When we look at the history of the Church, there can’t any doubt that two of the landmark moments in that history both occurred in the 4^th Century. The first was the Edict of Milan in the year 313. This was actually an imperial order about general religious freedom but because the Emperor Constantine was a Christian, it gave Christianity a favoured status among the religions of the Empire, and as a Christian, Constantine actively promoted Christianity. The Edict of Milan though, didn’t make Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire. That didn’t happen until the year 380 when the Edict of Thessalonica not only made Christianity the state religion of the Empire but also established the Nicene Creed, the one we still use today and say each and every Sunday in church, as the official statement of orthodox Christian belief. It also authorised the punishment of heretics, anyone who didn’t conform to the official version of Christianity.

There can’t be any doubt that these two edicts were very important in the history of the Church because they helped the Church to spread by giving protected status, and even imperial warrant to Christians to proclaim their faith, and that obviously helped to ensure the safety of Christian missionaries and evangelists throughout the Empire. But for some people, these edicts were landmarks in a very different sense because some people see these edicts as marking the end of true Christianity. Some people see these edicts as marking the points in time when the Church ceased to be a people who sought to ‘turn the world upside down’, as we read in the Acts of the Apostles  that St Paul and his companions were accused of doing, and became instead an organisation that had a vested interest in maintaining the status quo.

It must be said that there is some truth at least in the latter of those two strains of thought. If we look at the evangelisation of Britain in the post-Roman period for example, we can see that whether it was British missionaries evangelising in Ireland, Irish missionaries evangelising the Picts in what’s now Scotland or the Anglo Saxons in the North of England, or Roman missionaries evangelising in the South and Midlands of England, we see the same pattern. The missionaries looked first to speak to kings so that they could either convert them to Christianity which would give them royal warrant to proclaim the faith in a kingdom, or even if the king wasn’t for renouncing paganism, at he might allow the missionaries to proclaim their faith in his kingdom and give them some degree of royal protection. What often followed that were laws compelling the king’s subjects to adopt Christian practices. But of course all that would count for nothing if the Christian, or at least Church friendly king was deposed and replaced by a pagan king who was not so friendly to the Church. And so the Church did have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo where there was a ruler who was either a Christian himself or was at least friendly towards the Church.

But it wasn’t only in terms of enabling mission and evangelism that the Church had an interest in keeping things as they were. Regardless of the fact that they hold power, kings and ruling elites are sinners, just like everyone else. But  whereas ordinary people might have had to fast or do some other physically unpleasant penance to atone for their sins, ruling elites would pay for their sins by giving the Church money and land, so the Church grew very rich into the bargain. And of course that wealth would be under threat too if there was a change in the order of things. So the Church did have a vested interest in keeping things just as they were and had nothing to gain, at least in earthly terms, in seeing the world turned upside down.

In the Acts of the Apostles, when we read about St Paul and his companions having “turned the world upside down”, it’s in the context of people being won over to Christ through the power and persuasiveness of St Paul’s teaching. We’re told that “some” Jews, “a great many devout Greeks” (and what’s meant by ‘devout Greeks’ is God-fearing Greeks who attended the synagogue) and “not a few leading women” “joined Paul and Silas”. We’re told that because of this, “the Jews were jealous” no doubt because these conversions lessened their power and influence, and as a consequence, affected them financially too. And we read elsewhere in Acts that Paul and his companions were dragged before the authorities, beaten and imprisoned because their teaching and actions hit people where it hurts most – in the pocket.

In this morning’s Gospel we read the story of Jesus cleansing the temple, driving out,

‘…those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons, and the money-changers…’ 

This was part of the business of the temple. People were expected to offer a sacrifice when they went to the temple. Many of them would have travelled a long way to visit Jerusalem for the Passover and to save them from having to take animals with them, they could buy animals when they got to the temple. But the sacrificial animals had to be pure and un-blemished and so those who sold them could charge whatever they wanted, and the people would have no choice except to pay up. And people couldn’t pay with their everyday money either. That would have been Roman coinage and that was considered impure so, to protect the purity of the temple people had to change their money into temple money, and the money-changers, cheated people on the exchange rate. So the animal sellers, the money changers and the temple too got rich at the expense of the poor people who were, to use a modern term, being ripped-off. It’s no wonder Jesus was so angry and drove them out. But I don’t think we get the full impact or meaning of Jesus’ words in the version of this story we read today.

In St John’s version, Jesus is angry because people have turned his Father’s house into “a market”. But in other versions of the story, Jesus refers to those responsible for this as “robbers”, and in St Mark’s version, Jesus says,

 “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’? But you have made it a den of robbers.” 

