Readings: Acts 4.32–35; Psalm 133; 1 John 1.1 – 2.2; John 20.19–31
Alleluia! Christ is risen!
Football – are you a football fan?
I know some of you are, even if you do support odd teams.
And perhaps, like me,
you sit and watch Match of the Day every Saturday night.
There was a game on the programme a week ago,
and the highlights of the first half were very brief –
almost nothing to show.
But the second half was very different:
full of action as the two teams
(Sheffield United and Fulham)
shared six goals in a thrilling 3‑all draw.
It had been, the commentators and pundits noted,
a real game of two halves.
“A game of two halves” is something of a football cliché –
and it’s also a good summary of our gospel reading this morning.
We heard how, in the first half,
Jesus appeared to the disciples,
on the evening of the first Easter Day.
But Thomas wasn’t there,
and he didn’t believe the others when they told him;
no, he wanted to see for himself.
And Thomas wasn’t afraid of expressing his doubts.
Their teacher dead and buried – and now alive again?
“Well, I’ll believe that when I see it!”
And you know what?
I reckon that’d be the reaction of most of us.
And a week later we get the second half:
Jesus appears again and says,
“Here I am; you didn’t believe it was me;
well look, here are my wounds;
go on, touch them.”
And you may have noticed that the gospel doesn’t say
that Thomas did touch Jesus
or put his hand in the spear-wound on Jesus’s side.
No!
When he sees that Jesus is present
Thomas’s doubt is overcome
and he immediately exclaims
“My Lord – my God!”
Alleluia! Christ is risen!
Here are our two halves:
in the first half Thomas doubts Jesus;
and in the second half Thomas recognizes Jesus.
So, first, Thomas doubts Jesus.
I don’t know about you,
but I find that believing in Jesus still leaves room for doubt.
Having doubts doesn’t mean that faith is lacking.
Doubt is a natural aspect of our faith.
It is natural to question,
to think,
to wrestle with uncertainties,
and to seek understanding.
Doubt can deepen our faith rather than weaken it.
That’s because doubt isn’t the opposite of faith:
doubt is the companion of faith,
the other side of the same coin.
My faith in Jesus isn’t about certainty;
it’s about trust.
Faith in Jesus,
belief in Jesus,
means that we place our trust in him.
That’s the promise that was made at our baptism –
“do you believe and trust in God,
Father, Son and Holy Spirit?”
And trust is about having confidence in someone,
placing our reliance on them,
knowing that they will always be there,
there to help us.
Ultimately, Thomas did place his trust in Jesus.
And when we believe and trust in Jesus
we too know we can rely on him,
even when we doubt.
And we can know that what Jesus says is trustworthy.
Alleluia! Christ is risen!
And after the doubt, what does Thomas do?
He recognizes Jesus.
Recognizing people is one of the fundamental things
that we do as human beings.
Thomas recognized Jesus,
and we too have the opportunity to recognize Jesus,
to recognize the presence of Jesus.
And although there are a number of such occasions,
I want to suggest just a couple of times and places
when we can particularly recognize that Jesus is with us.
So one place we might find Jesus
is when we read the bible,
and especially when we read the four gospels that tell Jesus’s story.
When we tell the story of Jesus,
when we tell the stories about Jesus,
when we tell the stories that Jesus told –
then somehow Jesus is present with us in the telling.
And foremost among those occasions
is when we gather on a Sunday morning
and hear some of that story read,
some of that story proclaimed.
It’s a bit of the service we mark with special solemnity:
we stand (if we are able),
we sing “Alleluia” as an acclamation,
we carry the gospel book in procession
and turn to face the reader,
we burn incense and solemnly cense the book,
and we make a sign of the cross.
The book is lifted high for everyone to see.
All these little signs point to the importance of this moment –
that as we hear the story of Jesus,
the story Jesus told,
then still Jesus is alive here among us,
as he was when his first hearers,
people like Thomas,
gathered around him on the hillside,
or beside the lake,
in the market place,
or at dinner,
and he spoke to them.
Alleluia! Christ is risen!
And another opportunity for us to recognize the presence of Jesus
is also here in this service.
We recognize the presence of Jesus
as we break bread together.
Now “breaking bread” is a turn of phrase,
an idiom.
It’s not just about literally breaking bread,
it’s the whole action of sharing a meal together.
And that’s what we are doing here.
Yes, okay, it’s become a symbolic meal –
a small piece of bread and a sip of wine –
but it is a meal that we share together,
a meal that we share because Jesus himself told us to.
And told us to remember him as we share it.
