Passion Sunday to
Easter Sunday
There is a sense of completeness that comes with a series of linked
sermons, as each one tells a part of the story in the build up to
Easter, and so here they are, one after another, beginning with...
Passion Sunday
Readings
Philippians
3:4-14
If anyone else has reason to be
confident in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, a
member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew
born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor
of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.
Yet whatever gains I had, these I have
come to regard as loss because of Christ. More than that, I regard
everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ
Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things,
and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be
found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from
the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ, the
righteousness from God based on faith. I want to know Christ and the
power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by
becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the
resurrection from the dead.
Not that I have already obtained this
or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own,
because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Beloved, I do not consider
that I have made it my own; but this one thing I do: forgetting what
lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on
towards the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ
Jesus.
John 12:1-8
Six days before the Passover Jesus came
to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead.
There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one
of those at the table with him. Mary took a pound of costly perfume
made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her
hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. But
Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray
him), said, ‘Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred
denarii and the money given to the poor?’ (He said this not because
he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the
common purse and used to steal what was put into it.) Jesus said,
‘Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the
day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not
always have me.’
Address
What
makes you so passionate that you pursue it for all your worth? When
thinking about Passion
Sunday, maybe we
need to look at passion as we understand it.
When
I first met my wife-tobe,
I, unsurprisingly,
thought she was very attractive. I also decided that she was waaaaay
out of my league. She'd
come back from a holiday and was looking very tanned whilst I had my
usual Arctic-white
pasty face. Much as I was attracted to her, never in my wildest
dreams did I think she'd see anything in me. We
also had a very different outlook on life and she came across as a
strong and engaging woman who seemed very comfortable up on stage
with nothing but her guitar for company. I,
on the other hand, deliberately played a huge drum kit with lots of
cymbals and twin bass drums. This had the effect that when I was on
stage you could see there was someone behind the kit, but not who it
was. I couldn't see the audience and they couldn't see me, which
suited me fine. I was also the one who would gravitate to the back of
a party
where I didn't have to speak to anyone. You see why I thought I
wouldn't have a chance.
Alison
and I went away to the Greenbelt festival as a part of a small group
of people. Now remember that at this time I was a newly graduated
scientist who was very engaged in rational arguments. So had you
asked me if I believed it was possible to go
from attraction to wanting to be married to someone
over the course of a couple of days I would have laughed at you. But
that's what happened. I went from seeing Alison as a beautiful young
woman to realising that, from the depth of my being, she was the one
with whom I wanted to spend my life, despite our differences of
opinion on so many things at that point. You see this had never
happened to me before. I'd had a number of girlfriends and one very
serious relationship, but they had all sort of... happened. I had
never found myself in a position of wanting to pursue someone who I
thought wouldn't be interested in me.
This
was new ground.
With
shared musical
interests as an excuse,
we agreed to meet after work one evening. So I dug
out the nicest pair of
tight jeans I had and a really stylish white shirt and went to the
bookshop where she was then
working.
As
I walked in through the door, she looked up and did a double-take.
That
was a classic moment that remains forever etched in my memory because
at that point I realised that she had
seen me,
really noticed me. And so it began. Alison was the first woman that
I had ever really and truly pursued with a passion, and within a year
of that she was my wife.
But
it raises all sorts of questions now. First it
makes
me wonder what others have
pursued with a similar
passion. I wonder what
you have gone after with all of your heart.
But
then it made me wonder...
...Do
I pursue God with the same kind of passion?
Is
my relationship with Christ so very important that I would
do anything for that love?
Our
two Bible readings contain the stories of two people who made Christ
their passion. And I love the story of Mary of Bethany. But
first let me clear up a couple of points. Mary of Bethany was not
the same person as Mary Magdalene, and nowhere in the Bible do either
of them get portrayed as a prostitute. Now
it is true that Luke has a similar account of a so-called 'sinful'
woman doing something similar to Jesus, but that was at the start of
his ministry and in someone else's house. This
account, however,
takes place in the house of Lazarus, Martha and Mary, three siblings
who lived with one another in Bethany. It
also takes place not very long after Jesus raised Lazarus from the
dead, a miracle which set his fate in stone when the Jewish leaders
saw what he had done.
The
other thing that is probably worth mentioning is that there is some
suggestion that Mary, Martha and Lazarus might
have been quite well off. First they had a family vault for burial,
but secondly because of the financial cost of what Mary did. Now
just so you are aware of the value of the perfume, according to the
complaints Judas made it
was worth 300 denarii.
A denarius was a day's wages. So if the average wage now is
something around £24,000, then the value of that bottle was perhaps
the equivalent of £20,000 worth of perfume. Of
course it may well be that
Mary had saved up for a long while to buy it. Or
perhaps it was
a gift given to her. It
might have been her life savings that she had used
just the previous week
after watching what Jesus did for her in raising her brother. But
whichever way you look at it, this was hugely expensive perfume.
