Thinking allowed

Last Sunday after Trinity: 26 October 2025

on Sunday, 26 October 2025 at 8.13 pm by Simon Kershaw
categorised as sermon

Read­ings: Joel 2.23–32; Psalm 65; 2 Timothy 4.6–8, 16–18; Luke 18.9–14

‘The tax-col­lect­or, stand­ing far off,
would not even look up to heaven,
but was beat­ing his breast and saying,
“God, be mer­ci­ful to me, a sinner!” ’

In the name of the Fath­er and of the Son and of the Holy Spir­it. Amen.

Back in the 1670s, when Charles II was king,
the heir to the throne was his broth­er James.
An Itali­an prin­cess, Mary of Modena,
was chosen to be his wife,
a Roman Cath­ol­ic, like James.
But it seems that the pope was opposed to the marriage,
so they sought the help of Car­din­al Barberini
and he per­suaded them to marry immediately.
It would be, he advised,
“less dif­fi­cult to obtain for­give­ness for it after it was done,
than per­mis­sion for doing it”.¹

Car­din­al Barber­in­i’s advice
has become some­thing of a proverb,
espe­cially in recent years, has­n’t it?
It’s easi­er to ask for­give­ness (after the event)
than to get per­mis­sion (before).

And the tax col­lect­or in today’s gos­pel reading
cer­tainly seems to have his eye on for­give­ness, does­n’t he?

So what are we to make of this?

Jesus is telling a story about two characters,
one a Phar­isee, and the oth­er – a tax-collector.
Now if you’ve been hearing
bible read­ings and ser­mons for some time
you’ve prob­ably already got some ideas,
some preconceptions,
about Phar­isees, and about tax-col­lect­ors.

Phar­isees –
well, they’re always arguing with Jesus, aren’t they?
And full of them­selves and their strict rules.
And as for tax-collectors,
I sup­pose we know instinctively
that they’re not par­tic­u­larly nice people,
don’t we?
After all, who likes the taxman
even in our own society?
Most of us prob­ably think we pay
at least a bit too much tax,
and the taxman
– not to men­tion Chan­cel­lors of the Exchequer –
often seems to be try­ing to take a bit more.
(But per­haps I’ll leave a dis­cus­sion of
the Brit­ish tax sys­tem for anoth­er occasion!
Back to first-cen­tury Judea.)

We can see in the gospels
that Jesus does seem to have
some­thing of a soft spot for tax collectors.
We read about Levi or Matthew
being taken from the tax office to be a disciple,
and about little Zac­chaeus climb­ing a tree
to see and hear Jesus,
and then host­ing a ban­quet for him.

These are per­haps typical
of the atti­tudes we might bring
to a dis­cus­sion of this parable.
But they are not, I suggest,
what Jesus’s imme­di­ate hear­ers would have thought.
Most likely they would have con­sidered a Pharisee
to be a par­agon of virtue,
instruc­ted in the law,
the bib­lic­al law,
someone to be esteemed and copied.

And as for a tax-collector …
well, it wasn’t just that he took people’s money;
no, the real prob­lem with tax collectors
was that they were col­lab­or­at­ors,
col­lab­or­at­ors with the Romans,
the hated occupy­ing power.
If we think what the atti­tude was
to Nazi col­lab­or­at­ors dur­ing the War, say in France –
after the War many were lynched,
killed by the mob or executed by the state.
That per­haps gives us an idea
of what the Judeans and Galileans listen­ing to Jesus
might have thought about tax collectors!

And yet Jesus, in this parable,
says it is the tax col­lect­or who is closer to God.

Now, we’re com­ing towards the end
of a three-year cycle of bible readings
at our Sunday morn­ing services,
and over that three years we have heard
a lot of Jesus’s parables.
And one thing that comes across to me
is Jesus’s skill at using just a few words
to con­jure up in our imagination
a situ­ation and some characters –
and then to turn it all on its head
and shock his listen­ers with a sur­pris­ing outcome.
It’s one of his favour­ite devices,
a favour­ite way of teach­ing and telling stories.
And I’m sure he preached this way
in part to get his hear­ers to think for themselves.

And Jesus delights in chal­len­ging stereotypes,
both pos­it­ive ste­reo­types and neg­at­ive stereotypes.
So, a couple of weeks ago
we heard about the Samar­it­an leper,
a hated foreigner,
who was healed.
And in this read­ing today
it is the godly Phar­isee who is roundly criticised,
and the hated tax collector
of whom Jesus speaks approvingly.
You can almost hear people in the crowd
mut­ter­ing to one another
“What does he mean?
How can a tax col­lect­or, an enemy col­lab­or­at­or, be good?”

And if we look care­fully at the pas­sage in the gospel,
then one of the inter­est­ing things
is that actu­ally Jesus does not con­demn the Pharisee
for the things that he says he has done,
for his self-dis­cip­line and his charity.
He doesn’t con­demn the Phar­isee for that;
and nor does he con­done the tax collector
for what he has done either.
Now in almost the next epis­ode in Luke’s gospel,
we learn about anoth­er tax col­lect­or, Zacchaeus.
And Zac­chaeus, hear­ing Jesus’s teaching,
declares that he will return over­pay­ments with interest,
and give away half what he has to the poor.
But there is noth­ing like that here.
Jesus keeps this story
short, sharp and pointed.

Because today’s parable
is not primar­ily about
the eth­ics of either the Phar­isee or the tax collector,
but about their attitudes:
their atti­tudes to themselves,
their atti­tudes to others,
and their atti­tudes, above all, to God.

Per­haps one of the key words we heard
was when Jesus says that
the tax col­lect­or returned home … “jus­ti­fied”.
“Jus­ti­fied”.
What on earth is that about?
Well, “being jus­ti­fied” and “jus­ti­fic­a­tion”
are words that carry a lot of theo­lo­gic­al baggage.
They cause debate and divi­sion among Christians
and between sec­tions of the Church.
But ulti­mately it’s about being fit and worthy,
being made fit and worthy,
fit and worthy to stand in the pres­ence of the Almighty.

