AMAZING GRACE MATT 9: 9-13

A story is told of a French soldier during the Napoleonic Wars. He had fallen asleep whilst on guard duty and so at his court martial, he was sentenced to death. His widowed mother out of her deep pain, appealed her son’s case at every level on the chain of command. But failing on each occasion, she was eventually left with only the Emperor to turn to. Falling at Napoleon’s feet she begged for the life of her only child explaining that she depended totally on her son for her means of support. As she pleaded for mercy, Napoleon coldly told her that he son deserved to die. Without hesitation, the distressed mother replied;

‘You are right sire, of course. That is why I am asking you for mercy. If he were deserving, it would not be mercy.’

Touched by those words, Napoleon pardoned the soldier.

Today’s Gospel Reading shows us the mercy that is at the heart of Jesus. The calling of a tax collector named Matthew must surely have stuck in the gullet of many of those who first heard of it. You see, in those days to many of Jesus’ contemporaries, tax collectors were about as low as it was possible to get. Why should this be?

Firstly, they were seen as being those who betrayed their own people. The taxes they raised, went not to a veritable collection of good causes. No! They went to the Romans who were at that time oppressing the Jews and doing so with considerable brutality. Surely, it is not difficult to see that tax collectors such as Matthew were despised in the same sort of way that Vichy collaborators were despised in France after the Second World War. Enemies of their own people - that is what the tax collectors such as Matthew were!

But the indictment against Matthew and his sort didn’t end there . For a second charge could also be laid against them. This charge was that they were prone to being unscrupulous, dishonest characters. To make a worthwhile income for themselves, they were known to charge people well above their proper dues - hardly a way to win any sort of popularity contest as they often lived very well indeed as a direct result of the practice of extortion.

And finally, they were often outsiders from the religious life of their people. For their dealings with so many people made it close on impossible to observe the laws of ritual purity and so they excluded themselves from for example the worship of the Temple.

Wealthy these tax collectors may have been, but to the religiously sensitive, they were total outsiders who were far from God and from their own people.

And yet, it was one such as this that we find Jesus calling to be one of his close followers. And in the calling of Matthew, we obtain a picture of the wideness of the mercy that Jesus brings. As with so much of his ministry, Jesus is seen here to be holding his hand out to those whom respectable people held most strongly in contempt. There is a real sense that Jesus longs to bring the best out of those who are regarded as the worst. In so doing, Jesus scandalised not just the people of his own day for in so doing he also scandalises the people of our day. For today, we are a part of a society that often gives up on people, throwing them away and treating them as misfits. Even today, there is an all to common instinct to freeze people in their worst moments, never letting them move on from those moments. Yes, it is most commonly demonstrated in some of our less worthy media but the fact that it so often goes unchallenged, is a sign that they not only lead our thought patterns but also reflect them. But now, Jesus challenges us with a new way of thinking, the way of thinking that is dominated by the power of Jesus to bring about the transformation of love.

An example of this power of Jesus to transform is to be found in the life of John Newton. A foul mouthed sailor whose greatest delight was to break the faith of the one Christian sailor with whom he sailed, Newton earned his living out of the slave trade. By his own account, he sexually misused slave women and treated slaves both male and female with some considerable brutality. Far from the Christian upbringing which he had received from his mother , he was like Matthew a no hope person. Yet this wretch was reached by God in a storm and gradually changed his focus to such an extent that he became a much loved Anglican vicar at Olney and even a campaigner for the abolition of the slave trade. But Newton is best remembered for his autobiographical hymn, ’Amazing Grace.’

Listen to the words of the first verse;

Amazing grace (how sweet the sound)
That saved a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.’

Do you get the picture? Like Matthew, Newton was about as low as anyone could get. And like Matthew, Newton experienced the power of God to transform a life. And Matthew, like Newton, experienced this in a way that he did not deserve for both men learnt that God who is revealed in Jesus, offers not justice but mercy. And of course, as the condemned soldier knew, there’s quite a difference between justice and mercy.

