The tempation of security

Sermon on Matthew 4: 1-11

 

 

This is a sermon adapted from a sermon preached in the 1960s by Alan Robson and reprinted in it’s entirely in the October 2010 edition of Minsters-at- Work. I have shortened it somewhat and edited it slightly.

 

 

In our reading today ‘Jesus is in the wilderness, face to face with the Devil. God is absent. On the cross the situation is the same. Jesus is face to face with the powers of evil – alone. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Jesus calls out.

  

The twice repeated taunt of the Devil in the wilderness: “If thou be the son of God..,” is echoed by those who jeered at him on Calvary: “If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross.”

  

In the third temptation the Devil, taking Jesus onto a high mountain, shows him all the kingdoms of the world and promises, “All these things will I give you if you fall down and worship me.” Jesus refuses.

  

Similarly, in the story of the crucifixion, Jesus never compromises with the forces of evil. They have their way and he dies. But the story ends with Jesus – again on a high mountain – saying, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given me.”

  

If it is right to think that the temptation story is a commentary on the Easter story then it must throw light on the meaning of the death and exaltation of Jesus – and on its significance for us. It must reveal what it is about Jesus that makes him good news for us. The details of the temptation story are strikingly peculiar:

• The dialogue between Jesus and the Devil.
• The suggestion of turning stones into bread.
• The picture of Jesus and the Devil standing together on the pinnacle of the Temple.
• The absurd notion that from the mountain-top they could see all the kingdoms of the earth. 

The story is highly imaginative, extravagant in its imagery; it is the stuff that dreams are made of. Yet the essence of it is clear enough. There are three temptations and they correspond to the basic needs we all recognise in our lives:

• I want bread – or economic security;
• I want protection from life’s dangers – like falling from the pinnacle of the Temple;
• I want to rule the world or, in more modest terms, I want to belong – to have power or status. 

Whether or not it is right in this way to find a particular significance in each of the three temptations matters little because in the end they all end up to one fundamental need – the need for security.

  

We are all looking for a life of security, but in our anxious pursuit of security, life itself is passing us by. It is the Devil who tempts us to look to ourselves and our security. God, in Jesus, calls us to forsake our security and get on with living. What the Devil promises in terms of bread, protection and status is only an illusion of security. The Devil’s promise is never fulfilled.

  

But we are called to live, as it were, in the wilderness, deprived of the usual comforts and securities which people crave. But when in that wilderness we turn to God we generally do so in the hope that he will provide just that kind of security that the Devil offers Jesus.

  

Note that, for the first two temptations at least, the Devil is not tempting Jesus to turn against God. He is tempting him to look to God for his personal security – to make use of God to fulfil his own needs. Jesus is in the wilderness; he is hungry and there is nothing to eat. “Go on” says the Devil, “You’re the Son of God; ask him, he will provide you with food”. Jesus is on the pinnacle of the Temple – a desperately dangerous place to be. “Go on” says the Devil, “You’re the Son of God; jump off and he will protect you from harm.”

  

But Jesus will not put God to the test. God sent Jesus into the wilderness not that Jesus might test him, but that he might test Jesus. In the wilderness Jesus is on his own, face to face with the Devil, face to face with temptation to seek his own security. God is nowhere about. God waits on the other side of the wilderness.

  

This is what the cross is all about. It is the ultimate wilderness experience. Jesus is on his own, face to face with the forces of evil. God is nowhere to be seen: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” God is found on the other side of the wilderness of suffering and death: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given me.”

  

We live at a time when there is widespread disillusionment, apathy, and sometimes open hostility towards Christianity. And when we’ve served up all the usual reasons for this – economic, sociological and so on - the fact remains that people have discovered that the gospel that the Church has regularly preached is not true.

  

The Church has often offered people ‘instant security’ of the kind it knows people desire and then they’ve discovered that it doesn’t work. Putting it bluntly the Church has been doing the work of the Devil: promising that if only people will turn to God all their problems will be resolved. The stones will become bread; they will be protected from all dangers; they will enjoy security and status. This isn’t true, and people know it isn’t true – but then it isn’t the Gospel either…

  

The Church’s real role is to lead people through the wilderness. This means that first we must accept the fact that life is often a wilderness – a wilderness of poverty, homelessness of alienation, estrangement, doubt, anxiety and despair in which not only the poor but the affluent find themselves.

  

Yet we also have a Gospel: we have a word of good news – for those who can take it. But it is a hard word: a stumbling block to some and foolishness to others. I talked about this word a few weeks back.

  

The word is that it is in losing our lives that we shall save them. It is in dying that we live. It is in forsaking all desire for security that we shall find our ultimate security. The Old Testament affirmation: ‘No man shall see God and live’ becomes in the New Testament, ‘No man shall see God except he die’. This, it seems, is the word we find in Jesus.

Revering the earth. A talk for Plough Sunday

This was originally given as a talk for children as well as adults so hence the greater interactions with the congregation than is perhaps usual. You will need a plant pot, a bag of compost and a crocus bulb for everyone present



Readings

From Wendell Berry (1969) The Long Legged House, Counterpoint.

"The most exemplary nature is that of topsoil. It is very Christ-like in its passivity and beneficence, and in the penetrating energy that issues out of its peaceableness. It increases by experience, by the passage of seasons over it, growth rising out of it and returning to it, not by ambition or aggressiveness. It is enriched by all things that die and enter in it. It keeps the past, not as history or as memory but as richness, new possibility. Its fertility is always building up out of death into promise. Death is the bridge or the tunnel by which its past enters its future”



Isaiah 28: 23-29

[23] Give ear, and hear my voice; hearken, and hear my speech.

[24] Does he who plows for sowing plow continually? does he continually open and harrow his ground?

[25] When he has leveled its surface, does he not scatter dill, sow cummin, and put in wheat in rows and barley in its proper place, and spelt as the border?

[26] For he is instructed aright; his God teaches him.

[27] Dill is not threshed with a threshing sledge, nor is a cart wheel rolled over cummin; but dill is beaten out with a stick, and cummin with a rod.

