Suffering, loneliness, illness are things that nobody wants. We do our best to get rid of them. Doctors, nurses, researchers, social workers, people with clear religious commitment and people with none, faith-healers, rationalists – all strive to rid the world of its problems. It is an effort which unites so many people from different places and backgrounds, although there are plenty of squabbles along the way about whose method is best. So it is not surprising that, when the gospels present Jesus, the stories show him as a healer, someone who can cure people and help to lift the burdens that they are carrying. What would be the point of a saviour who couldn’t make any practical difference. So, in the story told in today’s passage from Luke’s gospel, a crowd of people was following Jesus, a man who had a reputation for being able to heal people’s illnesses and take away their problems. They came from all over the place looking for help, practical help. And what did they get? A sermon! That probably sounds all too familiar for many people who have approached religious groups for help. And the sermon or the talking-to that they have to listen to is often about what they must have done wrong to deserve all that has been happening to them. People suggest, for example, that AIDS is a punishment from God for a lifestyle they can’t approve of, or that poverty is the product of laziness and so on.But that is not the line that Jesus takes. He starts his sermon by saying, ‘Blessed are you poor…, blessed are you that are hungry…’ Now the word that is usually translated as ‘blessed’ or ‘happy’ doesn’t mean the sort of happiness you might experience at a good party. It comes originally from a word that describes the straight flight of an arrow. I think the best translation of it would be ‘on the right track’. So Jesus is not saying you’ve done something wrong if you’re poor or hungry or are bullied and so on. Quite the opposite: you’re probably on the right track if things like that are happening to you. I don’t think he’s suggesting that suffering of any kind is a good thing or that you’ve got to go looking for it. It’s a message of encouragement. Problems come along to everyone, but when things do go wrong it doesn’t mean it’s your fault, God hasn’t given up on you.The sermon goes on to give some guidance about how to cope with life in general. It’s all based around an idea of love. It is a kind of love that is free and generous. It’s a matter of trying to respond well even when people are unkind to us; trying to heal damaged situations by forgiveness where that’s possible; trying to improve our own reactions instead of just being critical of what other people are doing. It gives a whole framework for life. Nothing in the sermon comes across as being superficial or easy. Trying to be as open to people as it suggests means being prepared to allow ourselves to be very vulnerable. We are going to be hurt, we are going to be taken advantage of. But, says Jesus, when that happens we are probably on the right track.Jesus came announcing a great reversal. ‘The first will be last, and the last first.’ The Kingdom would turn the world as we know it upside down. That is just the point of the woes and beatitudes. By them, Jesus exhorts us to start living as subjects of the Kingdom of God, no longer of the kingdoms of this world.It’s true that one way that Jesus draws the distinction between those kingdoms is in terms of present and future suffering and satisfaction: go hungry now, he seems to be saying, so that you may later be satisfied. That might lead us to think that here we have just an exaggerated statement of the familiar sober calculation promoting delayed gratification in the pursuit of virtue. Another, more fundamental way Jesus distinguishes the kingdoms is in terms of the source of the satisfaction they provide. The woes are directed at those who contrive their own wealth and satisfaction and joy and respect. Like Jeremiah, the woes curse the one ‘who puts his trust in man and relies on things of flesh’. Blessed rather are they who receive from the Lord, who make the Lord their hope.Who for us Christians is this Lord, but Jesus himself? The beatitudes are a call not to prudent and respectable living, but to unwavering discipleship. A key to their significance is found in the culminating declaration, ‘blessed are you when people hate you, drive you out, abuse you on account of the Son of Man’. Poverty, hunger, grief, and persecution are not and cannot be made good in themselves. Suffered for the sake of the Gospel, however, in union with Jesus, these are the means of holiness and the promise of a glorious future. As St Paul says, if Christ is not raised from the dead, then we Christians labour pitiably and in vain. But Christ has been raised from the dead. There is the great reversal: death has given way to life. And that is the curious, narrow way we are called to travel. Thank God we can still rely on healing in various forms, some more or less miraculous, but there’s something just as important and more within the reach of everyone. To be able to love and accept ourselves, to give someone else the support of love and maybe some guidance if it is needed, even to be able to make someone feel better about themselves, is to bring a kind of healing that is very real and very important. It may not be spectacular but it can still be a miracle
It is a lifetime commitment that we make, here. Those who have gone before us have created new things, new buildings and furnishings, often pushing the boundaries of modern taste and architecture to create buildings, organs and furnishings to delight those who come after them, for us to add to, change and develop just as they added to, changed and developed what was left to them. We paused for a while as the money ran out after the Second World War and arguably never quite recovered the momentum, constrained as we were by the issues of secularisation, finance and changing tastes in all sorts of ways. So it was that we ended up preserving what we had, rather than creating things anew, and the popular imagination began to think that churches were, generally, Victorian and English looking, rather than the enormous majority in history and all over the world, and as Victorian taste began to be universally discarded and moved away from beginning in the 1960’s, a generation later we find ourselves here, in a perfectly beautiful place, somewhat worried about what we will do with it in thirty years or so.It's an eloquent place, a church is itself a silent sermon, proclaiming our belief in God’s presence in our midst and our need to worship him. The building, its furnishings and the liturgy we celebrate appeal not only to our minds, but also to our imaginations and emotions. Sometimes these outward physical signs come alive for