Category: preaching

Righteousness rights wrongs

David Herbert3 Comments

Not for ever in green pastures …….

This simple reflection for the 2nd Sunday in Lent (B) is for a small group who gather once a month for worship following the Book of Common Prayer. Hymn singing is not part of what they do, except today when the focus is on the hymn Father, hear the prayer we offer as a way of a simple exploration of Jesus’s way of suffering in Mark 8:31-end.

We have prayed this morning:

Almighty God,
you show to those who are in error the light of your truth,
that they may return to the way of righteousness:
grant to all those who are admitted into the fellowship of Christ’s religion,
that they may reject those things that are contrary to their profession,
and follow all such things as are agreeable to the same

We have prayed to God who shows to those in error the light of his truth that they may walk in the way of righteousness. God wants his people to walk the way of righteousness, and he gives us the means to do that.

What is the way of righteousness?

Righteousness is the translation of the Greek word in the New Testament which gives us also the word justice. In other words, that Greek word, is translated in two different ways: righteousness and justice – and can be summed up in the word rectification. So the way of righteousness is the way of rectification, the way of setting right what is wrong, the way of rectifying what is unjust. It is the way of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Another word we use is salvation. We, alongside many others, including many non-Christians lovingly long for this rectification and salvation.

And we know it’s not an easy way.

A song from the heart of the church is Father, hear the prayer we offer.
Father, hear the prayer we offer, not for ease that prayer shall be, but for strength that we may ever live our lives courageously.

In today’s gospel Peter again gets it wrong. Jesus was talking openly about how the Son of Man had to undergo great suffering, be reject and be killed, and Peter took him aside to rebuke Jesus about this. To which Jesus said to him what he’d already said to the tempter in the wilderness – “Get behind me Satan”. Peter was suggesting an easier way for Jesus. Father hear the prayer we offer, not for ease that prayer shall be.

We went to see the film about Nicholas Winton this week – One Life. He was a stockbroker who in 1938 went to Prague to witness the plight of refugees there – people fleeing for their lives. He took an enormous risk going there. His mother didn’t want him to go. She knew how dangerous it was. She wanted an easier way for her son. But he insisted, “I have to go”.

He was horrified by what he found in Prague and immediately set about finding a way to rescue some of them. It was the plight of the children which most affected him. He didn’t know how he was going to be able to help them – nor did those who were with him. He just knew that he had to find a way – a way that would need visas, foster homes and money. Gradually he found the way and organised the trains that would rescue 669 children.

Father, hear the prayer we offer:

Not for ever in green pastures do we ask our way to be, but the steep and rugged pathway may we tread rejoicingly.

Esther Rantzen’s programme, That’s Life, featured his story. They invited him as a guest and in great appreciation surprised him with an audience made up of the children he had saved back in 1938. The final credits of the film One Life suggested that over 6000 people owed their life to him – taking account of the families the children he rescued went on to have. He never talked about his work. His wife only discovered what he had done when she found a scrapbook in their home many years later.

He is remembered in Israel and named as one of The Righteous among the Nations – they are non-Jews who saved Jews during the Holocaust. He is one of the righteous who followed the way of righteousness, righting wrongs in his small ways, the only ways he could.

We have heard a lot this week about the former leader of opposition to Vladimir Putin. Alexei Navalny died in his cell in his prison inside the Arctic Circle – most likely he was killed. Alexei Navalny was a Christian. The Beatitudes were his inspiration. He called them his instruction book. He was particularly inspired by the blessing on those who hunger and thirst after righteousness. That is what he did. He hungered and thirsted after righteousness, all the while knowing the risks he was running, undergoing great suffering, getting rejected, and finally being killed ….

We don’t live with the same extremes as Alexei Navalny. We are not victims of Russian imperialism, nor are we Jews facing persecution and extermination, nor are we living in Jesus’ context in Israel, where their life wasn’t their own because of the Roman occupation and the cruelty that went along with that.

We could say that we live in quieter times in this rural setting of Warwickshire – but Christian prayer isn’t about having an easy time. There is a temptation to turn our backs on the suffering world, and we can do that because we might have built up protections. It is a temptation – to turn our back, to close our eyes and to not engage our hearts and minds. We have to resist the temptation to turn our back, to turn away from trouble, and instead we need to turn to face the realities of life and engage with the suffering of those who are the victims of wrongdoing. This is the way of righteousness – making things right, righting wrongs in our own small ways.

Father, hear the prayer we offer:
Not for ever, by still waters, would we idly rest and stay.

There are two ways we can go. We can go the way of the tempter, or we can go the way of Jesus. “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” That’s the way of righteousness. It’s the harder way and the way that those who love us may prefer us not to follow.

Mark 8:31 – end

Then Jesus began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, ‘Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.’

He called the crowd with his disciples and said to them, ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? Those who are ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.’

PS I am grateful for Fleming Rutledge’s work. She is the one who has pointed out the meaning of righteousness as rectification in her book The Crucifixion.

We have nothing to prove and everything to love

David HerbertLeave a comment

Here’s a sermon for two rural churches in Warwickshire for the first Sunday in Lent. I’ve wondered whether Jesus only went into the wilderness for 40 days, or was his whole life there? Is wilderness a way to see “life”? The gospel for the day is Mark 1:9-15.

Catching my eye this week were these words of a benediction by Cole Arthur Riley; “May you rest in the immanence of your own worth, knowing you have nothing to prove and everything to love.”

Know you have nothing to prove and everything to love.

It’s the first Sunday of Lent and we’re just getting started. The question is, do we begin with shame, or do we begin with love? When/if we choose to give up chocolate or social media is it because it’s a shame we eat too much chocolate or spend too much time on social media? Do we begin with shame or do we begin with love?

Lent is the opportunity to intensify the awareness in our lives – our behaviours and the life around us. But do we begin with shame, or do we begin with love? Perhaps we begin with shame, and perhaps we begin again with love.

We are fond of thinking that Jesus went into the wilderness for 40 days – to be tempted by Satan. And that is what the gospels tell us. But were those 40 days an intensification of the wilderness experience which was to consume his whole life? The temptations didn’t stop after 40 days. The wild beasts didn’t go away – they bruised him, beat him and crucified him. They were hard times in a harsh and barren landscape – a lifetime in the wilderness. 

His 40 days in the wilderness with the wild beasts were part of his whole life in a wilderness with the wild beasts of empire and religious authority baying for his blood.

Our gospel tells us it began with love, not shame.

