family first? maybe not.

 

SERMON PREACHED at HOLY TRINITY,

RINGWOOD EAST

ORDINARY SUNDAY 20

 (August 20^th) 1989

 

READINGS

Jeremiah 38:4–6, 8–10
Psalm 40:2, 3, 4, 18
Hebrews 12:1–4
Luke 12:49–53
 

It is a favourite ploy of politicians from the conservative side of politics, to issue a call for a return to biblical values and the prioritising of the family unit. The two elements are bracketed together as if the Bible, in all its diversity, has nothing to say except a kind of manifesto of family unity.

 Such a reading of the Bible reveals only that its proponents have not read the Bible. Our reading today is not the only one that cuts through the narrative of so-called family unit “Woman, what have you to do with me?” (John 2:4) remarks Jesus to his mother at Cana. “Who are my mother and my brothers?” (Mark 3:33) he retorts when a crowd tell him that his family awaits him outside in Galilee.

His priority is not human, but the will of the one he dares to call “Abba,” his “father in heaven.”

It is that notion that underscores his harsh words, unfathomable words, of our gospel reading today. It is a question of priorities. Elsewhere Jesus is very protective of the respect owed to one’s parents, as a glance at Mt. 15 would demonstrate.

Jesus then is once more turning societal expectations upside down. By his treatment of the Pharisees who refuse due honour to their parents in Mt. 16 it seems that he wants his followers to subscribe to the mores of respect and obedience on which Jewish family life is based. But he wants that to be placed in a greater perspective. Even that, the very basis of family life, must take second place to the demands placed on his people by God, the Ultimate Parent.

Jesus’ apparent inaccuracies and contradictions do not stop there. “Do you suppose that I have come to bring you peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division.” Where does this claim stand in the light of Jesus’ earlier words, “your faith has saved you. Go in peace” (Lk 7:50,  8:48). Similarly, his instructions to the 72 missionaries to declare to recipients of the message, “Peace be to this house” (Lk. 10:5)?

If peace, shalom, lies at the heart of Christian salvation, why does the Saviour here contradict and seemingly scorn that peace? If in our Anglican liturgy we long for the Christ-spoken words “come to me all who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest (Mt. 11:28), or Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you,” (Jn. 14:27) why does Jesus here categorically deny that the way for his followers is a way of peace?

The answer is hinted at in the readings that we have today from the book we know as Hebrews. “We must … run with resolution the race for which we are entered, our eyes fixed on Jesus” (Heb. 12:1-2). The peace of which we speak is eschatological – that is it is the peace that dwells at the end of the Christian’s race, the Christian’s life.

It is not unique to Christianity – indeed it is common to almost all religions – although the way in which it is grasped, attained, is unique to Christianity. It is the peace for which the saints long as they face the horrors of martyrdom. It is the peace that allows me to stand with confidence at the graveside or at the death bed as I administer God’s death-transcending love.

It is not all that Christianity offers. For Christianity speaks also of God’s judgement, of God’s mercy, and of the resurrection of the body. But it is the peace that is the beginning of the experience of the eternal.

Jesus, then, is making it quite clear to us that Christianity offers no easy way out. It is not, as some claim, a cop out, except in so far as it offers hope in the face of our mortality.

Luke places this event in Christ’s journey in between the commandment to be alert, to live in readiness for the second coming – to live as if now were the hour – and the tragic news of the slaughter of 19 Galileans by Pontius Pilate. The implication is clear, that Christ will return – or that our deaths may come – and that we must be ready for that event, living lives of faith to the full.

Living lives of faith to the full, and being prepared to enter the hard and dangerous way that it is to follow Christ. The way of the cross is one of pain and misunderstanding.

For the son treats the father with contempt,
    the daughter rises up against her mother,
the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law;
    your enemies are members of your own household.

Do not rejoice over me, my enemies;
    when I fall, I shall rise;
when I sit in darkness,
    the Lord will be a light to me.

                                    (Micah 7: 6-7)

 

So writes the Old Testament prophet Micah in a passage echoed by Jesus. But the message of Easter, after that of Good Friday – is the radically good news of hope-in-suffering.

