’t forsaken them. He promised to raise up a new leader, one worthy of the name. That was a promise which the people cherished and dreamed of, not only through the exile, but long afterwards too. Though they came back to their own land, they were still ruled by foreign powers, subject to the whims of tyrants, and they longed for the arrival of a Messiah who would deliver them.
Christians believe that Jesus fulfilled that promise, but you have to admit that, from tonight’s reading at least, you wouldn’t pick him out as Messiah material. He hangs on the cross under a sign which proclaims him the “king of the Jews”, but it is an ironic title, a reminder from Pilate that anyone who thinks they can rival the rule of Rome will be brutally set right. It is hard for anyone to see in this battered, dying man, anything that resembles a king, someone who will enable his people to “live in safety” as Jeremiah put it. He can’t even protect himself, something which the bystanders take cruel delight in pointing out.
And yet , there is one man – even here - who recognises his power and authority. The thief who hangs beside him realises that here is someone – the only one – who loves him enough to come to the place where he is, not because he must but because he chooses to. He exercises his power by laying it down for the sake of others. “Remember me when you come into your kingdom” – says the thief. To have a kingdom, you have to be a king, and that is who Jesus is for him. Jesus’ love has transformed his life, enabled him to see himself truly, even at this late hour, given him hope for the future. The power to heal the human heart is surely a far greater power than that of any despot, no matter how many armies he has at his disposal. You can conquer by force, but you can only really change someone for the better by love.
Tonight in the silence, then, let’s think of rulers, the burdens they bear and the temptations they face. Let’s think of our own power and how we use it. And let’s remember Christ, the king of love, who laid down his life that we might fully live.
Amen
Christ the King. Breathing Space Sermon. Who'd be a Royal?
Jer 23.1-6, Luke 23.33-43
Today is the last Sunday of the Christian year, the end of that long story which encompasses Christ’s birth, ministry, death, resurrection and ascension. It is the feast of Christ the king, when we think about the reign of God in our lives now and in the world to come, when we ask ourselves what a good ruler should look like, what it means to have power and use it well.
It’s a good week, as it happens, to be thinking about kingship. In fact it’s been hard to escape all things royal, what with a certain engagement dominating the news. Whatever we think of all the hysteria that seems to surround royal weddings – and I’m fed up with it already – we can’t fail to be happy on a human level for two people who have found love and want to make a commitment to each other. But mixed in with that happiness, I think many people – myself included – feel an undercurrent of anxiety for this particular couple because of all the expectations which will inevitably be thrust upon them. One newspaper article I saw this week was headed, “Does Kate know what she’s doing?” Marriage is always a journey into the unknown, of course, but we all know this one will have more challenges than most.
Ancient Celtic and Germanic tribes sometimes had what was called a Tannist king, who was appointed for a fixed period – usually a year – and then killed off by his subjects as a human sacrifice to the gods; they believed the giving of his life force strengthened the tribe. It seems horrendously barbaric and wasteful to us, but when I look at the way the Royal family is sometimes treated, I wonder whether that urge to set someone up on a pedestal so that you can later knock them off again has really ever gone away. There’s a sense in which we still sacrifice our monarchs; it’s just that now we do so to the gods of public opinion instead.
Power is a strange thing. People will manoeuvre and scheme to climb to the top of the heap, but when they get there, the reality is often not as attractive as it looked. It brings with it responsibilities that can soon start to feel burdensome; all eyes are on you, the buck stops with you, you are the one everyone blames when things go wrong. No wonder so many leaders try to ignore those responsibilities and just take the power on its own. Saddam Hussein, Idi Amin, Hitler – the list is endless of those who ruled by stamping the life out of those beneath them.
The complicated nature of power featured in both our readings tonight. Jeremiah denounces the leaders of Israel, who have cared only for themselves. They have scattered the sheep and left them vulnerable, and the result has been disaster. Jeremiah was writing around the time of the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians, and the exile of its people –he knew whereof he spoke. But God, their true king, hadn’t forsaken them. He promised to raise up a new leader, one worthy of the name. That was a promise which the people cherished and dreamed of, not only through the exile, but long afterwards too. Though they came back to their own land, they were still ruled by foreign powers, subject to the whims of tyrants, and they longed for the arrival of a Messiah who would deliver them.
Christians believe that Jesus fulfilled that promise, but you have to admit that, from tonight’s reading at least, you wouldn’t pick him out as Messiah material. He hangs on the cross under a sign which proclaims him the “king of the Jews”, but it is an ironic title, a reminder from Pilate that anyone who thinks they can rival the rule of Rome will be brutally set right. It is hard for anyone to see in this battered, dying man, anything that resembles a king, someone who will enable his people to “live in safety” as Jeremiah put it. He can’t even protect himself, something which the bystanders take cruel delight in pointing out.
And yet , there is one man – even here - who recognises his power and authority. The thief who hangs beside him realises that here is someone – the only one – who loves him enough to come to the place where he is, not because he must but because he chooses to. He exercises his power by laying it down for the sake of others. “Remember me when you come into your kingdom” – says the thief. To have a kingdom, you have to be a king, and that is who Jesus is for him. Jesus’ love has transformed his life, enabled him to see himself truly, even at this late hour, given him hope for the future. The power to heal the human heart is surely a far greater power than that of any despot, no matter how many armies he has at his disposal. You can conquer by force, but you can only really change someone for the better by love.
Tonight in the silence, then, let’s think of rulers, the burdens they bear and the temptations they face. Let’s think of our own power and how we use it. And let’s remember Christ, the king of love, who laid down his life that we might fully live.
Amen
Today is the last Sunday of the Christian year, the end of that long story which encompasses Christ’s birth, ministry, death, resurrection and ascension. It is the feast of Christ the king, when we think about the reign of God in our lives now and in the world to come, when we ask ourselves what a good ruler should look like, what it means to have power and use it well.
It’s a good week, as it happens, to be thinking about kingship. In fact it’s been hard to escape all things royal, what with a certain engagement dominating the news. Whatever we think of all the hysteria that seems to surround royal weddings – and I’m fed up with it already – we can’t fail to be happy on a human level for two people who have found love and want to make a commitment to each other. But mixed in with that happiness, I think many people – myself included – feel an undercurrent of anxiety for this particular couple because of all the expectations which will inevitably be thrust upon them. One newspaper article I saw this week was headed, “Does Kate know what she’s doing?” Marriage is always a journey into the unknown, of course, but we all know this one will have more challenges than most.
Ancient Celtic and Germanic tribes sometimes had what was called a Tannist king, who was appointed for a fixed period – usually a year – and then killed off by his subjects as a human sacrifice to the gods; they believed the giving of his life force strengthened the tribe. It seems horrendously barbaric and wasteful to us, but when I look at the way the Royal family is sometimes treated, I wonder whether that urge to set someone up on a pedestal so that you can later knock them off again has really ever gone away. There’s a sense in which we still sacrifice our monarchs; it’s just that now we do so to the gods of public opinion instead.
Power is a strange thing. People will manoeuvre and scheme to climb to the top of the heap, but when they get there, the reality is often not as attractive as it looked. It brings with it responsibilities that can soon start to feel burdensome; all eyes are on you, the buck stops with you, you are the one everyone blames when things go wrong. No wonder so many leaders try to ignore those responsibilities and just take the power on its own. Saddam Hussein, Idi Amin, Hitler – the list is endless of those who ruled by stamping the life out of those beneath them.
The complicated nature of power featured in both our readings tonight. Jeremiah denounces the leaders of Israel, who have cared only for themselves. They have scattered the sheep and left them vulnerable, and the result has been disaster. Jeremiah was writing around the time of the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians, and the exile of its people –he knew whereof he spoke. But God, their true king, hadn’t forsaken them. He promised to raise up a new leader, one worthy of the name. That was a promise which the people cherished and dreamed of, not only through the exile, but long afterwards too. Though they came back to their own land, they were still ruled by foreign powers, subject to the whims of tyrants, and they longed for the arrival of a Messiah who would deliver them.
Christians believe that Jesus fulfilled that promise, but you have to admit that, from tonight’s reading at least, you wouldn’t pick him out as Messiah material. He hangs on the cross under a sign which proclaims him the “king of the Jews”, but it is an ironic title, a reminder from Pilate that anyone who thinks they can rival the rule of Rome will be brutally set right. It is hard for anyone to see in this battered, dying man, anything that resembles a king, someone who will enable his people to “live in safety” as Jeremiah put it. He can’t even protect himself, something which the bystanders take cruel delight in pointing out.
And yet , there is one man – even here - who recognises his power and authority. The thief who hangs beside him realises that here is someone – the only one – who loves him enough to come to the place where he is, not because he must but because he chooses to. He exercises his power by laying it down for the sake of others. “Remember me when you come into your kingdom” – says the thief. To have a kingdom, you have to be a king, and that is who Jesus is for him. Jesus’ love has transformed his life, enabled him to see himself truly, even at this late hour, given him hope for the future. The power to heal the human heart is surely a far greater power than that of any despot, no matter how many armies he has at his disposal. You can conquer by force, but you can only really change someone for the better by love.
Tonight in the silence, then, let’s think of rulers, the burdens they bear and the temptations they face. Let’s think of our own power and how we use it. And let’s remember Christ, the king of love, who laid down his life that we might fully live.
Amen
Sunday, 14 November 2010
Remembrance Sunday
Micah 4.1-4, Matthew 5.1-16
Today marks the 70th anniversary of the bombing of Coventry. On the 14th November 1940 more than 600 people were killed in one night of bombing, thousands of homes were flattened, and the medieval cathedral was almost entirely destroyed. Wave after wave of bombers came over. For hours and hours there was no reprieve. There was no water to fight the fires, and very little that could be done for those in the worst hit parts of the city.
Many British cities suffered in the same way – Liverpool, Hull, Plymouth, London, Sheffield, Southampton and many others. Even my own home town of Exeter was bombed in what were called the Baedecker raids on towns identified in the Baedecker tourist guides as being particularly beautiful or historic.
The bombing wasn’t one sided, of course. British bombers carried out equally devastating raids on German cities – Berlin, Dresden, Cologne and many others – and I am sure that the people underneath the bombs felt the same terror no matter which side they were on.
Aerial warfare like this wasn’t absolutely new. There had been Zeppelin raids in the First World War, but not on anything like this scale, or with anything like the same destructive effect. In that earlier conflict people at home could still think of war as something which was fought by servicemen on battlefields “over there” on foreign territory. But in the Second World War anyone could be killed without going anywhere near the front line. In a sense war “came home“ to British civilians – literally and psychologically – in a new way.
I’ve been reading a book recently[i] which gathered together diary entries from the Mass Observation project, a project which invited volunteers to keep a record – a diary – of their everyday activities, their thoughts and conversations. It was one of the first attempts seriously to study the lives of ordinary people. It started in peacetime, but when war began, of course, these diaries took on a new importance. They were a window which revealed the way people experienced war on the home front. I am sure that those of you who lived through that time yourselves would recognise the experiences recorded there and be able to add your own stories too. What comes across most powerfully in the diary entries is the way in which war very quickly affected almost every aspect of people’s lives. There were the air raids of course, the terrifying nights spent in the shelters, not knowing what you would face when the all clear sounded. But there was everything that went with them too. The blackout, the fire-watching, being an evacuee or taking in evacuees, the exhaustion brought on by endless disturbed nights. Then there were the other day to day impacts of war, the sheer dreariness of rationing, the queues for everything, the hard work of having to make do and mend, inventing ways around the shortages of everyday items. And on top of all that the numbing anxiety about family members in the forces, and the uncertainty about how, when, whether it would all end. Of course there were bright moments – there were demonstrations of courage, a sense of community, and for some, especially women, new opportunities for work and independence which changed their lives, but none of that cancels out the misery, fear, grief and waste which many of the Mass Observation diarists clearly felt.
One of them had been listening on the radio to a broadcast of messages from separated families overseas and she commented to her diary “it made me realise that if only the heartache in every land could be piled into a visible heap war would stop at once”.
Perhaps that was an optimistic view – maybe it wouldn’t be that simple – but I think she was onto something. If we could truly see the scale of the pain which war produces – that great heap of individual, private sufferings – it would surely be much harder to contemplate adding to it. If we could feel the sorrow of others as keenly as we feel our own we would surely work far harder to bring it to an end. When war “came home” to that diarist, when she saw, in that moment, the extent of the sufferings it imposed – person by person, family by family - she could never think of it in the same way again.
Part of what we are doing on Remembrance Sunday is that we are letting war “come home” to us in the same way, holding silence, standing still in the midst of our busy lives so that we can see, for a few minutes at least, its reality. There are some, of course, for whom it is already far too real, who can’t get away from its impacts even if they try; those who are serving in the armed forces, or have family members who are serving, those who live with the physical and emotional scars of wars past or present, whom organisations like the British Legion exist to support, those who have been affected by terrorism, like the people currently testifying at the 7/7 inquest, and those who are refugees from war – there are 43 million displaced people in the world today, the majority of them are fleeing from conflict. For all these people, war is a constant presence, unforgettable.
But for many of the rest of us, most of the time, war is something that happens at a distance, which can seem to have nothing very directly to do with us. We see it on our TV screens. We read about it in the newspaper, but it is easy to change channels or turn the page. We have the luxury of being able to forget, which is why it is all the more important that we should very deliberately remember. We need to let war “come home” to us for the sake of all those for who can’t escape it, so that they can receive the help they need, but also because if war doesn’t “come home” to us, then peace is unlikely to “come home” to us either. If we can’t bear to look steadily at that heap of heartache, we will never be able to dismantle it. It is as we grieve with those who grieve that we really begin to ask ourselves where all this suffering starts from and how it can be brought to an end. We begin to see how our own lives, our own actions, our own words can stir up intolerance and hatred, or sow the seeds of peace.
Both the readings we heard today emphasize the importance of those small things, the seeds of peace, and war, sown through individual acts in real lives. Micah’s vision of peace, written after he and his people had been deported to Babylon, culminates not in a grand scene of conquest and glory, but in an almost ludicrously small scale image. What will it be like when all is set right? It will be a time when “they shall all sit under their own vines and under their own fig trees, and no one shall make them afraid.” True peace – peace that is real, that has “come home” - is about being able enjoy the fruits of your labours in your own backyard, without the fear that some invading army will take them away, or force you to abandon them, or wrench you away into exile. It may not sound very dramatic, but in the end this is the peace that really matters, the peace which affects the nitty gritty reality of life.
In our second reading, from the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus talks to a crowd of people who also knew trouble first hand. They lived under Roman occupation, which was often brutally enforced. There was constant political upheaval. Revolution simmered under the surface. Jesus could have called this crowd to form an army, whipped them up against an enemy “out there”. But he doesn’t. Instead he focuses on what is going on in their own hearts and lives, what is going on “at home” in the centre of each one of them, because he knows that this is where wars begin and where peace can begin too, if we will let it.
The people he is talking to – ordinary people - may feel small - poor in spirit, battered down, mourning, worthless – that is the reality of living in troubled times. But their lives do matter in the grand scheme of things. If they can learn to live with compassion and integrity then God can work within them to build his kingdom.
They may look at themselves and think, “What difference can I make – I’m no more than a guttering candle in a very great darkness?” But Jesus tells them that the light they have within them is the light of the world, light that is vital, light that can change everything, if they will only let it shine where they are – in their homes, in their villages, in their daily, ordinary lives.
Of course, war is not simple. There is no easy solution to it. But that doesn’t mean that there is nothing we can do about it, that we should leave it to politicians, diplomats, generals, experts in international affairs, to sort out. The truth is that if ordinary people like us don’t think about war, care about its impact, and do what we can to counter the conditions which give rise to it, then the peace that we long for – ordinary peace, the kind that lets people sit under their vines and fig trees – will never be a reality. Right where we are, in our everyday, undramatic lives, we are called to play a part in building God’s kingdom of peace, through the words we speak to one another, the care we take of one another, our willingness to put aside suspicion and hatred and take the risk of loving those around us and working for their good.