This
was not a cheap gift.
Do
we love
Christ
that much?
Mary
knew she owed Jesus everything. He had given her brother back to
her, and she would have known that this one action, more than any
other, would ensure that Jesus was likely
to be pursued by the
authorities and probably executed.
Jesus had put his life on
the line for the sake of her brother and somehow she needed to
respond with passion to that.
It was in her
act of passion,
of anointing Christ, that
she demonstrated the love she had for him.
Mary knew what was coming, and she wanted to show her gratitude
to him in an incredible
act of love.
Do
we have that kind of passion for Christ?
Do
we want to have that kind of passion, because it is clearly very
costly. But then the more we receive from
someone, the more grateful
we become. I wonder how aware we are of what Christ has done for us?
St.
Paul was. When you look at what is essentially his CV: 'circumcised
on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of
Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to
zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law,
blameless', what we find is a man who, from the perspective of his
Jewish faith, had it all. How many of us could say that, with
respect to keeping the commandments, we were blameless? Yet
everything that he had achieved
he counted as rubbish when he compared it to knowing Christ. Even
the righteousness he had achieved he counted as worthless compared to
the righteousness that was counted to him as a gift from God because
he had put his faith in Christ.
Do
we ever feel that
passionate about anything, let
alone about Christ?
Of
course some might class this as extremism, but there is a difference
between passion and extremism. In extremism you want everyone to
follow you and do what you do. In extremism you are willing to
enforce your views on others to
make them submit to what you believe in.
But
in passion it's as if there are
no others. You barely
notice anyone else because of the focus of your attention on that
about which you are passionate. Passionate
believers in anything don't care about onlookers, just as Mary didn't
care. Being seen isn't a part of passion; it's far more pure than
that.
Do
we get like that with
Christ?
Do
we get like that with anything?
There's a
frightening verse in the book of Revelation chapter 3 when Jesus is
speaking to the rich church of Laodicea. He tells them that he
wishes that they were either hot or cold, but because they were
lukewarm he would vomit them out of his mouth. Riches, all too
often, lead to complacency.
Sadly,
that seems
to be something we have
witnessed here.
Since
news broke that we were being left a big legacy, giving has plummeted
to the point that even the interest earned on the money invested
won't close the gap between
what it costs to run this church and what its parishioners are
giving. We are on the
verge of wasting a gift which,
if used properly, could make such a difference in the parish.
When there is a great
need to invest in people, instead we seem to see it as a way of
backing off our giving. Is this an indicator of the level of
our passion for Christ? Or
maybe we're just not aware of the need.
But
we do
refer to ourselves as being created in
the image of God. And we
do think of ourselves as having
Christ as our brother. So
if we want to look at what passion means, then it is his passion to
do the will of the Father and to open the gates to heaven which
should be our inspiration. It
is his passion for his friend Lazarus, whose death had moved him to
weep, whose raising to life was going to cost Jesus his own life;
that is passion.
The
one thing that keeps coming out over and over again in
these stories is
relationship. My on- going passion for my wife depends on our
relationship. Mary's
passion for Jesus, St. Paul's willingness to count everything he had
achieved as rubbish compared to knowing Christ, these are stories of
relationship. It is by
being in relationship with Christ that we will find we are driven to
passionately live as people of God. If
we are not engaged in that relationship; if we are not praying; if we
are not knowing and being known, then there will be no spark to
ignite passion, there is
only habit and duty.
So
once again it comes back to the time we spend in the presence of God,
recognising the lengths he goes to for us. If
we are lukewarm about prayer, if we are lukewarm about worship; if we
are lukewarm about being silent in the presence of God, then there
will be no passion in our relationship. And if this all sounds
scary, and if it sounds like changing your relationship with God
could be risky because, being English, we know how passion can upset
our carefully controlled world, well you're right, passion is all of
those things. But my own experience is that, in those rare
times when I actually
manage to lay aside all
that I
want and simply focus on reciprocating the love of God, then I
realise I don't care about
the effect it could have on my life.
Nothing
is worth more then him.
Yes, passion can be disorientating because living like that changes
us, but it's a good change.
But
for now, let us ask ourselves about passion. Let us ask ourselves
about how much of an impact on how we live does our relationship with
Christ have. And let us seek him with all our heart and be changed.
And
if you're not sure, then just take a step towards him and see what
happens.
*******************
Changes
(From
the meditation given at The Well on Passion Sunday)
I read
a wonderful fiction book a few years ago in which a woman described
her forty year marriage to a much younger man who was contemplating
asking his girlfriend to become his wife. She said something quite
simple yet very profound to him: 'I have been married for forty years
to four different men, all called Bob.'
Change
is a fact of life.
It
is going to happen to you. Alison,
my wife,
married a young scientist who, like she, wanted to be a full-time
musician. We were both hard
rockers at the time; she with her white electric guitar, white
leather jacket and awesome vocal and me with my huge mock-snakeskin
covered drum kit with double bass drums.