 

 

things happen on a mountain

 

SERMON PREACHED ON
THE FEAST OF THE TRANSFIGURATION
 
(August 6^th) 1989
HOLY TRINITY, RINGWOOD EAST

 

READINGS

Exodus 34:29–35
Psalm 99
2 Peter 1:13–21
Luke 9:28–36

 

What are we to make of this scene that we know as the “transfiguration”? This scene of which we read each year, and which seems to bear little resemblance either to our personal experiences of Christ, or to the remainder of the New Testament story?

As is so often the case we can only begin to comprehend this visionary passage in the life of our Lord when we place it in context. What is the conversation that these events take place “eight days” (or six days) after?

What happens when the bemused disciples return with Jesus from the hillside?

For this scene takes place between the moment that Peter recognises and confesses Jesus to be the long-awaited Christ and the time that Jesus turns and sets his footsteps resolutely towards Jerusalem, knowing only too clearly the fate that awaits him there.

The meaning of this dramatic side show can be understood, then, only in the context of Jesus being the Christ, the long-awaited Messiah of Israel, and in his turning that vocation upside down to make it not a glorious civil triumph but a tragic civic execution.

The event itself is saturated with poetic imagery. It is the language of heaven, the language of the coming Kingdom for which we pray each time we pray the Lord’s Prayer. The setting is a mountain, traditionally, in the ancient world, a place “set apart,” set aside from the daily events of life. One would expect an encounter with God on a mountain.

The clouds that surround the men on the mountain are also symbolic. In biblical literature the cloud is always a symbol of the presence of the glory of God. God’s presence, but not the sight of God’s face. Luke reminds us again that the only way by which we may see God is to look at the Son, Jesus.

Jesus himself at this point is transformed in appearance from a mere mortal to one whose clothes are white, dazzling beyond human possibilities. Jesus, momentarily, is seen by the three disciples as he shall be. Shown as he will appear in the future Kingdom.

It is significant that he does not appear again in this way even after the resurrection. Even now we await the fully revealed glory of the Son. In that momentary supra-whiteness of Jesus the disciples see the radical otherness between the realms of God’s glory and the realms of human existence.

Jesus returns to the realm of human existence.

The people of whom we read in the Book of Daniel are longing for a saviour who will overthrow oppressive regimes and re-establish God’s chosen people. They long for a military conquest. They are in the end never wholly liberated by such conquests.

The “beloved Son” on the mountain is a conqueror. But he conquers not by overthrowing the oppressive regime of Caesar, but by turning away from the heavenly sphere and setting his steps resolutely towards Jerusalem where he will die in disgrace.

It is not, as St. Paul sees with penetrating clarity, in the miraculous realm of the mountain that Jesus reveals his glory, but in the utter degradation of the Cross. For once the disciples got it right and remained silent about the events of the mountain. In Mark and Matthew’s accounts they are commanded to tell no one. Jesus sees only too clearly that the miracle of transfiguration becomes clear only in the light of the Cross.

The Transfiguration then, is a kind of parenthesis in the life of Jesus. it is a glorious insight to the Kingdom which is yet to come it is a glorious sign of the hope that we have in the resurrection. It is, in theological terms, an “in-breaking,” albeit momentary, of the Not Yet, the world to come, into the already, this world. But like Jesus, we too must come down from the mountain, and turn with him to Jerusalem.

Rabouni

  

REFLECTIONS  ON THE FEAST OF St MARY MAGDALENE

 July 22 1989
HOLY TRINITY, RINGWOOD EAST

 

 (REPRESENTATIVE) READINGS

Judith 9:1, 11–14
Psalm 42:1–7
2 Corinthians 5:14–18
John 20:11–18

 

Few characters within the New Testament drama, within the history of Christianity, have been more distorted and abused by tradition than the woman we have come to know as Mary of Magdala, Mary Magdalene. Perhaps only Jesus himself has been more distorted, more removed from the historical, more re-created in whatever image the Church deems appropriate.

Mary.

Immediately, because of her name, she is doomed to live in the shadow of Mary, the mother of Jesus. The Messiah’s mother had very little to do with his ministry, being rather more a bemused onlooker than an active supporter. John alone records her as being present at the crucifixion.

Yet the gospel-records  are unanimous in giving Mary of Magdala a key role in the unfolding of Jesus’ pronouncement of love, of salvation, of the Kingdom.

