The generation we now call Z has grown up in a multi-platform world, a world in which they can access information in a number of different ways, but they may have lost other vital skills!‘Generation Z learned to swipe before they could write!’Generation Z thinks it is more important to have a reliable wifi connection than a reliable bathroom’Analogue or DigitalGeneration Y was the last generation to write a letter!I remember the day when we got our first and last letter from our Generation Y child. Up to that point, all our other children had written to us regularly from school but this was the last handwritten letter we received and I have preserved it for posterity!However, all our children belong to what could be called the digital age whereas most of us belong to the analogue generation.The difference I think is that the analogue generation processes information differently to the digital generation. Analogue people are used to a single medium, usually words, whereas the digital generation uses many different platforms. This means that we, the analogue generation, mainly use only one of the senses God has given us to process information.The Great East Window York MinsterI use a painting to illustrate my sermon because I believe it helps if we engage more than one sense as we process what we are hearing. In fact I remember learning back at theological college that we remember and retain more, the more of our senses that are employed. My picture today is not a painting but a stained glass window, because back in the days before literacy was universal, biblical stories were told with pictures. The window contains two biblical cycles, Creation and Revelation, the beginning and the end of all things. Beneath the heavenly realm at the head of the window, populated by angels, prophets, patriarchs, apostles, saints, and martyrs, there are three rows of 27 Old Testament scenes from the Creation to the death of Absalom. Below this, scenes from the Apocalypse appear, with a row of historical figures at the base of the window. You could preach many sermons just from that one window!Multiple platformsMusic too was important to lift the spirit, and incense to convey the mystery of God. Touch and posture are also used to express worship. Today I would like you to take these holding crosses for a moment as you pray, they may help you to focus. When I was a child we used to sing a little song that went ‘Hands, shoulder, knees, and toes…. and eyes and ears and mouth and nose’ I think there was a little dance that went with it. I’m not sure whether we sang it to remind ourselves where all these parts of the body were, or to exercise, but it reminds me today that there are many more ways to listen to a sermon than sitting on a church pew. Consider for a moment the various ways in which Jesus interacts with the people in this passage.Interactive TeachingFirst, there is the interactive dialogue with the Syrophonesian woman, then there is the encounter with the deaf-mute man who Jesus took aside and stuck his fingers in his ears, and ‘After spitting, touched his tongue’ vs 33.Only after engaging physically with this man does he speak to him, “Ephphatha”Later he teaches through the feeding of the four thousand and illustrates his message through the vivid image of broken bread. Just like the little ditty we sang as children Jesus appears to want to engage us by using and even touching every part of our body.‘heads, shoulders, knees and toes… eyes and ears and mouth and nose’Holistic TherapyJesus then engages with our contemporary culture in many more ways than we do in our churches.I think that he would have used music therapy to reach disturbed children or aromatherapy to calm stressed executives or maybe started a massage clinic to treat the weary disciples!In reality, Jesus’ healings were sermons delivered not in words, but by touch and sight, smell and taste. Those who merely heard often went away unaffected, those who merely saw returned home unmoved, but those who responded with their whole being were touched and changed.Modern medicine has caught up with Jesus's methods but the Church hasn’t. Jesus engaged the whole person, the Church today only seems to engage those parts of us that can receive an analogue message rather than a multiplatform digital one.The Multi-Sensory ChurchIt is not just a problem for the Church it is a problem for us analogue Christians, we have learned to engage with parts of our minds but not with all of our bodies, and yet here we are at a service of Holy Communion. What is this if it is not a multi-sensory experience?We hear the Word but we also receive the Bread and the Wine because that too is the message now acted out in the Breaking and Sharing of the Bread and the Pouring out of the Wine. Holy Communion asks us to engage with our whole bodies:To come forward, to kneel, to put out our hands and eat, to open our mouths and drink. To taste and smell, to share in the body and blood of Christ.Engaging the SpiritThere is one dimension we have not mentioned. The spiritual, for Jesus, did not just engage the body and mind he engaged with the spirit of each person.‘’And looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, “Ephphatha” that is be opened. Mark 7:34As Jesus engaged with this deaf-mute there was a struggle going on at a spiritual level. Jesus was engaging with more than the man’s body and mind he was engaging with his spirit. It appears that just as his mouth was locked up and his ears closed so too his spirit was imprisoned and the implication is that until his spirit could be freed neither his body nor mind could be.“ Be opened” then reminds us that there is a dimension within each of us that words cannot reach, which even bread and wine cannot nourish. A part of us that will not respond without a struggle though we may be doing all the right things with our bodies and even believing all the right things with our minds.As we kneel and hold out our hands, as we open our mouths there is another part of us with which Jesus asks us to open up, our spirits.For us analogue Christians this may be the hardest part of us to release, but only as our spirits are released can we experience the full spectrum of a multidimensional, multi-sensory, multi-coloured, and even multi-generational world.
