If I were to ask you, ‘What does it mean to be a Christian?’ I hope that everyone would answer that it means to be a disciple of Christ. And if I were to ask what that means, I hope that everyone would answer that it means to follow Christ by modelling our lives on his example, to be like Christ in so far as we’re able. But if I were to ask how we might go about that, then I think I’d start to get some rather different answers from people.

For example, I’ve heard many people describe Jesus as the first socialist and so for them, being a Christian is often about caring for people,  especially for the weaker members of society. On the other hand, the Church of England has often been described as ‘the Tory Party at prayer’ and I don’t think I’d be wrong to say that most people who go to church in this country at least are small c conservatives. By that I don’t mean supporters of the Conservative Party, but that they’re conservative in their views; they don’t like change (and people have heard me speak about that often enough) they like to maintain traditions and traditional ways of doing things. So for many people, being a Christian has a lot to do with being what society thinks of as a good, upstanding citizen. Perhaps, dare I say, with being a ‘good’ person.

But therein lies a problem, and it’s a very big problem for us when it comes living out our faith and when it comes to teaching others the faith, to mission and evangelism. The answer to the question ‘What does it mean to be a Christian?’ can be very similar for many people, but when it comes to what that means in practice, to living out being a follower of Jesus Christ, the answers can become very subjective and more about what we think than about what Jesus said and did.

And I’m sure we’ve all come across this. How many people have we heard say that Christinas shouldn’t drink alcohol? Where does that come from? It’s certainly not from Jesus because he drank wine and if it is wrong to drink alcohol what kind of hypocrite was Jesus turning all that water into wine and then letting people who were already drunk, have even more to drink? When I used to ride on the speedway, I had a priest telling me it was wrong because competing against other people was un-Christian. I don’t recall ever reading that in the Gospel and in fact, St Paul uses athletic competition to help illustrate the way Christians should live. And what about that most awful of sayings among church going people,

‘We don’t want their sort here.’ But didn’t God send his Son into the world to save the world? He didn’t send him to save only those who we think are nice, respectable people did he? And we know that Jesus made a point of ministering to those whom his society thought were unrespectable, sinners, tax-collectors, lepers, prostitutes, the hated Romans and perhaps even more hated Samaritans. If we think about these things, we very soon realise that what people often can and do pass off as Christianity is actually nothing more than the standards and values of the society they live in and their own subjective opinions about what’s right and wrong, good and bad, worthy and unworthy. And how can we teach other people what it means to be a Christian if the example of our own lives is largely based on our own subjective views and opinions and on our own subjective version of Jesus and his teaching, rather than on the teaching and example of Christ himself?

But our subjective approach to Christianity doesn’t only hinder our efforts at mission and evangelism, it has a very detrimental effect on our discipleship too because we can take the same subjective approach towards sin.

If we are in any way serious about our faith, we won’t deny that we are sinners. But isn’t it true that we have a tendency to downplay our own sins? And we very often do that by comparing our sins to what we see as the far worse sins of others. So, for example, someone might annoy us to the extent that we think we’d like to punch them in the face. But we don’t actually do it. And to us in our subjective view of things, that makes us not so bad. We recognise that sin of thought, we know we shouldn’t think those things, but we absolve ourselves to some extent, or perhaps even completely, by thinking that at least we didn’t actually punch them in the face and that makes us a lot better than the person who turns that kind of though into action and does whack that annoying person in the face. But while some sins are worse than others, we can’t for example, compare even someone who does punch another person in the face with the crimes of Jack the Ripper, let alone of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. But nevertheless, sin is sin, and whatever the sin is, we shouldn’t be doing it. And we see this is what Jesus says to us in this morning’s Gospel.

We have to remember that, in Jesus’ day, misfortune was seen as a judgement and punishment from God on miscreants.

And so the people Jesus speaks of in the Gospel, the Galileans whose blood was shed and those crushed when the Tower of Siloam fell on them, would have been seen as terrible people whose fate had been handed out to them by God as their just deserts for their sins. But what Jesus says is that their sins, whatever they were, were no worse than anybody else’s. And he says to the crowd that unless they repent of their own sins, and again we’re not told what they were, they too would perish. And the meaning is clear. The punishment for sin is death, and it makes no difference what we think about the gravity of the sin, whatever our sins are, we all have to repent or die. And this makes it clear that we simply can’t afford to look at sin in a subjective way. We can’t say or think that we’ll be all right because our sins are not as bad as someone else’s sins. All sin is wrong, and all sin will be judged in the same way and carry the same sentence. And no matter how trivial or insignificant we think our sins are, and no matter how much better than others we think we are because of that, we all have to repent. We all have to seek forgiveness, repent and do our utmost to sin no more. The good news for us, is that we still have time to do that, and that’s the meaning of the parable of the fig tree at the end of this morning’s Gospel.

