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(beware it’s a loooong one! Written for Hednesford Pentecostal church)
Being, doing, speaking
James 1:19-27; 2:14-26; 3:1-12
Intro
I want to preach to you this morning from the letter of James. James is sometimes a neglected letter – he doesn’t have a lot of doctrine in his letter, in fact he doesn’t seem especially interested in theology. James is what we’d call a practical theologian – he’s more interested in how we live our lives than in abstract issues. But James certainly knows his theology. As we’ll see, a lot of what he says seems to come out of deep reflection on Jesus’ parables.
It’s a letter that isn’t written to anyone in particular. In fact, it may not have been written as a letter at all, but simply been a record of James’ own sermons, and then circulated around the churches, these being the days before you could hear your favourite preacher by clicking on their website and downloading a podcast.
In any case, James is writing to the church, to committed Christians who already know a fair bit about their faith. To people like us. And what he’s really interested in talking about is this: What does it mean to be a Christian? What should a Christian look like, sound like? How should a Christian live?
Now the letter is too long for me to talk about the whole thing, so I’m going to pick out three of my favourite passages and see what we can learn from them. So we’ll be looking at what James says about Being a Christian in Chapter 1: 19-27, then at what he says about Doing things Christianly in Chapter 2:14-26, then at what he says about Speaking Christianly in Chapter 3:1-12. Being, Doing, Speaking. In every area, James is trying to correct some mistaken ideas we might have about how we are, do, and speak as Christians.
1. Being a Christian
James 1:19-27
It’s tempting to understand being a Christian as really being about a decision we made to believe or trust in God. I’m sure that all of us have heard stories of how people ‘came to faith’. Perhaps we’ve had to tell our own story. Sometimes there are amazing events that prompt people to make a commitment to God. Sometimes people are won over by seeing the example of their friends or family and want to be like them. Sometimes people think through what seems to make sense to them and make a decision. There are thousands of different stories. But most of us, when we’re asked to talk about how we come to be a Christian, will talk about some moment when we came to make a decision. It might be one decision amongst many, but we tend to think that there was a moment when we weren’t a Christian and a moment when we were, and that sometime between the two we made a decision to change. That sort of story can be inspiring to others and it can be helpful for us, to help us remember how we came to be here, but there is a danger: the danger that we think being a Christian is all about making that decision, the danger that we think that was the hard part, the danger that we think we can put our feet up and think ‘that’s it, now I’m saved’.
James is very aware of that danger. Perhaps he’d come across people who had misunderstood what Paul preached about being saved by faith, and thought that one they were saved it didn’t matter how they lived. We don’t know, but he’s certainly setting out to shake us up a bit if we’ve got at all complacent. For James, however important a moment of making a decision or commitment might be to us, it’s only a first step, and one that might end up leading nowhere. In fact, he’s not that interested in how we come to start being Christians at all. What he’s interested in is being a Christian as an activity – not just something you passively are, but something you choose to do.
If you turn to James 1:19-21 you can see James talking about how we come to be Christians. He says (I’m paraphrasing here) – stop getting angry and stop loving the sound of your own voice and start listening. That’s how you start to produce some fruit of God’s righteousness in your life. So, clear away any wickedness that’s entangling you and stopping you from growing, and welcome the implanted word that can save you. James is so uninterested in the moment we actually become Christians that he leaves it almost to an afterthought, so let’s turn things round to see what James is saying: the word is implanted in you, you need to welcome it meekly, clear away any wickedness entangling you, and produce fruit by living in a way that is holy.
Am I the only one to catch echoes of Jesus’ parable of the sower here? James is really saying ‘be good soil’. Let the seed put down deep roots in you, clear away the weeds, and produce a good crop. For James, the moment of decision hardly features – the soil doesn’t choose to have seed planted in it – or perhaps its better to say that for James there is no single moment of decision. Every moment is a moment of decision, to accept the seed, to pull out the weeds, to produce fruit.
He then talks about the ways we can do that: by choosing to not just hear the word but also do it, and by controlling our tongues. We’ll look at these in some detail shortly, but let’s just see what he says about them here, in verses 22-27.
Be doers, not just hearers of the word, he says. If you just hear the word you’re like someone looking into a mirror and doing nothing about the mess that you can see. Hearing the word, hearing God’s will for us, is supposed to make a difference to how we live. When we look into that mirror, we’re supposed to not just see that we need to brush our hair, we’re supposed to actually do it!
Perhaps if James was alive today he’d have used the phrase ‘you talk the talk, but do you walk the walk?’, except that for James, talking is the thing that’s at the top of his list of things we need to do right. If we don’t think about what we’re saying, he says, we’re deceiving ourselves and our Christianity is nothing but a waste of time. If it isn’t to be a waste of time, if it’s going to be a way forward, it has to involve caring for the most vulnerable in society.
2. Doing Christianly
James 2:14-26
We live in an age where we are encouraged to think that what is inside us is the most important thing. Our thoughts, our feelings, our sense of identity. Adverts don’t sell us products, any more, they sell us ideas, feelings, ways of seeing ourselves. If we are acting in accordance with our highest ideals we will talk in these terms: ‘It felt right’, ‘I knew it was the right thing’, ‘I felt that was where I belonged’.
Some of the roots of this lie in Christian teaching, of course. Jesus criticized the outwardly-righteous Pharisees for their hypocrisy – the way they play-acted holiness by doing the right thing when their hearts were far from God. If our hearts and minds are not right with God then whatever apparently holy things we do will make no difference.
But there is another side to this, and James feels it’s time to redress the balance. He’s writing to followers of Jesus who already know all this, to people familiar with Paul’s teaching that we are saved by faith. And so he comes to the section of his letter that we so frequently misunderstand: James 2:14-26. Martin Luther, reading this, was so convinced that James was contradicting Paul’s message of salvation through faith alone that he said the letter shouldn’t be in the Bible at all, that it was ‘a letter of straw’. If we read carefully, though, I think we’ll see that James isn’t contradicting Paul. He’s saying something different that stands alongside it.
‘What is the point of your faith if you do not have works too?’ James asks. ‘What is the point of being right on the inside if you aren’t also right on the outside where it can be seen?’ You can know that the naked and hungry should be clothed and fed, but that’s worthless unless you do it. Even Abraham, Paul’s great example of justification through faith, is really an example of justification through works, because his faith was demonstrated in his actions. James’ point here is not that we are not justified through faith, but rather that unless that faith bears fruit in our actions it was never true faith in the first place.
The image at the back of James’ mind is that of the seed again. Good seed in good soil is fruitful. But if it can’t put down roots or it’s choked by weeds then it won’t bear fruit. James’ concern is that faith without works is ‘dead’, ‘barren’, and will not be ‘bought to completion’. If the seed that has been implanted in us is welcomed in, then it will grow and bear fruit. Faith is always demonstrated in our actions, so that by our works people will see our faith. It’s certainly true that, as Jesus saw, people can have works without faith. However, says James, you cannot have faith without works. The person who thinks they are a Christian and yet does nothing is not, no matter how sincerely they believe. Faith changes us and changes others through us or it isn’t faith.
3. Speaking Christianly
James 3:1-12
‘Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me’ the old rhyme goes. It’s obviously untrue, as a moment’s reflection will tell you, but it’s amazing how easy it is to dismiss the power of words. Words don’t leave any scars, so it’s easy to think they didn’t hurt, but anyone who has ever been the victim of gossip will tell you otherwise.