Today we remember. We remember those who have been crushed under the heap of heartache that is war, and those who are being crushed under it still. We allow the reality of war to come home to us, so that peace can come home to us too and take root in our lives. And as we do that, the promise of God is that the tiny lights which our small acts represent become a great light that no darkness can put out.
Amen
[i] Our Longest Days by Sandra Koa Wing.
Today marks the 70th anniversary of the bombing of Coventry. On the 14th November 1940 more than 600 people were killed in one night of bombing, thousands of homes were flattened, and the medieval cathedral was almost entirely destroyed. Wave after wave of bombers came over. For hours and hours there was no reprieve. There was no water to fight the fires, and very little that could be done for those in the worst hit parts of the city.
Many British cities suffered in the same way – Liverpool, Hull, Plymouth, London, Sheffield, Southampton and many others. Even my own home town of Exeter was bombed in what were called the Baedecker raids on towns identified in the Baedecker tourist guides as being particularly beautiful or historic.
The bombing wasn’t one sided, of course. British bombers carried out equally devastating raids on German cities – Berlin, Dresden, Cologne and many others – and I am sure that the people underneath the bombs felt the same terror no matter which side they were on.
Aerial warfare like this wasn’t absolutely new. There had been Zeppelin raids in the First World War, but not on anything like this scale, or with anything like the same destructive effect. In that earlier conflict people at home could still think of war as something which was fought by servicemen on battlefields “over there” on foreign territory. But in the Second World War anyone could be killed without going anywhere near the front line. In a sense war “came home“ to British civilians – literally and psychologically – in a new way.
I’ve been reading a book recently[i] which gathered together diary entries from the Mass Observation project, a project which invited volunteers to keep a record – a diary – of their everyday activities, their thoughts and conversations. It was one of the first attempts seriously to study the lives of ordinary people. It started in peacetime, but when war began, of course, these diaries took on a new importance. They were a window which revealed the way people experienced war on the home front. I am sure that those of you who lived through that time yourselves would recognise the experiences recorded there and be able to add your own stories too. What comes across most powerfully in the diary entries is the way in which war very quickly affected almost every aspect of people’s lives. There were the air raids of course, the terrifying nights spent in the shelters, not knowing what you would face when the all clear sounded. But there was everything that went with them too. The blackout, the fire-watching, being an evacuee or taking in evacuees, the exhaustion brought on by endless disturbed nights. Then there were the other day to day impacts of war, the sheer dreariness of rationing, the queues for everything, the hard work of having to make do and mend, inventing ways around the shortages of everyday items. And on top of all that the numbing anxiety about family members in the forces, and the uncertainty about how, when, whether it would all end. Of course there were bright moments – there were demonstrations of courage, a sense of community, and for some, especially women, new opportunities for work and independence which changed their lives, but none of that cancels out the misery, fear, grief and waste which many of the Mass Observation diarists clearly felt.
One of them had been listening on the radio to a broadcast of messages from separated families overseas and she commented to her diary “it made me realise that if only the heartache in every land could be piled into a visible heap war would stop at once”.
Perhaps that was an optimistic view – maybe it wouldn’t be that simple – but I think she was onto something. If we could truly see the scale of the pain which war produces – that great heap of individual, private sufferings – it would surely be much harder to contemplate adding to it. If we could feel the sorrow of others as keenly as we feel our own we would surely work far harder to bring it to an end. When war “came home” to that diarist, when she saw, in that moment, the extent of the sufferings it imposed – person by person, family by family - she could never think of it in the same way again.
Part of what we are doing on Remembrance Sunday is that we are letting war “come home” to us in the same way, holding silence, standing still in the midst of our busy lives so that we can see, for a few minutes at least, its reality. There are some, of course, for whom it is already far too real, who can’t get away from its impacts even if they try; those who are serving in the armed forces, or have family members who are serving, those who live with the physical and emotional scars of wars past or present, whom organisations like the British Legion exist to support, those who have been affected by terrorism, like the people currently testifying at the 7/7 inquest, and those who are refugees from war – there are 43 million displaced people in the world today, the majority of them are fleeing from conflict. For all these people, war is a constant presence, unforgettable.
But for many of the rest of us, most of the time, war is something that happens at a distance, which can seem to have nothing very directly to do with us. We see it on our TV screens. We read about it in the newspaper, but it is easy to change channels or turn the page. We have the luxury of being able to forget, which is why it is all the more important that we should very deliberately remember. We need to let war “come home” to us for the sake of all those for who can’t escape it, so that they can receive the help they need, but also because if war doesn’t “come home” to us, then peace is unlikely to “come home” to us either. If we can’t bear to look steadily at that heap of heartache, we will never be able to dismantle it. It is as we grieve with those who grieve that we really begin to ask ourselves where all this suffering starts from and how it can be brought to an end. We begin to see how our own lives, our own actions, our own words can stir up intolerance and hatred, or sow the seeds of peace.
Both the readings we heard today emphasize the importance of those small things, the seeds of peace, and war, sown through individual acts in real lives. Micah’s vision of peace, written after he and his people had been deported to Babylon, culminates not in a grand scene of conquest and glory, but in an almost ludicrously small scale image. What will it be like when all is set right? It will be a time when “they shall all sit under their own vines and under their own fig trees, and no one shall make them afraid.” True peace – peace that is real, that has “come home” - is about being able enjoy the fruits of your labours in your own backyard, without the fear that some invading army will take them away, or force you to abandon them, or wrench you away into exile. It may not sound very dramatic, but in the end this is the peace that really matters, the peace which affects the nitty gritty reality of life.
In our second reading, from the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus talks to a crowd of people who also knew trouble first hand. They lived under Roman occupation, which was often brutally enforced. There was constant political upheaval. Revolution simmered under the surface. Jesus could have called this crowd to form an army, whipped them up against an enemy “out there”. But he doesn’t. Instead he focuses on what is going on in their own hearts and lives, what is going on “at home” in the centre of each one of them, because he knows that this is where wars begin and where peace can begin too, if we will let it.
The people he is talking to – ordinary people - may feel small - poor in spirit, battered down, mourning, worthless – that is the reality of living in troubled times. But their lives do matter in the grand scheme of things. If they can learn to live with compassion and integrity then God can work within them to build his kingdom.
They may look at themselves and think, “What difference can I make – I’m no more than a guttering candle in a very great darkness?” But Jesus tells them that the light they have within them is the light of the world, light that is vital, light that can change everything, if they will only let it shine where they are – in their homes, in their villages, in their daily, ordinary lives.
Of course, war is not simple. There is no easy solution to it. But that doesn’t mean that there is nothing we can do about it, that we should leave it to politicians, diplomats, generals, experts in international affairs, to sort out. The truth is that if ordinary people like us don’t think about war, care about its impact, and do what we can to counter the conditions which give rise to it, then the peace that we long for – ordinary peace, the kind that lets people sit under their vines and fig trees – will never be a reality. Right where we are, in our everyday, undramatic lives, we are called to play a part in building God’s kingdom of peace, through the words we speak to one another, the care we take of one another, our willingness to put aside suspicion and hatred and take the risk of loving those around us and working for their good.
Today we remember. We remember those who have been crushed under the heap of heartache that is war, and those who are being crushed under it still. We allow the reality of war to come home to us, so that peace can come home to us too and take root in our lives. And as we do that, the promise of God is that the tiny lights which our small acts represent become a great light that no darkness can put out.
Amen
[i] Our Longest Days by Sandra Koa Wing.
Remembrance Sunday
Micah 4.1-4, Matthew 5.1-16
Today marks the 70th anniversary of the bombing of Coventry. On the 14th November 1940 more than 600 people were killed in one night of bombing, thousands of homes were flattened, and the medieval cathedral was almost entirely destroyed. Wave after wave of bombers came over. For hours and hours there was no reprieve. There was no water to fight the fires, and very little that could be done for those in the worst hit parts of the city.
Many British cities suffered in the same way – Liverpool, Hull, Plymouth, London, Sheffield, Southampton and many others. Even my own home town of Exeter was bombed in what were called the Baedecker raids on towns identified in the Baedecker tourist guides as being particularly beautiful or historic.
The bombing wasn’t one sided, of course. British bombers carried out equally devastating raids on German cities – Berlin, Dresden, Cologne and many others – and I am sure that the people underneath the bombs felt the same terror no matter which side they were on.
Aerial warfare like this wasn’t absolutely new. There had been Zeppelin raids in the First World War, but not on anything like this scale, or with anything like the same destructive effect. In that earlier conflict people at home could still think of war as something which was fought by servicemen on battlefields “over there” on foreign territory. But in the Second World War anyone could be killed without going anywhere near the front line. In a sense war “came home“ to British civilians – literally and psychologically – in a new way.
I’ve been reading a book recently[i] which gathered together diary entries from the Mass Observation project, a project which invited volunteers to keep a record – a diary – of their everyday activities, their thoughts and conversations. It was one of the first attempts seriously to study the lives of ordinary people. It started in peacetime, but when war began, of course, these diaries took on a new importance. They were a window which revealed the way people experienced war on the home front. I am sure that those of you who lived through that time yourselves would recognise the experiences recorded there and be able to add your own stories too. What comes across most powerfully in the diary entries is the way in which war very quickly affected almost every aspect of people’s lives. There were the air raids of course, the terrifying nights spent in the shelters, not knowing what you would face when the all clear sounded. But there was everything that went with them too. The blackout, the fire-watching, being an evacuee or taking in evacuees, the exhaustion brought on by endless disturbed nights. Then there were the other day to day impacts of war, the sheer dreariness of rationing, the queues for everything, the hard work of having to make do and mend, inventing ways around the shortages of everyday items. And on top of all that the numbing anxiety about family members in the forces, and the uncertainty about how, when, whether it would all end. Of course there were bright moments – there were demonstrations of courage, a sense of community, and for some, especially women, new opportunities for work and independence which changed their lives, but none of that cancels out the misery, fear, grief and waste which many of the Mass Observation diarists clearly felt.
One of them had been listening on the radio to a broadcast of messages from separated families overseas and she commented to her diary “it made me realise that if only the heartache in every land could be piled into a visible heap war would stop at once”.
Perhaps that was an optimistic view – maybe it wouldn’t be that simple – but I think she was onto something. If we could truly see the scale of the pain which war produces – that great heap of individual, private sufferings – it would surely be much harder to contemplate adding to it. If we could feel the sorrow of others as keenly as we feel our own we would surely work far harder to bring it to an end. When war “came home” to that diarist, when she saw, in that moment, the extent of the sufferings it imposed – person by person, family by family - she could never think of it in the same way again.
Part of what we are doing on Remembrance Sunday is that we are letting war “come home” to us in the same way, holding silence, standing still in the midst of our busy lives so that we can see, for a few minutes at least, its reality. There are some, of course, for whom it is already far too real, who can’t get away from its impacts even if they try; those who are serving in the armed forces, or have family members who are serving, those who live with the physical and emotional scars of wars past or present, whom organisations like the British Legion exist to support, those who have been affected by terrorism, like the people currently testifying at the 7/7 inquest, and those who are refugees from war – there are 43 million displaced people in the world today, the majority of them are fleeing from conflict. For all these people, war is a constant presence, unforgettable.
But for many of the rest of us, most of the time, war is something that happens at a distance, which can seem to have nothing very directly to do with us. We see it on our TV screens. We read about it in the newspaper, but it is easy to change channels or turn the page. We have the luxury of being able to forget, which is why it is all the more important that we should very deliberately remember. We need to let war “come home” to us for the sake of all those for who can’t escape it, so that they can receive the help they need, but also because if war doesn’t “come home” to us, then peace is unlikely to “come home” to us either. If we can’t bear to look steadily at that heap of heartache, we will never be able to dismantle it. It is as we grieve with those who grieve that we really begin to ask ourselves where all this suffering starts from and how it can be brought to an end. We begin to see how our own lives, our own actions, our own words can stir up intolerance and hatred, or sow the seeds of peace.
Both the readings we heard today emphasize the importance of those small things, the seeds of peace, and war, sown through individual acts in real lives. Micah’s vision of peace, written after he and his people had been deported to Babylon, culminates not in a grand scene of conquest and glory, but in an almost ludicrously small scale image. What will it be like when all is set right? It will be a time when “they shall all sit under their own vines and under their own fig trees, and no one shall make them afraid.” True peace – peace that is real, that has “come home” - is about being able enjoy the fruits of your labours in your own backyard, without the fear that some invading army will take them away, or force you to abandon them, or wrench you away into exile. It may not sound very dramatic, but in the end this is the peace that really matters, the peace which affects the nitty gritty reality of life.
In our second reading, from the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus talks to a crowd of people who also knew trouble first hand. They lived under Roman occupation, which was often brutally enforced. There was constant political upheaval. Revolution simmered under the surface. Jesus could have called this crowd to form an army, whipped them up against an enemy “out there”. But he doesn’t. Instead he focuses on what is going on in their own hearts and lives, what is going on “at home” in the centre of each one of them, because he knows that this is where wars begin and where peace can begin too, if we will let it.
The people he is talking to – ordinary people - may feel small - poor in spirit, battered down, mourning, worthless – that is the reality of living in troubled times. But their lives do matter in the grand scheme of things. If they can learn to live with compassion and integrity then God can work within them to build his kingdom.
They may look at themselves and think, “What difference can I make – I’m no more than a guttering candle in a very great darkness?” But Jesus tells them that the light they have within them is the light of the world, light that is vital, light that can change everything, if they will only let it shine where they are – in their homes, in their villages, in their daily, ordinary lives.
Of course, war is not simple. There is no easy solution to it. But that doesn’t mean that there is nothing we can do about it, that we should leave it to politicians, diplomats, generals, experts in international affairs, to sort out. The truth is that if ordinary people like us don’t think about war, care about its impact, and do what we can to counter the conditions which give rise to it, then the peace that we long for – ordinary peace, the kind that lets people sit under their vines and fig trees – will never be a reality. Right where we are, in our everyday, undramatic lives, we are called to play a part in building God’s kingdom of peace, through the words we speak to one another, the care we take of one another, our willingness to put aside suspicion and hatred and take the risk of loving those around us and working for their good.
Today we remember. We remember those who have been crushed under the heap of heartache that is war, and those who are being crushed under it still. We allow the reality of war to come home to us, so that peace can come home to us too and take root in our lives. And as we do that, the promise of God is that the tiny lights which our small acts represent become a great light that no darkness can put out.
Amen
[i] Our Longest Days by Sandra Koa Wing.
Today marks the 70th anniversary of the bombing of Coventry. On the 14th November 1940 more than 600 people were killed in one night of bombing, thousands of homes were flattened, and the medieval cathedral was almost entirely destroyed. Wave after wave of bombers came over. For hours and hours there was no reprieve. There was no water to fight the fires, and very little that could be done for those in the worst hit parts of the city.
Many British cities suffered in the same way – Liverpool, Hull, Plymouth, London, Sheffield, Southampton and many others. Even my own home town of Exeter was bombed in what were called the Baedecker raids on towns identified in the Baedecker tourist guides as being particularly beautiful or historic.
The bombing wasn’t one sided, of course. British bombers carried out equally devastating raids on German cities – Berlin, Dresden, Cologne and many others – and I am sure that the people underneath the bombs felt the same terror no matter which side they were on.
Aerial warfare like this wasn’t absolutely new. There had been Zeppelin raids in the First World War, but not on anything like this scale, or with anything like the same destructive effect. In that earlier conflict people at home could still think of war as something which was fought by servicemen on battlefields “over there” on foreign territory. But in the Second World War anyone could be killed without going anywhere near the front line. In a sense war “came home“ to British civilians – literally and psychologically – in a new way.
