Sermon for the Second Sunday of Lent

Sermon for St Mary's Hendon on 4th March 2007

Genesis 15.1-12, 17-18
Philippians 3.17-4.1
Luke 13.31-end

In nomine…

“How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings.” (Lk 13.34)

So, we’re eleven days into Lent, eleven whole days of abstinence. How does it feel so far? Pining for a pint? Sickening for a cigarette? Craving some coffee?

Our experience of Lent can be quite an angular thing. We treat it is as if the only way to closer communion with God is through awkward and jarring disciplines. We try almost to recreate our own mini-version of Crucifixion. Of course, there is a hallowed place in the tradition for this self-denial, and it is indeed often useful and fruitful in our Lenten journey to the Cross and Resurrection of Our Lord.

There is another perspective though, which often gets overlooked, but which our readings remind us of today.

For Jesus, lamenting that Jerusalem is the place where prophets are killed, tells us his desire is to gather us together. What contrast between the violence of the city that stones people and kills the prophets, and the analogy of a hen gathering her brood under her wings. For a hen gathers together her brood gently, here no jarring actions or awkward movements will help, indeed, they would only further disperse the birds.

Jesus instead presents us with an image of a way of gentleness, of meekness and humility. His desire is to coax us peacefully into the protection which, in the image the psalmist uses, is found under the shadow of the wings of the Lord (Ps 17.8). He contrasts the way of violence with his way of gentleness.

But this is no simple contrast of one way with another. Rather than demeaning it as “not his way of doing things”, Christ actually does something with violence. Jesus cuts through cycles of violence, of the killing and stoning of prophets, of myriad forms of destruction, abuse, aggression, he even cuts through the violence of Crucifixion. For in submitting himself to the shame and violence of the Cross, Jesus steps into violence and presents the alternative of anti-violence. God himself, in Christ, redeems the violence of suffering and death to inaugurate a kingdom built on peace. Christ enters into the violence of our human existence to save us from the violence we experience.

And here, in today’s Gospel, we hear that Christ has set his face toward Jerusalem, knowing the pain that awaits him there. He will not heed the Pharisees’ warning (that Herod wants to have him killed), because in order to fulfil his mission from the Father, he must complete his work as Redeemer. He must submit himself to that violence which will disclose his identity as Saviour.

And not just a Saviour who undoes the violence of death, but one who inaugurates a new way, one who gathers us as those redeemed from violence, under his protective wings, into a community together. That Christ talks of gathering us together indicates that there is something corporate going on here. The redemption from violence he offers isn’t available to each of us as a sort of cosy, hippy-like, individualised way of peace and love. Rather, he gathers us into a community where his way of peace is to be lived out together.

St Paul, in our epistle talks of our bodies being “conformed to the body of [Christ’s] glory” (Phil 3.21). Likewise, he tells us that “our citizenship is in heaven” (3.20). The glory of Christ’s body is that which is revealed to us in his Resurrection, when his experience and transcending of the violence of the Cross is realised. This glory that transfigures the dead body of Jesus into the radiant body of the risen Lord, is the same glory as is known in heaven, for it is the very glory of God. How then, are we, as St Paul says “conformed to this glory”, to the glory of the Risen Lord, which is the heavenly glory of God?

Well, simply put, this happens here. Christ calls us to this place, to this community, to this Church, and to each other, again he gathers us together here that we might be conformed to the glory of his body. The Spirit’s work within us is to reveal, bit-by-bit, the glory of God, the image of him in whose image we were first created. We do this by being a community of love, by being a people of prayer, by study and reflection on Scripture, by being people of kindness, generosity and charity, by our gathering here to share his body and blood in the Sacred Feast. These are the disciplines of Lent, these are the spaces within in which the Spirit works to conform us to his glory, to gather here and be an anticipation of that place where our true citizenship is –in heaven, where the fullness of Christ’s glory will be revealed, and the fullness of his glory in us will be realised.

To be conformed to the glory of Christ’s body isn’t to put-on the straight-jacket of refraining from coffee, alcohol, chocolate or whatever else we might have given up. Although such disciplines will inevitably focus our thoughts on our goal, they are the means rather than the end. Rather, to be conformed to his glory is to be more truly ourselves, to more fully be the person he has created us to be. For we were created in his image, so the truer we are to our real selves, the truer we are to his image in us – the more of him will be revealed in us.