What Jesus seems to be saying
is that we do not earn that justification
by what we do.
Now, don’t get me wrong.
Else­where in the gospels,
Jesus spends a long time
teach­ing about right behaviour,
about caring for others,
about look­ing after the weak and the poor
and all who are in need,
regard­less of who they are
or where they have come from,
or soci­ety’s atti­tude towards them —
the poor, the hungry, the homeless,
the sick or disabled,
the pris­on­er, the refugee,
the oppressed and the shunned.

That work is very clearly a gos­pel imperative,
and Jesus makes it abund­antly clear
that in help­ing those in need
we are help­ing … Jesus,
we are help­ing … God.

Instead, in today’s reading,
Jesus reminds us
that in order to come close to God
we need to acknowledge
that we … are not gods,
that we … are not in con­trol of the world:
that we need to stop and to be honest.
To be hon­est with my-self.
To con­front my own faults, my own issues.

In the story,
the Phar­isee’s problem
is that rather than recog­nising his own faults,
he prefers to see him­self as bet­ter than someone else.
The tax col­lect­or, on the oth­er hand,
does not com­pare him­self to others,
but humbly recognises
that he has not done the right things.
And it is that recognition
which should be the start of a jour­ney for him,
and which should be the start of a jour­ney for each of us.
Per­haps the epis­ode of the tax col­lect­or Zacchaeus,
just a few verses later,
indic­ates what should fol­low that ini­tial recog­ni­tion of fault –
a whole new way of life …
new life in the king­dom of God.

[short pause]

And a final thought or conundrum
for us to consider.
I won­der if you have spotted
the “Catch 22” in the parable.
Have you?
It’s all too easy, isn’t it,
to find ourselves thinking
“I thank you that I am not like … that Pharisee”?
Because when we do that
then we are being just like the Phar­isee in the par­able, aren’t we?

“God, be mer­ci­ful to me, a sinner!”

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Trinity 16: 5 October 2025

on Monday, 6 October 2025 at 9.22 am by Simon Kershaw
categorised as sermon

Read­ings: Lam­ent­a­tions 1.1–6; Psalm 137; 2 Timothy 1.1–14; Luke 17.5–10.

In the name of the Fath­er and of the Son and of the Holy Spir­it. Amen.

“We are worth­less slaves;
we have done only what we ought to have done!”
Some words from Jesus in the gos­pel read­ing we have just heard.

Well I was in Lon­don dur­ing the week,
and I happened to be walk­ing from
West­min­ster Abbey to Lam­beth Palace,
when I spot­ted an inter­est­ing monument
on the Embank­ment at Millbank
that I’d nev­er noticed before.
It’s a 19th-cen­tury fountain,
a big covered drink­ing fountain,
dec­or­ated with poly­chro­mat­ic brick or stone,
and it’s called, as I discovered,
the Bux­ton Memorial.

It com­mem­or­ates a num­ber of Mem­bers of Parliament
who led the 19th-cen­tury campaigns
first
to abol­ish the slave trade
and then
to abol­ish slavery itself.

And our gos­pel read­ing today
presents us with an “inter­est­ing” situation,
don’t you agree?
In that second half, Jesus talks about slaves,
and per­haps you found it a bit uncomfortable.

So, hands up if the idea of slavery
makes you uncomfortable –
the idea … of being a slave,
the idea … of own­ing slaves,
the idea … of trad­ing slaves.
Slaves – that’s … oth­er human beings.

Most of us here – with a few exceptions –
prob­ably don’t con­sider ourselves
to have any dir­ect link with slavery –
we aren’t des­cen­ded from slaves,
and we prob­ably aren’t descended
from slave-own­ers either,
though of course
we might still have benefitted
from insti­tu­tions and investments
that derive from slavery.

I guess there are one or two excep­tions among us,
and plenty of oth­ers in our town
and else­where around us,
and we can­’t talk about slavery
without being sens­it­ive to that
and to the impact it has had
on our friends and their families.
I’m sure that that per­son­al stake makes a difference
to how today’s gos­pel read­ing is heard,
and speak­ing for myself
per­haps I find it too easy
not to worry that much about it.

Nor should we for­get that there are people in this country,
prob­ably people here in St Ives,
who are involved in “mod­ern slavery”:
people who are exploited and kept in bondage;
people who exploit oth­ers and keep them in bondage.

Hav­ing said all that, however,
I want to make two quick points – about Jesus.
First, let’s be abso­lutely clear:
there is no indic­a­tion at all
from any­thing we read in the New Testament
that Jesus or his family
or any of his imme­di­ate associates
ever owned slaves.
There are no slaves at his birth in Bethlehem,
and no slaves tend­ing to him in the gospels.
When Jesus vis­its his friends Mary and Martha,
it is fam­ously Martha
who is busy with domest­ic chores,
not a slave.

And the second point
is that Jesus isn’t set­ting out
to over­turn the insti­tu­tion of slavery
as it exis­ted in the ancient Medi­ter­ranean world –
not in the short term anyway.
That was for later generations –
though he clearly envisaged
a dif­fer­ent way of treat­ing everyone,
regard­less of wheth­er they were slave or free.

So what are we to make of all this?

Well yes­ter­day
I was licensed by the bishop
to be a lay reader,
a licensed lay minister
in this parish.
And being a min­is­ter is also about being a servant.
You see, the word min­is­ter comes to us from Latin
and its first use was in the second century
to refer to dea­cons.

That’s because the word dea­con
comes from the Greek word διάκονος²,
which simply means “ser­vant”,
per­haps espe­cially someone
who waits at table.
It wasn’t long before “min­is­ter”
came to be used of all clergy –
not just dea­cons, but priests and bish­ops too,
(even archbishops-designate)
and also of the less­er orders
such as sub-dea­cons and readers,
all of whom are servants …
ser­vants of God.