I think this, the earliest version of the story, is perhaps the best version because it gives an added dimension to Jesus’ anger. This trading went on in the temple precinct, not in the temple itself. So all this buying and selling, this robbery, as Jesus called it would have been going on in the Court of the Gentiles, the place where God-fearing Gentiles would have gathered to worship God because they weren’t allowed into the temple proper. So what all this trading and cheating and profiteering was doing was preventing non-Jewish people from worshipping God: it was preventing the temple from being the house of prayer for all nations that it was supposed to be. And there is a great and much needed lesson in this for the Church today.

We know we live in difficult times for the Church, and that’s led to the Church to become very focussed on finance, on making money and saving money. In fact this has become such an issue for the Church that it’s now stopped claiming that what it does is “all about money” and now openly admits that much of what it does is about money. And yet the Church is not poor. The Church might cry poverty, but its accounts don’t reflect that, quite the opposite in fact, in terms of its assets the Church grows richer year after year. But people are not stupid, they can see this and how many people are being prevented from coming to Christ and to God because of what they see as the Church’s attitude towards money? Which, rightly or wrongly, many people do see as yet another example of the rich getting richer at the expense of ordinary people. How many people have we met, for example, who’ve said things like, “The Church is loaded but all they do is cry poverty to try and get more money out of people” or “I won’t go to church because all they want from you is money” or “I won’t go to church because all they want you for is to see how much they can get from you”?

We know that one of the reasons for the growth of the early Church was that it was a religion that turned the world upside down. It was a religion that taught a slave was the equal of their master, in fact there’s an old tradition that bishop Onesimus of Ephesus whom St Ignatius of Antioch wrote of in the late 1^st Century, was one and the same as the slave Onesimus mentioned in St Paul’s Letter to Philemon. It was a religion that appealed to slaves, to women, to the poor, to the marginalised, to the weak, in fact to all those whom the world, if it regarded them at all, regarded as worthless. It was a religion that appealed to these people because it challenged that status quo, and it was made up of people who, far from seeking to ingratiate themselves to ruling elites in order to make the task of mission and evangelism easier, were prepared to challenge ruling elites and urge them to change their ways in accordance with the teachings of Christ. In a week when it was reported that the Archbishop of Canterbury has had to apologise to the pastor of a Palestinian Christian Church in Bethlehem for refusing to meet him because he’d been advised it may have caused problems, can we honestly say we belong to the same Church which once turned the world upside down?

Of course, we can’t turn the world upside down on our own, but we can turn, at least try to turn, our own little worlds upside down by trying to live in the way that those early Christians did and by trying to do the things they did. We can try to think less of our own comfort and more of those who have little or no comfort. We can try to be more courageous in proclaiming our faith and not worry so much about what people will think or say about us for doing that. And when we get the opportunity, we could remind our Church leaders that Christians are called to turn the world upside down and urge them to show less interest in maintaining the comfort of the status quo and more interest in bringing to Christ the multitudes of people who are downtrodden by the status quo.

Amen. 

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Propers for Lent 3, 3rd March 2024

Entrance Antiphon
I will prove my holiness through you.
I will gather you from the ends of the earth;
I will pour clean water on you and wash away all your sins.
I will give you a new spirit within you, says the Lord.

The Collect
Almighty God,
whose most dear Son went not up to joy but first he suffered pain,
and entered not into glory before he was crucified:
mercifully grant that we, walking in the way of the cross,
may find it none other than the way of life and peace;
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)        
Exodus 20:1-17
Psalm 19:8-11
1 Corinthians 1:22-25
John 2:13-25

RCL (St Gabriel’s)          
Exodus 20:1-17
Psalm 19
1 Corinthians 1:18-25
John 2:13-22

Our Gospel readings this morning are, once again, different in each church in the benefice. And because of the order we read them, this Sunday the readings are in the wrong chronological order. At St Mark’s this morning we read the story of Jesus’ Transfiguration, which we read at St Gabriel’s a couple of weeks ago, whilst at St Gabriel’s we read the story which comes immediately before the Transfiguration when, shortly after confessing that Jesus is “the Christ”, Peter rebukes Jesus for speaking about his death and resurrection and, in return Jesus rebukes Peter saying,

“Get behind me, Satan! For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.”

