Mary the Mother of God

 

Last Friday was a very important day!
Yes, I should have had my operation, but that’s not why it was important. In some parts of the Christian Church, the fifteenth of August is a major festival in the Church’s calendar.
It’s what’s called the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary,
and celebrates the belief that her body, as well as her soul,
was taken to heaven after she’d died.
Or possibly even before, it’s not clear.
Either way, it’s a very old tradition,
going right back to the early years of Christianity,
even though there’s nothing about it in Scripture.
And even those Christians, like us,
who don’t necessarily subscribe to that doctrine,
do still consider 15 August one of the Festivals of Saint Mary.

And even though we Protestants don’t really think about Mary much,
the fact that she’s such an important figure in so much of Christianity means she’s probably worth thinking about from time to time.

So what do we actually know about her from the Bible, as opposed to tradition?
She first appears in our Bibles when Gabriel comes to her to ask her if she will bear Jesus,
and, of course, as we all know, she said she would,
and Joseph agreed to marry her despite her being pregnant with a baby he knew he wasn’t responsible for.
I do rather love Luke’s stories about Mary –
how one of the things the angel had said to her was that her relation, Elisabeth, was pregnant after all those years.
And Mary rushes off to visit her.
Was this to reassure herself that the angel was telling the truth?
Or to congratulate Elisabeth?
Or just to get away for a bit of space, do you suppose?
We aren’t told.
But Elisabeth recognises Mary as the mother-to-be of the promised Saviour, and Mary’s response is that great song that we now call the “Magnificat”, which we heard in our Gospel reading.
Or if it wasn’t exactly that –
that may well be Luke putting down what she ought to have said, like Shakespeare giving Henry V that great speech before Agincourt –
it was probably words to that effect!
I think she was very, very relieved to find the angel had been speaking the truth, and probably did explode in an outpouring of praise and joy!

And later, in Bethlehem, when the shepherds come to visit her, we are told that she “kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart.”

The next time we see Mary is when Jesus is twelve and gets separated from them in the Temple.
I spent a lot of time with that story when my daughter was a teenager –
how Mary and Joseph say to Jesus, “But why did you stay behind?
Didn’t you realise we’d be worried about you?”
and Jesus goes, “Oh, you don’t understand!” –
typical teenager!

We don’t see Joseph again after this –
tradition has it that he was a lot older than Mary, and, of course, he had a very physical job.
It wasn’t just a carpenter as we know it –
the Greek word is “technion”, which is the same root as our “technician”;
if it had to do with houses, Joseph did it,
from designing them,
to building them,
to making the furniture that went in them!
And tradition has it that sometime between Jesus’ 12th birthday, and when we next see him, Joseph has died.

But we see a lot more of Mary.
She is there at the wedding at Cana, and indeed,
it’s she who goes to Jesus when they’ve run out of wine.
And Jesus says, at first, “Um, no –
my time has not yet come!” but Mary knew.
And she told the servants to “Do whatever he tells you”, and, sure enough, the water is turned into wine.

There’s a glimpse of her at one point when Jesus is teaching, and he’s told his mother and brother are outside waiting for him, but he refuses to be diverted from what he’s doing.
And, of course, it could have been that it was just random people who said they were his relations to try to get closer to him.

We see Mary, of course, weeping at the Cross –
something no mother should ever have to do.
And Jesus commending her into the care of the “beloved disciple” John.
And, finally, we see her in the Upper Room in Jerusalem when the Holy Spirit came.

That’s really all we know about her from the Bible, but other early traditions and writings, including some of what’s called the apocryphal gospels –
they’re the ones that didn’t make the cut into the New Testament as we know it –
tell us a bit more.
They tell us that her mother was called Anne and her father was called Joachim, and that she was only about 16 when Gabriel came to her.
One source has it that Anne couldn’t have babies, and when Mary finally arrived, she was given to be reared in the Temple, like Samuel.
And traditional sources also tell us that, after the Crucifixion, she went to live in Ephesus, probably with John, and died somewhere between 3 and 15 years later, surrounded by all the apostles.
And that her body was taken up to heaven, which is where we came in!

Well, so far, so good, but how did they get from there to the veneration of her, not to say worship in some cases, that we see today?
This may be something you find difficult to understand –
I certainly do –
and that’s okay.
We aren’t required to do more than honour her as the Mother of our dear Lord;
we mention her when we say the Creed, of course, and there are lots of churches dedicated to her.
My family’s church in Clapham is dedicated to St Mary the Virgin, as are loads of other churches around the world.

But we do not think of her as quasi-divine in some way.
We do believe that Jesus was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit, not by ordinary human means,
but that this was something that happened in time, not in eternity!
She became the Mother of God –
she was not the Mother of God before Jesus was born.

It’s fascinating, reading up on all the various Marian theologies.
I don’t propose to go into them now –
I don’t understand some of them at all, and anyway, it would take too long.
It would appear, though, that while veneration of Mary is very ancient indeed, independent theological study of her is comparatively recent.
Actually, theology isn’t quite the right word, given that that is the study of God - I think the technical term is “Mariology”.
And when it spins over into giving Mary that worship that properly belongs to God alone, it becomes “Mariolatry”.