Mark gives the sequence of events – and his sequence is his version of “in the beginning”. Beginning the gospel, beginning the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, Mark gives this sequence of events:

  1. First, John appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance, and crowds came out to the wilderness to be baptised by him.
  2. Jesus, from a backwater village in Galilee was one of them. Just as he came out of the water he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him, and a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved, with you I am well pleased.”
  3. Immediately the Spirit drove Jesus deeper into the wilderness
  4. Then John was arrested

The Spirit drove Jesus into the wilderness. It began with love. “You are my Son, the Beloved, with you I am well pleased.” He was driven into the wilderness by love ringing in his ears, giving him the resilience for devilish temptation and for a life with the beasts. 

And with love he walked the wilderness for the rest of his life, facing the wilder-ness of human nature and the be-wilderment of the victims of that wilder-ness and beastliness.

Resounding above all the voices of that wilder-ness, the beasts baying for his blood, the crowds shouting “crucify him”, the mockery – above all that din is the voice of heaven: “you are my Son, the Beloved, with you I am well pleased”, and the sound of the angels who waited on him in the wilderness, whose only sound is the sound of heaven and their lyric, “do not be afraid”.

The wilderness is our world too. We are in serious denial if we ignore the wilder-ness of our human nature and the beastliness that so many suffer: if we ignore the beasts that force themselves on us and the beasts that we entertain. 

Lent is our opportunity to intensify our awareness of the wilderness of our lives, to take stock of the wars around us, the greed that threatens us, the environment we’ve neglected, the injustice that is suffered, the emptiness of so much of life, the distance between us, and the isolation which is so much a feature of life. 

Life is wilderness. The wilderness is so much bigger than any of us can ever imagine – too big for our hearts and minds. We have a problem if we reduce Lent to a personal remedy for our over-use of social media or our over-indulgence of chocolate. Lent will have been a waste of time if all we do at the end is reach out for a Cadbury’s cream egg. The devil will have won big time then.

Just as it was the love shown to Jesus in his baptism that drove him into the wilderness, to love in the wilderness, to do wonders in the wilderness, so it can be the love shown to us in our baptism that drives us into the wilderness, into these 40 days, into the rest of our lives.

We’ve got nothing to prove and everything to love. The wilderness isn’t an easy place to be. Heaven knows we’ve suffered enough there already. The landscape is often bleak and unforgiving. We may be tested to our limits. We will take wrong turns. There will be complicated choices for which there are no easy answers. We will be be-wildered and bothered by the wilder-ness around us and within us

The wilderness isn’t easy. But it’s the only place to be – or, the only place to be is where love drives us, where God’s Spirit takes us. Just don’t make it a guilt trip. Don’t let shame take you there these 40 days, and into the rest of your lives. Let love take you.

From the beginning God brought love to the wilderness. That is clear to us when we open our scriptures. “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep.” In other words there was nothing but wilderness and chaos – and a wind from God swept over the face of the waters, and he did wonders in that wilderness and chaos.

Similarly, at the beginning of Mark’s gospel, there are all the signs of wilderness and chaos – that is why the crowds came to John, for his baptism of repentance as a way through the wilderness and chaos they were facing. It is the Spirit of God which drove Jesus into the wilderness and chaos which has never gone away. It’s our wilderness, our chaos – and he begins with love.

When we are baptised, we are christened – becoming one in Christ, driven by love into wilderness. St Teresa of Avila gave us this blessing which will surely help us follow Jesus in his love into the wilderness, far from the easy life some of us may have been tempted to choose. It is the truth of our christening and being in Christ.

Christ has no body but yours, no hands, no feet on earth but yours.
Yours are the eyes with which he looks compassionately on this world.
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good.
Yours are the hands, with which he blesses the world.
Yours are the hands.
Yours are the feet.
Yours are his eyes.
You are his body.
Christ has no body now but yours, no hands, no feet on earth but yours.
Yours are the eyes with which he looks compassionately on this world.
Christ has no body now on earth but yours.

Jesus began with love in the wilderness. We don’t need to begin with anything other than love. We don’t have anything to prove but we have everything to love.

Mark 1:9-15

In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptised by John in the Jordan. And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’

And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness for forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.

Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.’

Cole Arthur Riley’s book from which the opening benediction is taken is Black Liturgies, published in 2024 by Hodder and Stoughton

Beginnings and the meaning of life

David Herbert1 Comment

A sermon for the 2nd Sunday before Lent. Both epistle and gospel of the day are about beginnings and the meaning of life. This sermon was for a church in rural Warwickshire.

In the beginning. In the beginning – such a lovely phrase. In the beginning – such a good place to start.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. That’s how John prefaces his gospel.

Our scriptures open at the beginning. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth

Some of you will remember Maureen Lipman’s British Telecom adverts. In one she rings her grandson to see how he got on in his exams. He goes through all the exams he failed. She asks, “did you pass anything?”. “I got pottery” – to which grandma says “that’s good, people will always need plates”. “And I got Sociology”. To which Grandma says, “you got an ology and you said you failed!”.

In the beginning was the Word. I’ve not got much in the way of an ology, but I’ve got enough of an “ology” to know that the Greek words for the Word is o-logos. O logos. It is from those two Greek words that we get all our ologies – whether sociology, psychology, geology, astrology, criminology – anyone awarded an ology can claim the credit of beginning to understand the meaning of an aspect of life. 

Putting aside any clever, clever ologies we may have we could all say that we have an OLOGY because the Word became flesh and dwells amongst us, with us always, to the end of time. That’s an ology that God has gifted us. He has gifted us his Word, o logos, made flesh, embodying the meaning of God from the beginning. If we want to know the meaning and purpose of God we have to look no further than Jesus.

The Word means meaning. O logos, the ology given to us, means meaning and purpose. From the beginning life has meaning and purpose. This is the viewpoint of faith, hope and trust.

In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. That is such a beautiful opening for our scriptures. 

Our generations, with all our ologies, have tended to scoff at this creation story. “It can’t have happened like that” we say, as if the inspired authors of this literature ever believed it happened like that. We are not looking at God’s first diary and to-do list. Inspired fiction sits alongside inspired history in our scriptures – what matters is not what happened, but what is true. In the beginnings described by the first chapter of Genesis, the openings of John’s gospel and our reading from Colossians – in all of them we have inspired theology that conveys truth.

I am ever more conscious that our scriptures are the scriptures of the Jewish people, so frequently overpowered, conquered, enslaved, exiled, occupied, persecuted, oppressed, impoverished and hated, as well as being so often disobedient and misled (just like the rest of us). They become our scriptures as long as we open our hearts and minds to join those who suffer, redirecting the power and wealth we have for their sake, becoming poor in spirit.

