WHO AM I? Matthew 16: 13-20

Who do you say I am?

A simple question asked by Jesus to his closest followers.
They have just told him what others have been saying. Their answers have linked Jesus with the prophetic tradition be it through John the Baptist, Elijah or Jeremiah. Each of these three men has been used by God at some point in the past, in John’s case actually overlapping with Jesus.

Others might have produced very different answers. To some, Jesus was the healer who had given them restored health. To others, Jesus was the teacher who had given them value. Whilst to others, Jesus was man who mixed with the wrong type of people, a man whose teaching was a blasphemy which was disobedient to the Law, a man who threatened the religious traditions of Israel. Meanwhile, for some Jesus was someone to be mocked, to have a crown of thorns placed on his head, a sort of King but without dignity.

And since then, this question has still not gone away.

Who do you say that I am?

For Jesus goes on being seen in so many different ways. We have the indecisive Jesus of Zefferelli’s Last Temptation and in contrast Lloyd Webber’s Jesus Christ Superstar in which Jesus is interpreted through the lens of celebrity. Meanwhile, traditionalists, revolutionaries, feminists and believers in patriarchy all seem to construct Jesus in a way that suits them.

And yet, this Jesus hold a great fascination for so many people. A piece of prose entitled One Solitary Life that dates back to the 1920s perhaps explains why;

He was born in an obscure village
The child of a peasant woman
He grew up in an obscure village
Where he worked in a carpenter shop
Until he was thirty
He never wrote a book
He never held an office
He never went to college
He never visited a big city
He never travelled more than two hundred miles from the place where he was born
He did none of the things associated with greatness
He had no credentials but himself
He was only thirty three
His friends ran away
One of them denied him
He was turned over to his enemies
And went through a mockery of a trial
He was nailed to a cross between two thieves
While dying, his executioners gambled for his clothing
The only property he had on earth
When he has dead
He was laid in a borrowed grave
Through the pity of a friend
Nineteen centuries have come and gone
And today Jesus is the central figure of the human race
And the leader of mankind’s progress
All the armies that have ever marched
All the navies that have ever sailed
All the Parliaments that have ever sat
All the Kings that ever reigned put together
Have not affected the life of mankind on earth
As powerfully as that one solitary life.

In those words we see a glimpse into how unique Jesus is. No wonder, his followers began to see him as Lord! No wonder, as the early Church reflected, they saw in Jesus the full measure of Divinity. This of course led to lengthy debate within the Church. They saw Jesus as a man but they also saw him as Divine. How could this be understood. The key man in the process of such understanding was the Emperor Constantine who came to power in Rome in the year 312. He had had a vision of the cross just the night before a crucial battle. Many would question how genuine his conversion was. After all whilst he became a patron to the Christian Church, he also worshipped in the temples of the Sun God whom his ancestors had worshipped. However, he did get the Christian leaders of his time to gather together in order to resolve the question as to who Jesus was. And it was at Nicaea in one of those Councils that it was resolved that whilst Jesus was fully human, he was also Divine, being ‘One Being’ with God the Father. So we find the significance of Jesus enhanced. This is more than another of the heroes of the past. This is the one in whom we meet with God. It is as David Jenkins, when Bishop of Durham, said;

God is. He is as he is in Jesus. Therefore, there is hope.

You get the picture? If you want to know what God is like, all you have to do is look at Jesus. In this man is God. Through him, God has taken on flesh and come into our world. As we look at his birth, we can sing;

He came down to earth from Heaven.

In his death, we see God suffering for the world. And in his resurrection, we see affirmed God’s decisive YES to all that Jesus, said and did in his ministry.

But whilst Constantine was right about Jesus’ significance as being ‘One Being’ with God, he was equally wrong as to the character of Jesus. His understanding of God was about power. He believed that God had granted him victory in battle with his rivals for supremacy in Rome. And so, he linked his power to God. And in the name of his power, he killed his wife in a boiling bath, executed his son and generally linked his often cruel use of power to his being God’s man. And sadly, others have down through the years followed in his footsteps using God as a defence for cruelty and domination over others in a way that is a sick perversion of all that Jesus was about.