The whole point of mercy is that it is undeserved. It is quite simply a generous act of Divine love that nobody can earn. Such is at the heart of so much of our worship and the liturgy of particularly poignant moments. In the Methodist Worship Book’s service for the Baptism of Infants, the minister addressing the child, recounts the Scripture;

‘We love, because Christ first loved us.’

And this mercy also figures when we come to receive Holy Communion for in the Prayer of Humble Access in which we acknowledge our unworthiness to come to the Table which is where we find God’s acceptance, that unworthiness is not a barrier for the same prayer states the great truth;

‘But you are the same Lord
Whose nature is always to have mercy.’

And even at our end, the song of mercy goes on when we are commended to ‘God’s perfect mercy and wisdom.’

So, in a real sense, the story of Matthew’s calling is a sign of what life is about - the unending mercy of God which is offered to us throughout all the changing scenes of our lives. Undeserved, it is for as we see in the story of the calling of Matthew , the call and the acceptance come before Matthew has done anything to merit this mercy. And that is something which lies at the heart of the Gospel. The first move in love and in offering acceptance is always the move of God. It never is and cannot be earned. The cycle always begins with God’s initiative for as the Apostle Paul wrote bear the end of his tempestuous life;

'But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: Whilst we were still sinners, Christ died for us.’

Yes, the gifts of acceptance and love for which so many cry out, come to us not because of some Divine illusion about us but in full knowledge of what we are, warts and all. And the simple truth is that however unlovely we might be, God just goes on loving us for his mercy is ultimately rooted in straightforward unconditional love.

So where does all thus leave us today? Well it certainly tells us much about the heart of God. It certainly tells us something about our own value to God but surely it cannot stop there. For this unconditional love and mercy if for all peoples including those whom we find it hardest to love or to value. And yet if this love and mercy is for us, then surely we are the evidence of the wideness of Divine love. So surely we are called to be a part of a circle of love and mercy, a circle which touches the unlikeliest of places. For then it is revealed that the whole of human experience can indeed be transformed not by effort but by that most incredible invasion into our world, the invasion of AMAZING GRACE!

AMEN


This sermon is to be preached at Alverdiscott on June 5th in the evening in a Communion Service

TRINITY - PSALM 8, MATT 28:16-20, 2 CORINTHIANS 13:11-13

I was once guilty of a form of Planytis. For me it wasn’t a case of deciding which preachers I would attend worship led by. Instead I had a tendency to ensure that my days when I was not available to the Superintendent minister, were the ones which most discomforted me. In the case of Trinity Sunday, it was a Sunday when non availability could be virtually guaranteed. In a sense, I was as one with the late Bishop John Robinson who when asked how he would teach a child about the doctrine of the Trinity, replied,

‘I wouldn’t.’

And yet the doctrine of the Trinity is a major part of our Christian understanding. Not articulated in a formal way in the Scriptures, it represents an understanding arrived at in the early centuries of Christianity after fierce debate over the nature of Jesus. In that debate, there was a struggle between those who emphasised the divinity of Christ over his humanity and those who emphasised the humanity of Christ over his divinity. By the time of the Nicene Creed, it was beginning to be generally accepted that Jesus was fully human and fully divine. We could experience God as Father, Son and Spirit. Whilst today we often make the Trinity seem like a lifeless doctrine, we do well to appreciate that it came into being out of the dynamic experience of early Christians and from their passionate grappling with the search to understand that which God is about.

The God of the Trinity is experienced by us in a range of ways. Psalm 8 points us to God as the loving Creator to whom we owe our lives and the good gifts of creation. Some of you will be aware that I regard the hymns of Charles Wesley as amongst Methodism’s greatest treasures, I agree with the Congregationalist scholar Bernard Manning (no relation to the Mancunian comedian) that it is Wesley’s hymns that are the greatest thing that Methodism can bring to the ecumenical dialogue. Yet the one thing, I struggle with in Charles Wesley’s hymns is a tendency to refer to humanity in terms such as 'worms'. I hope I have misunderstood Wesley because I think Psalm 8 calls us to see humanity in a much higher context than that. This Psalm which points us to the majesty of God, tells us that God has created humanity with status, the status of being cared for by God, the status of being but a little lower than the Divine and ‘crowned with glory and honour.’ Out of this has come responsibility for caring for the created order, a sharing in the very work of God.

