In our Gospel reading this morning we hear about Jesus teaching and healing in the early days of his earthly ministry. At the end of the reading we’re told that his reputation and fame spread rapidly throughout Galilee, and we’re left in no doubt that this was due in part to the fact that, unlike other people, Jesus taught and acted ‘with authority’.  

I don’t think there can be any doubt that, if you’re going to ask people to follow you and do what you tell them to do, as Jesus did, you do have to have some kind of authority. You have to know what you’re talking about; you have to know what you’re doing, and you have to show that you know these things. And we, as Christians, are people who’ve decided that Jesus did have this kind of authority and so we’re willing to follow him and do what he says.

But for many people today, the idea of submitting to authority is repugnant because many people today think that the ultimate, and preferably only  authority in their lives is, or at least should be, themselves. Many people today seem to believe that they have, or should have, the right to do exactly what they want to do. They believe that no one has the right to tell them what to do nor has the right to tell them what they can’t do. And many people try to live according to these kinds of beliefs. I’ve come across this kind of attitude in schools, especially high schools, I’ve come across it in the workplace, and I’ve spoken to people, especially in the Police Force and Prison Service who’ve come across it in their work too.

As this is a problem that people in different lines of work come across, it’s clearly a widespread problem in our society, and as it’s a widespread problem in our society, it’s a very big problem for the Church. As I’ve already said, to be a Christian involves submitting to the authority of Christ. It means doing what he said we should and not doing what he said we shouldn’t. But, if people have an aversion to authority, they’re almost certainly going to have a problem with Christianity because the central practice of the faith is living under the authority of Christ. And we see this too in the number of people who say that they’re Christians but don’t live as Christ commanded. How many people have we all met who’ve said that they don’t go to church, but they are Christians because they’re ‘good people’ who live ‘good lives’? But what do those people actually mean by that? By what standard and by who’s standard are they good? When you ask people who say these things what they mean by ‘good’, you tend to find that their ideas about what’s good and bad are very subjective because the standard they use to determine good and bad is usually their own. This doesn’t mean that they’re bad people, but it doesn’t make them Christians because the only standard a Christian uses to determine good and bad is the standard that Christ used and taught.

But if issues with authority are a problem in our society and for individuals who make up our society, I don’t think we’re alone in having this problem, because, I think, authority is very much at the heart of the trouble we see in the world today.

I don’t think anyone can help but be deeply concerned with the state of the world at this present time. There’s great unrest in the world, war and conflict in so many parts of the world, and the threat of even more war and conflict as more and more nations become involved and take sides in the fighting and the turmoil. But if we try to look at what’s happening in the world at the moment in an objective way, if we put aside our own feelings about nations and our  historical disputes with them, I don’t think we have to look too far beneath the surface of the trouble in the world to see that issues of authority are very much at the heart of the world’s present troubles. Who has authority, the abuse of authority; who wants authority and who should have authority.

As we look at the world, don’t we see powerful nations exerting authority over weaker nations, and often in a very abusive and violent way? And consequently we see weaker nations trying to break free of the hegemony, the influence and authority of those powerful nations so that they can have authority over their own lives. And, because they are weak, they look to find allies in their struggle to exert their own authority. Of course, those who have hegemony want to keep it and so they take steps to preserve their authority and influence over others. And so we end up with nations at each other’s throats issuing threats and counter threats and the world becomes an ever more violent and volatile place in which even the authority of law is breaking down as nations look to criminalise those they’re hostile towards, whilst at the same time absolving or even supporting friendly nations who commit similar atrocities against their neighbours. Any objective sense of what’s right and wrong, good and bad goes out of the window and the difference between these things becomes entirely subjective and based on nothing more than ‘national interests.’ Which in itself is a euphemism for a nation’s authority over its own affairs and/or the affairs of other nations.