Which leads to Jesus giving what must be one of his most well-known teachings,

“If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”

When we read this story of Jesus’ rebuking Peter in this way, we have to understand that Jesus isn’t saying that Peter is the devil. We’re told that before he rebuked Peter, Jesus turned to the disciples, so this rebuke was probably intended for all of them. So there’s no sense that Peter himself is evil. It’s his thoughts and words that are evil, and not because they’re malicious, we’re given no indication that they were that, but simply because they’re contrary to God’s will.

I think it’s worth comparing this story about Peter with what we read about Judas Iscariot later in the Gospels. After Judas had argued with Jesus about allowing Mary to anoint his feet with expensive perfume, and had also been rebuked by Jesus, we read that,

‘…Satan entered into Judas called Iscariot, who was of the number of the twelve. He went away and conferred with the chief priests and officers how he might betray him to them.’

So unlike Peter, who argued with Jesus, was rebuked and then reconciled to Jesus, Judas argued, was rebuked but was not reconciled to Jesus. On the contrary, in response to disagreeing and arguing with Jesus, and being rebuked for it, he acted with malice aforethought to bring Jesus’ down. Again we’re not told that Judas himself was evil, but that Satan, evil thoughts had entered him. But unlike Peter, Judas allowed those thoughts to fester and grow so that they turned to evil action.

I think we also have to understand what Jesus might have meant when he used the name, or the word, ‘Satan’ when he rebuked Peter. We think of Satan as synonymous with the devil, perhaps a proper name for the devil, but that isn’t something we find in the Old Testament. In fact, most Jews don’t believe in the devil as an evil supernatural being. Satan, or ‘the satan’ to be precise, first appears in the Book of Genesis as someone akin to a prosecutor in a court case, someone who stands before God and accuses people of sin. And when they speak about Satan rather than the satan, different strands of Judaism interpret Satan as either a human adversary, an evil influence or, as in the Book of Job, an agent of God sent to test human beings so that he can then accuse them as the satan when he stands before God in the heavenly court. So when the Gospels speak of Satan, and especially when Jesus speaks about Satan, it’s almost certainly in one or a number of these ways.

If we read this Gospel story in this light, ‘Satan’ perhaps refers both to the tempter, who’d failed to turn Jesus from God in the wilderness and who’d now become an evil influence on Peter and the other disciples in an attempt to turn them into human adversaries of Jesus, and to Peter and the disciples who were, at that moment, acting as Jesus’ human adversaries by being an evil influence on him and themselves trying to turn him from obeying God’s will.  And if we look at ‘Satan’ in those terms we can perhaps say that Judas was the most susceptible to this kind of testing and evil influence because he was the one who, in the end, conspired with Jesus’ human adversaries to plot his downfall.

And if Satan can be a human adversary who tries to turn us from obeying God’s will then, just as Satan entered Peter and Judas and turned them into Satan, Satan can enter us too, and in the same ways that Satan entered them.

Satan enters us when we argue with Jesus. We might not think we do argue with Jesus or even wonder how we can because Jesus isn’t physically with us to argue with. But we do argue with him. We argue with Jesus every time we question his teaching, or disagree with his teaching, and we do these things in many ways. We question his teaching when we try to interpret it in ways that allow us to act as we want to act rather than acting as he commanded us to. And we all do that because how often do we sin and then try to excuse what we’ve done by thinking and even saying that what we’ve done isn’t so bad, nowhere near as bad as the things other people do? Or try to excuse our sins by trying to argue that, if we interpret Jesus’ words in a certain way, what we’ve done isn’t a sin at all really? And when we sin and try to excuse what we’ve done, or worse, say we haven’t sinned at all, aren’t we really saying that Jesus is wrong? And isn’t that what Peter was doing when he argued with Jesus about his death and resurrection? And what Judas was doing when he argued with Jesus about allowing Mary to anoint his feet with expensive perfume, and when he plotted with the authorities to betray Jesus?

Some people argue that Judas has got a ‘bad rap’ because, after all, he brought about Jesus’ death through which our sins are forgiven, and we’re saved. They argue that Judas played a vital role in our salvation and so he should be, if not praised, then at least more pitied than vilified. But that doesn’t seem to be the way Jesus himself viewed Judas and his actions because he said,

“The Son of Man goes as it is written of him, but woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed! It would have been better for that man if he had not been born.” 

Reading that, I’m sure none of us would like to be in Judas’ shoes. But when we acclaim Jesus as Christ, and as our Lord and Saviour, and then argue with him and live our lives as though we think he was wrong, aren’t we allowing Satan to lead us into betraying him too? Aren’t we at least inviting Jesus to rebuke us by saying,

“Get behind me, Satan! For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.”?