James doesn’t make this mistake. He’s already mentioned the importance of controlling your tongue if you are to let the seed of righteousness grow in you, but now, in chapter 3:1-12 he returns to the theme. James talks about speaking Christianly by using several vivid images. First, he highlights the importance of controlling our speech by suggesting the tongue is like the bit and bridle of a horse or the rudder of a ship. If we can control this one apparently small thing, we can control everything else we do. The uncontrolled tongue, however, is like the tiny flame that sparks a forest fire. For good or evil, this easily-underestimated part of our bodies has massive power.
It’s easy to think that James is exaggerating here when he starts to speak about the tongue being a restless evil, set on fire by hell itself. But if we look at what he is saying, I think we can understand. James is simply reflecting on the very human experience of sin. This is James’ equivalent to Paul’s discussion of fighting against his own self in Romans 7.
The tongue, says James, is like the whole person in miniature. With the same tongue we praise God, and curse others, we sing hymns and pray and lie and spread gossip. No-one can tame their own tongue, and the things we say witness against us.
The tongue shows us how messed up and sinful we are: we are like a spring that pours forth fresh and salt water from the same opening, or a fig tree that produces olives. You go expecting something sweet, and come away with a bad taste in your mouth.
Nothing in nature is like this, says James. Things are true to their own inward nature, springs produce fresh water, grapevines produce grapes. But with human beings we see something unnatural: Christians lie and gossip.
On the face of it, James seems to be making a point like Jesus’ – criticizing us for our hypocrisy. But the examples suggest something deeper: a warning, similar to Jesus’ parable of the barren fig tree. (Lk 13:6-9) Things are always in the end true to themselves, he says. That’s what we see in nature. That’s why good works must flow out of faith. But this means that the opposite is also true. If we produce no fruit, then the seed in us never grew. And if we produce bad fruit, then the plant has become diseased, good for nothing but chopping down and throwing on the fire. If you tell lots of lies, in the end it becomes obvious that you are a liar. If you spread stories about others, in the end it becomes obvious you are a gossip.
James leaves his discussion with the warning, because he has already given his solution back in 1:19. There is only one way to try and tame the tongue, to try and speak Christianly. Be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger.
All of us make many mistakes when it comes to our tongues, he says (3:2), so it’s best to speak less. Especially if you’re one who teaches others. Which perhaps suggests that I too have now said enough!
Conclusion
So, that brings us to the end of our quick trip through the letter of James. James warns us not to get complacent, and think that because we’re saved we can sit back. Being a Christian is an activity, not a state of being, he says. It’s what you do, not who you are. He warns us that just like the seeds in the parable, receiving the seed doesn’t guarantee it will bear fruit, and it is fruit, in our lives and the lives of others that shows that the faith we have is real, not the sincerity of our feelings. If we’re going to produce that fruit, we need to let the seed grow deep roots in us, and we need to clear away any weeds that might be growing. And the main weed he identifies is the sin we commit with our mouths – the things we say. If we cannot control our tongues, he suggests, then we will never bear fruit. Christians should not be liars, gossips, or people who are known for their anger. But that is what we are. In the end our true nature will show itself through our works, says James. Not through the purity of our faith kept locked inside us, but through the way we live our lives.
And so, he gives some simple instructions. They sound too simple, really. Surely, we might think, these are not the sorts of things one needs to say to a church full of devout Christians. But James does. He thinks we need to hear it. So hear it:
Be quick to listen.
Be slow to speak.
Be slow to anger.
If we can do these things, then maybe we can live in a way that shows who we really are. Amen.
I want to thank anyone reading here at church who invited someone to church this week. We were able to almost fill the church and with about 85 people in total and many giving very positive feedback I’m thrilled and thinking about doing it again next year!! (It’s usually only been done every other year)
Zaccheus
It’s not a popular job: tax collector. And it was even less popular in Roman-occupied Palestine. It was the Roman’s taxes they collected. A tax collector was a collaborator. A sell-out. A traitor. Especially the chief tax collectors. And Zaccheus was a Chief Tax Collector. Someone who’d compromised their principles. Not popular at all. Quite the opposite. You wouldn’t want to be seen with a tax collector. What would people think? You were ratting someone out? Telling the authorities that someone wasn’t paying enough? It would have been a lonely life. Probably most of his friends were other tax collectors.
No wonder, really, that so many of them took the chance to line their own pockets. Asking for a bit more, inventing some new taxes. Well, it wasn’t like the Romans paid them that much. Certainly not enough for what they had to put up with. It didn’t make up for everyone hating them, but it gave them a bit of security at least. Corrupt. Especially the rich ones. And Zaccheus was rich. Traitors. Sinners.
Not the sort of people you’d find in the synagogue on the Sabbath. A bit too worldly for that. Corruption. Loneliness. Compromise. Sin. Zaccheus did not have a great life. And he was short too. So short he couldn’t see someone through the crowd. He couldn’t see Jesus.
Why did he want to see Jesus? The story doesn’t tell us. Maybe Zaccheus didn’t really know himself. He’d heard of him, obviously. Minor celebrity, holy man, famous for his teaching and his miracles. And he was passing through Jericho. Maybe Zaccheus just got curious. He wanted to see who this Jesus was. He’d heard some stories, but he wanted to see for himself.
Only when he got there he couldn’t see. This was the man who was used to sitting down at his table while people queued up to pay him money. He wasn’t used to this. He had to run ahead, on his short legs, puffing and panting, trying to get ahead of Jesus, trying to get to where the crowd thinned out a bit. But even then he couldn’t see. So he had to climb up a tree to get a better look. The chief tax collector climbing up a tree. It would have been so humiliating if someone had noticed. And then they did.
Jesus looked up at him and spoke to him. Zaccheus had really just gone along to look and see. He was curious. He hadn’t planned on getting involved. He hadn’t imagined that Jesus might actually want to talk to him. No-one wanted to talk to him.
But Jesus did. Not only did he talk to him, he invited himself to his house. And he knew who he was. He called him by his name. He chose to stay at the house of the chief tax collector. As if he thought he wasn’t the sort of person you avoid. As if he though he wasn’t corrupt. A sinner. A traitor. A sell-out. Even though it made the crowd mutter about him. And they did mutter. It was a risky thing for Jesus to do.
Perhaps that was what made Zaccheus do it. Because if there’s one thing the taxman doesn’t like doing, it’s giving people’s money back. It must have been the riskiest thing he’d ever done. Letting go of his money. His security. And it made a big impression on Jesus. “This is what I came here for today.” He said “To see lives turned around. To see the people no-one wants to know brought back into God’s family. To seek out and save the lost.”
I wonder what you’ve come here for today? Maybe, like Zaccheus, you don’t know. Maybe you’ve just come to look and see what all the fuss is about. Maybe, like him, it’s not what you’re used to. Maybe it’s a bit embarrassing – you’re sure you’ll be spotted doing something silly. Or maybe you’re a bit more at home. Maybe it feels familiar, being in church again.
However being in church feels, whether strange or familiar, I hope that like Zaccheus you’ll meet with Jesus today. It’s funny that, just like Zaccheus, we usually don’t expect to. Even if we’ve come to the place we know he’ll be. At the most we expect to hear about him, not actually meet him. But actually he’s the reason we meet together. Jesus, who came to seek out the outsiders, the ones who haven’t been here for a long time, no matter where they’ve been and what they’ve done. Because he wants to welcome all of us into his family.
