This morning’s Gospel reading marks a pivotal moment in St John’s account of Jesus’ mission and ministry. But if we take this reading at face value, it probably seems anything but that. In fact, taken at face value, it seems a rather strange story. To recap. Some Greeks want to see Jesus but, instead of speaking directly to Jesus, as so many others had, they go to Philip and tell him they’d like to see Jesus. Then, rather than taking them to Jesus himself, Philip tells Andrew, and they both go to put the request to Jesus. But Jesus’ response is quite strange. There’s no record in the Gospel that he spoke to the Greeks, or that he even saw them, instead he starts talking about the hour of his glorification having come, about his death, about judgement being passed on the world and about drawing all people to himself when he is lifted up from the earth. So what’s going on here? What is Jesus saying here that’s so important, and what is St John trying to tell us through Jesus’ words? 

One of the problems with the way we read the Scriptures in Church is that we chop them up into ‘bite-sized’ pieces so to speak. We do that so that the readings we have in Church aren’t excessively long, but in doing that, we very often make the readings more difficult to understand because we take them out of the context they’re set in, in the overall story. And that’s certainly the case with this morning’s Gospel.

Reading St John’s Gospel as a whole, we know that by this point in the story, the religious authorities had started to plot Jesus’ death. The part of the Gospel we heard this morning comes shortly after Jesus had attracted great crowds of people to himself by raising Lazarus from the dead, and it comes immediately after Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem on what we know as Palm Sunday. That attracted great crowds to Jesus too and the religious authorities were getting worried, they were very likely frightened too. We know that because, in the verse immediately before this morning’s Gospel starts, we read;

‘So the Pharisees said to one another, “You see that you are gaining nothing. Look, the world has gone after him.”’

That’s the context in which we have to read this morning’s Gospel.

In the original Greek language the Gospel was written in, it’s clear that the Greeks who wanted to see Jesus were not Greek-speaking Jews but Greeks by birth. And so in the coming of these Greeks, gentiles who are looking for Jesus, symbolically at least, the whole world was indeed now going after him.

We also know from our general reading of the Scriptures that ‘to see’ very often means not simply to see with our eyes, but to see with our minds and hearts too: in other words, ‘to see’ means to know and understand. And so what these Greeks were really asking Philip is to know and understand Jesus; who, and possibly what, he really was. We also know that Jesus’ mission and ministry was to the Jews. As he himself said to the Canaanite woman who begged him to rid her daughter of a demon,

“I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”

We know that Jesus did help the Canaanite woman, and other non-Jews during his ministry. But that was on account of their faith and St John doesn’t say that these Greeks came to see Jesus ‘in faith’; they were simply enquiring about him. They were looking for understanding and they would need to be brought to faith. And that wasn’t Jesus’ mission and ministry, that was the mission and ministry that he was going to entrust to his disciples and to his Church. And we see that played out in this morning’s Gospel.

These Greeks, these non-Jews, wanted to see Jesus. They wanted to know and understand him. But they didn’t go directly to Jesus, instead they went to his disciples to enquire about him. And it was up to the disciples to bring them to Jesus. It was through the disciples that they’d ‘see’ Jesus, that they’d come to him and come to know and understand him. So what this short Gospel story is about and why it’s so pivotal in the Gospel as a whole, is that it marks the end of Jesus’ own earthly mission and ministry, the mission and ministry to the Jews, and the beginning of the Church’s mission and ministry to non-Jewish world. The disciples almost certainly didn’t recognise that at the time, but Jesus certainly did, and that’s why he answered the request in the way he did. 

Earlier in St John’s Gospel, Jesus’ prophesied his own death when he spoke of himself as the ‘Good Shepherd’. He said,

“I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep. And I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd. For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This charge I have received from my Father.”

And now, the sheep of another fold, symbolised by the Greeks, were coming to him. And so he knew the time to lay down his life had come. His ‘hour’ had come. The time for him to be glorified had come. The time for everyone to ‘see’ him, to know and understand who he really was, had come. And he knew that would happen when he was lifted from the earth because it would come through his death, through him being lifted up on the Cross. It would come through his Resurrection, through him being lifted up from the grave. And it would come through his Ascension, through him being lifted from the earth back to the Father from where he’d send the Holy Spirit on his disciples to empower his Church to go out into the world in his name, to draw all people to him.

