In this morning’s Gospel reading, we hear Jesus put a couple of questions to his disciples. First of all he asks them,

“Who do people say the Son of Man is?”

We know from the Gospels that ‘Son of Man’ seemed to have been Jesus’ own title of choice so this was a question about who people thought Jesus was. And, as we heard, the disciples tell Jesus that people think different things about him. Some think he’s John the Baptist, some think he’s Elijah, some think he’s Jeremiah and some think he’s one of the prophets. Given the Jewish understanding of things at the time, that suggests that a lot of people thought Jesus was the herald of the Messiah, the one who was to come to prepare the way for the Messiah.  

But Jesus makes no comment on what the people thought, he simply asks the disciples another question:

“But who do you say that I am?”

That was a very pertinent question. And, in many ways, it was a far more important question than the first one. The disciples were the people who’d spent a lot of time close to Jesus, they’d seen him work and heard him speak much more than anybody else. And they’d not only seen and heard what other people had seen and heard, they’d had the privilege of seeing and hearing what others hadn’t. They’d see the miracles he’d done when no one else was around and they’d had the parables explained to them when they were alone with Jesus. So they were the people who knew Jesus best. And so, whatever anybody else thought about him, they were the people who really ought to have known who he was. And it was very important that they did know who Jesus was because not only were they were the people who were working with him now, they were the people who were going to continue his work after he’d returned to the Father and, as we heard a little later in this morning’s Gospel, they were the people who were going to become the Church and who were going to take the Gospel into the wider world to teach people who Jesus was, and is.  

But, as we look at the world today, 2,000 years after Jesus asked those questions, I think we must realise that his questions are as pertinent today as they were then. It might not be Jesus who asks them today, but people are still asking who was Jesus?

And, just as when Jesus asked the question, there are lots of different answers. To those outside the Church, who don’t have any faith, Jesus might be a great philosopher or a great teacher of wisdom or morals and ethics. For those outside the Church and of different faiths, Jesus is usually seen as a great prophet, but one who was misunderstood by his contemporaries, especially his own followers who founded a new faith and the Church around him.

As Christians, we might agree with some of those answers, but to us, Jesus was, and is, much more than any of those things. As we heard in the Gospel, Peter answered the question on behalf of all Jesus’ disciples when he said that Jesus was

“…the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”

But even so, Christians, or perhaps I should say people in the Church, often still disagree about who Jesus was.

I don’t mean by that, that people disagree with Peter’s answer to the question; no one in any mainstream Church would say that Jesus wasn’t the Messiah and the Son of God, and if they do then, quite frankly, they shouldn’t really be calling themselves Christians or members of the Christian Church. But what people do disagree on is what Jesus taught and what he meant by his teachings. People put their own interpretation on Jesus’ words and teachings. Rather than conforming their lives to Jesus’ life, which is really what it means to be a Christian, to be Christ-like, in a sense they conform Jesus to their way of life. And that affects the Jesus they preach to the world.

That’s always gone on to some extent and we only have to read the Gospels to see that each of the Evangelists have their own particular interest or slant on who Jesus was.

St Mark shows Jesus as a man of action, rushing from place to place, wherever he’s needed, with no time for rest. St Matthew shows Jesus as a great teacher and as the Saviour of Israel. St Luke’s Jesus is a universal Saviour and great healer and someone who carries the burdens of others. And St John shows Jesus as a great miracle worker and emphasises his divinity and close, personal relationship with the Father, more than any of the other Gospel writers.

We think the Evangelists did this so that Jesus could be portrayed as addressing the concerns of the particular Christian community each evangelist was writing for. That’s understandable. But, if we don’t take all the Gospels into account when we’re building an image of who Jesus was, we can end up with a distorted image of him. The same thing can happen if we look for examples of Jesus addressing our own particular concerns and ignoring examples of Jesus speaking against our preferences. And I’ve come across lots of examples of that.

There was a lady with a rather feminist outlook that I met in a parish I once served in, who told me that she didn’t like the disciples, and neither did Jesus, he preferred women to men. I asked her where she got that impression from and she said it was because all the disciples ran away when Jesus was arrested, and only the women stayed with him. When I pointed out that the Gospel says that Beloved Disciple was with Mary at the Cross, she said, ‘Oh. That’s in John isn’t it? Well I don’t take any notice of what John says, I don’t like him, I prefer Luke!’ Luke’s Gospel, by the way, is the one that gives the most prominence to women, as you would expect from someone who portrays Jesus as the Saviour of all people.

I’m sure many of you here will have heard Jesus referred to as a proto-Socialist, or the first Socialist because of his concern for the poor. That’s a view that was very common a few years ago, especially amongst more politically left-wing Christians. But then, on the other hand I remember once hearing during a TV interview, a very famous, world famous in fact, American evangelist saying that Jesus wasn’t a Socialist; that Jesus believed in business and free-enterprise; that Jesus believed in private property; that Jesus believed in the ‘American Way’.