Mark 9:30-37: The Child and the Argument
It’s a scene we’re very familiar with from the gospels – Jesus travelling across the Galilean countryside with his disciples. He’s trying to teach them something about how he’s going to be betrayed, die and then rise again, and they can’t seem to understand. It’s probably got something to do with the argument that’s been rumbling on for miles. Not in front of Jesus, of course, but behind his back, when they think he’s not looking, while he’s going on about the Son of Man doing this that and the other. The argument. Who’s the greatest? It was a good one, could go round and round for days, because of course only Jesus could say for sure. But it seems to have taken up a lot of the disciple’s time and energy. Who’s the greatest? There are some obvious front-runners. Peter, ‘the rock’, Jesus told him he’d build his church on him. But, well, he’s not the sharpest tool in the box is he? Big on enthusiasm, short on common sense. John, ‘the disciple Jesus loved’, Jesus’ best friend, but never shown particular favouritism, or given extra responsibility. Then there’s the others. Levi the tax collector – probably the best educated of the lot of them, great conversion story, sinner turned to saint that sort of thing. Simon the zealot – formerly member of a radical revolutionary sect, never compromised, never wavered in his convictions, always given his all for God, not like half of them, who’ve spent more time being fishermen than being disciples. And that’s not even considering the women. Because, chances are, the twelve didn’t – stands to reason that the greatest would be a man, would be one of the twelve.
On and on it went, with every incident providing evidence to bolster the case for one disciple or another. It must have driven Jesus round the bend. Or would have done if he hadn’t been so patient. So when they get to Capernaum, he decides enough is enough. This rivalry, the constant comparisons, the pride, the insecurities, everyone trying to figure out a pecking order, all of it was making it impossible for the disciples to hear what he was saying. So he does something about it. He pulls a child into the centre of the room.
The story doesn’t tell us who they were. It doesn’t tell us if they were a boy or a girl. It doesn’t tell us how old they were. Maybe they were the child of whoever’s house they were staying in that night. We aren’t told. And I suspect we aren’t told for a very important reason – the disciples didn’t know. Until Jesus pulled them into the centre of things none of these self-important men had even noticed the child was there. Children had little status in the ancient world. To men wrapped up in an argument about who was the greatest, they would have barely registered. Jesus pulls this child, who they had thought beneath their notice, into the centre of things and says “Whoever wants to be first must be last and servant of all.”
The disciples are the ones wanting to be first. The child is the one who is last in the room. “You must be like this.” Jesus is saying. Instead of being obsessed with their own status, forever competing with those around them, seeing them as rivals, they are to act as if they know they are less important, as if competition were pointless.
But that isn’t all that Jesus is trying to teach them. “When you welcome this child, you welcome me and the one who sent me.” He says. Not only should the disciples be like a child, Jesus himself is like them, and so is God. Jesus has come as a servant, as one completely outside of the games of status that consume those they serve. He has set aside his own interests and put those of others first. And until the disciples understand this is the character to his mission – the first who is last and servant of all – they will not understand what he has been trying to teach them about where his mission will lead. Jesus, the servant of all, will be betrayed and killed, because he is putting the needs of others first.
We’ve all got our bugbears, our little quirks, the things we like and don’t like, and there’s nothing wrong with that – as long as we put the needs of others first. Because that’s what children have to do. It’s not much fun being a child – however much we might tell them it is. Your life, your priorities, are dictated to you by someone else. And you can’t do much about it. Jesus wants us to be children. By choice. To choose to allow our priorities to be dictated by others. It doesn’t mean we can’t have our little quirks – whether that’s a liking for Thomas the Tank Engine or for having others admire our knowledge of gardening. As long as we realise that there will be times when the needs of others must come first, when we must allow our priorities to be set by God, not us.
What is in your heart?
Todays readings really speak much of what is in our hearts. Are our hearts changed by our faith? Are we people who are transformed by the love between us and our God? I wonder if you were really praying the words of that last hymn for yourself, genuinely?
It’s one of those Sundays where the lectionary doesn’t give it to us gently- but then, matters of the heart are rarely gentle on any of us! Jesus, in the gospel reading, is addressing the Pharisees, seen by all as some of the most religious, publicly devout people of the day. They not only acted in accordance with the commandents in everything they did, they went beyond the minimum, they were exemplary. All of the actions Mark describes in the gospel: washing hands, purifying themselves after going to the market, washing cups, all of it underlined that these were extremely devout religious people. And Jesus calls them hypocrites. He says “you honour God with your lips, you worship him publicly, you teach religious doctrine, but your heart is far from God, so it is all in vain”
Essentially if I were to modernize the gospel into our context it might sound a bit like Jesus were saying : you can come to church every Sunday, kneel devoutly at the Altar, Sing Hymns, wear robes, serve, represent others on the DCC, carry a bible in your bag and turn up for all the proper study groups and worship services but none of this means anything if what’s going on on the inside isn’t right. Ultimately there is a warning against deceiving ourselves here. We are not to think that being a fine upstanding church-goer makes us holy, or pure, that it makes us special in God’s eyes. God doesn’t look at what we do between 10 and 11 on a Sunday morning. He looks at our hearts.
What is in our hearts when we come to church really matters- not least because our actions and our motives, the inner and the outer, are all connected in some way. I think James was perhaps getting at this when he said ‘be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves’. He wasn’t emphasizing actions over understanding or putting a work ethic onto our faith- trying to say that our works, or our actions are more important than our beliefs or our faith – but rather he was trying to communicate how we can deceive ourselves in our hearing and understanding if we don’t live out our faith in actions. Because it’s often in our actions that others can see what’s going on.
Do I seem to be contradicting myself here? I started by suggesting with Jesus that we should worry about what’s going on on the inside – in our hearts, which might be completely at odds with what’s going on on the outside. Now I’m saying with James that what is going on on the outside is a pretty accurate indicator of what’s going on on the inside. I don’t think there is a contradiction here, though, and the key to seeing how Jesus and James fit together is in realizing that both of them are talking about the way we deceive ourselves by thinking that something other than letting God into our hearts is good enough. Jesus says “If you just go through the motions of religion, however devoutly, but you never let it touch your heart, you’re kidding yourself and wasting your time. None of the religious stuff you fill your time doing will impress God in the slightest.” James says “If you sit and listen to sermons, sing stirring hymns, read the Bible, know your faith inside out, but never actually do anything that shows it makes a difference to you, you’re kidding yourself: it doesn’t make a difference to you at all. It’s never found its way into your heart, even if it’s made its way into your head, because if it had, it would change your life.” Behaving in a Godly way isn’t enough. Thinking Godly thoughts isn’t enough. But that’s not just because you need to do both (though you do) – it’s because you need to do something deeper, you need to love God in your heart. If we don’t, say Jesus and James, we’re deceiving ourselves.
Because there’s something neither of them say, because they think it’s so obvious it needs no spelling out – we’re not deceiving God. And maybe, we’re not deceiving anyone else either. Perhaps we are deceiving ourselves if we think others don’t know or aren’t aware of when our actions are perhaps a little too slow, when we need to be persuaded grudgingly to do what we know we should. Or when our actions are a little too fast, because going through the motions of doing the right thing has become an automatic response that doesn’t really mean anything to us. When we find it hard to be quiet or listen to each other. When we snap or make rude or unhelpful remarks at or about each other. When we loose sight of the other people around us and their needs and focus on our own too much. When the way we act, or don’t act, gives us away, reveals what’s going on in our hearts.
So did you really mean it when you sang ‘Purify my heart’? Will you really mean it when you say ‘Peace be with you’ to the others around you? Will you really mean it when you accept the body of Christ, broken for you? That can sound like a trite question, or a facetious one. It might sound like an overly intrusive question, one that’s getting a bit too personal. But it’s not. It’s central to what we’re here for. Do you really mean it? Is it coming from your heart? Is it coming from my heart? Because if it isn’t, we’re just deceiving ourselves.