To be honest, there’s probably not much we, as individuals, can do to influence what’s going on in the world today, in any meaningful way. But we can perhaps try to understand what’s going on a little better by looking at the world’s troubles in an objective way and for us, as Christians, that means looking at these things through the lens of Christ’s teaching. And, as Christians, that’s what we should be doing. If we look at the world’s problems through the lenses of past and present disputes or national interest we’ll just become subjective in our opinions about the rights and wrongs of the world’s problems and then we can be swept away with the prevailing mood of our society and time which will inevitably mean being swept away from the teaching of Christ.

Let me put it this way. If someone took something of ours without our permission and with no intention of returning it, we’d call that person a thief, and quite rightly so because that’s what they’d be. But if a good friend of ours or a member of our family took something of someone else’s without their permission and with no intention of returning it, they would also be a thief. Just because what was taken wasn’t ours and the person who took it was someone we knew and liked or even loved, that would not make them any less of a thief, and it wouldn’t make what they’d done any less wrong. As Christians, as people called to live under the authority of Christ, to live according to his teaching and example, and called to encourage others to do the same by proclaim the Gospel, we’d be obliged to point out to our friend or family member that what they’d done was wrong and encourage them to make amends to whomever they’d stolen from. That would be the objective, Christian thing to do. But if on the other hand we made excuses for what they’d done, or tried to hide what they’d done, we’d be complicit in their wrongdoing. We’d be just as guilty as they were. And that would be the subjective, un-Christian thing to do. As we look at what’s going on in the world around us today, what do you think we’re seeing? I think we’re far, far more likely to see subjective responses to the world’s problem than objective responses, let alone Christian responses.

As Christians, we’re called to be in the world but not of the world, and that’s simply another way of saying that we’re called to live under the authority of Christ and to live and judge according to his standards rather than the world’s standards or our own standards. Some of the problems we can faced with in life are very complicated and it’s not always easy to see the good and the bad, the rights and wrongs of a situation so that we can decide what to do about the problem. That’s certainly true of the problems we see around us in the world today. But as long as we try look at problems through the lens of Christ’s teaching, we do, at least, have an objective way of trying to decide what is right and wrong and to choose what the right and wrong way to respond is. The alternative is to use the subjective ways that the world looks at problems and tries to solve them, and we only have to look at the world around us to see how much worse, rather than better, that can make a problem.

Many people today are fearful about the future, they’re worried, and frightened, about what’s going on in the world and the potential for even worse to follow, and that’s quite understandable. Those feelings are perhaps made worse by the knowledge that there probably isn’t very much, if anything, we as individuals can do to influence and change for better what’s going on in the world. But no matter what is happening and may happen, we must stay true to our calling as Christians and live under the authority of Christ and his teaching. If we can do that then, whatever happens, we will have made the right choice and be on the right side.

No matter how great it seems to be in its day, all earthly power and authority and influence comes to an end, eventually, but Christ’s authority never will. As he said,

“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit,teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

So let’s remember and submit to his authority now because, whatever happens in the world, in the end, his will be the only authority left.

Amen.

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Propers for the 4th Sunday of Ordinary Time (Epiphany 4) 28th January 2024

Entrance Antiphon
Save us Lord, and gather us together from the nations,
that we may proclaim your holy name and glory in your praise.

The Collect
God our creator,
who in the beginning commanded the light to shine out of darkness:
we pray that the light of the glorious gospel of Christ,
may dispel the darkness of ignorance and unbelief,
shine into the hearts of all your people,
and reveal the knowledge of your glory in the face of Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
Amen.

The Readings
Missal (St Mark’s)        
Deuteronomy 18:15-20
Psalm 95:1-2, 6-9
1 Corinthians 7:32-35
Mark 1:21-28

RCL (St Gabriel’s)          
Deuteronomy 18:15-20
Psalm 111
Revelation 12:1-5
Mark 1:21-28