[28] Does one crush bread grain? No, he does not thresh it for ever; when he drives his cart wheel over it with his horses, he does not crush it.

[29] This also comes from the LORD of hosts; he is wonderful in counsel, and excellent in wisdom.





John 12: 24-25

[24] Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.

[25] He who loves his life loses it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.







I’ve recently got interested in earth. It’s is amazing stuff and deserves to be thought about more, and treated with more reverence, than we generally do. People used to think that everything came from four elements: air, light, water but also earth and there is still truth in this idea. The Bible has a lot to say about where things come from which we need to take head of. Today we are celebrating Plough Sunday. It used to be celebrated by bringing in a plough to church for a blessing. Ploughs are used to till the earth. I couldn’t find a plough to bring to church today so instead I have brought some earth/compost for you to take away with you. Today I want to think more about earth and in particular what it symbolises.



So can you tell me what earth is made of?

Dead plants and animals; rock (ground up finely); living bacteria, earthworms

And why do we need earth or soil?

To grow things for food



So today I would like to give you a pot of earth.

First would you like to smell it? What does it smell like?

Second would you like to feel it? What does it feel like?



So why have I brought some earth along for you? Well today, as I said, we are celebrating Plough Sunday. It’s one of the Church’s services that are designed to celebrate the farming year which begins with ploughing, continues through sowing then growing and ends with harvesting. We, in the Church, still celebrate Harvest, but generally forget the other things that famers must do to produce food for us to eat.

Back in Victorian times Plough Sunday was observed on the First Sunday after Epiphany, on the 6th January. But its roots lie in a much older tradition associated with the first working day after the twelve days of Christmas, known as ‘Plough Monday’. In days when food was scarce in winter, the observance looked forward to the time of sowing with the promise of a harvest to come

Plough Sunday is celebrated in the middle of winter. But we’ve now past the longest night and we can look forward to spring. With spring comes new growth – in particular the new growth of crops: vegetable and fruit bearing plants, wheat and other plants producing grains for bread, etc. But also in spring there begins to be enough food around so that the farm animals can give birth to their young and we can have milk, eggs and of course meat to eat again.

After the Christmas break the farmers must get back to work again and their work begins with ploughing. Ploughs are one of the first tools than humans invented in the early days of agriculture – to get more food out of the earth than it would do otherwise. Ploughing is not unproblematic – like all human activity – it needs to be done carefully and sparingly otherwise the farmer risks damaging the earth as our reading from Isaiah reminds us. Isaiah, in the reading we just heard, warns us in parable like the ones Jesus told, that we need to respect the earth.

The Bible recognises the importance of earth and compost in many of its stories. Can you think of any stories in the Bible about earth?

The parable of the sower

What was the name of the first human being?

Adam.

Adam is a Hebrew word. Do you know what for?

Yes ‘earth’ or better still ‘compost;. And I don’t think this is just a coincidence. Names in the bible are always meaningful and God’s choice of Compost as the name of the first human is full of significance.

Furthermore Compost’s first task, his first job, in the Garden of Eden was to till it and keep it, i.e. prepare the ground for the plants in the garden to grow and bring forth fruit. Compost/Adam was, in other words a gardener, and his job was to prepare the soil for the plants but also look after the soil and care for it.

Gardens turn up a lot in the Bible – starting with the Garden of Eden. Then there’s the Garden of Gethsemane where Jesus is handed over to the Roman authorities, then there is the Garden where Jesus is laid in a tomb after his crucifixion and where Mary mistakes Jesus for the Gardener after his resurrection and finally the gardens within the new city promised in the Book of Revelation.

So earth and gardens feature in the garden quite a lot but earth, together with sunlight, air and water is required for the growth of seeds. Again there is lots in the Bible about seeds. Can you think of any stories in the Bible about seeds – particularly stories – parables - Jesus told?

The parable of the sower, the mustard seed [Mark 4: 30-32], the wheat and tares, the growing seed [Mark 4: 26-34]

Today I would like just to mention one but very important mini parable Jesus told. He said, according to John, ‘I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many’ [John 12: 24].

Now why does Jesus tell this story? Is a seed really dead? I have got some seeds here. Well they are crocus bulbs – a sort of seed. Do they look dead to you? They are all brown and have got a dry sort of skin. But if you were to break one of them open you would find a bit of green life. I won’t do this because it would kill the bulb.

And similarly with a grain of wheat. If you were to break that open you would find a bit of life inside – a tiny root and shoot – which will become bigger if and when the seed grows into a plant. So is it true that the seed must die if it is to grow into a plant? Well sort of. It is actually the adult plant – and not the seed that must die and become compost for the plant’s life to continue beyond the year.

A lot of people would like to point out that earth, despite appearances it is very much alive, with lots of good bacteria breaking down organic manner to be recycled for the benefit of plants, lots of earthworms, etc. to aerate the soil and contribute to this recycling. But what the bacteria are breaking down, and the worms helping to recycle, is dead stuff, dead plants and animals. This dead material is necessary so that other plants, and the animals that eat those plants, may live. Jesus is using this truth about seeds, the death of plants and earth to emphasise that he, and possibly we, must die so that others might live.

Jesus tells the story of the dying seed in conjunction with one of his sayings which are recorded in all four gospels “He who loves his life loses it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it to life eternal” according to John [John 12: 25]. Matthew’s version is, ’For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it.’ [Matthew 16: 25]. Here he is saying that we must die if we are to find life for ourselves. This is a difficult saying, with lots of different layers of meaning to it. I have explained what I think it means in a previous sermon. But it’s one of Jesus’ most important sayings and one that we need to understand and take on board if we are to understand the good news of the Gospel.

It’s obviously not just about physical death but about letting go of our selfish desires. One of those desires is to dominate creation and this is where we come back to Isaiah and respect for earth. God wants us to have a right relationship, not only with him and our neighbour (loving them as ourselves), but also with creation as a whole. Only if we love creation can we cherish it and look after it properly. And w need to start with that seemingly unlovely substance earth.






I have got some bulbs for you to plant in your pots of earth – but I don’t want you to plant them until you get home. I want you to think about the earth for a bit longer.