And this is a gradual uncovering, which the Spirit of God effects in us. Think, for instance, of an old portrait painting, on which, over the years, has accreted layers of dust, of grime and smoke until the image of the man in the painting has become obscured, almost hidden by this mess that masks him. Now think of the work of the picture restorer, gradually and painstakingly revealing the image that has always lain beneath. The picture restorer, with brush and cotton bud and cloth gently rubbing away, bit by bit applying tiny amounts of water, of white spirit. And gradually, slowly, the true image, the image that was first intended by the artist is revealed. The old details and features are exposed and given new life.

So is the Spirit’s work in us. As Christ did, the Spirit eschews the way of violence. Imagine what would happen if one took a wire-brush and some bleach to that old portrait. So God, by his Spirit, reveals in us the image of him by whom we were created. We are conformed to the glory of Christ’s body not with the jarring, angular use of violence, of bleach and wire-brush, of aggression, but with the gradual, gentle removal of layers of sin and dirt, the purging of walls of defensiveness and pretence, of all those things that impede our receptivity to God’s work in us. We are conformed to Christ’s glory by the gentle uncovering of the image beneath, the true image, the truer self.

George Herbert, that great 17th Century Anglican poet captures this dynamic of God’s rejection of the means of violence, and his choosing of the way of gentleness and peace in his dealings with us in his poem “Discipline”.

THROW away Thy rod,
Throw away Thy wrath;
O my God,
Take the gentle path!
For my heart's desire
Unto Thine is bent:
I aspire
To a full consent.

Not a word or look
I affect to own,
But by book,
And Thy Book alone.

Though I fail, I weep;
Though I halt in pace,
Yet I creep
To the throne of grace.

Then let wrath remove;
Love will do the deed;
For with love
Stony hearts will bleed.

Love is swift of foot;
Love 's a man of war,
And can shoot,
And can hit from far.

Who can 'scape his bow?
That which wrought on Thee,
Brought Thee low,
Needs must work on me.

Throw away Thy rod;
Though man frailties hath,
Thou art God:
Throw away Thy wrath!


So the image of God is revealed in us by the way of anti-violence, the way of Divine action in the world of which Christ’s choosing of the Cross is the archetype: That way by which Christ gathers us under the protection of his wings, gathers us to this place, and begins the work of conforming us to the image of his glory: the image in which we were created, and the glory of heaven which is ours in him.


May we be gathered closer to him,
and closer to each other this Lent,
that we may be conformed to the body of his glory,
and his image revealed in us,
who lives and reigns now and forever.
Amen.

Quinquagesima sermon

Sermon for the Sunday next before Lent

Exodus 34.29-35
Psalm 99
2 Corinthians 3.12-4.2
Luke 9.28-36

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The lectionary can be a difficult thing. The readings we hear on Sundays can sometimes be obscure, apparently irrelevant, and finding oneself having to make some sense of them in preaching can be a real challenge. At other times the lectionary can be a real gift and we are presented with three readings that cohere nicely and are appropriate to the season. I am happy to say that today’s readings fall in the latter category.

Here we are, on the last Sunday before Lent: our last chance to live it up before things take a more serious turn. So we find ourselves at the hinge of the Church’s year, at the moment when we ready ourselves to embark on the disciplines of Lent, to hear again (even to live out) the story of Christ’s passion, and to carefully prepare ourselves for the joy of Easter.

Likewise, in the gospels the Transfiguration itself is a hinge in the narratives. And today we are presented with Luke’s account of the Transfiguration. The Transfiguration is that moment when Jesus ascends a mountain with a few of his disciples and while he is there his appearance is changed, or transfigured and Moses and Elijah appear with him. The voice of God is then heard, proclaiming “This is my Son.”

It is at the Transfiguration in Matthew, Mark and Luke (that is, the synoptic gospels – those gospels that share a common structure) that the emphasis in the story of Jesus changes. We move from a focus on his itinerant ministry, moving around Judea preaching, healing and performing miracles, to a focus on his journey into Jerusalem where he would be rejected by those who are closest to him, falsely accused, tortured and crucified.

Yet, it is not just the parallels between the context of the Transfiguration, and our own moment in the Church’s year that are significant, we can also say something about the Transfiguration itself. In the Transfiguration, as with the Old Testament story of Moses, we hear that the presence of God changes a person. Both Jesus and Moses ascend a mountain and experience a theophany. A theophany is a moment when God reveals something of himself, it is a Greek word meaning literally “God-revealing”. In these theophanies, these experiences of God’s revelation of himself, a change occurs for both Moses and Jesus: both appear afterward to have become whiter, brighter, one might say “more luminous”. For, from them, after their meeting with God, the light of God radiates. So, we see that the presence of God changes a person, it makes the presence of him more visible, more tangible, it makes them more like himself.