She ended up being a
professional harpist married
to a vicar. What's more,
this vicar, me, started his ministry from a quite rational state of
mind; not averse to the ways of the Holy Spirit by any stretch, but
nevertheless, a scientist through and through. Throughout
my first few years as a
minister, if you wanted to
look at my sermons you would
see an element of the
scientific method about the way I would write. But then, as
many of you remember, my
sister became ill and died.
The
vicar that this church called was, within a year of starting, gone.
Gradually
a new one emerged with a somewhat changed understanding of the ways
of God. That was vicar mark 2. Mark 2 then went on sabbatical and
was then called by God into engaging with the otherworldly viewpoint
of the British Pagan community, something that the early rational and
scientific version would have found very difficult to do.
Change
and change again.
Change
keeps happening to us. Sometimes we curse it because we would like
the status quo to persist. We'd like to not get any older. We'd
like our youthful freedom to remain. We'd like to make plans in the
absolute certainty that they would come to fruition, and so on.
Change just keeps on happening, and most of it, so it seems, is not a
matter of our choice.
Yet
what if I said that not only is change a part of life, but change is
willed by God?
Note
this from Isaiah:
Isaiah 43:16-21
Thus says the Lord, who makes a way in
the sea, a path in the mighty waters,
who brings out chariot and
horse, army and warrior;
they lie down, they cannot rise, they are
extinguished, quenched like a wick:
Do not remember the former
things, or consider the things of old.
I am about to do a new
thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
I will make a
way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.
The wild animals
will honour me, the jackals and the ostriches;
for I give water in
the wilderness, rivers in the desert, to give drink to my chosen
people,
the people whom I formed for myself so that they might
declare my praise.
'I am about to do a new thing.' Those
are the words for the Old Testament reading for Passion Sunday, an
encouragement from God that he is going to accomplish something that
has not happened before. We now read this as referring to Christ, but
in its original context it was all about the people of Judah in
Babylon being brought home from exile.
God does new things. But that does not
necessarily mean things that make life better for us.
The western dream is that you meet
someone nice, set up home, buy stuff, have a family, buy more stuff,
grow old together and enjoy a comfortable retirement into a sedentary
and comfortable old age of at least 90 plus, owning lots of 'stuff'.
But for God's people we are often called to a different way. And
change can be uncomfortable.
Change starts when something to which
we have grown accustomed is altered, and in Isaiah God says, “Look,
I am doing a new thing”. For a time we struggle with this, trying
to integrate it into who we are and finally we make peace with it and
learn to live with what has taken place.
The theologian Walter Brueggemann
recognised that there are three stages to how we respond to change;
Orientation,
Disorientation, Reorientation. I
wonder where you are with respect to these three at the moment.
Think
about the life you currently have. Does
it seem stable at the moment? Have
you reached an equilibrium? Are you happy with that? Have
you reached a place of feeling content that you are doing what God is
calling you to do?
Or
do you feel like you're in a rut and need to do something different?
Imagine
a landscape in front of you. Parts
of it are completely flat and level. Might that describe where you
are at the moment? Might that be the
way of life to which you have become accustomed.
Are you happy with that? Do you feel like you are in the place
where God has called you and
probably doing what you are called to do at this time?
You
can see a long
hollow in the landscape.
What might that mean to you?
The bottom of the it
might indicate a sense of being stuck in a rut, of desiring a change
that never seems to come.
There
are also slopes and contours to
the land. Some
are steeper than others. You may feel that you are in
need of a change but not too sure how to go about that. You
may be wondering whether God is wanting you to do something new. Or
you may be in the middle
of a disorientating change right
now and not sure how to cope with it;
it might feel like you're
sliding down a hill and not in control.
And there is a
small hill. This could mean a number of different things. Maybe
this is a new place, a new orientation, at which you have arrived.
The view is good but you notice how easy it is to fall down the sides
of that. When you're getting used to a new place it's easy to feel
precarious there.
But remember, all
new places feel like that initially. Gradually the ground comes up
to meet you, and slowly rises above your head until you feel you the
'new place' has become the 'old place'. The hill of a re-orientation
can become the plains of an old one.
So where do you
feel you are at the moment? And where would you like to be? And
what are you planning to do about it?
Palm Sunday
Reading
Luke 19:28-40
When Jesus had come near Bethphage and
Bethany, at the place called the Mount of Olives, he sent two of the
disciples, saying, ‘Go into the village ahead of you, and as you
enter it you will find tied there a colt that has never been ridden.
Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks you, “Why are you
untying it?” just say this: “The Lord needs it.” ’ So those
who were sent departed and found it as he had told them. As they were
untying the colt, its owners asked them, ‘Why are you untying the
colt?’ They said, ‘The Lord needs it.’ Then they brought it to
Jesus; and after throwing their cloaks on the colt, they set Jesus on
it. As he rode along, people kept spreading their cloaks on the road.