Oscar Wilde’s famous story ‘The Portrait of Dorian Gray’ could have been written to illustrate today’s gospel reading. Dorian Gray has his portrait painted as a young man; it reflects his youthful innocence and beauty. As Dorian grows older he remains youthful but strangely the marks of his uncontrolled and selfish lifestyle begin to distort the features of his portrait until it becomes so ugly he decides to destroy it. In the moment he destroys the portrait he dies and a strange transformation takes place. The portrait once again shows him as a youthful man but the marks of his evil distort and disfigure his dead body.Rembrandt Self Portraits 1628-1669We can see a similar transformation over time as we examine Rembrandt's self-portraits. In the case of Rembrandt what we find is a growing sense of self-knowledge as life takes its toll and bankruptcy brings wisdom. The self-portraits thus create a visual diary of the artist over a span of forty years. They were produced throughout his career at a fairly steady pace, he was still painting portraits in 1669, the year he died at the age of 63.These self-portraits trace the progress from an uncertain young man, through the dapper and very successful portrait painter of the 1630s, to the troubled but massively powerful portraits of his old age. Together they give a remarkably clear picture of the man, his appearance, and his psychological make-up, as revealed by his richly weathered face. Kenneth Clark stated that Rembrandt is "with the possible exception of Van Gogh, the only artist who has made the self-portrait a major means of artistic self-expression, and he is absolutely the one who has turned self-portraiture into an autobiography."The Beautiful lifeA rather cruel quotation, variously attributed to Abraham Lincoln, Albert Schweitzer, Coco Chanel, and others makes this point about our faces:“When you are young, you have the face God gave you. At 40 you have the face life molded, and at 60 you have the face you deserve”Jesus is challenged to answer the same question, ‘What makes a life beautiful?’ We are familiar with all the remedies that advertisers offer, but they can only help us look good on the outside, what we need is help on the inside.Servants and MastersIn Jesus' day, the secret of a beautiful life was ritual purity, eating and drinking the right foods, washing regularly, and touching only those things that were uncontaminated. These rules and regulations were encoded in the ‘traditions’ and were strictly observed by the Pharisees and teachers of the Law. The traditions and the law were indeed given by God to lead his people to holiness but over time they had become not servants but masters. Sadly this is what happens to many of God’s good gifts. Money, sex, power, and even food are all gifts of God that have been given to us as servants to enable us to lead good lives, but as our masters, they have become monsters.Prisoners of the law.Paul uses this phrase to describe the reality of evil. He calls himself “A prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members.‘What a wretched man I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God, through Jesus Christ our Lord.”Romans 7: 23-25.Paul, like Jesus, clearly points us to our own appetites and desires as the source of evil. Evil comes not from the outside but from the inside of us. We must face the reality that it is we who are responsible for the transformation of the beautiful gifts of God into the source of evil. When we allow these gifts to become our masters we become their prisoners. Even the Law of God, Paul points out, given to lead us to God, can become a cruel taskmaster turning us into tyrants and hypocrites when it no longer serves the purposes of God.Many of us have puzzled over the problem of evil, how can God allow it to exist in His world? The answer lies within us. As we consider our lives we must ask the question, ‘What drives us, who are our masters, and who are our servants?’ True holiness begins as we focus our desires and ambitions on God. Somewhere we all need a portrait of ourselves that reflects what is going on inside us! When we can see ourselves as we really are the answer to our dismay is not to destroy that image but to hand it over to the one who has put to death the sin that destroys us, and be transformed by the new life that he gives us.