If we look at Jesus’ words in this morning’s Gospel in this context, we can see how much sense they make and how important they are. We can see what Jesus means when he speaks about a single grain of wheat, failing to the ground and dying, so that it can yield a rich harvest because he was the single grain whose death yielded a worldwide faith and Church. We can see why Jesus says that earthly life is less important than eternal life because if he hadn’t laid down his earthly life, there would have been no Cross, no Resurrection and no Ascension. People wouldn’t have been drawn to him and there would have been no faith in him and so there would have been no hope of eternal life through him. And we can see what Jesus means when he said that where he is, his servant is too. Not only because he promised to be with his disciples always, but also because whenever and wherever his disciples bring someone to know and understand Jesus, that person ‘sees’ him.

This morning’s Gospel reading isn’t very long but, if we read it in the context of the Gospel as a whole, we can understand how important it is and why St John made it such a pivotal moment in his account of Jesus’ mission and ministry. If we read this Gospel story in it’s true context, we can find so much in so few words. And amongst the things we find in these words, is own place and role in the Gospel and in Jesus’ story.

We are Jesus’ disciples. We are his Church. Today, we are the ones entrusted with continuing Jesus’ mission and ministry to draw people to him in our own time and place. Today, we are the Philips and the Andrews because we are the ones people come to when they want to ‘see’ Jesus. Jesus promised to be with his disciples always, so we know that he is here to be seen. What we have to do is make sure that we are his disciples and servants so that wherever he is, we are too.  And we need to do that so that, when people ask us to help them know and understand Jesus, we can see him well enough ourselves to help them find him and see him.

Amen. 

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The Propers for the 5th  Sunday of Lent can be found here.

One of the mysteries of what we might call the Christian era is the extent to which the Church has been persecuted throughout its existence. And it is a mystery. The Christian faith is about love of others. It’s about agape love, which I spoke about recently, loving, not in order to be loved in return, but loving simply for the sake and good of those we love. That is what Jesus taught, it’s what the Church teaches, and it’s what Christians are called to do. And yet the Church has been persecuted throughout its history, and still is today. So why should that be? Why should the Church be persecuted for telling the world that people should love one another?

The mystery of Church persecution is one that even the persecutors themselves can’t seem to answer. Those who have and do persecute the Church have never really been able to explain why they’ve done so. They’ve no doubt had their reasons but, in the end, what these reasons all seem to boil down to is simply that Christians are different to other people.

As we all know, people who are different can make us feel uncomfortable. And one way to deal with people and groups of people who make us feel uncomfortable is to get rid of them from our lives, or silence them, so that they don’t bother us anymore. So, perhaps the answer to the mystery of Church persecution is simply that the world has tried to get rid of the Church because, by its proclamation of the Gospel, the Church has pricked people’s consciences and reminded them of the error of their ways, and they simply want to go about their lives without being reminded of those things and being called to face up to them. 

But we shouldn’t really be surprised that this has happened. Jesus himself warned his disciples that they would be persecuted in the way that he was, and the reason for that persecution is given in this morning’s Gospel:

“…the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed.”

And what better way to prevent those evil works being exposed is there, than to put the light out?

In our own society, we don’t have to suffer the kind of persecution that Christians in many other countries have to endure. We’re not likely to suffer any physical harm or risk death because of our faith. But the Church is persecuted in other ways. There’s been a widely reported anti-Christian bias in the nation’s media and we know that our faith can be ridiculed and suppressed in ways that wouldn’t be allowed if it were any other faith. But, on the whole, I think the problems we face can be put into three categories, all of which are linked and form a more general circular problem.

The first is that, for the majority of people in our society, the Church and the Christian faith are simply an irrelevance. That’s obviously true of those who don’t believe in Christianity, but at the last census, more than half the population of this country said they did. So where are they all? Why aren’t our churches bursting at the seams? The answer seems to be the vast majority of the people in our country who claim to be Christians obviously don’t see any need to come to church, or of the Church in their lives either.