And as we share that meal,
as we break bread together
and remember that Jesus died for us,
then we recognize that Jesus is here among us –
just as he was with Thomas and the other disciples
when he broke bread and shared supper with them.
Alleluia! Christ is risen!
And Jesus tells us
that when we minister to those in need,
we are ministering to him:
And, you know, Jesus didn’t worry
whether someone had paid their Temple taxes or not;
he didn’t worry whether they were a woman or a man;
a slave or a slave-owner;
a faithful Jew or a Samaritan,
or even a centurion in the occupying army.
Jesus bluntly tells us
that when we share God’s love
by ministering to someone in need
then we are ministering to him.
Here too we will find Jesus.
So I want to leave you with this thought for the week:
who will you recognize Jesus in?
Who will you minister to?
And who will you allow to minister to you?
Like Thomas,
may our encounters with the risen Christ
transform us,
transform those around us,
and transform the world.
Alleluia! Christ is risen!
0 CommentsReadings: 2 Samuel 7.1–11, 16; Canticle: Magnificat (Luke 1.46–55); Romans 16.25–27; Luke 1.26–38
“The angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth.”
In the name of …
Prequels.
Do you enjoy prequels?
Did you watch Endeavour as a prequel to Morse?
Or perhaps The Phantom Menace and others as prequels to Star Wars?
And what about books?
As a teenager
I worked my way avidly through CS Forester’s Hornblower novels,
reading them in story order,
and finding that all the earlier books were written after the later ones.
The conclusion of the story was already pre-determined –
Hornblower’s failure to achieve this or that;
the death of … spoilers.
Much of this was fixed by throw-away lines in the later books that were already in print.
And today’s gospel reading is a sort of prequel as well.
What’s it a prequel to?
Well, we heard a couple of weeks ago
the start of the gospel according to Mark.
(Mark the evangelist, that is, not Mark the vicar.)
Mark’s account is very widely regarded as the first gospel to have been written,
and so there was a time,
a short time perhaps,
when it was the only gospel in existence.
Perhaps you can remember from two weeks ago how it starts:
The beginning of the gospel [or: good news] of Jesus Christ, the Son of God[1]
and then it describes that beginning:
the preaching of John the Baptist,
and how Jesus arrives on the banks of the Jordan and is baptized by John.
So,
what was Jesus doing before the start of Mark’s account?
I think that’s a natural question to ask.
And in the culture of that time
it might not have been obvious
that he had been born,
or that he had grown from a baby to an adult man.
That’s a somewhat bizarre thing to say, isn’t it? What do I mean?
Well,
ancient mythology is full of stories that skip all that stuff.
Just one example
from the Roman poet Ovid,
who lived just a year or two ahead of Jesus and Luke.
His long verse collection Metamorphoses includes such a tale –
how the immortal gods
Jupiter and Mercury
decided one day to pay a visit in disguise to the mortal world.
They are spurned by everyone
until they meet an impoverished elderly couple,
Philemon and Baucis,
who invite them in and cook them supper
from their own meagre resources,
and gradually realize,
when the goblets of wine never empty,
that their guests are divine.[2]
Now if you think this is far-fetched,
then have a look at the Acts of the Apostles, at chapter 14,
where in an echo of Ovid’s tale, Luke tells us that
Paul and Barnabas are themselves mistaken for exactly the same two gods.[3]
So you can see perhaps
how the sudden appearance of Jesus in the earliest gospel account
as an adult acclaimed as God,
might also be open to misinterpretation.
That Jesus wasn’t really human,
but was a god in disguise.
Perhaps Luke was aware of speculation
about the origin of Jesus and his early life,
but whatever the reason,
he gives us two whole chapters about Jesus
before getting to John baptizing in the River Jordan
(where Mark had begun, remember?).
And here we are:
in the story it’s nine months before the birth of Jesus,
and Luke introduces us to Mary.
We don’t learn much about her though:
that she lives in Nazareth,
and is engaged to be married;
and via the angel that she is favoured by God,
and is related to Elizabeth,
who is herself expecting a child –
that’s the boy who in adulthood will become John the Baptist.
That’s pretty much all the story says about her.
And that’s because the story isn’t really about Mary.
It’s about Jesus.
The things that Mary says and does point us to Jesus.
The angel tells Mary she will have a son,
and that the Holy Spirit will overshadow her,
so that the child will be holy
and called “Son of God”.
Mary, then, will be the bearer of God the Son,
and we can see our Old Testament reading as a parallel to this.