Purify my heart,
Let me be as gold and precious silver.
Purify my heart,
let me be as Gold, pure Gold.
Refiner’s Fire,
my heart’s one desire
is to be Holy.
Set apart for you, Lord.
I choose to be Holy.
Set apart for you my master,
ready to do your will.
I’ve been reflecting on the Parish profile that I read on the Internet back in May 2008. Reflecting on the truths, the things that weren’t quite as true as you probably wanted them to be, and the things that never quite made it on to the profile at all and I’ve enlarged a rather important page of that profile and stuck it over my desk. Partly because it helps remind me what you wanted in a vicar (and why I applied as I felt my gifts were a good match!) and it has a set of Parish Objectives. I think you may hear some of these a bit more often this next year!
Today I am going to start by talking to you about Objectives number 2 + 3. That is this:
‘to empower each person in St John’s to use their talents and time to serve both in the church and in our community’
‘’to take to the community the unconditional love of God, making new disciples of all ages.’’
Well, this week you have an opportunity to demonstrate that you are working on these objectives! This week each of you is going home with an invitation to pass on to a friend or neighbor inviting them to come back to church at the end of this month.
But first, I sat and asked myself the question – What are we inviting people to?
Clearly coming to church is about more than what happens on a Sunday BUT we are inviting people back to church specifically for a Sunday service. So what are we inviting them back to? Why do you come?
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I hope that for all of us in some way the answer is that we come because we are followers of Jesus. There may be other things as well – maybe you like to sing, maybe your friends are here, maybe you don’t know what else you’d do on a Sunday morning – but as well as all that it’s because of Jesus, because we follow him. That sense of being a follower of Jesus is a common thread that takes us all the way back to those first men and women who left everything to follow him as he travelled around healing, teaching, and preaching the good news. It puts us in the same shoes as the disciples in our reading today. By being here, we are making a statement: Jesus is important to us. But that’s not enough. Just as he did with his followers then, Jesus wants to ask us why. Why do we follow him? Who do we say that he is? In our reading it is Peter who gives the answer to that question: Jesus is the Christ, our ruler and our saviour. It’s the textbook answer, he goes to the top of the class. But then, moments later, in some of the harshest language he uses anywhere, Jesus rebukes him as if he were the devil himself. And it’s because Peter can’t accept that his saviour and Lord will be leading them, not to a triumphant endless party where all their troubles disappear, but on the way of the cross – through opposition, hardship, and suffering to defeat and death. Because only then could he really save them.
Peter knows who Jesus is, he has already chosen to follow him, but what he hasn’t grasped is what that really means. He doesn’t really want to accept that Jesus is going to die, and that he is leading his followers on to suffering and death. It’s a common fault. Many of us find it hard to really accept that following Jesus doesn’t entitle us to victory over all our problems. Surely God can sort everything out. Realising that following Jesus doesn’t make us immune to life’s ups and downs can be difficult. But this is the way of the cross, this is what it means to follow Jesus.
Knowing who Jesus is is supposed to help us figure out who we are and how we should live. If Jesus is the ruler who serves us all, the saviour who suffers for us, that tells us, as his followers, who we are. We are not the favoured few who are immune to the hard things in life. We are called to lives that will probably involve suffering – lives of self-sacrifice. And lives where we will need to support each other. That is the truth that Peter had to face up to. Perhaps it’s easy to understand why he didn’t want to accept it. It may not sound like a great advert: “Follow Jesus, and you too can enjoy hardship and suffering in the company of those who are committed to helping you face up to the toughest things in your life. Follow Jesus and be forced to confront your deepest fears.”
So where does that leave us in asking others to consider coming back to church? It’s always tempting to try and ‘sell’ church as something it’s not, to try and present following Jesus as something other than what it is. But that’s the very thing Jesus condemns Peter for doing, trying to live in a dream. We are to invite others to follow Jesus (or at least to resume their friendship with him), but not by pretending everything will be wonderful. We are to invite others to follow because of what we know to be true: what Jesus has done for us, and what he means to us. Asking others to come to church is tough because if we are to do it effectively it means being honest and vulnerable with people, saying something to others about who we think he is.
But it’s vital that we do it. The church will only go on existing if we ask others to join us – it’s one of our objectives. It’s what Jesus commanded his followers to do, and it’s what we need to do if we want the church that we value to continue to be here in the future. We tend to forget that, because for a long time we could just assume that church would go on as long as there were plenty of children being baptized – the church didn’t have to keep inviting people to come along, because there were children who would grow up and take their parent’s places. But those days are gone. We can’t sit back and wait for our children to come along. I expect this village is full of people who were baptized in this church but haven’t been for years. They won’t come just because they were baptized. But they might if they were asked by people who are their friends, by people who tell them the truth, who aren’t trying to give a sales pitch, but just inviting them to join in something important to them.
It’s always tempting at this point to look around and see if there’s someone else in church you can rely on to do some inviting so you don’t have to. Like the vicar. She’s the professional, after all. Why can’t she do all the inviting for us? Well, simply, because I wouldn’t be able to. We’re talking about inviting the friends who know us and trust us, the people we can be honest with. I’ve been here a year. I don’t have those sorts of friendships with people: you do. I’m not here to do your job for you. I’m here to challenge you to do it, to encourage you to be honest, and to help you to love God and your neighbours in a real way. This is what you wanted both from a vicar and for yourselves in your Parish profile – in the objectives. Because at bottom that’s what this is about: being honest and being real with those around you. Who do you say that he is? Is your life real…real in the way Jesus challenges it to be – self sacrifical? There’s two big challenges I’m wanting to put to you over the next year or so, and both of them are about considering how real our faith is and what it really means to us. Next year I’m going to be talking about planning our giving, being real about how much church means to us and what we’re prepared to give for it. But right now I’m wanting to talk about the first of those challenges – being real about church, about our faith, about following Jesus with those around us. We come here week after week, it’s obviously important to us, but are we honest with those around us about what it means to us? Can we show the courage to tell the truth about our faith to those who are closest to us?
I’m sorry if this makes you uncomfortable, but it’s what I’m here for. To ask you the questions, the hard ones and to love you as Jesus loved his disiples- without avoiding the hard questions.
So, what can you do? Back to Church Sunday is at the end of this month. The idea is simple: there are many people who used to go to church but have stopped coming, for all sorts of reasons, but if they were invited back, they might come again. On Sunday 27th September we’re going to celebrate Back to Church Sunday. In many ways it won’t be different from any other Sunday – we’re not trying to pretend St Johns is anything other than St Johns. But what we are doing is having the courage to speak the truth about our faith and what it means to us: to say what going to church means to us, to say that it’s a place where God meets with us, that we think there’s something of immense value here, and we’d like to share that with others.
Ideally this is something you share with those you know best, the friends who don’t come to church but who would value hearing you tell them the truth about what it means to you. But you don’t have to have an in depth conversation with someone, you don’t even have to see them face to face if you don’t want. All you have to do is give or send them an invitation. It might be someone who has been before, it might be a neighbour or friend who has mentioned faith or St John’s but never managed to come along- I am sure there would be a variety of people you think would value the things you value about this church and community. The invites are at the back of church for you to collect. All you need to do is fill out the details of the service on the first side. Leave the second side blank (this is a place for people who come back to church to offer us some feedback!) and then write the name of the person you intend to invite on the 3rd side and tear that side off- and keep it, it is a prayer card for you to pray for that person that you have invited.