Scripture tells us that Satan can enter all of us, either as a supernatural or human agent, and influence us towards evil, and because of that we can all be Satan by becoming an evil influence on others. What we have to do is to be able to recognise when Satan has or is trying to enter us and deciding whether we are going to respond as Peter did, or in the way that Judas did. If evil thoughts enter our minds, are we going to allow those thoughts to fester and grow until they lead us away from following God and Christ and into evil actions, or are we going to be resist the tempter and be reconciled to Christ so that we can stay on the right path? And if we’re going to respond in the latter way, as Peter did and we should, then we have to turn a deaf ear to whatever Satan is telling us, whoever that Satan might be, and listen to what Jesus is telling us. That is the right thing to do because it’s what the Father himself tells us to do. As we read in the story of Jesus’ Transfiguration,

“This is my beloved Son; listen to him.” 

So let’s listen to Jesus and follow him so that we can resist Satan and the satan can’t stand before God and accuse us.

Amen.

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Propers for Lent, 25th February 2024

Entrance Antiphon
Remember you mercies, Lord, your tenderness from ages past.
Do not let our enemies triumph over us;
O God, deliver Israel from all her distress.

The Collect
Almighty God,
you show to those who are in error the light of your truth,
that they may return to the way of righteousness:
grant to all those who are admitted into the fellowship of Christ’s religion,
that they may reject those things that are contrary to their profession,
and follow all such things as are agreeable to the same;
through our Lord Jesus Christ,
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)
Genesis 22:1-2, 9-13, 15-18
Psalm 116:10, 15-19
Romans 8:31-34
Mark 9:2-10

RCL (St Gabriel’s)          
Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16
Psalm 22:23-31
Romans 4:13-25
Mark 8:31-38

This morning, as is customary on the First Sunday of Lent, our Gospel reading tells the story of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness. St Mark’s account of this is very brief and doesn’t go into any detail about how Jesus was tempted, but what it does do, as does the gospel of St Matthew, is tell us that Jesus’ ministry began after John the Baptist had been arrested. This fits with John’s own words that he must decrease whilst Jesus increased, but why should this be? We know that John was sent to prepare the way for Jesus, but why couldn’t he have continued his ministry of baptism and sent people to Jesus as we’re told he did with some of his own disciples?

I think the answer to that lies in the similarity between John and Jesus. We’re told in the Gospels that many people thought John was the Messiah, and that after John’s death, many people thought that Jesus was John come back to life. So there must have been a great similarity between them to lead to this kind of confusion. But any confusion about who was the Messiah would have inevitably led to confusion amongst people about who to follow. And notwithstanding the similarities in the message that John and Jesus were proclaiming, any confusion about who to follow would also inevitably have led to some people following the wrong path and potentially being led astray. And so the reality seems to have been not so much a case that John had to decrease so that Jesus could increase, but that John’s ministry had to come to an end before Jesus’ ministry began so that the field would be left clear for Jesus to go about his work.

One of the great problems in the Church, and for the Church too, is just this kind of confusion. All Christians and all Churches proclaim the same Gospel, or they should do at least, but because there are so many different Churches, so many different denominations of the Church and so many different factions within the same Church, the same denomination, and even within individual congregations, people can be confused about who is right and who to listen to. In fact people can become so confused that they give up trying to listen to anyone and simply make their own mind up about what’s right and wrong, which makes the situation even worse because it creates yet another voice, within the Church, another ‘truth’ vying for attention with all the others, and even more confusion. And none of this helps the mission of the Church, in fact it can’t do anything other than hinder the Church’s mission to fulfil its Christ given Great Commission to proclaim the Gospel and make disciples of all people.

I think in many ways we can see the problem of disunity in the Church as stemming from the Church’s individual and collective failure to resist the very things Jesus himself was tempted with in the wilderness. A failure to live by God’s Word, a failure to resist putting God to the test, and a failure to serve God alone.

As I said earlier, St Mark doesn’t tell us how Jesus was tempted but I’m sure we all know the story. Jesus’ first temptation was to turn stones into bread to satisfy his hunger, and Jesus’ answer was,

“‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”

How many people in the Church though, don’t live by every word that comes from the mouth of God? And by that, I don’t simply mean how many people in the Church sin because we’re all sinners. But how many people excuse their sins? How many people in the Church do things that God says we shouldn’t, or don’t do things that God says we should, but say that they haven’t done anything wrong and are doing what they should do as Christians? How many people teach their own values and pass those off as Christian values, or twist God’s Word to make God say what they want God to say, in effect wanting to make God live by their words rather than trying to live their own lives according to God’s Word? These things happen all the time in the Church and amongst Christians and when they do, aren’t we seeing people trying to turn stones into bread? Trying to turn the stones of their own words into the bread of God’s Word? And what does this do except set a bad example of how Christians should live, and confuse people because they don’t know who or what’s right and wrong and who or what to listen to?