us. With the eyes of faith, we become very aware of what they signify, but we should never let our faith be constrained by the physical environment in which we meet.This is something of what Isaiah experienced as he prayed in the temple in Jerusalem. He saw the temple as the throne room of God in his majestic glory, surrounded by his court and praised by the heavenly choir. In contrast with the majesty of God, Isaiah became very aware of his own unworthiness and lack of understanding, and that is, we should remember, how many people view churches today, and that lack of understanding is seamlessly translated into a lack of attendance.The Gospel tells us that Simon, the fisherman, had a similar experience to Isaiah, a glimpse of the awesome majesty of Christ, who had enabled him to take a miraculous catch of fish. Like Isaiah, Simon was very conscious of his unworthiness in the presence of the divine. Falling to his knees, he exclaimed, “Depart from me, Lord. I am a sinner’, or ‘go away, I do not understand why you would come to me’.Such a sense of unworthiness could be paralysing. Or it could be liberating – and that was the case with both Isaiah and Simon. As Isaiah recognised that he was a man of unclean lips, a seraph cleansed them with coals of fire. Far from being intimidated and reduced to silence by God’s majesty, Isaiah was empowered to become his prophet. His glimpse of the Lord’s presence and power became a source of hope and strength. God was in the midst of his people and would protect them, if only they would turn to him and trust him.And it was only when Simon recognised his personal inadequacy that Jesus called him to be a fisher of men. By the incarnation, the Son of God has come among us partly to equip us to undertake the mission that Simon and Isaiah were called to, to bear witness and to speak uncomfortable truths, energised by their encounter with the divine, both in the Temple and on the lakeshore – we must do both, God is not confined here any more than we are and what we learn here we take outside and teach here, but it is not shaped by our building, but by He who it is built to serve.Today’s readings are about the vocation of a great prophet and of the leader of the apostles. But Jesus calls each one of us to follow him and to work for him. The task can seem daunting and impossible – if we think only of our limitations. But when God calls us, he owes it to himself and to us to give us the strength to do his will. We are not acting alone and we inherit our surroundings from those who have done this work before us, who were called to make this new thing for us, as we are called to make new things for those who follow us.We are told that the apostles left everything and followed Jesus, as Isaiah left everything and followed God, as the Saints and Martyrs did, as Abraham and Sarah left their home to follow God. They gave up their security and journeyed into a yet unknown future with. For us, leaving everything means abandoning our self-sufficiency and our trusting in God’s power, not our own. With him we can do great things for the Lord. If we waited until we thought we were good enough to do God’s work, nothing would ever get done, and this building would join so many others and find a new half life as flats or a warehouse. Following Christ is a lifetime commitment, not for us, but for the life of those who come after us, that they might carry on the god work we do here, as we carry on the work of Simon Peter.
Today is Candlemas, a pivotal point in the year. Traditionally it was when winter began to close up, supplies of food were maybe scarce, spring was still a few weeks away but the ground would begin to thaw sufficiently to be worked and thoughts of seeds and planting were in the minds of farmers. Old wisdom tells us that the weather on Candlemas predicts the season to come – Americans call it Groundhog Day. Whatever you call it, today is the day when the end of winter is enough of a possibility that we can begin to anticipate spring.We are also at a pivotal point of the churches year, Christmas in every sense of the word is now over and we turn not simply from cradle to cross but from cradle through cross to the empty tomb, already visible, albeit dimly through the darkness still to come. Following Jesus is not just about Christmas; not just about Good Friday. Following Jesus is also about the hope and freedom of Easter.Holding all of that together in one piece can be very difficult – but perhaps we don’t have to. Our liturgical year offers us seasons in which one or the other piece takes primacy in our worship. And our own lives offer us seasons in which one or the other takes primacy in our faith and in our experience. Sometimes, those match up with the liturgical year and sometimes they don’t – in which case our worship serves as a valuable reminder that what we are living is not the whole of God’s story.I am in Alnwick, where it is cold and windy, but the East coast is often light and brighter than the West, particularly around this time of year, when the long views over the North Sea bring the reflection of the sun for longer than on our side. It reminds me of the coming of God to Abraham and Sarah, the long and unavoidable shadows coming to their camp, bringing God who brings change, challenges and a long journey of faith and the leaving behind of that which is comfortable and familiar.Simeon’s song begins with a declaration of the end of his work, perhaps even his life: “Lord, now let your servant go in peace”. His task has been fulfilled; he has born witness to the arrival of the infant Messiah, seen the salvation of the world. That season is over, a new season has begun. His work is complete.I wonder how Simeon felt when he woke up the day after meeting Jesus and seeing the truth of what his future would hold. I wonder if he woke up thinking, ‘today might be the day!”, before he remembered that yesterday had been the day and that he would have to find something else to do today, a way of using up the life left to him knowing that his purpose has been beautifully fulfilled – the promise of God came to him and now he has to look to meeting God, not in the form of the infant Jesus, but on the day of his judgement. Not many people will have beheld their judge as a baby!What then did he do? I imagine he lit a candle, in the quiet of that winter morning, and prayed that the light of the world would break through the darkness and reveal to him the continuation of God’s promise. Let that be our prayer, also, as we journey through the seasons of the year and of our lives.Have a blessed day, and if I come back, we can keep on moving forward together, and if I do not, well, we will move forward anyway, because that is the only direction that we can travel in, as St Augustine said ‘sing alleluia and keep on walking!’
