A generation or two ago, it was very common if not actually the norm for Sunday services at an Anglican parish church to include Morning and Evening Prayer or, as they would probably have been called then, Mattins and Evensong. And at that time, if you’d have asked a member of an Anglican congregation to name a canticle, that’s a song from scripture, they would almost certainly have been able to give you one or more of three answers: the Benedictus, the Song of Zechariah which we use at Morning Prayer, and/or one of the two canticles we used to use at Evening Prayer, the Magnificat, the Song of the Blessed Virgin Mary, or the one we heard in this morning’s Gospel, the Song of Simeon, which we know as the Nunc Dimitis, which is the Latin translation of the opening words of the canticle, ‘Now you let depart’.

The Nunc Dimitis is a canticle that works in a number of ways. It begins as a song of faith, and of praise and thanksgiving for faith vindicated. We’re told that the Holy Spirit had revealed to Simeon that he’d live to see the Christ, the long-awaited Messiah, and the opening lines of the Nunc Dimitis express Simeon’s thanks and praise to God that this promise had been fulfilled. And not only the promise he’d been given, that he’d see the Messiah with his own eyes, but God’s promise to the people of Israel too, that they’d be given a saviour, the Messiah:

“Lord, now you are letting your servant depart in peace,
according to your word;
for my eyes have seen your salvation
that you have prepared in the presence of all peoples…”

But having begun as a song of faith, and of praise and thanksgiving, it then becomes a song of prophesy. We know from scripture that God had promised a Messiah to the people of Israel, but Simeon extends this promise to include all people of all nations:

“…for my eyes have seen your salvation
that you have prepared in the presence of all peoples,
a light for revelation to the Gentiles,
and for glory to your people Israel.”

We know that the word ‘revelation’ means to show something that was previously hidden, and the word ’glory’ can mean to say or show something good and praiseworthy about who or what we’re speaking about. So if we take these two lines together, Simeon’s words express his faith and his prophesy that the Messiah, this child Jesus whom he’d just laid eyes on for the first time, this baby boy who wasn’t quite six weeks old at the time, would go on to show to the people of the world something good and praiseworthy about the people of Israel. And he’d do that so that along with the people of Israel, the people of all nations could receive salvation too. But what does all that mean? What does it mean to be God’s people, Israel, and what about that did the nations need to know so that they could receive salvation?

In the Book of Genesis we read that Israel is the name God gave to Jacob, and so Jacob’s descendants became the people of Israel. No one’s quite sure exactly what the name ‘Israel’ means. When God gives Jacob the name, he explains it this way;

“Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with men, and have prevailed.”

We know that ‘El’ is short for ‘Elohim’, which is a name for God, but what ‘Isra’ means, or meant, we’re not sure because it could have a lot of different meanings and connotations. It can be interpreted as having something to do with struggling and strength, it can be interpreted as ‘seeing’, and it can also be interpreted as standing firm, especially in the way a plant stem becomes firm after taking in water. So, whilst we can’t be entirely sure what ‘Israel’ meant, it’s generally thought that it has something to do with standing firm with God, perhaps especially after having seen God or becoming filled with God. And we could interpret that as becoming filled with the Holy Spirit or what Jesus called ‘living water,’ an abundance of goodness that flows into a person from God and flows out of a person to others.

But whatever the exact meaning of the name ‘Israel’ is, it clearly has something to do with knowing God, being filled with a desire to live as God wants us to live and standing firm in faith. This is what it means to be one of God’s people, Israel, and this is what Jesus came to reveal to all people. He came to be the glory of God’s people Israel, by showing what it means to be one of those people. He came to do that both to call the people of Israel back to what they were always supposed to be, and to show the nations, those who had not been God’s people, how to be his people so that they could receive salvation. As St Peter put it when writing to the Gentile Church in what’s now Turkey,

‘Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.’

To be God’s people though involves a commitment to live as God wants us to live, and part of that commitment is to allow the abundance of goodness that we’ve received from God flow out to others. If we don’t do these things then we can call ourselves God’s people until we’re blue in the face, but we won’t  be his people, except in name only. And I think it’s very important to understand that in light of what’s happening in the world at this time.

To be one of God’s people, we’re called to keep the commandments. The people of Israel whom Simeon spoke about in the Nunc Dimitis had ten; Jesus summed them up for us in the Church in two;

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbour as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”

And the Scriptures are full of examples of how God’s people should love God and their neighbour. Such this from Leviticus:

“When a stranger sojourns with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong.You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt…”

And this from Isaiah:

Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean;
remove the evil of your deeds from before my eyes;
cease to do evil, learn to do good;
seek justice, correct oppression;
bring justice to the fatherless,

plead the widow’s cause.

Or this, again from Isaiah and which Jesus himself quoted as the reason he had come into the world.

‘The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me,

because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor;
he has sent me to bind up the broken-hearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives,
and the opening of the prison to those who are bound…’

One of the great problems genuine people of faith have is that there are so many people who claim to be people of faith but who act in ways that are contrary to the teachings of the faith they profess. These people are not God’s people but because they claim to be whilst at the same time acting in ways that scripture tells us are abhorrent to God, such as these which we find in Proverbs;

‘…haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood,
a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that make haste to run to evil,
a false witness who breathes out lies, and one who sows discord among brothers.’

they give genuine people of faith, and faith itself, a bad name because we all become tarred with the same brush. But, even in the days when this country was regarded as a Christian country, it would have been ludicrous to have regarded all the people of this country as Christians and to have seen their often very un-Christian behaviour as Christian behaviour. And in the same way, it’s ludicrous to see all Muslims as terrorists and to see what the modern nation state of Israel does, and is doing, as the actions of what Simeon and scripture call God’s people Israel.

We have to be very clear to distinguish between people of genuine faith and those whose faith is only a name to hide behind whilst they carry out acts which the faith they profess quite clearly says are wrong. Jesus came to be the glory of God’s people Israel. So when we see him and hear his teaching, we’re seeing and hearing what God’s people should be. And if people don’t do these things, they’re not God’s people. So let’s not listen to them or do as they say and do. Jesus came to show us these things so that we could be God’s people too. So when we see him and hear his teaching we’re seeing and hearing what we should be. So when we don’t do these things, we’re not God’s people. Jesus came to show us these things so that we could receive salvation. So let’s not do anything that will make us God’s people in name only, but listen to Jesus and do what will make us God’s people in reality. 

Amen.

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Propers for the Presentation of the Lord (Candlemas) 4th February 2024

Entrance Antiphon
Within your temple, we ponder your loving kindness, O God.
As your name, so also your praise reaches to the ends of the earth;
your right hand is filled with justice.

The Collect
Almighty and ever-living God, clothed in majesty,
whose beloved Son was this day presented in the Temple, in substance of our flesh:
grant that we may be presented to you with pure and clean hearts,
by your Son Jesus Christ 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)        
Malachi 3:1-4
Psalm 24:7-10
Hebrews 2:14-18
Luke 2:22-40

RCL (St Gabriel’s)          
Malachi 3:1-5
Psalm 24:1-10
Hebrews 2:14-18
Luke 2:22-40

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