Pray. Be courageous. Be open and honest. Pray some more. That’s what my challenge is to you this morning.
Mark 6:1-13
I had some really tough decisions to make when I read the readings for this week because the gospel reading says a lot of different things and there were a lot of different sermons that I could preach from it. There was however one thing that it seemed to me needed to be preached. It’s not easy to preach about and it’s not easy to listen to. I don’t want to preach this sermon and you probably won’t want to hear it but I think it is the sermon that needs to be preached. I’m going to talk to you this morning about the things people say about people in ministry. It will not just be about the things people say about me but it will include that. The reason I’m doing this though is not because I’m wanting to defend myself or have a go at people about things they might be saying about me but because I’m not the only person in ministry in this church. We have a curate, Steve (who has at least 2 years of training left to do with us), we have a lay reader, Joyce. There are a number of other people who take very clear public roles- Gloria, Dorothy, George and Sheila, Bill and Sheila… to name a few! We also have 2 people from this church who are actively exploring a possible call to ordained ministry- who are both looking to serve in ministry at St John’s. All of these people have been and will be affected by the sorts of things people say about them to their face or behind their back. So I’m talking about these things today not just for me but also for them because if we as a church can’t learn how to support and encourage those called to ministry amongst us – we will all be losing out.
Picture the scene. Jesus has just begun to travel around galilee preaching the gospel, healing the sick and doing miracles. It’s his home town of Nazareth. It’s the Sabbath- a holy day. So everyone is gathered in the synagogue for worship. Jesus, with his disciples, has come home. He’s there in the synagogue this morning. He’s probably not planning it as a big event- just passing through but he has a ministry of preaching and healing and people from his home town will have heard what he has been doing elsewhere. So he starts to teach. What do you think happens? Maybe to start with it’s just a little muttering at the back where they don’t think he or his disciples will hear. ‘Who does he think he is?’ ‘Isn’t he getting a bit big for his boots?’ ‘not like he’s a proper rabbi-we know who he really is. He’s just a carpenter.’ By now maybe the mutterings and the significant looks have crept a bit further forward in the synagogue and Jesus’ disciples start noticing. Maybe there’s some of the elders up the front making faces at each other behind him where they think he can’t see. ‘hmm hark at him! It’s Mary’s son (we were never quite sure if Joseph was really his father wasn’t he born before they were married?). Look here’s his brothers- James, Joses, Judas and simon, they think he’s a bit strange’. His sisters were sitting in the women’s gallery, maybe they were some of the ones doing the gossiping. The Nazarene’s might have thought their comments and looks were discreet but they didn’t go unnoticed and there was soon a distinct atmosphere in the room. They thought he was a bit too full of himself, they thought he didn’t really know his place, they thought he’d forgotten where he came from and so they stopped listening. Jesus Said ‘A prophet is honoured for the words they speak, words that are given them by God, the right words for people to hear at the right time. Prophets are not without honour except in their home town, their own house and amongst people who know them’. He said this because when people think they know you they think they already know what you’re capable of. So Jesus did minister in Nazareth but their unbelief, their small mindedness, their assumptions and their gossip restricted his ministry so much that the amazing things he had intended to do became impossible. I want you to consider for a moment the implications of that. Jesus was God. God was limited by human beings and it wasn’t what we would see as big sins, huge issues and problems that restricted Jesus’ ministry in that place. The people didn’t stone him. They weren’t too bogged down in sinfulness to be reached by the good news he had to share. They gossiped, they talked behind his back, they belittled him, but that was enough.
I’m not going to tell you any of the things that I’ve heard said here but there are many examples I could give. I will share some of the things I heard said in my previous posts about the vicars there.
Edited out comments.
I don’t think I’m like those priests and there isn’t anyone involved in ministry here like them so the things being said there will not be the same as the things being said here. But things are being said here and not just about me. Just like in the synagogue at Nazareth, lots of things are being said and taken individually none of them sound that serious, they could all be discredited or put into a different perspective. However together they create an atmosphere within which effective ministry becomes impossible. God was limited by this kind of atmosphere in Nazareth and he will be limited as those he sends in ministry are limited in Heath Hayes. I’m not saying we can’t have genuine grumbles or disputes with people in ministry. Sometimes ministers get things wrong and we need to be told when that happens. Sometimes people in ministry do unpopular things and you need to know that you can express your feelings about it. What I’m talking about is not either of those things. It’s not openly challenging something you feel is wrong.
If I could give you some pointers to help I would probably say: firstly: don’t belittle those you have called to serve you. It will not help them to be better ministers and it may make it impossible for you to be ministered to through them. Our marital status, our children and how we choose to care for them, our parentage, our age, our education- all of these things define who we are, but the significance and authority of our ministry has nothing to do with them. Belittling someone by reference to these things or others like them is really a way of attempting to undermine the ministry they have been called to exercise. Secondly: assumptions. Never assume you know anybody so well that you can predict exactly what they will say and do in any given situation. When we stereotype people, when we pidgeon hole them and write them off and stop listening to them we don’t leave space for God to work through that person in ministering to us. I think both of those pointers are really about respect. It’s respect , yes for the person but ultimately for the calling and ministry that they have- irrelevant of the person and their failings.
So my challenge to you is to not be another Nazareth. Do not limit what can be done here. Don’t reject the possibility of amazing things happening. Don’t force your leaders to dust off their feet as they move on in ministry. Respect those whom God sends you, leave space for him to work through them in your lives. God sends people of all shapes and sizes- sometimes they are close to us and sometimes they are a stranger. If you cannot do this for those who are visible ministers, those who are obviously sent by God – if you cannot show respect to these people then how will you do so to the ones God sends you everyday… to each other?
So your vicar is in the pulpit, it’s the Sabbath, the holy day. I wonder what you’re thinking? Am I limited by your knowledge of me? Are the things that define me barriers for you? I wonder will you gossip? Will God touch just a few through my ministry here or will he do amazing things?
Well, Leah has finally bitten the bullet and started running, so I thought I ought to try and blog a bit more. And here’s my first offering: my first sermon in Heath Hayes, preached on Sunday, reproduced here by popular demand (well, Rosie asked for it anyway).
A couple of explanatory notes first:
I preach from headings rather than full text, so I’m not going to attempt to give a full text version here. I’ll hopefully expand the headings enough that it makes sense what I was saying. It also means that what goes down here is not necessarily exactly what anyone in church on Sunday heard. My sermons tend to evolve a bit depending on the setting.
And I’m experimenting with a new style here. For a while now I’ve been intruiged by the sort of structure used in stand up comedy, in particular Eddie Izzard’s routines, which I love to bits. He uses a structure where he appears to have no obvious progression of thought and be continually lurching off into bizarre and unanticipated flights of fancy yet the same characters or thoughts or ideas get woven into them. And each time a thought gets re-introduced into a new context, enabling it to be seen in a new light, it gets a bigger laugh. I wanted to try this sort of thing in a sermon: building the structure not around a logical progression of thought (as I normally do) but around a single idea, placed in different contexts. This sort of structure is well suited to John anyway, because he thinks like that, and I try to preach in a way that gives integrity to what’s there.
So, without further ado, on to the sermon: John 15:9-17 – Abiding in Jesus’ love.
A story (probably apocryphal): there was once a minister somewhere in scotland who had the habit, when he visited his parishoners, of sitting and listening to them, doing all the normal things you’d expect. But at the door on his way out, he’d turn and quote a verse of scripture at them. And then he’d say “Stick that under yer tongue and suck it like a sweetie”.