I’ve been reading a book recently[i] which gathered together diary entries from the Mass Observation project, a project which invited volunteers to keep a record – a diary – of their everyday activities, their thoughts and conversations. It was one of the first attempts seriously to study the lives of ordinary people. It started in peacetime, but when war began, of course, these diaries took on a new importance. They were a window which revealed the way people experienced war on the home front. I am sure that those of you who lived through that time yourselves would recognise the experiences recorded there and be able to add your own stories too. What comes across most powerfully in the diary entries is the way in which war very quickly affected almost every aspect of people’s lives. There were the air raids of course, the terrifying nights spent in the shelters, not knowing what you would face when the all clear sounded. But there was everything that went with them too. The blackout, the fire-watching, being an evacuee or taking in evacuees, the exhaustion brought on by endless disturbed nights. Then there were the other day to day impacts of war, the sheer dreariness of rationing, the queues for everything, the hard work of having to make do and mend, inventing ways around the shortages of everyday items. And on top of all that the numbing anxiety about family members in the forces, and the uncertainty about how, when, whether it would all end. Of course there were bright moments – there were demonstrations of courage, a sense of community, and for some, especially women, new opportunities for work and independence which changed their lives, but none of that cancels out the misery, fear, grief and waste which many of the Mass Observation diarists clearly felt.
One of them had been listening on the radio to a broadcast of messages from separated families overseas and she commented to her diary “it made me realise that if only the heartache in every land could be piled into a visible heap war would stop at once”.
Perhaps that was an optimistic view – maybe it wouldn’t be that simple – but I think she was onto something. If we could truly see the scale of the pain which war produces – that great heap of individual, private sufferings – it would surely be much harder to contemplate adding to it. If we could feel the sorrow of others as keenly as we feel our own we would surely work far harder to bring it to an end. When war “came home” to that diarist, when she saw, in that moment, the extent of the sufferings it imposed – person by person, family by family - she could never think of it in the same way again.
Part of what we are doing on Remembrance Sunday is that we are letting war “come home” to us in the same way, holding silence, standing still in the midst of our busy lives so that we can see, for a few minutes at least, its reality. There are some, of course, for whom it is already far too real, who can’t get away from its impacts even if they try; those who are serving in the armed forces, or have family members who are serving, those who live with the physical and emotional scars of wars past or present, whom organisations like the British Legion exist to support, those who have been affected by terrorism, like the people currently testifying at the 7/7 inquest, and those who are refugees from war – there are 43 million displaced people in the world today, the majority of them are fleeing from conflict. For all these people, war is a constant presence, unforgettable.
But for many of the rest of us, most of the time, war is something that happens at a distance, which can seem to have nothing very directly to do with us. We see it on our TV screens. We read about it in the newspaper, but it is easy to change channels or turn the page. We have the luxury of being able to forget, which is why it is all the more important that we should very deliberately remember. We need to let war “come home” to us for the sake of all those for who can’t escape it, so that they can receive the help they need, but also because if war doesn’t “come home” to us, then peace is unlikely to “come home” to us either. If we can’t bear to look steadily at that heap of heartache, we will never be able to dismantle it. It is as we grieve with those who grieve that we really begin to ask ourselves where all this suffering starts from and how it can be brought to an end. We begin to see how our own lives, our own actions, our own words can stir up intolerance and hatred, or sow the seeds of peace.
Both the readings we heard today emphasize the importance of those small things, the seeds of peace, and war, sown through individual acts in real lives. Micah’s vision of peace, written after he and his people had been deported to Babylon, culminates not in a grand scene of conquest and glory, but in an almost ludicrously small scale image. What will it be like when all is set right? It will be a time when “they shall all sit under their own vines and under their own fig trees, and no one shall make them afraid.” True peace – peace that is real, that has “come home” - is about being able enjoy the fruits of your labours in your own backyard, without the fear that some invading army will take them away, or force you to abandon them, or wrench you away into exile. It may not sound very dramatic, but in the end this is the peace that really matters, the peace which affects the nitty gritty reality of life.
In our second reading, from the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus talks to a crowd of people who also knew trouble first hand. They lived under Roman occupation, which was often brutally enforced. There was constant political upheaval. Revolution simmered under the surface. Jesus could have called this crowd to form an army, whipped them up against an enemy “out there”. But he doesn’t. Instead he focuses on what is going on in their own hearts and lives, what is going on “at home” in the centre of each one of them, because he knows that this is where wars begin and where peace can begin too, if we will let it.
The people he is talking to – ordinary people - may feel small - poor in spirit, battered down, mourning, worthless – that is the reality of living in troubled times. But their lives do matter in the grand scheme of things. If they can learn to live with compassion and integrity then God can work within them to build his kingdom.
They may look at themselves and think, “What difference can I make – I’m no more than a guttering candle in a very great darkness?” But Jesus tells them that the light they have within them is the light of the world, light that is vital, light that can change everything, if they will only let it shine where they are – in their homes, in their villages, in their daily, ordinary lives.
Of course, war is not simple. There is no easy solution to it. But that doesn’t mean that there is nothing we can do about it, that we should leave it to politicians, diplomats, generals, experts in international affairs, to sort out. The truth is that if ordinary people like us don’t think about war, care about its impact, and do what we can to counter the conditions which give rise to it, then the peace that we long for – ordinary peace, the kind that lets people sit under their vines and fig trees – will never be a reality. Right where we are, in our everyday, undramatic lives, we are called to play a part in building God’s kingdom of peace, through the words we speak to one another, the care we take of one another, our willingness to put aside suspicion and hatred and take the risk of loving those around us and working for their good.
Today we remember. We remember those who have been crushed under the heap of heartache that is war, and those who are being crushed under it still. We allow the reality of war to come home to us, so that peace can come home to us too and take root in our lives. And as we do that, the promise of God is that the tiny lights which our small acts represent become a great light that no darkness can put out.
Amen
[i] Our Longest Days by Sandra Koa Wing.
Saturday, 13 November 2010
3 before Advent: Life after death. a sermon by Kevin Bright
Job 19.23-27a, Thessalonians 2.1-5, 13-17 & Luke 20.27-38
I was chatting earlier this week about what keyhole surgery is, when you think about it the surgeons have given themselves plenty of room for interpretation here. It really all depends on the size of the key doesn’t it, is it one of those tiny keys that you use for a pointless suitcase padlock that can spring open in a strong wind or are we talking about the sort of key used to open ancient church doors?
As you came into church this morning you will have walked under a man holding some keys which are also rather large in proportion to his body, St Peter allegedly holding the keys to heaven and it’s access to heaven, the afterlife, the resurrection life, our very salvation which features in our readings today.
Of course before we can consider the question of what life after death could be like we have to consider the issue of death itself. Sitting between the Sundays of All Souls, when we remember loved ones who have died and Remembrance Sunday when we reflect on sacrifice, service and many who have died in distressing circumstances, perhaps today’s readings are well placed.
Most of us will have suffered the death of someone we love and will know the resulting distress, sadness and heartbreak that changes our lives for their remainder. At its rawest moments someone telling us that our loved ones are at peace with God might offer long term hope but does little to ease the excruciating pain of the loss.
There’s certainly nowhere that states the rules for access to eternity with God nor much detail on what the afterlife could be like. Perhaps there are reasons for this, it may not be possible to define in earthly terms.
If you have ever watched the cooking programme ‘Saturday Morning Kitchen’ they usually have a guest who states what their idea of food heaven and food hell is, recently food hell was described as a pumpkin dish for one guest though you can be sure that many people at home would be shouting at the television that this is one of their favourite dishes. Similarly one person’s idea of heaven might be somewhere they can swim in the sea every day, another where reading time is unlimited, another having a beautiful garden to work in and another where they have the freshest ingredients available to prepare the finest meals.
Jesus makes it clear that all such ideas are superfluous in the answer which he provides to the Sadducees.
The question arose in the last week of Jesus earthly life following his triumphal entry into Jerusalem.
The Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection. They attempt to ridicule the concept of resurrection life by using a far-fetched example to make nonsense of it. In the resurrection what is the situation of a woman who had seven earthly husbands? Which, if any, would be her real husband? The Law of Moses forbade the practice of having more than one husband at a time.Thus all seven could not morally be her husbands and, presumably, there would be no immorality in the resurrected life and therefore, it could not exist.
The answer goes way beyond the question to the point where it is left looking ridiculous.
Jesus makes it clear that such earthly considerations have no place in heaven any more than the type of food we prefer, the next life cannot be compared to this one. Jesus tells us how different it will be when he says ‘they cannot die anymore because they are like angels and children of God’.
When I thought about the fact that Jesus indicates there will be no marriage in heaven I had serious and not so serious thoughts.
One conjured up a cartoon like image of a worn down little woman with a grumpy and overbearing husband sitting in the pew with a balloon coming out of her head stating ‘is this what they meant when they said come to church to hear the good news?
The more sensible thought was how you sometimes see on a gravestone where husband and wife are buried ‘united once again’ or similar sentiments. It shows how we are limited to seeing things in earthly terms, yet such words symbolise our hope for an eternity with those we love, knowing that if we are children of God then we can trust the God of love to care for us in ways which we cannot currently comprehend.
I can remember the words of the priest at my brother’s funeral. He had lifelong disabilities which meant he never was able to walk or do all the things my second brother and I were able to take for granted. She stated that following his death he was now kicking a football in heaven. I don’t think she meant that this would be compulsory otherwise we will be heading back to different peoples ideas of heaven and hell. I think she meant that she believed we will one day be free of the constraints of our earthly bodies able to enjoy perfect health in a new form.
It is both wise and proper that we think about what happens to us after we die and yet we have to also think whether this affects the way we chose to live our lives now.
Are we able to enter into a loving relationship with God now which will endure for eternity? Can we trust that Jesus sacrifice on the cross and his victory over death through the resurrection has opened a pathway to God for us?
I would hope that the answer is yes but the truth is probably…not always.
Sometimes earthly concerns and worries dominate our thoughts and shut out God. Sometimes we let ourselves down and cannot imagine a God so generous that he would forgive us and have us back. Sometimes faith in something so wonderful, so generous, such sacrificial love can seem just too great to be real. Put simply it’s often difficult to believe that each one of us could really be loved so much, and yet we are.
In the letter to the Thessalonians the people are urged to move beyond anxiety and fear about the end times and to focus on what they need to survive the times of difficulty, to keep their faith real and to draw on the assurance of their salvation. Like them we should be encouraged to stand firm in our faith avoiding the temptation to abandon it when it would be more convenient to do so.
I was recently given a copy of the text and accompanying notes for the passion play which takes place in the German town of Oberammergau every ten years.
The notes remind us that familiarity with Christ’s story cannot always be assumed and also that the issues and questions which seem relevant to it can shift with time. It’s something we need to consider when sharing Christ’s message with others. Yet there is also an element that doesn’t change, the fact that the story of Christ’s life captures ‘the fears and longings of the people’ giving’ them the kind of hope offered by faith.’ It states that the play is not museum like folk theatre but is a story that continues to reach deep into life.
It’s a message we will do well to apply to today’s readings reminding ourselves that the powerful message of God’s love and the hope it offers to us are not just something found in the history told by the bible but continue to be real, personal and available to us today.
Not long after answering the question about life after death from the Sadducees Jesus would find himself close to death on the cross as one of the criminals at his side uttered those familiar words ‘Jesus remember me when you come into your kingdom.’ Jesus replies ‘truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise’.
He wants his followers to know that they will be with him when this life is over.
Confident in this truth we realise that all the rest is detail, detail which we can happily trust to God.
Amen
Kevin Bright
7 November 2010
I was chatting earlier this week about what keyhole surgery is, when you think about it the surgeons have given themselves plenty of room for interpretation here. It really all depends on the size of the key doesn’t it, is it one of those tiny keys that you use for a pointless suitcase padlock that can spring open in a strong wind or are we talking about the sort of key used to open ancient church doors?
As you came into church this morning you will have walked under a man holding some keys which are also rather large in proportion to his body, St Peter allegedly holding the keys to heaven and it’s access to heaven, the afterlife, the resurrection life, our very salvation which features in our readings today.
Of course before we can consider the question of what life after death could be like we have to consider the issue of death itself. Sitting between the Sundays of All Souls, when we remember loved ones who have died and Remembrance Sunday when we reflect on sacrifice, service and many who have died in distressing circumstances, perhaps today’s readings are well placed.
Most of us will have suffered the death of someone we love and will know the resulting distress, sadness and heartbreak that changes our lives for their remainder. At its rawest moments someone telling us that our loved ones are at peace with God might offer long term hope but does little to ease the excruciating pain of the loss.
There’s certainly nowhere that states the rules for access to eternity with God nor much detail on what the afterlife could be like. Perhaps there are reasons for this, it may not be possible to define in earthly terms.
If you have ever watched the cooking programme ‘Saturday Morning Kitchen’ they usually have a guest who states what their idea of food heaven and food hell is, recently food hell was described as a pumpkin dish for one guest though you can be sure that many people at home would be shouting at the television that this is one of their favourite dishes. Similarly one person’s idea of heaven might be somewhere they can swim in the sea every day, another where reading time is unlimited, another having a beautiful garden to work in and another where they have the freshest ingredients available to prepare the finest meals.
Jesus makes it clear that all such ideas are superfluous in the answer which he provides to the Sadducees.
The question arose in the last week of Jesus earthly life following his triumphal entry into Jerusalem.
The Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection. They attempt to ridicule the concept of resurrection life by using a far-fetched example to make nonsense of it. In the resurrection what is the situation of a woman who had seven earthly husbands? Which, if any, would be her real husband? The Law of Moses forbade the practice of having more than one husband at a time.Thus all seven could not morally be her husbands and, presumably, there would be no immorality in the resurrected life and therefore, it could not exist.
The answer goes way beyond the question to the point where it is left looking ridiculous.
Jesus makes it clear that such earthly considerations have no place in heaven any more than the type of food we prefer, the next life cannot be compared to this one. Jesus tells us how different it will be when he says ‘they cannot die anymore because they are like angels and children of God’.
When I thought about the fact that Jesus indicates there will be no marriage in heaven I had serious and not so serious thoughts.
One conjured up a cartoon like image of a worn down little woman with a grumpy and overbearing husband sitting in the pew with a balloon coming out of her head stating ‘is this what they meant when they said come to church to hear the good news?
The more sensible thought was how you sometimes see on a gravestone where husband and wife are buried ‘united once again’ or similar sentiments. It shows how we are limited to seeing things in earthly terms, yet such words symbolise our hope for an eternity with those we love, knowing that if we are children of God then we can trust the God of love to care for us in ways which we cannot currently comprehend.
I can remember the words of the priest at my brother’s funeral. He had lifelong disabilities which meant he never was able to walk or do all the things my second brother and I were able to take for granted. She stated that following his death he was now kicking a football in heaven. I don’t think she meant that this would be compulsory otherwise we will be heading back to different peoples ideas of heaven and hell. I think she meant that she believed we will one day be free of the constraints of our earthly bodies able to enjoy perfect health in a new form.
It is both wise and proper that we think about what happens to us after we die and yet we have to also think whether this affects the way we chose to live our lives now.
Are we able to enter into a loving relationship with God now which will endure for eternity? Can we trust that Jesus sacrifice on the cross and his victory over death through the resurrection has opened a pathway to God for us?
I would hope that the answer is yes but the truth is probably…not always.
Sometimes earthly concerns and worries dominate our thoughts and shut out God. Sometimes we let ourselves down and cannot imagine a God so generous that he would forgive us and have us back. Sometimes faith in something so wonderful, so generous, such sacrificial love can seem just too great to be real. Put simply it’s often difficult to believe that each one of us could really be loved so much, and yet we are.