As he was now approaching the path down from the Mount of Olives, the
whole multitude of the disciples began to praise God joyfully with a
loud voice for all the deeds of power that they had seen,
saying,
‘Blessed is the king
who comes in the name of the
Lord!
Peace in heaven,
and glory in the
highest heaven!’
Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to
him, ‘Teacher, order your disciples to stop.’ He answered, ‘I
tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.’
Address
Picture the scene if you will. It's a
bright spring day, but Jerusalem is up in the hills and there is
still quite a chill in the air, and so, as a crowd makes its way
towards the city for the Passover festival everyone still has their
cloaks wrapped around them. In the midst of one particular group
there is a man who is quite obviously the centre of attention.
Another small group of men are walking towards them, having come from
a slightly different direction, and they have a borrowed donkey in
tow.
Clearly the man at the centre has
planned ahead because he wants to make a statement.
And so as they stand on the Mount of
Olives, with a superb view across the valley to the walled city
opposite, with its colossal temple at the centre, gleaming in the
sun, some of the people put their cloaks over the donkey and the man
climbs on to it.
As the procession winds its way down
the steep hill, others from their group grow so excited at what they
are seeing that they throw their precious cloaks on to the ground in
front of him. Now remember, these people have walked a long way and
camped out over several nights. The cloak was a garment that kept
you warm at night as well as by day. To throw it on the ground in
front of someone was a clear sign of honouring that person.
The symbolism, to any Jew of that
period, was clear and we should take note. Jesus was demonstrating
that he was a ruler who had come in peace despite the way the people
would treat him. Riding on a donkey was a tradition for Israel's
kings.
And so the disciples and the crowd sing
their praises to God. It's also worth noting that, whereas the other
accounts have the crowd shouting 'Hosanna' which translates as 'Save
us', Luke records no such thing. This is typical of Luke, as I've
been discovering, because he actually leaves out some of the material
that Mark has, despite basing his Gospel on Mark's. That's because
Luke has a different understanding of what's taking place, and more
about that will follow in the Good Friday address.
So here we are on a Sunday that became
known as Palm Sunday because of the exuberance of the crowd, and yet
just five days later, Jesus is hanging on a cross. How do you go
from the celebration of Palm Sunday to the wreckage of Good Friday?
One of the questions that we so often ask about this whole story arc
is this:
How could a crowd that was so full of
singing praises to God on a Sunday be so ready to shout out 'Crucify'
less than a week later?
The answer may be more simple than we
often think. They didn't. It's a trick question. I think it's two
different crowds. You see Jesus, like all good Jews living in the
Middle East, would periodically make the journey to the temple for a
festival, but Jesus didn't come from Jerusalem, he came from
Nazareth, from the Galilee region up in the north. And the kind of
responses we often read from the southerners about 'ignorant
fishermen' leads one to conclude that the residents of Jerusalem
probably thought of themselves as cultured and the Galileans as
ignorant northerners with funny accents.
So the scenario could be a little like
this if we were to re-imagine it into our own time and culture. In
the Black Country there has been a prophet with his broad Black
Country accent. He's been speaking out against injustice and he's
been healing people. Then he and his followers walk down, through
Birmingham, around Oxford and eventually into the middle of London.
As they approach St. Paul's Cathedral they start shouting out about
how God has come amongst them, and of course they are all speaking in
their broad accents. Meanwhile all the rich, white, well educated
middle class Londoners who commute in from Richmond look on bemused.
To start with they can barely recognise what the people are saying
because of their accents. Then when they do start to figure it out,
they just look down their noses at them. 'These ignorant Brummies,
what do they know about theology and God?' And in the middle of the
crowd there are a bunch of learned Brummie vicars, called the
Pharisees, who are saying to the followers of our Black Country
Jesus, 'Shhh, stop it. They think we're stupid as it is. They can't
even tell a Black Country accent from a Brummie one!You're not making
it any easier for us.'
But of course, the crowd takes no
notice, and so the Pharisees turn to Jesus, who they know well having
verbally and theologically jousted with him for the last three years,
and ask him to tell his followers to be quiet, at which point Jesus
declares, in his broad Black Country accent, 'I tell you, if they
were silent, the very stones would cry out.'
However, over the course of that week
it all goes horribly wrong. The Black Country crowd start to see the
real danger of the capital city, and when Jesus is arrested, they
kind of melt away, like almost all of Jesus' disciples did. They
become overwhelmed by a new and louder voice; one which is angry at
Jesus and his uncultured ways.
By the end of the week, using trumped
up charges and judicial trickery, the rich, wealthy and powerful
people have the upper hand.
Talking of which, have you noticed how
little the world has changed when it comes to politics?