She is doomed also to be confused with that other Mary, Mary the sister of Martha, the one who in John’s account anoints Jesus’ feet with costly ointment. Mary and Martha of Bethany are the sisters of Lazarus, who Jesus had earlier raised from death. Her overflowing gratitude can be imagined, and the outpouring of the oils intended for her brother’s body is a symbol of that gratitude.

That symbol in turn fuses with Luke’s record, at Luke 7:36–50, of a similar incident in which a woman bursts into a dinner attended by Jesus, and anoints his feet with tears and ointment. She is not identified by Luke, depicted only as one who “had a bad name” in her community. She does not appear to be Mary of Bethany, for Jesus is far from Bethany in the preceding scenes. She is clearly not Mary of Magdala, for though Jesus is close to Magdala at the time, Mary of Magdala is introduced  by Luke in the following scene (Luke 8).

Nevertheless the Church has traditionally mixed these three in a theological blender and produced the tradition of Mary Magdalene.

The great sinner.

It is unfair to Mary, and unfair to women.

The Church has also traditionally upheld “Mary “ – this blended and mythical Mary – as the example par excellence of the sins of the flesh. The redeemed, lusty, professional prostitute, who plied her trade on would-be righteous males. She attains salvation only in her failure to seduce the Messiah, and in her resultant dramatic rejection of her former wayward life.

She becomes the fallen woman picked up by Christ, the woman who stands as a warning to every Christian’s daughter. She stands in this tradition as a condemner of sexuality, or more specifically of female sexuality. Her love for Jesus is acceptable only when body and spirit are compartmentalised.

When her love is carnal it is evil, but when spiritual it is an example to us all.

Though common, these are falsified images of Mary. They have done enormous damage to Christianity – to the Church’s attitude towards women, and to our attitudes towards salvation. We have found it all but impossible to incorporate our bodies into our love of God. Protestants in particular have fervently denied the place of the body in worship, indeed in all of life. Art, dance, even the symbolic actions of genuflection and the sign of the cross as offerings of love, are largely absent from Protestant worship.

It is not coincidental that in the 1980s, as society searches for wholistic existence, the Church that Christ loved into being has been marginalised.

Who, then was Mary? Who can she be for us at the close of the 1980s?

Luke introduces her to us.

Soon afterward he went on through one town and village after another, proclaiming and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God. The twelve were with him, as well as some women who had been cured of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out …

 

The reference to demons is almost certainly a reference to mental illness. The fact that Mary had been delivered of seven demons indicates that she was suffering chronic mental illness. Her deliverance is not recorded, but we might guess that she was afflicted by recurring epilepsy or manic depression. The patterns of Jesus’ exorcisms suggest that he would have physically touched this ostracised woman, perhaps embraced her, helped her to her feet.

He allowed her to be herself, to choose to follow him, to love him. She left the wealthy town of Magdala and became one of the leaders amongst his followers. Her name always heads the list of women, and it is to her, not Peter, that Jesus entrusts the Good News of Resurrection.

But with what pain? The woman, whose life is so attuned to Jesus, remains with him to the end. Unlike the twelve men, she does not desert him, and is with him at the Cross. She continues to love even the dead body, and her calm is broken only when she sees that to have been taken from her.

Not for her the foolish rivalry of the race between Peter and John. For her only the sacrifice of tears. Her words to the gardener are words of stern command, words of a woman not to be taken lightly.

“Sir, if you have taken him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will go and remove him.”

Only then is the tenderness of Jesus’ love for her revealed.

“Mary.”

She replies,

“Rabouni.” My teacher.

But it is in the firmness of his next words, and her acceptance of them, that his strength is revealed.

“Do not cling to me … but go tell the brethren …”

The apostleship of Mary is birthed before that of Peter, of the others. It is birthed in the pain a woman knows best, the pain of being torn from one who is loved. It is birthed in obedience. It is birthed in misunderstanding, for Luke’s account tells us, “This story seemed to the apostles pure nonsense.”

This story of the woman who was sent by Jesus is still largely being ignored: an apostleship born of love.

In the light of The Last Temptation of Christ, of Superstar, of Michelle Roberts’ The Wild Girl, we might ask the question, “what was the nature of Mary’s relationship to Jesus?”