When we read scripture we are always looking through the eyes of a people (like Paul writing to the Colossians from prison) who suffered so much and yet dared to wonderfully imagine that from the very beginning God is working his purpose out, that there is meaning even in the midst of tragedy.

The beginnings described in Genesis and in John’s gospel and in our reading from Colossians are profound theological reflections on the meaning of life in the midst of chaos, surrounded by so much diversity and difference, a wealth of creation – and the part we are called to play. 

The “beginnings” of Genesis and John are not the start of things. It’s not a blank page. In the beginning described by John there was stuff going on. There was darkness, and the Word became the light of the world that darkness has never been able to overcome. There was darkness going on, and on and on.

Likewise in Genesis, there was stuff going on. There was formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep. In other words, it was chaos – and the creation story imagines what God does with chaos, ordering it and making so much of it for our delight.

The beginnings described by Genesis, John and Paul are all of them in the midst of things. There is always something going on. These scriptures belong to people who are in the midst of things, and passed on to those going through so much. There has been so much love gone into them – their meaning is to inspire faith, hope and love – in us, in the midst of things.

Sometimes life doesn’t seem to have any meaning – particularly when bad things overwhelm us. Sometimes that is about discovering that life doesn’t mean what we thought and that there is a new meaning we have not yet discovered. As we lose sight of the meaning of life we can often forget the meaning of God. We may have been misled into thinking of God in a way he just isn’t. 

When we lose that sense of meaning for our lives, when we’re burnt out and exhausted by excessive busyness, or responsibility, or trauma, when we’ve lost our way in the forest, then we do need to retrace our steps, unwind to the beginning to the time when there was always meaning. 

When we lose sight of the meaning of life we need to follow the sound of music and start at the very beginning, a very good place to start, the beginning when the Word became flesh and dwelt among us – a down to earth meaning, embodied in our lives, in our times and in all we try to do.

The meaning of God is the meaning of life. In our first reading, the letter to the Colossians, we have the phrase He is the beginning. Christ is the beginning for God. 

The letter continues: “in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross”.

This is the meaning of God and the meaning of life.

We are all “in the beginning” – we are part of the body of Christ who is the beginning. He is the beginning of the work of reconciliation ………. He is the beginning of the repair of broken and exploitative relationships. That is his work, his meaning and purpose. We are all “in the beginning”, in the beginning of a new creation, in the beginning of something new, in the beginning of something better as long as we listen to his word and love his meaning.

In the midst of things, a lot of which we’d rather not be in the midst of, in the midst of things we have the beginnings of life, its meaning and purpose, and the beginnings of God, his meaning and purpose – to find our way where we might lose our way. In our beginning is the Word to inspire our faith, hope and love, the ology which means the world to us.

Colossians 1:15-20

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers – all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross. 

John 1:1-14
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.
He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.

And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.

Discovering consolation with Simeon and Anna

David Herbert3 Comments

The weekend of Holocaust Memorial Day is the day we celebrate The Presentation of Christ in the Temple. Here’s what I prepared for a small worship gathering in a Warwickshire village.

Presentation of Christ in the Temple – January 28th 2024

I don’t know how many of you watch films, TV or read books. Charles Darwin read novels to relax. But he had one requirement. The book had to have a happy ending. If it didn’t he would fling it furiously on the fire.

So says Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska in her poem called Consolation.

The poem continues:

Roaming in his mind over so many times and places
looking back on all the extinct species,
such triumphs of strong over weak,
so many tests of survival,
sooner or later all in vain,
that at least in fiction
and its micro-scale
he had a right to expect a happy ending.

I don’t know what you make of evolutionary theory, whether you agree with it or not, but I suppose that our usual viewpoint is that of the “survivor” and the “strong” and “fit”. The theory is about the “fittest” surviving. The theory is very good news for the strong as they continually score triumphs over the weak, but it’s very bad news for the forever beaten, weakened to extinction. The logic of natural selection and survival of the fittest was behind the Nazi death camps – their catastrophe we remember this weekend in Holocaust Memorial Day.

Seeing life like that, it is understandable that Darwin looked for happy endings when he read to relax.

Our gospel this morning is about the search for happy endings. Simeon, we are told, was “righteous and devout” and was “looking forward to the consolation of Israel”. His consolation was to take the child Jesus in his arms and to find in him the hope of salvation, “a light for revelation to the Gentiles” and for glory to the people Israel.

The old lady in the gospel story, Anna, started speaking about the child “to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem” – in other words, those looking for consolation because of the state of Jerusalem.

The poet continues her poem by listing all sorts of happy endings. Here they are, some of them:

And so, necessarily: sunrays behind a cloud,
lovers together again, kin reconciled,
doubts dissolved, faith rewarded,
fortunes recovered, treasures dug up.
Neighbours regret their mulishness,
good names restored, greed put to shame,
old maids married to respectable ministers,
schemers expelled to the other hemisphere,
forgers of documents cast down the stairs,
seducers of virgins hurrying to altars
orphans taken in, widows embraced,
pride humbled, wounds mended,
prodigal sons invited to the table,
the cup of bitterness poured into the sea,
tissues wet with tears of reconciliation,
universal singing and music-making,
and the puppy Fido,
lost already in the first chapter,
let him run home again
and bark joyfully.

We’re here, not just because we are survivors. We may have survived many plots and lived through many twists and turns but it is because we love our neighbours as we love ourselves that we are here. Together we stand. We know those who are going through hell. We know those who are hanging on by a thread. We know those who are beaten, rejected and weakened by those who are stronger, wealthier and better connected. We know the plight of the poor, the refugee. We know the victims of hate crimes. We know people who aren’t allowed to be themselves. We cry for the children killed in war, for the families who go hungry. We’re here for them, to worship the God who brings consolation.

Nicholas Winton saved the lives of many Jewish children. His life is featured in the film One Life now showing in cinemas.

We all understand that fiction is fiction and that too often there are no happy endings. There is too much tragedy and that grieves us so. We live in the world where the strong rule over the weak, and where the weak, if they survive at all, continue to suffer. If only there could be a happy ending to all the unhappy endings.

And so we pray – for those who are poor, those who are sick, those in prison, those who are vulnerable. In our prayers we are looking for consolation for those for whom we pray. We are with Simeon whose eyes were fixed on the consolation of Israel, and we are with Anna in her conversations with those looking for the redemption of Jerusalem. We are with them looking for the happy ending for all those who have been wronged and for all those suffering in the state of things today.