John’s gospel takes a bit of time to get your heard around, because John doesn’t think in straight lines. He thinks in spirals. He circles round and round ideas, seeing them from different angles. It’s like sucking on a sweet, a hard-boiled one, that you keep in your mouth and let it move around and around, tasting as more of the flavour emerges.
I think what John is saying in this passage is all about abiding in Jesus’ love. He’s circling around these words of Jesus “abide in my love”, seeing them from different angles. Abide, live in it, make your home in it. And I think what he’s saying about it is this: to abide is to obey, to obey is to love, to love is to abide.
To abide is to obey
The places we live shape us in different ways. My parents house is a semi with thin walls. So I learnt to play music quietly. My mother was a librarian. So I learnt to mark my place with a bookmark. My abiding had a shape. It’s not that there were a set of ‘house rules’ I had to follow or I’d be chucked out. Rather, I became a certain sort of person because of the place I lived. Abiding in Jesus’ love makes us Jesus’ love-shaped. Not ‘now you’re a Christian you’d better behave’ but ‘you’re a Christian, and that will shape you and your behaviour, like it or not’.
To abide is to love, to love is to obey, to obey is to abide.
To obey is to love
Very easy to hear John’s words ‘love your friends’ and think he’s got it wrong. We’re used to hearing about the challenge to love our neighbours, our enemies, to go beyond just loving our friends (don’t even the pagans do this? as Jesus asks in another gospel). But in some ways, loving our friends is harder than loving our enemies. Our friends, the people we have lived with, know us too well. They know the things we don’t like people to know about us. We know the things they don’t like people to know about them. Intimacy is a great challenge to love. There’s a saying ‘familiarity breeds contempt’. There’s a lot of contempt in families. There’s a lot of contempt in churches. Love your friends. There’s a challenge. Not a challenge to have a love that is wide enough to reach out to the stranger, but a challenge to have a love that is deep enough to go beyond our contempt. Abiding in Jesus’ love creates a family, people committed to loving each other despite themselves, self-sacrificially.
To abide is to obey, to obey is to love, to love is to abide.
To love is to abide
We are more used to the idea of living with people than we are to the idea of living with ideas. But we do, we live with ideas, we let them feed our hopes and dreams, eventually our thoughts and actions, and finally they come to birth – they bring change in the world around us. When Barak Obama was elected president, the first Black president of the United States, many people looked back to Martin Luther King and his speech ‘I have a dream’. That was an idea people lived with, a dream people lived with, that changed them, and changed the world. Jesus says we are his friends, not his servants, because he shares his plans with us. He doesn’t want blind obedience from us, he wants us to share his hopes, share his dreams, share in the idea of the Kingdom of God. To live with that idea until it changes us and changes the world.
As far as John is concerned, love is the very essence of that idea. We may struggle with the idea that love is what being a Christian is all about – we probably know many people who are genuinely loving yet would not describe themselves as Christian – but for John, love is so central to what God’s plans are about that he would likely tell us that love is love, and if you truly love you may not live at the address you think you do. John says love is the idea that Jesus calls us to abide in – live with it, inhabit it, let it change you and change the world around you.
To abide is to obey, to obey is to love, to love is to abide.
Jesus says ‘abide in my love’.
John says ‘to abide is to obey, to obey is to love, to love is to abide’.
The Scottish minister says ‘Stick it under your tongue and suck it like a sweetie’.
John 20: 1-18
It’s easy to make mistakes at dawn. When the sun isn’t quite up. When shadows still seem deep and dark. Easy to miss things. Easy to see things that aren’t there. Easy to see the things you want to see. Or the things you’re most scared of seeing. So in a way it’s not surprising that they didn’t really know what was going on. Mary thought the authorities had opened the tomb and moved the body. Peter saw the linen wrappings lying there, and didn’t know what to think. Who steals a body in the middle of the night, but stops to unwrap it? The other disciple saw and ‘believed’. But he didn’t say anything. And they went home, leaving Mary weeping and wondering outside the tomb. Not much rejoicing at the empty tomb on that first Easter morning. Not much Easter hope. A lot of confusion. A lot of uncertainty. Lots of people running about and thinking their own thoughts, but no-one quite brave enough to say it. They didn’t know what was going on. But Christ had risen from the dead, sin and death and hell had lost their grip on creation, and the world had changed completely overnight. It’s easy to make mistakes at dawn. But daylight is coming.
We’ve been through quite a journey together over the last week. I stood up in front of you a couple of weeks ago and told you what I saw: a church carrying a lot of hurt. I stand up before you today, on Easter morning, and I think I see something different. But just like the disciples, I’m not sure I’m quite brave enough to say it. It’s all glimpses, feelings, things half-guessed at. The way the numbers at our services crept slowly up as the week went past. The depth of the silence in church during the services. The people I know have talked about hurts they haven’t dared to share before. We’ve had a good Holy Week. God has been at work here. In silence here, in conversation there, in song somewhere else. Something has happened. I feel it. Do you? Something has happened. But at the moment, when the shadows still seem deep and dark, it still feels too uncertain to say it. It’s easy to see things that aren’t there. Easy to see the things you want to see. It’s easy to make mistakes at dawn. But daylight is coming.
Things are clearer in the daylight. The shadows shorten and disappear, as we begin to move into the day. The empty tomb, still dark and full of uncertainty an hour before, is now filled with light. When Mary looks in once more there is no longer room for uncertainty. Angels in white sit where the body had been, one at the head, one at the foot. The tomb can no longer be mistaken for the scene of a late night grave-robbery. This is not a crime scene. It is holy ground. Wherever the body has gone, it is clear that God has been at work. A miracle has happened. No-one could still think that he was stolen away by the authorities. Could they? But Mary does. She looks in, and sees the angels. And still she thinks that ‘They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him’. She turns around and sees Jesus. And still she can’t take it in. She asks him if he has taken the body away. It would be hilarious if it wasn’t so tragic. She is half out of her mind with grief and confusion. Mary, tears running down her face, can’t see what’s in front of her eyes. And when she does, all she wants to do is hold on to Jesus and never let go. Now she’s been through losing him once, she doesn’t want to risk losing him again. He has to almost forcibly remove her and remind her what it means that he has risen. The past has gone. There is a future to prepare for. The disciples must be told, and Mary, apostle to the apostles, has a job to do. Things are clearer in the daylight. And now she can let go of the fears of the past she can see what’s there. Now she can live with the risk of trusting Jesus again, she can move into the future he has opened up for her.
I think something has happened to us, between us, within us, this Holy Week. And as we move on from Holy Week, into the consultation morning, into becoming a parish in our own right, into a new future, I believe that things will be different. But we have to be willing to let go of the past if we’re going to be able to live in that future. Like Mary, it’s very easy for us to be so bound up in the fears and hurts of the past that even when the reason for those hurts and fears is gone we can’t see it. We ask Jesus where he’s hidden the body and whether he can point us in the right direction. We fail to see the truth of where we are and what’s going on because we’re still seeing where we were and what was happening. It would be hilarious if it wasn’t so tragic. I think we’ve done a lot together towards helping the hurts we’ve been carrying with us to be healed. Sometimes these are things that will take a long time to really mend, but progress has been made. A corner has been turned. But human beings are funny about their hurts. Amputees still get twinges in the limbs that aren’t there any more. We hold on to hurt when all reason for it is long gone. Mary struggles to believe that Jesus has risen, and then struggles again to trust that it will be alright if she takes the risk of letting go. God has been at work, but we have to trust that things will be different if we’re going to move into the future he is calling us into. Because he is calling us. It’s a new day, Christ is risen, and he calls us to do a new thing. He calls us to hope. He calls us to trust. He calls us to step into a future that can be different from the past. It’s risky. It means letting go of the hurts and the fears. The past has gone, buried in the tomb. There is a future to prepare for, and we have a job to do. Things are clearer in the daylight. And now, if we can let go of the fears of the past we can see what’s there. If we can live with the risk of trusting Jesus again, we can move into the future he has opened up for us through his resurrection.