Indeed, Jesus cannot be put into our neat boxes. Nowhere is that more clear that in Peter’s answer to the Who do you say I am question. His answer You are the Christ, the Son of the living God can be seen as a statement of faith, faith on which the church is to be based. But that is not the whole picture. For whilst Peter’s statement is absolutely true, the problem lies with what he and others understood the Christ, the anointed one of God would do. You see, the expectation was that the Christ, the Messiah, would be one who would be victorious over Israel’s enemies. Years of wrong would be ended and all would be well. And in this understanding, there is no room for a Christ to be tortured or to die the vile death of a criminal. Soon Peter will be resisting Jesus when Jesus talks of his future sufferings. For Jesus turns upside down the traditional expectations of the Christ that Peter shared.

As we face the Who do you think I am question, we face a question that is about more than titles. We face the very way of Jesus. For Jesus is about a Kingship that is like no other Kingship. Unlike Constantine, the Kingship of Jesus is not about domination and coercion. Instead it is rooted in the giving of value to all, it is rooted in a vision that all can be connected to God, it is rooted in a vision of peace and that peace with justice. It has values of respect, forgiveness and graciousness. And whilst as the humiliation of a Cross reminds us that it comes with no guarantees of success, it is this Jesus who has changed the world through love rather than might.

On Saturday, many of us will gather in Torrington, to witness the burning of that great model of HMS Victory that has been erected over the past months. We may spare a thought to how that defeat of Napoleon in 1805 was a major blow to his plans to dominate Europe, plans that came so close to fulfilment. But Napoleon knew that great as his military power was, it was eclipsed by a greater albeit different power. Hear his words;

"I know man and I tell you that Jesus Christ is no mere man. Between him and every other person in the world there is no possible term of comparison. Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne and I founded empires. But on what did we rest the creations of our genius? Upon force. Jesus Christ founded his empire upon love: and at this hour millions of people would die for him."

The question asked to Peter - Who do you say that I am? - has resounded down the years and continues to challenge us today. Like Dietrich Bonhoeffer who was executed by the Nazis sixty years ago, we can see in Jesus, the God Man who encompasses both human and Divine. But we can never capture this Jesus into our neat modes of thinking. Instead, the proper response is to follow him on a journey in which we will be surprised and challenged time and again. And ultimately it is only in following Jesus that we can come to know him. And it is only in knowing him, that we can truly know ourselves.

This sermon was preached at a Baptismal Service at Bideford on August 21st. It wa written with the rock band TheWho's song of the same title ringing in my ears.

WHEN WALLS COME DOWN Matthew 15:21-28

Reading today’s Gospel reading is a somewhat uncomfortable experience. Our preconceptions of Jesus seem to come crashing down. Even if we have been a little desensitivised by the antics and language of the contestants in Big Brother, I think that we cannot be other than uncomfortable to find Jesus likening Gentiles which after all includes as far as I know all of us, with the description ‘dogs.’

So what is going on here? Well, at a point when Jesus is tired and shaken by the news of the killing of John the Baptist, along comes a somewhat persistent Canaanite woman, making demands of him. Here is a woman who has a demon possessed daughter and she, as a loving mother, is going to stop at nothing to get her daughter better. And in that objective, she sees Jesus as the one who can meet her needs.

Perhaps at this stage, it is worth looking at what being a Canaanite woman entails. This woman who lived around the coastal region of Tyre and Sidon, would have been at least nominally a descendant of those with whom the Hebrews had been involved in combat against going back to the events of the Exodus well over a thousand years earlier. I say nominally, because the territory from which she came, was territory that had been fought over by a range of peoples since. Philistines and Hittites were amongst those who had settled in this land, and the one thing they had in common was a deep enmity with the Jews. It was from these territories that just a couple of centuries before the time of Jesus, a King had invaded Jerusalem and by use of torture and persecution, sought to destroy the entirety of Jewish religious tradition, leaving a legacy of martyrs who were still very much remembered at the time of Jesus. So, you can see that this encounter is hardly likely to be promising.