We tend to blame things that we do on things we have not done. Hence I sat on a bus in London some years ago listening to someone being utterly horrible about someone sitting near them and about the driver and anyone who dared look at her, before announcing loudly ‘my chakras are not aligned properly, so you can all go to hell’ – or something similar. I do not think she knew what a chakra was, and to be fair nor do I, but blaming whatever they are on being in a foul mood seems stretching it a little.We do tend to find excuses, or to create dualisms or divisions. So we perceive opposing forces of good and evil at work around us and blame them for anything from being short changed to being unpleasant. Human beings are seen as being made up of a body and soul working in duality, and to a great extent perceiving dualisms or divisions is probably not a wrong thing to do. However, as is often the case, taking matters to extremes leads to the breakdown of our balance, or if you like, a misalignment of body and soul.We are today finishing the week of prayer for Christian unity. Unity is certainly seen as a virtue and a command of Christ ‘may they all be one Father as you and I are one’ . To be one is good. To be divided is bad, although in the Trinity there are here specific entities. At the same time though, it is untruthful, and therefore unhelpful, to pretend there is one church, when there is in fact, two or many. In Christian ecumenism, there is always a tension between recognising the scandal of division and valuing the Gospel work of individual churches and traditions, or pneumatologically there is value in recognising the gifts of the Spirit, the Kingship of Christ and the creative force of the Father. They are distinct but also one, and maybe a model for Christian Unity rather than pursuing one denomination which would be beige and inoffensive and we would not like it very much, because all the people who sulk when anything changes would leave and quickly form another church which would splinter and then we would be back in the same place again, looking as foolish as we do now.This model of duality can be applied elsewhere, specifically, to popularly perceived dualisms. First we have the human anthropology of body and soul. Much traditional theology gives us the image of the human person made up of body and soul. An image that is very useful because it makes it easier to talk and distinguish between the physical and spiritual. Fair enough. However, it is not correct to think we are talking about two separate entities, that the human person is not a unity. It is important to keep in mind that the body and soul are two aspects of one unity. Then there is the popular dualism of good and evil. There are certainly some aspects of the world that we want to describe as good and others we want to see as evil. However, that is not the same as thinking that are two existing principles, one good the other evil, that are the same in nature but directly opposing in direction. Such an understanding undermines the very unity of God. Good is the force of creation. There is no force of uncreation. Existence is good. There is no thing that is non-existent. To equate evil with goodness undermines the unity and pervasiveness of goodness in creation and existence.A further division human beings like to make is between ‘thinking’ and ‘doing’. There is a lot more to Christianity than intellectual assent. Sitting at home believing in God does not get the believer, or anybody else, anywhere. We have to be doing something as well. The thinking and the doing have to become a unity. Thinking and doing has to be become a one unified activity in such a way that the thinking and the doing become inseparable. This unity is what the theologian, Edward Schillebeeckx, calls the Christian ‘praxis’. The Christian praxis is action that redeems and saves people, bringing them to the ultimate unity with God.We only need to look at today’s Gospel to see what that activity is. At the beginning of his ministry Jesus announces what he going to do — bring good news to the poor, free captives and the oppressed, and cure the ill. These actions are all about fulfilling people’s humanity, making them whole, and making them one. With any dualism, we have to make sure we see the unity behind it. Otherwise: we are scandalised by a divided Church rather than appreciating the Church’s achievements; we become obsessed with the body or the soul at the expense of our wholeness; we exaggerate evil and underestimate the goodness of creation; and our religion becomes reduced to thought and no redeeming action occurs. If we keep division in perspective and fully appreciate the unity around us, then Christ’s saving work will take place.
