He is not here

 

SERMON PREACHED at HOLY TRINITY,
RINGWOOD EAST

ORDINARY SUNDAY 32

 (November 12^th) 1989

READINGS

Haggai 1:15b—2:9
Psalm 98
2 Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17
Luke 20:27-38
 

Jesus was constantly challenged to answer questions brought to him by sceptics. Often the scribes and the pharisees sought to trap him with their questions, but on this occasion it was a group of sadducees who came to him.

The sadducees, as Luke tells us, did not believe in the resurrection. Belief in the resurrection of the dead was, at the time of Jesus, a relatively newfangled doctrine championed by the pharisees and other modernists. The sadducees were suspicious of such innovative doctrines, preferring to stick strictly to the letter of the law, the Torah.

If the suspicion about newfangled doctrines sounds familiar, compare it with the ordination of women. Newfangled, unprecedented belief in the resurrection of the dead took over from the traditional centuries-old belief that death was it. Does this have implications for those whose opposition to the ordination of women is based on tradition – on the traditions of scripture? Those with ears, let them hear.

The story told by the sadducees, though unlikely, is possible. It is a story based on the levirate law of marriage, a law designed to keep property within a family and to ensure an heir from within a family to whom property would be bequeathed. But the sadducees were seeking to bait Jesus with the story, so that he will be forced to deny the resurrection.

This perspective of course is too limited. Too earthly. Their understanding of the hereafter is crippled by limitation to their understanding of the here and now. Their belief is not in a miraculous and awesome God who is the God of the astounding, but in a somewhat myopic, pedantic God, whose relationship to the world is unspectacular and pedestrian.

Jesus, the one who dares to call God “Abba,” will have none of this, and refutes the question by simply commending the hereafter to the world of imagination. It will not be like this but – just imagine. As with all the biblical prophets, he seeks to draw an opulent, attractive picture of that which is to come. God is the God of all to whom his promises are made, and his promises are not thwarted by the petty event of our death. God’s promise of love and of eternity transcend our puny mortality.

I should say at this point that much fuss is made about remarks made in 1985 by David Jenkins, the Bishop of Durham. I would that more people had sought to listen to what Jenkins was really saying. Do not limit your understanding of the resurrection to a mere body, there is more at stake on Easter morning than flesh and blood.

That said, I must emphasise again that Christianity is not on about the immortality of the soul. That is a pagan doctrine far older than Christianity, and has nothing to do with the God of Jesus Christ. But the nature of Christ’s resurrection, the details of the body resurrected, these are red herrings. It is the pronouncement, “He is not here, he is risen,” that rings down through history.

It is that pronouncement that breathes hope into human existence and will continue to do so for as long as we reach out to the world around us and proclaim, “Jesus is Lord.” Or to put it another way, an inclusive way, Jesus is in control of life and of death.

It is that news that we take out to the world.

 

The Lord be with you,

tomb and womb

 

SERMON PREACHED at HOLY TRINITY, RINGWOOD EAST

ORDINARY SUNDAY 29

 (October 22^nd) 1989

(incorporating baptism of Matthew)

I scripted this sermon with two introductory paragraphs which I later omitted, presumably because they were not suited to the context and added to the length. More than 35 years later I think the omission was wise (!) but I kinda like what I was saying – maybe a message to myself rather than to those who gathered that day? I'm not sure I achieved “new languages and images” but the thought was there. 

I preface my thoughts by emphasising that it is the task of the Church to rediscover and re-present its doctrines for every generation. New languages and images  have to be used to express the truth of Christianity just as new vehicles are used as our transport needs change.

But we as Christians must test our claims – in each generation – by the double yardstick of biblical witness and the tradition of the Church down through the ages.

***

Baptism represents a new start. When Nicodemus quizzed Jesus about the signs he was revealing to the world, Jesus replied by saying that understanding, and full experience of God, could come only to those who are born again. It is a message that has been repeated and argued over by Christians ever since.

What did Jesus mean? I want to stress that our experience of Jesus need not necessarily begin with a clear conversion experience. Mine did, but others’ may not. But I must emphasize too that the promises we make at our children’s baptisms and our confirmations only become fully realised if we seek continually to enter into full relationship with Jesus. We must pray through Jesus. We must explore the scriptures to understand more fully the relationship between God and human history. We must confess regularly our inadequacies before God. We must be active in our allegiance to and involvement in the Church, the Body of Christ.

Baptism is the way by which we enact or symbolize that beginning. Jesus was baptised in order to symbolize his absolute identification with humanity in all its grot – and to accentuate the beginning of his public ministry.

