Some years ago, sailing into Plymouth harbour, the boom vang on my yacht snapped. Boom Vangs are small things, but of crucial importance if you want the boat to move in the way you wish it to, because it connects the wheel to the sail, via a device known, amusingly, as a ‘tabernacle’. The snap came about fifty metres from the harbour wall, beyond which all was still and calm and the onboard motor would have been quite sufficient, with the sails down, to pootle into the marina and moor up to get the thing repaired. However, those fifty metres were the issue – it was a high wind and the boat could not be steered, the sail was flapping around uncontrollably and I thought I would have to allow it to scupper on the harbour wall, leap out and save myself. Instead, I reached up, caught the boom with my hand while attaching my belt to the wheel, steered with my feet and got to safety, where the boom slowly flapped overhead and banged me on the head, cracking my skull and making me quite dizzy. The Doctor in the hospital later on was fussing around in an irritating fashion, and I just thought ‘it’s not the end of the world’.“It’s not the end of the world!” Everywhere I’ve been, people say this. For our world to end would be a disaster: it would be the end of everything familiar, everything we know. The trouble is that when suffering comes to us – losing our job, relationship break up, illness, bereavement, being banged on the head by an errant boom – we can indeed feel it’s the end of our world. And in a way we’re right: the old certainties, the old comforts, have gone – perhaps forever, we have no idea if things will return to how they were – but then, they never do, we keep on growing and moving on.As Christians, we don’t try to explain suffering and change away. We don’t try to pretend either that it’s just not happening or frantically try to avoid it. We see Christ on the Cross, suffering with us, changing with us, the Old Covenant giving way to the New, through this most painful rebirth – the Gospel today is simply a beautiful picture of our own pilgrimage, in which we both suffer, turn to Christ and rise again.And we see more. In today’s Second Reading, St. Paul, perhaps quoting an early Christian hymn, gives us an essential insight into the cross. Jesus, who is “the Beginning, the first-born from the dead” reconciled “things in heaven and things on earth” on the Cross. Stretched between heaven (the invisible) and earth (the visible), between God and creation, and his arms wide to embrace the whole of time and space, Jesus embraces all that is good and all that is broken. And he makes peace: he makes it new, and He makes it new for us as an act of love, as a King would do, living for his people and caring for them – this is not the feast day of a King we can admire beyond a velvet rope, but a King who is part of us and us Him, there is no divide, just love.But how does he and therefore we make peace? I suggest Jesus offers us an understanding of suffering which is beginning to be appreciated by modern psychotherapy. Suffering is not good in itself. We should not seek it. But when it comes, we have to go through it – we can’t avoid it. And we will only get through it with the strength that comes from understanding more deeply what is behind our suffering. As Christians, we don’t need to do that on our own. Knowledge and love, bring us a larger view of reality. We start to see things more as they really are. This might bring us to make changes in our lives. An old world might come to an end and a new one start to come into being. “Today you will be with me in paradise,” says Jesus to the good thief, and that ‘today’ is ours to give as well, through Baptism and living authentically our Christian life.War and climate chaos are major causes of suffering, and I find the flagrant defence of either to be challenging, as though a nation can deserve suffering, and a major cause of that is human sin: exploiting and polluting nature and each other, and manipulating people, rather than tilling the garden and keeping it, as God directed Adam to do . And the brunt is borne by people who live far from us. We have forgotten we are part of creation, not its consumers. Changing our ways, living by the true knowledge of creation which comes from God is to reign from the Cross of creation’s suffering. It is to put to death the old world of power as tyranny and exploitation. It is to understand instead what it means for us to be baptised as priest, prophet and king. A good king is a wise king, one who serves justly in universal love. It may take suffering to open us to receive this insight. And to start to know and love as God knows and loves is for the Resurrection to begin in us.Christ the King is the feast of the end of a fallen world and its worldly ways. Next Sunday we begin Advent, as we long for the coming of the Risen Lord in glory. We long for the new heaven and new earth. And as we begin to live the Kingship of Christ, we will see that even in the smallest things, heaven begins now.So cheer up, it’s the end of the World! It only comes once a year.