We will do all in our power to help those who need our help. We will fight for better lives, happier endings. We gather our energies to make sure that the vulnerable do survive. We know they deserve their happy-ever-after and we will do all in our power to stop those who don’t care for the way it ends for them, the heartless beasts, the wolves, the tyrants.

Israel was suffering from heartless beasts. They were prey to wolves. Tyrants ruled them. They had a history of exile, persecution, oppression – a vast accumulation of trauma and tragedy. Simeon felt that. Anna felt that. And all those Anna spoke amongst felt that. That is why they were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem – a very different ending to the ignominious end which seemed to be their destiny.

Simeon knows there is a happy ending. He has seen it with his own eyes. He has held it in his arms. He has embraced the ending which will see many “fall” and many “raised”. The poor will be blessed. They will rise up. The beasts will be slain. This is the consolation of weak, occupied, isolated Israel. The consolation of Israel is the survival of the least, the last and the lost. The consolation of Israel is the humiliation of the beastly strong. The consolation of Israel is the child. The consolation of Israel is the vulnerability God takes to heart.

Not everyone knows that the Christmas season is a 40 day season in the liturgical year, just like Advent was and Lent is. The Christmas story ends with the presentation of Jesus in the temple. There is a Feast on February 2nd to celebrate this ending. That is the 40th day which churches keep on the Sunday before feb 2nd if they don’t keep weekday festivals. Our gospel reading is the reading for that 40th day.

There are many twists and turns in the Christmas story. There is the danger Mary is in by getting pregnant outside of marriage, there is the discomfort of the journey, there not being any room for them in Bethlehem, the threat to Jesus’ life from Herod, having to take flight to Egypt as refugees. All this is part of the story, let alone the battle between light and dark. There is a happy ending. Simeon finds the consolation Israel was searching for and Anna names their redeemer.

Musicals were playing in the background when I was finishing this sermon. The earworm was Love changes everything. It is love that changes everything. It is love that gives Charles Darwin and ourselves a happy ending. The happy ending is not the survival of the fittest. 

The happy ending is the unhappy ending for the villains (often the fittest, strongest, riches and most powerful). The happy ending is the survival of the people God loves – those so easily lost and so often last and least.

Luke 2:22-40
When the time came for their purification according to the law of Moses, they brought him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord (as it is written in the law of the Lord, ‘Every firstborn male shall be designated as holy to the Lord”), and they offered a sacrifice according to what is stated in the law of the Lord, ‘a pair of turtle-doves or two young pigeons.’

Now there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon; this man was righteous and devout, looking forward to the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit rested on him. It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Messiah. Guided by the Spirit, Simeon came into the temple; and when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for him what was customary under the law, Simeon took him in his arms and praised God, saying,
“Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace,
according to your word;
for my eyes have seen your salvation,
which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples,
a light for revelation to the Gentiles
and for glory to your people Israel.’

And the child’s father and mother were amazed at what was being said about him. Then Simeon blessed them and said to his mother Mary, ‘This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed so the inner thoughts of many will be revealed – and a sword will pierce your own heart too.’

There was also a prophet, Anna the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was of a great age, having lived with her husband for seven years after her marriage, and then as a widow to the age of eighty-four. She never left the temple but worshipped there with fasting and prayer night and day. At that moment she came, and began to praise God and to speak about the child to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem.

When they had finished everything required by the law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee, to their own town of Nazareth. The child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom; and the favour of God was upon him.

Mary’s words in our prayer for Christian Unity

David HerbertLeave a comment

Here’s the bones of a sermon for two village churches for the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity 2024. The gospel text is John 2:1-11 in which Mary makes her voice heard. Women have had far less “say” through the Christian centuries, and even now – a sure sign that there is no unity in Christian community.

This week is the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. It always begins on the 18th January, the date when we celebrate what God did with Saul, converting him from a zealous persecutor of Jesus’ followers, into someone who came to love them as his brothers and sisters.

It has been a special 8eightday period pf prayer each year since 1908 – co-ordinated by the World Council of Churches – the idea being that we pray “for the unity of the Church as Christ wills it, and in accordance with the means he wills” (Paul Couturier)

Our first call in our prayer for Christian unity is to lament that the lack of Christian unity. Christians remains divided on so many things. Churches remain divided. We rejoice when there is reconciliation, when we find the way to work together, but divisions run deep, hurting the body of Christ. 

In the past our focus for prayer may have been the relationship between the denominations and those prayers have borne fruit. Or our hearts and minds may have gone to the troubles in Northern Ireland, as prayer for the Catholic and Protestant communities there.

But, here and now, what does disunity look like andfeel like to us? What is our experience of disunity? Materials for this year’s Week of Prayer have been gathered by an ecumenical group from Burkina Faso. They have invited us to join with them in a process of self-reflection as they consider what it means to love our neighbour in the midst of a security crsis.

We may be less vulnerable to acts of mass violence than in Burkina Faso, but many here live with the memory and/or threat of serious violence centred on issues of identity and belonging. There are also groups within communities who feel particularly vulnerable to violence. For them, prayers for Christian unity become urgent – that we discover the unity Christ wills in accordance with the means he wills.

There is no unity
as long as people are not free to be themselves,

as long as people are disrespected, or disabled or silenced by people more powerful than them,
as long as there are victims of abuse and the injustice inflicted on them has not been righted,
as long as people are frozen out, talked down, talked down to
because of who they are
because of the colour of their skin, because of their gender,
because they’re women,
because of their age (too young, too old),
because they’re gay, or haven’t had the right education
or because they are caught up in historic conflicts and they’re bound to one side or the other,
because of who we are.

Differences don’t have to lead to conflict and division. Differences can be the cause of great rejoicing. They are also the places where love grows.

There will always be differences. Our scriptures open with God celebrating difference in the creation stories with the creation of all sorts of life. He creates relationships by making man and woman. He loves what he has done. God doesn’t iron out differences.

We have a choice. We can love our differences, or we can hate our differences. When we hate our differences we can feel threatened, we can seek to control and manipulate, we can hide the truth of the other and finish up sowing seeds of division.

When we love our differences we rejoice in the gifts of others, we will see our differences as a blessing (even when there is disagreements among us). We will love that the world has so many different points of view, that there are so many different ways to understand things, that there is so much to learn, so much to discover.