The answer is that we do not know and need not know. But we must be sure that we are not afraid to think of Jesus as a sexual being. For if Jesus is not a sexual being then he is not fully human. God created us as whole beings, and gave to us the gift of sexuality, with all the gifts of life.

In all of our being we are redeemed by Christ. To learn about the responsibilities of having been redeemed we could do worse than reflect on the truth and on the abuses of the Mary Magdalene tradition.

Mary tells the disciples, “I have seen the Lord.”

 

The Lord be with you.

 

 

love in a bottle?

 

SERMON PREACHED AT HOLY TRINITY, RINGWOOD EAST
FIFTEENTH ORDINARY SUNDAY (July 16) 1989

 

READINGS

Amos 7:7-17
Psalm 82
Colossians 1:1-14
Luke 10:25-37

 [Returning to this sermon after 35+ years I wonder if I ever finished writing it. Perhaps I ad libbed a different ending. My diary tells me I was busy with visitors the day I wrote it – as it happens visitors with whom I still have Facebook contact – the sermon writing squeezed between two sets. Ah well. Let it stand].

We hear it read each Sunday. The Golden Rule, the command to love God,  self, and neighbour. It rolls easily off the tongue, causing us scarcely a hiccup in out thoughts, and we respond, “Lord, have mercy on us.”

Yet the reply Jesus gave to the lawyer is pregnant with significance. The command is simply to give all our human self to the service of God. The whole person is to be dedicated to the worship and the service of God. We are not intended to divide up the aspects of our humanness. The combination of heart, soul, strength and mind is no more than an emphasis on the totality of our life, the holistic way in which our lives are called to be dedicated to God.

In the beginning God created. The hows and the whens are utterly unimportant. What is important is that this alternate source of energy withdrew from a tiny space in the universe and granted room for you and I to grow there. God creates because in the perfection of divine love there was and is a desire to share love.
Love in a bottle or love in a vacuum is an unsatisfactory, restricted love. In response however to the privilege of being breathed into existence, God seeks the return of love; that we should love God with all our being.

Love from a puppet is no love at all. God breathed us into existence impregnated with free will, we may choose to love God, we may choose to ignore God, we may choose to hate God. The love of a puppet for its master is no love. God did not create puppets.

The story, the myth, of the Fall reminds us of our failure to love God. The children of the parent reject the loving care of the parent and refuse to obey. We as individuals and we as a human race fail to obey, and so we form a world where hatred is based on misunderstandings of our neighbour, because of their colour, because of their sex, because of their sexuality, because of their creed. We fail to love God with heart, soul, strength, mind. We fail to love even our neighbour. We fail to love.

At the heart of Jewish religion is the knowledge that the command to love God in our totality, and likewise to love our fellow beings created in the image of God, is everything. The Ten Commandments, all the Law, all the Prophets, all are no more then an explanation of the command to love God. If you love God then you will not covet, or steal, or perjure, or profane those things that are sacred.

The earnest lawyer saw and knew all that.

But we do not love God with our all, and we are entrapped in a world which does not love God with its all. You and I will again and again fail in our attempts to love God. We will leave undone those things we should have done and we'll do the things that we should not do.

The reward for that failure should be the experience of eternal and unremitting separation from the perfection of God’s love.

That it is not is the miracle of Easter, the miracle of divine love.

still small voice of calm

 

SERMON PREACHED AT St AIDAN’S, ALEXANDRA

and ST JAMES’, ROXBURGH

NINETEENTH ORDINARY SUNDAY

(August 9^th) 2026

 

READINGS 

 

1 Kings 19:9-18 

Psalm 85:8-13

Romans 10:5-15

Matthew 14:22-33

 

                                   

If you were one of the remarkable people who has read or is reading the bible cover to cover, or even if you were doing that simply with Matthew’s gospel account, you will read or better still hear this story knowing that just a few minutes ago Matthew used this same motif.

In Matthew 8 he records Jesus telling a teacher of the law that foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nest, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head. Then he tells a would be follower that he  cannot  bury his father, but must follow in the Way of the Cross immediately. And Jesus then stepping into a boat with his disciples and heading off on the lake, where a storm arises and Jesus calms it.

That though is not the story I have just read. This is another lake, another storm, another story. Jesus is not in the boat with the disciples in this vivid scene. He arrives somewhat unorthodoxly, and for people like me who really took very little notice of bible stories in my youth, it would be one of few that are memorable. And it all seems a bit unusual, really.