I wonder if we take this seriously enough. Too often we interpret the term ‘dominion’ which is first used in the Genesis 1 creation narrative to imply that we have a world to do with as we wish and this irresponsible attitude is increasingly lead us to the point of environmental crisis. Only a few weeks ago, a gathering of climate scientists meeting in Exeter at the request of the Prime Minister, concluded that the threat of climate change is so great that amongst other things;

- in the next few centuries, the sea level will rise by twenty feet wiping out whole communities

- sand eels have left the warm waters of the North Sea causing a collapse of the bird populations that have fed off these eels

- the increasingly acidic seas will lead to the destruction of all the world’s coral reefs within 35 years.

And if all that is not enough, the Independent Newspaper on Friday estimated that at the current rate of deforestation, the Amazon Rainforest will be no more within 50 years.

Such environmental disasters are a consequence of our failing to appreciate that Biblically ‘dominion’ is about following the example of God whose ‘dominion’ is exercised in loving care and servanthood. And what our world needs now is not a theology that justifies the ravaging of God's gift of this incredible planet but a theology espressed in the exercising of loving care of our planet in partnership with God.

So this morning, we see a challenge to not only appreciate that this world and our lives are the gift of God, but also that we are called to live out our high calling in harmony with that God.

But then we come to the stories of Jesus of Nazareth. I have always like a quote from David Jenkins from the time when he was Bishop of Durham. This is what he said;

‘God is. He is as he is in Christ. Therefore there is hope.’

What Dr Jenkins is saying here is that if we want to know what God is like, we only need to look at Jesus. Gaze at Jesus and we begin to see what unconditional love is about. This is the one who turns the world right side up. Jesus continually challenges our smug norms. He finds value in the most unlikely of places and people. He crosses the barriers of religion, race and gender to bring a message that to him all are special and loved by the Divine. Every prejudice of his day and by implication of our day also, is challenged with a message that our responsibilities are not just for those who are as we are but for people in all their diversity. For Jesus, our calling is not just about me and mine but also for those who in our dark moments we see as beyond the pail. And for this humanity which he meets at its very worse in his Passion, he gives his all and cries ‘Father forgive.’

But more! On Trinity Sunday, we recall that that Jesus is enthroned, is interceding for us, able to fully empathise with us in the weaknesses of our humanity for such has been his experience. And because he still is, there are those times when we sing aloud that which we can at all times sing in our hearts;

‘What a friend we have in Jesus.’

Note, it is 'What a friend we have in Jesus' not 'What a friend we had in Jesus.' For this Jesus lives and is for us in the present as much as in the past.

Last year one of my courses was in 20th Century Christology. We looked at how a range of 20th Century theologians interpreted the significance of Christ. One of them was Karl Barth, the great Swiss theologian. I found him rather difficult and didn’t dare attempt an essay on him in the examination at the end of the year. And yet one thing about Barth I find endearing. Towards the end of his life, after a lecture he was taking questions when a student asked him which of his theological discoveries was the most important one. Without hesitation Barth who had written thousands of pages in his 'Dogmatics' replied,

‘Jesus loves me. This I know for the Bible tells me so.’

And those words which many of us remember singing in a Sunday School chorus say it all!

But we can not leave the Trinity without touching on the third person. Last week of course was Pentecost when we recalled the pouring out of the Holy Spirit, the fulfilment of the promise of Jesus. This Holy Spirit totally transformed the closest friends of Jesus from the cowards of Gethsemane to courageous pioneeers of the Gospel, lions for God. In the Spirit we see God’s continued engagement with the world. Through the Spirit, God prods, rebukes, encourages and strengthens us so that the story of God goes on through the lives of those who follow God. The Spirit challenges our baser thoughts and lifts them to a higher plain where we can truly begin to respond to the vision of the Psalmist in which we care for the world, engaging in God's work. The Spirit is God at work in our world yet taking the risk of daring to trust in people to be partners in that work. And indeed it is through the Spirit that we know that we are not alone for to turn to the great hymn, ‘Hallelujah! Sing to Jesus’ we find that incomparably great line;

‘Not as orphans are we left in sorrow now.’