I wonder, though, just how it happened that veneration of Mary became such a thing among Roman Catholic Christians.
Orthodox Christianity also venerates her, but make it quite clear that she is not divine –
the distinction, sometimes, among Catholics gets a bit blurred.
One theory I have heard put forward is that she gives a female aspect to Christianity, which may or may not be lacking from the Trinity.
In Italy, apparently, the day is called “Ferragosto”, and is far older than Christianity –
it was originally a festival of the goddess Diana, and became a public holiday during the reign of the Emperor Augustus!
You remember “Great is Diana of the Ephesians” when Paul had a row with a silversmith making copies of her shrine in the book of Acts – it’s that Diana, also known as Artemis, who was associated with the moon, the hunt, and virginity.

Her festival is now the Assumption!
We Christians do like to take a pagan festival and turn it into something else, don’t we?!

But listen, back in the day when the head of your household, or family, or tribe, decided to be baptised and to follow Jesus, everybody else had to, too, no matter what they felt about it.
And although many traditions worshipped a God who,
if gendered, was thought of as male, a very great many worshipped some kind of mother goddess –
and, suddenly confronted with a God who presented very much as male –
although of course there are female aspects of, and names for God, but we don’t use them much!
One can quite validly pray to Lady Love, or Lady Wisdom, and the Holy Spirit is often thought of as female, since the Hebrew word for Spirit is feminine.
Anway, where was I –
oh yes, when told they would now worship God, and Jesus –
well, there was his Mother, all ready to be the Mother you used to worship…..

We Protestants, of course, do have a choice –
there is a tradition of venerating Mary in some parts of the Protestant Church, but it is far from compulsory.
We honour her as the Mother of our dear Lord –
and we honour her, too, for her bravery in saying “Yes” to God like that.
After all, had Joseph repudiated her for carrying someone else’s child, she could have ended up on the streets!

As for the Assumption –
well, who knows?
Some Catholics think she was still alive when that happened, but the official position is unclear.
The Orthodox call it the Dormition, or falling-asleep, and celebrate her death, but they, too, believe her body was carried up to heaven.

But what, then, can we learn from Mary?
We don’t tend to think of her very much, at least, I don’t.
But there is that incredible bravery that said “Yes” to God –
and remember, she didn’t know the end of the story, not at that stage!
There are times I wonder what she must think of it all!
But she was totally submitted to God in a way that very few people can claim to be.

And, of course, there is what she said to the servants at that wedding in Cana - “Do whatever He tells you”.
And that’s not a bad motto to live by, either:
Do whatever Jesus tells you.
Amen.

A long, hard slog

I ad-libbed a children's talk, and there is a bit of a break where they went back to their own activities, but keep listening....

If I were to ask you how many years you’ve been consciously Jesus’ person, I wonder what you would answer!
For me, it’s –
well, it’s really rather a long time, let’s put it that way!

And during that time, I hope, you have grown and changed,
and allowed God to grow and change you and help you become more and more the person you were created to be.
I don’t suppose for one moment you’ve got there –
I know I haven’t:
God still has a lot of work to do in me!

I expect your views on what God’s people should be like have grown and changed over time, too.
Mine have;
but then, they’d have had need to!
I ended up in a weirdly toxic form of evangelicalism that demanded that if you wanted to be a Christian you had to do it in a particular way, and no other way was valid.
And God was incredibly picky, and out to catch you out whenever possible.
Which was, of course, ridiculous, but you don’t realise it at the time.

But over the years I’ve learnt, and I expect you have too, slowly and often painfully, that “in my Father’s house are many mansions”,
and there is room for us all, no matter how differently we may express our faith, and our commitment to being Jesus’ person.
And, indeed, that God is looking for every excuse to pardon and forgive us, not condemn us.

But, of course, there are caveats.
Look at our first reading, from Isaiah:
“Do you think I want all these sacrifices you keep offering to me?” asks God.
“I have had more than enough of the sheep you burn as sacrifices and of the fat of your fine animals.
I am tired of the blood of bulls and sheep and goats.”

And then;
“When you lift your hands in prayer, I will not look at you.
No matter how much you pray, I will not listen, for your hands are covered with blood.”


God wants his people to:
“Wash yourselves clean.
Stop all this evil that I see you doing.
Yes, stop doing evil and learn to do right.
See that justice is done;
help those who are oppressed, give orphans their rights, and defend widows.”

I wonder, sometimes, what God thinks of what’s going on in America right now, with people there calling on His name to justify cutting aid to the poorest of the poor, and so on.
Well, I am sure justice will be done in the end.
Remember Jesus’ warning:
“Not everyone who calls me ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the Kingdom of heaven, but only those who do what my Father in heaven wants them to do.”

But meanwhile, we do need to be stepping up to the plate to help those less fortunate than ourselves.
The need for the Food Bank, for instance, hasn’t stopped just because it is August;
rather the reverse, as people who can just about cope in term time when their children get their main meal at school can find it very much more difficult in the school holidays.
You will, perhaps, remember footballer Marcus Rashford’s campaign to have meals provided for children in poorer families during, and I think after, the pandemic.

Just about a year ago there were riots against asylum seekers, prompted by the rumour –
untrue, of course –
that the person who murdered some little girls at a dance class was an illegal immigrant.
He wasn’t, but it served as an excuse for the most appalling displays of racist behaviour that you can possibly imagine.
They even set fire to hotels where they thought asylum seekers were being housed!
And I believe there have been similar gatherings this past week, on the anniversary.
It is this old chestnut that “they” are getting more support than people in this country are.
Which is also not true.
They get less than £50 a week to live on, and they are certainly not housed in 5-star hotels!