Some of our media would have us afraid of our differences, as would the gossip on the street. Sometimes we have to put our hands over our ears on radio phone-in and instead tell ourselves what we hear from scripture as the heart of vocation – “do not be afraid”.

Day by day we make this choice, loving our differences, or hating our differences and thereby creating divisions and seeing life break apart.

One of the great divisions within society and within the church is the difference between men and women, the different ways they’ve been treated. We see this in the politics of the church – about who can speak, teach or lead. We see it in our scriptures. Men play a far more prominent role. They are more powerful and they have a lot more to say. 

Yet, in spite of all the patriarchy, it is Mary’s voice that we hear in today’s gospel. She doesn’t say much, but what she does say is truly significant.

She says to Jesus, “they have no wine” and to the stewards, “do whatever he tells you”. “They have no wine” and “do whatever he tells you”. Just nine words!

It would have been no surprise that the wine ran out. Cana was just as poor a village as nearby Nazareth. The farming families there struggled to make a living while at the same time they were being heavily taxed – the Temple tax, tribute to the Roman emperor, and the tax they had to pay to Herod for his various vanity projects. This was a community of poor people.

Mary’s four words, “They have no wine” addressed to Jesus is as a prayer – a prayer trusting the one she is speaking to to be the one to answer the embarrassment of the poor hospitality which was all they could afford.

Mary can lead our prayer. We can follow her in spelling out to Jesus what concerns us. The lack of wine may not be our concern, but we may make similar prayers, such as “They have no food”, “They have no justice”, “they have no room”, “they have no one to care for them” – and her words “do whatever he tells you” becomes the answer to the prayer.

As we pray for Christian unity, as we note any temptation to hate our differences, and our inclination to demean those who disagree with us, we can make our prayer “There is no unity, there is only difference and division”. As we work our way through a PCC meeting, or face up to any resentment we may feel about how we have been treated by others we can follow Mary’s prayer, “there is no agreement”, or “there is no love”.

When we pray for Christian unity, we turn to Jesus and offer ourselves as the answer to the prayer of the church. There may be no unity, but we turn to the one we know to work wonders with difference, who loves difference. Paul sums it up: In Christ, there is neither Jew nor Gentil, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for we are all one in Christ. These are the wonders God works in our differences. 

Luke describes the church in his Book of Acts. In the beginning he shows Jesus’ friends and followers all together in the room, men and women, devoting themselves to prayer, describing how the Spirit came on them inspiring them to speak in such a way that everyone was able to understand them in spite of their differences of nationality, ethnicity, gender and age. And then trhoughout Acts Luke continues to amaze his readers with the sheer diversity of the earliest church. There are men and women, strangers and foreigners, slaves, prisoners (and their guards), Jews and Gentiles, eunuchs. God loves the differences and builds his church from them.

The stewards in today’s gospel did precisely what Jesus told them to do. They filled six huge jars with water which turned to wine, far better than the first wine, the poor wine, the wine of the poor which is never enough. This water ran out as wine, as the wine which never ran out. The jars each held 20 – 30 gallons.. Just imaging – 120-180 gallons of wine – more than enough for this poor Galilee community to drink, make merry and celebrate the wedding feast. More than enough for the disciples to see his glory. More than enough for the church down the centuries to carry on drinking in the way that he told us to – drinking the cup of salvation.

In the midst of conflict and disagreement dare we trust ourselves to turn to Christ to love our difference? Dare we hope for as much as those wedding guests at Cana? Where there is no peace dare we hope for more than enough peace, peace beyond human understanding? Where there is no love dare we hope for so much love to make friends out of enemies and to build community with our differences as another sign of God’s glory?

John 2:1-11
On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, ‘They have no wine.’ And Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.’ His mother said to the servants, ‘Do whatever he tells you.’ Now standing there were six stone water-jars for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. Jesus said to them, ‘Fill the jars with water.’ And they filled them up to the brim. He said to them, ‘Now draw some out, and take it to the chief steward.’ So they took it. When the steward tasted the water that had become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the steward called the bridegroom and said to him, ‘Everyone serves the good wine first, and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk. But you have kept the good wine until now.’ Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.

Taking the unsweetened Christmas story into our resolutions

David Herbert3 Comments

This sermon was prepared for the first Sunday after Christmas when I suspect many are tired of Christmas and want to get back to normal. We have to hope we don’t – go back to normal, that is – because then the “lowly” and demeaned are left out as normal. It is to them, the likes of the shepherds and Mary and Joseph, that the glory of God takes us. The gospel text is Luke 2:15-21.

This week, the danger is that life will get back to normal, that we will go back to our old ways, to the old gods which hold our thoughts, and that this coming year, 2024 will be just like any other year with its low expectations and vague hopes for world peace, a lottery win a nice holiday and just getting by.

But if we go back to normal won’t Mary’s pain have been in vain? Time turns on Jesus’s birth. There was a time for us “before Christ”, and there is time after his birth, a new time, the time when we know God’s favour – the day of the Lord, the years anno domini – the time that will surely never be the same again.

I suspect that those who will be glad to “get back to normal”, relieved it’s all over will have imbibed too much sugar or tried to do too much.

How much sugar we take with our Christmas is a good question. The way most people know the Christmas story is through sugar-coated carols and cards. Christmas can get so sweetened that we have difficulty getting the real flavour of Christmas as presented, unsweetened, by the gospel writers, Matthew, Luke and John.

There’s usually a “free from” aisle in our supermarkets these days. I suggest that we keep this aisle in church as a free from aisle. Free from sugar and syrup so that we can get into the meaning of Jesus’ birth. Luke, Matthew and John didn’t tell these stories lightly or sweetly. They tell them deeply, from the depths of a whole community’s memory and experience. And they tell their stories darkly – there is a dark reality to all the elements of their stories. We need to feel their weight, not their lightness. We need to feel their weight to grow in worship, resilience and love for the lowly and the stranger.

Our gospel this morning begins after the angel left the shepherds. An angel had appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them. The angel brought good news to them that was to cause great joy for all people. A child, wrapped in cloth, lying in an improvised cot was the sign. The great company of the heavenly host join the angel and the shepherds. They praise God for the news singing at the top of their voices, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom his favour rests”.

This morning’s gospel begins with the shepherds deciding to go to Bethlehem to see for themselves what God had made known to them. They went with haste and found Mary and Joseph and the child lying in the manger. They made known what they’d been told about the child. Their hearers were amazed and Mary treasured their words and pondered them in her heart.