So on Trinity Sunday, we come not to meditate on dry words but instead to encounter a living truth of a God who is for us in differing ways - Father, Brother, Spirit. And who is probably experienced in many other ways too. That is the magnitude of our God who is all that we need God to be and so so much more.

And in Trinity, God is revealed as community, dynamic community and that is also our calling to be a community of diverse peoples in relationship to one another, constantly being patterned in God’s image so that we might take God’s togetherness into the world and in the words of Bishop Spong be those who are;

‘Living life to the full
Loving wastefully
And being all that we possibly can be.’

AMEN

This sermon was preached at Alwington on Trinity Sunday, 22nd Mat 2005.

ASCENSION Acts 1:1-14

ASCENSION
It is one of those apocryphal stories. Jesus arrives at the Pearly Gates following his Ascension. There he is met by the angelic host. They all want to know about his time on earth. As Jesus tells his story of being raised in humble circumstances, the years of teaching, preaching and healing followed by his account of being at the receiving side of torture and murder prior to the ultimate conquest of death, the angels are enthralled. The story of all that Jesus has done to share the good news of a God who wants only the best for creation leaves them truly amazed.
But then, one of them has a question to ask;

“Lord, now that you are no longer physically on earth, who will continue to share the good news?”

Jesus answers, “There are eleven who were especially close to me and I have given them the responsibility of getting the word out.”

Relieved at this, the questioner responds, “ O Lord, these must be incredible people - the best and the brightes that creation has to offer!”

“Well, actually no,” Jesus responds. “These are average people with ordinary abilities. Not the “best and brightest” by any means.”

“But if these are only average people with ordinary ability, how can you be sure that they will get the job done?”

“To be honest,” Jesus answers, “I can’t be sure.”

“ You can’t be sure, Lord? What if they fail to do the job? What is your back up plan?”

Quietly Jesus answers, “ I have no back up plan.”


The story of the Ascension of Jesus tells us that it is now left to ordinary people such as us to continue his work. Luke in his account of the Ascension links the Ascension of Jesus with the challenge to continue the work of Jesus in Jerusalem where they were, in Judea which was nearby before deaded Samaria and ultimately to the ends of the Earth. Jesus might be absent in the physical sense but this absence would not be the end of the story but the beginning of a new chapter. Powerfully, this tells us that we are so valued by God that we are actually called to share in the ongoing work of God.

The problem with all of this is that on first reading we find the Disciples being given the impossible task at the very time when their resources are lowest. Weeks before at Easter they had found their own limitations severely exposed as they fled on the night of Jesus’ arrest. In those days, they experienced something of an emotional roller coaster ride. Now after a number of encounters with the Risen Christ, they were left alone - only with a giant of a task. Yet the message of the text is that they were not alone for Luke links his account of the task they are given not just with the Ascension but with the promise of the Spirit, the Spirit who working within them will be the guarantor of Christ’s continued presence. Perhaps the brief delay between Ascension and Pentecost represents a chance for the Disciples to begin to learn to walk on their own. BUT they are not to feel as orphans, deserted.

A helpful illustration may be one concerning Mahatma Gandhi who was one of the greatest figures of the 20th Century. His murder at a time of crisis in India devastated many within the Hindu community who had come to rely on his great spiritual guidance. His friend, Stanley Jones, the Christian missionary recalls hearing a well known Hindu poet named Mrs Naidu , lament this tragedy on the radio just three days after his assassination. Tearfully she cried out for both herself and her stricken nation;

“O Bapu, O Little Father, come back. We are orphaned and stricken without you.”

Stanley Jones said he could sympathise with her feelings but he also reflected;

“ O God, I am grateful I do not have to cry out for the leader of my soul: ’O Jesus, come back. Come back. We are orphaned and stricken without you.”