And Jesus makes this point sev­er­al times, doesn’t he?
In one of the week­day readings
from Morn­ing Pray­er last week,³
Jesus reminds his disciples
that the rulers of the Gentiles
lord it over them
and that the great ones of the Gen­tiles are tyrants.
But his dis­ciples, Jesus says,
his dis­ciples are to be ser­vants;
and he mixes the lan­guage of ser­vants and slaves
say­ing that
“who­ever wishes to become great among you
must be your ser­vant⁴,
and who­ever wishes to be first among you
must be slave⁵ of all”.⁶

This same story appears also in Luke’s gos­pel⁷
only there it has an extra punchline –
“who is great­er,” asks Jesus,
“the one who is at the table
or the one who serves?
Is it not,” Jesus says, “is it not the one at the table?
But I,” he answers him­self, “I
am among you as one who serves”.
And there’s a ver­sion in John’s gos­pel too⁸.
There Jesus concludes
by telling the disciples
that just as he has served them,
they are to serve one another.

Just as he has served them,
they are to serve one another.

So let’s come back
to the words in today’s gos­pel reading:
“We are worth­less slaves;
we have done only what we ought to have done!”
In our context,
in the twenty-first century,
we might well see Jesus’s words
as a little harsh,
and for some
a pain­ful reminder
of the slave trade.

But let’s para­phrase those words a bit;
how about this?
“Our role as Christians,
as fol­low­ers of Jesus and his teaching,
our role is to serve others,
to look after others,
to help others.
That’s what God asks us to do.”

We may be able to serve a lot;
or we may only have the capa­city at the moment
to serve a little;
or maybe right now
we are among the ones who need to be served.

But it is this humble ser­vice to others
which is at the heart of Jesus’s message
of com­pas­sion and recon­cili­ation.
It is the role of ordained ministers
(even of an archbishop-designate);
it is the role of licensed lay ministers;
it is the role of all of us who hear the words of Jesus.
To serve … God;
to serve … each other;
to serve … the whole of creation.

Because we stand today at a crossroads.
Of course, we stand each day at a crossroads,
the junc­tion between the past and the future;
the past behind us,
known, or partly known;
the future before us, largely unknown.
For me, right now,
that cross­roads is defined by
my licens­ing yes­ter­day in the Cathedral,
my licens­ing as a lay minister
to serve in this parish.
But we each of us stand at a crossroads.
We don’t know what the future will bring,
indi­vidu­ally or collectively,
for us or for our parish.
But what we do know is that
every day
Jesus calls us, each one of us,
to serve.
To serve one another,
to serve our community,
to serve the world.

So, finally once again:
“We are worth­less slaves;
we have done only what we ought to have done!”

Now Jesus is prone to hyperbole.
He loves to exag­ger­ate for effect,
to grab attention.
And we can see that here.
Some­times we need sup­port and affirmation.
At oth­er times we need tak­ing down
a peg or two.
(Well I do anyway.)
But Jesus’s mes­sage is
a call to serve.
I am, he says, among you as one who serves.

So in the days ahead
I invite you
to take a few moments to think about
what you can do to serve;
what we as fol­low­ers of Jesus
indi­vidu­ally and collectively
can do to serve:
to serve God’s world
and to serve God’s people,
to serve them here in St Ives.

Amen.

Note: at the end of this ser­vice it was announced that the Vicar would be leav­ing in Janu­ary. Some of the “unknown future” text was writ­ten with this in mind.

 

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Holy Cross Day (with baptism): 14 September 2025

on Sunday, 14 September 2025 at 9.05 pm by Simon Kershaw
categorised as sermon

Read­ings: Num­bers 21.4–9; Psalm 22.23–28; Phil­ip­pi­ans 2.6–11; John 3.13–17

Have you noticed
how fly­ing flags
has become so pop­u­lar this summer?
Even if you haven’t seen any yourself,
well, it’s been all over the papers and the tv news,
hasn’t it?

Here in St Ives there are flags
flut­ter­ing from lamp-posts in the town centre,
and plenty more adorn­ing bed­room windows.
If you go fur­ther afield
you’ll see them strung along bridges across the motorway
and so on.
Or you might have seen more than a few flags
being car­ried through the middle of Lon­don yesterday.

And of course
they’re not fly­ing just any old flag are they?
They’re either fly­ing the Uni­on Jack,
or per­haps more likely
the flag that’s part of the Uni­on Jack –
the flag of St George.

I’m sure we can all pic­ture that flag:
the white back­ground with a red cross on it.

So, I want to think for a minute –
what does that cross mean?
What does it represent?

Well, one place where you’ll find quite a lot of crosses
is here in this church.
There’s a really big cross,
right up there.
Take a look!
It’s per­haps the most prom­in­ent feature
of the inside of the building.
Because the cross is the primary sym­bol of Christianity.
So much so that it has its own spe­cial day each year –
Holy Cross Day,
cel­eb­rated year after year on the 14th of September.

Today!

And yet it’s a strange thing to celebrate,
if you think about it.
After all, the cross is an instrument
of tor­ture and death –
that’s what’s going on up there, isn’t it? –
and a sim­il­ar sym­bol in our own soci­ety might be
a hang­man’s noose perhaps.
Don’t you think it’s rather shock­ing to cel­eb­rate that?
It cer­tainly ought to be shocking;
it ought to bring us up with a start.

The cross is a sym­bol of the death of Jesus.

And the death of Jesus
is an event of supreme significance.
You see, when Jesus died on that cross,
he died (just as he had lived),
pro­claim­ing … forgiveness,
pro­claim­ing … reconciliation,
pro­claim­ing … God’s love for everyone.

Jesus in his life and ministry
had told his listeners
that what he called “the king­dom of God” was at hand –
the abil­ity to live without hate, without selfishness,
but with love and compassion.
For those we agree with, yes –
and also towards those we don’t.

Because for­give­ness and compassion
are the mes­sage of the Cross,
of Jesus on the Cross.
Jesus’s mes­sage isn’t about condemnation –
what was that line
in today’s gos­pel reading?
“God did not send [Jesus] into the world
to con­demn the world,
but in order that the world might be saved through him.”

For­give­ness and compassion.