But what are we, as God’s people, to do about this?
Yes, we can and do express our disgust at such behaviour, but is that all?
What, I wonder, would Jesus do?
If we look at how he treated people whom his culture thought despicable, maybe we will get an idea:
he loved them and forgave them!
He made it quite clear that their behaviour was, or had been, wrong, but then he loved them and forgave them, just as he does us.
Just as, I hate to say it, he does some of those “pseudo-Christians” in the USA.

But enough of that particular rabbit-hole!
Today I am trying to talk about faith!
Faith that manifests itself in action!

Faith that probably has to be grown over many years.

“To have faith” says the letter to the Hebrews, “is to be sure of the things we hope for, to be certain of the things we cannot see.”
And the letter goes on to give us an example in Abraham, who, we are told, was promised a wonderful inheritance.
God promised to make his descendants, quite literally, more numerous than the grains of sand on the seashore.
He was going to be given a wonderful land for them to live in.

Now, at this stage, Abraham was living very comfortably thank you, in a very civilised city called Ur,
and although he didn't have any children, he was happy and settled.
But God told Abraham that if he wanted to see this promise fulfilled he had to get up,
to leave his comfortable life,
and to move on out into the unknown,
just trusting God.
And Abraham did just exactly that.
And, eventually, Isaac was born to carry on the family.
And then Isaac’s son, Jacob.
And we are told that, although none of them actually saw the Promised Land, and although the promise was not fulfilled in their lifetimes,
they never stopped believing that one day, one day, it would be.
Their whole lives were informed by their belief that God was in control.

This sort of faith is the kind we'd all like to have, wouldn't we?
Wouldn't we?
Hmmm, I wonder.
In our Gospel reading, Jesus says, “Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father is pleased to give you the Kingdom.”
That's great, isn't it?
“Your Father is pleased to give you the Kingdom.”

Well, it would be great, but then he says, “Sell all your belongings and give the money to the poor.
Provide for yourselves purses that don't wear out, and save your riches in heaven, where they will never decrease, because no thief can get to them, and no moth can destroy them.  For your heart will always be where your riches are.”

That's the bit we don't like so well, do we?
Like Abraham, we are very-nicely-thank-you in Ur,
comfortably settled in this world,
and we don't want to give it all up to go chasing after something which might or might not be real.
This is the difficult bit, the bit where what we say we believe comes up against what we really do believe.

We would like to be there –
to be that sort of faith-filled person –
without the hard slog of actually getting there!
We want to have all the privileges and joys of being Christians without actually having to do anything.

Of course, in one of the many great paradoxes of Christianity,
we don't have to do anything!
We can do nothing to save ourselves!
It is God who does all that is necessary for our salvation.

But if we are to be people of faith, if we are to be of any use to God,
our faith does, or should, prompt us to action.

First of all, then, our faith should prompt us to repent.
To turn away from sin and turn to God with all our hearts.
It's not just a once-and-for-all thing;

it's a matter of daily repentance, daily choosing to be God's person.

And as we do that, our faith grows and develops and strengthens to the point where, if we are called to do so,
we can leave our comfort zone and try great things for God.
As Abraham did, and as Jesus calls us to do.

We aren't all called to sell our possessions and give what we have to the poor –
although a little more equity in the way this world's goods are handed out wouldn't be a bad thing.
We are all called to work for justice in our communities,
whether that is a matter of writing to our MPs if something is clearly wrong,
or getting involved in a more hands-on way.
We are called to pray for those places where things are clearly wrong,
whether that’s what’s happening in the USA right now
or for people in those countries whose leaders are at war andw ho are suffering immeasurably because of it.

Some people –
maybe some of you, even –
are or have been called to leave your home countries and work in a foreign land to be God's person there,
whether as a professional missionary, as it were,
or just where you are working.
Others are asked to stay put, but to be God's person exactly where they are –
at school,
college,
work,
home,
at the shops,
on the bus,
in a traffic jam,
on social media...
everywhere!
Being God's person isn't something that happens in church on Sundays and is put aside the rest of the week.

It isn't easy. It's the every day, every moment hard slog.
The times when we wish we could skip over all this,
and be the wonderful faith-filled Christian we hope to be one day without the hard work of getting there!

Sadly, it doesn't work like that.
We don't have to do all the hard work in our own strength, of course;

God the Holy Spirit is there to help us, and remind us, and change us, and grow us as we gradually become more and more the people God designed us to be.
But God doesn't push in where He's not wanted.
If we are truly serious about being God's person,
then we need to be being that every day.
Each day we need to commit to God, whether explicitly or implicitly.

Jesus reminds us that this world isn't designed to be permanent.
One day it will come to an end, either for each of us individually,
or perhaps in some great second coming.
Scientists tell us it will be very soon now, as climate change runs out of control.
But whichever way, it will end for us one day,
and not all of us get notice to quit.
We need to be ready and alert, busy with what we have been given to do, but ready to let go and turn to Jesus whenever he calls us.

None of this is easy.
Being a Christian isn't easy.
Becoming a Christian is easy,
because God longs and longs for us to turn to Him.
But being one isn't.
Allowing God to change us,
to pull us out of our comfort zone,
to travel with Him along that narrow way –
it's not easy.
But it is oh, so very worthwhile!
Amen.

Martha and Mary

 This was a short reflection for an informal act of worship when on holiday with book group friends.  I am not recording it.  