He knew that reality that the hymn writer writes of in ‘Alleluia! Sing to Jesus’ which is expressed in the line, “Not as orphans are we left in sorrow now.” For Jones was able to recognise that which makes Jesus different from others, namely that ‘though absent in the flesh, Jesus is a continuing presence in our lives as a result of the presence of the Spirit. Added to which Ascension is linked to a promise of return which means that ultimately it is the purposes of Jesus that will be fulfilled in the world.

But how do we live in the knowledge of the Ascension? Ultimately this leads us into an understanding that the Ascension is amongst other things one of the most political doctrines of the church. In Ascension, Christ is exalted and may truly be described as “King of Kings” or “Lord of Lords.” In the past week we have elected people into leadership in both Parliament and County Councils. Their tasks are important and their power to affect peoples’ lives is considerable. However, Ascension points us to One who is a higher power with a much greater claim on our allegiance and how we live our lives. Yet this authority of Jesus is at times counter cultural. It is the authority that challenges us to seek what is right through looking to the actions, teachings and self giving that we see in Jesus. This is the authority that puts before us the challenge that all should be treated with dignity, that our human created barriers against those we see as other than ourselves should be challenged and that power is best exercised in servanthood rather than in domination and manipulation. It puts before us great imperatives such as peace and justice along with great attitudes such as love and mercy. And radical as it may seem, when those imperatives and those attitudes are at odds with the exercise of authority in public life or in communities of faith, it is the authority of Christ that needs to be affirmed as supreme whatever the cost.

Today as we look to the Ascension we seek our place in the ongoing story of God’s work of love. It is a story that has not ended with Ascension but goes on through the narrative of the Acts of the Apostles and in the lives of people who follow Jesus.

In this I am reminded of the story of the Italian composer Puccini who wrote such great operas as ‘Madame Butterfly.’ He had begun writing his masterpiece Turandot which included such classic music as ‘Nessun Dorma.’ Sadly he was diagnosed with a terminal illness. Feverishly he worked to bring his work to completion but in the end he died leaving an unfinished work. Friends who saw the brilliance of this work and who had been inspired by Puccini later completed it. One evening in 1926 a year or so after Puccini’s death, Turandot was performed for the very first time at La Scala Opera House in Milan. The conductor was Toscanini who had been a close friend of Puccini. When he got to the end of what Puccini had written, he lowered his baton before turning to the audience and saying through his tears, “ So far the Master wrote before he died.” The performance was over but the following night he was able to announce, “But his friends have completed his work” and the entire opera was performed.

And it’s a bit like that with us. We are called as the friends of Christ to continue the Master’s work. But we have the bonus of the realisation that through the Spirit, the Master is present with us and using us with all our ordinariness for his extraordinary purposes.
AMEN

This was preached in a different church to the sermon on paraclete - hence the two sermons contain the same illustration. I am grateful to David Leininger for the illustration re Stanley Jones and the aftermath to the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi.

It was preached at Torrington on My 8th 2005.

EASTER 6 PROMISE OF PARACLETE - John 14:15-21

EASTER 6
Dark Age Ahead! No don’t panic. This is not one last piece of negative campaigning ahead of polling day. On the contrary, it’s the title of a recently published book by the Canadian writer Jane Jacobs.

Jacobs argues that we are entering dark age unless certain trends are reversed. To her the danger is not only the loss of precious things but also the memory of them.

To her the threats are to be found in five area;

- Community and family are threatened by consumerism being put before family welfare.
- Higher education is threatened by being more about empire building than providing quality education.
-Science is becoming debased by being dominated by economics. Hence essential environmental action is rejected when costly.
- Government has become more about satisfying the desires of powerful groups than addressing the welfare of the nation.
- Once respected professional groups have become more interested in self protection than in accountability.

This side of the Atlantic we would probably see the dangers in different ways. There are echoes here of all the concerns of Jacobs but I for one would see prime threats coming from
the ocean of private debt, the growth of addiction problems and the serious environmental threat but what do I know? These matters have barely figured in the debates of the past four weeks.