Anyhow, the encounter begins with an almighty surprise. This outsider makes her approach, addressing Jesus as “Lord, Son of David.” This is remarkable on two fronts. Firstly, there is the bravery of this action. In the patriarchal society, it was not acceptable for a woman, especially an unrelated woman, to invade a man’s space in search of a favour. This was after all a society in which the system served to prevent women from acquiring an assertive role in public life. Yet here, in her desperation, this Canaanite woman dares to challenge these structures of what today would be described as sexism.

Yet, perhaps more remarkable is the great insight she shows in the titles with which she addresses Jesus. At a time when those on the inside including his closest disciples fail to recognise it, this outsider woman is able to see Jesus as “Lord” and as “Son of David.”

Commentators seem to hold a range of opinions as to her motives in addressing Jesus with these titles. Perhaps their use enables her to address him in an acceptable way as a subject to a King. Perhaps, it is done in this way out of her desperation to bring help to her daughter. But, it seems that out of her desperation she has possibly inadvertently stumbled on the true significance of Jesus. The outsider has come to understand what passed the insiders by. Increasingly, I think that this is important. Too often, we are closed to the insights of those who are other than us. Yet often wisdom comes from surprising places. After all some of the most valuable insights on peace and justice of which I am aware come from Mahatma Gandhi who followed the path of Hinduism, some of the most important insights on environmentalism come from campaigners outside the Christian community and 20 years ago when millions faced starvation in Africa, the most vocal voice to feed the world was an Irishman who had long been disenchanted with the Church with which he had grown up and who was prone to expressing himself in a somewhat non ecclesiastical manner. None of this denies that many times God works through Christian people but I would like to suggest this morning that this Scripture reminds us part of good Christian discipleship is about listening to the insights of those who in many ways might be seen as other than we are.

But now comes the problem. And horror of horrors the problem seems to be Jesus. His first reaction is not to respond. If he is a King, she is no subject and he is in no way obligated to respond to her. Indeed his reaction is to tell his disciples who are vexed at the disturbance, that he was only sent to “the lost sheep of Israel.” Hearing this is uncomfortable to us although it probably would not have shocked some of his followers who saw God in a tribal manner. But our problem soon becomes bigger when as the woman begs still more, by now on her knees, we find Jesus to telling her;

"It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs."

Dogs! That’s gentiles like you and me. Surely not! So in a sense we can only be glad that the Canaanite woman refuses to be put off. Back she comes with the rejoinder;

“Yes Lord, but even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.”

And at that demonstration of faith and at that reminder that good things inevitably spread, Jesus changes tact, acknowledges her faith and gives her the healing of her daughter which this woman has craved.

But what has happened here. One view is that Jesus has used this exchange to lead this woman to discover her true value for herself and also to teach the disciples that the Gospel stretched outside of the comfortable box named Israel. Others see this encounter as showing Jesus developing his own understanding of his ministry through this encounter. Remember that Jesus is fully Human as well as fully Divine. And humanity is something that involves developing. Remember those words in Luke’s Gospel, after Jesus has questioned the leaders in the temple;

"And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature."

Perhaps this story hints that in his ministry, as one who is fully human, Jesus is still wrestling with his ministry and growing in wisdom. Indeed, if Jesus is changing in the encounter, might that not be a good example to all of us to follow, that we might not put certainty above compassion. For in the powerful words of the Jewish Rabbi, Sheila Peltz after her visit to Auschwitz;

“As I stood before the gates I realised that I never want to be as certain about anything as were the people who built this place”

The more I look at what I find to be this difficult encounter, the more convinced I am that it represents a powerful pointer to a God whose love is inclusive. The more convinced I am that it is a story that challenges the walls we build to divide us between an Us and a Them. It reads to me as a story that challenges us with a vision of God valuing even those whom we find it hardest to value. And as such, it draws us into God’s work of tearing down the man made walls that divide and exclude.