I chose to only have the Gospel reading today, because this is, after all, meant to be a short act of worship! But, had I chosen to have the Epistle read, too, we would have heard that: “in Jesus all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.”

And in our Gospel reading, we basically find all the fullness of God sitting in someone’s front room eating crisps! Well, perhaps not crisps, but probably bread and olives, and maybe cheese as well.

We know the story of Martha and Mary so well; we probably learnt it in Sunday School. Jesus and his disciples visiting their good friends in Bethany, and Jesus teaching, as he so often did. Martha, bustling about in the kitchen, getting a meal ready for everybody, and Mary sitting at Jesus’ feet and listening!

I think we probably see Mary’s behaviour as perfectly normal, but back in the day, it was incredibly shocking. Women weren’t supposed to be able to learn, and if they were, they should learn in private, ideally from other women, not in mixed company! The disciples may well have been embarrassed by her behaviour, and Martha certainly was. I rather suspect she didn’t ask Jesus to send Mary out to the kitchen because she wanted help, but because she thought Mary might be embarrassing Jesus by her behaviour. After all, this was Mary who poured a vial of ointment all over Jesus’ feet, and who may have had some kind of Past! Some scholars think this Mary was the same person as Mary Magdalene, but the Bible isn’t very clear how many people poured vials of ointment all over Jesus. But anyway.

It’s not that Martha didn’t want to know about Jesus, other than as a friend, perhaps a friend of her brother’s; it was, if you remember, Martha who declared, after her brother had died,
“Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah,
the Son of God,
the one coming into the world.”
Martha, perhaps, was beginning to get a glimpse of who Jesus was. She knew he would have healed her brother had he arrived before he died; she was to see him raised from the dead – and, perhaps, later she was to meet the risen Jesus, as Mary did, as the other disciples did.

But not that day. That day she was fussed with preparing a meal, and by her sister’s embarrassing behaviour. Jesus and the disciples would probably have been happy enough with bread and cheese, and maybe some olive oil or even some olives, but Martha couldn’t, at the time, feel she was honouring him with a simple meal.

And yet – “Mary has chosen the better part!” Jesus never cared whether he was speaking to men or to women; he never cared whether or not he was made ritually unclean; he only cared that people listen to his message of the good news of the Kingdom of God.

“In Jesus all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.”

I wonder how we would react if Jesus, in person, was sitting in our front room nibbling on crisps and olives. Would we, like Mary, long to sit at his feet and listen? Or would we, like Martha, prefer to prepare a feast for him? I don’t think either is wrong – we need both Martha and Mary in our churches. And I think most of us lean to one or the other, although I hope we carry both of them with us. I know I’m more like Mary…. What about you?

Poor old Elijah!

 I'm afraid there is no recording this week; I have a new tablet and it came with its own integral recorder.  Which didn't.  I have now downloaded the one I'm used to, so I hope that next time I preach (not until August), the recording will work!

Well, poor old Elijah! Sounds as though he went properly through the mill, doesn’t it? For a bit of context, this chapter is giving us the aftermath of the great trial between Elijah and the prophets of Baal. Now, back then, Baal was a rival god to Yahweh, our own God, and a great many of the children of Israel had started to follow him, encouraged by the Queen of the day, Jezebel, who seems to have been dominant over the king, Ahab. Jezebel, it must be said, was not an Israelite, but a Sidonian princess, who had been brought up to worship Baal, and brought that worship with her. And many prophets of God had been killed, although Obadiah, Ahab’s chief administrator, had saved at least a hundred of them. Obadiah was a devout follower of Yahweh, as God was known back then, despite everything.

Elijah, you may remember, had declared a severe drought over all the land because of the worship of Baal, but finally it was time for a great showdown. He went to Ahab and told him to bring all the prophets of Baal to Mount Carmel, and they would build two altars, one to Baal and one to Yahweh, place a sacrifice on each altar, and whichever god lit the sacrifice with fire from heaven would be declared the god that Israel should worship. Elijah was so confident that God was God that he ordered that altar to be drenched in water, with water in a sort of moat round it. The Baalites went first, and nothing happened. Elijah teased them that Baal must have gone for a walk, or be on the loo, or something, and they worked themselves up into a terrific frenzy and cut themselves and so on, but nothing happened. And then Elijah prayed, and fire came down from heaven and consumed the sacrifice, and the wood, and even the water! Whereupon the people fell on their faces and said that God was God. But Elijah had the prophets of Baal killed, which doesn’t sound very Godly of him, but we mustn’t judge people who lived in the Iron age by our own standards!

Anyway, Ahab goes home that evening and tells Jezebel what has happened, and she is absolutely incandescent with rage, and vows to kill Elijah within the day. Elijah, hearing of this, runs away, and that’s where our reading comes in. He’s obviously totally knackered and completely out of cope, and he prays that he might die, and then he falls asleep. An angel comes, bringing him food, and he eats and sleeps again, and then he eats a last meal before heading off towards Mount Horeb, a journey which it is said took him forty days and forty nights – a foreshadowing of Jesus in the wilderness. I don’t know whether it was actually forty days and forty nights, or whether this is just code for “a long time”, and I don’t know whether he was able to find anything to eat along the route, but whatever. Anyway, he goes into a cave to spend the night, and God comes to him and says “Elijah, why are you here?”

To which he replies, “I have been very zealous for the Lord God Almighty. The Israelites have rejected your covenant, torn down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too.”