As we approach the end of the liturgical year, many of the readings encountered at Mass may seem rather apocalyptic, looking towards the end…..the end times; end of an era. The context of today’s gospel is that we are coming to the end of Jesus’ ministry. We are fast approaching the cross. Apocalyptic scripture may seem devastating; it is very often imagery based and yet while it seems to be very violent and full of suffering, there is also always a message of hope alongside the stern warnings we may read or hear. Today’s gospel is no exception as Jesus foretells destruction, tribulation, family rifts but promises the hope of life eternal for those who remain steadfast in following Him. And our very short Old Testament reading from Malachi has the same warning followed by hope – ‘all the arrogant and evildoers will be stubble’ while the ‘sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings’ for those who remain in fear of the Lord.In today’s gospel, Jesus is foretelling destruction and devastation, and it may appear that this is a foretelling of the eschaton, the end times, as Revelation portrays it. But the majority view of scholars and theologians is that Jesus is foretelling the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD, the very Temple which is being so admired and revered by His companions. This Temple (not Solomon’s Temple, that one was destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 BC) – this Temple is the second Temple which was completed around 516 BC. It was then expanded by Herod the Great over a period of a number of years into the majestic, imposing structure being admired. And this is important. The Temple – so beautiful and magnificent was nonetheless impermanent. Jesus tells of its total destruction, stone by stone. Now to the Jews, this would have been almost an anathema; imagine the total destruction of places or buildings that we revere (and I’m sure there will be a variety of thoughts as to what they may be) but it would have seemed like the destruction of everything that the Jews held dear, something which was deemed to be representative of the permanence of God’s power. But it was manmade, and nothing which is manmade is permanent. The Temple is a building, a structure, a thing and by its very being it is impermanent.Its destruction along with the routing of Jerusalem by the Romans in AD 70, had profound consequences for Judaism, heralding the end of the Jewish national state for nearly 1900 years and it also brought about a move in religious practices from the Temple into the synagogues.As Jesus’ discourse continues, He foretells great woes, catastrophes, wars, uprisings, nation against nation, famine, earthquakes – sound a bit familiar…? But He says that these events are necessary. They must take place before the Parousia – the coming of the eternal Kingdom. He warns us not to panic, not to be led stray by the ‘noise’ and in particular not to be drawn towards anyone who promises a quick fix, a simple immediate answer. These are the false messiahs. The constant crises of the world are the necessary chaos leading towards the coming of Christ’s eternal Kingdom. But Jesus tells His followers, and us, that the more personal trials and tribulations that they/we will undergo will be opportunities to proclaim the good news. ‘This will be your opportunity to bear witness.’ For them/us to use the ridicule, persecution to proclaim for Jesus. And this is not easy, believe me. Now I’ve never been persecuted for my faith, but I have been ridiculed, or rather God/Jesus has been ridiculed to me. And I have felt ill equipped to stand up for my faith, felt unable to rationalize my beliefs. I never had the self-confidence to stand up for my faith, for Jesus, to proclaim the good news. I am getting better, gaining a little in self-confidence, but it is still very much something I need to work on. But this is what we are called to do as Christians. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – it’s out there, outside of the church where we enter the mission field, where we need to be ready to share our stories, whenever the Lord gives us the opportunity.However, opposition makes Christianity thrive. In the early church, the more Christians martyred, the stronger Christianity became. ‘The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church’ (Tertullian 2nd century AD). The early Christians were given power, powerful power, by the Holy Spirit. The same Spirit working in and through us today. As Jesus foretells, Christianity will cause familial division (has done and still does). And althoughpersecuted, ridiculed, Christians are assured of rewards in heaven, that not a hair on our heads will be lost. Now this does not mean an end to earthly suffering, we just need to consider how many souls are remembered in the Martyrology for example, but it does mean life eternal for those who hold fast to God and do not deny Jesus Christ, if we keep our eyes on Jesus as an Ordinand in my college group often says.But Jesus advises that our hardships are not stumbling blocks. They are stepping stones. The crises are not a defeat but a platform. Our weaknesses, our despairs are a conduit for God’s greatest moments of strength. St Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians that God’s grace is sufficient for us; His powers are made perfect in our weakness. The Holy Spirit is with us and so we don’t need to rehearse clever arguments but if we cultivate a deep, abiding relationship with Jesus Christ, He will be our guide, will never leave us, because nothing can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.At the end of our gospel, Jesus tells us ‘By your endurance you will gain your lives.’ Endurance is not just surviving the storms of life; it is using these storms to give weight to our testimony. Everything man made will eventually perish – our buildings, possessions. The world can take it all away, even our very breath. But our testimony, our witness will remain.So, let’s not cling to the temporary temples of our world – they will fall.Let’s remember that the chaos we experience and see all around us – these are like the birth pains preparing the way for Christ’s return.And let’s use the trials and personal tribulations we experience as God given platforms to bear witness to our Lord Jesus Christ.The Spirit goes ahead of us when we witness, preparing the way, giving us the word and granting us courage. Our faith grows by expression – we must share it – we must witness. (Billy Graham)
I hope that what we do here, how we witness, is of some consolation to those who visit occasionally. Sometimes at baptisms and funerals, I occasionally think ‘why did you want the service in a church’, because it can seem as though I am the only person in the room who believes in what we are doing. Maybe people feel some consolation from the fact that there are those who still believe. Do Christians actually believe in life after death? It depends on what is meant by life. One of the consequences of the two world wars was that the flood of deaths led to a rather banal idea of life after death, as many people began praying for the dead for the first time, they also therefore imagined a slightly strange vision of what the life of the world to come actually is.We can see this in the flourishing of spiritualism after the first war. The life of the dead was perceived in terms of the technology of the time. The dead could talk over the telephone, as it were, with the medium as an operator, connecting the calls, wobbling the tables, offering a show.Yet the reality went with a certain lack of mystery. The imagined world was just our own world, but without the pain. “It’s very nice here,” the dead would say, as if phoning from a boarding house in Skegness. ‘Auntie Joan is here too and it’s always sunny’. The knowledge of the afterlife was limited to the travel experience of the medium, and presumably if foreign holidays were common in 1920, the dead would be saying ‘it’s just like being in Torremolinos, only the food is nicer’.During the second war another way of taking away the pain was found: a host of films about life after death designed to reassure troops and civilians. ‘Here comes Mr Jordan’, ‘A Guy named Joe’, and ‘Blithe Spirit’ are examples. Death was a blip in our ongoing existence, something hardly noticed as we proceed in our happy lives, enjoying cocktails with the dead, seeing it all clearly only, strangely, there is no God, just another life.It’s understandable that in time of war people should feel tempted to run away from the reality of death. “Nothing is going to happen, nothing will hurt you,” cooed nanny in the nursery as she tucked the children into bed. “In the morning you will wake up in the same bright nursery you fell asleep in.” But Death is real. We endure something terrible in our death. Human beings long for a continuance of this life and cannot conceive of something different. That’s what lies behind the Sadducees’ questioning of Jesus.They deny the resurrection, but the resurrection they deny is one that will lead to everything continuing as normal. Their argument against the resurrection fails at the first premise: people who are married in this life will stay married in the next, just like in ‘Blithe Spirit’. But Jesus replies that they will not. The question then arises: why is there no marriage?The answer is: because there is no death. It’s because we are mortal that we need to perpetuate our race by procreation. That’s life as we live it, but the next life is described in strange terms in today’s Gospel. It’s a whole new age which we must be ‘worthy to attain’ without any guarantee that all will succeed. It comes after death, and in that age ‘they cannot die any more for they are equal to angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection’.Christ, born into this world, does not marry or have children because he is to be the beginning of the new life where there is no death. Instead, in that life, we share in the common sonship of Christ, waiting to complete that sharing by our own resurrection.When that day comes, we will wake up, not in the nursery where we fell asleep, but to a life beyond death – a life more radically different from this life than the life of adults differs from the life of children. It will be a life for people who have truly grown in Christ. How it will be, we do not know, but we know that Christ is waiting for us, that God is incarnate there, that it is the end of every human life on earth and that we come here to witness to that.So next time when we sit in church watching occasional visitors wonder what on earth is going on, maybe we can tell them, say ‘this is a hard journey, but we come here to take it together, in faith, hope and love’.Eternal rest grant unto them O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them. May they rest in peace. Amen.