Jacobs fears the entering of a Dark Age. Such a fear also existed amongst those who first read John’s Gospel. By now Christians had been kicked out of the synagogues which were the heritage of most of them. Families were divided, even the church was divided and most of all Christians were living on the edge of society despised by the powers that ruled in Rome and by the educated elite steeped in Greek culture.

So we find John reminding them of words from Jesus - words that would help them in their times of darkness. For the message was that they were not alone. Jesus had promised them that with the ending of his physical presence they would not be orphaned. Instead they would be given a Paracletos which can be translated as a comforter, an Advocate, a Helper or even coach - one who enables us.

But enables us for what. The answer is to be found in the first line of our reading which talks about keeping the commands of Jesus, continuing the work of Jesus. And what was that work? Well when I look at the stories of Jesus I see the one who valued everyone. The man who accepted those with checkered pasts, the man who elevated the role of women, the man who spoke of responsibilities to neighbours but showed the neighbour to be not just those with whom we are comfortable with but those who might be termed as strangers, those who are other than us and he demonstrated it most powerfully in the parable of the Good Samaritan where the neighbour comes from a hostile religious and racial tradition.

And the need for that way of love is needed today. I wonder why we do not see the sickness in society when many people live their lives experiencing a crisis of self esteem, feeling either denied of worth and acceptance or fearing that such acceptance is tenuous. There is something wrong in a society that not only throws away scarce resources in an environmentally destructive manner but people as well.

In our prayers we will along with the other churches of our District be using prayers concerning the General Election. They will come from the Bolton and Rochdale District and they do in part reflect the concern of Christians in that part of our land about the racist threat of the BNP. Yet before we feel to smug, even in Cornwall and Devon, there is a growing problem of racist attacks mainly but not exclusively in our bigger towns and that is not to mention the recently reported figure of 8,000 homophobic attacks in Devon and Cornwall last year.

Oh, the power of transforming love is needed now as much as at any time if we are not to slip into a new Dark Age. But our Scripture has reminded us that love goes on - not merely depending on us but with the help of the Holy Spirit. And to that cause we need to devote ourselves afresh this morning - for the sakes of James, Mark, Ellie and Levi if we can think of no other reason.

In the 20th century one of the greatest writers of opera was the Italian Puccini. ‘Madame Butterfly was one of his greatest successes. During the writing of Turandot his final opera, he was diagnosed with the illness that would kill him. Faced with death he threw himself into his work. However, in the end he was unable to complete it. After his death a small group of friends completed the opera. In 1926 it was performed for the first time at La Scala Opera House in Milan. Puccini’s friend Toscanini was the conductor. They got as far as Puccini had written before Toscanini stopped the performance dropping his baton and saying to the audience, ‘This is where the master ends.’ That was it for the evening but the next evening, came a different message as the opera continued, the message, ‘And this is where his friends began.’
And that is how it is with Jesus. The story does not end. Jesus work of love continues through his friends depending in the gift of the Holy Spirit, the Comforter. For Love has no ending and ultimately it is Love that is able to confront and vanquish the dark forces that would take us to a Dark Age.

A Sermon by Canadian minister Dave Martin inspired this sermon.
The context of this sermon was a service in Bideford at whichwhich four young children were baptised on May 1st 2005

GOOD FRIDAY

I used to find Elaine difficult. She was the first Messianic Jew that I ever met. Time after time she would complain about sermons she heard containing anti Semitism. In my mind I psychoanalysed her and wished the problem away.

Many year later training for the ministry at Wesley House I realised there was a problem that could not just be ignored. We shared our site with the Centre for Jewish Christian Relations, a community of Jews and Christians dedicated to exploring the issues in relations between Jews and Christians. Two and a half years ago their Director Ed Kessler whose family had fled Austria in the 1930s took us to the Beth Shalom Holocaust Museum near Nottingham. We set off as an animated group of students but returned in total silence. We’d known that the Holocaust would be disturbing but what we encountered at this centre set up by a Methodist minister left us shattered. An effort in the midst of Christendom to destroy the Jewish communities of Europe and all memory of them.