In the letter to the Thessalonians the people are urged to move beyond anxiety and fear about the end times and to focus on what they need to survive the times of difficulty, to keep their faith real and to draw on the assurance of their salvation. Like them we should be encouraged to stand firm in our faith avoiding the temptation to abandon it when it would be more convenient to do so.
I was recently given a copy of the text and accompanying notes for the passion play which takes place in the German town of Oberammergau every ten years.
The notes remind us that familiarity with Christ’s story cannot always be assumed and also that the issues and questions which seem relevant to it can shift with time. It’s something we need to consider when sharing Christ’s message with others. Yet there is also an element that doesn’t change, the fact that the story of Christ’s life captures ‘the fears and longings of the people’ giving’ them the kind of hope offered by faith.’ It states that the play is not museum like folk theatre but is a story that continues to reach deep into life.
It’s a message we will do well to apply to today’s readings reminding ourselves that the powerful message of God’s love and the hope it offers to us are not just something found in the history told by the bible but continue to be real, personal and available to us today.
Not long after answering the question about life after death from the Sadducees Jesus would find himself close to death on the cross as one of the criminals at his side uttered those familiar words ‘Jesus remember me when you come into your kingdom.’ Jesus replies ‘truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise’.
He wants his followers to know that they will be with him when this life is over.
Confident in this truth we realise that all the rest is detail, detail which we can happily trust to God.
Amen
Kevin Bright
7 November 2010
3 before Advent: Life after death. a sermon by Kevin Bright
Job 19.23-27a, Thessalonians 2.1-5, 13-17 & Luke 20.27-38
I was chatting earlier this week about what keyhole surgery is, when you think about it the surgeons have given themselves plenty of room for interpretation here. It really all depends on the size of the key doesn’t it, is it one of those tiny keys that you use for a pointless suitcase padlock that can spring open in a strong wind or are we talking about the sort of key used to open ancient church doors?
As you came into church this morning you will have walked under a man holding some keys which are also rather large in proportion to his body, St Peter allegedly holding the keys to heaven and it’s access to heaven, the afterlife, the resurrection life, our very salvation which features in our readings today.
Of course before we can consider the question of what life after death could be like we have to consider the issue of death itself. Sitting between the Sundays of All Souls, when we remember loved ones who have died and Remembrance Sunday when we reflect on sacrifice, service and many who have died in distressing circumstances, perhaps today’s readings are well placed.
Most of us will have suffered the death of someone we love and will know the resulting distress, sadness and heartbreak that changes our lives for their remainder. At its rawest moments someone telling us that our loved ones are at peace with God might offer long term hope but does little to ease the excruciating pain of the loss.
There’s certainly nowhere that states the rules for access to eternity with God nor much detail on what the afterlife could be like. Perhaps there are reasons for this, it may not be possible to define in earthly terms.
If you have ever watched the cooking programme ‘Saturday Morning Kitchen’ they usually have a guest who states what their idea of food heaven and food hell is, recently food hell was described as a pumpkin dish for one guest though you can be sure that many people at home would be shouting at the television that this is one of their favourite dishes. Similarly one person’s idea of heaven might be somewhere they can swim in the sea every day, another where reading time is unlimited, another having a beautiful garden to work in and another where they have the freshest ingredients available to prepare the finest meals.
Jesus makes it clear that all such ideas are superfluous in the answer which he provides to the Sadducees.
The question arose in the last week of Jesus earthly life following his triumphal entry into Jerusalem.
The Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection. They attempt to ridicule the concept of resurrection life by using a far-fetched example to make nonsense of it. In the resurrection what is the situation of a woman who had seven earthly husbands? Which, if any, would be her real husband? The Law of Moses forbade the practice of having more than one husband at a time.Thus all seven could not morally be her husbands and, presumably, there would be no immorality in the resurrected life and therefore, it could not exist.
The answer goes way beyond the question to the point where it is left looking ridiculous.
Jesus makes it clear that such earthly considerations have no place in heaven any more than the type of food we prefer, the next life cannot be compared to this one. Jesus tells us how different it will be when he says ‘they cannot die anymore because they are like angels and children of God’.
When I thought about the fact that Jesus indicates there will be no marriage in heaven I had serious and not so serious thoughts.
One conjured up a cartoon like image of a worn down little woman with a grumpy and overbearing husband sitting in the pew with a balloon coming out of her head stating ‘is this what they meant when they said come to church to hear the good news?
The more sensible thought was how you sometimes see on a gravestone where husband and wife are buried ‘united once again’ or similar sentiments. It shows how we are limited to seeing things in earthly terms, yet such words symbolise our hope for an eternity with those we love, knowing that if we are children of God then we can trust the God of love to care for us in ways which we cannot currently comprehend.
I can remember the words of the priest at my brother’s funeral. He had lifelong disabilities which meant he never was able to walk or do all the things my second brother and I were able to take for granted. She stated that following his death he was now kicking a football in heaven. I don’t think she meant that this would be compulsory otherwise we will be heading back to different peoples ideas of heaven and hell. I think she meant that she believed we will one day be free of the constraints of our earthly bodies able to enjoy perfect health in a new form.
It is both wise and proper that we think about what happens to us after we die and yet we have to also think whether this affects the way we chose to live our lives now.
Are we able to enter into a loving relationship with God now which will endure for eternity? Can we trust that Jesus sacrifice on the cross and his victory over death through the resurrection has opened a pathway to God for us?
I would hope that the answer is yes but the truth is probably…not always.
Sometimes earthly concerns and worries dominate our thoughts and shut out God. Sometimes we let ourselves down and cannot imagine a God so generous that he would forgive us and have us back. Sometimes faith in something so wonderful, so generous, such sacrificial love can seem just too great to be real. Put simply it’s often difficult to believe that each one of us could really be loved so much, and yet we are.
In the letter to the Thessalonians the people are urged to move beyond anxiety and fear about the end times and to focus on what they need to survive the times of difficulty, to keep their faith real and to draw on the assurance of their salvation. Like them we should be encouraged to stand firm in our faith avoiding the temptation to abandon it when it would be more convenient to do so.
I was recently given a copy of the text and accompanying notes for the passion play which takes place in the German town of Oberammergau every ten years.
The notes remind us that familiarity with Christ’s story cannot always be assumed and also that the issues and questions which seem relevant to it can shift with time. It’s something we need to consider when sharing Christ’s message with others. Yet there is also an element that doesn’t change, the fact that the story of Christ’s life captures ‘the fears and longings of the people’ giving’ them the kind of hope offered by faith.’ It states that the play is not museum like folk theatre but is a story that continues to reach deep into life.
It’s a message we will do well to apply to today’s readings reminding ourselves that the powerful message of God’s love and the hope it offers to us are not just something found in the history told by the bible but continue to be real, personal and available to us today.
Not long after answering the question about life after death from the Sadducees Jesus would find himself close to death on the cross as one of the criminals at his side uttered those familiar words ‘Jesus remember me when you come into your kingdom.’ Jesus replies ‘truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise’.
He wants his followers to know that they will be with him when this life is over.
Confident in this truth we realise that all the rest is detail, detail which we can happily trust to God.
Amen
Kevin Bright
7 November 2010
I was chatting earlier this week about what keyhole surgery is, when you think about it the surgeons have given themselves plenty of room for interpretation here. It really all depends on the size of the key doesn’t it, is it one of those tiny keys that you use for a pointless suitcase padlock that can spring open in a strong wind or are we talking about the sort of key used to open ancient church doors?
As you came into church this morning you will have walked under a man holding some keys which are also rather large in proportion to his body, St Peter allegedly holding the keys to heaven and it’s access to heaven, the afterlife, the resurrection life, our very salvation which features in our readings today.
Of course before we can consider the question of what life after death could be like we have to consider the issue of death itself. Sitting between the Sundays of All Souls, when we remember loved ones who have died and Remembrance Sunday when we reflect on sacrifice, service and many who have died in distressing circumstances, perhaps today’s readings are well placed.
Most of us will have suffered the death of someone we love and will know the resulting distress, sadness and heartbreak that changes our lives for their remainder. At its rawest moments someone telling us that our loved ones are at peace with God might offer long term hope but does little to ease the excruciating pain of the loss.
There’s certainly nowhere that states the rules for access to eternity with God nor much detail on what the afterlife could be like. Perhaps there are reasons for this, it may not be possible to define in earthly terms.
If you have ever watched the cooking programme ‘Saturday Morning Kitchen’ they usually have a guest who states what their idea of food heaven and food hell is, recently food hell was described as a pumpkin dish for one guest though you can be sure that many people at home would be shouting at the television that this is one of their favourite dishes. Similarly one person’s idea of heaven might be somewhere they can swim in the sea every day, another where reading time is unlimited, another having a beautiful garden to work in and another where they have the freshest ingredients available to prepare the finest meals.
Jesus makes it clear that all such ideas are superfluous in the answer which he provides to the Sadducees.
The question arose in the last week of Jesus earthly life following his triumphal entry into Jerusalem.
The Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection. They attempt to ridicule the concept of resurrection life by using a far-fetched example to make nonsense of it. In the resurrection what is the situation of a woman who had seven earthly husbands? Which, if any, would be her real husband? The Law of Moses forbade the practice of having more than one husband at a time.Thus all seven could not morally be her husbands and, presumably, there would be no immorality in the resurrected life and therefore, it could not exist.
The answer goes way beyond the question to the point where it is left looking ridiculous.
Jesus makes it clear that such earthly considerations have no place in heaven any more than the type of food we prefer, the next life cannot be compared to this one. Jesus tells us how different it will be when he says ‘they cannot die anymore because they are like angels and children of God’.
When I thought about the fact that Jesus indicates there will be no marriage in heaven I had serious and not so serious thoughts.
One conjured up a cartoon like image of a worn down little woman with a grumpy and overbearing husband sitting in the pew with a balloon coming out of her head stating ‘is this what they meant when they said come to church to hear the good news?
The more sensible thought was how you sometimes see on a gravestone where husband and wife are buried ‘united once again’ or similar sentiments. It shows how we are limited to seeing things in earthly terms, yet such words symbolise our hope for an eternity with those we love, knowing that if we are children of God then we can trust the God of love to care for us in ways which we cannot currently comprehend.
I can remember the words of the priest at my brother’s funeral. He had lifelong disabilities which meant he never was able to walk or do all the things my second brother and I were able to take for granted. She stated that following his death he was now kicking a football in heaven. I don’t think she meant that this would be compulsory otherwise we will be heading back to different peoples ideas of heaven and hell. I think she meant that she believed we will one day be free of the constraints of our earthly bodies able to enjoy perfect health in a new form.
It is both wise and proper that we think about what happens to us after we die and yet we have to also think whether this affects the way we chose to live our lives now.
Are we able to enter into a loving relationship with God now which will endure for eternity? Can we trust that Jesus sacrifice on the cross and his victory over death through the resurrection has opened a pathway to God for us?
I would hope that the answer is yes but the truth is probably…not always.
Sometimes earthly concerns and worries dominate our thoughts and shut out God. Sometimes we let ourselves down and cannot imagine a God so generous that he would forgive us and have us back. Sometimes faith in something so wonderful, so generous, such sacrificial love can seem just too great to be real. Put simply it’s often difficult to believe that each one of us could really be loved so much, and yet we are.
In the letter to the Thessalonians the people are urged to move beyond anxiety and fear about the end times and to focus on what they need to survive the times of difficulty, to keep their faith real and to draw on the assurance of their salvation. Like them we should be encouraged to stand firm in our faith avoiding the temptation to abandon it when it would be more convenient to do so.
I was recently given a copy of the text and accompanying notes for the passion play which takes place in the German town of Oberammergau every ten years.
The notes remind us that familiarity with Christ’s story cannot always be assumed and also that the issues and questions which seem relevant to it can shift with time. It’s something we need to consider when sharing Christ’s message with others. Yet there is also an element that doesn’t change, the fact that the story of Christ’s life captures ‘the fears and longings of the people’ giving’ them the kind of hope offered by faith.’ It states that the play is not museum like folk theatre but is a story that continues to reach deep into life.
It’s a message we will do well to apply to today’s readings reminding ourselves that the powerful message of God’s love and the hope it offers to us are not just something found in the history told by the bible but continue to be real, personal and available to us today.
Not long after answering the question about life after death from the Sadducees Jesus would find himself close to death on the cross as one of the criminals at his side uttered those familiar words ‘Jesus remember me when you come into your kingdom.’ Jesus replies ‘truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise’.
He wants his followers to know that they will be with him when this life is over.
Confident in this truth we realise that all the rest is detail, detail which we can happily trust to God.
Amen
Kevin Bright
7 November 2010
Sunday, 7 November 2010
3 Before Advent Evensong: The wisdom of Solomon
1 Kings 3.1–15, Romans 8.31–end
“The Lord appeared to Solomon in a dream by night; and God said, ‘Ask what I should give you.” At first sight it seems like a wonderful offer. Ask for whatever you want, says God to Solomon. But what should he ask for?
Folk stories are full of similar tales – stories where people are told they can have whatever they wish for – like Aladdin with his magic lamp - but these sorts of offers are rarely as simple as they sound. There is a tale, common across Europe, about a woodcutter who spares the tree he was about to chop down at the request of the spirit who lives in it and is granted three wishes. He goes home, not quite believing that anything will actually come of it. When his wife puts a plate of boiled cabbage, in front of him for his supper, without really thinking about it he wishes there was a sausage to go with it. The sausage appears on his plate. When he explains what has happened to his wife she is furious that he has wasted a precious wish on a sausage. A row breaks out, and in the heat of the moment the man wishes the sausage was stuck to his wife’s nose, which it instantly is. For the sake of marital harmony he really has to use his final wish to wish it away again, and that is the end of the three wishes, and they are back where they started. Be careful what you wish for, we say, because you may get it.
Or there’s another story about a poor fisherman and his wife who are promised whatever they want by a magic fish. The fisherman’s wife demands finer and finer houses and clothing until in the end, she wishes to be God himself, at which point they find themselves back in the mud hut they started in. Getting what you wish for doesn’t necessarily make you a better or a happier person.
So what will Solomon ask for? Many kings, the story implies, would have asked for wealth or power – that’s the way to win the admiration of other nations, or at least to put them in fear of you - but Solomon is different. Solomon says that he feels like a child, that he doesn’t know if he’s coming or going, in the face of the challenges he faces. So he asks for wisdom, a discerning mind that knows right from wrong.
Wisdom was a highly valued gift in the ancient world. All cultures had their “wisdom literature” – collections of sayings and advice passed down from through the generations. In the Bible we find it primarily in the books of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Job and the Song of Solomon, books in which the writers ponder the mysteries of life and death, love and suffering. Wisdom, for our ancestors, was about far more than mere cleverness, or raw intelligence, in fact it might not have much to do with intellectual ability at all. It was about living well, with justice, integrity and compassion. Solomon knows that he will often have to think on his feet, and to do that successfully you really have to have a deep-rooted sense of what is right, what is healthy, what will bring about peace between people.
There is one story which, above others sums up the wisdom of Solomon. It comes straight after the reading we’ve heard tonight – it’s the proof that he’s got what he asked for. It is the appalling tale of two women – both prostitutes – who come to him in a dispute about a child whom both of them claim is theirs.
If Solomon had just been clever he might have tried to puzzle out who the child’s real mother was by summoning witnesses and doing some detective work – today he would have just asked for a DNA test. But Solomon wasn’t just clever; he was also wise. He gave the order that the child should be cut in two, so they could each have half. And, as he had hoped, one of the woman instantly asked him to give the child to the other – she’d rather lose him than see him harmed. That was all the evidence Solomon needed, and she got the child back.
