What does your faith cost the rest of the world?

The Seventh Sunday of Easter

Year C

Acts 16:16-34

…as we were going to the place of prayer, we met a slave girl who had a spirit of divination and brought her owners a great deal of money by fortune-telling. While she followed Paul and us, she would cry out, "These men are slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to you a way of salvation." She kept doing this for many days. But Paul, very much annoyed, turned and said to the spirit, "I order you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her." And it came out that very hour.

But when her owners saw that their hope of making money was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace before the authorities.

You’ve probably heard a sermon or two asking whether your Christian faith has ever cost you anything.  This Sunday’s reading from the Acts of the Apostles opens the door to another question, though:  What has your faith cost the society around you? 

The Romans expressed everything from mild irritation to outright persecution of non-Roman religions.  They could not countenance the Jews with their Sabbath, for example.  To what end is it worth having a slave, an indentured servant or even a business partner of the “Hebrew Persuasion” who insisted on taking one perfectly good day out of the week and refusing to work on it?  A slave you could always beat but some would gladly endure a beating for the sake of their Sabbath.  And these Christians with their refusal to do their patriotic duty by sacrificing a pinch of incense to the Genius of Caesar on the small altars set up in front of public buildings!  Religious fanatics all of them and not to be trusted.  A drain upon public solidarity.  Roman society was, in the main, conservative, pragmatic and mercantile.  Nothing wrong with peace, order and good government and at the same time making a little dough in the ordered space that a well-managed society offered you.

Saint Paul cast out a “spirit of divination” from a little slave girl who was following him and his associates throughout the city of Philippi.  It’s what you would expect a follower of Jesus to do.  In this case, however, the little girl’s fortune telling was a source of considerable income to her owners.  Her healing cost them something and the enduring presence of Paul and his associates in Philippi and even more so later in Ephesus (chapter 19) promised to threaten the local economy by freeing men and women from their magical practices and their idols.  It undermined their loyalty.

Not many of you have a “spirit of divination” which might cause alarm and concern to your pastor or to the members of this parish.  But as men and women redeemed by Christ and called from the world into the family of God you have a competing loyalty which might, could, should or even must cause you to consider how you make and spend your money, how violently you climb the ladder of success, how you relate to your employer and your employee. 

Your school, your business and your political party need to be put on notice.  God has his claws in you.  You are no longer a company man.

Naming the Saints of God

The Sixth Sunday of Easter

Year C

Acts 16:9-15

We set sail from Troas and took a straight course to Samothrace,

the following day to Neapolis, and from there to Philippi…

When the train arrives at the station here in Clermont Ferrand the crowds pour out of the up escalator at the Gare. Crowds at rush hour are pretty anonymous – a nameless mass of moving humanity. You can quickly ascertain who has somewhere to go immediately and who doesn't. The ones with a determined look and a quick pace disappear quickly while the others stop for coffee or stand on the corner talking with their friends. Grab one of the quick ones in your imagination. “Where are you going?”you ask.

“I have a class at 8 o'clock at the university.”

“I have a sales call in fifteen minutes”.

“My appointment at the hospital is this morning and I want to be early in line.”

Newly arrived at Philippi from the dockside at Neapolis long ago Saint Paul lingered with a few of his fellow workers in the high street. He'd been conveyed inland to the right town but hadn't yet been told where he was to present himself. There he stood with his secretary (Luke - carrying the stationary case) and a couple of associates knowing only that God had told him in a vision to come here and be of help to the struggling local church – wherever it was. Together they intended to go where the church would likely meet. They would be shown what to do next. 

Take some time to read through Acts 15-17. God was clearly out and about in the Roman Empire. He was bringing men and women to faith in large centres and in out-of-the-way places. He was bringing strangers together in the towns and cities of the Empire. They were small business people, they were household servants – Jews and Gentiles. The Christian establishment back in Jerusalem was now being called on to be fellow workers with God in the process which he was initiating and with the people who he knew already. All Paul and his friends needed to do was to make themselves available and to weather the uncertainty. They were to “loiter with intent”.