Jesus describes the required commitment to him as one of being “born again.” It is no coincidence that he and the Church adopted water as the sign of that rebirth. Birth is a watery business.

Sigmund Freud says that we spend our lives in the search for means to return to the womb. Günter Grass, in his novel Cat and Mouse vividly depicts one character’s enactment of this desire, as he constantly dives to enter a submerged wreck. Freud may have been wrong in many details, but the similarity between tomb and womb is emphasised in many cultures. It is in our death, it seems, that we are finally brought once more into the womb.

Christianity enacts this return to the womb in the rite of baptism. It is as though the one baptised enters into the womb of God and is born from it. As the new Christian emerges from the waters the people of God rejoice.

We receive and welcome you as an inheritor with us  of the Kingdom of God.

But if tomb and womb are essentially the same we can say also that in that moment there is enactment of resurrection. The baptizand enters into a momentary tomb and emerges, at one with Christ’s resurrection, on the far side.

The fulness of what we are doing in baptism becomes apparent only at the graveside. It is at the graveside that we stand and defy death. We do not deny death. We deny death’s finality. As we have emerged from the waters of God’s womb, and as Christ on Easter Day emerges from the womb of death, the womb of Good Friday, so will we and those we love emerge in God’s time from the womb at our deaths.

It is to that hope, that joy, that we baptise our children.

It is because we must be faithful to that hope that we must work to grow into Christ.

It is only because of that hope, as revealed in the agony, the death, yet the emergence of Christ from the tomb-womb, that we have something to say in the face of San Francisco,[1] of Grafton,[2] or of the death of our loved ones.

The Lord be with you.

---

[1] The Loma Prieta earthquake struck San Francisco on October 19^th, 1989, killing 63, 42 of whom died when the Cyprus St Viaduct collapse. .

[2] On October 20^th, 1989,  21 people were killed and 22 injured when a semi-trailer and bus collided on the Pacific Highway near Grafton, NSW. At the time it was Australia’s worst road transport disaster, though tragically it was surpassed two months later, 200 kms further south on the same highway, when two coaches collided head on near Kempsey, NSW, killing 35. Coroners recommended that a dual carriageway be built, implementation of which took some 26 years.

make eucharist

 

SERMONETTE PREACHED at 
HOLY TRINITY, RINGWOOD EAST
ORDINARY SUNDAY 28 

 October 15^th 1989           (STEWARDSHIP SUNDAY)

READINGS

Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7
Psalm 66:1-12
2 Timothy 2:8-15
Luke 17:11-19

Has it ever been your experience to feel a Hallelujah torn from within you and offered, silently or aloud, to the heavens?

To glimpse the moon last night, or to see again the blossoms, or to be struck by the force of Friday afternoon’s downpour; to experience the love of a friend or a child, to be torn apart by a piece of stirring music, poetry, drama or prose: these are moments that no word will suffice, except an offering of praise, silent or spoken, to the heart of the Creator.

There were ten lepers. Branded and hated by society, desperate for love and compassion, beyond touch or healing. Jesus touched. Had he not been crucified he may well have died of leprosy.[1] Jesus touched. Jesus healed. And nine went on their way.

But one came and threw himself at the feet of the healer, and gave thanks.

That man whose offering of tearful thanks was made at the feet of Jesus was doubly a pariah. He was a Samaritan. Like the woman at the well he should despise Jesus and be despised by him.

Just one came back.

A leper. An AIDS victim. A homosexual. A pariah in India. A black in South Africa. A Koori[2] in Australia. A Samaritan. At the feet of Jesus he made Eucharist: he gave thanks.

We too will now make Eucharist.

“Let us make Eucharist to the Lord our God.”

“It is right to make Eucharist and to praise God.”

 
We have much for which to give God thanks. We have much within our lives to offer to the service of God’s Kingdom. It is to that offering of thanks and of our lives that we are called each day.

---

[1] Although I did not know it in 1989 this was a fallacy. Leprosy is not transmitted by skin to skin contact, but, like tuberculosis, by airborne droplets. On the other hand Luke the physician did not know that either!

