It is by happy chance that this Sunda we have a serving Police Detective (who is also a priest) preaching at the 10.30am Mass, because today’s Gospel can sound very much as though it is concerned with policing the Church! It is really though about forgiveness in cased of breaking rules of behaviour? Fundamentally we ask can wrong-doers remain members of the Church?Matthew wrote his Gospel, inspired by God, for the local Churches in Syria, Palestine and neighbouring regions. Some of the congregations were Jews who had become Christians, others were Gentiles. All were now Christians, but what were the boundaries of the community? How did it govern itself?In the local synagogues — just across the road or down the street, in the very same towns and villages — a strikingly similar debate was taking place. Who were Jews? Could Jews do this or that and how were they to live? Christianity and Judaism were establishing their boundaries as separate communities.Many diverse groups within Judaism were disappearing. Paul’s letters to Greek speaking churches in Greece and what is now Turkey, give another glimpse of the intense debate in early Christianity about our Jewish inheritance, and what aspects of the Jewish law were obligatory for Christians. Kosher meals? Marriage rules? How now are we to live when hitherto we have lived in a certain way for so long? How do we pass this new thing down?But today’s passage is about forgiveness. A Christian community is a community of people whose sins have been forgiven by God and who bear witness to this – everything else comes out of that mercy. A Christian believer has a responsibility for his fellow Christian’s salvation. He or she must try to bring someone back to the way of salvation. If the personal touch or the discrete approaches do not bear fruit, then Matthew here envisages a system of casting someone out of the Christian fellowship.Some Christian denominations have tried systems where the whole community are responsible for public discipline and who publicly cast people out of the community. The result is usually a rather narrow group of like-minded individuals where forgiveness is much talked about but little exercised, especially towards those people who are different and who do not fit the usual patterns. The outsider perceives this as hypocritical — often correctly and we need to be mindful of that ourselves. Within the church today how might this work? What do we pass down and how? We expect our pastors to be charitable and our priests to be ministers of forgiveness. Yet I hear tales of babies refused baptism. I hear of some people being unwelcome. I hear tales — often thankfully from the past — about priests being reluctant to bury people who had committed suicide, or who treated badly a couple who wished to marry because one of them was not a Christian.The truth of such tales is sometimes complex, sometimes straightforward, but often difficult to ascertain years later. Sometimes the priest was racist, uncharitable or simply badly informed. Other times, a priest may have hesitated to baptise a child when admission to a church school seems to be the be-all and end-all in requesting the baptism. Any experienced pastor will have faced many such issues and will have been misunderstood — sometimes deliberately. But this passage is not about clergy alone, it is about the whole people of God, how we live, and build, and develop, and it has to be based on mercy and forgiveness but also the sure knowledge that we have to keep ourselves focused on what we are doing, which is seeking the Kingdom of God. It is an uncomfortable truth that if someone complains every time something changes and then leaves and goes to no other church, that they should not have been listened to in the first place. The final verse in our passage shows us that the intention of any church discipline is not punishment, but rather to bring the person so excluded to ask for forgiveness and their place back in the fold, which we must immediately grant and not refer to the issue again. We must pray gently and persistently for sinners that they may repent - put another way, we are all sinners so we must pray persistently for each other and ourselves that we may repent of those things we have not been found out for and that we may keep on the path of salvation. The details have been worked out, now the practice of the faith is our present work. May we persevere not for our good alone, but for the good of the whole world.