We have walked alongside Jesus in the company of the disciples through the public adulation of Palm Sunday, the intimacy of a meal at Mary and Martha’s house in Bethany, as he taught the crowds who came to the festival, and as he spoke in private to the disciples he knew were going to desert him. And now we come to the Last Supper – Jesus and his disciples gather together to celebrate Passover together, and Jesus knows this is the last time he will be able to teach them. Before the night is out they will all be scattered. And these same disciples, scared, guilty, fallible, will be all that is left to continue his work and proclaim the Kingdom. What lesson should he leave them with? What would you have left them with? Some words of encouragement? A parable? Some guidance as to how they should organise themselves?
Jesus gives no spoken parable, but acts out his message. Perhaps because what he needed to say could be communicated no other way. He took off his robe, tied a towel around his waist, took up a basin of water, and did the work of a servant: washing his disciples’ feet. These were feet that had been walking in sandals along dusty, filthy, streets all day. They would be smelly, covered in sweat, dust, and whatever else collected in streets without modern sewage systems, where beasts of burden were used universally. Washing feet was the lowliest of low tasks. Not something to be idly chosen as a symbolic example of humility, as we might regard footwashing now, when the chances of encountering genuinely unpleasantly dirty feet is slim. This was genuinely unpleasant. Jesus wasn’t just making some symbolic point about humble service, he was performing humble service. In the most basic, simplest way, he was teaching them something central to his life and ministry, and central to the lives and ministries of those who would be following him. Jesus had come primarily as one who serves, and that is best understood not in some spiritual, elevated way, but as a man washing manure off of people’s feet.
The foot-washing teaches the disciples something vital about who Jesus is. John says that ‘knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands’ Jesus washed their feet. He had been given all power, all authority by God, and his choice was to set that aside and to wash feet. Jesus is the rightful Lord of all creation, but rather than coming to impose that authority on others or demand it be recognised he has come to serve. Unless they really understand this they will never understand what he is seeking to accomplish through his coming suffering. He has the power to resist his death. He could choose another way, but he has come to serve, not to be served, and to give his life for others, not to save his own at their expense.
There is another lesson Jesus seeks to teach his disciples, though, and it is so important that he adds words to his actions. He has washed their feet, and they are his disciples, who are to follow his example in all things. If Jesus, the Messiah, the one given all things by the Father, has not held back from performing the most menial act of service for them, then none of them should think of themselves as too important to perform any act of service for each other. The church that would come after him must be built on this sort of service, says Jesus, service that does not seek glory or recognition, service that does not hold itself aloof from the least attractive tasks.
And from this service flows the commandment to love one another. Service that is compelled speaks only of oppression and injustice, of one person’s power over another. But the service Jesus calls his disciples to is a service that is not compelled but chosen. Such service speaks of love. Love expressed in service is to be the mark of the church. It is to be what identifies people as followers of Jesus: “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
That can seem like a heavy challenge to us, because we are often aware how short we fall of that ideal. The church is often marked by hierarchy, power, and a desire to assert its own importance rather than by humble loving service of others, and the same can often be said of individual Christians. These words can be heard with a sort of dread, a recognition that they form a sort of impossible ideal. But I think we miss the point if we hear them like that. These are not the words of a despairing Jesus trying to push his fracturing band of followers back together. He knows they will be broken. He knows they will be scattered. He knows that they will fail to live up to these words. And yet he does not despair. He knows that what seems like a broken group of failures will build the church. He knows that out of the apparent pointlessness and tragedy of his suffering and death, God will be glorified. When he looks to the future he does not see failure, he sees glory.
So don’t hear these words as words of condemnation, because they are words spoken by Jesus to the disciples he loves, in anticipation of the glory he and they will bring to the Father. Hear them as an invitation, an invitation to continue walking with him the path of loving service. An invitation to be the church that points people to Jesus. However unworthy you think you are. However frequently you or those around you fail to live up to it. ‘Serve. Love. Because by this, everyone will know that you are my disciples.’
Here is the version I didn’t preach.
( John 12: 1-11)
Bethany was not far from Jerusalem, and Lazarus’ house was clearly one Jesus knew well. He had been a guest here several times before, and this would have been perhaps the final opportunity for him to stay somewhere safe, amongst friends, before the suffering he knew was to come. Mary and Martha are perhaps best known to us from two other stories about the sisters: the resurrection of their brother Lazarus, and the occasion when Jesus taught in their house and the two sisters had rather different priorities in receiving their guest. In the first story, it is Mary’s words ‘Lord if you had been here, my brother would not have died’ that cause Jesus to weep. In the second, Martha sought to prepare a meal and play the hostess. Mary instead simply sat at his feet listening to his teaching. Much to Martha’s surprise, Jesus commended her sister and told her to stop worrying. Just as in the story we’ve heard today, Mary responded to Jesus in a way that was unconventional, offending those around her, and showing a deep personal devotion. And in both stories, Jesus commends her risky actions and rebukes those who are offended. Mary is shown consistently as a model disciple with a very close relationship to Jesus, an example of a vulnerable love that risks being misunderstood and condemned.
The story told here, though, is almost identical to one told in the other gospels. In Mark and Matthew’s accounts Jesus is in Bethany when he is anointed on the head with expensive perfume by an unnamed woman, to which all the disciples, not just Judas, object that the money would better have been used on the poor. Luke’s version of the story, however, is slightly different. He sets the story in Galilee, earlier in Jesus’ ministry, while Jesus was at a Pharisee’s house. The unnamed woman not only anoints Jesus’s feet with the perfume and wipes them with her hair she also washes them with her tears and kisses them. And Luke gives a different explanation for such extraordinary devotion: the woman is a sinner, forgiven by Jesus. Church tradition since the third century has linked these women together: Mary of Bethany and the unnamed sinful woman, and has linked them to another disciple of Jesus: Mary of Magdalene, the first witness to the resurrection, who went to anoint his body in the tomb even though she knew it was dangerous to be associated with him.
It may or may not be the historical truth that these women were all one and the same. What is certainly true, however, is that all of them were characterised by a passionate risky devotion to Jesus. And that devotion is spelt out in the story of the anointing. The perfume of pure nard was worth about 300 denarii. A denarii was the average daily wage, 300 could maintain a family for a year. When Mary cracks open that clay jar and the fragrance fills the house, that’s a year’s wages being thrown away in a single act of extravagant love. A year’s wages. Think about how much that would be worth in today’s money. A year’s wages. Think again about Judas’ protest that it could have been sold and the money given to the poor. Sounds a lot more sensible and reasonable now, doesn’t it? She takes a year’s wages and pours them out over Jesus’s feet. It was probably her life savings, her dowry, maybe her brother’s and sister’s savings too. This is her security, her future, maybe her family’s future too that she is smashing open and watching pour away over Jesus’ feet.