With Mary we treasure their words and ponder them in the heart of the church. But, please, no sugar because if we put sugar in we miss the point that Luke is here making as he paints the picture of those on whom God’s favour rests, around whom God’s glory shines and through whom, and for whom, God chooses the way of saving the world that is lost.

God’s glory shines around the shepherds. These were men who lived out in the fields, on the wasteland around Bethlehem on land which was no good for anything else than grazing sheep. They were there in all weathers, warding off wolves and thieves, working nights, protecting the lives of their sheep, their livelihood – doing the work which was to inspire Jesus’s own self understanding of being the good shepherd. They were an underclass, living rough. Around them the glory of God shines. The press release of the birth isn’t carefully planned for maximum impact in the corridors of power, but is focused in the isolation of these shepherds.

The sweetened versions of the Christmas story, the sweetened Nativity, can never convey the darkness and will always shy away from the poverty. It is the unsweetened versions, given to us by the gospel writers which shows us where God’s favour rests – around the shepherds, on Joseph (a poor artisan carpenter in an obscure village) and Mary – a young girl whose song of praise Jesus will have heard growing up. In her song, the song we know as Magnificat she praises God for looking “with favour on the lowliness of his servant”.

Lowly is the collective noun for those who have been demeaned. The word lowliness is used throughout the Bible to denote misery, pain, persecution and oppression. In our unsweetened version of Jesus’ birth story, Mary embodies the experience of her people, the Jews – their whole history threaded with misery, pain, persecution and oppression. She knew God’s favour rests there, with her people – and those who have joined Mary have come to realise he favours all like her, all those in misery, pain, persecution and oppression. The glory of God is all about them – Mary, Joseph, the shepherds – and all the lowly who make up the extended holy family, and those who want to relate to them as relatives. The love of God is for them – to turn life round in their favour.

Poet W H Auden puts these words into the mouths of the shepherds in his Christmas Oratario For the Time Being:

We never left the place where we were born,
Have only lived one day, but every day

Have walked a thousand miles yet only worn
The grass between our work and home away.

Lonely we were though never left alone.
The solitude familiar to the poor
Is feeling that the family next door,
The way it talks, eats, dresses, loves, and hates,
Is indistinguishable from one’s own.

Tonight for the first time the prison gates
Have opened.
Music and sudden light
Have interrupted our routine tonight,
And swept the filth of habits from our hearts.
O here and now our endless journey starts.

We’ve come to the end of the year, the end of the Christmas holidays is in sight. We may be relieved it’s all over – we have, after all, consumed far too much sugar. 

But, let’s not go back to normal. 

Let’s join the shepherds just as their endless journey starts when they find a baby wrapped in cloths, lying in a manger – the sure sign that starts us off. 

Let’s join Mary treasuring the words of the angels and pondering their words in our hearts. 

Let’s join those who are demeaned, those who are lowly. 

Let’s make our resolutions for the new year, for new time, a resolution everyday undergirded with daily prayer to join with them; those who suffer misery, pain, persecution and oppression.

Renowned black preacher and theologian Howard Thurman has this to say:

When the song of the angels is stilled,
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the kings and princes are home,
When the shepherds are back with their flock,
The work of Christmas begins:
To find the lost,
To heal the broken,
To feed the hungry,
To release the prisoner,
To rebuild the nations,
To bring peace among people,
To make music in the heart.

How about that for our new year’s resolution? How about that as resolution for the rest of our lives? That is coming alive in the unsweetened story of Jesus’s birth and being part of God’s favour and glory.

The gospel of the day – Luke 2:15-21

When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, ‘Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.’

So they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger. When they saw this, they made known what had been told them about this child; and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them. But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart. The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.

After eight days had passed, it was time to circumcise the child; and he was called Jesus, the name given by the angel before he was conceived in the womb.

Darkness needs light: a reflection on the coming of holy night

David Herbert3 Comments

I assume that everyone’s feeling tired by midnight on Christmas Eve. Midnight is not the time to be preaching long and hard. Here’s my offering for a group of churches in rural Warwickshire.

Wherever we look in the story of Jesus’ birth there is darkness. 

Matthew’s gospel begins with Mary’s disgrace and how Joseph saved her from being cast out by marrying her. Then we’re told that the Magi’s search triggers the slaughter of the innocents by Herod – he killed all the children in Bethlehem and around who were under two years old! Then Mary and Joseph become refugees to escape Herod’s slaughter.

Luke’s gospel begins with the darkness of Joseph and Mary being forced to make the long journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem by order of the Roman emperor -just to be counted – just to become numbers in the machine of a foreign empire. 

John’s gospel begins with the life which was to be the light of all people, the light that shines in darkness.

Darkness is never far from us. It’s within us – all those dark thoughts, and it’s all around us. On this night of darkness we celebrate how the light comes to us, how the light comes to us as love (all vulnerable), how the night becomes holy – thanks be to God.

I wrote this for tonight.

One light,
so much darkness. If truth be told
what Christmas needs
is the longest of nights, 
the shortest of days,
and the time when people
are at their coldest
and meanest.

For truth to be told
darkness needs light
for the night to find its way to day,
for those who walk
through the dark night of the soul
lost in a cloud of unknowing
frightened in the valley
of the shadows of death.

If truth be told
darkness lies
in the distance between us,
what  we do to one another in war,
rape, rubble, ruin in Gaza and Kyiv.
It rides the nightmares
of suffering, anxiety, despair.
It’s the cost of living.

The data of darkness
is hidden in official secrets
and personal shame,
in the blindness of prejudices
in the lies of truth twisters
in the scheming of profiteers
in the denial of freedoms
in the erections of borders

that divide darkness
from darkness, hiding the terror
from which so many flee.
It’s in their denial. Yes,
there is no room.
It’s in their small boats
not built for the darkness
of the deep and stormy sea.

If truth be told, it’s told in numbers:
in the homeless numbers,
the foodbank users,
the choosers choosing 
heating or eating,
the children killed in war.
It‘s in the numbers of those
who are just numbers.

It’s the middle of the night,
when even the clocks
put their hands together
in time to pray.
They pray for first light
to end the night, a baby flame
in the frame of shame,
and then they pray us awake

and in the darkness, see,
shimmering and flickering
in the world which,
if truth be told,
has no room for Light,
where the only place
to rest his head lay
in the love of a mother

and the kindness of a stranger 
in the inn the light came in,
casting shadows with halos,
our light never dying.
With the angel band backing,
all hallelujah singing,
watching shepherds 
dance the night away.

Joy to the world. Happy Christmas.