Losing yourself

St Matthew's Church,  Oxford, 18th November 2012

Today I want to talk briefly about one of Jesus’ sayings that can be found in all four Gospels. Indeed two of the Gospel writers – Matthew and Luke – repeat it, as if to underline it. Here are four different versions of the saying.

Matthew 16:25 For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it.

Mark 8:35 For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it.

Luke 17:33 Whoever tries to keep his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life will preserve it.

John 12:25 The man who loves his life will lose it, while the man who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.

I want to talk about this saying because in the 10.30 services at the moment we are thinking about change and loss. I said two weeks ago – in my sermon at the 10.30 service on the question: ‘Does God Change?’ - that life inevitably involves change and loss. I talked about the way God changes and loses things. One of the biggest things we can lose is our life. And God himself loses his life on the cross, to regain it at his resurrection. And at some point we must all lose our life – in the sense that we will all must die.

So at a basic level all four versions of this saying contain a comforting truth: that death is not the end – there is life after death. ‘Whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it’ says Jesus according to Mark.

But, of course, the saying says more than that because it contrasts trying to hold onto your life, implying that that is not a good thing, with not trying to hold onto it, suggesting that that is a good thing. And this is surely paradoxical. Having life is surely a good thing so why should loosing it also be a good thing.

Note that Luke and John seem to be trying – not entirely successfully - to make the saying more rational, less paradoxical than its version in Matthew and Mark.

The saying is always given, as if a maxim, a matter of fact, rather than say an instruction, and in the context of Jesus explaining what it means to follow him. Note the ‘For’ at the beginning of the Matthew and Mark versions’ ‘FOR whoever wants to save his life will lose it, etc. and in the Luke version I quoted Jesus has just been talking about his coming again and ‘For’ is definitely implied.

In Matthew and Mark, and on another occasion in Luke, the saying is given, in the context of Jesus having just talked about the need for the disciple to ‘take up his cross’ when following him. But whilst the saying is given in that context it is separate from the instruction. In none of the gospels does Jesus doesn’t give any explanation for why it is necessary to lose your life in order to find it.

A way round the paradox is to presuppose that the ‘life’ that to be lost in the first half of the maxim means life here on earth and the life to be gained in the second means life after death, life in heaven. In other words you have to lose A to gain B. But listen again to the version from Matthew

‘For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it.’

Here it is not so clear that the life that Jesus is talking about is two different things. He seems to be saying that you have to lose A to gain A. And the crucial words here are ‘for me’. If you lose your life for me you will gain it: whether that life is life here on earth or life in heaven.

Another question about this saying is what does Jesus mean by lose? Does he literally mean you have to die to live? Is the loss that he is speaking of here just physical loss, i.e. death, or is it more than just physical life? Now life is surely not just breathing and having a pulse. Jesus is not just talking about the physical functioning of our lungs and heart or even our brain but our life in all its dimensions, life in all its fullness (cf. John 10: 10).

Our life is our identity, what we think of as our self – what we are good at and what we are not so good at, what we like about our self but also what we are ashamed of. When Jesus talks to Nicodemus about the necessity of being born again as a condition of entry to the kingdom of God he is surely re-phrasing the saying we have been thinking of and emphasising, in another way, the necessity of loosing ourselves – to start a new life. So the saying we are thinking of could be reformulated as:

‘For whoever wants to save his self will lose it, but whoever loses his self for me will find it.’

But our life is not just our identity it is our relationships - with our family and friends. And when we think about life in that sense then the saying becomes even harder surely. So when Jesus says, ‘If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters--yes, even his own life--he cannot be my disciple’ (Luke 14: 26) it’s even harder to accept. But Jesus here is surely not saying that it’s good to hate people, and in particular those who love us, but is connecting with the idea that we must loose ourselves to find ourselves.

There is even a sense which it is necessary to lose God – our conception of God at the very least – in order to find him.

Here is Simone Weil on the subject.

‘He [God] emptied himself of his divinity. We should empty ourselves of the false divinity with which we were born. Once we have understood we are nothing, the object of all our efforts is to become nothing. It is for this we suffer with resignation, it for this that we act, it is for this that we pray. May God grant me to become nothing. In so far as I become nothing, God loves himself though me.’

This idea that giving up this life is a necessary precondition for following Jesus, for finding God is a pervasive theme in the Gospels and in the rest of the New Testament. Here is just one example of Paul on the subject – from his letter to the Philppians (3. 8) ‘For his [Christ’s] sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as refuse, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him.’

This is such a big issue that it is difficult to do it justice in a short sermon. It connects up with other big gospel themes such as sacrifice being part and parcel of love. It’s also hard to summarise. Perhaps all that can be done is let the words speak for themselves.

Christmas newsletters

Gospel reading: Luke 2: 1-20


This year we hadn’t had, until yesterday, a single round-robin Christmas letter. Perhaps they are going out of fashion like Christmas cards. But I also wonder whether you heard Lynne Truss’s attack upon on them on Radio 4’s Today Programme this year. That can’t have helped with their popularity. Of course people have been taking pot shots at such letters for years. But I like Christmas newsletters – even if I can’t seem to get round to writing one myself - and was glad when one arrived through our letter box. I’ll read it to you

The Star Inn
Bethlehem

Dear all

This year has been a busy, busy one for us Brewers, what with having had a glorious new kitchen for the inn and then Martha’s wedding to Joel in the autumn which we had here. See picture of the bridal party below and particularly note my new hat.

Joel is such nice boy and we all love him dearly. This year he’s been promoted to Chief Tax Officer for the local district - which has certainly brought its benefits if also some rather unkind remarks from the neighbours. And Martha is expecting a baby which is due in the spring. Simon – now 14 can you believe it? - is doing marvellously at school and has just got a distinction for his Grade 6 Timbrel and Loud Cymbals exam. Fluffy the ox had a new calf in the spring so it’s now Fluffy and Huffy in the stable.