Get behind thee me Satan!The start of the gospel today effectively heralds a turning point. – the Galilean ministries are now completed and Jesus is setting His face towards Jerusalem, and His eventual suffering, death and resurrection. Peter has just confessed Jesus as the Son of the Living God. Now he’s admonishing Jesus and ends up being referred to as Satan! Woah!! Some turn around! But to Peter, the thought of the Messiah, the conqueror, succumbing to torture, humiliation and death is simply unthinkable. Peter who discerned Jesus as the Son of the Living God through divine means is now seeing Jesus’s words with a human mind and heart. Human aversion to suffering. Satan, the devil, pure evil really does not like the fact of Jesus’s existence. He continues to look for a way to thwart the plan of salvation which has been in play ever since Genesis 3. The whole Bible is like a rainbow, a sign of God’s covenantal promise, a soteriological arch, with Genesis 3 at one end (the Fall) and the promised beauty of Revelation at the other. One overarching story with sub-plots running throughout. The devil hates God’s plan and looks for ways to scupper it. Peter, as human, is flawed…..very flawed. Just confessed the true identity of Jesus, has been handed the leys to the Kingdom of Heaven and now has the temerity to rebuke Jesus, his teacher, his master, to look to correct Him. The devil sees a possible way in, through Peter, to try yet again to stop the salvational journey that Jesus is making. In the wilderness Jesus heard from Satan, the devil, that He can achieve greatness without having to suffer and die. Here, in our gospel today, He is hearing a very similar message from Peter. Jesus rebukes Satan via Peter – you didn’t get Me in the wilderness; you’re not going to get Me now! Jesus had to suffer and die – He did so for Peter, for His disciples, His followers. He did so for us. If He hadn’t, Peter would have died in his sins and we would have no Christian hope, no eschatological horizon to look towards. Jesus has just called Peter the rock upon which His church will be built. A sturdy foundation stone keeping the forces of darkness away. Now rather than being a firm foundation Peter becomes like sinking sand; unstable, shifting, no longer reliable. But I believe that this is not fully Peter. I believe that Satan has spotted that little flaw in Peter; his impulsiveness, outspokenness and yes, his passion. Admirable traits, but seen as a way in by Satan. A chance to put an end to the salvation of man.Peter’s confession of Jesus as Messiah was the work of God; Peter’s attempt to save Jesus from death is the work of the devil. An attempt to make Jesus king without the cross goes fully against God’s plan of salvation. The devil tried this in the wilderness when he offered Jesus rule over all the kingdoms of the world if He would only bow down and worship him – the devil. Jesus said then, ‘Be gone Satan!’ Much like in our reading today. Get behind me Satan! Peter had inadvertently aligned himself with Satan’s plan. Thankfully this plan is again thwarted by Jesus’s admonishment. Evil is real. Belief in God has an equivalent belief in the devil; that he does exist. You can’t believe in the light but not believe in the dark. The devil is the absolute opposite of Jesus, he is what Jesus isn’t – scheming, sly, jealous, power hungry just as examples. And oh how easy is it to fall under his clutches – unwittingly or even intentionally. But with eyes fixed on Jesus and maintaining Christlike qualities we can thwart his attempts to woo us. That devil on our shoulders – persistent, annoying, oh so real and so often. Get thee behind me Satan!The devil may seek ways in, via our personality traits, like Peter. He may seek to over-inflate my ego, to give me an over-exaggerated opinion of myself, or alternatively to make me feel inferior, to doubt my faith, to feel unworthy of the friendships I have. Overly concerned about how others see me. Those weaknesses are like little niches, fissures and may be just enough to allow the devil in, and to allow him to wreck lives. I have certainly experienced the devil on my shoulder oh so many times and very possibly so have many of you. That sense of doubt which niggles away; seemingly innocuous occasions which prey on the mind and will not go away no matter how hard one tries to banish them. In my case my mind starts to spiral, I catastrophise, overthink, get too much inside my head, looping thoughts. For a short time, in my head and only in my head, my relationships with people are tainted and I question myself. Get thee behind me Satan!Prayer, praying for those horrible feelings to pass. But it is so difficult – the devil can be so clever. But I know that Jesus Christ is supremely cleverer, will always overcome the devil. And I can’t change the past. I can’t change what has been done. Yesterday is another country, borders are now closed. Get thee behind me Satan!!We are all unique. We are worthy of the love of Christ and Satan cannot pull us away from that unless we let him in. And we must not do that. The Christian life is a battle against the things that pull us away from God. It’s a daily choice to remember who we are; who we belong to. This matter most. It’s so easy to go off track, prayer life to stutter, anxiety to creep in, obsessing over material things, eyes away from Jesus. Big flashing warning signs – the devil is waiting to pounce. We’ve put something other than God at the centre of our lives. We must come back to God. We must prevent the devil from taking a hold. So – get thee behind me, Satan! Amen.
