Easter 2: My Lord and my God

 Today we had the joy of a baptism in the service! Congratulations to Eliza, her parents and godparents.

Names matter. I know that Eliza’s names were chosen carefully, not just picked at random, for all they meant to you, for the precious people they reminded you of. What we call our children says something about our feelings about them, our hopes and dreams for them, what we believe about them and their identity. I’ve never met parents who have called their children a name they don’t like, at least at the time, however the child feels about it when they grow up.

 

We give people titles too, which say a lot about what we think of them. Being addressed as Sir or Madam by someone serving you or helping you implies respect, “Oi you!”, not so much.

 

In today’s Gospel story, the names, or rather the titles, Thomas uses for Jesus are equally important. Who does he think Jesus is?

At the start of the story, the only labels he has in his mind for Jesus are the labels “dead” and “failed”. He has just seen Jesus arrested, crucified and buried.  Whatever Thomas had hoped for has died with him. Like all the other disciples, Thomas had invested a huge amount in the idea that Jesus was the Messiah, leaving home and family and livelihood to follow him, putting his own life in danger, but it has all been for nothing. He is just another dead, failed leader.

 

But then the other disciples start to tell him that it isn’t so. That Jesus has been raised from death, and has appeared to them. We don’t know why he wasn’t there with the rest on that first evening after the resurrection, when the rest of the disciples saw Jesus. He might have run away, needed to be alone after the crucifixion. He may just have gone on some errand – someone presumably had to buy food. But he wasn’t there, so he missed seeing Jesus. And, understandably, he wasn’t going to accept the word of the others. Why should he? Would we have done?

 

But a week later, Jesus appears again. For him. Just for him. And he invites Thomas to do the very thing that Thomas  had said he needed in order to believe. “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side” says Jesus. There’s no judgement in Jesus’ words. He just gives Thomas what he needs, meets him in his doubt and gives him the time and space to come to his own conclusion. But Thomas turns out not to need much convincing. We’re not told that he actually does touch Jesus - the sight of him seems to be enough.  

 

And suddenly those awful labels “dead” and “failed” are replaced by the joyful acclamation, “My Lord and my God!”. My Lord and my God.

 

He doesn’t call Jesus “Rabbi”, or “teacher” – titles that he had often been called during his ministry – he calls him Lord and God. But what does that mean to him? Why is it so significant?

 

Let’s start with the second word – God. John’s Gospel, in which this story is told, was the last of the four Gospels to be written, around the end of the first century, about 70 years after Jesus’ death, and it is the one which goes furthest in identifying Jesus as God, one with his Father. The early Christians  had had 70 years to ponder the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. During his life they’d had the sense that he showed them what God was like in a new and unique way. They didn’t understand it, but somehow they knew that although he was completely human, there was something very different happening through him. The doctrine of the Trinity doesn’t appear in the Bible, but it came into being because those early Christians came to believe that in meeting Jesus, and later encountering the Holy Spirit, they were meeting the same person they had always known as Creator.  That idea that God could be three in one doesn’t make a lot of sense, logically, but it made complete sense psychologically and spiritually to those who formulated it. It was what they experienced.

 

When Thomas meets Jesus again after his resurrection, he knows that whatever has happened is completely beyond his grasp, infinitely bigger than his brain can comprehend. He knows that he is in the presence of total mystery, in the presence of God, just as Moses does when he encounters God in the burning bush, something he can’t deny, but can’t explain either. God himself.

 

But Thomas doesn’t just call Jesus God. He also calls him Lord. What does that mean. In the Greek the Gospel was written in, the word is “kyrios”, and it was used of anyone who was in charge, who led others. It was the title given to the head of a household, who, at the time would have had complete power over and responsibility for the family and the servants. Not every “kyrios” was good, but a good “kyrios” would lead the household well, caring for its members, and they would follow him and play their part in the household as a result. Our English word “Lord” comes from an Anglo-Saxon word “Hlaf–ward”, literally the “loaf-ward”, the one who guarded the bread, who provided for those under his authority, so it carried the same sense. You didn’t call someone Lord simply because you thought they were important or good; you called them Lord because you recognised their claim on you, their authority over you, because you recognised that your life was tied up with theirs, that you had thrown in your lot with them.