Which I always thought was a bit of an anachronism, but the pronouncements of American Christians are often puzzling to more than me. As indeed is the C of E’s current preoccupation with money. I’m sure Jesus wouldn’t have objected to the Church collecting money to meet its needs, after all, St Matthew’s Gospel tells us that he paid the ‘Temple Tax’ but how they can justify hounding churches for money, and closing churches and cutting clergy numbers for financial reasons while the Church sits on over £8 billion, how they can square that with Jesus cleansing the temple when God’s house of prayer had been turned into a den of thieves, I don’t know.  

In fact they are, and have been during the Churches history, literally hundreds of different theologies and movements, based on partial and distorted versions of Jesus’ teachings. Some of them seem to have been based on nothing more than the personal views of those who’ve espoused them. Some of them, perhaps many of them, have highlighted neglected areas or unseen implications of Jesus’ teachings, but none of them are the whole picture and so, if they’re taken in isolation, they all give an incomplete and distorted image of Jesus and his teachings. They all give the wrong answer to the question, who is Jesus?

So who is Jesus? As St Peter said, Jesus is the Messiah and the Son of the living God. Jesus is the one who came to take away the guilt and punishment of our sins by carrying them on the Cross on our behalf. Jesus is the one who came to be our Saviour so that all people might have eternal life. Jesus is the one who said that all we need do is believe in him and in the words he spoke, which weren’t his words, but the words of our Father in heaven. And Jesus is the one who summed up those words very simply in the Great Commandment to love God and to love our neighbour as we love ourselves. And if we think about it, what else do we need to do, or say? What is it that isn’t covered in that Great Commandment? It might not be so easy to put into practice, but that’s our fault; it’s not a fault in Jesus, or an omission from his teachings that we have to put right. And we’ll only think that it is if our image of Jesus is wrong, if we don’t know him as his disciples should.

Amen.

---

You will find the Propers for the 21st Sunday (Trinity 11) here.

Today is one of those days in the Church’s calendar that highlights some of the differences that exist between the various denominations of the Church. In the Roman Catholic Church, today is kept as the feast day of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary: it’s the day when Roman Catholics celebrate Mary being taken body and soul, directly to heaven, at the end of her earthly life. In the Eastern Church, today is kept as the Dormition, or falling asleep, of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and it’s the day when Orthodox Christians celebrate the death and resurrection of Mary. Now, as I’m sure you’ll all know, we don’t find these things in the Scriptures; they’re traditions of the Church that date back to the late 5^th Century, and so, as they’re not found in Scripture, the Church of England simply keeps today as a  feast day of the Blessed Virgin Mary and makes no mention of her death and resurrection nor of her assumption.

I suppose none of that would really matter if it wasn’t for the tendency of Christians to argue and fall out about the details of their faith. And, on the whole, it is the details that Christians fall out about. If we think about it, no one who can call themselves a Christian with any integrity, any member of one of the mainstream Churches or Christian denominations, falls out about the fundamentals of their faith, we don’t tend to disagree about the things we find in the Creeds for example; all Christians agree on those things. But we seem to find it very easy to disagree and argue and fall out, and even split the Church, because of the details of what various of us believe.

And unfortunately, that happens quite a lot when it comes to what people believe about Mary, perhaps especially in and between the Roman Catholic and Reformed wings of the Western Church. And that’s very sad, because it takes away from Mary the special place of honour she should have in all the Churches and amongst all Christians.

And Mary should be honoured amongst all Christians because of the unique role she played in the story of our salvation. She should be honoured by all Christians because she is the mother of our Lord Jesus Christ. But, if we see Mary, and especially what various denominations believe and say about Mary, as something to argue and fall out about, how can we honour her as we should? And if we refuse to honour Mary because we think that’s something people of other Churches do, how can we go along with her own words, words that we do find in the Scriptures, and that we heard this morning:

“From now on all generations will call me blessed”?

How can we regard Mary as blessed, as someone favoured by God and worthy of honour, if we regard her as a source of dispute and division in the Church? And if we can’t regard Mary with the honour she’s due, it takes away from us, or at least impedes, our ability to see her as an example and to learn from her example.

The Church, the whole Church that is, very often does talk about Mary as an example to Christians. They speak about her agreement to be the mother of Christ as an example of obedience to God’s will. The Church speaks about Mary’s role in Jesus’ miracle of changing water into wine at the Wedding in Cana as an example of faith. The Church speaks about Mary’s role in following Jesus during his ministry and to the Cross as an example of discipleship in the face of hardship and suffering. And the Church speaks about Mary’s waiting with the disciples in the upper room after Jesus’ Ascension as an example of obedience to Christ and of patient hope and expectation of God to reveal himself in our lives. And Mary is an example of all those things. But Mary is also an example of just what God can do through us if we are obedient and faithful and hopeful and expectant.