For many of us this experience was something we could not let go of. For me it led me to study a course on Jewish and Christian Responses to the Holocaust in my final year. And I began to discover how right Elaine had been. The polemics within scripture which come from what is in essence a 1st Century family quarrel had in the centuries that followed been used to demonise Judaism with outbreaks of violence particularly prevalent at Easter as passion plays led to heightened emotions and prejudices. To me the most disturbing moment was reading the Dabru Emet Statement of Jewish scholars, a gracious statement, which whilst recognising the anti Christian nature of Nazism, also affirmed that were it not for years of Christian anti Judaism the terrible events of the 1940s could never have happened.

In the years that have followed most of the Christian churches have begun a journey of reconciliation with the older brother of Judaism. Hopefully this journey will not be at the cost of another scapegoat emerging in the form of Islam. However, we do well on this Good Friday to appreciate that the cross which is the supreme sign of God in Christ’s sacrificial love has at times been so misused that for others especially Jewish brothers and sisters, there is a shadow side. Such is shown by the story of well meaning efforts to erect a convent at Auschwitz to pray for the horrors that had happened at that place with a cross as a sign of hope only for many Jews to be mortally offended with the result that the Pope intervened to halt the scheme.

I wonder if we haven’t at times got our focus wrong as we look at the Passion of Christ. Increasingly I think that the story reminds of the dangers of the misuse of power by the powerful. We see it in the religiously powerful but also in the political power yielded by Pontius Pilate. Pilate was a man known for brutality, brutality which would later bring his career to an ignominious conclusion. This was hardly a man who needed a crowd to incite him to torture or execution. In a way he was a fore runnner of a long tradition of the powerful using political expediency as a cover for torture, violence and war.

Yet more uncomfortably by setting our attention on others, we often excuse ourselves. Rowan Williams in his book ‘Resurrection’ reminds us that unlike Jesus we are hardly pure victim for we also have within us the characteristics of the persecutor. Painfully we know how mobs of people just like us can like the Easter crowd vent fury, hatred and prejudice on others simply for being in some way other than what we are. We are caught up in what the American academic Walter Wink calls the ’ myth of redemptive violence.’ And if we excuse ourselves there we all know too well the sin of silence when we fail to speak for those who are victims.

I think of Martin Niemoeller the Lutheran pastor who at first was taken by Hitler before realising that Nazism was anti Christian, made his stand, spending years in gaol as a result. Listen to his words;

"First they came for the communists but I did not speak out because I was not a communist

Then they cam for the Socialists but I did not speak out because I was not a Socialist.

Then the came for the trade unionists butI did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews but I did not speak out because I was not a Jew.

Finally they came for me and there was no one left to speak for me."

And yet there is one who is for us. Elie Wiesel’s book ‘Night’ which tells of his time at Auschwitz and Buchenwald makes for painful reading. Indeed he could only write it many years after the events. In one tortuous episode he describes the hanging of two men and a boy whom he describes as looking like a ‘sad eyed angel.’ The boys takes a long time to die and Wiesel refers to hearing man behind him asking ‘Where is God now?’ before going on to write;

And I heard a voice within me answer him;
'‘Where is he? Here he is….. He is hanging on the gallows.'’

I am not quite sure what Wiesel means by that. It may relate to his struggle as to whether he could continue to believe in a God in the light of the terrible things he saw and experienced. I don’t know. But I put it to you this morning that in a real sense the suffering God is present with all those who suffer injustice and pain. For in the cross we find the courageous self giving love of God in Christ, given for all.

The cross a form of torture, sadly used so often by Christians as a weapon, stands revealed as the means by which God in love embraces a world hooked on the drugs of self interest and violence. Through the cross, is revealed the supremacy of Divine love for as that great hymn of the Welsh Revival puts it,

"Here is love vast as the Ocean".


This sermon was preached at an ecumenical Good Friday service at St Mary's.