We know that for­give­ness and compassion
aren’t always easy.
But Jesus on the Cross teaches us
that for­give­ness and compassion
are the way to end … hatred,
the way to end poverty,
the way to end violence.
And even, yes,
even the way to end the polit­ic­al assassinations
and school shoot­ings that we see in the news.
For­give­ness and compassion.

The mes­sage of the Cross,
embod­ied in that red cross
on the flag of St George and the Uni­on Jack,
is one of rad­ic­al inclu­sion and rad­ic­al hospitality.
It lives “in the words we choose,
the causes we defend,
the way we treat one anoth­er.”⁹
Wouldn’t it be wonderful
to think that this is the message
that is shared by those
who are put­ting up flags in our streets?

Or do they want it to symbolize …
exclusion?

But back to Jesus:

in his death on the Cross
Jesus brought that king­dom, God’s king­dom, into being.
Now some­times you’ll see a cross
with the fig­ure of Jesus
not naked and suffering,
but in roy­al robes and crowned –
Jesus Christ,
“lif­ted up” (as our gos­pel read­ing just said)
lif­ted up and reign­ing from the cross.

That image is a theo­lo­gic­al state­ment of course,
and it reminds us that his suf­fer­ing and death lead …
to the hope of resur­rec­tion and new life,
a new life where we are able
to set aside
the powers and tempta­tions that lie all around us
and even with­in us,
the things that make us selfish –
and instead to live,
here, now,
in God’s king­dom of good­ness and love.

You see,
God invites each one of us,
you and me,
to make that choice,
that per­son­al commitment,
to try and live that new life.

And that leads me on …

Because
we are also here today
to cel­eb­rate, to cel­eb­rate a baptism,
the bap­tism of little N.
And a bap­tism is always an occa­sion for celebration.
When it’s a baby being baptized
it’s a won­der­ful opportunity
to cel­eb­rate the birth of that new life,
a new child into a family,
and I’m sure N’s fam­ily
are def­in­itely going to have
that cel­eb­ra­tion a bit later.
We all love a party and we all love a baby!

And of course bap­tism is so much more
than an excuse for a party.

You see,
at bap­tism we enter a new life
as we become a mem­ber of the Church,
a mem­ber … of God’s family.
First, the per­son being bap­tized makes some promises.
Or if it’s a baby or small child like N today,
the par­ents and godparents
make these prom­ises on N’s behalf.
They prom­ise to try and live in God’s way,
rather than the way of the world:

to try and live in love and hope
and to reject the influ­ences and ideas
that want so hard
to drag us back to the world we know so well,
the world of selfish­ness, envy and jealousy,
pre­ju­dice and hate.

And the cross plays a sig­ni­fic­ant part in the bap­tism service.
We’ll see in a few moments
that Fr Mark will trace a small cross on N’s fore­head,
anoint­ing her with oil,
and then invite her par­ents and godparents
to trace that cross on her forehead
with their own thumbs too.

Because
all Chris­ti­ans are marked with the Cross.
Or per­haps I should put that the oth­er way round:
the Cross marks us.
The Cross marks us out
as people who try –
people who try … to fol­low Jesus,
who was lov­ing and compassionate.
And who cared for every person,
espe­cially for those in need.
N, if your par­ents and godparents
remem­ber and teach you that,
then you’ll be doing okay.

A new life is a won­der­ful thing.
And a new Christian,
a new mem­ber of the Church,
is a won­der­ful thing too.
I pray N
that as you grow
you will be full of love and compassion,
someone in whom all can see
the true mark of the Cross.

Amen.

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St Peter and St Paul: 29 June 2025

on Sunday, 29 June 2025 at 5.22 pm by Simon Kershaw
categorised as sermon

Read­ings: Acts 12.1–11; Psalm 125; 2 Timothy 4.6–8, 17, 18; Mat­thew 16.13–19

May the words of my mouth
and the med­it­a­tion of my heart
be accept­able in your sight, O Lord.

I won­der if you’ve ever been to Rome.

It’s some­where I’ve been sev­er­al times,
and one of the things I have done each trip
is vis­it the Vatican
and climb up the dome of the great basilica there.

It’s a bit of a slog,
some 500 steps to the top,
but when you get up there
you are rewarded
with some won­der­ful pan­or­amic views across the city.

And you can also access the gallery
that runs around inside the dome.
From there
you get some really impress­ive views of the interi­or.

One thing you can see close up, for example,
is a Lat­in inscription
that runs full-circle around the dome.
In giant let­ter­ing it begins: “Tu es Petrus …”.
I’ll come back to these words in a moment.

But first
– if you’re not too bothered about the height –
per­haps you can look straight down.
It’s a rather dizzy­ing couple of hun­dred feet
but there beneath you
is the high altar,
with its great bal­dachino or can­opy by Bernini.

And right in front of that altar
there’s a semi-circle of steps
lead­ing fur­ther down,
down beneath the floor of the church.

Now these steps aren’t access­ible to the public.
But if you could go down them,
and under the high altar,
you’d find yourself
stand­ing among the remains
of an ancient Roman cemetery.

Because those steps take you down
to the site of the tomb of St Peter.
Of course, the church we see today
was com­pletely rebuilt
some 4 or 500 years ago,
in the flam­boy­ant baroque style.
But they rebuilt it
on exactly the same site
as the pre­vi­ous church,
with the high altar
in exactly the same place as before.

That first church had been built
over a thou­sand years earlier,
in the 300s,
as soon as Chris­tian­ity had been legalized.
It was built
– with con­sid­er­able difficulty –
right on top of this ancient Roman cemetery;
and awkwardly,
on the side of a hill;

Cross sec­tions through St Peter’s. [From The Tombs of St Peter and St Paul, by Engle­bert Kirschbaum, 1959]

Interi­or elev­a­tion of St Peter’s show­ing also the floor level of the Con­stantini­an basilica, and the nec­ro­pol­is or buri­al area beneath. [From The Nec­ro­pol­is under St Peter’s Basilica in the Vat­ic­an, by Pietro Zander, 2009]

all care­fully positioned
so that the high altar
was dir­ectly over
one par­tic­u­lar tomb^*.