 

When Thomas calls Jesus, “Lord”, that’s what he means. His faith in Jesus isn’t about intellectual assent to a set of ideas, it is a commitment to live in the way that Jesus wants him to. From now on, what Thomas does, his priorities, his actions, will be shaped by the message of Jesus. Legend says that Thomas eventually travelled to India, taking the Gospel there, and that he was the founder of the first Indian churches. It’s not impossible or unlikely, as there were well established trade links between the Middle East and India at the time. There are all sorts of legends about what happened to Thomas, but whatever the truth of it, we can be sure that, like all the other apostles, it wasn’t how he had thought his life would turn out when he was young.

 

We don’t know what Eliza will do or be when she is grown up, but our prayer for her today is that she will find a sure anchor, a firm foundation in her life, that she will see, and find for herself good things, and good people to look to for guidance and help, and ultimately that, like Thomas, her life will be rooted and grounded in the love of God, her Lord and her God.

Amen

Good Friday: Lamb of God

Matthew 27

In a few minutes, the choir are going to sing an anthem by Samuel Webbe, “Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis, dona nobis pacem.” Or, in English, “Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, have mercy on us, grant us peace”. You might recognise those words. We sing or say them at every communion service, just before we share the bread and wine. Whether in Latin or in English, The Agnus Dei has been set to thousands of different tunes over the centuries. Every self-respecting composer has composed music for them, from the simplest plainchant to the wonderful complexities of Bach’s B Minor mass. But sometimes, the familiarity of the words mean that we miss the oddness of the image they contain. 

Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world. We all know who is being referred to – it’s Jesus. But why a Lamb? What does that have to do with Jesus? 

These words were introduced into the communion service by a 7th century Pope , Sergius I. They were his reaction to a ruling by a rather obscure Church Council meeting in Constantinople which had banned Christians from painting pictures of Jesus as a Lamb, probably against the backdrop of a more general nervousness at the time of making images of living things at all. At least, said the ruling, if you must paint pictures of Jesus, let it be as a human being, not as a dumb animal. Sergius wasn’t impressed with this ruling, and decided that, if you couldn’t paint Jesus as a Lamb, you ought to be able to sing about him as one, and the rest is history. It was a slightly passive-aggressive work-around, but the Agnus Dei was here to stay.

Pope Sergius wanted to keep this imagery of Jesus as the Lamb because it was  deeply Biblical. John the Baptist had called Jesus the Lamb of God, pointing him out to his disciples when he came to him for baptism at the beginning of his ministry. You’ll often find a lamb or a sheep somewhere in paintings of John the Baptist for that reason. But John didn’t invent this image out of nowhere either. He was drawing on the long tradition of sacrifice which was the bedrock of Jewish faith, and in particular on the story of the Exodus from Egypt, and the last of the ten plagues God sent to try to persuade Pharaoh to let the Israelite slaves go free.

When that tenth and final plague struck, killing all the first born in Egypt, Israelite households were spared, provided they had sacrificed a lamb and smeared its blood on their doorposts. Ever afterwards, lambs were sacrificed at the feast of Passover to remember that deliverance of Israel from Egypt. The Israelites rejoiced at their liberation, but, of course, the whole business looked rather different from the perspective of the lamb. Freedom comes at a cost, especially for the lamb. 

The prophet Isaiah picked up the image of the lamb led to the slaughter in the words we heard earlier. He was writing to Israelites at another difficult time in their history, when they were in exile in Babylon. He spoke of a new leader, the leader Israel needed, but he wouldn’t be a great warrior, coming in obvious strength and power. He would meet with opposition and suffering. “He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth.”  Christians heard echoes of these words in the life and death of Jesus. This was how God worked, they said, choosing unlikely people, like the vulnerable baby Moses left to his fate in a reed basket in the River Nile, or the shepherd boy David, who had defeated the giant Goliath – or, indeed, the carpenter from Nazareth, who had called his followers to love their enemies and had prayed for forgiveness for his executioners even as they nailed him to the cross, who had looked weak, a failure, disgraced by his shameful death, but whom God had raised to new life. That’s why in Christian imagery, the Lamb of God is often pictured carrying a flag of victory. We’ve probably all come across that image, even if it’s only on a pub sign – there are quite a few “Lamb and Flag” pubs around! I’ve explored some of these thoughts in the display here at the front of church.

This image of the triumph of vulnerability can be challenging, though. When we’re in trouble, up against it, our natural response is usually to try to throw our weight around, to big ourselves up, to play the strong man or woman. But the message of Christ’s death is that the light of God breaks into the world through his weakness and vulnerability, through his willingness to give up power, to serve rather than be served. 