And then she wipes his feet with her hair. Even in our culture this is an act of incredible intimacy and humility, but in the culture of the day a respectable woman’s hair was covered when in company. For a woman to wear her hair down suggested a looseness of morals or someone who grief or calamity had pushed beyond the bounds of respectability. This was shameless devotion, a love that almost invited misinterpretation, that was bound to cause scandal and shock, that left her exposed and vulnerable, a love so strong that it had pushed her to the point where such things didn’t matter. What others thought didn’t matter. The cost to herself, her reputation, her security, didn’t matter. All that mattered was Him. And she knew that He would not misunderstand. He would not abuse her vulnerability.
Maybe it’s hard to imagine having that sort of love for Jesus. Taking risks so acute. Being so willing to be vulnerable in front of others. It seems very un-English. Too extreme. If it wasn’t that Jesus commends it we’d be tempted to call it ‘fanaticism’, ‘hysteria’ or ‘obsession’. We’re tempted to dismiss it, find good reasons why what Mary did just isn’t sensible or appropriate for us. The difficulty is that this starts to make us sound uncomfortably like Judas. ‘Now obviously we can admire Mary’s devotion, but really, where would we be if we all acted like that? Someone has to pay the bills.’ I think this story challenges us to ask why we are so quick to dismiss Mary and her love for Jesus. Why does such extravagant devotion make us feel uncomfortable? Do we find ourselves thinking (like Martha) that we’d all have been better off if she’d just stayed in the kitchen with her sister?
I think the story suggests there are two big reasons why people feel uncomfortable with Mary’s love, and they’re not reasons any of us are going to feel comfortable with. For some of us it may be because, like Judas and the disciples, our priorities are not Jesus’ priorities, and our vision of Jesus is too small. Mary sees what no-one else does, that Jesus is going to his death, and that all she can do is to prepare him for it. It’s something no-one else wants to face up to, even though Jesus has been telling them for months. Jesus is days away from his death, seeking solace and support in the company of his friends, and no-one wants to recognise it except Mary. Maybe we need to bring our priorities and our vision of Jesus and his Kingdom before Him and ask Him to break and remake them?
For others of us it may be because, like the Pharisee in Luke’s version of the story, we have been forgiven little, and so we only love a little. Jesus described the Pharisee like this not because he saw him as a good upstanding man who hadn’t done much that needed forgiving, but because he saw him as someone who needed a great deal of forgiveness that he had never asked for. The Pharisee’s love for God was limited because he had never really felt his need of God, and never known how much God wanted to forgive him. Maybe we need to come before God and ask for Him to show us his love and give us his forgiveness?
The Mary in this story may not be the Mary who would rise early in the morning with spices to anoint Jesus’ body after his burial as this one had anointed him before, she may not be the woman the church would remember as the ‘apostle to the apostles’, but she is certainly a challenging example to us of the sort of disciples we are called to be. Our church has a mission statement: “St John’s is here to encourage and enable all people to recognise and to celebrate God’s unconditional love.” What sort of disciples are we called to be to make that a reality? To enable all people to recognise and celebrate God’s unconditional love? Mary could do that. Could we? And if we can’t, what are the things preventing us? This is a chance for us to come bring those things before God and ask for his healing and his strength.
And here is the one I did….was a nightmare to decide which!
Bethany was not far from Jerusalem, and Lazarus’ house was clearly one Jesus knew well. He had been a guest here several times before, and this would have been perhaps the final opportunity for him to stay somewhere safe, amongst friends, before the suffering he knew was to come. Mary and Martha are perhaps best known to us from two other stories about the sisters: the resurrection of their brother Lazarus, and the occasion when Jesus taught in their house and the two sisters had rather different priorities in receiving their guest. In the first story, it is Mary’s words ‘Lord if you had been here, my brother would not have died’ that cause Jesus to weep. In the second, Martha sought to prepare a meal and play the hostess. Mary instead simply sat at his feet listening to his teaching. Much to Martha’s surprise, Jesus commended her sister and told her to stop worrying. Just as in the story we’ve heard today, Mary responded to Jesus in a way that was unconventional, offending those around her, and showing a deep personal devotion. And in both stories, Jesus commends her risky actions and rebukes those who are offended. Mary is shown consistently as having a very close relationship to Jesus, an example of a vulnerable love that risks being misunderstood and condemned, though Jesus consistently refuses to do so. Church tradition has identified Mary of Bethany with Mary Magdalene, who had a similarly close relationship with Jesus.
That devotion is spelt out in the story of the anointing. The perfume of pure nard was worth about 300 denarii. A denarii was the average daily wage, 300 could maintain a family for a year. When Mary cracks open that clay jar and the fragrance fills the house, that’s a year’s wages being thrown away in a single act of extravagant love. A year’s wages. Think about how much that would be worth in today’s money. A year’s wages. Think again about Judas’ protest that it could have been sold and the money given to the poor. Sounds a lot more sensible and reasonable now, doesn’t it? She takes a year’s wages and pours them out over Jesus’s feet. It was probably her life savings, her dowry, maybe her brother’s and sister’s savings too. This is her security, her future, maybe her family’s future too that she is smashing open and watching pour away over Jesus’ feet.
And then she wipes his feet with her hair. Even in our culture this is an act of incredible intimacy and humility, but in the culture of the day a respectable woman’s hair was covered when in company. For a woman to wear her hair down suggested a looseness of morals or someone who grief or calamity had pushed beyond the bounds of respectability. This was shameless devotion, a love that almost invited misinterpretation, that was bound to cause scandal and shock, that left her exposed and vulnerable, a love so strong that it had pushed her to the point where such things didn’t matter. What others thought didn’t matter. The cost to herself, her reputation, her security, didn’t matter. All that mattered was Him. And she knew that He would not misunderstand. He would not abuse her vulnerability.
Maybe it’s hard to imagine having that sort of love for Jesus. Taking risks so acute. Being so willing to be vulnerable in front of others. It seems very un-English. Too extreme. If it wasn’t that Jesus commends it we’d be tempted to call it ‘fanaticism’, ‘hysteria’ or ‘obsession’. We’re tempted to dismiss it, find good reasons why what Mary did just isn’t sensible or appropriate for us. The difficulty is that this starts to make us sound uncomfortably like Judas. ‘Now obviously we can admire Mary’s devotion, but really, where would we be if we all acted like that? Someone has to pay the bills.’ I think this story challenges us to ask why we are so quick to dismiss Mary and her love for Jesus. Why does such extravagant devotion make us feel uncomfortable? Do we find ourselves thinking (like Martha) that we’d all have been better off if she’d just stayed in the kitchen with her sister?
I think the story suggests a reason why people feel uncomfortable with Mary’s love, though it’s not a reason any of us are going to feel comfortable with. It may be because, like Judas and the disciples, our priorities are not Jesus’ priorities, and our vision of Jesus is too small. Mary sees what no-one else does, that Jesus is going to his death, and that all she can do is to prepare him for it. It’s something no-one else wants to face up to, even though Jesus has been telling them for months. Jesus is days away from his death, seeking solace and support in the company of his friends, and no-one wants to recognise it except Mary. She may choose to express it in a way that more respectable people feel uncomfortable with, in a way that is unwise, imprudent, but Jesus takes what she offers and explains it in a way that transforms it, that makes this vulnerable, risky, misunderstood action something that will be remembered and honoured in the church.
This is what Jesus longs to do with all of us, to take what we bring, however we or others might perceive it, and transform it into something he uses for his Kingdom. Maybe we are like Mary, and need to bring our offerings to have Jesus transform them. Maybe we are like Judas and the disciples and need to bring our priorities and our vision of Jesus and his Kingdom before Him and ask Him to break and remake them. Whatever our need is, tonight we have the opportunity to come before Him as we are, offering all that we can, in the knowledge that he can and will transform and heal us.
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