King David wants to build a permanent home for the ark of the Covenant,
the holiest possession of the ancient Israelite people,
and regarded by them as the place where God dwelled.
But the prophet Nathan tells David
that it is not for him to build such a place,
that will come later;
but God will instead establish David’s line for ever.
Two prophecies for the price of one!
First, because Luke traces Jesus’s own ancestry back to King David –
seeing Jesus as fulfilling Nathan’s statement
that David’s line will reign for ever.
And secondly because
we have just heard how Mary will be the bearer of God –
it is her womb that will house God: God the Son.
So what does Mary do?
In the verses immediately after our gospel reading
she legs it,
and seeks out her relative Elizabeth.
And it is while she is with Elizabeth
that, Luke tells us, she praises God.
And earlier in our service today,
we sang a version of the words Luke records:
“With Mary let my soul rejoice”.
(You might like to have the words in front of you now.)
This song, the Magnificat, is not just a song of praise.
It’s also
a trailer or teaser for the story of Jesus,
for the story of Jesus’s mission and teaching,
the story of Jesus’s proclamation of God’s kingdom,
God’s rule.
Because in the Magnificat we can see parallels with Jesus’s later teaching:
These are the themes we have seen and sung in Mary’s Song,
and they are the themes that continue throughout Jesus’s ministry:
lifting up the hungry and poor,
exalting the humble and meek –
sending the rich away empty.
And in today’s gospel reading
we see them announced at the very start,
at the very moment that Jesus’s conception is first revealed.
Even as Jesus is conceived
Luke tells us that this message is proclaimed.
So is Luke’s account a good prequel?
Well, it’s the prequel that
to much of society
is almost the only bit of the story they remember.
In that sense, yes, it’s a really good prequel.
And yet …
The world around us
is drawing to the end
of its annual orgy of extravagant spending and extravagant consumption,
whilst all about we see:
poverty,
misery,
hatred,
war.
And though we shouldn’t begrudge people a bit of light and fun
and – above all – hope
in the midst of such difficulty,
nonetheless
our job,
our mission,
yours and mine,
is to make sure
that the rest of Jesus’s story is remembered too –
the proclamation of the good news that is the Kingdom of God,
where the poor and the hungry,
the homeless and the refugee,
the war-ravaged –
all who suffer, the downtrodden of society –
are raised up and satisfied,
and enemies are reconciled to each other.
And – our response should be to make that happen,
now, at Christmas time, yes – and also all year round.
Because all that is foreshadowed
in the news that we like Mary, heard today.
The good news
that the baby whose birth we are about to celebrate
saves us
and teaches us how to move
from lives governed by the prince of this world
to lives governed by the prince of peace.
Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.
[1] Mk 1.1 (NRSVAE)
[2] Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book VIII
[3] Acts 14.11, 12
[4] Lk 4.18,19 (NRSVAE)
[5] Lk 6.20–25 (NRSVAE), abbreviated
0 CommentsReadings: Daniel 7.9,10,13,14; Psalm 97; 2 Peter 1.16–19; Luke 9.28–36
I don’t know about you, but I’m not much of a film-buff and I don’t often go to the cinema,
perhaps only once, maybe twice, a year, if that.
But I went to the cinema last weekend.
So, there are two big films on right now,
one that I’ll just gloss over as mostly pink
and another that I can say is somewhat grey.
Now I expect my three-year old granddaughter
would love to watch the pink one,
but it was the somewhat-grey film that Karen and I went to see.
It’s a story – a true story – set during the Second World War,
with a bunch of scientists racing to work out how to build a new weapon.
And not just any new weapon, but a new kind of weapon,
a weapon that will unleash untold power.
And just as they’re about to explode the very first test at Los Alamos
– a moment of high drama –
the hero, Robert Oppenheimer, remembers an earlier conversation
(in the film it’s) with a chap called Albert Einstein,
a conversation about an important question –
what’s the worst that might happen in the test?
Well, comes the reply, it could set off a chain reaction,
a chain reaction that might ignite the whole atmosphere,
a chain reaction that might consume and destroy all the earth.
They don’t think that’s very likely, but it is possible.
(And I think you’ll agree that is rather a big downside to any decision.)
So of course they proceed with the test.
There’s a small starting explosion,
and then a great shining, blinding, white light
and then a massive fireball
as the chain reaction in a small lump of uranium causes an explosion of unparalleled ferocity
and then
a great booming sound, the shockwave of the explosion.
The test is a success. Oh, and the earth isn’t destroyed either.
And so – a few weeks later – on the 6th of August, 1945,
their new bomb is dropped on the Japanese city of Hiro-shima.