We can all see that this was the right decision emotionally, but in fact, the writer tells us, it was also the right decision legally and biologically. This really was the child’s mother. But it’s intriguing to note that, actually, Solomon could never have known this for sure himself. He has no hard and fast proof. He hasn’t sought it, and he evidently doesn’t intend to. Sometimes birth mothers are cruel or thoughtless, and foster mothers can give extraordinary love to the children they care for. Solomon knows – and it is all he needs to know – that whoever this child’s biological mother is, the mother he needs is the one who would will put his needs before her own, even if that means losing him to keep him safe. That’s what makes his decision not just clever, not just legally fair and right, but wise as well.
True wisdom, the story tells us, is rooted in love; any amount of cleverness can’t substitute for that. It is about the ability to see into the hearts of others, and to care enough about them to want to bring about what is good for them. It is also about knowing that God desires their good too, it is about aligning our vision with his. .
Solomon, of course, having asked for wisdom, gets wealth and power as well. In fact the story is probably suggesting that these are the natural result of ruling wisely. That’s a neat and satisfying ending, but I’d be uneasy about expecting things always to work out like that, which is why I am glad we had our second reading to balance it. There is no obvious success here, no message that suggests that doing the right, the wise, thing will automatically bring us happiness. St Paul and the church in are facing hard times. Their commitment to the way of Christ, the way of love, may be the right way, but it is leading them into head-on collision with the Roman authorities. Where are the rewards of their wisdom?
It must have been easy for them to think that they might as well give up, go back to the “dog eat dog” ways of the world, where might was right and the devil take the hindmost. But Paul reminds them that God often moves to an entirely different timescale than ours. Just because we are suffering now, that does not mean that God has abandoned us. Jesus lay in the tomb for three days, apparently a complete failure, rejected by God, stone cold dead. But on the third day God raised him, and death was swallowed up in victory. True wisdom doesn’t just enable us to see into the hearts of others, but also into our own hearts and into the heart of God, to discover in him a God who will never forsake us. This knowledge, says Paul, makes us “more than conquerors” because of it we have something that nothing can destroy or take away – the assurance of the love of God.
These two readings both, in a way, ask us the same questions. What is it that we really want from life? If God offered us anything we desired, what would we ask for? Would we ask for safety, comfort, wealth and power – the things the world so often calls success, but which are often bought at the expense of love and justice? Or have we got the courage to ask for wisdom – the ability to see what is right and to do it even if it brings us nothing but trouble. In the end, say these readings, it is this latter gift which is the only one which will truly be worth having.
Amen.
“The Lord appeared to Solomon in a dream by night; and God said, ‘Ask what I should give you.” At first sight it seems like a wonderful offer. Ask for whatever you want, says God to Solomon. But what should he ask for?
Folk stories are full of similar tales – stories where people are told they can have whatever they wish for – like Aladdin with his magic lamp - but these sorts of offers are rarely as simple as they sound. There is a tale, common across Europe, about a woodcutter who spares the tree he was about to chop down at the request of the spirit who lives in it and is granted three wishes. He goes home, not quite believing that anything will actually come of it. When his wife puts a plate of boiled cabbage, in front of him for his supper, without really thinking about it he wishes there was a sausage to go with it. The sausage appears on his plate. When he explains what has happened to his wife she is furious that he has wasted a precious wish on a sausage. A row breaks out, and in the heat of the moment the man wishes the sausage was stuck to his wife’s nose, which it instantly is. For the sake of marital harmony he really has to use his final wish to wish it away again, and that is the end of the three wishes, and they are back where they started. Be careful what you wish for, we say, because you may get it.
Or there’s another story about a poor fisherman and his wife who are promised whatever they want by a magic fish. The fisherman’s wife demands finer and finer houses and clothing until in the end, she wishes to be God himself, at which point they find themselves back in the mud hut they started in. Getting what you wish for doesn’t necessarily make you a better or a happier person.
So what will Solomon ask for? Many kings, the story implies, would have asked for wealth or power – that’s the way to win the admiration of other nations, or at least to put them in fear of you - but Solomon is different. Solomon says that he feels like a child, that he doesn’t know if he’s coming or going, in the face of the challenges he faces. So he asks for wisdom, a discerning mind that knows right from wrong.
Wisdom was a highly valued gift in the ancient world. All cultures had their “wisdom literature” – collections of sayings and advice passed down from through the generations. In the Bible we find it primarily in the books of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Job and the Song of Solomon, books in which the writers ponder the mysteries of life and death, love and suffering. Wisdom, for our ancestors, was about far more than mere cleverness, or raw intelligence, in fact it might not have much to do with intellectual ability at all. It was about living well, with justice, integrity and compassion. Solomon knows that he will often have to think on his feet, and to do that successfully you really have to have a deep-rooted sense of what is right, what is healthy, what will bring about peace between people.
There is one story which, above others sums up the wisdom of Solomon. It comes straight after the reading we’ve heard tonight – it’s the proof that he’s got what he asked for. It is the appalling tale of two women – both prostitutes – who come to him in a dispute about a child whom both of them claim is theirs.
If Solomon had just been clever he might have tried to puzzle out who the child’s real mother was by summoning witnesses and doing some detective work – today he would have just asked for a DNA test. But Solomon wasn’t just clever; he was also wise. He gave the order that the child should be cut in two, so they could each have half. And, as he had hoped, one of the woman instantly asked him to give the child to the other – she’d rather lose him than see him harmed. That was all the evidence Solomon needed, and she got the child back.
We can all see that this was the right decision emotionally, but in fact, the writer tells us, it was also the right decision legally and biologically. This really was the child’s mother. But it’s intriguing to note that, actually, Solomon could never have known this for sure himself. He has no hard and fast proof. He hasn’t sought it, and he evidently doesn’t intend to. Sometimes birth mothers are cruel or thoughtless, and foster mothers can give extraordinary love to the children they care for. Solomon knows – and it is all he needs to know – that whoever this child’s biological mother is, the mother he needs is the one who would will put his needs before her own, even if that means losing him to keep him safe. That’s what makes his decision not just clever, not just legally fair and right, but wise as well.
True wisdom, the story tells us, is rooted in love; any amount of cleverness can’t substitute for that. It is about the ability to see into the hearts of others, and to care enough about them to want to bring about what is good for them. It is also about knowing that God desires their good too, it is about aligning our vision with his. .
Solomon, of course, having asked for wisdom, gets wealth and power as well. In fact the story is probably suggesting that these are the natural result of ruling wisely. That’s a neat and satisfying ending, but I’d be uneasy about expecting things always to work out like that, which is why I am glad we had our second reading to balance it. There is no obvious success here, no message that suggests that doing the right, the wise, thing will automatically bring us happiness. St Paul and the church in are facing hard times. Their commitment to the way of Christ, the way of love, may be the right way, but it is leading them into head-on collision with the Roman authorities. Where are the rewards of their wisdom?
It must have been easy for them to think that they might as well give up, go back to the “dog eat dog” ways of the world, where might was right and the devil take the hindmost. But Paul reminds them that God often moves to an entirely different timescale than ours. Just because we are suffering now, that does not mean that God has abandoned us. Jesus lay in the tomb for three days, apparently a complete failure, rejected by God, stone cold dead. But on the third day God raised him, and death was swallowed up in victory. True wisdom doesn’t just enable us to see into the hearts of others, but also into our own hearts and into the heart of God, to discover in him a God who will never forsake us. This knowledge, says Paul, makes us “more than conquerors” because of it we have something that nothing can destroy or take away – the assurance of the love of God.
These two readings both, in a way, ask us the same questions. What is it that we really want from life? If God offered us anything we desired, what would we ask for? Would we ask for safety, comfort, wealth and power – the things the world so often calls success, but which are often bought at the expense of love and justice? Or have we got the courage to ask for wisdom – the ability to see what is right and to do it even if it brings us nothing but trouble. In the end, say these readings, it is this latter gift which is the only one which will truly be worth having.
Amen.
3 Before Advent Evensong: The wisdom of Solomon
1 Kings 3.1–15, Romans 8.31–end
“The Lord appeared to Solomon in a dream by night; and God said, ‘Ask what I should give you.” At first sight it seems like a wonderful offer. Ask for whatever you want, says God to Solomon. But what should he ask for?
Folk stories are full of similar tales – stories where people are told they can have whatever they wish for – like Aladdin with his magic lamp - but these sorts of offers are rarely as simple as they sound. There is a tale, common across Europe, about a woodcutter who spares the tree he was about to chop down at the request of the spirit who lives in it and is granted three wishes. He goes home, not quite believing that anything will actually come of it. When his wife puts a plate of boiled cabbage, in front of him for his supper, without really thinking about it he wishes there was a sausage to go with it. The sausage appears on his plate. When he explains what has happened to his wife she is furious that he has wasted a precious wish on a sausage. A row breaks out, and in the heat of the moment the man wishes the sausage was stuck to his wife’s nose, which it instantly is. For the sake of marital harmony he really has to use his final wish to wish it away again, and that is the end of the three wishes, and they are back where they started. Be careful what you wish for, we say, because you may get it.
Or there’s another story about a poor fisherman and his wife who are promised whatever they want by a magic fish. The fisherman’s wife demands finer and finer houses and clothing until in the end, she wishes to be God himself, at which point they find themselves back in the mud hut they started in. Getting what you wish for doesn’t necessarily make you a better or a happier person.
So what will Solomon ask for? Many kings, the story implies, would have asked for wealth or power – that’s the way to win the admiration of other nations, or at least to put them in fear of you - but Solomon is different. Solomon says that he feels like a child, that he doesn’t know if he’s coming or going, in the face of the challenges he faces. So he asks for wisdom, a discerning mind that knows right from wrong.
Wisdom was a highly valued gift in the ancient world. All cultures had their “wisdom literature” – collections of sayings and advice passed down from through the generations. In the Bible we find it primarily in the books of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Job and the Song of Solomon, books in which the writers ponder the mysteries of life and death, love and suffering. Wisdom, for our ancestors, was about far more than mere cleverness, or raw intelligence, in fact it might not have much to do with intellectual ability at all. It was about living well, with justice, integrity and compassion. Solomon knows that he will often have to think on his feet, and to do that successfully you really have to have a deep-rooted sense of what is right, what is healthy, what will bring about peace between people.
There is one story which, above others sums up the wisdom of Solomon. It comes straight after the reading we’ve heard tonight – it’s the proof that he’s got what he asked for. It is the appalling tale of two women – both prostitutes – who come to him in a dispute about a child whom both of them claim is theirs.
If Solomon had just been clever he might have tried to puzzle out who the child’s real mother was by summoning witnesses and doing some detective work – today he would have just asked for a DNA test. But Solomon wasn’t just clever; he was also wise. He gave the order that the child should be cut in two, so they could each have half. And, as he had hoped, one of the woman instantly asked him to give the child to the other – she’d rather lose him than see him harmed. That was all the evidence Solomon needed, and she got the child back.
We can all see that this was the right decision emotionally, but in fact, the writer tells us, it was also the right decision legally and biologically. This really was the child’s mother. But it’s intriguing to note that, actually, Solomon could never have known this for sure himself. He has no hard and fast proof. He hasn’t sought it, and he evidently doesn’t intend to. Sometimes birth mothers are cruel or thoughtless, and foster mothers can give extraordinary love to the children they care for. Solomon knows – and it is all he needs to know – that whoever this child’s biological mother is, the mother he needs is the one who would will put his needs before her own, even if that means losing him to keep him safe. That’s what makes his decision not just clever, not just legally fair and right, but wise as well.
True wisdom, the story tells us, is rooted in love; any amount of cleverness can’t substitute for that. It is about the ability to see into the hearts of others, and to care enough about them to want to bring about what is good for them. It is also about knowing that God desires their good too, it is about aligning our vision with his. .
Solomon, of course, having asked for wisdom, gets wealth and power as well. In fact the story is probably suggesting that these are the natural result of ruling wisely. That’s a neat and satisfying ending, but I’d be uneasy about expecting things always to work out like that, which is why I am glad we had our second reading to balance it. There is no obvious success here, no message that suggests that doing the right, the wise, thing will automatically bring us happiness. St Paul and the church in are facing hard times. Their commitment to the way of Christ, the way of love, may be the right way, but it is leading them into head-on collision with the Roman authorities. Where are the rewards of their wisdom?
It must have been easy for them to think that they might as well give up, go back to the “dog eat dog” ways of the world, where might was right and the devil take the hindmost. But Paul reminds them that God often moves to an entirely different timescale than ours. Just because we are suffering now, that does not mean that God has abandoned us. Jesus lay in the tomb for three days, apparently a complete failure, rejected by God, stone cold dead. But on the third day God raised him, and death was swallowed up in victory. True wisdom doesn’t just enable us to see into the hearts of others, but also into our own hearts and into the heart of God, to discover in him a God who will never forsake us. This knowledge, says Paul, makes us “more than conquerors” because of it we have something that nothing can destroy or take away – the assurance of the love of God.
These two readings both, in a way, ask us the same questions. What is it that we really want from life? If God offered us anything we desired, what would we ask for? Would we ask for safety, comfort, wealth and power – the things the world so often calls success, but which are often bought at the expense of love and justice? Or have we got the courage to ask for wisdom – the ability to see what is right and to do it even if it brings us nothing but trouble. In the end, say these readings, it is this latter gift which is the only one which will truly be worth having.
Amen.
“The Lord appeared to Solomon in a dream by night; and God said, ‘Ask what I should give you.” At first sight it seems like a wonderful offer. Ask for whatever you want, says God to Solomon. But what should he ask for?
Folk stories are full of similar tales – stories where people are told they can have whatever they wish for – like Aladdin with his magic lamp - but these sorts of offers are rarely as simple as they sound. There is a tale, common across Europe, about a woodcutter who spares the tree he was about to chop down at the request of the spirit who lives in it and is granted three wishes. He goes home, not quite believing that anything will actually come of it. When his wife puts a plate of boiled cabbage, in front of him for his supper, without really thinking about it he wishes there was a sausage to go with it. The sausage appears on his plate. When he explains what has happened to his wife she is furious that he has wasted a precious wish on a sausage. A row breaks out, and in the heat of the moment the man wishes the sausage was stuck to his wife’s nose, which it instantly is. For the sake of marital harmony he really has to use his final wish to wish it away again, and that is the end of the three wishes, and they are back where they started. Be careful what you wish for, we say, because you may get it.
Or there’s another story about a poor fisherman and his wife who are promised whatever they want by a magic fish. The fisherman’s wife demands finer and finer houses and clothing until in the end, she wishes to be God himself, at which point they find themselves back in the mud hut they started in. Getting what you wish for doesn’t necessarily make you a better or a happier person.
So what will Solomon ask for? Many kings, the story implies, would have asked for wealth or power – that’s the way to win the admiration of other nations, or at least to put them in fear of you - but Solomon is different. Solomon says that he feels like a child, that he doesn’t know if he’s coming or going, in the face of the challenges he faces. So he asks for wisdom, a discerning mind that knows right from wrong.
Wisdom was a highly valued gift in the ancient world. All cultures had their “wisdom literature” – collections of sayings and advice passed down from through the generations. In the Bible we find it primarily in the books of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Job and the Song of Solomon, books in which the writers ponder the mysteries of life and death, love and suffering. Wisdom, for our ancestors, was about far more than mere cleverness, or raw intelligence, in fact it might not have much to do with intellectual ability at all. It was about living well, with justice, integrity and compassion. Solomon knows that he will often have to think on his feet, and to do that successfully you really have to have a deep-rooted sense of what is right, what is healthy, what will bring about peace between people.
There is one story which, above others sums up the wisdom of Solomon. It comes straight after the reading we’ve heard tonight – it’s the proof that he’s got what he asked for. It is the appalling tale of two women – both prostitutes – who come to him in a dispute about a child whom both of them claim is theirs.
If Solomon had just been clever he might have tried to puzzle out who the child’s real mother was by summoning witnesses and doing some detective work – today he would have just asked for a DNA test. But Solomon wasn’t just clever; he was also wise. He gave the order that the child should be cut in two, so they could each have half. And, as he had hoped, one of the woman instantly asked him to give the child to the other – she’d rather lose him than see him harmed. That was all the evidence Solomon needed, and she got the child back.