And so, for us, in contemplation of the Divine, in our prayer where we encounter him, he is forming us more into his likeness that we might shine with his radiance. In our prayer and in our worship we might glimpse that glory of God in-breaking from heaven to earth; as Moses beheld it on the mountain, and as the disciples saw it reflected in Jesus at the Transfiguration. We might just for a moment reflect his light and become, bit by bit, more like him.

The climax of this, for us, is of course to encounter God in the Eucharist. Here, in these gifts of bread and wine we encounter the very presence of God himself and are transformed, transfigured by consuming them more into the likeness of him. Our bodies are united with his body and his blood flows into us, and so in consuming him we become like him. His presence here will transform us. The continuation of this Eucharistic encounter, between those actual moments when we come to the altar, must be lived in a Eucharistic life, in a life of prayer; in a life of intentional encounter with God, of purposeful remembering of his presence as we make remembrance of his saving work here. Our prayer is the place where this continuity of encounter is maintained.

The glory that the disciples see in Christ is the same glory of God that will transfigure Christ even more fully at the Resurrection. After his crucifixion and death the true identity of Jesus is disclosed: the Saviour of all, who dies for us and raises us with him to new life – this identity is his glory. So, the Transfiguration is a foretaste of this full disclosure of the identity of Jesus, it is Easter anticipated. And yet, we could not know this identity without the Cross coming first.

An understanding of the Cross is necessary for an understanding of the Resurrection. And this is Peter’s mistake: he wants to capture this glory now. “Master,” he says, “it is good to be here, let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.” He wants to establish Christ’s glory prematurely, before he has accomplished that which he came to do. He wants to make permanent now something that is yet to come, something that can only be fully realised after going through a process.

The same must be true for us. As we, for a moment, before we embark on Lent, have Easter-anticipated in this Transfiguration account we must not want to cling to it, to prematurely establish the full glory of Christ on this event. Because, for us between now and then there is Lent. We are on the way to this glory, via Lent and the recalling of Christ’s Passion. As Christ, from the Transfiguration was on his way to glory, via the Cross.

In the meantime, to prepare ourselves to receive the theophany of Easter, the great revelation of God in the glorious transfiguring of the body of Christ, it will be our desire to become more like him. To gaze on him, to contemplate him, to be with him in prayer. For then, we too shall be transformed to reflect his glory, as Paul says in our Epistle:
“And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.” (2Cor3.18)
The Authorised version has this as “changed from glory to glory”. And so in gazing on him we shall become like him, until we are finally one with him. We shall be moved from the temporary glory of the Transfiguration to the permanent and fuller glory of the Resurrection, via our Lenten journey of prayer.

“This is my Son,” the voice of God says of Jesus at the Transfiguration. When we encounter it, the glory of God will make us more akin to him, more and more like him until, when at length, we come into the fullness of his presence and he will see us as his own and greet us saying, “This is my child.”

May we be ready to receive his glory when he greets us at Easter as our Risen Lord, and may we prepare ourselves so to do by a prayerful keeping of a Holy Lent. Amen.

Homily on Wisdom

Matthew 11.16-19
Jesus said: ‘But to what will I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the market-places and calling to one another,
“We played the flute for you, and you did not dance;
we wailed, and you did not mourn.”
For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, “He has a demon”; the Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, “Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax-collectors and sinners!” Yet wisdom is vindicated by her deeds.’

These brief four verses come in the midst of a chapter of woes, condemnations and apocalyptic images, which concludes with thar famous, and favourite of many passage: "Come yo me all ye that are weary; I shall give you rest."

Here, in the midst of all that we have a few verses where Jesus condemns "this generation" for being, basically, too hard to please: John was too much the ascetic, Jesus too much the party-goer. "Yet" he says, "Wisdom is vindicated by her deeds."

What is wisdom?

Wisdom is the eschewing of easy, glib, trite answers. Wisdom is the searching for something deeper and the conviction that just such a depth will be found.

In Christ we are shown that through the perfectly lived life of the Human One the depths of the Godhead shine out. Depth is revealed in and through the very materiality of Jesus Christ.

And this was the pharisees mistake, as Jesus tells us in the passage: they looked only at the surface and saw Jesus as one who ate and drank with sinners, and John as one who hardly ate or drank at all. And, on the shallow basis of these superficial observations they judged and condemned them.

Wisdom, however, stand above such judgement. For, as Christ say, she is vindicated by her deeds.