There are rules that we need, and ones that we do not need, and ones that we do not always need, so can be ignored or waived from time to time. If you give me a grouse, I will cook it for 14 minutes in a hot oven and eat it with game chips, bread sauce and port gravy. If I were to use it for sushi or a lasagna, you would be at liberty to phone the emergency services. There are rules of engagement as well – we don’t go up to people we do not know and invite them to go on holiday with us, and there are speed limits, which can be useful guidelines for some people. Rules can and do matter only because people matter. Rules may make us uncomfortable, but should we change them simply to put people at ease? Things that make us uncomfortable lead to a choice: between listening to others or to ourselves.In John’s Gospel many are uncomfortable with Jesus’s teaching. They cannot accept that Jesus is the Bread from heaven, and many who had previously followed him cease doing so. Jesus interrogates his disciples, whether they also want to leave. Peter answers,Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life; and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God. (John 6.68-69)Jesus responds by calling one of his apostles (Judas) ‘a devil’.This is similar to the Gospel we hear today. Jesus interrogates his disciples, ‘But who do you say that I am?’ and Peter responds with a confession of faith, ‘You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.’ Jesus then calls one of his apostles (Peter) ‘Satan’.In John’s Gospel the reason for Peter’s faith is that Jesus has ‘the words of eternal life,’ and in Matthew’s account because Jesus’s Father has revealed this to Peter. In both Peter has faith in God’s saving revelation of himself. By contrast Judas is called ‘a devil’ (slanderer) because he rejects faith and life offered in Jesus, and Peter is called ‘Satan’ (adversary) because he is ‘not on the side of God, but of men’.The context of these choices, between faith and one’s own will, is an uncomfortable disquiet. The disciples do not understand Jesus’s words or who he is, but they must choose. Peter puts his trust in Jesus. Following Peter’s confession of faith, Jesus makes his own choice. ‘Upon this Rock I will build my Church,’ Christ says. But what is this Rock?The Bible gives three identities for the Rock, and all three are true.First, the Rock is Jesus himself (1 Corinthians 10.4). The Church is built on apostles, with Christ as chief cornerstone (Ephesians 2.20), such that there is no other foundation but Christ (1 Corinthians 3.10-11).Secondly, the Church in her liturgy, unhesitatingly affirms that the ‘Rock’ is Peter’s confession of faith. Thirdly, the ‘Rock’ is Peter himself. Jesus says to Simon Peter, ‘You are Rock and on this Rock I will build my Church’. This is the plain literal sense of the text. Peter, shifting and fickle as sand, is made to be a Rock by Jesus. By grace Peter receives that stability and role that is Christ’s by nature, and we share that as well if we accept Jesus as the Lord and share that confession of faith. Furthermore, Jesus uses a plural here – ‘on rocks I will build my church’, living stones, like you. By the Father’s gift the Church remains faithful, confessing through the Spirit that ‘Jesus is Lord’. Some people want, and get, a church that changes its rules to suit people. But if any church should prefer human ways over God’s or unbelief over faith, changing doctrine to suit people, then she is ‘Satan’ and ‘a devil’, the adversary and slanderer of Christ. Our rules are not guidelines, they show how we follow Christ because that is the only journey that really matters. The church then is a gift to the world, because we exist simply to point the way to eternal life and hope, and to the source of all love and no trend or fashion has ever loved and cared for his people more than God himself. We find Him in the Bible and we find Him in our community, together, because we are, completely, in this together and it is Him we listen to, Him we worship, Him we model our lives on, and Him we want to be with forever, and the choice is to be with the slanderer, the adversary, who speaks so well in the voice of our times, but whose every word is a lie.