I started my sermon last Sunday, by speaking about the differences between the Roman Catholic and Church of England calendars; about why at St Mark’s we were keeping the 2nd Sunday in Ordinary Time, whilst at St Gabriel’s we were keeping the 2nd Sunday of Epiphany. Today I’m going to start by mentioning one of the problems that can cause, perhaps especially for the clergy when they’re looking for a theme for a sermon! The problem is, because we use different calendars in the two churches in this benefice, we can sometimes have different readings in the two churches on a Sunday, and today is one of those Sundays. So whilst our readings at St Mark’s today, the readings for the 3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time, are concerned with answering the Lord’s call and with repentance, the readings at St Gabriel’s, the readings for the 3rd Sunday of Epiphany, are still concerned with revelation and with signs pointing to the true identity of Jesus. Nevertheless, even though these readings do seem quite different on the surface, there is, I think, still a common thread in these readings, and it’s one that I’ve also spoken about recently, the need to be willing and able to change, to do things differently so that we can follow the Lord and proclaim the Gospel.

Our readings at St Mark’s today start with Jonah. I’m sure we all know the story of Jonah, how God chose him to go to the great city of Nineveh and proclaim God’s word to the inhabitants there. And the word was to change your ways, repent and desist from evil behaviour. We also know that Jonah didn’t want to go, and he tried to run away to Tarshish. We don’t know where exactly Tarshish was. All we know is that it seems to have been associated with the sea to the west of Israel, and with great wealth, especially in metals. So when God asked Jonah to leave what he was doing and go to Nineveh, Jonah’s response was to run as fast and far as he could in the opposite direction, Nineveh being far to the east of Israel. But of course, we can’t run away from God no matter where we go nor how fast we go there and in the end, Jonah did end up in Nineveh, doing what God had asked him to do.

That theme of leaving what we’re doing in order to proclaim God’s word runs through this morning’s Gospel reading at St Mark’s too. At this point in St Mark’s Gospel, Jesus had started his public ministry and was beginning to call disciples, people to follow him and help him to proclaim the Good News. And the first people he calls are two sets of brothers, Simon and Andrew, and James and John. The Gospel tells us that they were all fishermen, and when Jesus found them, they were all busy at their work. Simon and Andrew were fishing, and James and John were mending their nets. But when Jesus called them, they left what they were doing and followed him. They didn’t try to run away as Jonah had done, they didn’t say they were too busy, they didn’t get together for a chat about whether they should follow Jesus or not, they didn’t even ask Jesus why they should leave what they were doing and follow him. They didn’t ask what was going to happen to their boats and nets, or how they were going to make a living if they left these things behind, they just followed Jesus’ call.

So these readings are about people who were asked to stop what they were doing and do something else instead. To stop doing what they were used to doing and do something for God. And they responded in different ways. Jonah tried to run away. Simon, Andrew, James and John, simply stopped what they were doing and followed Jesus. We could look at these two Bible stories as stories about how people respond to change, how adaptable they are and how willing they are to change their ways for God. And when we look at these stories in that way, they become stories that are very much applicable to people in the Church; to us.

As I’ve said many times, including recently, we can’t stay the same for ever because the world we live in doesn’t stay the same for ever. If we want to be able to proclaim the Good News to the world we live in, we have to adaptable and willing to change. And we can see this in the reading from 1 Corinthians, which is the second reading at St Mark’s today. In that reading St Paul urges the Corinthians to change their ways, to behave in a different way than they had been doing, and the reason St Paul gives for this is,

‘…because the world as we know it is passing away.’

What St Paul meant by that is that Jesus would return in the near future and the world, as we know it, was going to come to an end. We know that didn’t happen, but nevertheless, those words are applicable to us because the world as we know it is always passing away. It must be because the world is in a constant state of change. Things today are not the same as they were in the past and so, if we want to proclaim the Good News to today’s world, we have to adapt to today’s world. And I’ll give you an example of what I mean.

Many years before I was ordained, I was once involved in a conversation between a priest and a woman, a lapsed Catholic as I recall, about why so many people don’t go to church these days, as those days were then. The lady was saying that, in her opinion, the reason many people didn’t go to church was because it was so old fashioned and boring and that, these days, people want something a bit more lively and up to date. The priest said that we were talking about going to church, not going to a pop concert and that people shouldn’t be going to church to be entertained, but because it’s their duty to worship God. To which the woman said,

“People don’t think like that anymore though.”