Wisdom then is to know that the value of things lies beyond how they merely appear. This is what Christ shouw us in himself, as St Paul says "the wisdom of the Cross is folly to the world." The Cross seems to be about death and failure. Yet, we know its real meaning to be life and triumph.

So when Christ says wisdom is vindicated by her deeds (or children, in some translations children) we are not perhaps slipping into works-righteousness, (whereby we prove wisdom by doing stuff) but being told that the fruits of wisdom are always good, despite (at first reading at least) appearing as foolishness.

The pharisees, "this generation" as Christ here condemns them, never saw past this foolishness-level to the depths of wisdom in John the Baptist and, most supremely, in Jesus Christ.

So let it be our prayer that we may receive the grace to see beyond the foolishness, to see beyond superficiality, and to find in our own lives, and in others, the depths of meaning, the wisdom, and to recognise its fruits.
Amen.

Healing in the eschatological perspective

Below is the text of the sermon I shall preach at a Healing Mass on Sunday morning. Enjoy!


Daniel 12.1-3
Hebrews 10.11-14
Mark 13.1-8


I have to admit, I’ve always been rather the sceptic when it comes to healing services, and I do believe there are some situations where they can do more harm than good. Before I proceed, I probably ought to say more about that.

It always seemed to me that praying for a person’s healing, especially from a physical ailment might rather raise false hopes. Indeed, in some circles there seems to be such confidence that healing will occur if only we bamboozle God enough that any apparent failure to heal must be read as, at best, the inadequacy of our prayers and, at worst, a serious challenge to our Christian faith.

Yet today’s readings do, in part, give us an indication of the theological landscape within which we pray for healing, and within which healing may occur.

My own opinions began to change when last year I worked in a parish in North London. As part of that work I spent a day a week as a chaplain in an “Older People’s Services Hospital”, what we might more conventionally call a geriatric hospital. As part of this work Fr Bruce, the chaplain, and I would visit many people ill in their beds and pray with them for healing, sometimes laying on hands and anointing them with holy oil. Some of these people were desperately ill, with perhaps not long to live. Indeed, for some of them, suffering from painful sicknesses, a quiet death would be a relief and an end to their suffering. I needed to radically challenge my prejudices about “healing prayer”…

Within this context I began to see healing as something other than bamboozling God with words in the hope that he might “make us better”: prayer for healing isn’t some divine paracetamol taken for a cosmic headache. Rather, prayer for healing is an acknowledgement of our broken and fallen state: the acknowledgement that we are not now all that we will be. And, the alignment of our will with God’s, that one day we will be perfected in his presence.

Our readings today are set within what theologians would call an apocalyptic framework. Apocalypto translates as “to uncover” and it is a word used to allude to the time when things will be seen clearly (or uncovered), that is the time of the coming of the Kingdom of God, when Christ shall be revealed as Lord of all. When we shall be changed and renewed in him and by him. And this is the Good News: that the person I will be is more truly myself than the person I am. That the perfected, healed, restored person that God will make me, or rather renew me into, is the fullest expression of myself.

We see this in the life of Christ himself. He came to preach the Kingdom, to make the Kingdom of God a present reality, and he did so, not just with words but with actions: with miracles of healing, where people were transformed from a broken, outcast state to wholeness and integration in the community. The wholeness we await is the Resurrection of the body, and the community into which we will be integrated is the Communion of Saints. The pattern was the same for Christ, he is our prototype for the ultimate healing – the healing of death by the resurrection to eternal life. So we do this not alone, but with him as our captain and our guide. It is not only Christ’s companionship either, but we are assisted by the angels, as Daniel says St Michael, the chief angel, will arise to deliver us to everlasting life, that we may shine like the stars forever. And, we are surrounded by one another as those anticipating the greater reality which will transform us - we do this together.

Our reading from Hebrews helps us to understand, as much as that is possible, how this is done: it is done in Christ. The writer of the letter assures us that the sacrificial death of Jesus has lasting effect for us now, and yet there is something that is not quite given to us fully yet. “Until I make your enemies your footstool…” there is still a little more to be done. The process of healing has been begun, and completed in Christ, and yet we shall not enjoy its full effects until we too are part of that new creation, or renewed creation, of which he shall be Lord.

But what of us now? What of the sicknesses, the weaknesses, of our own and of others that we bring with us to this rail? With which we kneel and ask God to meet us in those dark, hurting places. If full healing is not fully realised yet, why do we bother? Well, we bother because we believe that God meets us when we come to him, indeed that he is already there and we just re-member ourselves into his presence. And, that in doing so our faith will be strengthened and that we will be encouraged by the promise of the fullness of healing that is to come. Indeed, perhaps even at a deep level we will be healed inasmuch as we shall be given the grace and faith to bear our sufferings until they are subsumed into Christ’s death and Resurrection and transformed into glory.