I am generally quite uncurious about details, whether it be reading the fifty page contracts you are emailed to buy a phone or lists of allergens on labels – I have little interest in them. When I am asked the usual question now ‘do you have any allergies’, I generally answer ‘yes, I have an allergy to small portions and inflated prices’ – but this can sometimes confuse the limited number of brain cells of the staff member, so I just say ‘no’. It’s easier. The same with people – some people ask you every detail of your life, but I have never felt that way inclined, people present as who they are, and I have only a limited memory anyway, and once divulged, people can get upset if you forget what they have told you. What do we need to know about each other though? We can know quite a lot about an individual, and not know them. This is true, for both individuals and people often in the news. And we’ve all found ourselves saying something like: I’ve heard so much about you, and now I am looking forward to getting to know you. No amount of knowledge about someone can be the same as knowing them, but knowing certain things as true about someone can make us want to know them or to know them better. Facts can attract. They help us find people like us – and unless you are a vegan, people are unlikely to know much about you, for it is only vegans who define themselves by their peculiar aversion to natural food and reliance on concocted food shaped items. This kind of ordinary, everyday questioning could be a good starting point in celebrating the Assumption of Mary, Our Lady. To know that Mary was assumed into heaven cannot remain as just one more fact that we know about her. Knowing this truth about Mary, affects how we relate to her, and it is an invitation to relate to her more deeply and with even greater joy. What do we know about Mary? Was she a Vegan? Did she have an allergy to celery? We believe that Mary, the immaculate Mother of God, is assumed body and soul, that her whole person is in heaven together with Jesus Christ. All this means that we are invited to a unique kind of relationship with her of the kind not possible with any other saint in heaven. This is what we know about her. It is not that Mary is around 2000 years old in earthly time, but invisibly and without feeling her age. In a God-granted, gracious way Mary, having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory. This relates her to Jesus Christ in a special way, as she did in becoming his mother. Mary’s bond to Christ is without parallel, physically and spiritually, in body and soul. Jesus did not have a biological father, he did not become one flesh with a woman in marriage, he had no children. His is a unique bodily bond to his mother. She also related to him uniquely in her soul, spiritually in faith and immaculately without sin and full of grace. Details do not matter, as I keep on assuring our Finance committee. What matters is our relationship to God, through Mary and each other. What we know is that there is salvation. What we do not know is how we will pay the builders. Some things matter, some do not. As Mary relates to Christ in a uniquely glorious way, she draws us closer to him and to each other. She draws us closer to Christ because the two of them are so close, and we can hardly know Mary without knowing her Son and God. A devotion to Mary that does not lead us to Christ or fails to make us aware of our common dependence on him cannot be a full devotion. The centre of our Christian hope is not so much that our souls will be in heaven, though that will be a great joy in itself. Our God-given hope is that we will be resurrected bodily. The liturgy makes us attentive to these realities, and this attentiveness spills over into our personal prayer life and our behaviour towards others. Our deepest hope is shaped by what has happened to Mary. We know this about Mary, so therefore we know it of ourselves – that there is hope, that there is love, that there is life everlasting. Christian hope does not only point to the kind of future awaiting us but also affects how we live and behave now. Hope is not cosmic fantasy or wishful thinking. It is for real, for real people in a real world. Grace is given to us for struggle, the struggle against all that diminishes our humanity and that of others. Importantly therefore grace is given us to struggle against sin and against death. The more we relate to Mary assumed by God body and soul into heavenly glory, the greater will be our commitment to resisting all the ways that here on earth bodies and souls can be disfigured. The closer we are to her, the closer we are to Her Son, and the closer we are to Him, the closer we are to heaven.