[2] By 1989 my Australian sojourns had only been in Victoria. It was not until much later that I learned of other designation of First Nations people on the continent of Australia: Anangu, Murri, Nunga, Noongar, Pallawah. For kiwi readers, these designations are not entirely correspondent with iwi except insofar as Australian Indigenous nations are subsets of these regional demonyms, as hapu are a subset of iwi.

sink or stride

 

SERMON PREACHED AT 

St AIDAN’S, ALEXANDRA

and ST JAMES’, ROXBURGH

TWENTY FOURTH ORDINARY SUNDAY

(September 13^th) 2026

 

READINGS 

 1 Kings 19:9-18 
Psalm 85:8-13
Romans 10:5-15 
Matthew 14:22-33

 

                                   

Immediately he made the disciples get into a boat and go on ahead to the other side, while he dismissed the crowds. ²³ And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up the mountain by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone, ²⁴ but by this time the boat, battered by the waves, was far from the land, for the wind was against them. ²⁵ And early in the morning he came walking toward them on the sea. ²⁶ But when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified, saying, “It is a ghost!” And they cried out in fear. ²⁷ But immediately Jesus spoke to them and said, “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.”

²⁸ Peter answered him, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” ²⁹ He said, “Come.” So Peter got out of the boat, started walking on the water, and came toward Jesus. ³⁰ But when he noticed the strong wind,^[b] he became frightened, and, beginning to sink, he cried out, “Lord, save me!” ³¹ Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him, saying to him, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?” ³² When they got into the boat, the wind ceased. ³³ And those in the boat worshiped him, saying, “Truly you are the Son of God.”

 

Perhaps I can begin with a confession? I am not one who slides through life with a deep sense of the tangible presence of God. Despite being a convert Christian I have to admit that much of my life of faith is based in thoughts and intuition, based more on a questioning brain cell then the pumping of the heart. I was often in trouble for that when I mixed in strongly charismatic circles, yet it has stood me in good stead in the years since. I can only hope it will continue to until the day the lights go out, one way or another.

This is not to say that what we call the heart has no role in faith. Emotions, for that surely is what we mean by heart, are a critical dimension of what it means to be human. Not actually uniquely human. Ask my dog, out there sulking in my car! For the more advanced forms of animal carry emotions too. In fact I am advised that even some species of ant are sentient – you can Google that claim later! But as Matthew sat down to record for posterity his account of the Jesus event, he ensured that his brain was fully engaged. He expected that his listeners, for that is what we were meant to be, would engage their brains too.

I say all that in the context of what are called the nature miracles. Those who first heard Matthew’s gospel account certainly had to believe that God, as God is revealed in Jesus,  has the whole world in his hands, as some of you may have sung in Sunday school.

The nature miracles, such as stilling a storm, had to be consistent with the deep sense of God that believers experienced in their lives of worship, lives of study of the scriptures, of fellowship, and even of nature around them. “The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament proclaims God’s handiwork,” announces the Psalmist in Psalm 19.

But generally God does not revise the laws of nature on a whim, or to entertain Christian believers, or to create a neon spectacular. To place that responsibility on the shoulders of God makes mockery of the horrendous events of Nepal just a fortnight ago, or the drowning of 14 souls (to use aviation language) when a ferry capsized in the Mediterranean late last month, or 39 souls in a Philippines ferry fire just days ago.

The vagaries of nature are fierce. These are sometimes aided by human irresponsibility and sometimes not. Evils perpetrated by humans on each other are equally or more horrifying. Yet these remind us that all life hangs by a fragile thread. Yours and mine too. The gospel is us that divine love, resurrection hope, transcends even the breaking of that thread. Sometimes it’s hard to believe, and when we can others can for us, bizarre though that sounds. When we pray we are often praying on behalf of those who cannot.

I was not on the shores of the lake nearly 2000 years ago, as Peter had a panic attack while striding on the surface of the water. I was not there moments before this when Jesus strode out to meet his closest followers.

I have no idea what happened or if it happened at all, though I suspect it related closely to some deep experiences of those first followers of Jesus. But I do know that there are moments in our living and in our dying in which the firm hand of God transcends all expectation, all fear, all darkness.

This is not to say that we won’t experience fear or darkness in our living and our dying, but it is to say that the experience of those first followers of Jesus can be our experience too. They grew to believe that the heartening touch of God as revealed in Jesus is greater than even the deepest darkness or what I might call the scaredest scaredness. “In our darkness there is no darkness to you O Lord; the deepest night is clear as the day” as the Taizé chant puts it n its adaptation of Psalm 139.

John Bell’s translation of a Spanish affirms the same message: “Both in our living and in our dying, we belong to God.” That is the gospel we have, as we sung in our first hymn, and we have it to proclaim it. We have a gospel to proclaim, indeed, though sometimes we may struggle to believe it.

This interpretation of the events on the lake applies personally, in times of deep uncertainty in our lives.

It applies globally as we face enormous uncertainty, political and ecological, across the face of the globe.