Jesus’ second temptation was to throw himself from the top of the temple in order to prove that he was the Son of God. And this time Jesus’ answer was,

“‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.’” 

But again, how many people in the Church give in to this temptation and do put God to the test? How many people have we all met who’ve left a church, a congregation, or changed denomination, or even left the Church completely and say they’ve lost their faith? And how many of these people have done these things simply because things haven’t gone the way they want them to?

People do this for all sorts of reasons, perhaps because they think their prayers haven’t been answered or because they don’t agree with what’s going on in a congregation or a denomination or even the Church itself. But in the vast majority of cases that I’ve come across, what the problem has really been, is that people haven’t got, or can’t get their own way. And this goes back to the first temptation, people thinking that their way is God’s way and that anyone who doesn’t agree with their way isn’t following God’s way. In this second temptation, the tempter, the devil, told Jesus to throw himself from the top of the temple to prove that he’s the Son of God by quoting from scripture:

“‘He will command his angels concerning you’, and “‘On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone.’”

But if people leave churches, or the Church, because they can’t get their own way, isn’t what they’re doing tantamount to saying, “I’m right, I’m on God’s side, and I expect God to uphold me by letting me have my own way. And if I can’t have my own way then I want nothing more to do with God?” But what is that if it’s not putting God to the test?

Jesus’ final temptation in the wilderness was to worship the devil in return for  earthly power and glory. And in this case Jesus’ answer was,

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

But how many people in the Church and how often does the Church itself succumb to the lure of earthly power and glory? How many people in congregations are given an office, a role in the Church that gives them some kind of status and authority, and then use that office and authority to throw their weight around? How many accusations and instances of bullying and abuse by those in authority in the Church have their been? And on a larger scale, what are the arguments between differing traditions in the Church and denominations of the Church other than attempts to pressure people into doing things in a certain way by saying what amounts to, “We’re right, they’re wrong, so ignore them and follow us because we know what God wants and anyone who disagrees with us doesn’t.” But aren’t arguments of that kind about influence over others and so, ultimately, about power? Aren’t they also examples of Christians doing, or at least trying to do the very thing that Jesus says Christians mustn’t do and ‘Lord it’ over others?

When I hear about these things I sometimes think of the words of a man not often noted for his religious tolerance, Oliver Cromwell. He once wrote to the Kirk, the Church in Scotland, saying,

“Is it infallibly according to the Word of God, everything that you say? I beseech you, in the very bowels of Christ, to consider the possibility that you may be mistaken.”

Why is it that so many people in the Church seem to think that everything they do say and do is infallibly according to the word of God, and that anyone who disagrees with what they say and do are the ones who are mistaken?

We’re called to worship God alone and to follow the teaching and example of Christ but so long as we try to turn the stones of our own words into the bread of God’s Word, so long as we put God to the test by insisting on having our own way in the Church, and so long as we play politics in the Church and with the Church for earthly power and status, we’ll neither worship God as we should nor follow Christ as we should. And so long as we do these things and play these games and fail to resist these temptations, we, the Church, will always struggle to fulfil our Great Commission to proclaim the Gospel and make disciples of all people because all our self-righteousness, and petty squabbling and lusting for influence and authority does is confuses people about who and what is right and wrong and about who they should listen to and follow.

John had to decrease so that Christ could increase and we, as individual Christians, as Churches and as a Church need to follow suit, we need to decrease so that Christ can increase. Perhaps a good, collective Lenten discipline for the Church and everyone in it would be to do that so that people will hear a lot less of our confused and confusing voices and a lot more of his voice.

Amen. 

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Propers for Lent 1, 18th February 2024

Entrance Antiphon
When he calls to me, I will answer; I will rescue him and give him honour.
Long life and contentment will be his.

The Collect
Almighty God,
whose Son Jesus Christ fasted forty days in the wilderness,
and was tempted as we are, yet without sin:
give us grace to discipline ourselves in obedience to your Spirit;
and, as you know our weakness,
so may we know your power to save;
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)       
Genesis 9:8-15
Psalm 25:4-9
1 Peter 3:18-22
Mark 1:12-15

RCL (St Gabriel’s)          
Genesis 9:8-17
Psalm 25:1 -9
1 Peter 3:18-22
Mark 1:9-15