If we think about Mary, who was she, in worldly terms? A young girl from a small, insignificant village in Galilee. And Galilee itself was an insignificant backwater of the Roman Empire. It’s value to Rome was as a land route for grain shipments from Egypt and as a buffer state between the Roman Empire and the Parthian Empire to the East. A measure of its importance to Rome is that they couldn’t even be bothered to govern it themselves but installed client kings to run the place for them. So, in worldly terms, Mary was a nobody from the middle of nowhere. And yet, because of her obedience and faithfulness to God, 2,000 years later, she’s known to and remembered and honoured by billions of people all over the world.

And it’s very important that we do understand that about Mary. It’s important we realise that, in worldly terms, there was nothing special about Mary, she was just like you and I and everyone else.

I know there is a teaching of the Church that Mary was born without original sin. Even without going into the problems with the doctrine of original sin itself, and Mary’s own profession that God is her Saviour, which we heard this morning, that causes some major problems. First of all, this idea seems to stem from a belief that it would have been impossible for the Son of God to have been born of a sinful human being. But that limits what God can do, and essentially, it limits what God can do to what human beings can understand. But in that case, how could Jesus perform miracles? And, more importantly, how could Jesus have been raised from the dead?  So we can’t limit God to our understanding and that’s made perfectly clear in the conversation between the archangel Gabriel and Mary at the Annunciation:

“How can this be, since I am a virgin? The angel said to her, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God. And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son; and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren. For nothing will be impossible with God.”

Another major problem the idea that Mary was born without original sin causes, is that it raises some very difficult questions about Jesus.  We believe that Jesus was both fully God, and fully human. His divinity came from his own being as the Son of God, but his humanity came from his human mother, Mary. But if Mary wasn’t like the rest of us, if her humanity was in some way different to ours, then wouldn’t Jesus’ humanity have been different to ours too?

And if Jesus’ humanity wasn’t like ours, that raises some very difficult problems with the whole idea of the Incarnation and with Jesus’ death as an atoning sacrifice for the sins of humanity. Because, if Jesus’ humanity wasn’t the same as ours, how can we square that with these words we read in the Scriptures, in the Letter to the Hebrews:

“Since, therefore, the children share flesh and blood, he himself likewise shared the same things, so that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by the fear of death. For it is clear that he did not come to help angels, but the descendants of Abraham. Therefore he had to become like his brothers and sisters in every respect, so that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make a sacrifice of atonement for the sins of the people. Because he himself was tested by what he suffered, he is able to help those who are being tested.”

And if it was essential that Jesus was just like us, it must have been essential that Mary was just like us too.

So, whatever the various denominations of the Church believe and say about Mary, it’s important that we realise that Mary was just like us because if she wasn’t, she can’t be an example to us. But if we do understand that she was just like us then Mary doesn’t only become an example of obedience and faithfulness, and hope and expectation, to us, she becomes an example of just what God can do in our lives, whoever we are. Mary’s role in the story of our salvation is unique, there’s no need for Jesus to be born of a human mother again, so God won’t give that blessing and honour to anyone else. But there are many other things that need to be done because God’s work on earth is still on going. And part of Mary’s example to us is that, if God could do such great things with this young girl, a nobody from the middle of nowhere, there’s no reason why he can’t do great things through us too because nothing is impossible with God.

Amen

---

You will find the Propers for The Blessed Virgin Mary here

How many people suffer from travel sickness? Quite a few I would imagine because it is a common complaint. I’m quite fortunate in that respect because it’s something that’s never troubled me but I do know lots of people who do suffer from it and I’ve met some who it affects so badly that they’re very reluctant to travel long distances because they know how ill they’ll be. In fact, I used to know one man who suffered so badly from travel sickness that, when he stationed on the Shetland Isles during the Second World War, he wouldn’t go on leave if the weather was bad because the boat journey to and from the mainland made him so ill! But, if you’re one of those unfortunate people who do suffer badly from travel sickness, I think you’ll be quite surprised to learn that one man who shares your troubles, is the Apollo 11 astronaut, Michael Collins.

For those who don’t remember the days of the Apollo space programme, or who aren’t particularly interested in that sort of thing, Michael Collins was the member of the Apollo 11 crew who’s often forgotten. People remember or have heard of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin because they were the first men to land and walk on the Moon, but Collins is often forgotten because he was the one who didn’t land on the Moon; he was the one who stayed in orbit around the Moon. As a fighter pilot, test pilot and astronaut, you might have thought that Collins would be amongst the least likely of people to suffer from travel sickness but, in his memoirs, he admitted that, under certain circumstances, he suffered very badly from travel sickness.