And so when they shout, 'Crucify!'
there is no one left with the courage to sing praise to God any more.
So I wonder, which crowd would we have
been in? I wonder, would we have kept our nerve? When someone says
to you, 'Are you a Christian?' how do you respond? When the going
becomes difficult, who will still cry out, 'Praise God'? When people
poke fun at us, will we still remember all that Christ has done in
us, the ways we have been changed by the Holy Spirit to become better
people than we were?
So don't be intimidated by what others
think. Don't be intimidated when they say, 'Your beliefs are
rubbish.' Don't be intimidated if, because you are a Christian your
politics change because you know that Jesus always had a heart for
the poor and the disabled. People will mock us.
I think, therefore, that the tale of
two crowds spread across this week, is a reminder to us that there
are going to be times when we are going to have to make a choice.
There are going to be times when, even though we may be embarrassed
by our fellow Christians and what they say and do, we need to be
ready to say, 'You can mock all you want. You can take the mickey
out of me for what I believe, but it changes nothing. Christ is
still my Lord.' Jesus tells the Pharisees that even if he does tell
them to shut up, even the stones will shout out praise.
That's as may be, but wouldn't it be
better if it were our voices?
Good Friday
Let me describe the vicarage garden to you. As I write this I can
see at least three large self-seeded ash trees that weren't here when
we arrived. There's a copper beech which is just coming into leaf
and blossom, several apple trees, one of which has forgotten how to
bear fruit so now has a nesting box instead, and there's a very wild
patch towards the end which is also host to a growing willow arch.
In front of the glass sliding door there is a large bird feeder on
which up to a dozen birds can be seen at any one time although at the
moment there are only three, and about four meters to one side there
is an old birdbath being frequented by a robin.
All of this is true. I could go on to tell you that the grass needs
mowing and the weeds need weeding and that I've just seen a nut hatch
bully two long tailed tits, but that they're persistently returning.
But
now, let me describe
the vicarage garden for you.
I
fling wide the sliding
door and step outside,
wishing that my feet were bare on the damp green grass. As
the door opens the air space I occupy is filled with birdsong. My
senses are almost overwhelmed by the sights and sounds and smells.
As the birds sing, so the bright
spring sun warms the chilled March
air. And my spirit soars as a sense of joy fills the core of my
being. I feel the cares of the day fall from my shoulders and my
spirit gives thanks to the Spirit within me for calling me to such a
beautiful place.
Same garden.
What I began with was factually correct, but the second telling was a
description of what the garden means to me. And this
is how it is with theology and belief. I can, and will, tell you
what it means, in so far as I am able, but I can also tell you what
it means to me, what my experience has been. Both are important, but
only one has the power to challenge us.
So let's remind ourselves about what Christians believe about the
death of Christ.
Our theology, at face value, is very simple. God is utterly perfect;
glorious beyond our comprehension. The Creator of all things, and
this is a big universe, is more powerful than we can even begin to
comprehend. Yet this Creator is also big enough to want
relationships with each tiny member of his creation (and yes, note I
didn't just say 'human'...) But there is a major difficulty with
this. Exposure to God, in all of God's perfection, would utterly
destroy us because we are a long way from perfect. Each of us knows
how, on a daily basis, we screw things up; we do the things we
shouldn't do or we don't do the things we should do. This is what we
call sin; the human propensity to screw things up. And so any
relationship between us in our sinful state and God in his perfect
state is impossible. The writers of the New Testament are then
explicit, that Christ died to save us from our sins; that in some way
his death and resurrection reconciled us to God. The technical word
for this is 'atonement' which is a compound word, 'at-one-ment', that
through the death of Christ we are made at one with God; we are able
to enter an intimate parent-child relationship similar to the one
that Christ himself had.
The difficulty begins in how we understand that Christ achieved that,
a difficulty that is further enhanced because not only does the
Church of England have no official doctrine about the atonement, even
the writers of the New Testament and the church throughout the last
two thousand years has not been able to agree on how Jesus did it.
Permit me a moment to give you a very brief introduction to some of
the major theories, although I'll hold one back for Easter Sunday to
try and explain what I
believe.
In the early church they lived in a culture in which sacrifice was a
part of spiritual life. One would offer up a sacrifice to whichever
deity you followed in the hope that by giving up something of value,
so you would be given something of even greater value, in this
context to be reconciled to God: The principal of unequal exchange.
So for some of the early church they held the belief that Jesus
offered his life as the once and for all ultimate blood sacrifice to
obtain the forgiveness of our sins. The problem for the modern mind
is, why would God need a sacrifice to forgive sins? Can he not
simply forgive them if he is all powerful?
A second early model draws on a comment Jesus made in Mark 10:45
where he says that he offers his life as a ransom for many. The
question that has to be asked would be, to whom is this ransom paid?