And next to this cemetery
there had been an arena,
the Cir­cus of Nero,
and that’s where many early Christians
had been put to death,
accused by Nero
of caus­ing the great fire of Rome.

Peter him­self was among those executed,
said to have been crucified
– cru­ci­fied upside-down accord­ing to tradition.
Paul was a Roman cit­izen though,
so he was spared crucifixion
– he was beheaded
(and buried)
else­where in the city.
Oth­er Chris­ti­ans were roun­ded up
and put to death in the arena:
torn apart by wild beasts,
or forced to fight to the death as gladiators,
burned alive,
or killed in some oth­er bar­bar­ic Roman spectacle.

And it is
this first great persecution
– the mar­tyr­dom of Peter and Paul and many others –
that we are remem­ber­ing today.
It is those mar­tyrs, Peter, Paul and the others,
that we commemorate
and hold in great honour.

It was prob­ably around the year 64,
so just 30 years or thereabouts
after Jesus had walked around Galilee
and come to Caesarea Philippi.

And we heard a bit about that
in today’s gos­pel reading.
Peter,
Simon Peter,
at Caesarea Philippi
acclaim­ing Jesus as the Messiah.
You can sort of ima­gine him blurt­ing it out, can­’t you?
The first per­son to put into words
what he, and per­haps others,
had been thinking.

And Jesus recog­nizes the leap that Simon Peter has made.

This is when Jesus gives him the nickname:
“Rock”, which of course is what “Peter” means.
“You are the rock,”
he says to him
– “you are Peter”.
Remem­ber that inscrip­tion around the dome at the Vatican?
This is the verse that it quotes, in Latin:
“Tu es Pet­rus”, “you are Peter”.

And in the 30 years or so
since that moment at Caesarea Philippi,
first Peter, the rock, and then Paul
had built the early church
from tiny beginnings
to some­thing that was start­ing to be noticed
– even in the heart of the Roman Empire.

Because these Chris­ti­ans were a bit different
from your every­day Roman.
They did­n’t join in things
that good Romans were sup­posed to do,
like … sac­ri­fi­cing at the temples,
or con­sid­er­ing the emper­or to be a god.
And although a few of them were wealthy,
many were slaves or ex-slaves
or very def­in­itely among the poor and oppressed.

Because it was often among
the poor and the oppressed
that Peter and Paul
and others
preached the good news of the king­dom of God.
“Blessed are the poor, the hungry,
the sick, the persecuted”
Jesus had said
– that’s def­in­itely good news when you are poor and oppressed.

Per­haps this mes­sage of hope
(and – dare I say it? –
social revolution?)
was already caus­ing a stir in Roman society.
There must have been some­thing they were doing
that attrac­ted the atten­tion of the rul­ing class
– of the Emper­or Nero,
when he was look­ing for someone to blame
for that dis­astrous fire.

And I won­der to what extent
this mes­sage of hope
– and social revolution –
can still cause a stir in our mod­ern society.
Or have we made it so bland,
or so other-worldly,
that it simply does­n’t impinge
on the thoughts of our fel­low citizens?
Most of them have not just giv­en up believing,
they have even giv­en up dis­be­liev­ing
– they just don’t care.

But as Christians
it is our job to care.

Peter and Paul,
as we have heard,
were mar­tyrs,
a Greek word mean­ing wit­nesses.
In their life
and
by their death
they and oth­ers were witnesses:
wit­nesses to the recon­cil­ing love of God,
wit­nesses to the good news
of the rule of God that Jesus had proclaimed.

And just like Peter, just like Paul,
we too are witnesses.
We are God’s witnesses
here in St Ives in 2025.
We are the ones
tasked with rep­res­ent­ing God –
rep­res­ent­ing God
to the world in which we live.
We are the ones
who are called to bear witness
to what God has done in our lives.
To bear witness
to what Jesus means in our lives.

Now I trust and hope that none of us
will be called to bear witness
in the face of per­se­cu­tion and viol­ent death.
So we will not be martyrs
in the way that the word is used nowadays.
We will not be mar­tyrs like Peter and Paul.
But we can be God’s witnesses
among our friends and family,
our acquaint­ances and colleagues,
and those we meet.
Does that sound a daunt­ing task?
Well, maybe it does, yes!
So, let’s start with something
any of us can do.

Let’s think for a moment.

Do you have a ready answer
when someone asks
what do you do on a Sunday morning?
Do you have a ready answer
when someone asks why do you go to church?
Do you have a ready answer
if someone asks you about Jesus?

If I’m hon­est, I’m not sure I do.
So my chal­lenge to each one of us is this:
find time this week to spend a few minutes
con­sid­er­ing how you would answer those questions
– in just a short sen­tence or two.
How you might answer those questions
in a way that encour­ages engage­ment and fur­ther interest.

And little by little,
per­son by person,
we will,
like Peter and Paul
and all the saints before us,
help to build God’s kingdom
here on earth
as it is in heaven.

Amen.

---

* This is a slight over-sim­pli­fic­a­tion. In the first Church, as ori­gin­ally built under Con­stantine, the tomb was vis­ible. It was Gregory the Great (in about 594) who raised the floor of the sanc­tu­ary by sev­er­al feet and placed the altar over the tomb. That altar was at a level sev­er­al feet below the floor of the rebuilt basilica that we see today.

 

 

 

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Nicaea and the date of Easter

on Saturday, 21 June 2025 at 11.32 am by Simon Kershaw
categorised as history, liturgy

This art­icle was first pub­lished in the June 2025 issue of Trans­form­ing Wor­ship News (formerly Prax­is News of Wor­ship).

The date of East­er is often regarded as rather com­plic­ated, too com­plic­ated for nearly every­one to worry about. But it links us with the ori­gin of the annu­al fest­iv­al, and the way the early Church cel­eb­rated the resurrection.