We can all see that this was the right decision emotionally, but in fact, the writer tells us, it was also the right decision legally and biologically. This really was the child’s mother. But it’s intriguing to note that, actually, Solomon could never have known this for sure himself. He has no hard and fast proof. He hasn’t sought it, and he evidently doesn’t intend to. Sometimes birth mothers are cruel or thoughtless, and foster mothers can give extraordinary love to the children they care for. Solomon knows – and it is all he needs to know – that whoever this child’s biological mother is, the mother he needs is the one who would will put his needs before her own, even if that means losing him to keep him safe. That’s what makes his decision not just clever, not just legally fair and right, but wise as well.
True wisdom, the story tells us, is rooted in love; any amount of cleverness can’t substitute for that. It is about the ability to see into the hearts of others, and to care enough about them to want to bring about what is good for them. It is also about knowing that God desires their good too, it is about aligning our vision with his. .
Solomon, of course, having asked for wisdom, gets wealth and power as well. In fact the story is probably suggesting that these are the natural result of ruling wisely. That’s a neat and satisfying ending, but I’d be uneasy about expecting things always to work out like that, which is why I am glad we had our second reading to balance it. There is no obvious success here, no message that suggests that doing the right, the wise, thing will automatically bring us happiness. St Paul and the church in are facing hard times. Their commitment to the way of Christ, the way of love, may be the right way, but it is leading them into head-on collision with the Roman authorities. Where are the rewards of their wisdom?
It must have been easy for them to think that they might as well give up, go back to the “dog eat dog” ways of the world, where might was right and the devil take the hindmost. But Paul reminds them that God often moves to an entirely different timescale than ours. Just because we are suffering now, that does not mean that God has abandoned us. Jesus lay in the tomb for three days, apparently a complete failure, rejected by God, stone cold dead. But on the third day God raised him, and death was swallowed up in victory. True wisdom doesn’t just enable us to see into the hearts of others, but also into our own hearts and into the heart of God, to discover in him a God who will never forsake us. This knowledge, says Paul, makes us “more than conquerors” because of it we have something that nothing can destroy or take away – the assurance of the love of God.
These two readings both, in a way, ask us the same questions. What is it that we really want from life? If God offered us anything we desired, what would we ask for? Would we ask for safety, comfort, wealth and power – the things the world so often calls success, but which are often bought at the expense of love and justice? Or have we got the courage to ask for wisdom – the ability to see what is right and to do it even if it brings us nothing but trouble. In the end, say these readings, it is this latter gift which is the only one which will truly be worth having.
Amen.
Tuesday, 2 November 2010
Mourning into morning : All Souls
All Souls’ Day 2010
Revelation 21. 1-6
I don’t know about you, but I have found that in the immediate aftermath of bereavement it is often the small things that trip us up. Things like the jarring experience of seeing other people apparently just getting on with their lives. You come out from registering the death and see people laughing and joking in the street outside. On the way to the funeral you see people out shopping, children in tow; all they care about is whether they’ve remembered the washing powder or the cat food. How can it be, when your whole world has changed so radically, that they can go on as if nothing had happened? Of course they have no idea what has happened to you, but it still doesn’t seem right.
W.H. Auden began his famous poem about bereavement with the memorable words, “ Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,” but the truth is that even if we did stop the clocks, time would still flow on. Life would still flow on. And there is nothing we can do about it.
Watching things change can be really painful when you’re grieving ; the one you want to share those changes with is no longer there to see them. Things happen that they can never be a part of – a grandchild is born, a son or daughter gets married. I have often found that people who are apparently coping well with a bereavement are completely thrown backwards by the death of a pet, or a house move. That pet, or the home they made together might be the last link with the person who has died, bearing many memories of shared times together, and it is the final straw when they are lost too.
But time flows on. Life flows on. Whether we like it or not new things happen, new opportunities present themselves, new challenges must be met. The sun keeps coming up in the morning and new days dawn one after another.
The poem I read just now was written during the Second World War. The poet, George Barker, writes it for his much loved mother who was, by all accounts quite a character. She lived in London through the Blitz – she had tried evacuation, but found the countryside too boring – but of course living in London meant she was surrounded by death and the threat of death as the bombs fell. Like many at that time she was bereaved again and again. Yet Barker’s picture of her shows that he knows her well. However terrible these times are, he trust her ability to cope with them. He knows that she will, in time move from “mourning into morning.” I had to print the poem because otherwise we might miss what he is saying. She moves from mourning – with a u – to morning, without – from grief to a new day. It may not be the day she wanted to see and it will certainly be a different day from the ones she knew before, but he trusts her strength and her courage. He knows she will find a way to carry on living, and living with spirit and verve too.
From mourning into morning. That’s the promise of the Bible reading we heard too. It comes from the Book of Revelation, that great vision of heaven which John had on the island of Patmos. He was in exile, in fear for his own life and for the lives of the friends he’d left behind, the people he loved. Some of them had probably already met death at the hands of the Romans and others would soon do so. How could they – and he - cope with this endless grief and fear? But his vision reassures both him and them. God is with them. He will “make all things new”. His love will never be defeated by the darkness of the world. No one and nothing will be beyond his power to hold and to heal – he makes “all things” new, not just some of them.
Today it is right to look back and to remember those we love who have died. It is right to thank God for all they have meant to us. It is right to treasure our memories. But it is also right to look forward, to ask God to help us move from “mourning into morning”, to dare to trust that there will be good things in the future, small or great, and that those we mourn would want us to embrace and enjoy them. We do them no favours if we let our lives wither in grief.
After our prayers in a moment, I am going to invite you, if you want, to come up to the front to light a candle for those you are remembering today. But as you leave the church, I’d like to invite you also to take for yourself one of these daffodil bulbs. Plant it somewhere as a reminder to you of the promise of that God who makes all things new. When it flowers in the spring let it remind you that every new day is a gift to us, one which those we love surely would have wanted us to treasure and live to the full.
Amen
Revelation 21. 1-6
I don’t know about you, but I have found that in the immediate aftermath of bereavement it is often the small things that trip us up. Things like the jarring experience of seeing other people apparently just getting on with their lives. You come out from registering the death and see people laughing and joking in the street outside. On the way to the funeral you see people out shopping, children in tow; all they care about is whether they’ve remembered the washing powder or the cat food. How can it be, when your whole world has changed so radically, that they can go on as if nothing had happened? Of course they have no idea what has happened to you, but it still doesn’t seem right.
W.H. Auden began his famous poem about bereavement with the memorable words, “ Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,” but the truth is that even if we did stop the clocks, time would still flow on. Life would still flow on. And there is nothing we can do about it.
Watching things change can be really painful when you’re grieving ; the one you want to share those changes with is no longer there to see them. Things happen that they can never be a part of – a grandchild is born, a son or daughter gets married. I have often found that people who are apparently coping well with a bereavement are completely thrown backwards by the death of a pet, or a house move. That pet, or the home they made together might be the last link with the person who has died, bearing many memories of shared times together, and it is the final straw when they are lost too.
But time flows on. Life flows on. Whether we like it or not new things happen, new opportunities present themselves, new challenges must be met. The sun keeps coming up in the morning and new days dawn one after another.
The poem I read just now was written during the Second World War. The poet, George Barker, writes it for his much loved mother who was, by all accounts quite a character. She lived in London through the Blitz – she had tried evacuation, but found the countryside too boring – but of course living in London meant she was surrounded by death and the threat of death as the bombs fell. Like many at that time she was bereaved again and again. Yet Barker’s picture of her shows that he knows her well. However terrible these times are, he trust her ability to cope with them. He knows that she will, in time move from “mourning into morning.” I had to print the poem because otherwise we might miss what he is saying. She moves from mourning – with a u – to morning, without – from grief to a new day. It may not be the day she wanted to see and it will certainly be a different day from the ones she knew before, but he trusts her strength and her courage. He knows she will find a way to carry on living, and living with spirit and verve too.
From mourning into morning. That’s the promise of the Bible reading we heard too. It comes from the Book of Revelation, that great vision of heaven which John had on the island of Patmos. He was in exile, in fear for his own life and for the lives of the friends he’d left behind, the people he loved. Some of them had probably already met death at the hands of the Romans and others would soon do so. How could they – and he - cope with this endless grief and fear? But his vision reassures both him and them. God is with them. He will “make all things new”. His love will never be defeated by the darkness of the world. No one and nothing will be beyond his power to hold and to heal – he makes “all things” new, not just some of them.
Today it is right to look back and to remember those we love who have died. It is right to thank God for all they have meant to us. It is right to treasure our memories. But it is also right to look forward, to ask God to help us move from “mourning into morning”, to dare to trust that there will be good things in the future, small or great, and that those we mourn would want us to embrace and enjoy them. We do them no favours if we let our lives wither in grief.
After our prayers in a moment, I am going to invite you, if you want, to come up to the front to light a candle for those you are remembering today. But as you leave the church, I’d like to invite you also to take for yourself one of these daffodil bulbs. Plant it somewhere as a reminder to you of the promise of that God who makes all things new. When it flowers in the spring let it remind you that every new day is a gift to us, one which those we love surely would have wanted us to treasure and live to the full.
Amen
Mourning into morning : All Souls
All Souls’ Day 2010
Revelation 21. 1-6
I don’t know about you, but I have found that in the immediate aftermath of bereavement it is often the small things that trip us up. Things like the jarring experience of seeing other people apparently just getting on with their lives. You come out from registering the death and see people laughing and joking in the street outside. On the way to the funeral you see people out shopping, children in tow; all they care about is whether they’ve remembered the washing powder or the cat food. How can it be, when your whole world has changed so radically, that they can go on as if nothing had happened? Of course they have no idea what has happened to you, but it still doesn’t seem right.
W.H. Auden began his famous poem about bereavement with the memorable words, “ Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,” but the truth is that even if we did stop the clocks, time would still flow on. Life would still flow on. And there is nothing we can do about it.
Watching things change can be really painful when you’re grieving ; the one you want to share those changes with is no longer there to see them. Things happen that they can never be a part of – a grandchild is born, a son or daughter gets married. I have often found that people who are apparently coping well with a bereavement are completely thrown backwards by the death of a pet, or a house move. That pet, or the home they made together might be the last link with the person who has died, bearing many memories of shared times together, and it is the final straw when they are lost too.
But time flows on. Life flows on. Whether we like it or not new things happen, new opportunities present themselves, new challenges must be met. The sun keeps coming up in the morning and new days dawn one after another.
The poem I read just now was written during the Second World War. The poet, George Barker, writes it for his much loved mother who was, by all accounts quite a character. She lived in London through the Blitz – she had tried evacuation, but found the countryside too boring – but of course living in London meant she was surrounded by death and the threat of death as the bombs fell. Like many at that time she was bereaved again and again. Yet Barker’s picture of her shows that he knows her well. However terrible these times are, he trust her ability to cope with them. He knows that she will, in time move from “mourning into morning.” I had to print the poem because otherwise we might miss what he is saying. She moves from mourning – with a u – to morning, without – from grief to a new day. It may not be the day she wanted to see and it will certainly be a different day from the ones she knew before, but he trusts her strength and her courage. He knows she will find a way to carry on living, and living with spirit and verve too.
From mourning into morning. That’s the promise of the Bible reading we heard too. It comes from the Book of Revelation, that great vision of heaven which John had on the island of Patmos. He was in exile, in fear for his own life and for the lives of the friends he’d left behind, the people he loved. Some of them had probably already met death at the hands of the Romans and others would soon do so. How could they – and he - cope with this endless grief and fear? But his vision reassures both him and them. God is with them. He will “make all things new”. His love will never be defeated by the darkness of the world. No one and nothing will be beyond his power to hold and to heal – he makes “all things” new, not just some of them.
Today it is right to look back and to remember those we love who have died. It is right to thank God for all they have meant to us. It is right to treasure our memories. But it is also right to look forward, to ask God to help us move from “mourning into morning”, to dare to trust that there will be good things in the future, small or great, and that those we mourn would want us to embrace and enjoy them. We do them no favours if we let our lives wither in grief.
After our prayers in a moment, I am going to invite you, if you want, to come up to the front to light a candle for those you are remembering today. But as you leave the church, I’d like to invite you also to take for yourself one of these daffodil bulbs. Plant it somewhere as a reminder to you of the promise of that God who makes all things new. When it flowers in the spring let it remind you that every new day is a gift to us, one which those we love surely would have wanted us to treasure and live to the full.
Amen
Revelation 21. 1-6
I don’t know about you, but I have found that in the immediate aftermath of bereavement it is often the small things that trip us up. Things like the jarring experience of seeing other people apparently just getting on with their lives. You come out from registering the death and see people laughing and joking in the street outside. On the way to the funeral you see people out shopping, children in tow; all they care about is whether they’ve remembered the washing powder or the cat food. How can it be, when your whole world has changed so radically, that they can go on as if nothing had happened? Of course they have no idea what has happened to you, but it still doesn’t seem right.
W.H. Auden began his famous poem about bereavement with the memorable words, “ Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,” but the truth is that even if we did stop the clocks, time would still flow on. Life would still flow on. And there is nothing we can do about it.
Watching things change can be really painful when you’re grieving ; the one you want to share those changes with is no longer there to see them. Things happen that they can never be a part of – a grandchild is born, a son or daughter gets married. I have often found that people who are apparently coping well with a bereavement are completely thrown backwards by the death of a pet, or a house move. That pet, or the home they made together might be the last link with the person who has died, bearing many memories of shared times together, and it is the final straw when they are lost too.
But time flows on. Life flows on. Whether we like it or not new things happen, new opportunities present themselves, new challenges must be met. The sun keeps coming up in the morning and new days dawn one after another.
The poem I read just now was written during the Second World War. The poet, George Barker, writes it for his much loved mother who was, by all accounts quite a character. She lived in London through the Blitz – she had tried evacuation, but found the countryside too boring – but of course living in London meant she was surrounded by death and the threat of death as the bombs fell. Like many at that time she was bereaved again and again. Yet Barker’s picture of her shows that he knows her well. However terrible these times are, he trust her ability to cope with them. He knows that she will, in time move from “mourning into morning.” I had to print the poem because otherwise we might miss what he is saying. She moves from mourning – with a u – to morning, without – from grief to a new day. It may not be the day she wanted to see and it will certainly be a different day from the ones she knew before, but he trusts her strength and her courage. He knows she will find a way to carry on living, and living with spirit and verve too.
From mourning into morning. That’s the promise of the Bible reading we heard too. It comes from the Book of Revelation, that great vision of heaven which John had on the island of Patmos. He was in exile, in fear for his own life and for the lives of the friends he’d left behind, the people he loved. Some of them had probably already met death at the hands of the Romans and others would soon do so. How could they – and he - cope with this endless grief and fear? But his vision reassures both him and them. God is with them. He will “make all things new”. His love will never be defeated by the darkness of the world. No one and nothing will be beyond his power to hold and to heal – he makes “all things” new, not just some of them.
Today it is right to look back and to remember those we love who have died. It is right to thank God for all they have meant to us. It is right to treasure our memories. But it is also right to look forward, to ask God to help us move from “mourning into morning”, to dare to trust that there will be good things in the future, small or great, and that those we mourn would want us to embrace and enjoy them. We do them no favours if we let our lives wither in grief.
After our prayers in a moment, I am going to invite you, if you want, to come up to the front to light a candle for those you are remembering today. But as you leave the church, I’d like to invite you also to take for yourself one of these daffodil bulbs. Plant it somewhere as a reminder to you of the promise of that God who makes all things new. When it flowers in the spring let it remind you that every new day is a gift to us, one which those we love surely would have wanted us to treasure and live to the full.