We had a lovely family holiday on the Med in June with my sister and her family. Such a beautiful spot near Gaza! The sea was as blue and as warm at it could possibly be. And the food was glorious. There was a bit of bother, at the time, between the locals and the Roman authorities. Some people – near where we were staying – were being evicted from their homes to make way for some new barracks. But as you know we don’t like to get involved in other people’s business – and our holiday was hardly affected at all.

It’s been very hectic here in Bethlehem over the last month what with that irritating Census. Luckily, as many of you will remember, Tom and I were born here so no travelling for us and, to tell you the truth, it’s been quite a boon to trade in what is normally a quiet season. You have to pity some of the travellers. Last night we even had a pregnant woman and her husband arrive at our door – and the only room we had for them – was with Fluffy and Huffy in the stable. I didn’t think the oxen would mind.

The woman seemed very heavily pregnant to me. She might have even had the baby last night or early this morning as there seemed to be quite a lot of noise coming from the stable throughout the night. At one point some most unsavoury looking characters turned up who seemed to be friends of the woman or her husband. I didn’t like to pry and couldn’t really see what was going on from our bedroom window.

So a lot has happened this year – what with the new kitchen, Martha’s wedding, Joel’s promotion, Simon’s musical successes and our lovely holiday. Tom is still his old self, spending too much time on the business but I have my health so we have much to be grateful for. Happy Holidays and I hope that you and yours have a prosperous New Year.

Lots of love Ruth, Tom, Martha, Joel, Simon and Fluffy and Huffy



Now I don’t know about you but I enjoy such Christmas newsletters. They are better than just a card. For one thing they contain more news. And in some ways they are better than a present. They do I think, cost the writer more in time and effort than, say a box of chocolates. They deserve to be received as news and accepted as a gift with good grace.

Of course Christmas newsletters generally don’t cover the disasters and the failures of the year: only the good times and the successes. They can seem impersonal because the writer is writing for a lot of different people – both friendly and not so friendly. They can sometimes seem boastful, even competitive, as if the writer wants to prove to their readers that they and theirs are doing better than you and yours. And of course they are easy to take apart and make fun of as Lynne Truss did, ever so skilfully, on the Today Programme.

It is fairly easy to see that Ruth Brewer – the author of my Christmas news letter – lives in a bit of bubble where it’s only the affairs of those most closest to her that particularly matter to her. But aren’t we all a bit like that? More significantly of course, Ruth seems to have, rather foolishly, missed the significance of a big event on her doorstep because she ‘doesn’t like to pry’ and, as she says, she and her family ‘don’t get like to get involved in other people’s business’. But how many of us in similar circumstances, would have got out of bed, got dressed and ventured out into the cold, merely to see a stranger’s new-born baby?

The birth of God in the form of a apparently insignificant baby, surely shows us one thing related to Christmas newsletters. It is in the most human that God is to be found, in the seemingly ordinary but also extraordinary events in our lives such as the birth of a child. If Ruth had looked she might have found God in her stable that night. But she also might, in the spring, find God in the birth of her own grandchild. God was even present - had she but known it – in her joy at her glorious new kitchen.

Newsletters contain news and at Christmas we think of the good news of the birth of the Christ child. In the Christmas story it’s angels who bring this news, first to Mary, then to Joseph, before the event and then to the shepherds immediately afterwards. In our Gospel reading tonight we heard how the angel tells the shepherds, ‘Be not afraid, I bring you good news of great joy.’

Newsletters may seem to contain rather trivial news compared with the birth of the Saviour of us all. But remember it was only Mary and Joseph, the shepherds, the wise men and a few others who glimpsed the significance of the baby born in Bethlehem that night. The innkeeper and his wife presumably didn’t grasp the importance of the couple who they housing in their stable, or they would have found them better accommodation. News might sound trivial but sometimes seemingly trivial news has earth shattering consequences. We scoff at such news at our peril.

A Christmas newsletter not only contains news but is also a sort of gift. And at Christmas it is customary to exchange presents, to symbolise the gifts of gold, myrrh and frankincense brought by the wise men, but also to remember that the baby in the manger was God’s gift to us. ‘For to you is born this day, in the city of David, a Saviour’: in other words the angel is saying to the shepherds that the baby has a tag on it saying ‘For you’.

A newsletter is a type of gift because the writer gives something of them self in writing it. In writing one the writer has to reveal what they have seen as significant over the last year, show what they truly care about, open them self up, if ever so slightly to acceptance or rejection. In laughing at the newsletter we reject that gift. And it is a gift which is ever-so precious.

Our offertory carol today is In the Bleak Midwinter. The last verse begins ‘What can I give him, poor as I am?’ and ends with the words ‘Yet what I can I give Him: give my heart’. In a way people give their heart in Christmas newsletters. They give us something which God gave us in the form of human baby. In allowing himself to be born as a baby in Bethlehem he gave himself to us – with the hope of acceptance but at the risk of rejection. Our giving of our heart to God, in return, may seem a strange thing to do but it is all he asks of us. It’s all he wants from us this Christmas.

Waiting for God

St Matthew’s, 16^th December 2012,
Readings: Zephaniah 3: 14-end; Philippians 4: 4-7 and Luke 3: 7-18.

My sermon today was billed as ‘Getting ready for God ‘ but actually I am going to be talking mostly about waiting for God.   Of course getting ready involves waiting.   But the two are not the same.   Getting ready involves activity.   Waiting does not.   I want to commend waiting to you.   I think it is much under-rated and I’ll try and explain why.   One reason for why I think waiting is good is that whilst God is, of course, a God who does things he is also a God who waits.   For example he waits for us to come to him.

But firstly why should we be thinking about getting ready for, or waiting for, God today particularly.   Well obviously we are in the season of Advent.   And at this time in the Church’s year we think about the coming of Christ into the world – both about the first time he came – as a helpless baby – and about our hope of his return – as a triumphant king.   It’s natural to feel that we need to get ready to celebrate his first coming and that we need to get ready for his second coming.   But what does getting ready involve?   Doesn’t  it mean that we have to do something?