Our story began with a vision from God which St Paul received of an unnamed man in Macedonia pleading for help. It's an imprecise commission but it prompted Paul and his associates “immediately” to get on the next boat. What follows in the rest of chapter 16 and into chapter 17 is a rush of personal names and place names – difficult words which will daunt whoever reads the second lesson this Sunday. Luke goes to length to name these people. The anonymity collapses and personalities emerge. These are the building blocks of the church which God builds.

Do we talk in our churches about Outreach and Mission as if they were projects which began and ended with us? Have we forgotten that the Spirit of God is already abroad in the world? Our role is much more to respond to what he has already begun in hearts of people who we hope to have the honour of being able one day to name and to know.

They were once like us.

Easter 4

Year C

Revelation 7:9-17

The folks at home eating Chinese take-out on folding TV tables scan the celebrities who come into view as a camera pans the crowd at a royal wedding or some other great national event.

“There's Elton John” says mum.

“Who's Elton John?” her granddaughter asks her.

“There's the former Chancellor of the Exchequer and, oh yes, that other fellow who was always on the news during the Falklands war – what's his name?'

If mum would ever just “stifle” and stop talking over the television she would be told who's who in due course. Nicholas Witchell, the BBC's royal correspondent does yeoman service filling in the blanks for those of us who need our memories jogged at great events. That's his job, after all. He knows. In the vision of John of Patmos (which we know in English as the Book of Revelation and which the rest of the world calls the Apocalypse), a heavenly elder turns to John the viewer and asks:

“Who are these, robed in white, and where have they come from?”

At first glance these figures dressed in white with their palm branches in hand who have gathered around the throne of God and the Lamb are angels or some other heavenly beings. In which case, they differ from me in their very nature. That they can show up at the west door with invitations to the heavenly event is no surprise, being born to it and all.

“John the Revelator” was possibly a prisoner in the island's salt mines when he had his vision. He writes like a Hebrew or Aramaic speaker who's learned a bit of journeyman's Greek along the way. He's nothing special.  So why does the heavenly elder ask him about the identity of the crowd? John appears put-out at this reversal of roles: “Sir, you are the one that knows.” he says.

Why ask the question? Might it be that not knowing at the outset is a part of the process and that a question nails that insecurity better? The first part of the elder's question provokes an immediate response: No, I am not one of those saints. The Revelator must feel the rawness of his own life first - the rags which barely cover his nakedness, the banishment and hard labour on the Island of Patmos. 

Try to remember that the emphasis in the elder's question is on the second part:  “...where have they come from?”  The “clearly not me” surrenders a little bit in the elder's explanation that these are ordinary humans who have 

"...come out of the great ordeal; they have washed their robes and 

made them white in the blood of the Lamb." 

My life in the salt mine as an exile for Christ performs some change in my nature. The pain of faithful life is not wasted. I am a prisoner. I am a member of a persecuted religious minority in a Roman outpost. I write in a language in which I have no ease because I am impelled to testify to the victory of God in the presence of my brothers and sisters. I am a member of a tiny church with a difficult demographic and an uncertain future. My faith is pretty well all that I have. I struggle to profess that faith in the midst of colleagues, parents or children who share little of it. 

I now know the answer to both sides of the elder's question:

I am not there right now.

But those who are 

or will be there

were once where I am now.

Simon Peter in the school of love.

Easter 3
Year C                                          
 John 21:1-19

Jesus asks Peter – Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?

These ‘what’ exactly? More than ‘this’ life, represented by the items of a fisherman’s trade scattered around on the beach – these nets, these spools of braided line, these floats?

Or – do you love me more than these other disciples love me?
You, Peter, pre-eminent among my followers:
                      Do you love me more than these others do?

The question arising between a man and a woman or a parent and a child - 'Do you love me?' - might be playful or perhaps it probes at some perceived weakness.

Do you love me? (of course you do)
Do you love me? (I want to hear you say it)
Do you love me? (I suspect that you do not)
Do you love me? (I wonder if you know what that means)

I’ll roll the dice and will hold that:

1. When Jesus asked Peter if he loved him more than these that he was referring to the other disciples gathered with them on the beach.

2. He asks the question three times because Peter has denied him three times and;

3. That when he asked Peter whether or not he loved him he was wondering if Peter knew what that meant.

Because it is not clear that we always know what love means.