And God tells Elijah to go and stand outside to experience the presence of the Lord. And we know what happened next: there was a huge wind, but the Lord was not in the wind; a mighty earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and a big fire, but the Lord wasn’t in the fire, either. And then there was only the sound of silence. And again God asked Elijah why he was there, and again Elijah replies, self-pityingly, that he was the only one left.

To which God says, more or less, that’s bollocks! He tells Elijah to anoint new kings of Aram and Israel, and to appoint Elisha as his successor, and between them they will kill the followers of Baal, but there are at least seven thousand people in Israel who haven’t ever worshipped Baal. Elijah is not alone.

And, just to finish off the story, Elijah is reassured, and goes and does what he has been told.

But poor old Elijah! I feel very sorry for him – I’m sure you know what it’s like to be absolutely exhausted and totally out of cope. I know I do, and all one can really do is go to bed and sleep it off. Things usually look brighter in the morning.

Only, in this case, for Elijah, things still looked pretty grim. Yes, the food the angel brought him helped, but the one thing he wanted was to go to where he knew God would speak to him. And sure enough, when he got to Mount Horeb, or Mount Sinai, which is probably another name for it, there God was. But he didn’t get the reassurance and praise he had hoped for. Instead it was “What are you doing here?” Elijah had no business being on Mount Horeb; God wanted him back home in Israel.

I wonder why God chose that moment to show the wind, earthquake and fire to Elijah, but only spoke to him in the silence. And then to say again “Why are you here?”
I think it’s important, often to wait on God in silence. In my early Christian life, I had no real idea how to pray – all that was modelled was the public prayer meeting, with the earnest Evangelicals going “Oh Lord, we really pray that you will just….”, and it wasn’t until I was many years into my Christian life that I discovered that there were other ways of praying, and that talking to – or perhaps more accurately, talking at – God was not the only way to pray. I’m sure you’ve found this for yourselves, but I do want to remind you that prayer is often, if not mostly, a matter of waiting on God in silence, of stilling your mind, of opening yourself. Some people like to use a mantra – “Jesus, son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner”, for instance; others like to use a rosary, perhaps using the “Saviour of the World” prayer. Still others use conscious relaxation methods. And it is while listening to the sound of silence that God speaks.

Don’t get me wrong; of course there is a place for prayer in words, as in the public prayer meeting, as in the liturgy. You can pray to God in your own words, and that, I suspect, is what most of us do, but of course there are loads of other prayers one can use, dating right back to the beginning of Christianity! Or even before – many people find praying the Psalms works for them, or perhaps a hymn. There’s no right or wrong way to pray; there’s no one way is right for everybody, and most of us will pray differently at different times! What matters is the contact with God, not the way you do it.

For Elijah, at that moment, it was running to Mount Horeb, where he knew God would speak to him. And indeed God did, but not in the way he expected. Instead of the – I was going to say hugs, but you know what I mean, that Elijah wanted and expected, it was pointed out to him that God doesn’t always deal in the spectacular, that Elijah still had work to do, and that there were at least seven thousand other people in the land who hadn’t and would not, bow to Baal!

Poor old Elijah! But as God never calls without enabling, I am sure Elijah received the reassurance and recovery he needed to enable him to go back and do as he’d been told. Elijah might have done the wrong thing in running away, but he was not sent back in his own strength. He was reassured that he wasn’t the only one, even though it felt like it. He was told to anoint two new kings, and eventually they would replace the current weak ones; and above all he was told to anoint his successor, Elisha. From now on, he would have someone shadowing him and helping him.

I think that’s a really good model for us, isn’t it? When we have gone wrong, as Elijah went wrong, God speaks to us – not normally in a spectacular way, but in the silence of our hearts – and reassures us, and heals us, and enables us to go right again.

I don’t, incidentally, think that Elijah had depression – that’s a very nasty illness, and I’m sure God wouldn’t have been so bracing with him, although I’m equally sure God would have healed him. But Elijah was exhausted and out of cope, and had lapsed into self-pity – all too easily done. But he knew the right thing to do, to go to God, even if he went about it the wrong way.

And that’s the same for us, isn’t it. Always, always, go to God. Sometimes we don’t want to; sometimes we feel too ashamed to show our faces before God. But we know that when we do, God will act – God will heal us, forgive us, and enable us to get up and go on.

The man who Jesus healed in our Gospel story was rather similar. We don’t know, from this distance, what had gone wrong for him, but it sounds like the worst kind of mental illness, and he felt he had a whole army of demons inside him. So he asked Jesus, firstly to leave him alone, and when that obviously wasn’t going to happen, to send his demons into the herd of swine that was grazing in the neighbourhood. And when this had happened, he was healed, and was able to get dressed and sit, clothed and in his right mind, at Jesus’ feet.

Sometimes, when we are too ashamed to go to God, or hindered by other reasons, it’s God who will come in search of us, as Jesus came to the man in the graveyard.

They are both odd stories in today’s readings, but I think what they spell out is God’s love and care for us, whoever we are. We may have trouble approaching God, but God is always looking out for us! Remember the father in Jesus’ story, who saw his estranged son coming and ran to meet him? That’s what God is like and it’s what I want to leave with you this morning!

Poor old Elijah! But God healed him and helped him and sent him forth. As he will do with us. Elijah was not alone – there were over seven thousand others. And we are not alone – we have our church families to love and support us. Amen.

Do you want to be made well?