© David Herbert 2023

Setting Mary free to be herself – listening to her song

David Herbert2 Comments

This is something for the 3rd Sunday of Advent, Gaudete Sunday, in a country church in Warwickshire dedicated to Mary, I have focused on Mary’s Magnificat.

Have any of you been put on a pedestal?

I can imagine it’s hard and you can be brought to earth with a bang. You’re not allowed to be yourself, always having to be what others want you to be.

The church hasn’t done Mary any favours. Above all women she has been put on a pedestal for so long that we’ve forgotten what she was really like. It’s what men have done to her over the centuries.

This morning I want us to listen to her song.

My aim in preparing this sermon is that you and I get a better idea of who Mary was. This, I believe will help us into the Christmas gospel and will help us better understand the son who spent most of his life with her in their village and home of Nazareth.

As a church dedicated to Mary, I suggest we dedicate ourselves to her liberation so that she can be herself, rather than what we have made her over the centuries, whether we have devoted ourselves to her as within the catholic traditions if the church, or whether we have been critical of such devotions, as within the protestant traditions.

When we look at her, what do we see? What we see is what people have made of her over the years. We see all the images laid on top of one another as she has been used for this or that purpose. 

She has become stereotyped. She comes to us well dressed in her blue flowing gown looking like a beauty queen. She usually has pale skin, blue eyes. She looks peaceful. She looks heavenly. She’s usually on her own, surrounded by quiet. She has her hands together, eyes closed, praying. Often her setting is the architecture of a palace. She is often reading. And in all of this there is no sign of trouble. There is no sound of her song and no sign of her joy. There isn’t much sign that she has done anything at all. 

But the gospels give us a very different view of Mary.

She was a woman of history. She was Mary, Mary of Nazareth, a small village of about 300 people off the beaten track to the sophisticated nearby city of Sepphoris. This was the village people scoffed at – “can anything good come out of Nazareth?” 

Archaelogists there have pieced together a picture of rural poverty, with people living in one and two roomed houses clustered around courtyards shared with extended families with shared cooking facilities. They’ve found no signs of any wealth. 

This was a small peasant community. Mary was married to the village carpenter. This wouldn’t have been a small business as we know them. He wouldn’t have had the status we give to small businesses. He would have been an artisan, the class below the peasants, earning less than the peasants and serving their needs. They probably would have had a small plot of land for growing food to eke out a living. They would have made their own clothes from their sheep.

They were poor. They were taxed three times. They paid 10% to the Temple. They paid tribute to the Roman emperor. And then they also had to pay tax to fund the vanity projects of Herod, such as the building of nearby Sepphoris, the equivalent of our HS2.

They would have been very poor, barely scraping a living together. Many of them would have been in debt to the wealthy and would have their land taken off them. Resentments grew and  there were frequent rumblings of revolt. Many days they would have gone hungry.

Life didn’t treat any of them gently.

It takes a village to raise a child. That village raised Mary and Jesus, Jewish babies having to grow up very quickly. Their village meetings would have dwelt on the different ways their people had suffered in Egypt, in persecution, in exile and the way that God had graced these suffering servants. She picks up the song of Hannah and makes it her song.

My soul does magnify the Lord, she sings. “My spirit rejoices in God my Saviour for he has looked with favour on the lowliness of his servant. The Mighty One has done great things for me. His mercy is on those who fear him. He has shown strength with his arm, he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones and lifted up the lowly. He has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty.”

This isn’t the song of the woman we have put on the pedestal for so long. This is the song of a woman who lives with the day to day challenge of survival. It’s a song Jesus will have heard from his mother and from the scriptures shared in their village meetings. This isn’t a song of the docile, or of those who take things lying down. This is the song of those who rejoice that the proud are scattered, the powerful dethroned and the rich sent away empty. 

This is the song which prompted one artist to portray Mary in the style of Russian communist posters, muscular, all boiler suited and booted.

You are a church dedicated to Mary. Can I suggest that we all try to get to know her better and that we talk about her more? Can you let her be herself rather than forcing her to be somebody she isn’t?

As we get to know her better we will know better where God plants his seed and where the baby Jesus grew, side by side with his mother as he joined her in her prayer, magnifying the Lord and praying for their daily bread and the forgiveness of their debts, joining her and watching her in the household tasks, digging the soil, planting seeds, baking bread – funding his imagination for sharing with those who followed him the images of the kingdom of the one he magnified in the song of his mother.

I am indebted to my Advent reading – to the work of Elizabeth A Johnson, in her book Truly our Sister: a Theology of Mary in the Communion of Saints

Magnificat

My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord,
my spirit rejoices in God mySaviour;
he has looked with favour on his lowly servant.

From this day all generations will call me blessed;
the Almighty has done great things for me
and holy is his name.

He has mercy on those who fear him,
from generation to generation.

He has shown strength with his arm
and has scattered the proud in their conceit,

Casting down the mighty from their thrones
and lifting up the lowly.

He has filled the hungry with good things
and sent the rich away empty.

He has come to the aid of his servant Israel,
to remember his promise of mercy,

The promise made to our ancestors,
to Abraham and his children for ever.

A final judgement: the parable of the sheep and goats

David Herbert4 Comments

The last Sunday of the Christian year (liturgically speaking, the celebration of Christ the King, the Sunday before Advent (Year A)). The readings from Ezekiel 34 and Matthew 25 (the parable of the sheep and goats) are printed below.

The liturgical year leads us to this. Today is the last Sunday before the new year starts next Sunday, the first Sunday of Advent, when we start a new round of readings, rediscovering the gospel for our dark times. The liturgical year with all its readings and reflections leads us to the kingdom of heaven, to the coronation of Christ the King and the admission that the love and mercy that makes his majesty should be the rule of our lives. It is our final judgement.

Jesus sees himself with those who are hungry, thirsty, stranger, naked, sick and in prison. They are his brothers and sisters. He calls them his family. “Just as you did it to the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me”. (Matt 25:40). 

Many of us will be starting to write Christmas cards – some may be of the “holy family” but this passage shakes up our preconceptions of the holy family. The holy family, (the royal family if we accept Christ the King), is made up of those who are hungry, thirsty, stranger, naked, sick and prisoner. Jesus is a king like no other, his kingdom is like none other, his royal family is like no other royal family.

It is just like us to idealise the nuclear family – Mum, Dad, baby (and the pet, the wee donkey!), but Jesus “extends” the family. Matthew has already told us of the time when Jesus’ mother and brothers stood waiting to speak to Jesus while he was talking to the crowd. He was told that his Mum and brothers were outside but he said “who is my mother, and where are my brothers?”, and pointing to the disciples he said “here are my mother and brothers”. 