On Christmas Day 1989, the Jewish conductor Leonard Bernstein conducted the ‘Berlin Celebration Concerts’ on both sides of the Berlin Wall which was in the process of being dismantled. His orchestra contained musicians from both Germanys as well as the four allied powers who had occupied Germany at the end of the Second World War. A wall had given way to a new unity. For the occasion Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” was renamed “Ode to Freedom.” Walls had come down and most miraculous of all the miracles of that Christmas was that Bernstein was now being feted in that land in which he would have been murdered simply for existing less than half a century earlier.

This morning, I have both a challenge and an invitation. The challenge is to ask what are the walls that exist today in our world, our community and indeed within the Church that lead to some people being treated as lesser. And having recognised them, what are we going to do to help dismantle those walls?

The invitation is that recognising that God is for all, we are invited to the acceptance that is found at our Lord’s Table. For this is the appointed place where God touches us no matter what our individual story might be for as the story of the Canaanite woman reminds us, God wants to touch us even when we may be seen as distant from God .

AMEN

This sermon was preached at a Communion service in Bideford on August 14th

BIBLICAL BIG BROTHER Genesis 37: 12-28

The book of Genesis contains a colourful collection of stories about the Patriarchs. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob all emerge as fascinating yet flawed characters. None of them, however, grabs the imagination quite as powerfully as the story of Joseph. Even if the story were not immortalised by Andrew Lloyd Webber’s ‘Joseph and his Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat,’ his is a story that catches our imagination.

This evening’s reading shows us great flaws in all the characters. Jacob, raised in what has long been a dysfunctional family, is an absolutely terrible father. Not only does he prize one son above the others, just as he himself was prized above his twin Esau by his mother, but he makes it obvious to the other sons. He keeps Joseph close to himself away from the grime of hard work and spoils him both emotionally and materially as shown through the special robe he makes him.

Not surprisingly, his actions leave sharp divisions among his sons.

As for Joseph, he seems to have behaved as a spoilt brat. From the reading we have heard this evening, we find that Joseph behaves like what at school we used to describe as a sneak or perhaps what some today would call a ‘grass.’ He can’t resist bringing his father bad reports about his brothers. But more than that! Joseph seems from the beginning to have experienced remarkable dreams, dreams which later with his interpretations transform his condition in a positive way. However, as a young man, he exhibits the level of sensitivity of a Big Brother housemate. He just cannot resist telling his brothers about the dreams which imply that he is going to be on a much higher plain than them. In Joseph, the worst of adolescent precociousness is revealed. One cannot help feeling that the young man could do with a trip to a good Finishing School to learn a few social graces.

But then there is the brothers. They were in the first case the victims of injustice. Their father’s preference for brother Joseph over them, was clear for all to see. It is not difficult to appreciate the pain they must have felt. But in their rebellion against injustice, they actually accelerated a cycle of injustice. One injustice was confronted by creating another one. You see, ultimately, Joseph was not the prime architect of the situation but such was their anger at the favouritism bestowed on him by their shared father, that most of them were prepared to kill him. Does this not speak into our world today where cycles of violence go on with ever increasing circles?
But of course, not all the brothers wish to do something as dramatic as fratricide. Reuben tries to defuse the situation. His idea is to throw Joseph into a cistern so that he might later rescue him. But when the idea of selling Joseph into slavery with the passing Midianite traders arises, enabling a hated brother to be got rid of and a handy profit made, he is not on the scene and ultimately does nothing to right the wrong. In a sense, Reuben symbolises the times when we fail to make a stand against what is wrong, preferring instead to remain in our comfort zone. In a sense his paralysing compromise with evil reminds me of the words of James Russell Lowell;

“They are slaves who fear to be in the right with two or three.”

And I suspect that there is a bit of the Reuben in most of us.

But what does this ancient story have to say to us today? In a strange way, I think this story is uncomfortably close to modern life.

Parenting is as hard today as it was then as I for one know. We, too, can be somewhat overindulgent just like Jacob. For the sake of ease, we can throw things at our young rather than our time. Certainly the challenging child needs time and patience with even handedness between competing children. Perhaps like Jacob, we can sense special ness in one of our children and elevate that one often unconsciously above the others, leaving behind pressures on the chosen and resentment on the part of the siblings. We need to be contra Jacob, in seeking the value of all our children including those whose gifts are less apparent.