When the Emper­or Con­stantine decided that Chris­tian­ity was the best hope of uni­fy­ing his empire, he found dis­agree­ment on sev­er­al top­ics, includ­ing the nature of Christ and the date on which to hold an annu­al cel­eb­ra­tion of his resur­rec­tion. The Coun­cil of Nicaea in 325 attemp­ted to resolve both issues, agree­ing a state­ment of belief and form­al­iz­ing the date of Easter.

The story begins with the Jew­ish fest­iv­al of Pas­sov­er, held at the first full moon of the spring, when the moon lights the sky all night. In the Jew­ish lun­ar cal­en­dar this day is 15 Nis­an, and the pre­vi­ous day, 14 Nis­an, is the day of pre­par­a­tion. In the late after­noon of that day, until the Temple was des­troyed, Pas­sov­er lambs were slaughtered in the Temple pre­cincts. They were then roas­ted and eaten at the Pas­sov­er meal that began with the full moon at sun­set, the start of 15 Nis­an. In the fourth gos­pel, the cru­ci­fix­ion was on 14 Nis­an, and in the syn­op­tics on 15 Nisan.

There is no expli­cit evid­ence in the New Test­a­ment of a yearly East­er. The focus in the early Church was the weekly cel­eb­ra­tion of the resur­rec­tion on the first day of the week, every Sunday. Although it is not entirely clear – and there may have been a cov­er up – it seems that Chris­ti­ans in Jer­u­s­alem and the Jew­ish dia­spora did keep an annu­al fest­iv­al, but Gen­tile Chris­ti­ans prob­ably didn’t. The former group kept an annu­al cel­eb­ra­tion of both the cru­ci­fix­ion and resur­rec­tion on 14 Nis­an, whichever day of the week that fell on.

Per­haps influ­enced by this annu­al feast kept in the dia­spora, oth­er Chris­ti­ans began to observe it and a fast on the pre­vi­ous day. But rather than keep­ing it on 14 Nis­an they cel­eb­rated the fol­low­ing Sunday, the day of the weekly com­mem­or­a­tion of the resur­rec­tion. Per­haps just as today, it was more con­veni­ent to trans­fer week­day fest­ivals to  Sunday.

These two groups co-exis­ted until at the end of the second cen­tury, Pope Vic­tor I con­tro­ver­sially excom­mu­nic­ated those who kept 14 Nis­an – the Quar­to­de­cimans (or “four­teen­ers”). A cen­tury later the dis­pute had not ended although the Quar­to­de­cimans were a dis­tinct minor­ity. So when, com­manded by Con­stantine to agree a com­mon date, the bish­ops assembled at Nicaea it was not sur­pris­ing that major­ity opin­ion, favoured by Rome and oth­er major sees, pre­vailed. The Coun­cil ruled that the annu­al paschal feast, cel­eb­rat­ing the resur­rec­tion, should be observed on the Sunday after the first full moon of the spring, the full moon after the equinox.

The Coun­cil did not pre­scribe how this might be determ­ined in advance, and ini­tially it was per­haps left to dir­ect obser­va­tion. Com­pet­ing tables of dates soon emerged, fre­quently based on a 19-year lun­ar cycle that had been known since at least the Baby­lo­ni­ans. The date of the equi­nox, which in the first cen­tury had fallen on 25 March, had by the fourth cen­tury drif­ted to 21 March. Tables from Alex­an­dria were gen­er­ally regarded as the best, and the declar­a­tion each year from that see of the date of East­er was usu­ally fol­lowed, though for many years the see of Rome used dif­fer­ent tables so occa­sion­ally East­er would fall on anoth­er date. Even­tu­ally the tables com­piled and exten­ded by the sixth-cen­tury monk Dionysi­us Exiguus were accep­ted as defin­it­ive. These con­tin­ued in use through­out the Church, across the schism between East and West. As the middle ages wore on it was recog­nised that both lun­ar and sol­ar com­pon­ents of the tables were increas­ingly inac­cur­ate, but it was not until after the Reform­a­tion that Pope Gregory XIII uni­lat­er­ally intro­duced a mod­i­fied cal­en­dar with self-cor­rect­ing lun­ar tables. Although these were gradu­ally accep­ted by the churches of the Reform­a­tion they have not been adop­ted in the East, at least not for determ­in­ing Easter.

In the twen­ti­eth cen­tury there were some moves to fix the date of East­er, but at the end of the cen­tury the World Coun­cil of Churches pro­posed abol­ish­ing cal­cu­lated tables based on the approx­im­ate 19-year cycle and instead using accur­ate astro­nom­ic­al cal­cu­la­tions of the equi­nox and the full moon as observed in the time zone of Jer­u­s­alem. They sug­ges­ted this might be adop­ted in 2000 when both East­ern and West­ern cal­cu­la­tions coin­cided on the same date. There was some sup­port for this from Rome, from Anglic­ans and vari­ous churches of the Reform­a­tion and some Ortho­dox churches, but it was far from uni­ver­sal. In this 1700th anniversary year of Nicaea, when East­er dates again coin­cide, the WCC has re-iter­ated its pro­pos­al. Once again, it seems unlikely to gain enough sup­port to be brought in.

---

Simon Ker­shaw remem­bers try­ing to cal­cu­late East­er from the tables in the BCP while endur­ing long ser­mons as a young chor­is­ter at Even­song. He has con­tin­ued to cal­cu­late and write about the date of Easter.

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Ascension Day: 29 May 2025

on Friday, 30 May 2025 at 11.14 am by Simon Kershaw
categorised as sermon

Read­ings: Acts 1.1–11; Daniel 7.9–14; Psalm 47; Eph­esians 1.15–23; Luke 24.44–53

May the words of my mouth and the med­it­a­tion of my heart
be accept­able in your sight, O Lord.

Did you ever watch I, Claudi­us?
Or per­haps you’ve read the books?
I sup­pose I was about 15 when I first read them,
shortly before the BBC made that won­der­ful adaptation.
Remem­ber – Derek Jac­obi in the title role,
and a host of oth­er stars?
I well recall our Lat­in teach­er back then
telling us that the books were so good
that occa­sion­ally he would forget
wheth­er some incid­ent was actu­ally historical
or had instead been inven­ted by the author, Robert Graves.
And cer­tainly Graves did include
a host of real his­tor­ic­al inform­a­tion in the books.