You'll have heard of the well-known “tussle” here in the conversation between Jesus and Peter:

Three times Jesus asks Peter whether he loves him and twice he uses the Greek word (agapao) which refers to the type of love which gives and sacrifices, a love which lifts up the beloved.  Peter keeps replying “Yes, Lord I love you” and uses the word (phileo) which is a more ordinary emotional attachment or affection.

You would expect that with the the second  time of asking Peter would have twigged that the repeated question with a particular word was meant to hammer him into shape but, in fact, it is Jesus who draws near to Peter and uses Peter’s inadequate word for love in his final question:  "Peter, do you love me?"

Peter has not yet fathomed the love that Jesus asks about.  Jesus, though, will begin in the place where his disciple stands and use the words that Peter can speak and know here in this School of Love which convenes on a Galilean beach.   It was the same way he encountered Thomas in the School of Faith which met behind locked doors in Jerusalem in last week’s Gospel reading.

Jesus starts where these disciples are but the lesson does not finish there..   The School of Love will carry on.  Peter will come to learn love’s meaning.  Jesus finishes with the words:   “Follow me”.

This open door

A recurring dream I’ve had over the years has a door appearing in the hallway of one of my childhood homes in Winnipeg, Manitoba where no such door ever existed.  Doorways in dreams, I’m told, represent novelty, change and new direction.  Apparently it’s very good news when doors appear in your dreams – well done you!    One of the icons of Easter is the empty tomb with the large stone rolled to one side.  You might see it stitched into church banners and worked into stained glass windows.   An empty tomb is an open door.  It’s an uncompleted story – a marvellously altered trajectory.

Isn’t there something “sadly wearying” about the events of the last few weeks with the airport and metro bombings in Brussels?  Shock comes first, of course, but then we see the true intent of such terrorist attacks as they compel people to harden and reinforce their prejudices.  Ah, we say – here’s the trajectory:  Communities driven in upon themselves and communication across cultural and ethnic boundaries faltering.  Suddenly we hear things from normally good-hearted people which seem shocking and abnormal.  We find ourselves thinking some of these same things.  We mediate the shame of feeling this way by appealing to its normalcy.  That’s what always happens, we say.  It’s the way things go because that’s the way the world is or because that’s the way we are.  Why fight it?  They go that way because powerful people are pushing events along that path.  Who are we to stand up to them?   

The Good Friday opponents of Jesus felt that the trajectory was on their side.  They had settled and ended forever this particular rabbi’s take on the Kingdom of God, clicked shut his open door to restoration for the outcasts amongst the common people he’d met and preached to in the Galilee and Jerusalem.  All those parables, those healings, those glimpses of the kingdom – all these were locked away forever. For their part, Jesus’ scattered disciples knew the trajectory was against them.  The story had no extra chapter.  The Jesus story was sealed in a guarded tomb – the new normal.   

The Easter tomb is not an “ordinary” outcome in any generation.  Within the plot of the New Testament this open door remains God’s extraordinary pledge that the world’s predictable downward spirals are not the last word.  

Stitch that on your banners.   Set it in your church windows. Love will achieve its outcome and hope will have its day. 

The 2^nd Sunday of Easter

Year C

John 20:19-31

Thomas doesn't have much of a speaking part in the Gospel of John.

Thomas appears to decline each time he opens his mouth. His first words (John 11:16) were a pep-talk he gave to the other disciples when Jesus suggested a return to Judea where he and his disciples had already been threatened with mob violence. Thomas suggested that they should together go and die with him.  All very noble, this, and the very thing you'd expect an apostle to say.  But something happened to Thomas along the way.  A few chapters later Jesus told his disciples that he was going to prepare a place for them - a home in the heavenly places.  Thomas' response (John 14:5) shows not only that he seems a bit thick and has misunderstood the big picture of what Jesus is saying.  It reveals a deep dis-ease and uncertainty at the centre of his soul

Lord we don’t know where you are 
going, so how can we know the way?

Show me a map.  Explain how it will be.  Tell me where to put my feet.  Which is more or less how Thomas will later challenge the other disciples (John 20:24-29) when he finds himself among people who have witnessed the risen Christ where he himself has not and is asked to share their joy which he believes he cannot.  Show me the map, he says again.  Show me the prints of the nails.  Show me the wounds in the side. 