The second problem we have is that of the Church’s compliance with society. By compliance, I don’t mean compliance with the law, I mean compliance with the values and standards of society. When was the last time the Church made a real stand against the corruption and injustice that exists in our society, and made that stand because society’s values and standards are contrary to the Gospel?

The Church is far too content to say nothing and to simply ‘go with the flow’. That no doubt reduces the severity of any persecution the Church might otherwise face, but it results in a Church which is simply tolerated because it’s acquiescent. The Church no doubt knows society is wrong, but it accepts what society does without protest. That actually causes people to think that the Church is irrelevant, because the Church makes no difference to society, but it also leads to a third problem, that of the Church being despised for its weakness and hypocrisy. And that, in turn, leads to the kind of anti-Christian bias we see in the media and in the ridicule and suppression our faith is singled out for.

I don’t think there can be much doubt, that one of the root causes of all this, perhaps the major cause, is the attempt the Church has made to reverse, or at least arrest, the decline of Church congregations, by making the Church more ‘acceptable’ to society. The only way the Church can do that is by acquiescence with society’s values and standards; by going along with the world, or at least turning a blind eye to the world. But the Church isn’t called to be acceptable to the world or any society in it; it’s called to be acceptable to God. And to be acceptable to God, the Church is called to do things God’s way, not the world’s way. The Church is called to encourage others to do things God’s way, not to simply stand by and say nothing while God and Christ are ignored. The values and standards of the world are based on pride and ambition, the desire for power and lust for this world’s riches. The values and standards of the world are anti-Christ, they’re the very darkness that Jesus talks about in this morning’s Gospel. And when it goes along with these things, the Church itself is moving from the light into the darkness because it’s going along with the very things that Jesus himself says will condemn us.

The first great persecution of the Church was the Decian persecution (named after the Roman emperor Decius) which began in 249 AD. During that persecution, many Christians were martyred for their faith. Many others though, renounced their faith but, when the persecution ended, they wanted to be readmitted to the Church. What became the official Catholic position on this, was that these people could be readmitted to the Church but only after they’d served due penance and undergone a programme of teaching. It was a lengthy process, and it took years for those who’d renounced their faith to be readmitted to the Church. But even so, some in the Church wouldn’t accept them, and a schism, a split in the Church which became known as the Novatian heresy, resulted.

In response to this, and in defence of the Catholic position, one of the great Church Fathers, St Cyprian of Carthage, wrote a work entitled On the Unity of the Church. In it, St Cyprian spoke of the Church as the mother of Christians and the bride of Christ. This is what St Cyprian said: 

‘… she (the Church) is one mother, plentiful in fruitfulness. We are born from her womb, nourished by her milk, given life by her spirit.

The spouse of Christ cannot commit adultery. She is uncorrupted and pure. She knows one home, she guards with chaste modesty the sanctity of one bed. She keeps us for God. She appoints the sons whom she has born for the kingdom. Whoever is separated from the Church and unites with an adulteress, is separated from the promises of the Church. No one who forsakes the Church of Christ can receive the rewards of Christ. He is a stranger; he is profane; he is an enemy. No one can have God for his Father, who does not have the Church for his mother.

… The Lord warns us, “He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me scatters.” [Matt. 12:30] He who breaks the peace and the unity of Christ, is an opponent of Christ. He who gathers anywhere than in the Church, scatters the Church of Christ.

The Lord says, “I and the Father are one” … Does anyone believe that such unity which comes from the strength of God and is held together by the sacraments of heaven, can be divided by the falling out of opposing wills? Anyone who does not keep this unity does not keep God’s law, does not keep the faith of the Father and the Son, does not keep hold of life and salvation.’

The Church has never been acceptable to the world’s societies. It isn’t called to be and was never intended to be. The Church, and the individual Christians who make up the Church, are called to be in the world, but not of the world. We are called to be, and intended to be, acceptable to God, and God’s ways are not the world’s ways: they are as different as light from dark.  Let us pray that the Church of today will remember that. That the Church will remain faithful to Christ, and that holy mother Church will bear and nourish many more sons and daughters fit for God’s kingdom where his will, and not the world’s ways, is done.

Amen.

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The Propers for the 4th Sunday of Lent (Mothering Sunday) can be found here.