I want to suggest – rather radically I hope - that we don’t need to do anything, to be ready for God to come,  that getting ready for God is not a question of preparing ourselves, making ourselves suitable for his arrival but of waiting.   Waiting is much more than just getting ready for an event, or a specific day, it about an attitude of mind.  Waiting does involve remembering what has happened and, indeed, hoping for what will be, but more importantly it is acceptance of what is.

Waiting has, I think, got a rather bad name.  What do you immediately think of when you hear the word waiting?   Perhaps ‘buses’ spring to mind.   Perhaps you are now imagining standing at a bus stop getting colder and colder and more and more frustrated at the non-appearance of your bus home.  Or perhaps you might-as its Advent – be thinking about waiting for a baby to arrive.

Of course we can wait for good things as well as bad and waiting is coloured by what we wait for.   Waiting for a baby – or even a party to celebrate a birth - is clearly different from waiting for a bus.   And then again waiting for the 25^th December to arrive is quite different for waiting for Christ’s second coming.

Waiting also depends on how we perceive what we wait for.  If we are a child we normally wait for Christmas with expectation and excitement at what is in store for us.   This is because we are hopeful that when it comes it will be associated with good things – namely presents.   If we are an adult and particularly if we have been infected with bar-humbugitis - we tend to wait for Christmas with indifference or even dread (dread perhaps at the likelihood of burnt or underdone roast potatoes and family rows).      

We do, when you think about it, quite a lot of waiting in our lives and as we get older we do even more.   Of course when we are very young – a baby – all there is to be done – besides eat and the consequence of eating - is wait, wait to be strong enough to walk, wait to learn how to talk, etc. etc.    It is no coincidence, I think, that we remember the incarnation at the celebration of Jesus’ birth, rather than say at the celebration of his baptism.   It’s as if we need to remember that God is as much present in the powerless baby – who waits for his life to unfold – as the man who is at his most powerful – at the height of his ministry.

As we get older we older we again become more and more dependent on other people and we spend more and more of our time waiting for them to do those things for us.  But we don’t have to be old to end up doing a lot of waiting,   Getting sick or losing your job also entail a lot of waiting. 

Waiting is something which is often thought of as somehow demeaning.  Babies and old people, sick people, unemployed people are sometimes thought at somehow less important than those who do stuff – particularly paid work.  Those who are active and busy are somehow seen as more important than those who are not so.     But this is surely not how God sees things.   Jesus the baby was surely no less important than Jesus the man.   Jesus the dying man – nailed to and therefore doing nothing on the cross – was no less important the Jesus the man rushing round preaching and healing.   Waiting is just as important as activity.

This is brought home to us by looking at the life of Jesus in a bit more detail and here I am summarising a book called the Stature of Waiting by an author called WH Vanstone.  As Vanstone points out, and as can easily be seen by even a quick reading of the Gospels, Jesus’ life falls into two halves: not equal halves in actual years or months but in halves in the way the Gospel writers write about it.   All four gospels expend many more words on the events of the last week of Jesus’ life than on any other week in his life.  For example Mark takes 10 chapters to describe Jesus’ life up to his entry into Jerusalem on a donkey seven days before Easter Sunday and six chapters on his last week.  

The first half of Jesus life can be characterised by preaching, healing, performing other miracles, changing peoples’ lives: in other words doing things.   The second and last half of Jesus life can be characterised by his being arrested, brought before the Jewish and Roman authorities, tried, tortured and finally killed, in other words having things done to him.   The transition between Jesus doing things and having things done to him can be seen to occur in the Garden of Gethsemane when Jesus is handed over to the Roman authorities, seemingly by Judas.  

In Mark’s gospel the transition is perhaps the most clear.   Mark’s description of Jesus ministry is almost breathless with words like immediately and phases like ‘that same day’ scattered throughout.   Jesus is almost always the subject of sentences.   Mark even describes scenes through Jesus’ eyes.   Jesus saw Simon and Andrew casting their nets and called them rather than Simon and Andrew were casting their nets when he called them.   Jesus found Peter, James and John asleep in the Garden of Gethsemane not that they fell asleep.  Mark’s description of Jesus’ ministry shows Jesus to be decisive, powerful, successful.   Jesus persuades, confounds, changes situations – even calms storms and casts out demons.   He changes peoples’ lives thought what he does.

But after he is handed over – or perhaps hands himself over – at the Garden of Gethsemane everything changes.   After that Jesus does hardly anything.   In Mark’s gospel Jesus is, after Gethsemane, the subject of only nine verbs.  One is the verb which reports him dying.   Four are negative in form or meaning, ‘He was silent’, ‘He answered nothing’, ‘He still answered nothing’ and when he was offered wine ‘He did not take it’.   The other four verbs are verbs of speaking but whereas previously Jesus’ words persuaded or confounded people, now his words affect no-one, change nothing.  

After Gethsemane Jesus is no longer the subject of sentences he is the object.  He is handed over from one authority to another, is dressed by others, even fed by others, or at least given wine.  It is as if he has reverted to being a helpless baby.   Not, this time, a baby that was cherished by his parents and worshipped by shepherds and wise men.   But helpless like a baby nevertheless.   But note that in this helpless inactivity Jesus accomplishes his greatest triumph, the rescue of us all, and not just the people who came into contact with him.   But in this he had to wait, do nothing, he had to wait for God to act.  We can see in the events from Gethsemane to Easter morning Jesus waiting for God to come and God does come.   God comes to raise him from the dead.  

Note too that since Jesus is God incarnate it is as if God waits for God.   In and after the Garden of Gethsemane.  God waits for Jesus and Jesus waits for God.  This is why I think waiting is to be commended and especially when it comes to waiting for God.  If Jesus and God wait for each other we must too wait for God, as he indeed waits for us.

Perhaps I should end my sermon here but I’d like us to retrace our steps a bit.   Of course some waiting can involve activity.  Sometimes that activity can be fruitful.   When we wait at a bus stop we might usefully fill our time chatting to the other people waiting.   When we are waiting to have a baby we can rush around visiting people to share the good news – as of course Mary did when she was told by the angel Gabriel that she was to have a baby.   But note that waiting – by definition – means we cannot affect what we are waiting for.   However much we might like to, we cannot make the bus come any faster, nor – if we are a pregnant women – do anything to speed the baby’s birth.   There is no shame in this.  Our helplessness is not something to be pitied but to accept, and in the case of waiting for a baby, if not a bus, to rejoice in.   It would be good for many people if they could wait for buses without so much impatience, so much fruitless activity.