And just a few days later another atomic bomb is dropped on Nagasaki.
As many as 200,000 people –
men, women, children,
mostly civilians –
were killed,
and many more suffered lifelong injury from radiation sickness.
Japan surrendered, bringing the Second World War to an end.
Light and sound – signifying death and destruction and conflict on an unprecedented scale.
It’s a true story, and today, today is the 6th of August,
today is the 78th anniversary of that first atomic bomb at Hiro-shima.
It’s a day when the world remembers those killed,
those injured,
[[those whose lives were affected,
the destruction wrought ]]
by those two life-destroying atomic bombs.
And
when we all hope and pray that it won’t happen again.
But the 6th of August is also a day that the Church has celebrated as a holy day
for hundreds and hundreds of years.
We heard the story in our gospel reading from Luke this morning.
Jesus and some of his disciples climb up a hill,
and there the disciples see Jesus transfigured –
shining white with brilliant dazzling light,
and they hear a great booming voice.
“This is my Son, listen to him.”
Now, I’m not going to try and explain what happened,
or try to second-guess what the disciples “really” saw and heard.
But the effects of this light and this sound
are very different from the destruction caused by the light and sound at Hiro-shima.
This light and this sound have a meaning totally different from that of the atomic bomb.
And as a result, the disciples understand that Jesus’s message comes from God.
“This is my Son, listen to him.”
Rather than death and destruction and conflict,
this bright light signifies
life and healing and peace.
That’s the life-giving message that Jesus brings,
the life-giving message that Jesus brings from God.
That God wants us to have life in all its fulness,
to live in love, and to care for one another
in the good times, yes –
and, even more so, when the going gets tough.
God wants us
– as Jesus says elsewhere in the gospels –
to feed the hungry,
to shelter the homeless and the refugee,
to care for the sick and the needy,
to lift up the oppressed,
to forgive and be reconciled with those who have wronged us.
“This is my Son, listen to him.”
It’s the message that God, in Jesus,
saves us from the chain reaction
of hate and wrong-doing and death,
the chain reaction that leads to ever more hate and wrong-doing and death.
God in Jesus offers us an alternative,
an alternative chain reaction of hope and caring and forgiveness.
“This is my Son, listen to him.”
It’s not an easy way out, though.
Caring and reconciliation can be costly too,
as we see up there, above me,
with Jesus put to death on the Cross.
Because not everyone appreciates caring,
not everyone appreciates it when people stand up for others,
not everyone appreciates it when people look for reconciliation.
But Jesus’s message is that this way is God’s way.
And in the Transfiguration, in Luke’s story that we heard earlier,
[[and also Peter in his letter that we heard too,]]
the disciples realize that Jesus’s message is God’s message.
“This is my Son, listen to him.”
And they do their best,
after Jesus’s death and resurrection,
to pass his story on to their successors,
and – and here’s the important bit –
not just to tell the story,
but to live as the community of people
who try to do those things.
And it’s into this community that we have come today
to see C_ baptized.
This is the community of people – here in this church in St Ives –
who are the followers of Jesus,
the successors,
(many hundreds of years later, with others here and around the world)
the successors of Jesus’s own disciples –
a life-giving, life-enhancing chain reaction.
Now, of course, we’re human, and we get things wrong.
We aren’t perfect
and we don’t always agree
and we don’t always look after one another as we should.
But we are that community,
that is what the Church is,
that is what the Church tries to be;
and we are committed to journeying together
and trying to understand and to live as that community,
the community of Jesus’s followers.
And so – today – we welcome C_ into this community.
Now, it’s a two-way thing, C_.
For your part,
you will affirm the importance to you of Jesus and his message,
and the importance in your life of the divine, of God,
and the importance in your life of this community of faith and prayer and worship.
And we, the members of that community,
we will affirm our support for you as you make this step.
We will journey together:
we will learn from you
as you learn from us.
We will do things together
to share the good news that Jesus shared with his disciples,
and to care for those among us and around us who are in need.
And we will do it all with God’s help.
We’ll have fun together
and sad times together.
If we are honest, we know that sometimes we might even get cross with each other.
But we know that that’s because we each care,
and that, in Jesus, through Jesus,
there is always forgiveness and reconciliation.
And if that sounds a bit like a family,
well, that’s because the Christian community, the Christian Church,
is like a family.
It doesn’t replace the family that we live with.
But it is a new family, God’s family,
that we each become part of at our baptism.
And it is into God’s family, C_, God’s life-enhancing family,
that we are now going to welcome you.
Amen.
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