By this point the priest, who used to talk quite a lot about ‘duty’, was getting quite annoyed and he said,

“No! Nobody understands anything about duty these days!”

In my opinion, they were both right. A lot of people do find church old fashioned and boring, and they won’t come to church because of that. On the other hand, I also believe too that very few people do have any great sense of duty. But, if people have no sense of duty, you can’t appeal to their sense of duty to encourage them to come to church can you? So you have to find another way, you have to change. That priest did have a great sense of duty, and tradition. That made him a very good parish priest, but it also made him very resistant to change and in the end his congregation was a very small, and quite elderly congregation, and after he retired, that parish church closed.

We have to be adaptable to the changing world that we live in, and we have to be willing and able to change to meet the challenges that changing world presents us with. That doesn’t mean we have to adopt change for change’s sake, and when and where we do change, we have to be very careful we don’t throw the baby out with the bath water. As Jesus put it;

“…every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like a master of a house, who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.”

In other words what’s new isn’t the enemy of what’s old, so long as the new fulfils the old. In the context of the Church, change isn’t about doing away with tradition, and certainly not about changing our purpose, it’s simply about finding new ways to answer God’s call to proclaim the Good News. And sometimes that means we have to let go of our old ways of doing things and think of news ways, even if that means thinking outside the box at times. But if we think about the Gospel reading at St Gabriel’s this morning, the story of Jesus changing water into wine at the Wedding in Cana, isn’t that what happened there?

We’re told that the wine had run out at what we’d call a wedding reception. Can you imagine it, a wedding reception with no booze? But what would we do about that situation? No doubt we’d go, or send someone to buy more, wouldn’t we? Jews can’t marry on the Sabbath, so they could have bought more, so why didn’t they? We could argue that when Mary told Jesus about this, she was implying that he should go and buy more wine. But Jesus and Mary were guests, and there were servants at the wedding to do that sort of thing so, as Jesus said, what did it have to do with him, or her? And when Jesus did decide to do something about it, he didn’t do what might be expected and tell the chief steward or tell the servants to go and but more wine, instead he asked them to fill up some jars with water. I wonder what those servants thought about that. There they were, at a wedding, the wine had run out and instead of being asked to go and buy some more, here’s this guest telling them to get a few hundred gallons of water instead. Surely he wasn’t suggesting people should drink water instead of wine, I mean, what sort of wedding reception would that be? The wedding would have been at the groom’s house, so what would people think of him if the guests had been given water to drink instead of wine? If we think about this story, simply as a story about a wedding, apart from Jesus asking what it had to do with him or his mother, it doesn’t make any sense, nobody does what you’d expect them to do. But of course Jesus used all these upturned expectations, all these changes to what people would have expected to happen and to be done, to proclaim the Good News. He turned the water into wine and, we’re told, it was through this that ‘his disciples believed in him’.

In the second reading at St Mark’s this morning, St Paul reminds us that the world as we know it is passing away, and it always is. That doesn’t necessarily mean that the world is coming to an end, but the world as we know it is passing away because the world is always in a state of change, and we have to be ready, willing and able to respond to the challenges the changing world presents us with. That means that we have to be ready, willing and able to change so that we can continue to proclaim the Good News in a world that is not the same as it once was. So are we going to be Jonah’s and run away from what we have to do? Or are we going to be like Simon and Andrew, James and John and be ready, at a moment’s notice to leave what we’re used to behind so that we can go out into the world and proclaim the Good News? Can we learn from the story of the Wedding at Cana and think outside the box so that we can use new, different and even unexpected ways to bring people to faith? 

Amen.

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Propers for the 3rd Sunday of Ordinary Time (Epiphany 3) 21st January 2024

Entrance
Sing a new song to the Lord!
Sing to  the Lord, all the earth.
Truth and beauty surround him, he lives in holiness and glory.

The Collect
Almighty God,
whose Son revealed in signs and miracles the wonder of your saving presence:
renew your people with your heavenly grace,
and in all our weakness,
sustain us by your mighty power;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
Amen.