But there is also something here about how we confront injustice. The brothers see injustice as being most effectively confronted by violence. I guess that this is often the dominant viewpoint in our world today. The problem is that when violence is seen as the answer, all too often we see new injustices emerging. Is not our history littered with examples of those who in their fight against injustice have ultimately brought about new injustices? So often the one time victim creates their own victims. This does not mean that we should be unconcerned about injustice. Indeed, the future for our world is grim if we do not look to correct injustice for injustice is often the first step in the circle of violence. However, it does mean that we need to be discriminating in how we confront the injustices around us so that the cycle be brought to an end. Increasingly, I think that the two outstanding figures of the twentieth century were Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King who stood against injustice in a way that refused to be contaminated by hatred and violence.

And this finds its roots in a belief that all people have value. You know, in our world we are so aware that we unthinkingly dispose of our planet’s precious resources. It is a scandal which needs to be confronted. Yet worse still is the fact that we are prepared to throw away people. Some people especially far off or other than, are too easily regarded as of less significance than we ourselves and those we see as being like us. Perhaps one of our needs is to discover afresh a sense of shared value as children of God.

And our being children of God, serves to remind us just as God was present in this story, so too is God present in our lives. God may not be jumping in and intervening in a way that we recognise but God cannot be dismissed as a mere spectator. In times of joy and times of suffering God is present weaving God’s future. In the story of Joseph, the darkness of our reading is not the end for through these happenings Joseph matures and is able to be God’s man in addressing the calamity of famine. Ultimately all the participants learn valuable lessons.

For us, God is involved in our lives and whilst nothing in tonight’s scripture readings promise us lives of ease and comfort, God is the reference point by whom we should live our lives. For stories such as these are in the Scriptures as important guideposts to help us in the decisions we face in our journey of life.

This sermon was preached at Northam on Sunday August 7th

GETTING WET Matt 14: 22-33

I think it was Mark Twain who tells the story of a visit to the Holy land where he decided to take his wife for a romantic ride on the Sea of Galilee. The boatman who he approached to take them onto the water noticed that Twain was well dressed and so suspecting that he had a rich customer to rip off, responded to Twain’s request for a price by suggesting $25. Walking away Twain muttered, ‘Now I know why Jesus walked!’

The story we have heard this morning takes us away from anything that corresponds with our experience of life. We know that nature does not allow people to walk on water even if some Nottingham Forest supporters were some time ago prone to suggesting that Brian Clough was able to do so. We can talk the talk but surely this story takes us into a world with which we are unfamiliar.

And so it is that people often try to explain away this story. Some regard it as a misunderstanding for it does not fit in with our rational understanding of nature. Others see it as a psychic phenomena. Still others see as a parable that eventually got passed on as an actual event. Others though see this story as an event that demonstrates that Jesus is the Lord of all creation, the one who has authority over all the forces of nature including the sea which in those days was greatly feared as a force of chaos and destruction.

You will doubtless have your own conclusions but about one thing, we must be certain. Within the early church, this story of Jesus walking on the water was a cherished story, a story passed on by the people of faith with the result that it is to be found in three of the Gospels that are in our Holy Scriptures.

In part, the cherishing of this story would seem to come from how it spoke to the early community of Christians in their situations. They received from the apostles this story at a time when they were a small minority in a hostile environment. For living the Christian faith, many knew what it was to be beaten. Some of their friends were executed. The road to social advancement was blocked. And when disasters happened they were the most likely to be blamed. For in the Year 70, following the great fire of Rome, Nero was to use the unpopularity of the Christians so that they rather than he, the negligent Emperor, should take the blame, to be the scapegoats. And so from the on, for two and a half centuries, the response to times in which Rome’s fortunes were low, was for the cry to go up for the Christians to be fed to the lions. And so, many would perish in places such as the Coliseum for the entertainment of the majority who despised what was termed the ‘Christian superstition.’