In fact what do we do with the nature miracles? For me there is a delicate middle path between cynical dismissal of these miracles as silly stories in an old book and uncritical acceptance of them as verbatim records of a spectacular event on a lake late one evening long ago, on the Sea of Galilee.

Matthew, who borrows this scene from Mark, makes significant theological alterations. In the first place he uses the unusual word “compels” – Jesus compels the disciples to enter the boat and undergo this harrowing experience.  Matthew vividly describes the boat as being “tortured” by the waves, and the first hearers of Matthew’s story would not have need to be rocket scientists to see the association between the portrayal of would-be followers of Jesus in a tortured boat and themselves, as would-be followers of Jesus in a church community “tortured” by misunderstanding and hatred in the Roman community around them.

The Christians were in fact rocking the boat of the Roman Empire. But that’s not the boat on display here. The boat here is their faith community, tortured by fear, buffeted by the winds of change, endangered because Roman authorities are becoming angry. They are because these upstart followers of a new religion, an illegal religion founded by a crucified criminal, are upsetting the gods.

And Jewish neighbours weren’t terribly happy, because their uneasy relationship with Rome was threatened, because Rome didn’t care about differences between upstart Christian believers and the more orthodox Jewish community. They were, to the Romans, basically atheists. They were angering the gods with their talk of one Creator God. They. the Romans, could almost stomach the traditional religion of the Jews, but these upstairs? A pox on both their houses. So the Jews and Romans alike were unimpressed.

The Jews had reached an uneasy truce with Rome, largely by compromising their standards. The new mob were hot-blooded, dismissive of the Roman gods, dismissive even of the Caesar if and when he dared to usurp the place of the Creator.

Was there a storm on the Sea of Galilee? There were probably many, and probably many occasions on which the mana of Jesus was such that the disciples trusted his judgement. Perhaps there were miraculous interventions, too – certainly this scene had to be consistent with the belief that Christians had that in Jesus they had discovered one who command the storms of life, including the storms of nature, commands storms to abate. One who could bring calm into the deepest chaos of his followers’ existence.   

It is no accident that in those thoughts Matthew was echoing the Genesis story of Creation. The Spirit breathes order into the chaos of an untamed cosmos. Indeed, one of the advantages the ancients had over we post-enlightenment travellers is that they knew the immediacy of chaos, just beneath the surface of human experience.

For decades we have tried to silence that awareness, but in the horrors of two world wars, of genocide, and of a cold war last century it was never really far away. And in the resurgent fears of nuclear chaos, the unparalleled awareness of ecological collapse, and the dramatic collapse of the American experiment, the American empire before, our very eyes we are vividly reminded that chaos’s grip is not too far away.

And that is the point Matthew – and Jesus before him, is making. The storms are not the final word. The voice of God is not in the dramatic and destructive and demonic, but in the silence, the still point, the calm. Speak through the earthquake, wind, and fire” as we shall sing shortly, “o still voice of calm.”

Our duty is to be still enough, to practice the stillness of God enough, to hear the voice that is greater than the chaos, to know the peace that is always there around us. In liturgy especially we have that opportunity … A practice that is useless for any purpose except to focus on the unseen God. That and to turn our hearts for a few momenta to that God.

To know peace, and strengthened by that knowledge, to continue the journey across the lakes of life.    

 

lambs amongst wolves

 

SERMON PREACHED AT HOLY TRINITY, RINGWOOD EAST
FOURTEENTH ORDINARY SUNDAY (July 9^TH) 1989

 

READINGS

2 Kings 5:1-14

Psalm 30
Galatians 6:[1-6] 7-16
Luke 10:1-11, 16-20

 

 

If I were to parcel Jesus up and to prepare him for popular market as one parcels up everyday products, seeking to make him palatable, I would have to spend a great deal of time cutting away the bitter pill that surrounds his message to his people. 

One often hears of the impact he had on those who heard him speak, yet it could be considered remarkable that he found twelve disciples at all, let alone the seventy-two that he sent out to proclaim the gospel to the world.

Look, I am sending you like lambs amongst wolves.

It is scarcely a job description that would bring hordes knocking to the door of the Christian enterprise.