The Readings
Missal (St Mark’s)        
Jonah 3:1-5, 10
Psalm 25:4-9
1 Corinthians 7:29-31
Mark 1:14-20

RCL (St Gabriel’s)          
Genesis 14:17-20
Psalm 128
Revelation 19:6-10
John 2:1-11

According to the Roman Catholic Church, we’ve now left behind what might be called seasonal time, and we’ve returned to Ordinary Time, that time of the year when we’re not celebrating any particular season of the Church’s year, a time that’s also known as the ‘green season’ because it’s a time of the year when the clergy wear green vestments. For the Church of England though, we’re now in the season of Epiphany, and for me, it’s the Church of England which has got this right.

Epiphany, as I’m sure you’ll know, is a word that means ‘revelation’ or ‘realisation’. So the Feast of the Epiphany, which we celebrated in Church last Sunday, is the day when we celebrate the revelation of Christ to the Gentiles, because in the visit of the wise men to the Christ child, the non-Jewish world realised who Jesus is. But as we go through these next few Sundays, our Gospel readings are full of revelations of who Jesus is and so this time of year is, in fact, a season of epiphanies.

If we think about it, it’s not surprising that our readings should be concerned with epiphanies, with revelations about Jesus, at this time. We started our year with Advent when we looked forward to Jesus’ birth, and we celebrated his birth at Christmas, so it’s only natural that we should then move on to say something about why we’ve made such a fuss of Jesus birth; to say something about who Jesus is that makes his birth and Jesus himself so important.

And so we start with the Feast of the Epiphany when the wise men’s gift of gold tells us that Jesus is a King. Their gift of frankincense tells us that he’s God. And their gift of myrrh tells us that he is the one whom Isaiah prophesied,

‘…he was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities;

upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed.’

We also hear at this time of year the story of Jesus’ baptism, and this again is a story of revelations because it tells us that Jesus, although he’s superior to the prophets, nevertheless submits to John the Baptist in order to ‘fulfil all righteousness’. So Jesus is someone whose purpose is to do God’s will. The descent of the dove as Jesus comes up out of the water tells us that this is someone on whom the Holy Spirit rests. And the voice from heaven tells us that Jesus is God’s own “beloved Son,” with whom the Father is “well pleased.”

Because we use both the Roman Catholic and Common Worship lectionaries in this benefice, today we have different Gospel readings in church, but nevertheless, they’re both concerned with epiphanies. At St Mark’s this morning we hear John the Baptist proclaim to his disciples that Jesus is ‘the Lamb of God.’ That’s something John had already called Jesus when, during the version of Jesus’ baptism in St John’s Gospel, John the Baptist calls Jesus,

“…the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!”

This again draws our minds to that prophecy of Isaiah, but also to Jesus as divine because only God can forgive sin, so who is Jesus that he can take away the sin of the world?

We also hear Jesus first disciples calling him “Rabbi,” ‘Teacher’ and that’s something we hear too in the Gospel at St Gabriel’s this morning. This Gospel reveals Jesus to have great wisdom and spiritual insight because he knows the kind of person Nathanael is simply by observing him, and in response, Nathanael says to Jesus, and of Jesus, 

“Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!”

So we hear too, in these stories about Jesus calling his first disciples. And over the next few weeks, as we move through the season of Epiphany, we’ll hear stories of the ‘signs’ Jesus performed, healings and other miracles that drew people to him and brought them to faith. And really, that is what these stories are about; revealing things about Jesus so that those who hear the stories will realise who Jesus is, come to faith and follow him as his disciples.

We who are here today, have already come to faith, or are at least somewhere along the road on the journey to faith; we probably wouldn’t be here if that wasn’t the case. But nevertheless, it’s important for us to hear these stories and be reminded of who Jesus is because, no matter how much faith we have and no matter how deep and strong our faith is, we’re all still only somewhere along the road to true discipleship. That’s because none of us follow Jesus as closely as we should, nor indeed as closely even as we could. And in this respect, we can fail in so many ways.