Children's talk (of course, there weren't any children, but I gave the talk anyway): Shalom

This Sunday we had two choices of Gospel reading, so I thought that, for a change, we’d have both of them. We’re going to read the second one in a bit, and I’ll talk about it, but for now, let’s all look at something Jesus said in the first reading.

He said, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.”

Now, when we have a Communion service, and quite often in other services, too, we wish one another God’s peace – that peace, that Jesus left with us. But peace, here, doesn’t just mean no war, although that, too! It doesn’t just mean feeling calm and happy, although that, too! It’s both of those things and more, beside. It’s about wholeness, and justice and living in unity – in short, it’s about the way things are like in God’s country, and the way they ought to be here.

The way things ought to be! When you wish people “Peace be with you”, you’re wishing them wholeness and healing and unity as well as peace!

I think, don’t you, that we need to stop and wish one another God’s peace, and then we’re going to hear a song on YouTube that you may well know – if you do, please join in!

This picture is not of the pool of Bethesda; it’s of the source of the Danube in Donaueschingen, Germany! But when we went to see it, all I could think of was the pool of Bethesda – it totally fits my mental image of what the pool was like!

The original pool was, of course, in Jerusalem, near the Sheep Gate, which is called the Lions Gate today. Apparently it may have been built in the 1^st century BC as a Greek shrine to Asclepius, their god of healing. It was just outside the original city walls, so as not to offend the Jews, who would not have cared for a pagan temple in their midst. It was not until later in the 1^st century AD that the city walls were expanded and the pool or pools turned into a full-on temple, built by Hadrian, and by the 5^th century AD there was already a church there.

Anyway, whether it was an active shrine, with sacrifices being offered to Asclepius or not, we are told that many people came there for healing. A verse in the narrative which is now omitted from most translations, as they are not sure whether it was in the original, says that periodically an angel would come down and stir up the water, and the first person to get into the pool while it was still rippling would be healed.

And one of the people there that day was paralysed, and had been for 38 years. We aren’t told whether he had been coming to the pool every day for 38 years, or whether he only started coming more recently, but he had fairly obviously been there for some time. Jesus asks him if he wants to be made well, and his response is that every time the water is stirred up, someone else gets there first, as he has nobody to help him get into the water. Jesus tells him to get up, pick up his mat, and walk, and the man promptly does so.

That was as far as we got in our reading, but the story goes on to tell us it was the Sabbath day, and the authorities clocked the man carrying his mat, which was not allowed, and tore him off a strip for it. He said that he had been told to carry it by the person who had healed him, but couldn’t say who it was, as by then Jesus had disappeared. Later, Jesus meets the man again in the Temple, and tells him not to sin again or worse things could happen. The man went and told the authorities that it was Jesus who had healed him, and that was basically when they started to persecute him, mostly because he had been healing on the Sabbath. Healing, like carrying mats, was considered work, and working on the Sabbath was completely forbidden.

It’s a very strange story, I think. The more I look at it, the odder it becomes. We know that the man was Jewish, so why was he at a pagan shrine? How did he get there? Was he there twenty-four seven? Did someone bring him each morning and fetch him at night? How did he manage for food and drink, or for warmth on a cold day? How did he manage about going to the loo? He must have had some kind of carer, even if they couldn’t be with him full-time! As, I expect, did most of the people round the pool. And why was he the only person healed, if there were crowds there? Was he the only Jewish person? It seems improbable. Really, a very odd story. I believe some authorities suggest it was included to remind people that it is Jesus we need to turn to for healing, not some pagan religion. Which doesn’t mean, of course, that it isn’t a true story, and it certainly doesn’t mean that we have nothing to learn from it!

Jesus asks him “Do you want to be made well?” This seems like a silly question, really. Of course he wants to be made well, why would he be at the pool every day, else? But, think about it a minute. Did he want to be made well? Was he, despite what he claimed, really quite comfortable with this life, where he could spend the day doing not very much, chatting with his friends, dependent on other people to do pretty much everything for him. And if he were healed, he’d lose all that. He would have to start looking after himself. He might have to start looking after his family, if he had one, instead of depending on them to look after him. He might even have to get a job!

Whatever happened, if he were to be made well, his life was going to change radically. Because that’s what happens when Jesus heals you. Life changes.

“Do you want to be made well?”
Sometimes it is our behaviour which changes – perhaps we used to get drunk, but now we find ourselves switching to soft drinks after a couple of glasses. Perhaps we used to gamble, but suddenly realise we haven't so much as bought a Lottery ticket for weeks, never mind visiting a bookie! Perhaps we used to be less than scrupulous about what belongs to us, and what belongs to our employer, but now we find ourselves asking permission to use an office envelope.

Very often these sorts of changes happen without our even noticing them. Others take more struggle – sometimes it is many years before we can finally let go of an addiction, or a bad habit. But as I've said many times, the more open we are to God, the more we can allow God to change us.

But the point is, when God touches our lives, things change. Life changes. Life changed for the man who Jesus had just healed. Life changes for us, when we allow God to heal us.

“Do you want to be made well?” Sometimes, of course, we cling on to the familiar bad habits, as we don't know how to replace them with healthier ways of acting and thinking, and that's scary. Perhaps we don’t really want to be made well. Perhaps we are quite comfortable with our life as it is, even though it isn’t ideal.