Strictly speaking, this is a parable about Israel. They are the unfruitful fig tree that’s about to be dug up because they’ve had ample time to bear fruit but hadn’t; they’d had ample time to repent, turn to the Lord and be saved, but hadn’t done it. The manure, although I hesitate to use such a word in connection, is Jesus, the Word made flesh who represents Israel’s last chance to turn from their sinful ways and bear fruit for God. But the parable applies to us too. We’ve all had time to repent, turn to the Lord and bear fruit. And I’m sure we all have borne fruit, but I’m equally sure that none of us has produced as much fruit as we might have done. But we still have time. And we can still be fertilised, shall I say, by Jesus. We can still be fed with God’s Word through listening to Jesus’ teaching and doing our best to follow his example. But time is running out. We might not be slaughtered on our way to church in the fashion of the Galileans in this  morning’s Gospel. We might not be crushed to death by a falling building as those who died when the Tower of Siloam fell on them were. But one day will be our last day and then our time for repentance, for turning to the Lord and bearing fruit so that we can be saved will be up. So if we want to be saved, the time for repentance is now, while we still have that time.

And as Jesus makes clear in this morning’s Gospel, it doesn’t matter how serious we think our sins are compared to anyone else’s, they are still sins and we still need to repent.

Just over a week ago I had my biannual Ministerial Development Review. That’s a one-on-one interview with a member of the senior clergy in the diocese, and among the things we discussed was the problem of proclaiming the faith and of being a parish priest at this time when we’re being constantly bombarded, it seems, with news of scandals in the Church, of curious and even dubious statements from senior Church leaders and in a time of great change for and in the Church which the majority of our small c conservative congregations aren’t happy about.  And we agreed that, at our own local level, all we can do is be the very best that we can be. To be as faithful to the teaching and example of Christ as we can be. But we will only be that and can only be that if we get rid of that subjective approach to our faith and discipleship that actually is the root of so many of our problems, and we begin to look at Christ’s teaching and example objectively and indeed look at ourselves objectively in the light of Christ’s teaching and example. Or to put it another way, when we stop trying to bend Christ to our ways and bend ourselves to his way.

I said a little earlier that the majority of people who come to church are small c conservatives, people who by nature, don’t like change. But the Christian’s calling is to change, and above all to change ourselves from what we were and are into what Christ calls us to be, and God wants us to be. But we’ll only make that change if we can stop being so subjective in our understanding of our faith and in our living it out in our daily lives. So let’s try to be more objective in these things so that we can change, so that we can repent, turn to the Lord, bear fruit and be saved. So that, whatever is going on in the wider Church, people can look at us and say here, at least, are people who are worthy of the name ‘Christians’ people who understand the faith they preach and practice it.  And let’s at least start to do that now, while we still have time.

Amen.

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Propers for the 3rd Sunday of Lent, 23rd March 2025

Entrance Antiphon
My eyes are always on the Lord,
for he rescues my feet from the snare.
Turn to me and have mercy on me,
for I am alone and poor.

The Collect
O God, author of every mercy and of all goodness,
who in fasting, prayer and almsgiving have shown us a remedy for sin,
look graciously on this confession of our lowliness,
that we, who are bowed down by our conscience,
may always be lifted up by your mercy.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, for ever and ever.
Amen.

The Readings
Exodus 3:1-8, 13-15
Psalm 103:1-4, 6-8, 11
1 Corinthians 10:1-6, 10-12
Luke 13:1-9

Prayer after Communion
As we receive the pledge of things yet hidden in heaven,
and are nourished while still on earth with the Bread that comes from on high,
we humbly entreat you, O Lord,
that what is being brought about in us in mystery
may come to true completion.
Through Christ our Lord.
Amen.

In last Sunday’s Gospel we heard the story of Jesus’ Temptation in the Wilderness, something we know happened before Jesus began his ministry. But today we’ve suddenly jumped way ahead in time to the story of Jesus’ Transfiguration and this is something that happened when Jesus’ ministry was well underway, and he was already looking even further ahead.