For example, Graves relates
that a few weeks after the emper­or Augus­tus died in AD 14,
the Roman Sen­ate declared him to be divine.
They built an offi­cial state temple,
and spe­cial coins were minted
show­ing the emper­or being car­ried up to heaven,
per­haps in a chariot,
accom­pan­ied by wing’d figures.

So you see there’s some history
of great rulers being declared gods
when they died
or even whilst still alive.

And a few years after Augustus,
around AD 40,
the emper­or Caligula declared him­self a god.
Claudi­us was next,
declared divine imme­di­ately he died in 54.
Even his neph­ew, the infam­ous Nero
who ruled until 68,
was wor­shipped as part of the divine imper­i­al family.

I’ve men­tioned these dates,
not to try and give a his­tory lesson
– there’s no exam later –
but because they remind us
that this is exactly the time
when the events of the New Test­a­ment took place
and when much of it was written.
This is the context
in which Jesus was first pro­claimed by Christians
as the Son of God,
and described as being taken up into heaven.
We might well won­der what the rela­tion­ship is
between the descrip­tions of Jesus’s ascension
and the tra­di­tion of emper­ors and others
taken up to a pagan heaven.

Let’s think about what we heard earli­er in our readings.

The Old Test­a­ment les­son from Daniel draws on traditions
sev­er­al hun­dred years before those Roman emperors,
Claudi­us and Co.
It’s a vis­ion of a human figure
“com­ing with the clouds of heaven”,
com­ing to the throne of God and receiv­ing etern­al kingship.
Clearly Jesus’s ascen­sion sits in this tradition.

And we also had two accounts of that Ascen­sion of Jesus.
Our ser­vice began with the open­ing words of the Acts of the Apostles.
It’s rather the defin­it­ive account,
the one we think of when the Ascen­sion is mentioned.

And our gos­pel read­ing had the ascen­sion story again,
this time from the very end of Luke.
Did you notice any dif­fer­ences between these two –
one from Acts and one from the gos­pel accord­ing to Luke?

Did you?
Because they aren’t quite the same.

In the gospel
the Ascen­sion hap­pens at the end of East­er Day itself,
but in Acts it’s forty days later,
just as today is forty days after East­er Day –
remem­ber I said it’s the Acts account we gen­er­ally recall?
And it’s only in Acts that
“two men in white robes” appear
and explain to the dis­ciples what’s happened,
telling them Jesus will return in the same way.

Now don’t for­get Claudi­us and those oth­er emperors.
I’ve sug­ges­ted that the New Test­a­ment descrip­tions of Jesus’s ascension
have a parallel
in the con­tem­por­ary Roman emper­ors being declared divine.
But at the time, of course,
the stor­ies of emper­ors were much bet­ter known
than the story of Jesus.

Whatever it was that the dis­ciples witnessed,
what they are doing is assert­ing a cult
that is a rival to the offi­cial cult of the Roman state.
A cult, a reli­gion, in which their leader
mys­tic­ally ascends into the heav­ens in recog­ni­tion that he is divine.
And of course the dis­ciples, the early Christians,
assert that it is their story which is true,
and that the divin­ity of the emper­ors is bogus.
They use the well-known stor­ies about emperors
to pro­claim the truth about Jesus.

So what is it that they are try­ing to say?

Let’s con­sider two import­ant things.

First
these early Chris­ti­ans were abso­lutely con­vinced that Jesus was divine.
They hadn’t yet worked out the theo­lo­gic­al details,
but there’s no doubt that they had become con­vinced it was true.
They want the world to hear about Jesus;
and
they want the world to hear
that Jesus is divine.

And secondly:
what do the pas­sages say?
“you will be my wit­nesses in Jer­u­s­alem …  to the ends of the earth”
(that’s Jesus in Acts)
and “repent­ance and for­give­ness of sins is to be proclaimed …
to all nations, begin­ning from Jerusalem”
(that’s from Luke).
And this is surely the key les­son for us.
You’ve heard me say it before
and I make no apo­logy for say­ing it again.
The task that Jesus gives his disciples
is to tell every­one the good news about the king­dom of God.
We are to tell people about our hope:
hope in the recon­cili­ation that is God’s love –
hope in recon­cili­ation with God the creator
and
recon­cili­ation with God’s cre­ation, with all our fel­low creatures.

Recon­cili­ation with God the creator
and recon­cili­ation with our fel­low creatures.

What does that mean in prac­tice? What can we each do?

It means liv­ing at love and peace
with our fam­ily and our neighbours,
not get­ting into dis­putes, not bear­ing grudges
– “for­give us our sins as we for­give those who sin against us” –
and this applies to every aspect of our lives:

to per­son­al conflict,
to loc­al and region­al conflict,
to inter­na­tion­al conflict.
And it applies to issues of social justice as well:
to equit­ably shar­ing the bounty of this world –
food, hous­ing, healthcare,
fair employ­ment and fair wages,
end­ing unjust discrimination.
And to our stew­ard­ship of the world that we are called to live in.
It isn’t always easy, is it?
But all this flows directly
from Jesus’s mes­sage of love and reconciliation.

This is Jesus’s mani­festo of com­pas­sion­ate love.

What any one of us can do
may be quite limited,
but it isn’t zero.
In our per­son­al lives,
in our sup­port for char­it­ies, for campaigns,
in how we shop,
how we vote or sup­port polit­ic­al parties,
in how we speak and how we act,
we each of us make
a small but sig­ni­fic­ant impact.

And one final thought.
We’re not alone.
Church is the com­munity of people com­mit­ted to doing this together.
Here should be the primary community
where we care for each other,
and where we are strengthened for that ser­vice in the world,
strengthened by each other
and strengthened by our belief
in the God who loves and reconciles.
Col­lect­ively we help advance the king­dom of God,
where God’s love and com­pas­sion are shared with all,
and peace and justice flow like a river.