Even Paul, who was later to respond to the Christian responsibility of proclaiming Christ to the world, sees little of glamour or self-betterment in the task. Rather he sees his responsibility to be one of emptying himself, of exposing himself to the dangers of the Cross, of risking and eventually paying with his life for the gospel of Christ.

I bear the marks of Jesus branded on my body.

Again and again we are reminded of the risky business of proclaiming Christ to the world. A Muslim convert who converts to Christianity in Islamic Society is likely to be rejected or murdered by his or her family. A Christian who proclaims in South Africa that the implications of the gospel for the world are a call to racial equality, and the dismantling of the evils of apartheid is likely to be murdered, gaoled, or at best beaten for the simplicity of such a message. A Christian in this country who speaks out boldly about the inequalities that produce some who rank amongst the world’s richest people and others who belong to one of the world’s poorest races, or who seeks to alter the structure that perpetuates such an evil, is likely to be alienated and castigated by her – or his – neighbours,

Look, I am sending you like lambs amongst wolves.

There is little in such a command that brings a sense of security.

Those of you who read the magazine Good Weekend will be able to tell me what is the world’s fastest growing (para)church. I have to describe the Mormons as a parachurch: theirs is not the gospel of orthodox Christianity. Nevertheless, their growth throughout the world is phenomenal, and it leaves those of us who adhere to orthodox Christianity, and especially in its Anglican form, cringing with deserved shame.

Yet for all their theological absurdities, it has to be said that the Mormons are the fastest growing “church” in the world precisely because they have captured one aspect that dwells close to the core of our gospel passage today. They have caught the command of Jesus to go out into the community to proclaim that which they hold dear.

The question is: what do we hold dear? I would have to suggest that our Mormon friends are not only proclaiming a highly corrupt form of the gospel, but also they are offering little that presents hope to, for example, the people of the black townships of South Africa, or the homeless youth of our own community.

I believe deeply that we as Anglican Christians have far more to proclaim. We have a gospel to proclaim that not only offers hope to “hung up Mr or Ms Normal” but also, if we put our lives where our mouths are, to the children of Ethiopia and Somalia, to our own children, and to the children of the streets.

Look, I am sending you like lambs amongst wolves.

But it is not a gospel that we can proclaim from our lounge rooms. It is not a gospel that we can proclaim merely through the mouths of our clergy or our professional evangelists. It is not a gospel we can proclaim merely by attending church – though we must do that – or merely belonging to clubs and lodges and teams. It is a gospel we must proclaim by going out into our community, if necessary by knocking on doors, by touching the lives of the unpleasant and unwashed, and by making ourselves vulnerable in the cause of the Cross.

The Mormons, by encouraging 50% of their males to commit two years of their lives to proclaiming their quite illogical and contorted version of good news, have grown 650% in the 45 years since World War 2. In the same time Anglican Christianity in the western world has reduced by between 10% and 15%.

In the end, although the message we as Anglican Christians have may not be palatable, may not be one of unconditional comfort, it will be one that has more to say to the victims of injustice, of loneliness, of “industrial disease,” than that offered by the Mormons. But we have only two choices. To commit ourselves to the radical task of visibly proclaiming the gospel or to see our churches closes down within our lifetime.

The choice is ours.

Look, I am sending you like lambs amongst wolves.

And the word we are sent out to proclaim is the word of peace. It is a radical word, the setting right of the hearer’s relationship with God, with self, with neighbour. It is a word that seeks to reorient the injustices of society. It is a word that demands a costly response on the part of the hearer.

The peace of God which passes all understanding.

It is not always a popular word, for it demands setting aside human power games. But it is a word we are called to pronounce. Shalom. To that end we must reach out into the community.

Look, I am sending you like lambs amongst wolves.

The Lord be with you.

birds have nests

 

SERMON PREACHED AT HOLY TRINITY, RINGWOOD EAST
ELEVENTH ORDINARY SUNDAY (July 2) 1989

 

READINGS

2 Kings 2:1-2, 6-14
Psalm 77:1-2, 11-20
Galatians 5:1, 13-25
Luke 9:51-62

 

In every ministry, every new ministry, there are inevitable changes of direction, inevitable new ideas. Some will represent improvements; some will be regressive. One of the subtle changes some people have noted in the period since Easter is that when using First Order Communion I often omit inclusion of the so-called “Comfortable Words.”