Perhaps we are used to our pain, even comfortable with it. Maybe if we were to be healed, we would have to confront the source of our pain, and it would get a lot worse before it got better. A wise person once said to me that nobody does any work on themselves until it becomes impossible not to, as the process is so inherently painful. That’s more about mental and emotional healing, but it can apply to physical healing, too – if I have this operation, it will make things better, but it’s going to be so much worse at first…

The man who Jesus healed didn’t answer directly, you notice. He just whinged that he had nobody to help him into the pool, so he could never get well. But when Jesus told him to get up, pick up his mat, and walk, he doesn’t seem to have argued or anything, just done as he was told. In spite of the fact that he got into trouble for it later. That sort of touch from God is irresistible, isn’t it? And frightening.

This isn’t the only occasion in John’s gospel where the consequences of being healed are spelled out. In another place, Jesus heals a blind man, also on the Sabbath day, and the authorities get themselves in a right muddle. Nobody born blind gets to see, it just doesn't happen. And if it did, it couldn't happen on the Sabbath. Not unless the person who did it was a sinner, because only a sinner would do that on the Sabbath – it's work, isn't it? And if the person who did it was a sinner, it can't have happened! And even the blind man’s parents get caught up in the row, telling the authorities that yes, it was their son, and yes, he has been blind from birth, but yes, it does seem that he can see now, and no, they haven’t the faintest idea why, or what happened!

“Do you want to be made well?” Later in John 5, Jesus tells the man he’s just healed not to sin again or something worse might happen. It’s not the only time he equates paralysis with sin – there’s that time when he’s teaching at home and a man comes with four friends who have to let his stretcher down through the roof because it’s simply too crowded else. And Jesus looks at the man on the stretcher and says “Your sins are forgiven!”

People do get stuck – sometimes physically, like these men, but more often mentally and emotionally. I know several people who found it extremely difficult to get back to normal life after the pandemic. I personally found it nearly impossible to make plans, in case things changed again and we went into another lockdown. That passed off fairly rapidly, but for others, not so much. Perhaps they were frightened that they might still catch Covid-19 – not an unreasonable fear, of course; people do still get it today, although far fewer and it seems far less fatal. Perhaps they had just got used to being mostly at home and only going out briefly for exercise, and changing that habit was difficult. But the thing is, they got stuck, and sometimes needed help becoming unstuck.

“Do you want to be made well?” It's easy to fall out of the habit of allowing God to touch you and change you. I know I have, many times. The joy of it is, though, that we can always come back. We aren't left alone to fend for ourselves – we would always fail if we were. We just need to acknowledge to ourselves – and to God, of course, but God knew, anyway – that we've wandered away again.

That's a bit simplistic, of course – there are times when we are quite sure we haven't wandered away, and yet God seems far off. But I'm not going into that one right now; nobody really knows why that happens, except God! But for most of us, most of the time, if we fall out of the habit of allowing God to touch us and heal us and change us, we simply have to acknowledge that this is what has happened, and we are back with him again.

“Do you want to be made well?” Sometimes dreadful things have happened to some of Jesus' followers, to those who speak truth to power, to those who refuse to conform to this world’s standards. But then, we always seem to be given the strength and the ability to cope with whatever comes. It’s not necessarily true that God never gives us more than we can handle, but what is true is that we don't have to cope alone. God is there, not only changing us,
but enabling us to cope with that change.

It is not, of course, just about healing us as individuals, but as communities – as families, as churches, as societies, even as nations. Being open to God, being open to God’s power to change and heal, can have consequences far beyond ourselves. We may not see them ourselves, we may never know that we were the catalyst, but it can happen, nevertheless.

Do you want to be made well? Amen.

No Difference

 The text of this sermon is substantially the same as the one preached here, only the current affairs have been updated!

Soul Songs - Nourished by Musical Expression

 

As you know, today is Palm Sunday, the day which kicks off Holy Week, when we remember Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem and, frequently, go on to read and think about his arrest, trial, and crucifixion, before the wonderful Resurrection on Easter Day. Most years, we’d be reading about this and, in many churches, they’ll not even have a sermon, but will just read the whole of what are called the “Passion Narratives,” this year it would be chapters 22 and 23 of Luke’s Gospel. That is thought to speak for itself, no need to elaborate!

But this year, the Methodist Church has suggested we just look at the triumphal entry into Jerusalem, and specifically at the way the crowd of disciples, so Luke tells us, burst into spontaneous praise and song when they saw Jesus riding on a donkey.

We’re standing at the edge of Holy Week. The road ahead is about to turn steep – both for Jesus and for us. Today is full of joy and shouting and waving palms, but we all know that just a few days from now, we’ll be walking into the shadow of the cross.

But now it’s time for celebration. There’s a sense of movement, of something important about to happen. And right at the centre of it all is music. Not instruments. Not choirs or pipe organs. But something deeper: people lifting their voices in praise. It’s music from the heart. The kind that doesn’t need tuning or lyrics – it just pours out.

This is what we’re thinking about this morning: how music from the heart nourishes us. In this season of Soul Food, we’re thinking about what feeds us, what sustains us in our faith, what helps us grow strong and rooted as people of God. We’ve thought how we are nourished by all the things, not just bread;
by a safe home for everyone;
by patience and slowness;
by unconditional love and forgiveness;
then last week by companionship;
and today, we think how we are nourished by music that comes from deep within – the kind that rises up when our hearts recognise the presence of Jesus.