Until then we are reminded of Jesus’ words to us today in St Mark’s gospel: “these are but the beginnings of the birthpangs”, and from the pain of birthpangs and labour comes new life. A new life which we are promised and which faith assures us, we shall receive, because (as the letter to the Hebrews affirms) “he who has promised is faithful.”

So to him who fulfilled the Father’s will in order to heal us by the operation of Spirit, to the one true triune God, from angels and men, be all glory and power, blessing and honour, now and from age unto age. Amen.

Theological orthodoxy

Hurrah! I am 100% orthodox and not a hell-bound heretic. It's good to know that first degree taught me something...

You scored as Chalcedon compliant. You are Chalcedon compliant. Congratulations, you're not a heretic. You believe that Jesus is truly God and truly man and like us in every respect, apart from sin. Officially approved in 451. Chalcedon compliant 100% Pelagianism 58% Nestorianism 33% Adoptionist 33% Monophysitism 33% Socinianism 33% Apollanarian 17% Modalism 17% Monarchianism 17% Docetism 8% Arianism 0% Donatism 0% Albigensianism 0% Gnosticism 0% Are you a heretic? created with QuizFarm.com

Papist?!

You scored as Roman Catholic. You are Roman Catholic. Church tradition and ecclesial authority are hugely important, and the most important part of worship for you is mass. As the Mother of God, Mary is important in your theology, and as the communion of saints includes the living and the dead, you can also ask the saints to intercede for you. Roman Catholic 96% Neo orthodox 79% Emergent/Postmodern 43% Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan 43% Modern Liberal 29% Classical Liberal 25% Charismatic/Pentecostal 21% Reformed Evangelical 14% Fundamentalist 7% What's your theological worldview? created with QuizFarm.com

The turn of Radical Orthodoxy

The limited pressures of the MA course I am currently studying do have the advantage of allowing me a lot of free time to pursue my own theological interests. The latest development in this has been my fixation with the "Radical Orthodoxy" movement. I am reading two books on the subject: "Radical Orthodoxy - a new theology" edited by Pickstock, Milbank & Ward; and, "Introducing Radical Orthodoxy - mapping a post-secular theology" by James KA Smith. For anyone interested in the matter, I would recommend reading these (starting with Smith as he gives a good overview).

One of the premises of Radical Orthodoxy (henceforth RO) is that as part of the Enlightenment religion became a private concern and was no longer an appropriate feature of the public sphere. Alongside this there flourished a range of secular philosophies and disciplines that sought to take religion's place, ie. to make sense of the world and our experience of it. Most (perhaps all) of these disciplines are therefore predicated on ideologies that are necessarily antogonistic to Christian theology. By constructing philosophies that deny God modernity also excludes revelation and so reason becomes the sole vehicle for understanding and sense-making; to use the RO phrase we have here "autonomous reason" - reason that functions without reference to anything else. This, RO claims, has been the development of modernity.

However, theorists now claim we are entering (or, more optimistically, have entered) postmodernity, that is the breakdown of modernity and its absolute claims, including the breakdown of the secular. If this is the case, then Christian theology ought to be able again to take a place in the public sphere (rather than the private) and confidently proclaim its "system" for making sense of the world and our experience, and revelation ought to be valued alongside reason (indeed, as intrinsically connected parts of the same process). But, that this is not yet the case reveals that postmodernity is an arriving phase, rather than one that has been fully realised, and that our current stage is something more akin to hyper-modernity; the final swansong of secular modernity.

Radical Orthodoxy (on my reading) encourages the challenging of this phase and the inauguration of true postmodernity. In postmodernity we will arrive also at the post-secular: Christian theology can confidently proclaim the riches of its tradition and the depth of its insight.

Part of this confident proclamation will be the eschewing of the correlationist project of much "modern" theology. Theology need no longer compete for a voice by conspiring with disciplines (especially modern philosophy some of the social sciences) which are fundametally antithetical to a Theo-logical interpretation of the world. Rather, Christian theology can explain itself in its own terms, rediscovering the riches of its past and reinterpreting in light of the present.

Such an argument (which I have simplified and explained as I understand it) is attractive and convincing. There is more to RO than this so expect more posts on that front...

On a related note, I will be hearing Pickstock and Milbank (two of the founders) at a seminar on Aquinas (who is part of the inspiration of RO) next week. I hope to give you a report of that also.