I have many reasons for doing so, but at least one of them is that in contemporary Anglican Christianity we spend a little too much time reflecting on the comfort brought to us in the sacrificial life of Christ, and too little time reflecting on the discomfort – to us and to Christ – of the Way of the Cross into which we are called.

It is traditional during Lent, and to a lesser extent Advent, to slow down and take stock of something of that cost. But I sense even that is insufficient, and  that much more stock must be taken at all times of the cost of our faith. A comfortable faith is dangerous – and yes, I know only too well that the word “comfortable” has shifted in meaning greatly in the past century.

Jesus was walking along the road and apparently invited a man to follow him. He had already made clear to another traveller something of the cost of faith.

Foxes have holes and birds have nests
      but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.

It is an enigmatic saying, and a metaphorical one. Its meaning is elusive but not literal, for we know clearly from the gospel records that the Son frequently slept and ate in the homes of friends or followers.

In the context in which Luke places the saying it is particularly poignant, for Jesus has just been rejected by a Samaritan village. In the context of his whole life it is powerful, for this in adult form is the babe for whose birth there was no room at an inn, and following whose death there is only a borrowed tomb. The Son of Man dwells amongst human beings and his very vocation is to be misunderstood and rejected.

We have seen already Christ’s utter identification with the poor. We have seen that this does not mean for him a rejection of the company of the rich, but simply that for the one who “came to his own people and they did not accept him” was utterly poor, and in that utter poverty revealed the nature of God. He now simply reaffirms that message as a challenge to the traveller who sought to follow him.

But to a second would-be follower Jesus offers stern stuff.

Another to whom he said, “follow me,” replied,
“Let me go and bury my father first.”
But he answered, “leave the dead to bury their dead.”

It is a command that contradicts even the most sacred values of Jewish custom. Commentators on the passage often emphasise the fact that the person’s father was almost certainly not yet dead, but approaching the point of death. In either case Jesus’ answer is utterly unacceptable.

Burial of the dead was a religious duty that took precedence over all others, Including even study of the Law. Priests, who were not normally allowed to touch dead bodies, could do so in the case of relatives … the burial of a father was a religious duty of the utmost significance.
                                                   (I. Howard Marshall, The Gospel of Luke, Exeter: Paternoster, 1978, 411)

 

Jesus, in other words, is spitting in the face of all that his people, all that his culture held dear. He is offering not comfort but utter rejection, utter misunderstanding, utter scorn.

Your duty is to go and spread the news of the Kingdom of God.

Nothing else, even all that is humanly decent, all that has become the mores of a decent society, nothing can take priority over the claim the Christ places on the lives of his followers.

We have seen also, in the readings from the book of Kings, the Old Testament response to this context. Elijah allows Elisha the decency of farewelling those he loves before his pilgrimage  begins. For Jesus the Way of the Cross must exclude even that.

In truth I tell you, till heaven and earth disappear, not one dot, not one little stroke Sleep well then, is to disappear from the Law until its purpose is achieved.

                                                                                                (Matt. 5:18)

 

In that sense there is little offer of comfort in the gospel of Christ. There is little of security, little that provides for us barricades against a world that many of us sense is changing too fast.

Those who naïvely proclaim biblical support, for example, for their belief in the orthodox family unit have read only selective portions of the gospel. Christ flies in the face of all that his hearers held dear, scandalised rather than comforted all who upheld rigorously the standards of Old Testament legalism.

For even that, says Christ, even the family, even at the burial rites of those we love, even the possession of basic needs must be surrendered to the service of the gospel. It is small wonder that Saint Paul describes his cross as a scandal to the Jews and a stumbling block to the Greeks. The commitment to Christ surpasses all else.

All this is consistent with a crazy upside down gospel that pronounces that it is the poor who are the icon of God’s nature, and which proclaims the love of God for humanity by hanging God naked on a cross.

Is there, then, comfort in the cross? In Christ? I fear not, if our expectation of comfort is for this side of the grave. But surely Good Friday is only half the story, and the real comfort lies in that icy Easter morning as we stand stunned at the empty tomb and proclaim with all Christians, “Christ is risen: death where is your sting?”

The Lord be with you.