Here, on the road to Jerusalem, the music just pours out from the crowd. Spontaneously. They may have started by singing one of the psalms that were traditionally sung on the way to Jerusalem for Passover – in our Bibles, these are Psalms 120 to 134, usually titled “A Song of Ascents”. They include favourites like “I will lift up mine eyes to the hills”, “I was glad when they said unto me”, “Out of the depths I call unto Thee”, and so on. Have a look sometime.

But I don’t think they stuck to the Psalms. Luke’s Gospel tells us that they sang “Blessed is the king
who comes in the name of the Lord!
Peace in heaven,
and glory in the highest heaven!”

No “Hosannas” here, although the other Gospels that record the story have them, but do you see how Luke has cleverly managed to make what they sang echo the song the angels sang at Bethlehem the night Jesus was born? “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom his favour rests.”

And then, when the religious leaders try to make them shut up, Jesus says “Look, if they keep quiet, these very stones will start to shout out!” All creation sings God’s praise, and if it’s dammed up in one place, it will spill out in another. This time of year, springtime, it can feel as though the whole creation is joining in praise! I know as well as you do that the birdsong that we love is actually about sex and turf wars, but it can sound like praise! The blossoms and the spring flowers are again about reproduction, but even still…. Perhaps that is how Nature praises God – in the cycle of the year, in the changing of the seasons.... There’s a hymn we used to sing when I was at school – it’s not in our hymn books – which begins “The spacious firmament on high”, and talks about how the heavens were made by God, and ends by imagining the stars all singing “The hand that made us is divine!” Maybe the stars do sing, at that! And, of course, we’re told that music is a characteristic of heaven! The “heavenly host” praises God constantly, and we are encouraged to join in with that.

Praise isn’t just about making us feel good, or making us feel close to God; praise isn’t just something we do because God demands it. God is worthy of our praise and worship at all times, of course, but there seems to be even more to it than that. It’s as though praise is an integral part of creation, and when we praise God, whether in words or in music, we become part of that. 

Note that “constantly”. It is always the right time to praise God – although sometimes it’s really hard to do. There are times when we simply have no praise in us. And that’s okay, because that’s where being part of a community comes in. It’s not individual praise, it’s corporate praise. If one individual has to drop out for a time, the rest of us can carry them in our own praise. It happens to us all, and is nothing to be ashamed of. But it is worth making the effort, even if you are just mouthing the words and no tune will come – God knows what is on your heart, and will honour your attempts at praise. Sometimes, of course, a flamboyant, bouncy praise song is totally inappropriate – at someone’s funeral, for instance, unless they specifically requested it, or at a time of national mourning, or straight after a mega-disaster. But it is still right to praise God – not for what has happened, of course, but anyway. And there are quieter, more reflective worship songs that will be appropriate then, and the more cheerful ones on other occasions.

I wonder what sort of music enables you to praise God? That’s the joy of the Church – I mean the whole Church, not just us Methodists! It caters to the whole spectrum of Christians, and that includes the music available. For some, it’s the wonderful choral music of Bach and so on – I like to listen to it, sometimes, but for me, it’s not so conducive to worship. But I know it is for others, and maybe it is for some among you.

I personally prefer music I can join in with – traditional hymns, for a start, and many of the more modern choruses and worship songs. Wasn’t it dreadful during the pandemic, do you remember, when we weren’t allowed to sing, but just had to hum with closed mouths behind our masks! I hated that. And there was the time when I had been diagnosed with pulmonary embolisms, and I wanted and needed to go to church to thank God that I had been diagnosed and treatment started ere worse befall. Anyway, came the first hymn and – I absolutely, physically couldn’t! I don’t mean I couldn’t sing in tune – you all know I don’t have much of a singing voice at the best of times – but I simply couldn’t get the air in the right place in my lungs to sing! Incredibly frustrating! Fortunately it didn’t last long, and within a week or so I was singing as loudly out of tune as ever! It is, I think, as well that we are commanded to make a joyful noise unto the Lord, not necessarily a tuneful one!

But the point is, no matter how unmusical we are, the music of praise helps align us with God, and thus nourish our souls. Whether it is listening to other people praise, and praising in our hearts as we do so; whether it is singing aloud, joyfully and, one hopes, tunefully – and whether that singing is when we are on our own, or when we are together as a church – then we are both praising the Almighty and nourishing our own souls.

It is Palm Sunday. Jesus is entering Jerusalem and the crowds – and we – are singing his praises. But we know, as he knew, that he is going to his death. On Thursday we will be remembering how he washed his disciples feet and instituted Holy Communion at the Last Supper, and on Friday, of course, we will be solemnly remembering his death on the cross. But we can, should and, indeed must continue to praise, all through this Passiontide, as it’s called. Perhaps bouncy songs are inappropriate, but there are plenty of others. Perhaps we might want to listen to one of the great Passion oratorios – Handel’s Messiah, for instance, or we might just want to sit quietly and let our praises sort of rise up in silence.

And then will come Easter Sunday, and our praises will spring forth joyfully and unrestrainedly as we celebrate the Resurrection of our Lord. And as the year continues, as we celebrate the Ascension and Pentecost, Trinity Sunday and the long, long stretch of Ordinary Time until it all starts again in Advent, so we adapt our praise, but we don’t stop praising!

Those who wrote the Soul Food series suggest we now sing hymn number 82, “How Great Thou Art”, and reflect on the blessings God has given us while we do so. So let’s stand to sing.