Boris Johnson’s article in the Daily Telegraph Newspaper, some time ago now, on the issue of whether or not to allow Muslim women to wear the full face Burqua is still widely quoted as the kind of racist racist remark that can provoke riots on the streets. He argued that he was not in favour of a ban on these symbols of modesty, but used language about the the face coverings in a way that was heard to be demeaning of Muslim women, comparing them to ‘Letterboxes’ and ‘Bank robbers’.This sensitive issue of the way we dress and look is just one of a number of flashpoints between Muslim communities in Europe. Recent riots in England have been fuelled by false information identifying asylum seekers as Muslim terrorists, and as a result, Mosques have become a target of ‘Rightwing’ mobs. How, we might ask has the Burqua and the beards worn by Muslim men, become symbols not of religious piety, but of Islamic terrorism?St Francis and the Sultan.There is a story told about St Francis who, during the 5th Crusade, 1217-1221, during which the Crusader armies attempted to invade Egypt, was sent to mediate between the warring religions, offering his life in order to bring peace.Sir Hugh de Beauvois, who was one of the leaders of the crusade, sought an audience with the Sultan, Malek al-Kamil, the nephew of Saladin and a pious Muslim. The Sultan, in turn, requested that Francis, widely regarded as a ‘Holy man’ by both Muslims and Christians, be brought before him.“Is he a madman or a Saint?” Asked the Sultan.To answer his own question the Sultan pointed to the tunic of Sir Hugh de Beauvois, who as a Crusader wore the white robe and red cross over his armour.“Let us see if this man is mad or a Saint” The Sultan declared.“Let me have your tunic and I will lay it out on the ground in front of me so that he will have to tread on it if he is to pay obeisance to me. If he does he is no Saint, if he doesn’t he is a madman and will die!”Francis was summoned, and on entering the presence of the Sultan he walked over the tunic with its Cross and paid obeisance to the Sultan.“ Do you not see what you have done? You have abused your most holy symbol, the Cross, you are no Saint!”“ No”, Francis answered, I am no saint. I am a child of God as you are. The Cross of Christ obliges me to honour you as of infinite worth to God”“ You may leave my presence with your life for you are no madman” The Sultan replied.So impressed was the Sultan by Francis’ courage and faith that he allowed the defeated Crusader armies to retreat and leave Egypt with their lives.Bread and Wine.Christ spoke of himself in terms of symbols - The Bread and Wine, but the symbols speak of a deeper reality beyond the rite which we now call the Eucharist or Holy Communion.Christ spoke of eating his flesh and drinking his blood, a statement that truly appalled and offended his Jewish listeners, and caused division amongst his disciples.Many thought that he was speaking literally and indeed many of the first Christians were accused of cannibalism, but Jesus' words do not, of course, refer to literal eating and drinking, but to a living out of the life and death of Christ.When Christ took up the five loaves and fishes the gospel writers record his actions of blessing, breaking and then giving the food to the people. In this dialogue that follows the feeding of the five thousand in the synagogue in Capernaum, Jesus goes on to expand on his teaching. The breaking of the bread, he says, speaks of the offering of life to others.‘Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.’ John 6: 52 To eat his body is to live out his self-giving life so that others are fed and nourished, or as Paul puts it elsewhere:‘Offer your bodies as a living sacrifice’ Romans 12:1 The words ‘Drink my blood’ can also be understood as an invitation to live his life. Blood was always understood to be the animating force in the body so to drink his blood is to share in the life of Christ, a life animated by a love for all God’s creatures.Maybe it was this realisation of the true cost of following Christ, and not that the disciples took the words literally, that led so many to turn away from him at this moment.To honour the symbol, then, means more than to reverence the bread and wine in Communion, however, we regard it, whether a literal or just figurative image of his body and blood. Honouring the symbol is meaningless unless it represents a living out of the life and death of Christ.In fact St Paul tells the Corinthian church that its celebration of the Communion meal is blasphemous:“ For where anyone eats and drinks without recognising the body of the Lord eats and drinks judgement on himself.” Cor12:29By recognising the ‘Body’ Paul did not mean believing that the bread was the body of Christ, but that it was a symbol of the ‘Body’ of Christ, that is the Church.When the Corinthian Christians ignored the poor in their midst by leaving them out of their elaborate Communion meal they were in reality, not just symbolically, abusing the Body of Christ.Taking the symbols seriously, whether Christian or Muslim, requires us to recognise the true meaning of our faith. Yes, symbols mean something, but they mean something because they point to a respect for the dignity and indeed the divinity of all humanity as St Francis recognised we are all children of God, we all bear the image of God.