We know Jesus was looking ahead at this time because the Transfiguration happened after Jesus had begun to speak about his death and Resurrection, so we know that by this time he was looking ahead towards the climax of his own ministry. But shortly before Jesus had begun to speak about these things, he’d sent the twelve Apostles out ahead of him to proclaim the good news. And on their return, he’d asked them not only who other people thought he was, but who they thought he was, and he’d elicited from Peter the belief that he, Jesus, was the Christ. And Jesus had begun to teach the Apostles that they too would have to take up their own cross if they wanted to follow him. So it seems that, by the time of his Transfiguration, Jesus was not only looking ahead to the climax of his own ministry, but also to the time after his return to the Father, to the time when his disciples would continue his ministry, to the time and ministry of the Church. So why have we jumped so far ahead today and skipped over so much of what Jesus said and did between his Temptation in the Wilderness and his Transfiguration?

I think we’ve done that because, as different as these two gospel stories appear to be, there are some striking similarities and connections between the second of Jesus’ three temptations and the story of his Transfiguration, and these similarities and connections are of great importance to us as disciples of Christ.

The second temptation of Jesus was the temptation to turn his back on God and worship the devil in return for all the glory and authority of the kingdoms of the world. In order to show Jesus that glory, the devil took Jesus up to a high place, or a high mountain as St Matthew’s gospel puts it. And in the story of the Transfiguration, again we have someone being taken up a high mountain to see a vision of glory. In this case, Jesus taking Peter, James and John up a mountain to see a vision of him in glory, a vision of God’s glory rather than earthly glory.

Of course, Jesus wasn’t alone in this vision of glory, he was accompanied by Moses and Elijah. Moses represented the law, and this suggests another connection between this story and the second of Jesus’ temptations. In that temptation Jesus was asked to worship the devil but when we think about the law what probably springs to mind first are the Ten Commandments and as we know the first commandment is;

“I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods besides me.”

The second temptation was an attempt to entice Jesus into breaking this first commandment, with the lure of earthly power and glory. But Jesus resisted the temptation and in obedience to the first commandment said,

“‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve.’”

So in the story of Jesus’ Transfiguration we’re reminded of his second temptation and his obedience to the law.

Obedience to the law was something the people of Israel hadn’t always been very good at though and so God had sent prophets to the people to call them back to obedience. And in the Transfiguration, the prophets were  represented by Elijah.

But the prophets really had a two-fold ministry. They were charged to call the people back to God and to obedience to the law, but they also prophesied, they told people what God would do in the future. Jesus had said earlier in his ministry that he’d come to fulfil the law and the prophets and that’s what he did. He fulfilled the law, that is, he lived according to the law and did everything that was required under the law, and he fulfilled the prophets. He did that by fulfilling prophecy and by bringing people back to God through his own suffering and death.

Through doing these things, Jesus has been raised to glory. As St Paul says,

‘And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.’

And this brings us to another connection between Jesus’ second temptation and his Transfiguration.

In that second temptation, Jesus was shown and offered the glory and authority of the world. In the Transfiguration, Peter, James and John were shown the glory and authority of Jesus and of God. And that’s a glory we’re offered, and a glory we can have and share in if we can look beyond the glory and authority of the world and remain faithful to God and obedient to his Word. And his Word is Jesus.

Just before his Transfiguration, Jesus had asked the Apostles who the people thought he was. The answer came back that they thought he was a prophet. But in answer to the question,

“But who do you say that I am?” 

Peter confessed his belief that Jesus was, 

“The Christ of God.”

And that was confirmed at Jesus’ Transfiguration by the voice from the cloud which said,

“This is my Son, my Chosen One; listen to him!” 

In his second temptation, Jesus was taken up to a high place to see the glory and authority of the world. At the transfiguration, Peter, James and John were taken up a mountain to see the glory and authority of Jesus and of God. In that second temptation, Jesus was offered the glory and authority of the world in exchange for unfaithfulness to God. Peter, James and John, saw the glory and authority of Jesus and of God that is the reward for those who remain faithful to God. That’s a glory we can have too if we can be faithful to God, and we can be faithful to God if only we listen to Jesus.

Of course the vison of glory that Peter, James and John saw on the mountain is a vison of what we can be like and will be like if we remain faithful to God. But we can become more glorious every day by listening to Jesus and being obedient to his teaching and following his example more closely. As St Paul, again, says,

‘And we all, with unveiled face, reflecting the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.’