Good Friday challenges us to follow a Lamb, not a mighty warrior, one who lovingly accepted that his death was an inevitable part of that mission his Father had called him to, and by doing so cut through the tangled knot of sin which ensnares us all, giving us that peace for which we long.  

I’d like to finish with a poem by Brian Cremer, which challenges us to think about the deeply counter-cultural idea of the strength that comes through vulnerability, and many ways that was seen in the ministry of Jesus’ ,the Lamb who wins the freedom for us all through his death. 

 

We want the war horse.

Jesus rides a donkey.

We want the bird of prey.

The Holy Spirit descends as a dove.

We want the militia.

Jesus calls fishermen, tax collectors, 

women, and children.

We want the courtroom.

Jesus sets a table.

We want the gavel.

Jesus washes feet.

We want to take up swords.

Jesus takes up a cross.

We want the empire.

Jesus brings the Kingdom of God.

We want the nation.

Jesus calls the church.

We want the roaring lion.

God comes as a slaughtered lamb.

We keep trying to arm God.

God keeps trying to disarm us.

(Benjamin Cremer)

 

 

May we be disarmed by God and learn to follow the Lamb in his way of love.

Amen 

Maundy Thursday: Do this in remembrance

 1 Cor 11.23-26, John 13.1-35

As many of you will know, our Lent Course at Seal this year explored this service that we are taking part in today, the service of Holy Communion – or the Eucharist, the Lord’s Supper, the Mass. Depending on your church tradition you might call it any of these things, but, as we discovered, each one casts a different light on this ancient service. Eucharist comes from the Greek word for “thanks” – we can only share bread and wine because God first gave it to us, so this service should be a reminder to live thankfully. Calling the service Holy Communion emphasizes the closenesss with God and one another that is at its heart, with all the complexities that can bring. People can be anxious about coming close to God, not sure if they belong or will be accepted, and how we feel about being close to others depends a lot on how we feel about the others! “Mass” is more usually a name you’d hear for this service in Roman Catholic or High Anglican Churches. It comes from the words that close the service in the old Latin liturgy, “Ite, missa est” – roughly translated as “Go, it is finished or sent” – the equivalent in our service is that dismissal “Go in peace to love and serve the Lord”. It’s thought that people who didn’t understand Latin simply recognised the word “missa” , and applied it to the whole service, hence “Mass”, but I like the way it emphasizes that the point of the service isn’t simply to spend an hour in a holy bubble, but to carry something back out into the world. It’s often said that “what happens in Las Vegas, stays in Las Vegas”, but “what happens in the Mass” certainly shouldn’t stay in the Mass. It should be food for the journey, something which equips and strengthens us to live and love as the people of God, bringing good news to those around us. 

But the fourth of the common titles for this service, the Lord’s Supper, is perhaps the one which comes to the fore today, because tonight we are very consciously recalling the story of Jesus’ Last Supper with his friends. He took bread and wine, shared them and told his friends that every time they did this, they should do it “in remembrance of him". In some sense, the bread and wine would be his body and blood, his presence with them.  Whatever else this service is, it is the Lord’s Supper, something he did with his followers on the night before he died, something he told us to do as well. Something about this business of eating and drinking together mattered to him. He could have said “read the Bible in remembrance of me” or “work for justice in remembrance of me“or “love one another in remembrance of me”, but he didn’t. He said, “Do this! Eat and drink together in remembrance of me”. Maybe that seems odd, because those other things sound more important than eating and drinking, but perhaps Jesus knew that in order to do those things, we first needed to do this thing, to eat and drink together in his company. 

Jesus’ commandment is puzzling, and theologians and church leaders have puzzled much over it. They have argued. They have even fought and killed one another as they try to define what is happening as we share bread and wine. Does it literally become the body and blood of Jesus, even if it still tastes like bread and wine – an idea which became popular during the Middle Ages, but was firmly rejected by Protestant reformers? Or was Jesus present spiritually in some special way in the elements of communion? Or maybe these were simply symbols, reminders of an ancient story, but nothing special in themselves? Most Anglicans tend to sit on a spectrum between the second and third of those options today. 