So it may be with much of life’s waiting.   Waiting, at its most basic, is acceptance of the inevitable and I think we need to learn this – or at least this is something I need to learn.   We can, like children do waiting for Christmas, wait impatiently for it all (what precisely?) to start.   Or we can like adults getting ready for Christmas, rush around preparing things rather wishing we had a bit more time before it (what precisely?) arrived. 

Alternatively we can try and adopt an attitude of mind which is one of acceptance – acceptance of own ultimate helplessness to change what will God will have it be.   This is not to say that we should not eschew bar-humbugitis and be as excited as we can be at the coming of Christmas, nor that we should do nothing by way of preparing for it.

And so finally to waiting for God.   What is this precisely?   I am only going to attempt to say what it is not.  And it’s not, I think, waiting for a particular day on which he arrived or will arrive.  I always find that first line of the well-known Advent carol ‘O come, O come Emmanuel’ slightly odd.   Firstly it sounds to me as if, in singing this, we think God won’t come unless we call upon him to do so and.  And secondly doesn’t calling him Emmanuel mean that he is with us already?   How can someone who is with us be called to come to us?  

We will – after this sermon be singing a well known Taize chant that begins: Wait for the Lord, His day is near.  Now this too could be taken to mean that we should wait for a future event – the Day of the Lord (as it’s referred to in our readings today) – but note that the chant doesn’t say ‘Wait for the Day of the Lord’  It says wait for the Lord.  The two are quite different.  

And so to summarise. When waiting for God we do not need to do anything.   He is already here.  He does not require us anything but to hand ourselves over to him.   Our example himself is Jesus himself who in the last days of his life waited for God.  If it is necessary for God to wait for God surely we should wait for him.

 

Thinking theologically about junk foods

Notes for a workshop at the EWDC Food Matters Conference, 1-3 October, 2012

 

 

What is junk food?

• Unhealthy, high in saturated fat, salt, added sugar; fat from animals rather than plants. 
• Unsustainably produced (without regard to the depletion of resources (earth, land, water) and degradation of the environment (global warming); fat from animals rather than plants  
• Unjustly produced, derived from products produced with cheap labour 
• Highly processed to ensure a cheap, transportable, imperishable, unhealthy source of calories.   

Is junk food just celebratory food eaten routinely?

• Coca-cola, chocolate, etc used only to be eaten at weekends, parties, celebrations but are now eaten on a daily basis 
• But not all celebratory foods (champagne,birthday cake, etc) are junk foods by definition above.

 

What Biblical themes and principles might help us to think about junk food?

 

Stewardship

 

Food is a precious gift from God to be treated with respect.

• Genesis 1: 29. Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food.”

 

Human beings are to use the earth to produce food but they are also look after it

• Genesis 2: 15. The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.

 

The earth will produce enough food for everyone (and more) if we do not exploit it

• Revelation 6:6. Then I heard what sounded like a voice among the four living creatures, saying, “Two pounds of wheat for a day’s wages, and six pounds of barley for a day’s wages, and do not damage the oil and the wine!”

  

How does the idea that we are to act as stewards of the earth when producing foods affect our attitudes towards junk food?

 

  

Justice

 

God’s justice for the poor is intimately connected with food justice. Food justice is redistributive

• Isaiah 57: 6-7 Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry…

 

God’s (food) justice is also fair

• Amos 8: 4-8. Hear this, you who trample the needy and do away with the poor of the land, saying, “When will…the Sabbath be ended that we may market wheat?” skimping on the measure, boosting the price and cheating with dishonest scales,… selling even the sweepings with the wheat.

 Flouting of God’s laws re. the distribution of food leads to environmental destruction.

• Amos 8: 4-8. Hear this, you who trample the needy and do away with the poor of the land, saying, “When will…the Sabbath be ended that we may market wheat?” skimping on the measure, boosting the price and cheating with dishonest scales,… selling even the sweepings with the wheat. The Lord has sworn by himself… “I will never forget anything they have done. Will not the land tremble for this, and all who live in it mourn?”

  

Is it just to produce, market and eat junk food?

 

   

Eucharist

 

Eating should ideally be done at meals to which all are invited, where food is shared, where food is eaten reverently – as if it is Christ’s body. 

• I Corinthians 11: 2-33. So then, when you come together, it is not the Lord’s Supper you eat, for when you are eating, some of you go ahead with your own private suppers. As a result, one person remains hungry and another gets drunk

 

Could some junk food (say the iced biscuits pictured) be eaten instead of bread at a Communion/Eucharist/Mass? If not why not?

 

 

Identity

 

Greed is a bad thing. Sharing is a good thing. Consumption/shopping is not the only thing that defines us

• Luke 12: 16-21 And he told them a parable, saying, "The land of a rich man brought forth plentifully; and he thought to himself, `What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?' And he said, `I will do this: I will pull down my barns, and build larger ones; and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; take your ease, eat, drink, be merry.' But God said to him, `Fool! This night your soul is required of you; and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?' So is he who lays up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God."

  

But how (and what?) we eat expresses who we are.

• Matthew 11: 19 T "But to what shall I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the market places and calling to their playmates, `We piped to 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, `Behold, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!' Yet wisdom is justified by her deeds."

  

Our holding on to the way things stops us from seeing the way things could be.

• Mark 10: 17 – 23 As Jesus started on his way, a man ran up to him and fell on his knees before him. “Good teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” “Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good - except God alone. You know the commandments: ‘You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony, you shall not defraud, honor your father and mother.’” “Teacher,” he declared, “all these I have kept since I was a boy.” Jesus looked at him and loved him. “One thing you lack,” he said. “Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” At this the man’s face fell. He went away sad, because he had great wealth. Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God!”