It applies cosmically, too. That is what the author of Revelation made clear in his recitation of God’s promise of a new heaven and a new earth.

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. ² And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. ³ And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying,

“See, the home of God is among mortals.
He will dwell with them;
they will be his peoples,
and God himself will be with them and be their God;
⁴ he will wipe every tear from their eyes.
Death will be no more;
mourning and crying and pain will be no more,
for the first things have passed away.”

 

However unlikely and incomprehensibly far off as that universal extinction may seem, even further away than global extinction, that is nevertheless an essential part of the journey of God’s creation and redemption. Even if the means of that extinction were to be AI's destruction of humanity within the next decade, as Evan Hubinger has cautioned. 

For me this does not mean that I stride into personal, global or cosmic events with studied nonchalance or overconfident indifference. This does not mean that when I see sick little pictures posted on the internet by the president of perhaps the world’s most powerful nation, depicting himself nuking his perceived enemies, that I don’t feel a visceral twinge of horror and even doubt. There is probably a Peter in all of us.

But the scene on the lake challenges me to ensure that despite the uncertainties that surround me, I must do my best to help others on their journeys through doubt, through life and through death to resurrection. So must we all.

baptism

 

SERMON PREACHED at HOLY TRINITY,
RINGWOOD EAST

ORDINARY SUNDAY 21

 (August 28^th) 1989

(incorporating baptism of Joshua)

READINGS

Hosea 1:2-10
Psalm 85
Colossians 2:6-15 [16-19]
Luke 11:1-13
 

Baptism. There are few if any things that are agreed on by the whole Christian community, but one that we come close to agreement on is baptism. We, as Christians, argue as to when it should be done, and we argue as to how it should be done, but we are in relative agreement that it should be done.

At a time when some, perhaps many, Anglicans are moving towards a belief that only adult, believing Christians should be baptised I want to make it quite clear that I believe the opposite. I believe that, in the New Testament, when whole households were baptised, children were amongst them. And I believe that it is imperative that we baptise children not out of some superstitious belief that if some tragedy befalls them God will have no place for them, but because they are so young and unaware the rite signifies what it is to become a part of God’s Kingdom of love and mercy.

Let me explain. The argument for baptising only those who are adult, believing Christians, is that only they can fully understand the significance of the step they are taking. Joshua today will have no real conception of what is happening to him. He will know only that an unfamiliar person has taken him and has for no apparent reason washed his head.

Yet I believe that is precisely why we should baptise infants. Those too young to know what is happening to them. For if we say we have to have an intellectual grasp of all that Jesus has done for us, then the gospel is not gospel, is not good news. If we must grasp God first with our intellect then God is not good news for children, not good news for the intellectually handicapped, not good news for those who happen to meet Mormon missionaries before they meet Christian missionaries. It is not even good news for you or me, for there is no way that we can grasp or understand the significance of Easter – any more than Joshua. It is to those who believe as children – those who accept but do not even attempt wholly to unravel the mystery – that the Kingdom of Heaven belongs.

What we do with our belief is another matter. We may seek to explore and deepen our knowledge of God intellectually, as well as emotionally and physically – but that is another matter. For Joshua that decision will come later.

What are we doing then, when we baptise? Baptism is not a naming ceremony. Joshua has a name already, although by naming him again in this context of baptism we are expressing, as it were, God’s approval of his name.

Baptism is a symbolic death, burial and resurrection. It is a symbolic re-entry to the womb. The font water becomes a symbol of the waters of which we are born. Birth itself is a death experience – passing from the comfort and security of the womb into the cold and noise of the outside world, our world. The font waters become also a symbol of death – the waters of death, the tomb of death into which Christ descends on Good Friday, and to which we all descend in our death.

In emerging from that tomb-womb we symbolise the mysterious Christian hope of the resurrection of the body, the experience of Easter. We symbolise even more than merely the immortality of the soul, a Pagan doctrine, for we symbolise God’s love of his creation, God’s love of our bodies in all their functions, God’s desire to create and then to recreate our bodies in the glory of his future Kingdom.

In the end today we are offering it to Joshua no more than a symbol. We are offering to him the symbol of hope – of the hope that our life is not all. We are offering him the symbol of grafting, of being grafted on to the death and resurrection of Christ. We are offering him the responsibility to make of his life something of a symbol of Christ, a sign and reminder to the world of the hope for all people that is in Christ.

In the end we cannot understand. We can understand no more than Joshua. What we are doing today is a mystery.

 

The Lord be with you.

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.