I will not believe unless…..

This is not a story where the Church mocks Thomas.  Rarely does the question boil down to a  binary issue of whether we have faith or whether we don't as if there were a lottery going on and the lucky among us scratch the little box that reveals with an exclamation mark that “Congratulations you have faith!” and others merely uncover the words “Better luck next time!”  Our Gospel reading this Sunday is a story about God’s active and continuing interest in bringing faith to the surface and nurturing it into visible reality – exactly as Jesus does for Thomas in the story. Faith is discovered by needing and using it and by finding that God indeed makes it possible.   

I've been at this for well over thirty years now and have sat next to all sorts of people facing things which led them to wonder if they had the faith necessary to get through the next month or even the next six hours.  Most of them proved themselves pillars.  Most of them would testify to the active support of something beyond themselves as and while they forged forward with a degree of faith they were not sure they had.

Later stories about Thomas, while in no way certain, are reasonably well-founded.  From his base in Edessa in western Turkey he is said to have then traveled to India.  We may reasonably assume he did so without a map.  He had been schooled in faith at an uncertain time at the wounded hands of Jesus.   You may have been so schooled yourselves.  You may yet be.   You should pray to be.

Seek, find and be amazed!

Easter Sunday - Year C
Luke 24:1-12

…these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did

not believe them.  But Peter got up and ran to the tomb;

stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves;

then he went home, amazed at what had happened.

The ancient rubbish tip outside the ancient Egyptian town of Oxyrhynchus yielded a Greek fragment of the curious text of the Gospel of Thomas - an enigmatic book which contains morsels of Jesus material at least as old as our first three Gospels mixed in with odd philosophical and even heretical musings from the third century.  It’s not been included amongst our canonical Gospels for some quite good reasons.  Nonetheless it does yield the odd gem:

(2) [Jesus said], "Let him who seeks continue [seeking until] he finds.

When he finds, [he will be amazed. And] when he becomes [amazed],

he will rule. And [once he has ruled], he will [attain rest]."

There is no question that the disciples and other early witnesses to the resurrection were perplexed, thunderstruck, disturbed and, in the case above, “amazed” by the events of Easter Sunday morning.  That they did not understand immediately doesn’t seem to matter because our Evangelists are telling two parallel stories about the Easter morning events and the appearances of the risen Christ in the days which followed:  What did God do?  And (because the Gospels are designed to be read by men and women of faith and to help refine and underpin that faith with the historical record) How did men and women react to the Resurrection? 

The resurrection of Jesus is not an incomprehensible loud noise which deafens the attending disciples. Their perplexity is temporary.  It will be nurtured into faith through their fellowship with the risen Christ, through his words in the following forty days and through the future confirmation of the Holy Spirit.  This is the remaking of a fallen creation.   God’s pledge is to make that creation new again.  The risen Christ will be not only observed but in fact witnessed (there’s a difference!) and then proclaimed and for that to happen the Resurrection will come to be understood. 

I want to point to one very early response, on Peter’s part, which even preceded his sprint to the empty tomb much less any coherent understanding.  The women had returned with a story which seemed, to the gathered and grieving disciples, a vain and empty tale.  Without any particular textual justification, I can imagine Peter in another room hearing every second word shouted out by grieving and perhaps even angry disciples as they argue with the women.  The words beyond the wall sink in – idle – tale - master – gone – tomb – empty.   The merest shred of possibility presents itself that all is not in fact ended.  Like a dull ember buried deep in the ashes, hope finds a little tinder in Peter’s soul and catches light.   He’s off like a shot.  Prior to faith in full flower there can be both will and openness.  

Keep your ears open.  

Honour the hunger within you.  

Seek until you find.   

Be amazed!

Palm Sunday 
Passion Sunday
Year C 
Luke 22:14-23:56                                                                                                                   

Do you hear the people sing?

The most recognisable song from “Les Misérables” is set amidst the decay and turmoil of Paris in the 1830’s.   The song is defiant and hopeful.  It is a young person’s song.  The voice of the people will lead the way.  They can be trusted to do the right thing.  Well that’s the theory anyway.  

A number of you this Sunday will note how the long Passion Gospel from Luke is divided up amongst the several voices expressed in the story.   We all have our parts to play.  It’s fitting that ordinary human voices should be heard. 