 

 How do we find/loose our identity in eating junk food?

 

 

 

Other possible themes: Incarnation, Resurrection, Sabbath

 

 

Does God Change?

St Matthew’s, Oxford, 4th November 2012.   Readings: Genesis 18: 20-33, Mark 7: 24-30

This could be a short sermon: a one word answer to the question, ‘Does God change?’ Either ‘yes’ or ‘no’. I was tempted to tell you what I think is the answer and then just sit down but I expect you’re expecting a slight longer sermon at this point. Before I start I wonder whether I could do a straw poll. If you think the answer to the question, ‘Does God change?’ is ‘yes’ please could you put your hand up now? If you think the answer to the question is ‘no’ please could you put up your hand now? .....

I’ll do this poll again at the end of my sermon,

So first why a sermon on the question, ‘Does God change?’ Well this is the first of four services on the theme of change. In the next two sermons we’ll be thinking about changes in the human situation, such as the change in our lives when someone close to us dies, or when we ourselves fall, what appears to be permanently, ill, or when we lose our job through redundancy or even retirement. I am guessing slightly here because I don’t know what the preachers are going to say. But in this sermon I am asking, ‘Does God change?’ And I want to pose four questions.

Firstly: Does it matter whether God changes? My answer to this question is: yes it does matter whether God changes: hence a special sermon on the subject.

Secondly: Does God experience change? I know that this is not the same question as, ‘Does God change?’ But I think it helps us get a better grip on the bigger question. And my answer to the question, ‘Does God experience change?’ is yes.

Thirdly: Does God change his mind? And my answer to this is yes.

And finally: Does God change in his essential character? And my answer to this is ‘no but’.

So firstly does it matter whether God changes? But before tackling that question we might like to ask ourselves can we answer the question anyway or even what it means?

Talking about this question of whether God changes, or perhaps it was a related issue, to a friend the other day, she pointed out that God says to Isaiah: ‘For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, says the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than our ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.’ There are many things about God which are mysterious. All our attempts to describe God and what he is like – such as this sermon - are provisional, almost bound to fail.

Nevertheless we have, not just a desire to know God, but to know what he is like. In a sense the whole of the Bible is the authors’ attempts to explain what God is like – and in Jesus we get to see what God is like - and so I think it is legitimate to ask questions such as, ‘Is God good?’ To which the answer is yes. Or, ‘Does he love us?’ Again: yes. Such questions matter and so does the question, ‘Does he change?’

In our hymns we often sing to God but we also often sing about God. And it will have not escaped your notice that we have just sung the words.

GREAT IS THY FAITHFULNESS,
O God my Father,
there is no shadow
of turning with thee;
thou changest not,
thy compassions they fail not;
as thou hast been
thou forever wilt be.

I should say I didn’t choose this hymn but I am not quibbling with the choice. But the author - Thomas Chisholm – would surely have been with those of you who put up their hands with the ‘nos’ just now. And I think our natural response to the question, ‘Does God change?’ is no he doesn’t. We might even be able to dredge from our memories some biblical support for our response. Perhaps Hebrews 13: 8 springs to mind: ‘Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.’ Or even Malachi 3: 6 ‘For I the LORD do not change; therefore you, O sons of Jacob, are not consumed.’

The changelessness or immutability of God goes together with other properties of God that we might have heard about and accepted. That he is omnipotent – all powerful, omniscient – all knowing, everlasting – has and will be around forever. As I am sure I have said before I am not at all sure that God is omnipotent or omniscient. (I do think he is everlasting). But I am not going to go into my reasons for my thinking today. Just to say that I think that the notion that God is omnipotent and omniscient comes from Greek philosophers like Plato and not from the Bible.

The idea that God is immutable is also a Greek idea and some Christians I think have taken it far too far. Some have argued that what God is and therefore what he going to do is entirely fixed: there is no way he can be and do otherwise and thus cannot change in any way. That means that it is only humans that can react to God and God cannot react to anything that, for example, humans do. This, in my view, can lead to thinking of God as cold and unfeeling. Even beyond contact.

In the second book of Samuel David says, at one point, ‘The LORD is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer, my God, my rock, in whom I take refuge’. Now rocks and fortresses are unfeeling and when we sing ‘Faithful one, so unchanging; ageless one, you’re my rock of peace’ or as we will do later ’Safe in the shadow of the Lord, beneath his hand and power, I trust in him, I trust in him, my fortress and my tower’, we might end up thinking that just as a rock doesn’t really care whether we are clinging to it desperately or not, or a fortress doesn’t really care why we are taking refuge in it, so God doesn’t care. Rock, fortress, tower metaphors for God can clearly be taken too far.

The one area where the idea of the immutability of God might be useful is when thinking about God’s faithfulness, as, for example, in the hymn we have just sung beginning ‘Great is thy faithfulness’. And indeed in that verse from Malachi, ‘For I the LORD do not change; therefore you, O sons of Jacob, are not consumed.’ Malachi is reporting God as saying that he will stick to his promises whatever his people do to themselves and to him. We can always rely on God to be faithful to his promises; he is not in any way fickle or capricious. The supreme faithfulness of God means that he is consistent in what he says, can be relied upon always to act in a way that is loving and good. But does that mean he never changes his mind? I’ll come onto that in a moment.

But secondly: Does God experience change? I know that this is not the same question as, ‘Does God change?’ But, as I said, I think it helps us get a better grip on the bigger question. Because if God is affected by what goes on within his creation then there is a sense in which he can be said to be changed by it. And even, in consequence, do things differently than he otherwise would have done.

The question, ‘Does God experience change?’ is related to the question of whether God is unfeeling like a rock or fortress or whether he feels for us – say like a shepherd feels for his sheep, or a father for his son or a mother for her daughter? When I pray I think of God as a person who cares for me, rather than an uncaring rock. But does that mean God feels emotions in caring for us – like we human do. When we fail does he feel sad, when we succeed does he feel glad?