And this is really what our Lenten discipline is all about, to listen more closely to Jesus so that we can be more obedient to his teaching and so that our lives will be more like his life. So that we can be changed, slowly by one degree at a time, into his glorious likeness.

Like Jesus, we can tempted by the glory and authority of the world but, like Jesus, we’re called to resist that temptation and remain faithful to God. The allure of earthly glory and authority is great, but even if we achieve it, it isn’t permanent. The kind of glory and authority that God offers us may not be so alluring in the short term, but in the long term it’s far more attractive because, if we can achieve it, it is permanent; it’s everlasting. So which will it be, which mountain are we going to climb, the mountain of temptation or the mountain of the Transfiguration? And which vision of glory and authority are we going to plump for and go after?

Amen.

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Propers for the 2nd Sunday of Lent, 16th March 2025

Entrance Antiphon
Of you my heart has spoken: Seek his face.
It is your face, O Lord, that I seek;
hide not your face from me.

The Collect
O God, who has commanded us to listen to your beloved Son,
be pleased, we pray,
to nourish us inwardly by your word,
that, with spiritual sight made pure,
we may rejoice to behold your glory.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, for ever and ever.
Amen.

The Readings
Genesis 15:5-12, 17-18
Psalm 27:1, 7-9, 13-14
Philippians 3:17-4:1
Luke 9:28-36

Prayer after Communion
As we receive these glorious mysteries,
we make thanksgiving to you, O Lord,
for allowing us while still on earth
to be partakers even now of the things of heaven.
Through Christ our Lord.

Amen.

Today is the first Sunday of Lent and so, as always, our Gospel reading today is the story of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness. And, as people who preach on this story usually do, I’m going to speak today about temptation, about how we can be faced with the same or similar temptations Christ was, and about how, unlike him, we can succumb to temptation and be led astray from the right path of life. But I’m going to try to look at these things in a slightly different way than perhaps we usually do.

The first temptation Jesus faced was to turn stones into bread. Of course that’s something we can’t do, we don’t have the power, but Jesus did. His answer to this temptation though was to say,

“It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone.’”

And that calls to mind the full scripture quotation, written in the Book of Deuteronomy,

‘…man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.’ 

But as Christians we believe that Jesus is both word and bread. He is the ‘Word made flesh’, the incarnate Son of God. And he is the ‘Bread of Life’. Or, to put it in Jesus’ own words,

“I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live for ever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

So in Jesus we have both bread and word. But what do we do with this wonderful gift from heaven? Do we see it as the means of life for the world, or do we use it for our own selfish purposes? Sadly, I think it’s far too often the latter. As we break the bread of life in church, we say,

“We break this bread to share in the body of Christ.

Though we are many we are one body, because we all share in one bread.”

We say this but we know that we’re not one. And what’s worse, we use both word and bread as weapons in our petty internecine arguments. We argue about the word and say that those who don’t agree with our version of the word are not part of the body.

We argue about holy orders, about whose ordination has been done properly and whose hasn’t. And if people don’t do it our way, we say that their bread isn’t the true bread, that it isn’t the body of Christ.

I hear these kinds of statements so often. Not too long ago an ex-Anglican I know who’s now been received into the Roman Catholic Church told me that his parish priest told him that he’d been wasting his time all the years he was an Anglican. Why? Do we proclaim a different Gospel to the Roman Catholic Church? Do we believe that someone other that Jesus Christ is our Lord and Saviour?

We might not have the power to turn stones into bread, but we certainly do seem to have the power to turn bread into stones. We’re often tempted to do that, and we very often give in to that temptation. We turn bread into stones and then we pick up those stones and throw them at one another.

The second temptation Jesus faced was to turn his back on God and worship the devil in return for earthly power and glory.

That’s a temptation we know only too well because we’re surrounded by people who’ve done that. We live in an age when our society in general seems to have turned its back on God in favour or earthly riches, power and glory. A very selfish society in which the motto to live by seems to have become ‘What’s in it for me?’ We might like to think that we’re not like that. And to some extent at least, that’s true. At least we’re here in church worshipping the Lord and giving thanks for the good things he’s blessed us with, both the spiritual and the worldly. But still, if we’re honest, isn’t it true that we live in a kind of halfway house in which we follow Christ as long as that doesn’t become too hard for us in worldly terms? How many of us are really prepared to suffer any kind of economic or physical hardship for the sake of the Church, or our neighbour, let alone for an enemy? And yet we proclaim Jesus Christ,

‘… who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.’ 

not only as our Lord and Saviour but as the way, the truth and the life, and as our example.