Some time ago, there was a meeting looking at regularising the rites of deliverance in the Church of England. As most of you will guess, I was at the meeting. I was reasonably quiet, because I had successfully argued for ‘other occasional texts as may be needed’ to be inserted into the Canon, and indeed, ‘Other Occasional Texts’ pretty much sums up the entire liturgy by which I live and minister. At one point, the insurance company were saying that we would be unable to practice deliverance ministry with those under the age of 18, and I kept quieter yet, thinking ‘I hope that nobody mentions that the Rite of Baptism which we all use contains an exorcism’. It’s a little one, but babies are generally little, so it is felt to be sufficient, and you may well have missed it – but just after the oil of Catechumens is applied to the head of the candidate and before the water is blessed and exorcised, the candidate is as well. Life starts – true life in Christ starts – as we may wish it to continue.During the ordination rite of a priest, the bishop hands him a paten and a chalice, saying, ‘Accept from the holy people of God the gifts to be offered to him. Know what you are doing, and imitate the mystery you celebrate; model your life on the mystery of the Lord’s Cross.’ Knowing what you are doing presupposes knowing who you are—and we are all of us part of the Body of Christ, blessed, consecrated, Chrismated, exorcised and set free. Know what you are doing, that is, know who and what you are, and therefore keep focussed on those things which will deepen our knowledge of God in us, of Emmanuel, God with and within us. The whole of the crib which we will soon erect in the Actors' Chapel is contained within us, an Incarnation in Body and Blood, the co-redemptive power of Mary, the faith of Joseph and indeed the waste of the animals, all that makes for Saints, and all that makes for Sinners. In small matters, not knowing what we are doing might be comical or annoying, but in graver matters it could prove dangerous. Mistaking a minefield for a picnic ground is not generally a good idea. But not knowing who we are is a greater mistake by far. Not recognising the mark of Christ within us and obscuring it by living the lie of self-importance, egotism and self-reliance puts ‘me’ before ‘Him’, and Saints are marked by God within them.On a larger scale, if the Church did not realise what she is doing, she might think she is in the business of facilitating meetings, of proffering biscuits and pouring tea and fixing pointing and slates, but these things do not make us Saints. But really and truly, she is at war:‘For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places’ (Ephesians 6:12).This is not something we are about to face; this is what we are already in the midst of doing—waging war—whether we like it or not. Here we are, and here with Christ we stand, knowing that our power and authority is His, given to His holy church to cleanse and redeem and sanctify, literally, to ‘make Saintly’.We are at war, and it’s a disaster when we don’t realise it. People seek God in the Church and so often they find compromise, sandwiches, poor quality coffee, fundraising, rotas – anything, in fact, other than clear Biblical truth and encounter with God and an encouragement to live authentic lives of discipleship – to become, in fact, Saints. This is not to say that the other things do not matter, they do. We have to do many things, including wearing clothes and blowing our noses, but nobody became saved because they did so. Let us love people and each other enough to tell them the truth, and to live justly and righteously. If the Church forgets who she is, then she fails to believe sufficiently. Then we would have a travesty of mercy: if sin be no longer sin, why would we need mercy?We, the Church Militant, need the prayers of the Church Triumphant as we wage this war against darkness: a war of love over fear, of life over death, of grace over sin. Know what you are doing but know first who you are, and thank God for those who have gone before us.Who are we? I think that each of us discovers that to which Jesus Christ beckons us. It’s to be born. Our identities as people go from one birth to another. And from each birth to birth we’ll end up bringing to the world the child of God that we are. The Incarnation, for us, is to allow the reality of Jesus to embody itself in our humanity. The mystery of the Incarnation remains what we are going to live. We celebrate the vast throng of saints today, each utterly different; each completely themselves by being one in Christ. Know that you are to be one of them.