Amen.

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4 before Lent: 9 February 2025

on Monday, 10 February 2025 at 11.07 am by Simon Kershaw
categorised as sermon

Read­ings: Isai­ah 6.1–8 [9–13]; Psalm 138; 1 Cor­inthi­ans 15.1–11; Luke 5.1–11

May the words of my mouth and the med­it­a­tion of my heart
be accept­able in your sight, O Lord.

Over the last few weeks,
since the start of January,
we’ve been listen­ing each Sunday
to stor­ies about the begin­ning of Jesus’s ministry.
How Jesus was bap­tized by John the Baptist;
and about the wed­ding at Cana,
where ordin­ary water was turned into abund­ance –
an abund­ance of the best pos­sible wine.
We heard how Jesus came to Nazareth
and him­self read the passage
where Isai­ah foresees
good news for the poor and the oppressed,
for the blind and the captive.

And today we have Jesus
gath­er­ing his first disciples.

In Luke’s account,
which is what we are mostly read­ing this year,
this is the first time Andrew, James and John have appeared,
though Simon Peter gets
a teensy men­tion in the pre­vi­ous chapter.
And yet they do exactly what Jesus says.

What’s going on?

Luke does­n’t really tell us,
but we can get a hint from John’s gospel.
You see, John tells us
that Andrew was a dis­ciple of John the Baptist;
that when Jesus was baptized
John the Baptist poin­ted him out to Andrew,
and Andrew then went and fetched his broth­er Simon Peter
and intro­duced him to Jesus.
Anoth­er dis­ciple with Andrew is not named,
but it is tra­di­tion­ally thought to have been John –
that’s the same John who was one of the fishermen
in today’s story,
the broth­er of James.

So it seems Jesus already knew these four fishermen,
Andrew and Simon Peter, James and John.
But they had not yet begun to travel around with Jesus.
What changed?

Well,
what changed
was that John the Baptist had been arres­ted by Herod
and was now a cap­tive in Herod’s dungeons,
where he would soon be executed.
Can you ima­gine what it must have been like
for those who had flocked to hear him preach
and become his disciples?
It must have been a dark and dif­fi­cult time, mustn’t it?
Well, the gos­pels don’t tell us anything
about what happened to John the Baptist’s followers
when he was arrested –
but it’s easy to ima­gine, I think, that they all ran away,
away from the danger that they too
might be iden­ti­fied with his movement
and his cri­ti­cism of Herod.
Away from the danger
that they too might be arres­ted and per­haps put to death.
That they ran away
back to the anonym­ity of their homes
and their fam­il­ies and their every­day jobs.

And that’s where we find
Andrew and Simon Peter, James and John –
back in their fam­ily busi­nesses of catch­ing fish
and no doubt try­ing to keep a low profile.

And then – Jesus comes back too.

Per­haps he’s real­ized that his time has arrived:
that with John the Baptist silenced
it is his turn to pro­claim the word of God,
to pro­claim the good news about the king­dom of God.
And already people are listen­ing to him:
Luke, in our read­ing today,
says “the crowd was press­ing in on him”.
Why?
Luke tells us they wanted “to hear the word of God” –
Jesus preach­ing about the king­dom of God.

And in this mêlée,
there right in front of Jesus
are some people he knows:
Andrew and Simon Peter, James and John.
Was he look­ing for them?
Or did he just come across them?
What he saw though was an opportunity
to stop the crowd press­ing in on him
and to con­tin­ue to teach from the safety of a boat,
pre­sum­ably just out in the shallows.

And then
they put down their nets
and catch fish –
fish in great abund­ance,
fish almost bey­ond their capa­city to bring to shore.

And this mira­cu­lous catch of fish
provided the per­fect opportunity
for Jesus … to tell a joke.
To me that’s one of the things
that comes across so strongly
in the gos­pel stor­ies about Jesus.
He was just the most won­der­ful speaker –
a really skilled orator.
Jesus knows when to tell a story and when to argue;
he knows when to cross-ques­tion and when to debate;
and he knows how to use
exag­ger­a­tion and sar­casm and humor­ous one-liners
to great effect.

And that’s what he does here, isn’t it?
“Yes, you can carry on catch­ing dead fish,” he says,
“or you can come with me and we’ll fish for liv­ing people.”

Of course it’s not just a one-liner –
the punch­line to the teach­ing about the king­dom of God
they have just heard him deliver,
or the punch­line to the great catch of fish
they have some­how just man­aged to land.
No, it’s not just a one-liner,
it’s also a proph­ecy, isn’t it?
Because we know that’s exactly what these fishermen,
these ordin­ary people,
will become.

They start right here
becom­ing Jesus’s first disciples.
They will fin­ish,
bey­ond the end of Luke’s book,
bring­ing in a mira­cu­lous catch of people,
fol­low­ers of Jesus in great abund­ance.
They were frightened fishermen
who had run away
when John the Baptist had been arrested,
and they would do so again when Jesus is arrested.
And yet
Jesus inspired them and nur­tured them
and gave them what it takes
to be catch­ers of people,
mira­cu­lously so,
fear­lessly pro­claim­ing the king­dom of God’s abund­ant love.

Here we see the very first steps of that journey,
Jesus gath­er­ing together
this group of John the Baptist’s disciples,
who become the core of Jesus’s own disciples.
And it’s a jour­ney that has continued
down the ages and across the world,
right down to us,
to you and to me,
here today in this place
far from the shores of the Sea of Galilee.

Because it is our respons­ib­il­ity now.
We are the dis­ciples sit­ting on
– if you like –
the beach.
We are the disciples
who have heard Jesus’s mes­sage about the king­dom of God –
where the hungry are fed and the home­less housed,
the sick nursed and the stranger cared for,
the oppressed and the per­se­cuted set free,
and where peace and reconciliation
replace bit­ter­ness and war.

And our job,
our job is to share this good news,
to live as people who believe this good news
and to invite our friends and our neighbours
to come and live it
and to share in its great abund­ance.

Thanks be to God.

 

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