Jesus has a voice in this long reading. 

Pontius Pilate and the religious authorities in Jerusalem have their voice as well -

and of course there’s that voice of the crowd or the assembly calling out in unison: Crucify him!

What is a crowd, anyway?  Like the man said in the fine print:  Your experience may vary.  

If you’re a policeman a crowd is something to be controlled.  If you’re an entertainer, you might look at the crowd in front of you as something you need to whip up or encourage to sing along with you or to laugh at your jokes.  Those of us who live in democratic societies look to crowds to cast a vote in general elections and referendums.   We delegate, to their hands, the destiny of our nations.

For most of us Passion Sunday is also Palm Sunday.  At the beginning of our service we heard the voice of Jesus’ followers crying out during the Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem that Jesus is blessed and that he is the coming Messiah.  And so we cannot avoid being smacked in the face by the change in the crowd’s tone between one Gospel and the next.  Let’s not try to score any easy points.  This is not a jab at the madness of that particular historic crowd in Jerusalem nor does the Gospel reading join us in in our disdain for a crude contemporary public whose taste in music, religion or politics we might despise.    To avoid ever accusing somebody else we are therefore asked to take our part in the readings this Sunday. 

We are the judged and not the judges. 

Salvation is the gift accomplished by Christ for us and freely given to us.  That’s what the Gospel accounts are at pains to show us in the layered drama of the Passion accounts.   Any potential partners in salvation are peeled away from the story.  Pilate (and with him the greatest administrative state the world had ever known) is out for the count.  The priests and the scribes are out as well (and with them the historic religion that presumed to know God best).  The disciples, Judas - even Peter - either betray or deny Jesus.  God shoulders the burden of the cross himself.    And as for the voice of the people?  

 The crowd, it would appear, is just another failed actor.  

Lent 5 - Year C
John 12:1-8

“The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume”

How bright is the lamp? 

How powerful is your space heater? 

How potent is the perfume? 

How able are any of these to fill a room with light or heat or fragrance?  Somebody out there knows the maths and can hold forth on Lumens or British Thermal Units to explain it.  I certainly can’t.

How much is too much?  Rooms can be overheated.  Lights can be too bright.  If you’ve ever sat in a movie theatre, with a group of ladies of a certain generation on their night out together behind you, you know that perfume can be too strong.

Is this what Judas is griping about - that Mary has cracked open a one-pint alabaster jar of expensive imported perfume?  It’s too much, he says, not only wrong but unnecessary!  We might have spent money differently and in a less extravagant fashion.  This comment earns Judas a direct rebuke from Jesus in the story and a critical side note from John the Evangelist which rubbishes his character and his motives.  What John knows (and what you know) is what Jesus reveals just prior to the last supper:  Judas is on the wrong side of the fence – as critics sometimes are.  He feigns an attitude of care but fears the loss of his control.

Who is in control?  These are little people, remember.  They are not the big beasts of their generation.  Moreover, they stand at the beginning of a chapter in Jesus’ earthly life where nobody but God is in control.  The anointing at Bethany is the overture to the Passion Narrative in John’s Gospel as well as Mark’s and Matthew's Gospels.  It is the starting gun.  From this point on, everybody from Judas to Peter, to Pontius Pilate and the High Priest plays the role that has been chosen for him and the son of God goes to the cross as it has been written. 

She’s done it before - Mary of Bethany.  She correctly discerns what the right attitude in such circumstances might be – the “one thing [which] is needful” in this prelude to Christ’s Passion.   It alone makes sense at the beginning of a week which will see their world turned upside down.   It takes the form of an extravagant and overt act of adoration, of love and of worship. Wordlessly she draws attention to the One in their midst who is giving himself for the life of the world

It is a gift beyond argument, dispute and objection. 

It is the small planet settling into orbit around the grander sphere.

It is the servant bringing the fruits of the harvest to the master. 

She has understood. 
And have you? 

Worship is not a periodic obligation, sparing and conservative (perhaps even self-serving) like one of Judas' disbursements.   It is the pouring out of our substance at Jesus’ feet as a response to what he has accomplished for us.  Even the worship of little people like ourselves has its own power over powerlessness.  It fills the room.