Some parts of the church believed that we were held prisoner by the
devil in our sin, but that he released us from his clutches by
receiving what would have been a far greater payment, the death of
the Son of God, i.e. Christ's death was the ransom paid by God to the
devil for us. The devil was then thwarted when the Son was raised
from the dead. He got his ransom but then lost it again. Whilst
there are still people who believe this, again there are questions
about it. No Biblical writer says anything about to whom payment is
made. Many nowadays would question whether this kind of relationship
exists between God and the devil.
Then there are the more popular models which have gained ground over
the last few centuries, which are the substitution models. Here God
is presented as standing in judgement over sin. The penalty of sin
is death and so we can expect nothing more than eternal separation
from God. So far this makes rational sense, regardless of whether
you believe it, hence it's popularity in the modern scientific era.
But it is then suggested that instead of punishing us, God the Father
sent Jesus to be killed on our behalf. God the Father substituted
his Son instead of us and enacted judgement and punishment on him.
Now from a rational perspective one can understand how this works;
it's a kind of balancing the scales. Everyone deserves to die for
their sin and the only one who could die for everyone's sin is God
himself.
Those of you who are parents should be able to detect the problem
with this.
It portrays a God so angry that he has to take it out on someone and
so he takes it out on his Son. Recent scholars have likened this to
divine child-abuse. Whilst many in the Evangelical church hold this
to be the only true interpretation, it is relatively recent in church
history and has massive shortcomings.
So can you see the problem?
Christ's death and resurrection are central to the Gospel, yet no one
can agree on how he achieved what he did, which is the reconciling of
God with humanity. And to make matters more complicated, this year
we are studying Luke's Gospel and there is a body of opinion, not
universal but well supported by good theologians, that Luke has no
theology of the atonement with respect to the cross. Now if this
sounds outrageous, it's worth briefly mentioning something that many
of us are unaware of. Many Christians know of the theory that Mark
wrote his Gospel first and that Luke and Matthew based their Gospels
on Mark's adding material from a separate document called 'Q', and
also the fruits of their own eyewitness researching. That leads to
the assumption that what they did to Mark was to add to it. However,
in Luke's case that isn't true. Luke also deleted some aspects of
Mark's Gospel, and this was a shock to me, as I suspect it may be to
you.
Remember that verse I mentioned a few lines back, that in Mark 10:45
it says, 'For the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to give
his life as a ransom for many'? Matthew has exactly the same thing,
but Luke does not use this verse. He appears deliberately to have
omitted it. What we get instead is a greater emphasis on the Holy
Spirit in his writings than is found in the other writers.
(I should mention that there is also a large block from earlier in
Mark's Gospel that's missing, but it is these isolated verses that
seem to indicate that Luke may have a different understanding of the
meaning of Jesus' death from that of Mark and Matthew.)
Now the debate echoes loud and long across theological journals,
between books and around the internet, asking the question, 'Did Luke
actually believe that Jesus' death atoned for our sins?' I would not
declare myself an expert on this by any stretch, and I don't want to
rehearse the arguments for and against in any depth because it seems
to me that the most important thing is that there are
arguments.
We
can have any number of discussions about how Jesus saved sinners
through his death on the cross, but the important thing is not how
he did it that
he did do it. I think the key comes in Luke
23:44-46, the death of
Jesus. Let me re-read this for you:
It was now about noon, and darkness came over the whole
land until three in the afternoon, while the sun’s light failed;
and the curtain of the temple was torn in two. Then Jesus, crying
with a loud voice, said, ‘Father, into your hands I commend my
spirit.’ Having said this, he breathed his last.
'The curtain of the temple', what does
that mean? To understand it you have to know how the temple was laid
out in several courts. Furthest out was the Court of the Gentiles.
That was as close as the non-Jews could get to the temple. Next you
have the Court of the Women for Jewish women. Closer still was the
Court of the Men. In front of them was the Court of the Priests.
Then you got into the inner sanctum of the temple, and at the centre
was the Holy of Holies, the holiest place on earth where it was
believed that the glory of God dwelt behind a thick heavy curtain.
Only the High Priest could go in, just once a year, and the other
priests would tie a rope around him so that they could haul him out
if he was overcome by the presence of God.
That thick curtain, that thick veil
between the presence of God and the rest of humanity, that is the
temple curtain to which Luke is referring. What Luke is saying, I
believe, is not how Jesus reconciled humanity to God,
but that however he did it, something about his death
meant that there was no longer any barrier between us and God.
And
all of this brings us back to my description of my
garden. I want to close with
a story about how I became a Christian. I
don't tell this story often because I fear it will make people think
that you have to have some amazing experience in order to be a proper
Christian. I prefer to think of it as Jesus whispering to me for
years and finally getting tired of
me not listening and so
he began shouting. We need
to learn to hear the whispers.