Amen
Night Vision : All Saints
All Saints 2010
Dan 7. 1-3, 15-18, Psalm 149, Eph 1.11-end, Luke 6.20-31
This morning we are celebrating the feast of All Saints. This evening we are going to move on swiftly to All Souls and the commemoration of our loved ones who have died. Of course the truth is that actually this isn’t really the proper day for keeping either of these feasts. Strictly speaking All Saints’ is tomorrow and All Souls’ is Tuesday; it is just more convenient to keep them now. Today, as I am sure you are all aware, is actually the eve of All Saints, All Hallows – Hallowe’en – an occasion which seems to get bigger and bigger every year, partly, I’m sure, because the shops have realised its sales potential. There are costumes for ghosts and witches in Tesco, gingerbread skeleton men in the cake shops, pumpkin lanterns to put by the front door, plastic spiders and fake webs to adorn your home (if you don’t have enough of the real thing, like us!) ,
But with this annual ghoulfest comes an equally predictable annual bout of anxiety from Christians. Hallowe’en is a sensitive subject, especially when children are involved. Is it healthy to peer into the dark aspects of life? Should we try to ban Hallowe’en or steer them away from it? Personally, though I understand those feelings, I don’t entirely share them. I’m not keen on trick or treating, which often seems to me to be rather intimidating and manipulative but I’m not too worried about Hallowe’en itself. Of course we want to protect our children, but the world can be a scary place, and sooner or later they are sure to discover that and have to cope with it. It may not be ghosts or witches they’ll face, but perhaps illness, war, cruelty, failure – things that can be even more terrifying. Children learn to cope with the adult world through play, and it seems to me that Hallowe’en gives them a rare chance to play with their fears, and to develop their inner resilience, the sense that they can, if they need to, “feel the fear and do it anyway”. Properly handled, Hallowe’en, can give them valuable practice in this, but the key is in those words “properly handled”, and that is where I think Christian faith has some wisdom to bring to this debate.
Staring into the darkness isn’t enough on its own. Acknowledging that the world is scary isn’t enough. It’s how you understand that darkness – how you interpret and react to the bad things that happen to you and around you – that makes the difference. It’s tempting, when things go wrong in our lives, to assume that we have failed, or that God has abandoned us, and simply to give up. But those aren’t the only interpretations open to us. In our second reading today we heard Paul’s words to the Christians in Ephesus. They knew all about terror; they lived with the constant threat of persecution. Yet Paul prays that they will learn to see with “the eyes of their hearts enlightened”, and will learn to interpret their lives in a way that helps them to cope with this. He prays that they will know that, just as God was present in the darkness of the tomb when he raised Christ from the dead, he is also present with them in their dark times, working for good through the “immeasurable greatness of his power”.
Having the “eyes of your heart enlightened” might seem like an odd image, but perhaps we might think of it instead as having a sort of spiritual “night-vision”, the ability to see beyond the obvious. These days we have technology which enables us to do that physically – wildlife films use it often, and it is standard kit for the military – but even without the gadgets we all know how our eyes adjust to the darkness after a while, revealing things that you couldn’t see at first. They may not be very clear, but we can tell that there is more there, more going on than we first thought. Paul’s talking about the spiritual equivalent of that here and just like it’s physical counterpart, you only really develop it if you are prepared to sit in the darkness for a while first.
Daniel, in our Old Testament reading, is a good example of this. This is the same Daniel who was thrown into the lions’ den, but that was just one trial among many. His story is set during the time when the Jewish people were in exile in Babylon. Life was precarious for the exiles. Though Daniel had become influential in the Babylonian court, he was far from safe and he soon fell foul of its murky politics. He wouldn’t play ball with the power games of the court, and the lions’ den was the inevitable result. He wasn’t the only one to suffer though. His fellow Jews, Shadrach, Meschach and Abednego, were pushed into a fiery furnace to die because they refused to worship idols.
As it happened God preserved Daniel’s life in the lions’ den, and for the other three, the deliverance was even more dramatic. Instead of being burnt alive, they came out of the furnace with not so much as a scorch mark on them. The watching Babylonians, peering into the furnace, saw them standing in the flames, singing praises, with a fourth figure standing with them, a messenger of God sent to sustain them. Their stories have happy endings, but that doesn’t cancel out the terror that came before, or the questions which their suffering must have made them ask.
Daniel’s dream, which we heard about this morning, reflects those questions. He is trying to make sense of his ordeal. Why is God letting this happen? Is there any purpose to the sufferings of his people, or is it all pointless? Will their story end in tears or triumph? He has a dream of four great beasts rising from the sea. It is very puzzling, but a heavenly being in the vision explains it to him.
“Four kings shall arise out of the earth,” says the being. “But the holy ones of the Most High shall receive the kingdom and possess the kingdom for ever – for ever and ever” (in case he missed the point!)
The power of Babylon, the overwhelming nature of the oppression he and his people faced had loomed so large in Daniel’s sight that he couldn’t see anything else. But this isn’t the whole picture, says God, and Daniel needs to learn to see this. Empires will rise and fall, kings will come and go, and those who concentrate simply on currying favour with them will rise and fall, come and go, with them. The holy ones of God, though – those whose loyalty is to God’s kingdom of righteousness and love – will find a peace and a purpose which will last for ever and for ever, and which nothing can destroy. God calls Daniel to use his “night vision” his “enlightened eyes”, to look into the darkness that confronts him and see it for what it is, something which will pass while the deeper things of God endure.
Jesus makes the same point in the Gospels. There were many people at the time – as there are now – who assume that wealth and success are proof that you are in God’s favour, while the poor and excluded are somehow getting what they deserve. But Jesus says that God is at work in ways that don’t fit that simplistic view. Jesus will himself soon be poor, hungry and thirsty, stripped naked on a cross, sorrowful and abandoned. Does this mean he’ll have failed? No. In fact, Christians believe that it is in the darkness of the cross that we see most clearly the depth of God’s love. Jesus refuses to turn away from it, to seek an easy way out – he lives the message he has preached - and so the cross becomes to us a promise of God’s presence in every darkness, every death.
This “night vision”, the ability to see in the dark, which transforms our view of the world is something which many people of many faiths and backgrounds affirm. I was reminded of it in a story I read this week in the supporters’ magazine of the Medical Foundation for the Care of the Victims of Torture. In it, an Iranian refugee, a Muslim, wrote of her experience. She had been imprisoned without trial for many years, and for some of that time had been held along with a 17 year old girl called Nosrat. They grew close during their ordeal. Then one day, the guards burst into their cell and announced that they were to be executed. They were led out to the courtyard, blindfolded and terrified.
She wrote that as she stood there, shaking with fear, Nosrat leant close to her, took her hand and began to sing quietly into her ear. “Her voice made me warm,” she said, “like a very strong wine flowing in my veins… Her voice was like a song of the Prophet David. I felt angels flying above us, felt their wings; we weren’t alone”.
They waited for the soldiers to shoot, but at the last moment they put down their guns and began to laugh. It had all been a sick joke.
But the woman went on… “A few days later they did execute Nosrat. God didn’t save her, nor did the angels… After a few years I was freed and I still think of her song. You might not believe it, but some nights I’m woken from my sleep by her voice, her song.”
That is not, in any sense, a story with a happy ending, and yet she has clearly drawn continuing strength from that memory. “We weren’t alone” she says – and if they weren’t alone then at that darkest of times, when would she ever be alone? She discovered her “night vision” – that counter-intuitive sense of the comforting presence of God when we are at our lowest, and her story echoes to me the story of Daniel, of Jesus on the cross, of Paul and those early Christians. When the “eyes of our hearts are enlightened” we learn to see God at work even in the darkness, especially in the darkness. And then we know for sure that the darkness can never have the last or truest word. Instead of being a place of terror it becomes the home of God, a place where we can meet with him most deeply.
We keep All Saints today against the background of its shadow, Hallowe’en, and I pray that this will help us to remember that sainthood isn’t a matter of avoiding the darkness, but of discovering that within it, as in every place, the Lord of life is with us.
Amen
Dan 7. 1-3, 15-18, Psalm 149, Eph 1.11-end, Luke 6.20-31
This morning we are celebrating the feast of All Saints. This evening we are going to move on swiftly to All Souls and the commemoration of our loved ones who have died. Of course the truth is that actually this isn’t really the proper day for keeping either of these feasts. Strictly speaking All Saints’ is tomorrow and All Souls’ is Tuesday; it is just more convenient to keep them now. Today, as I am sure you are all aware, is actually the eve of All Saints, All Hallows – Hallowe’en – an occasion which seems to get bigger and bigger every year, partly, I’m sure, because the shops have realised its sales potential. There are costumes for ghosts and witches in Tesco, gingerbread skeleton men in the cake shops, pumpkin lanterns to put by the front door, plastic spiders and fake webs to adorn your home (if you don’t have enough of the real thing, like us!) ,
But with this annual ghoulfest comes an equally predictable annual bout of anxiety from Christians. Hallowe’en is a sensitive subject, especially when children are involved. Is it healthy to peer into the dark aspects of life? Should we try to ban Hallowe’en or steer them away from it? Personally, though I understand those feelings, I don’t entirely share them. I’m not keen on trick or treating, which often seems to me to be rather intimidating and manipulative but I’m not too worried about Hallowe’en itself. Of course we want to protect our children, but the world can be a scary place, and sooner or later they are sure to discover that and have to cope with it. It may not be ghosts or witches they’ll face, but perhaps illness, war, cruelty, failure – things that can be even more terrifying. Children learn to cope with the adult world through play, and it seems to me that Hallowe’en gives them a rare chance to play with their fears, and to develop their inner resilience, the sense that they can, if they need to, “feel the fear and do it anyway”. Properly handled, Hallowe’en, can give them valuable practice in this, but the key is in those words “properly handled”, and that is where I think Christian faith has some wisdom to bring to this debate.
Staring into the darkness isn’t enough on its own. Acknowledging that the world is scary isn’t enough. It’s how you understand that darkness – how you interpret and react to the bad things that happen to you and around you – that makes the difference. It’s tempting, when things go wrong in our lives, to assume that we have failed, or that God has abandoned us, and simply to give up. But those aren’t the only interpretations open to us. In our second reading today we heard Paul’s words to the Christians in Ephesus. They knew all about terror; they lived with the constant threat of persecution. Yet Paul prays that they will learn to see with “the eyes of their hearts enlightened”, and will learn to interpret their lives in a way that helps them to cope with this. He prays that they will know that, just as God was present in the darkness of the tomb when he raised Christ from the dead, he is also present with them in their dark times, working for good through the “immeasurable greatness of his power”.
Having the “eyes of your heart enlightened” might seem like an odd image, but perhaps we might think of it instead as having a sort of spiritual “night-vision”, the ability to see beyond the obvious. These days we have technology which enables us to do that physically – wildlife films use it often, and it is standard kit for the military – but even without the gadgets we all know how our eyes adjust to the darkness after a while, revealing things that you couldn’t see at first. They may not be very clear, but we can tell that there is more there, more going on than we first thought. Paul’s talking about the spiritual equivalent of that here and just like it’s physical counterpart, you only really develop it if you are prepared to sit in the darkness for a while first.
Daniel, in our Old Testament reading, is a good example of this. This is the same Daniel who was thrown into the lions’ den, but that was just one trial among many. His story is set during the time when the Jewish people were in exile in Babylon. Life was precarious for the exiles. Though Daniel had become influential in the Babylonian court, he was far from safe and he soon fell foul of its murky politics. He wouldn’t play ball with the power games of the court, and the lions’ den was the inevitable result. He wasn’t the only one to suffer though. His fellow Jews, Shadrach, Meschach and Abednego, were pushed into a fiery furnace to die because they refused to worship idols.
As it happened God preserved Daniel’s life in the lions’ den, and for the other three, the deliverance was even more dramatic. Instead of being burnt alive, they came out of the furnace with not so much as a scorch mark on them. The watching Babylonians, peering into the furnace, saw them standing in the flames, singing praises, with a fourth figure standing with them, a messenger of God sent to sustain them. Their stories have happy endings, but that doesn’t cancel out the terror that came before, or the questions which their suffering must have made them ask.
Daniel’s dream, which we heard about this morning, reflects those questions. He is trying to make sense of his ordeal. Why is God letting this happen? Is there any purpose to the sufferings of his people, or is it all pointless? Will their story end in tears or triumph? He has a dream of four great beasts rising from the sea. It is very puzzling, but a heavenly being in the vision explains it to him.
“Four kings shall arise out of the earth,” says the being. “But the holy ones of the Most High shall receive the kingdom and possess the kingdom for ever – for ever and ever” (in case he missed the point!)
The power of Babylon, the overwhelming nature of the oppression he and his people faced had loomed so large in Daniel’s sight that he couldn’t see anything else. But this isn’t the whole picture, says God, and Daniel needs to learn to see this. Empires will rise and fall, kings will come and go, and those who concentrate simply on currying favour with them will rise and fall, come and go, with them. The holy ones of God, though – those whose loyalty is to God’s kingdom of righteousness and love – will find a peace and a purpose which will last for ever and for ever, and which nothing can destroy. God calls Daniel to use his “night vision” his “enlightened eyes”, to look into the darkness that confronts him and see it for what it is, something which will pass while the deeper things of God endure.
Jesus makes the same point in the Gospels. There were many people at the time – as there are now – who assume that wealth and success are proof that you are in God’s favour, while the poor and excluded are somehow getting what they deserve. But Jesus says that God is at work in ways that don’t fit that simplistic view. Jesus will himself soon be poor, hungry and thirsty, stripped naked on a cross, sorrowful and abandoned. Does this mean he’ll have failed? No. In fact, Christians believe that it is in the darkness of the cross that we see most clearly the depth of God’s love. Jesus refuses to turn away from it, to seek an easy way out – he lives the message he has preached - and so the cross becomes to us a promise of God’s presence in every darkness, every death.
This “night vision”, the ability to see in the dark, which transforms our view of the world is something which many people of many faiths and backgrounds affirm. I was reminded of it in a story I read this week in the supporters’ magazine of the Medical Foundation for the Care of the Victims of Torture. In it, an Iranian refugee, a Muslim, wrote of her experience. She had been imprisoned without trial for many years, and for some of that time had been held along with a 17 year old girl called Nosrat. They grew close during their ordeal. Then one day, the guards burst into their cell and announced that they were to be executed. They were led out to the courtyard, blindfolded and terrified.
She wrote that as she stood there, shaking with fear, Nosrat leant close to her, took her hand and began to sing quietly into her ear. “Her voice made me warm,” she said, “like a very strong wine flowing in my veins… Her voice was like a song of the Prophet David. I felt angels flying above us, felt their wings; we weren’t alone”.
They waited for the soldiers to shoot, but at the last moment they put down their guns and began to laugh. It had all been a sick joke.
But the woman went on… “A few days later they did execute Nosrat. God didn’t save her, nor did the angels… After a few years I was freed and I still think of her song. You might not believe it, but some nights I’m woken from my sleep by her voice, her song.”
That is not, in any sense, a story with a happy ending, and yet she has clearly drawn continuing strength from that memory. “We weren’t alone” she says – and if they weren’t alone then at that darkest of times, when would she ever be alone? She discovered her “night vision” – that counter-intuitive sense of the comforting presence of God when we are at our lowest, and her story echoes to me the story of Daniel, of Jesus on the cross, of Paul and those early Christians. When the “eyes of our hearts are enlightened” we learn to see God at work even in the darkness, especially in the darkness. And then we know for sure that the darkness can never have the last or truest word. Instead of being a place of terror it becomes the home of God, a place where we can meet with him most deeply.
We keep All Saints today against the background of its shadow, Hallowe’en, and I pray that this will help us to remember that sainthood isn’t a matter of avoiding the darkness, but of discovering that within it, as in every place, the Lord of life is with us.