We acclaim Jesus as our King and our God, as these Epiphany season Gospel stories say he is. But we know that we don’t always treat him as such. As I said in my sermon last Sunday, we don’t always pay Jesus homage, that is, we have a tendency to privatise our faith for the sake of an easy life rather than proclaiming our faith publicly, as we should for our King and our God.

If we acclaim Jesus as our King and our God, we should obey him and keep his commandments, but we know too that we don’t always do that. In fact, we probably don’t do that anywhere near enough. And one of the ways we can fail most often and most spectacularly in this respect, is through our attitude towards sin.

Jesus said that the greatest commandment is to love God with all our heart and soul and mind, and the second is to love our neighbour as ourselves. He said that the whole of the law and the prophets depended on these two commandments, in other words, the whole of the Jewish faith depends on these two commandments. And we must always remember that the Jesus on whom our faith depends, was himself a Jew, a very good and faithful Jew who taught the Jewish faith, so our faith depends on these two commandments too. And yet what is sin other than a failure to love both God and our neighbour as we should, and as Jesus commanded us to? But when we sin, what do we do? Do we confess our sins and humbly ask for forgiveness, as Jesus said we should, or do we get on our moral high horse and pretend that we’ve done nothing wrong? Far from being humble enough to admit our sins, how often do deny that we’ve done anything wrong and / or try to hide what we’ve done wrong? And even if we have to admit our sins, how often do we try to shift the blame for them on to someone else by saying something along the lines of,

“Well, yes, I admit I did that. But I wouldn’t have done it if they hadn’t done this to me first.”

Have you ever noticed that in any argument of this kind, as far as both parties are concerned, it’s always, always, the other side who drew first blood?

As we heard his disciples do in this morning’s Gospel readings, we call Jesus ‘Teacher,’ but very often, we don’t pay proper attention to the lessons he teaches us do we? Even if we are think we are the injured party in a dispute, does that justify us in taking revenge? And that’s exactly what sinning against those who’ve sinned against us is.

Didn’t Jesus, our Teacher, say that we shouldn’t take revenge? That we shouldn’t adopt an eye for eye, tooth for tooth approach to these things but rather forgive one another, even those who sin against us?

We believe that Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, but I sometimes think that many Christians take this to imply that it doesn’t really matter too much how they behave. They may admit, at least to themselves, that they’re sinners, but think that doesn’t matter too much because, after all, Jesus paid for our sins on the Cross so as long as we say we believe, we’ll be forgiven, and we’ll be OK. But is this really what Jesus, our Teacher, taught us? Is this really what it means to love God with all our heart and soul and mind and to love our neighbour as ourselves? Didn’t Jesus actually teach something quite different; that,

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord’, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.”

And that,

“Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock…. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand.”

Do we want to be taken for wise, or for foolish? In particular, and regardless of how we think we are in our own eyes, do we want to be taken for wise or for foolish in Jesus’ eyes and the Father’s eyes?

These revelations about Jesus that we hear in church at this time of year are a reminder to us of who Jesus is. We might say we know that already, but it’s important that we are reminded of who Jesus is so that we can come to a deeper faith, so that we’ll take what he says more seriously and so come to  understand the lessons he teaches us more fully. So that we can become better disciples of his, wise people who hear Jesus’ words, and put them into practice.

Amen.

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Propers for the 2nd Sunday of Ordinary Time (Epiphany 2) 14th January 2024

Entrance Antiphon
May all the earth give you worship and praise, and break into song at your name, O God, Most High.

The Collect
Almighty God,
in Christ you make all things new:
transform the poverty of our nature by the riches of your grace,
and in the renewal of our lives,
make known your heavenly glory;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
Amen.

The Readings
Missal (St Mark’s)        
1 Samuel 3:3-10, 19
Psalm 40:2, 4, 7-10
1 Corinthians 6:13-15, 17-20
John 1:35-42

RCL (St Gabriel’s)          
1 Samuel 3:1-20
Psalm 139:1-5, 12-18
Revelation 5:1-10
John 1:43-51