In the title song of the musical Jesus Christ Superstar, the spirit of Judas, who by this point has committed suicide, asks Jesus a series of questions. It’s clear from the words of the song that Judas simply doesn’t understand why Jesus did what he did in the way that he did and he’s looking for answers, as he says repeatedly in the song,

“I only want to know.”

So, amongst other things, Judas asks Jesus why he let things he did “get so out of hand?” Why didn’t he plan things better and come at a time when mass communication would have enabled him to reach “a whole nation” rather than choosing “such a backward time in such a strange land?” And he asks whether Jesus’ death was intentional or whether it was “a mistake?”

Of course, Jesus Christ Superstar is a work of fiction, albeit one set against the backdrop of the Gospel accounts of the last week of Jesus’ earthly life, leading up to his crucifixion. But the questions that Judas asks in this song, are questions that people really do ask about Jesus, and especially about the events of that last week of his earthly life. Anyone who’s ever watched the kind of ‘search for the historical Jesus’ type of documentary we tend to see on the TV around this time of year will no doubt have heard someone ask this type of question. Whether Jesus deliberately provoked the events that led to his death, or whether things simply got out of hand and out of his control? Whether it was all a mistake and Jesus had simply miscalculated things, whether he’d over-estimated the true level of support he had among the people and under-estimated the depth of opposition he faced among the religious and civil authorities? 

And in one sense, these are quite valid questions to ask because if we look at Jesus mission and ministry from purely human terms, how could we describe it as anything other than a failure? The purpose of his mission and ministry, his own stated purpose, was to bring the lost sheep of Israel back to God. So the very people his mission and ministry were aimed at winning over, rejected him, and his message. Not only that, those same people arrested him, handed him over to a foreign, and quite ruthless, ruling imperial power, and then connived at his death to shut him up and get rid of him, and the few followers he had actually managed to gather round him. In human terms, how could that be seen as anything other than a failure?

If, as St Paul says, the Jews were looking for signs, what signs did Jesus give them that they should believe in him? He was a great preacher and teacher, perhaps a prophet, and a reputed miracle worker. But there had been other preachers and teachers and prophets and miracle workers before Jesus so what signs did Jesus give that he wasn’t just like all the others? What signs did Jesus give that he was the Messiah, the Son of God? If he were then surely God would never have allowed it to end in the way it did? Of course, there was the Resurrection, but that was in the future. In any case, the risen Jesus only appeared to his followers, to those who had listened and been convinced by his message, and who had faith in him. So even that wasn’t the clear, unmistakable sign that the majority of people seemed to be looking for.

And if the Greeks were looking for wisdom, what wisdom did Jesus show them that they should believe in him? There’s a great deal of wisdom in his teaching, but what wisdom can we find in the way it all ended? What wisdom was there in Jesus cleansing the temple? In a lot the ‘historical Jesus’ documentaries I mentioned earlier, this is seen as the pivotal moment in Jesus’ mission and ministry because it was a direct challenge and threat to the religious authorities, and one they couldn’t let go unanswered. And what wisdom was there in Jesus’ death? Human beings can do some horrendous things to one another but to put someone to death by crucifixion is one of the worst they’ve ever invented. So seeing Jesus crucified was hardly likely to rally people to his cause, in fact, quite the opposite. That was one of the purposes of crucifixion, to deter people from doing what the crucified had done for fear that they’d end up nailed to a cross too. It was one thing for Jesus to say that his disciples must take up their cross and follow him, it was quite another for them to see what that actually meant in Jesus’ case, and might mean for them too. In human terms, there really didn’t seem to have been much wisdom in following Jesus and continuing his mission and ministry. In fact, what happened to Jesus seems to have been almost guaranteed to signal the end of him,his message and his followers.

But then, perhaps we shouldn’t be asking these questions of Jesus at all.  After all, he said he was only obeying the Father’s will. So, if it was God’s plan, perhaps we need to ask these questions of God?