But in a way, trying to understand communion isn’t the point, and a lot of needless suffering has been caused because we have tried to. To me, it’s the very wordlessness of Communion that is the most important thing about it, the incomprehensibility of it. After all, we don’t need to understand food in order to be nourished by it. If that were the case, newborn babies would soon starve to death. They don’t know why they need their mother’s milk. They are just born with an instinct to seek it out. We don’t need to understand the chemistry that makes sugar, butter, eggs and flour into a cake in order to enjoy it – or what makes a tomato taste so delicious, if you want a healthier option – we just have to eat it. 

Sharing food – eating together – seems almost instinctual too. It feels very inhospitable not to offer food and drink when someone comes to visit, and special occasions feel flat without some sort of bun fight afterwards. The widespread fury over the Downing Street “Partygate” gatherings is rooted in the fact that the rest of us would have longed to share food and drink with family, friends and colleagues, but couldn’t and didn’t, even after funerals, when it would have brought such comfort to do so.  Knowing that those who’d made the rules hadn’t kept them just rubbed salt in the wound. What was so significant about a shared cup of tea after a funeral? Would the tea taste any different if people drank it on their own at home? No, but it emphasized their loneliness to have to do so.

I asked at the beginning of the Lent course, whether, if there was a pill we could take to supply all our nutritional needs, people would take it. Despite all the preparation and washing up it would save – an appealing thought for some – people generally answered no, especially not for those special times together, Christmas and Easter, Birthdays and Anniversaries, or meals out with friends. Sharing food, lingering over it together, makes memories, and also unlocks memories; of past celebrations and the people we shared them with – remembering them brings them back into our lives – of things we’ve done and things that have happened to us. There may be arguments, tensions, subjects we try to avoid – we’ve all had uncomfortable family dinners, I’m sure – but the fact that we are eating together says that in some sense we recognise that we belong together, that we aren’t strangers to one another, but part of one body. 

The Last Supper that Jesus shared was no different, in that sense. “Love one another, as I have loved you,” he said to his disciples. You are one family, grafted into one vine, whether you like it or not. And if that feels like a challenge – as it almost certainly will at some point - then we should remember who was at that table with him then, Judas who betrayed him, Peter who denied knowing him, and all the rest who ran away. Despite that, or maybe because of that, they needed this memory of shared bread and wine, shared love, to heal and restore them to one another and God. However we understand communion, the message is that it matters. It draws us to each other and to God, reminding us that we are indestructibly linked together by his love, and held together in his hands, no matter what has happened, or what we’ve done..  

Among us and before us Lord, you stand,” says the hymn we shall sing later,”with arms outstretched and bread and wine at hand. Confronting those unworthy of a crumb, you ask that to your table we should come.”

May we, in the words of the song, say “Yes” to God’s invitation, not just to the physical sharing of bread and wine, but to the sharing of our lives with one another and with him, meeting him in this meal, where he still nourishes, heals and blesses. 

Amen 

Palm Sunday

 Palm Sunday 2023

Mt 21.1-11, Psalm 118

I wonder whether you have ever been part of a procession or a march?

They come in many shapes and sizes. Small processions like those we start our morning worship in church with, that simply signal that the service is about to begin, or vast protest marches that snake their way through the streets in one cause or another. They can be joyful celebrations, like the Notting Hill Carnival or a Pride March, or they can be dark, threatening events, designed to spread hatred and violence. They can be secular or religious in intent, like the procession Philip and I went to see a few years ago in Sardinia, where, every year, thousands of local people process the statue of their patron saint, Ephisio, through the streets of Cagliari, and on out to the place where he was martyred in the fourth century. It's a great spectacle, with the traditional costumes and decorated ox-carts, but it’s also an act of worship; they pray the rosary as they walk.

What unites all these marches is that they aren’t just about getting from A to B. It’s no accident that some of them are called demonstrations. They are meant to convey a message, to demonstrate something to the onlookers. There is usually at least some level of planning and organisation, placards, slogans, banners, music, symbolism or ritual to underline what they are trying to say. 

It’s just the same in today’s Gospel reading. When Jesus comes riding into Jerusalem on a donkey, he knows exactly what he’s doing, and what effect it’s likely to have. 