So I
was fifteen and, despite having been brought up by church-going
parents, I was
beginning the well trod path
away from the church. I was
discovering girls for the first time in earnest and just, kind of
moving on. My
next door neighbour, Helen, with whom I had more or less grown up,
had become involved with a local church youth group. She kept
inviting me to things and I kept finding excuses not to go. But
one day she invited me to go to a film with her and her mum being run
by Youth for Christ. I have
no idea why I said yes on this particular occasion rather than on any
other, but I did. The film
was about how a pastor in New York got to know a street gang called
the Mau Mau's. He persisted
in telling them
about Jesus
over many months and
in the end many of them turned to Christ.
At the
end of the film one of the local Youth
for Christ leaders, Andy, who
was only in
his early twenties, got up on the stage and said he would like to say
a prayer giving thanks for the film. He told me sometime later that
he had no idea what to say, just that he had to get up there. After
the prayer Andy asked us to keep our heads bowed and said that if
there was anyone here who would like to find out more about Jesus
then just to go quietly to the back of the hall and there would be
someone there who would speak to them. It
was at about this point in time that my heart started racing. I
remember thinking clearly to myself, 'I'm OK, I go to church. I'm
OK, I go to church.'
And then I was on
my feet.
Someone
told me I kicked over someone's tin of coke on my way down the aisle
and that I more or less ran to the back. I don't remember that, but
I do remember being met by a local Baptist pastor called John who sat
with me and prayed with me as I gave my life to Christ. The whole
time I was literally shaking and this went on for over an hour.
Helen's mother, who also
happened to be my Godmother, that's how long we'd know each other,
sat next to me and put her arm around me while I shook. From
there on my life changed direction quite dramatically, and I can plot
a direct line from there to here.
The
point of me telling you this is simple.
At
that point in time I knew no
theology. All I knew was
that now Jesus was in my life and I was saved. I didn't know how it
worked.
I
didn't care.
In
fact the model of theology that was explained to me that night, of
penal substitution, is the one that I like least because, as I've
said, it sounds to me like divine child abuse. But it doesn't
matter. It doesn't matter how I have been reconciled to God. All
that matters is that somehow, through Christ,
through my Lord, dying
and being raised, I know that I have been put into a relationship I
do not deserve and which means more to me than anything else.
That's
the difference between sitting at the window and describing the
garden and getting out there and being overwhelmed by it's presence.
Doubtless, over however
many years are left
to me, my theology will change and develop, but what I want more than
anything, for me and for all of us, is an on-going life-changing rich
encounter with Christ that can happen in quiet whispers or loud
shouts.
As a
middle-aged man I can tell you that these days he whispers to me
more. Perhaps I've learned to listen a little better. But this
means more to me than I think I can convey in words. I
know that I sometimes have a bit of a reputation as a woolly liberal,
but that's only because sometimes I can't put mysteries into words, I
have lots of questions and I don't think God gives us simple answers.
But I
do know I'm saved, and I do
know that Jesus did it.
Easter Day
Reading
John
20:1-18
Early on the first day of the week,
while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that
the stone had been removed from the tomb. So she ran and went to
Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and
said to them, ‘They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do
not know where they have laid him.’ Then Peter and the other
disciple set out and went towards the tomb. The two were running
together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb
first. He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying
there, but he did not go in. Then Simon Peter came, following him,
and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, and
the cloth that had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen
wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself. Then the other
disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and
believed; for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he
must rise from the dead. Then the disciples returned to their homes.
But Mary stood weeping outside the
tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb; and she saw
two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying,
one at the head and the other at the feet. They said to her, ‘Woman,
why are you weeping?’ She said to them, ‘They have taken away my
Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.’ When she had
said this, she turned round and saw Jesus standing there, but she did
not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, why are you
weeping? For whom are you looking?’ Supposing him to be the
gardener, she said to him, ‘Sir, if you have carried him away, tell
me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.’ Jesus said
to her, ‘Mary!’ She turned and said to him in Hebrew, ‘Rabbouni!’
(which means Teacher). Jesus said to her, ‘Do not hold on to me,
because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers
and say to them, “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to
my God and your God.” ’ Mary Magdalene went and announced to the
disciples, ‘I have seen the Lord’; and she told them that he had
said these things to her.
Address
In
that reading from John's Gospel we hear of the first encounter that
the risen Jesus has with Mary Magdalene. Initially she doesn't
recognise him which seems strange to us because we wonder how
she could not have known who he was, that is until we put a few
things into the mix. Mary
might
well have held
her grief in the day before while she, with the other women, had
begun the preparation of the spices and ointments with which they
were going to anoint his body. Those
of
us who
have been bereaved know that there is a time between death and
funeral when we go on autopilot to do what must be done. If
that's how it was for Mary, when
she arrives at the tomb to find it empty that grief is going to flow
over her in wave upon wave, so her eyes are going to be flooded with
tears. It is also sunrise, and if she has been looking into a dark
tomb and then turning
around
to see someone who may well have the sun behind him, she's going to
see a silhouette. On top of that, have you ever had that experience
of running into someone you know well in an unexpected place? You
know that initial disconnect before you place them? It
happened to me at sunrise last Easter when a good friend who doesn't
live locally came to the service as a surprise, and because I didn't
expect to see her, and the light level was a little low, I didn't
recognise her. Well
imagine how much more when you saw the person die two days ago. How
much more difficult would it be for your
mind to accept what it's seeing. So
it is not until that moment when he says her name that she knows who
he really is, and responds saying, 'Teacher!'