Jesus was taken up to see all the kingdoms of the world and their power and glory, but we don’t have to be, we’re surrounded by it in our daily lives. We can see the world’s glory at home on our televisions, and wherever we are through the wonders of modern technology, through laptops, smart phones and the internet. Perhaps part of the problem is that, in being able to see so much so easily, we end up not being able to really see any further than the end of our noses. In the film Enter the Dragon, Bruce Lee’s character is trying to explain something to his student and says,

“It’s like a finger pointing away to the Moon.”

The student looks at the finger, Lee slaps him on the head and says,

“Don’t concentrate on the finger or you will miss all that heavenly glory”

I think we can be so tempted by the finger, by what’s right in front of us that we can lose sight of all the heavenly glory that God has in store for us.

The final temptation Jesus faced was to put God to the test by throwing himself from the top of the temple, forcing God into acting to save him.

I don’t think any of us would be so stupid as to test God in this kind of way. I’m sure some of you will have seen the photographs of John Barber and myself on the scaffolding at the top of St Mark’s Bell tower. I certainly didn’t think to throw myself down in an attempt to prove to the people of Chadderton and Middleton Junction that God loves us, and they should all be in church on a Sunday. I’m pretty sure John didn’t either. I’m also pretty sure that if I had done, I would have landed with an almighty splat! And you’d now be looking for a new vicar. But we can and do put God to the test in other ways, and we do put him to the test, often.

On your way into church this morning, you may have noticed a picture of a man leaning on a shovel. The words on the picture say,

God is in control, but he doesn’t expect you to lean on a shovel and pray for a hole to appear. He asks you to dig a hole and trust that he’s shown you where to dig it.

And this is one way we put God to the test. We pray for something and expect God to give us what we want. Perhaps what we’d be far better doing in many cases is praying to God to show us how to deal with the problem we’re praying about. Rather than praying,

Father, please let someone leave us some money (or let us win the lottery) so we can keep this church open,

our prayer should be more along the lines of,

Father, help us to see how we can proclaim the Gospel in ways that will bring people to faith.

So we can put God to the test in the way we pray. But perhaps we put God to the test most often is in our attitude towards sin.

We are all sinners. But how many of us sin, know that we’re doing wrong at the time, but do it anyway and then think it’s OK, and that God will forgive us because it’s only a little sin and it’s not as bad as some things other people do? Perhaps we think that we’ll be forgiven because we come to church whereas so many other sinners don’t. But isn’t that just like throwing yourself off the top of the temple, or a bell tower trusting God to save us? Isn’t it the same as doing something stupidly dangerous thinking no harm will come to us because we believe in God? And thinking we can commit sins quite deliberately and get away with it is stupidly dangerous because when we do that we’re not just taking chances with our mortal lives but with our prospects of immortal life. We might believe that our sins are forgiven through the Cross of Christ, but Jesus said that only those who do the will of the Father will be saved and the Father’s will is not that we should put him to the test by expecting forgiveness and eternal life from him whilst being serial, unrepentant sinners.

There are so many ways we can be tempted to sin, and so many ways we can succumb to the temptation. We should always be aware of this, but Lent above any other is the time of the Church’s year when we’re called to think about these things. So let’s use these 40 days wisely, as a time to think about how we’re tempted, about what tempts us, and about how and why we succumb to temptation. And as a time for prayer too. Not simply for forgiveness and salvation, but for guidance so that we might have the wisdom and the strength to find sin less of a temptation and to be able to follow Christ’s example of resistance a little more closely.

Amen.  

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Propers for the 1st Sunday of Lent, 9th March 2025

Entrance Antiphon
When he calls on me, I will answer him;
I will deliver him and give him glory,
I will grant him length of days.

The Collect
Grant, almighty God,
through the yearly observances of holy Lent,
that we may grow in understanding of the riches hidden in Christ,
and by worthy conduct pursue their effects.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, for ever and ever
Amen.

The Readings
Deuteronomy 26:4-10
Psalm 91:1-2, 10-15
Romans 10:8-13
Luke 4:1-13

Prayer after communion
Renewed now with heavenly bread,
by which faith is nourished, hope increased,
and charity strengthened,
we pray, O Lord,
that we may learn to hunger for Christ,
the true and living Bread,
and strive to live by every word which proceeds from your mouth.
Through Christ our Lord.
Amen.