Well I think so, yes. There are hundreds of instances in the Bible where we can see God feeling. Jesus clearly feels emotions. He is angry in the temple, scared at Gethsemane, sad about Jerusalem, happy when Lazarus is raised from the dead. Jesus is also acutely sensitive to other peoples’ needs and feelings though his many encounters with sick, poor, outsiders, c. He also tells parables where God shows delight when – like a shepherd – he finds a lost sheep, or - like a king - feels anger when the guests don’t turn up to the wedding of his son, etc. But the God of the Old Testament also feels anger, pleasure, sadness, happiness. You can think of many instances I am sure.

This all means, I think, that God is sensitive to the situation before him and responds accordingly. If he experienced everything before him as unchanging there would be no occasion to feel happy or sad, pleased or angry. So does he experience change as we do? I said at the beginning of this sermon that this is the first of a series of sermons where we think about change. We are talking about big changes – such as losing someone we love, losing our health, losing our job. Note that all changes in our life seem to involve loss, in some sense or other. Even good, big changes like leaving home, getting married, having a baby involve some loss on our part: the loss of our old way of life with all that meant to us, if only to gain a new way of life. Change goes hand in hand with loss.

The big world changing event in Jesus’ life is – perhaps to state the obvious – the loss of his life at his crucifixion. How does God experience the crucifixion? In line with Greek thinking about omnipotence, immutability, etc. it has commonly been thought that God is impassible, i.e. incapable of suffering. Why people have thought this seems to be because a suffering God seems, somehow, a weak God, too human, too un-godlike. Everyone could see that Jesus the man suffered on the cross but did his father God just not feel a thing? It seems to me that since God has experienced suffering – both in actually dying and seeing the person that most matters to him dying - then he stands by and with us in our suffering. He experiences loss just as we experience loss. He experiences change as we experience change. He suffers with us when we suffer. In this sense he is not at all like a rock. Rocks do not suffer.

Of course it is also important to stress that the reason why God experiences change is because he allows himself to do so. Here those famous verses from Philippians come into play: ‘Though he [Jesus] was in the form of God, [he] did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.’ God, in order to experience change, self-limits himself.

Some think that it was not only God in Jesus who self-limits himself but also that God created the universe and in particular his favorite creatures - we humans - by an act of self-delimitation. They think that because God is a perfect being no creature could exist except where God was not. Thus creation occurred only when God withdrew in part: a self-emptying preceding the second and corrective self-emptying of Christ's incarnation. And this helps me to make sense of suffering. I think that if you think God is omnipotent, immutable, etc. it is difficult to believe that he could allow horrendous suffering in the shape of the death of his son, but also the Holocaust and all the other cases of horrendous suffering that we can think of.

I also think that a capacity to suffer and in particular to suffer loss is necessary for love. The ancient Greeks recognized this in their mythology. The Gods could only truly love mortals rather than other Gods because where you have immortality you cannot have love. Only with the possibility of the loss of the loved one can there be love.

So in summary I think God experiences change because without doing so he cannot love.

My third question is: Does God change his mind? Or, in other words, does he react to what happens and in particular to what we do? And my answer to this is also yes. Here the two readings that we heard just now are important. In the first Abraham pleads with God to change his mind over destroying the city of Sodom. And God in answer to Abraham’s prayers does change his mind so that he agrees at the end to spare Sodom if ten righteous people can be found within it. There are many similar examples in the Old Testament.

A famous example of God changing his mind can be found in the book of Jonah. When Jonah finally reaches Nineveh after his adventures inside the whale he delivers his message from God to the Ninevehns . ‘Forty more days’, Jonah proclaims, ‘and Nineveh shall be overturned’. But when God sees how the Ninevehns fast and pray he relents and despite Jonah’s protestations spares the city.

The second, Gospel, reading tells a famous story of Jesus changing his mind in response to some persuasive arguments from a gentile woman. Up until this point Jesus seems to see his mission as being just to Israel. After this encounter he changes his mind and sees his mission as being to Jews and Gentiles alike.

There are by some accounts around 40 instances of God repenting – i.e. changing his mind - described in the Bible. In contrast we can find two or three verses which suggest that God does not repent. One of these examples is Numbers 23: 19. Here the prophet Baalam says: ‘God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should repent. Has he said, and will he not do it? Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfil it?’ But note firstly that the word repent in this verse is synonymous with lie. I am sure God doesn’t lie, i.e. say one thing and do another. Second this proclamation of Barlaam’s applies to a particular case and it shouldn’t be taken as a generalisation. Third the contention that in this case God will not change his mind presupposes that he can do so.

But what convinces me most that God can change his mind is petitionary prayer. What point is there in asking God to do things if he has already decided what he is going to do? You might say that by praying we are bringing our minds in line with the mind of God. In all true dialogue people will change their mind in the light of what the other says. I find that when praying I frequently change my mind about what I am asking God to do. But I also think he changes his mind as a result of our conversation. It wouldn’t be a real conversation otherwise.

And finally, my last question was: Does God change in his essential character? And my answer to this is no but.

No because even if God experiences change, reacts to it, even changes his mind, this does not mean that God ever changes in his essential character. And we can say this because of know that God is faithful – more faithful than we can comprehend. Faithful is, I think, a much more useful description of God than unchanging.

The faithfulness of God is something really very important. Because of his faithfulness we know we can rely on God. One of the main messages that Jesus brings to us through the gospels is that God is with us. And we can rely on God to be with us when we need him to be.

But here comes the ‘but’, and it relates to what I was saying at the beginning: God’s ways are not our ways. God is like Aslan in the Narnia stories by C S Lewis. In those stories the characters, even Aslan’s enemies, constantly note that Aslan is a wild lion, not a tame lion. Our God is a wild God, who comes and goes in a way we cannot control. His reliability is such that he does not always do what we want him to do but he does what we need him to do. His faithfulness is a strange sort of faithfulness. His essential nature may be unchanging but not in a way we might assume.

So I’d like to ask that question again: ‘Does God change?’ Can those of you who now think ‘no’ put up your hands? Can those of you who now think ‘yes’ put up your hands? Can those of you who don’t know put up your hands? Can those of you who have changed your answer as a result of this sermon put up your hands?