The details matter. Jesus rides in on a donkey, in fact, according to Matthew, he rides on the colt of a donkey too, which is a bit hard to imagine. It may just be Matthew’s invention, because the other Gospels don’t mention it, but it’s possible that Jesus did indeed seek out a donkey with a foal, because he is very deliberately trying to echo what would then have been a well-known prophecy from the prophet Zechariah, written hundreds of  years before, which said that God’s Messiah, the new King who would deliver his people from oppression,  would come “humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey”. The repetition was really just intended to emphasize the humility of this king, but maybe Matthew, or Jesus, decided to take it literally, so no one could miss the point. And whether it’s one animal or two, the fact is that Jesus could just as easily have walked the short distance from the Mount of Olives into Jerusalem, but he didn’t, because he wanted people to be in no doubt about the claim he was making, to be the one who was coming “in the name of the Lord!” The very deliberate message of his actions obviously had the desired effect. The crowd went wild. Freedom was coming. God was on the move. 

But this rather strange procession wasn’t the only one happening in Jerusalem at this time. The Roman Army was also on the move. This all takes place about a week before Passover. Thousands of Jewish people were gathering in Jerusalem, from all over Judea and Galilee, and from Jewish communities all around the Mediterranean. Religious and political feelings always ran high at this time of year. So, the Roman Governor, Pontius Pilate, not only sent troops from his base in Caesarea Maritima on the coast to police Jerusalem, but came himself too. He wanted to make sure that everyone knew that Rome was watching them. He didn’t just amble into Jerusalem with his soldiers. He knew the optics mattered. He had to have a procession too, one which would strike fear into the hearts of those who saw it; the sunshine gleaming off armour and weapons; the fine war horses;  the chariots; the clank of swords and spears and shields and many marching feet. Don’t mess with Rome, was the message. We are the ones with power. 

The Romans, just like empire builders throughout the ages, made much of the idea that they were bringers of peace, saviours. They were there to save people from warfare with their neighbours, to save them from barbarism, to save them from themselves. But their form of salvation came at a huge cost. The Pax Romana – the Roman Peace – was won by brutally suppressing anyone who didn’t want to be part of it. 

Rome had all the power. It held all the cards, as these two processions made their way into Jerusalem. And yet, it’s Jesus who gets the Hosannas, not Pilate. Hosanna is a Hebrew word that means “save us”. You only cry “save us” to someone you think can save you. But how do they think Jesus can do so? A man on a donkey, with a handful of followers, and unlikely ones at that; fishermen and tax collectors, women, the poor, the marginalised, people with no influence, never mind any armour. And yet, says the story, this is what salvation really looks like. Not swords and spears, not wealth and worldly power, but love and humility and service which draws people together and gives dignity to everyone. 

Perhaps as they acclaim him, they might have today’s Psalm running through their minds. Psalm 118 is one of a group of Psalms known as the Hallel psalms –Psalms 113 -118.  Hallel means praise, and these praise psalms were particularly sung at Passover. They tell of God’s saving action towards his people, salvation which they saw at work in their history, and in their daily lives, rather than salvation that came only after death. The psalms reminded them of the God who saved them from Egyptian slavery, the God who sees and helps the poor and needy, the God whose “steadfast love endures forever”.  In the words of Psalm 118 God brings his people into a “broad place”, a place where there is room for them, where they can thrive. “It is better to take refuge in the Lord,” says the Psalm “than to put confidence in princes”, and although it may look as if you are defeated, “pushed hard, so that [you were] falling”, in the end, God will carry you through.

Of course, many of those who shouted Hosanna – save us – at Jesus would melt away when he was arrested and killed later in the same week. It’s hard to believe that love is stronger than hatred when you are confronted with the overwhelming brutality of crucifixion. But at this moment, at least, they caught a glimpse of the message that the God who had saved them from slavery could save them again, even if his salvation looked very different from that on offer from Rome. That message wouldn’t be confirmed until after the resurrection, but this was a foretaste of it.

Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem wasn’t just a challenge to the authorities, it was a challenge to all of us, asking us what salvation looks like to us, and where we look for it. Salvation is really just another name for security or safety, something we all hunger for. We all want to feel safe, and it’s tempting to try to find security through money, power or popularity, but these can be dangerous illusions, and clinging onto them for dear life often damages others as well as ourselves, and ultimately, it doesn’t work. We can’t make ourselves safe in a world that is so often uncertain and frightening, where the threats are far beyond our power to control.

This story tells us, though, that ultimately, the security we crave, which causes us to cry out “hosanna” – save us - can only come when we put ourselves into God’s hands, and learn to live in the “broad place” of his generous love. Receiving that love and sharing that love, is what carries us safely together through all the world can throw at us, just as it did for Jesus.  

Amen