So where was the Wisdom that the Scriptures speak so highly of when God came up with this one? It wasn’t as if he hadn’t tried the same sort of thing before. How many prophets had God called and sent to the people of Israel already with the same message of repentance and the same mission and ministry to bring the people of Israel back to him? And how many of them had been rejected, along with their message? So what on earth, or perhaps more accurately, what in heaven’s name, was God thinking when he decided to try the same plan again? This time, of course, it was his own Son he was going to send, but he wasn’t going to send him in glory, accompanied by legions of angels so that everyone would know exactly who he was and why he’d been sent. No, he’d simply send him as a man, just like any other. In human terms, it seems an utterly stupid plan, a plan devoid of any of the any clear signs or wisdom that would give it even a fighting chance of succeeding. And, in human terms, it ended in the way it could have been expected to end; in disaster and failure.

But all that is in human terms, and this wasn’t a human plan. It was God’s plan and, as St Paul tells us,

‘God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.’

And. If we think about it, hasn’t that been shown to be the case?

There can’t be any doubt whatsoever that the same Jesus who suffered such a humiliating rejection and shameful death, is the most famous human being who has ever lived. His life, his mission and ministry, and his death, have influenced the world in a way and to an extent that no other human being who ever lived, ever has. The humiliating rejection and shameful death that, in human terms, must have seemed to have marked the failure and the end of Jesus’ life and his mission and ministry, in fact, simply set the scene for his message, his mission and his ministry to be taken up by his followers and spread, not just to the Jews, but to people throughout the world. And from those faithful few who saw the risen Jesus and who, despite the danger and difficulties of doing it, despite the seeming foolishness of the message and of proclaiming it, went out into the world as witnesses to his Resurrection, there has grown a faith and a Church that now claims almost 1/3 of the entire population of the world as it’s own. From what, in human terms, seemed to be the failure and end of Jesus’ life, and his mission and ministry, there has come the greatest victory ever, the victory over death itself. And from the darkness of the sealed tomb that seemed to be the sign of the final and complete failure of Jesus’ mission and ministry, has come the brightest ray of hope ever to shine into the lives of men and women, the hope and promise of the resurrection to eternal life. So perhaps God’s plan was not so foolish and weak after all?

In that song from Jesus Christ Superstar, the spirit of Judas questions Jesus because Judas doesn’t understand and wants to know. We’re like that too at times, aren’t we? There are times when we don’t understand what’s happening in the world or to us in our own lives. We can’t see any sign that what we’re seeing and experiencing can be part of God’s plan. It can all seem so pointless and senseless and, because of that, we might think that, if God does have a plan for us, it’s a foolish one because there must be an easy or less painful way for us to serve God’s will and purpose. But it’s at time like these that we need to remember St Paul’s words that 

‘God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.’

That’s not always so easy to do but just what that might mean for us, and for our lives, was expressed in the words of a prayer written by St John Henry Newman. They’re words that, I think, we all need reminding of from time to time, but perhaps especially when we’re going through bad times when we can’t see any sign of God in our lives and don’t understand why things have to be so hard. In those times when we’re tempted to think that we know better than God and could find better way to follow Jesus than the hard and foolish road we seem to be on.

You may have read or heard this prayer before, but whether you have or not, it’s one that I do recommend you have and keep a copy of, and that you do use. The prayer goes like this:

God knows me and calls me by my name.…
God has created me to do Him some definite service;
He has committed some work to me
     which He has not committed to another.
I have my mission—I never may know it in this life,
     but I shall be told it in the next.

Somehow I am necessary for His purposes…
     I have a part in this great work;
I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection
     between persons.
He has not created me for naught. I shall do good,
     I shall do His work;
I shall be an angel of peace, a preacher of truth
     in my own place, while not intending it,
     if I do but keep His commandments
     and serve Him in my calling.

Therefore I will trust Him.
     Whatever, wherever I am,
     I can never be thrown away.
If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve Him;
In perplexity, my perplexity may serve Him;
If I am in sorrow, my sorrow may serve Him.
My sickness, or perplexity, or sorrow may be
     necessary causes of some great end,
     which is quite beyond us.
He does nothing in vain; He may prolong my life,
     He may shorten it;
     He knows what He is about.
     He may take away my friends,
     He may throw me among strangers,
     He may make me feel desolate,
     make my spirits sink, hide the future from me—
     still He knows what He is about.…
Let me be Thy blind instrument. I ask not to see—
     I ask not to know—I ask simply to be used.

Amen.

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The Propers for the 3rd Sunday of Lent can be found here.