What he found was that, whilst he was flying, as long as he looked straight ahead, he could do barrel rolls (that’s when a plane rolls round like the fingers of a clock) with no problem at all, he could do them all day long. But, if he turned his head sideways so that, to him, it felt like that plane was rolling end over end, straight away, on the first roll, he’d be ill with travel sickness.

That tells us something about why people suffer from travel sickness. It tells us that it’s not really the movement of a vehicle that makes people ill, it’s caused by the disorientation people feel when there’s movement coupled with the lack of a reference point for them to focus on. Because, as long as people have some fixed point to focus on, they can cope with the movement. That’s why Michael Collins could do barrel rolls in a plane with no problem as long as he looked straight ahead but, as soon as he turned his head sideways and lost his reference point, he became disorientated, he thought he was rolling end over end, and it made him ill. It’s the same reason why people who suffer from travel sickness as passengers in a car, don’t suffer from it when they’re driving. And we can use that as an analogy for the problems we have at times as Christians.

We know that our reference point, the thing our focus should always be fixed on, is God. And our compass if you like, the thing that keeps us pointed towards God, is Jesus. And as long as we keep our focus on Jesus and the things he taught us to do, we can keep God in our sights and keep our orientation towards God. And, if we can do that, we can cope with whatever problems might be going on around us. But, if we take our eyes off Jesus, especially when we’re having to face and deal with problems and difficult times, we can find ourselves in trouble because, once we take our eyes off Jesus, we can very easily lose sight of God and the problems around us can overwhelm us. In a sense, it’s just like being in a moving vehicle when we can’t see where we’re going, we can become disorientated and start to feel physically sick.

So, if we lose sight of Jesus and God in our lives as Christians, we can become spiritually ill. And we see some examples of that in our readings this morning.

In our Old Testament reading, we heard about Elijah who had to flee for his life form king Ahab and Jezebel. But Elijah doesn’t look to God for a solution to his troubles, in fact, we’re told that Elijah felt so badly that he simply wanted to die. It’s God who finds Elijah. And then, after God has found him and Elijah does go looking for God, God isn’t where Elijah expects to find him. He’s not in the great wind, or the earthquake, or the fire, God is in the gentle breeze, the stillness, the silence. And when Elijah’s focus was taken away from all the commotion going on around him, his own troubles, and the wind and earthquake and fire, and it was back where it should have been all along, on God, what does God say to Elijah in such a quiet gentle way? He tells Elijah to go back and carry on with his God-given task. And that’s something we need to keep in mind at the moment when we’re faced with such troubled times.

Over these past few months, quite a few people have asked me, ‘Where is God in all this?’. Well, God is there, God is always there. But if people are expecting to see God in the act of hurling a bolt of lightning or sending an all-consuming fire from heaven, or in some other unmistakeable, cosmic way to destroy coronavirus, they’re probably not going to find God in all this. So we need to look for God’s presence amongst us at this time in other, less conspicuous ways. And if we look to Jesus, and simply do the things that Jesus taught us to do, we’ll find God.

We also have people, understandably so it must be said, who are frightened at this time: just like Elijah they’re quite literally in fear for their lives. Because of that, some people are reluctant to return to church until ‘things are back to normal’. But the important things, the things that really matter about coming to church are back to normal. Those things have never changed, what did change is that we weren’t allowed to come to church to experience them.

And whilst we might have had to make changes to what we do in church and to the way we use our churches so that we can come back to church, God is still here, his Spirit is still with us, the Lord is still present amongst us in Word and Sacrament, and we are here to worship him. Is that not what we normally do in church and what we normally come to church for?  So we need to keep our focus on Jesus and on God and not allow ourselves to be disorientated by the troubled times we’re living through and the changes we see around us. 

I think, at this time, we can liken ourselves very much to Peter in this morning’s Gospel. We’re in stormy waters but, as long as we keep our eyes fixed firmly on Jesus, we’ll get through them to calmer times. But, if we get so distracted by the storms that are going on around us that we take our eyes off Jesus, there’s a danger that we’ll start to sink beneath the waves, just like Peter did. So let’s keep our focus on Jesus and on doing what he taught us to do, whatever is going on around us at the moment. If we can do that, I’m not saying it’ll be all plain sailing for us, let alone that we’ll be able to walk on these particular waters without even getting our toes wet, I’m sure we’ll have to do a bit of paddling at least, and maybe even some wading at times, but at least we won’t sink and it’ll keep us heading in the right direction, towards God.

Amen.

---

You will find the Propers for the 19th Sunday of Ordinary Time (Trinity 9) here.