Could you allow me to start with a silly story from my school days? I remember two brothers at school who were almost identical twins. Their father had a business making plastic mouldings and, on a school visit to the factory, I remember, joking in a rather unkind teenage way, that his sons must have been fashioned in the same mould as they looked just like their father. A bad joke, I know!Who is this man?I begin with this story because today we continue with John’s account of the ways in which the disciples, the crowds, and the religious authorities, all attempted to understand Jesus. They tried to place him in a ‘mould’ that would make sense to them. ‘Who is this man?’, the disciples asked when he calmed the wind and the waves. Was he another Moses the crowds asked, as he had fed them with bread in the desert as Moses had?No, the religious authorities replied, ‘This is the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know.’ John 6: 42That was, in a sense true, but it did not explain or contain the whole truth, because Jesus escaped and continues to escape all attempts to categorise or contain him, either within philosophical, religious, scientific, or any human definitions. Instead, Jesus talked about coming from heaven.‘How can he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’? John 6: 42That is a question we continue to ask today, and indeed struggle to answer because he continues to escape us, or at least escapes the mould in which we attempt to place him.MatisseThe artist who best expresses the uniqueness of artistic genius is, to my mind, Matisse, but before he discovered his own unique style he went through many others. Starting as a student at the ‘École des beaux- arts’ he was trained in the grand traditions of French painting, but he soon moved on. He was introduced to Impressionism by the Australian artist John Russell, but moved on, again, to the Post Impressionists, and then the Neo-Impressionists before launching out in a new movement ‘Fauvism’. The Fauvists were called ‘Wild beasts’ because of their bold use of colour and it was with colour that Matisse discovered his own vision.The Red Room 1908 ‘The Red Room’ is the painting in which Matisse finds his own voice or, more correctly his own vision. Using colour alone to define the spaces he creates what is, at first sight, a red room, but the flat surfaces and spiral patterns suggest that this is more than a painting of a room, it urges us to think further and imagine more. Matisse has given us a room so we can locate ourselves within it, it is solid and we can identify the objects in it, but it suggests that beyond what we can see is another world of wonder and beauty. This is the artist’s eye giving us an insight into their world and their unique vision of it. The Bread of HeavenI want to use that image as a way of speaking of Jesus' words ‘I am the Bread of life’. We all know what bread is and how it sustains life so we can begin to understand what Jesus is saying. He is the one who sustains life, but then we get lost when he repeats the words adding:‘I am the living bread that came down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die.’ John 6: 50Here we are asked to think beyond the bread we eat to a mystery that escapes us, as Jesus escaped the crowds, as Jesus still escapes all attempts to put him in a box and market him as some kind of wonder loaf! The words ‘From heaven’ are, I think, a way of saying ‘This is beyond you’But there is another way of understanding these words because Jesus adds that ‘the bread comes down from heaven’, in other words, it is given to us, and it comes down to us so that we do not have to attempt the impossible and reach up to heaven with our own ideas.‘I am the living bread that came down from heaven.’ John 6: 51This is the bread that Jesus gives to us, not bread we can grasp at for ourselves. It is all gift or as Paul describes it ‘Grace’. More than this Jesus has left us a meal in which we can actually eat this bread, it is real bread, though in wafer form. It is physical bread just as Jesus was really physically present on earth, and as he promises, he is now present in the bread and wine of Holy Communion.Son of the FatherThe religious authorities thought they could identify Jesus because they knew his parentage. They were wrong about that, but if they had listened to him they might have guessed what he was saying:‘Not that anyone has seen the Father except the one who is from God; he has seen the Father’ John 6: 46Jesus was not the son of Joseph, he was and is the Son of God, and like those two boys I remember from school, he is the very image of the Father. If we truly want a taste of heaven we are invited to the heavenly banquet today.‘Whoever eats of this bread will live forever, and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh’ John 6: 51