I
wonder how
you think Jesus would have said, 'Mary', and how she would have
responded with 'Teacher'. Remember,
there is no punctuation in the original, so it's even possible there
would have been a question in her voice. Would
there have been a long pause while the penny dropped? Would there
have been a 'Teacher?...... Teacher!!!' moment?
But
it strikes me that the most important thing about this is hearing him
say her name. It is not the name itself but the way he says it, the
way that only he can say it. There
is something deeply significant about hearing our name spoken by
someone special to us, but there is more going on here. There
is something deeper being hinted at by the speaking of her name.
Something
else takes place which makes us wonder even further about the
significance of this exchange and
it's because
Jesus tells Mary not to hold on to him as
he's not yet ascended.
What
might that mean to Mary and what might it mean to us?
I
think
it's this: Jesus has named
Mary in the first day of a New
Creation.
In this new creation he communicates far more by sound, by voice, by
speaking
our
names, than by seeing him. People
often say that they wish they could have been there and seen it with
their own eyes. Indeed that's exactly what Thomas said about the
first resurrection appearance of Jesus to the disciples which
he missed.
But that was the old creation. In the new creation the risen Christ
speaks not just to those who can physically see him, but to anyone
who wishes to hear him. By being risen and ascended he is able to
send the Holy Spirit in such a way that anyone who asks, who learns
how to listen, can hear him speaking. We don't have to hold on to
him because, within us, he holds on to us.
So what then is this new creation?
Well in some ways it is like the stories told of Adam, Eve and God
walking in the garden together. Remember, Jesus was arrested in a
garden and here he meets Mary Magdalene in another garden. The
garden motif is no accident. He shows her that in this new creation
it is once again about walking together, but rather than walking
alongside each other, through the Spirit, he will be walking within
her.
How
then has he made this new creation?
What
is this new thing that has taken place? Think
of it like this, and
this is what I promised in the God Friday address; this is the
closest I have come to in understanding what the death and
resurrection of Christ means.
In
the mists of time emerges a story of God's intention that he would
walk alongside his people, but his people, represented by Adam and
Eve, continually put blocks in the way. We arrive at a point where
we have screwed things up so much that it is no longer possible to be
with each other. The perfect love and beauty of God has become more
than we can bear because
of our human ability to screw things up, otherwise known as 'sin'.
And
so rituals were put in place to try and deal with this.
In
Old Testament times, on what was called the Day of Atonement, or Yom
Kippur, the Jewish High Priest would lay his hands on a goat, called
the scapegoat. He
would pray on to the goat all the sins of the people, all the ways in
which they had screwed things up. Then the goat would be cast out of
the city to take with it all of the things that they had done wrong
away from them so that they could walk closely with God again. With
time came a fear that, what if the goat came back? What if it
brought the sins of the people back into the city. And so the
scapegoat was taken out of the city and killed so that the sins of
the people would die with the goat. But they had to do it year after
year.
This was a ritual that the people performed, and it didn't solve the
problem. And so God took upon himself the way to solve this issue
once and for all by sending his Son instead. That gives us a more
complete picture of what happened on Good Friday. Jesus, by the will
of the Father and his own agreement, becomes the scapegoat on to whom
the Father lays the sin of all humanity. When he dies everything
that we have done wrong, everything that we are doing wrong and
everything that we will do wrong, dies with him.
Some people talk of Jesus taking the punishment for our sins, but
it's much deeper than that. He actually takes the sins themselves
and destroys them in death so that there is nothing, absolutely
nothing, that you can do, or that you have done, that can come
between you and the love that the Father has for you. Nothing.
But the story isn't over yet. In demonstration of his power over
this and to bring a new start, a new creation, Christ is raised from
the dead, yet is somehow more powerful, more real than he was before.
This is the new humanity, the resurrected body that can live in the
presence of God because everything that we ever did wrong has been
dealt with and destroyed.
And
so now we are in the position where Christ calls each of us by name,
and walks within us. He
can speak your name and call you into the new garden where we walk
with him. This is why St. Paul wrote about becoming a new creation
in which the old order has passed away and everything has become new.
That's
why our
celebrations
today means we are celebrating the start of everyone being given the
chance to begin
again, just
like the three people who were baptised at sunrise this morning.
All
we have to do is say yes, I
want to be a part of this new creation. And then it all begins
again.