Amen
Night Vision : All Saints
All Saints 2010
Dan 7. 1-3, 15-18, Psalm 149, Eph 1.11-end, Luke 6.20-31
This morning we are celebrating the feast of All Saints. This evening we are going to move on swiftly to All Souls and the commemoration of our loved ones who have died. Of course the truth is that actually this isn’t really the proper day for keeping either of these feasts. Strictly speaking All Saints’ is tomorrow and All Souls’ is Tuesday; it is just more convenient to keep them now. Today, as I am sure you are all aware, is actually the eve of All Saints, All Hallows – Hallowe’en – an occasion which seems to get bigger and bigger every year, partly, I’m sure, because the shops have realised its sales potential. There are costumes for ghosts and witches in Tesco, gingerbread skeleton men in the cake shops, pumpkin lanterns to put by the front door, plastic spiders and fake webs to adorn your home (if you don’t have enough of the real thing, like us!) ,
But with this annual ghoulfest comes an equally predictable annual bout of anxiety from Christians. Hallowe’en is a sensitive subject, especially when children are involved. Is it healthy to peer into the dark aspects of life? Should we try to ban Hallowe’en or steer them away from it? Personally, though I understand those feelings, I don’t entirely share them. I’m not keen on trick or treating, which often seems to me to be rather intimidating and manipulative but I’m not too worried about Hallowe’en itself. Of course we want to protect our children, but the world can be a scary place, and sooner or later they are sure to discover that and have to cope with it. It may not be ghosts or witches they’ll face, but perhaps illness, war, cruelty, failure – things that can be even more terrifying. Children learn to cope with the adult world through play, and it seems to me that Hallowe’en gives them a rare chance to play with their fears, and to develop their inner resilience, the sense that they can, if they need to, “feel the fear and do it anyway”. Properly handled, Hallowe’en, can give them valuable practice in this, but the key is in those words “properly handled”, and that is where I think Christian faith has some wisdom to bring to this debate.
Staring into the darkness isn’t enough on its own. Acknowledging that the world is scary isn’t enough. It’s how you understand that darkness – how you interpret and react to the bad things that happen to you and around you – that makes the difference. It’s tempting, when things go wrong in our lives, to assume that we have failed, or that God has abandoned us, and simply to give up. But those aren’t the only interpretations open to us. In our second reading today we heard Paul’s words to the Christians in Ephesus. They knew all about terror; they lived with the constant threat of persecution. Yet Paul prays that they will learn to see with “the eyes of their hearts enlightened”, and will learn to interpret their lives in a way that helps them to cope with this. He prays that they will know that, just as God was present in the darkness of the tomb when he raised Christ from the dead, he is also present with them in their dark times, working for good through the “immeasurable greatness of his power”.
Having the “eyes of your heart enlightened” might seem like an odd image, but perhaps we might think of it instead as having a sort of spiritual “night-vision”, the ability to see beyond the obvious. These days we have technology which enables us to do that physically – wildlife films use it often, and it is standard kit for the military – but even without the gadgets we all know how our eyes adjust to the darkness after a while, revealing things that you couldn’t see at first. They may not be very clear, but we can tell that there is more there, more going on than we first thought. Paul’s talking about the spiritual equivalent of that here and just like it’s physical counterpart, you only really develop it if you are prepared to sit in the darkness for a while first.
Daniel, in our Old Testament reading, is a good example of this. This is the same Daniel who was thrown into the lions’ den, but that was just one trial among many. His story is set during the time when the Jewish people were in exile in Babylon. Life was precarious for the exiles. Though Daniel had become influential in the Babylonian court, he was far from safe and he soon fell foul of its murky politics. He wouldn’t play ball with the power games of the court, and the lions’ den was the inevitable result. He wasn’t the only one to suffer though. His fellow Jews, Shadrach, Meschach and Abednego, were pushed into a fiery furnace to die because they refused to worship idols.
As it happened God preserved Daniel’s life in the lions’ den, and for the other three, the deliverance was even more dramatic. Instead of being burnt alive, they came out of the furnace with not so much as a scorch mark on them. The watching Babylonians, peering into the furnace, saw them standing in the flames, singing praises, with a fourth figure standing with them, a messenger of God sent to sustain them. Their stories have happy endings, but that doesn’t cancel out the terror that came before, or the questions which their suffering must have made them ask.
Daniel’s dream, which we heard about this morning, reflects those questions. He is trying to make sense of his ordeal. Why is God letting this happen? Is there any purpose to the sufferings of his people, or is it all pointless? Will their story end in tears or triumph? He has a dream of four great beasts rising from the sea. It is very puzzling, but a heavenly being in the vision explains it to him.
“Four kings shall arise out of the earth,” says the being. “But the holy ones of the Most High shall receive the kingdom and possess the kingdom for ever – for ever and ever” (in case he missed the point!)
The power of Babylon, the overwhelming nature of the oppression he and his people faced had loomed so large in Daniel’s sight that he couldn’t see anything else. But this isn’t the whole picture, says God, and Daniel needs to learn to see this. Empires will rise and fall, kings will come and go, and those who concentrate simply on currying favour with them will rise and fall, come and go, with them. The holy ones of God, though – those whose loyalty is to God’s kingdom of righteousness and love – will find a peace and a purpose which will last for ever and for ever, and which nothing can destroy. God calls Daniel to use his “night vision” his “enlightened eyes”, to look into the darkness that confronts him and see it for what it is, something which will pass while the deeper things of God endure.
Jesus makes the same point in the Gospels. There were many people at the time – as there are now – who assume that wealth and success are proof that you are in God’s favour, while the poor and excluded are somehow getting what they deserve. But Jesus says that God is at work in ways that don’t fit that simplistic view. Jesus will himself soon be poor, hungry and thirsty, stripped naked on a cross, sorrowful and abandoned. Does this mean he’ll have failed? No. In fact, Christians believe that it is in the darkness of the cross that we see most clearly the depth of God’s love. Jesus refuses to turn away from it, to seek an easy way out – he lives the message he has preached - and so the cross becomes to us a promise of God’s presence in every darkness, every death.
This “night vision”, the ability to see in the dark, which transforms our view of the world is something which many people of many faiths and backgrounds affirm. I was reminded of it in a story I read this week in the supporters’ magazine of the Medical Foundation for the Care of the Victims of Torture. In it, an Iranian refugee, a Muslim, wrote of her experience. She had been imprisoned without trial for many years, and for some of that time had been held along with a 17 year old girl called Nosrat. They grew close during their ordeal. Then one day, the guards burst into their cell and announced that they were to be executed. They were led out to the courtyard, blindfolded and terrified.
She wrote that as she stood there, shaking with fear, Nosrat leant close to her, took her hand and began to sing quietly into her ear. “Her voice made me warm,” she said, “like a very strong wine flowing in my veins… Her voice was like a song of the Prophet David. I felt angels flying above us, felt their wings; we weren’t alone”.
They waited for the soldiers to shoot, but at the last moment they put down their guns and began to laugh. It had all been a sick joke.
But the woman went on… “A few days later they did execute Nosrat. God didn’t save her, nor did the angels… After a few years I was freed and I still think of her song. You might not believe it, but some nights I’m woken from my sleep by her voice, her song.”
That is not, in any sense, a story with a happy ending, and yet she has clearly drawn continuing strength from that memory. “We weren’t alone” she says – and if they weren’t alone then at that darkest of times, when would she ever be alone? She discovered her “night vision” – that counter-intuitive sense of the comforting presence of God when we are at our lowest, and her story echoes to me the story of Daniel, of Jesus on the cross, of Paul and those early Christians. When the “eyes of our hearts are enlightened” we learn to see God at work even in the darkness, especially in the darkness. And then we know for sure that the darkness can never have the last or truest word. Instead of being a place of terror it becomes the home of God, a place where we can meet with him most deeply.
We keep All Saints today against the background of its shadow, Hallowe’en, and I pray that this will help us to remember that sainthood isn’t a matter of avoiding the darkness, but of discovering that within it, as in every place, the Lord of life is with us.
Amen
Dan 7. 1-3, 15-18, Psalm 149, Eph 1.11-end, Luke 6.20-31
This morning we are celebrating the feast of All Saints. This evening we are going to move on swiftly to All Souls and the commemoration of our loved ones who have died. Of course the truth is that actually this isn’t really the proper day for keeping either of these feasts. Strictly speaking All Saints’ is tomorrow and All Souls’ is Tuesday; it is just more convenient to keep them now. Today, as I am sure you are all aware, is actually the eve of All Saints, All Hallows – Hallowe’en – an occasion which seems to get bigger and bigger every year, partly, I’m sure, because the shops have realised its sales potential. There are costumes for ghosts and witches in Tesco, gingerbread skeleton men in the cake shops, pumpkin lanterns to put by the front door, plastic spiders and fake webs to adorn your home (if you don’t have enough of the real thing, like us!) ,
But with this annual ghoulfest comes an equally predictable annual bout of anxiety from Christians. Hallowe’en is a sensitive subject, especially when children are involved. Is it healthy to peer into the dark aspects of life? Should we try to ban Hallowe’en or steer them away from it? Personally, though I understand those feelings, I don’t entirely share them. I’m not keen on trick or treating, which often seems to me to be rather intimidating and manipulative but I’m not too worried about Hallowe’en itself. Of course we want to protect our children, but the world can be a scary place, and sooner or later they are sure to discover that and have to cope with it. It may not be ghosts or witches they’ll face, but perhaps illness, war, cruelty, failure – things that can be even more terrifying. Children learn to cope with the adult world through play, and it seems to me that Hallowe’en gives them a rare chance to play with their fears, and to develop their inner resilience, the sense that they can, if they need to, “feel the fear and do it anyway”. Properly handled, Hallowe’en, can give them valuable practice in this, but the key is in those words “properly handled”, and that is where I think Christian faith has some wisdom to bring to this debate.
Staring into the darkness isn’t enough on its own. Acknowledging that the world is scary isn’t enough. It’s how you understand that darkness – how you interpret and react to the bad things that happen to you and around you – that makes the difference. It’s tempting, when things go wrong in our lives, to assume that we have failed, or that God has abandoned us, and simply to give up. But those aren’t the only interpretations open to us. In our second reading today we heard Paul’s words to the Christians in Ephesus. They knew all about terror; they lived with the constant threat of persecution. Yet Paul prays that they will learn to see with “the eyes of their hearts enlightened”, and will learn to interpret their lives in a way that helps them to cope with this. He prays that they will know that, just as God was present in the darkness of the tomb when he raised Christ from the dead, he is also present with them in their dark times, working for good through the “immeasurable greatness of his power”.
Having the “eyes of your heart enlightened” might seem like an odd image, but perhaps we might think of it instead as having a sort of spiritual “night-vision”, the ability to see beyond the obvious. These days we have technology which enables us to do that physically – wildlife films use it often, and it is standard kit for the military – but even without the gadgets we all know how our eyes adjust to the darkness after a while, revealing things that you couldn’t see at first. They may not be very clear, but we can tell that there is more there, more going on than we first thought. Paul’s talking about the spiritual equivalent of that here and just like it’s physical counterpart, you only really develop it if you are prepared to sit in the darkness for a while first.
Daniel, in our Old Testament reading, is a good example of this. This is the same Daniel who was thrown into the lions’ den, but that was just one trial among many. His story is set during the time when the Jewish people were in exile in Babylon. Life was precarious for the exiles. Though Daniel had become influential in the Babylonian court, he was far from safe and he soon fell foul of its murky politics. He wouldn’t play ball with the power games of the court, and the lions’ den was the inevitable result. He wasn’t the only one to suffer though. His fellow Jews, Shadrach, Meschach and Abednego, were pushed into a fiery furnace to die because they refused to worship idols.
As it happened God preserved Daniel’s life in the lions’ den, and for the other three, the deliverance was even more dramatic. Instead of being burnt alive, they came out of the furnace with not so much as a scorch mark on them. The watching Babylonians, peering into the furnace, saw them standing in the flames, singing praises, with a fourth figure standing with them, a messenger of God sent to sustain them. Their stories have happy endings, but that doesn’t cancel out the terror that came before, or the questions which their suffering must have made them ask.
Daniel’s dream, which we heard about this morning, reflects those questions. He is trying to make sense of his ordeal. Why is God letting this happen? Is there any purpose to the sufferings of his people, or is it all pointless? Will their story end in tears or triumph? He has a dream of four great beasts rising from the sea. It is very puzzling, but a heavenly being in the vision explains it to him.
“Four kings shall arise out of the earth,” says the being. “But the holy ones of the Most High shall receive the kingdom and possess the kingdom for ever – for ever and ever” (in case he missed the point!)
The power of Babylon, the overwhelming nature of the oppression he and his people faced had loomed so large in Daniel’s sight that he couldn’t see anything else. But this isn’t the whole picture, says God, and Daniel needs to learn to see this. Empires will rise and fall, kings will come and go, and those who concentrate simply on currying favour with them will rise and fall, come and go, with them. The holy ones of God, though – those whose loyalty is to God’s kingdom of righteousness and love – will find a peace and a purpose which will last for ever and for ever, and which nothing can destroy. God calls Daniel to use his “night vision” his “enlightened eyes”, to look into the darkness that confronts him and see it for what it is, something which will pass while the deeper things of God endure.
Jesus makes the same point in the Gospels. There were many people at the time – as there are now – who assume that wealth and success are proof that you are in God’s favour, while the poor and excluded are somehow getting what they deserve. But Jesus says that God is at work in ways that don’t fit that simplistic view. Jesus will himself soon be poor, hungry and thirsty, stripped naked on a cross, sorrowful and abandoned. Does this mean he’ll have failed? No. In fact, Christians believe that it is in the darkness of the cross that we see most clearly the depth of God’s love. Jesus refuses to turn away from it, to seek an easy way out – he lives the message he has preached - and so the cross becomes to us a promise of God’s presence in every darkness, every death.
This “night vision”, the ability to see in the dark, which transforms our view of the world is something which many people of many faiths and backgrounds affirm. I was reminded of it in a story I read this week in the supporters’ magazine of the Medical Foundation for the Care of the Victims of Torture. In it, an Iranian refugee, a Muslim, wrote of her experience. She had been imprisoned without trial for many years, and for some of that time had been held along with a 17 year old girl called Nosrat. They grew close during their ordeal. Then one day, the guards burst into their cell and announced that they were to be executed. They were led out to the courtyard, blindfolded and terrified.
She wrote that as she stood there, shaking with fear, Nosrat leant close to her, took her hand and began to sing quietly into her ear. “Her voice made me warm,” she said, “like a very strong wine flowing in my veins… Her voice was like a song of the Prophet David. I felt angels flying above us, felt their wings; we weren’t alone”.
They waited for the soldiers to shoot, but at the last moment they put down their guns and began to laugh. It had all been a sick joke.
But the woman went on… “A few days later they did execute Nosrat. God didn’t save her, nor did the angels… After a few years I was freed and I still think of her song. You might not believe it, but some nights I’m woken from my sleep by her voice, her song.”
That is not, in any sense, a story with a happy ending, and yet she has clearly drawn continuing strength from that memory. “We weren’t alone” she says – and if they weren’t alone then at that darkest of times, when would she ever be alone? She discovered her “night vision” – that counter-intuitive sense of the comforting presence of God when we are at our lowest, and her story echoes to me the story of Daniel, of Jesus on the cross, of Paul and those early Christians. When the “eyes of our hearts are enlightened” we learn to see God at work even in the darkness, especially in the darkness. And then we know for sure that the darkness can never have the last or truest word. Instead of being a place of terror it becomes the home of God, a place where we can meet with him most deeply.
We keep All Saints today against the background of its shadow, Hallowe’en, and I pray that this will help us to remember that sainthood isn’t a matter of avoiding the darkness, but of discovering that within it, as in every place, the Lord of life is with us.
Amen
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