So, here we are in this parable of the sheep and the goats with the family Jesus has extended – with his brothers and sisters, those who are hungry, thirsty, naked, stranger, sick and prisoner and our final judgement is based on whether we have sided with them or whether we have walked by on the other side joining with those who won’t be bothered, or who are too busy, or who think they have enough to bother about, or who join those who scoff at the last and the least pretending that their state is a “lifestyle choice”.

Our final judgement is about our kindness to the last and least who Jesus claims as members of his long lost family. Jesus identifies with them all and it’s his gratitude which places those who follow him and his family on his right hand. 

You gave me food when I was hungry. You gave me drink when I was thirsty. You welcomed me when I was a stranger. You gave me clothes when I had nothing. You took care of me when I was sick. You visited me when I was in prison. 

It’s acts of kindness such as these that sorts the sheep from the goats, that puts some on the right hand of God – the right hand being the the hand of God’s power, the hand of righteousness, the hand that puts things right – and puts some on the wrong hand of God, the dismissive hand, the hand that discards, the hand that says ‘to hell with you’.

(A note on prisons. They served a different purpose in Jesus’ day. It’s where they put people waiting for trial – as with Jesus before his trial, as with Paul, Stephen and John and so many of his brothers and sisters.)

It is about kindness. Kindness appreciates our kinship, that we are one of a kind, humankind. We could say that this final judgement in this parable of the sheep and goats is about the KINDOM extended by Jesus – the kindom (without the g) of the kingdom of heaven. The KINDOM (no G) of God rescues the vulnerable. In the language used by Ezekiel, these too are like sheep and the Lord is their shepherd, searching out those who have become lost, who have strayed, who are injured and who are too weak to withstand the cruelty of the “fat sheep” who “push with flank and shoulder, and butt at all the weak animals with their horns until they have scattered them far and wide.” The kindom of God centres around the victims of the powers that be and those who suffer from the way things are.

Timpsons, the cobblers, is a business that organises itself around kindness. 10% of their workforce is recruited directly from prisons. There are just two rules for staff members: “look the part” and “put the money in the till”. James Timpson is the company’s CEO. He tweets @jamestcobbler, last week listing random acts of kindness of Timpson staff members. It gives some food for thought for those who hunger for kindness.

  • Nigel at Solihull engraved a memorial plaque for a grieving mother
  • Thom at Cambridge cleaned a suit for a customer attending their child’s funeral
  • Raymond at Ponders End donated bone marrow to a stranger
  • Dave at Loudwater gave an elderly couple a lift home with some heavy curtains
  • Darren in Henley bought someone a coffee who was sitting in the middle of the road
  • Terri at Paddock Wood stopped whilst dropping garments back to a branch to help save a person from jumping off a bridge
  • Etc etc

Then the righteous will answer him, “when was it that we saw you?”. It’s as if this final judgement comes as a total surprise to those who are counted as sheep, to those who find themselves on the right side. Nigel, Thom, Raymond and the rest may also be totally surprised to find themselves on the “right side”. “Just as you did it to the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.” What they did in kinship and kindness for the grieving mother, the parents who had lost their child, the stranger, the elderly couple, the one thinking of suicide, “you did it to me”, says Jesus.

I don’t know about you but the questions posed by the sheep (on the right side) and the goats (on the wrong side) weigh heavy with me. “When was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink?” I struggle to remember when I ever did any of those things, but I can remember so many times when I have walked by on the wrong side, avoiding their troubles.

How do I justify myself in the final judgement? I can’t and perhaps you can’t. Part of it may be that we are pre-occupied with ourselves. And part of it may be that we just don’t know what to do in the midst of so much trouble.

So what do we do?

We can put in plenty of practice. Practice seeing Christ at the heart of his extended family, a heavenly kin(g)dom on earth amongst brothers and sisters who, in the way of the world, are hungry, thirsty, stranger, naked, sick or in prison. Practice seeing Christ not at the heart of a nuclear family, the so-called “holy family”, but at the heart of the family he has extended by his search and rescue as the good shepherd of those scattered, lost and bruised.

Put in the practice of prayer. Grow your prayer from the love of your own nuclear family to this kin(g)dom of God and let the people of his extended family populate our prayers. 

Pray for those who go hungry, depending on food banks. Pray for your brothers and sisters who are parched and who don’t have easy access to water. Pray for your brothers and sisters who come amongst us as strangers, newcomers and refugees, that we may welcome them and that they feel at home. Carry on praying for those who are sick and for your brothers and sisters in prison. 

These are the people to populate our prayers – the brothers and sisters of Christ the king – his royal family. And give thanks for all those who join them, on their side, the right side, in their various practical acts of kindness.

We can never do enough. We are not asked to do enough to save the world. The kingdom of God, with Christ as king, is the kingdom where the last and the least are prized. We may be surprised that Christ makes so much of the little we do, even a cup of water for the thirsty, or a knitted blanket for the poorly clad, or just a smile, a word, or a touch. They are the seeds that grow.

Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24

For thus says the Lord God: I myself will search for my sheep, and will seek them out. As shepherds seek out their flocks when they are among their scattered sheep, so I will seek out my sheep. I will rescue them from all the places to which they have been scattered on a day of clouds and thick darkness. I will bring them out from the peoples and gather them from the countries, and will bring them into their own land; and I will feed them on the mountains of Israel, by the watercourses, and in all the inhabited parts of the land. I will feed them with good pasture, and the mountain heights of Israel shall be their pasture; there they shall lie down in good grazing land, and they shall feed on rich pasture on the mountains of Israel. I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I will make them lie down, says the Lord God. I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak, but the fat and the strong I will destroy. I will feed them with justice.

Therefore, says the Lord God to them: I myself will judge between the fat sheep and the lean sheep. Because you pushed with flank and shoulder, and butted at all the weak animals with your horns until you scattered them far and wide, I will save my flock, and they shall no longer be ravaged; and I will judge between sheep and sheep.

I will set up over them one shepherd, my servant David, and he shall feed them: he shall feed them and be their shepherd. And I, the Lord, will be their God, and my servant David shall be prine among them; I, the Lord have spoken.

Matthew 25:31-end

When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left.

Then the king will say to those at his right hand, “Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.”

Then  the righteous will answer him, “Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?”

And the king will answer them, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.” Then he will say to those at his left hand, “You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison, and did not take care of you?”

Then he will answer them, “Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.” And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”