Any battered minority looks for signs of hope. Today, we hear of Muslim women who since the bombings of July 7th are afraid to go out for fear of being abused, spat on or attacked for wearing the hijab. How much worse was the position of Christians in Rome during times when the fury of the mob was unleashed. And against that background, can we not see that the message of Jesus, spoken to frightened disciples, “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid” is a message of hope. And I would suggest that in our world today we need to hear that same message. In our world, battered by the waves of war, terrorism, authoritarianism and environmental neglect amongst other things, we need to that same soothing message of Jesus offering us cause not to fear. And whilst, we cannot in Britain envisage the sort of persecution experience by early Christians in Rome or indeed by some Christians on other parts of our planet, increasingly we find ourselves in a land in which secularism is expressed primarily by an indifference to matters of faith and religion with a result that Christian communities are increasingly becoming marginalized and adrift from the direction of society. And so as we seek to be faithful, we need to hear afresh those words - “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.”

But the story also has something to say about the risks of faith. And here, the figure of Peter comes into his own. God old impetuous Peter! Well, here we find Peter daring to take an outrageous step. He sees Jesus walking on the water and his immediate instinct is to go to Jesus. So often, we talk about faith as a mind matter. But that shortchanges faith. I rather like the description of faith that I read recently which describes faith as “like that function of the heart that gets blood to hands and feet.” In other words faith involves action with all the risks that action involves. And it is expressed in a range of ways in which people are caught up in the ways of God, even meeting God in the process. Now Peter was a man who sometimes got things wrong. That was not about to stop. He would still have his moments of failure such as when got frightened after Jesus’ arrest and he would sometimes get things wrong as Paul certainly felt he had done with regards to his attitude concerning the Gentile mission. But, he clearly has a passion for Christ. And in our Gospel Reading, we find him leaving the precariousness of the boat in order to take a crazy risk with his safety to reach out to Jesus.

Heat those words again;

“Lord, if it is you, command me to join you on the water.”

Crazy! But that is the nature of faith, not always bound by norms but daring to look beyond and to see hitherto unforeseen possibilities. It is about seeing the potential of what a rock song calls a “a crazy little thing called love” to bring about a greater and more beneficial change to our world that might or force could ever dream of!

But of course, there is no plain sailing in our story. Things go wrong. Peter begins to sink as in so many ways most of us have done at some time or other. For faith brings no guarantee against failure.

And yet, there is hope. And here the hope comes from Jesus. Reaching out to save the sinking Peter, Jesus responds to Peter’s desperate cry of “ Lord, save me” with a gentle, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?”

And there is the rub of the whole story. We are often far from giants of faith. Indeed sometimes I wish that people would speak less of giants of the faith for such an emphasis can only make us feel inadequate. Yet more importantly, it can take us away from the emphasis of Christ. For the message of Christ is not that we have to be giants of faith but it is that faith as small as a mustard seed, the tiniest of seeds, is faith that can be used to move mountains. And are there not a few mountains in our world and even here in North Devon that could do with moving?

So this story about Jesus is full of meaning. It’s an encouragement to us to dare to take the risks of faith for God’s Kingdom. Just as 2,000 years ago, it challenges the accepted wisdom for this faith is a faith that is so God centred that it affirms that God is so worth following that it is better to risk being drowned with God than crowned by anyone else. This faith whilst keeping a focus on Christ, doesn’t necessarily know where it is going or whether it will see success. But it does know that it is about our opening our lives to connect with God’s love and grace. And whether we discern it or not, that love transforms the world and us. And when it comes to those times when all around us seem to be too much, a voice within, speaks to us as it did to those on a boat some 2,000 years ago;

“Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.”

And knowing he loves us unreservedly despite all the ways in which we mess up, we are able to take the risks of dabbling our feet into the water for God’s Kingdom.

Preached at Alwington on August 7th 2005. This sermon came at the end of two weeks holiday and is heavily influenced by notes from Sarah Dylan Breuer and a sermon by P. Brewer. They deserve the credit for any good points. The weaknesses are all mine!