At various times in sermons, and on other occasions too, I’ve said that one of the most important things we can do, as Christians, is read the Scriptures on a regular basis. Having said that, I do know that the Scriptures aren’t always the easiest of things to read. Quite apart from the difficulty we can have in pronouncing some of the names, in the Old Testament in particular, it isn’t always easy to understand what a particular story in the Scriptures is about, what the message of the story is. And that’s sometimes made worse because, at times, one story in the Scriptures can seem to contradict another story. For that reason I’ve also said, on occasions, that when we’re reading the Scriptures, it’s often a good idea to have a Bible commentary to hand to help us get a deeper insight into the part of Scripture we’re reading, so that we can understand it more easily and in a better way.

That said, if we are going to use Bible commentaries, whether that’s in written form or a spoken commentary such as we can find on the internet, we do need to make sure that we use a good one. We need to make sure that the person giving the commentary knows and understands the particular text we’re reading and, just as importantly, is giving an accurate commentary on the text and not distorting it in any way to push their own agenda.

One thing we always have to be aware of when we’re reading or listening to what people say about the Scriptures is that some people are quite willing to distort the Scriptures in an attempt to make the Scriptures say what they want them to say rather than what they actually do say.

For example, when I was a student at the College of the Resurrection at Mirfield, I was once in a lecture during which a book by an American theologian was being quoted by the person giving the lecture. At one point one of my fellow ordinands, who was himself American, from Texas, put his hand up to speak, and when he did speak, what he said was that we should always be very wary of what American theologians and biblical commentators say because what a lot of them actually do, is preach American values and pass them off as scriptural and Christian values.

But it’s not only American theologians and biblical commentators who do this kind of thing. One of the most blatant, and I would say shameful examples of it I’ve ever come across, occurred at a CMD event I once attended. CMD or Continuing Ministerial Development to give it its full name, is something that all Anglican clergy are obliged to do these days. CMD events are designed as opportunities for the clergy to meet, sometimes for a full day, sometimes for half a day, to study either a topic, such as safeguarding, for example, or a biblical text together. And they are, as I say, compulsory. At one CMD event I attended, we were given a lecture on the well-known story from 1 Kings about the two women who come before king Solomon wanting him to settle their dispute about which of them was the mother of a child.

I’m sure you all know the story but just to remind you. Two women who live in the same house both give birth to sons within a few days of each other. One child dies and the women argue about who’s child has died and who’s is still alive. To solve the problem, Solomon orders the child cut in two so that both women can have half a child. One woman responds by telling the king to give the child to the other woman because she doesn’t want the child killed, but the other woman is quite happy to see the child killed and for neither of them to have him. Solomon, realising that a mother would never want any harm to come to her own child, makes his decision and give the child to the woman who wanted him to live.

Just before this story, we read that Solomon asks God for ‘an understanding mind’ so that he ‘may discern between good and evil’, and, because Solomon hasn’t asked for long life, earthly riches or victory over his enemies, God grants Solomon’s request. And at the end of the story about the two women we’re told that,

‘…all Israel heard of the judgement that the king had rendered, and they stood in awe of the king, because they perceived that the wisdom of God was in him to do justice.’

So this is undeniably a story about the wisdom of Solomon. And yet, the person who spoke to us about it that day, a canon theologian, as I recall, said it isn’t. Despite what the Scriptures plainly say, he said that this isn’t a story about Solomon’s wisdom at all, it’s a story about the wisdom of women. In his interpretation of this story, Solomon showed no wisdom at all in this case, he would have just had the child killed and cut in half. In his interpretation of this story, it was the woman who intervened to stop him from doing that, who showed wisdom. That’s not what the Scriptures themselves say about this story and I think the deafening silence from virtually everyone in the room, including the female clergy, both when he finished his lecture and when he was thanked for it by the bishop at the end of the day, showed what the clergy thought of his rather distorted interpretation of it.

I think this example in particular shows just how careful we have to be when we’re reading or listening to commentaries on the Scriptures. It shows how even a well-known and well-understood story can be distorted to make it fit the personal agenda of the person writing or speaking about it.

So how do we avoid being drawn in by people who distort the Scriptures in this way? One very good way is to take each story in the Scriptures as part of the whole of the Scriptures rather than taking them out of context by reading and interpreting them as stand-alone stories. That was the trap the person who so appallingly distorted the story of Solomon’s wisdom fell into; he failed to take into account (or worse, perhaps deliberately ignored) what comes before and after the story of the two women and took the story out of its scriptural context in order to change its meaning. And that’s something we could very easily do, and has on occasions been done, with this morning’s Gospel story of the Good Samaritan.

We interpret the story of the Good Samaritan as a teaching on how to love our neighbour, as a teaching that we’re supposed to be good to them, to love them and care for them, whoever they are. And you might think it’s impossible to misunderstand the meaning of this story or to distort it to give it a different meaning; but it’s not, I’ve heard it done, and it’s been done by treating it as a stand-alone story so that it’s been taken out of the context of Jesus’ teaching as a whole. And it’s very easy to do that if we treat the story of the Good Samaritan as a stand-alone story, because then we can put a very different interpretation than we normally do on how it answers the question ‘Who is my neighbour?’

We know that the Jews and the Samaritans were not on good terms with one another because of their cultural and religious differences. It could even be said that they hated each other because we also know that during the 1^st Century, fighting between the Jews and Samaritans because so bad that Roman legions had to be called in to stop it. So for a Samaritan to help a Jew would have been unthinkable. And yet, it’s the Samaritan in the story who shows himself to be a neighbour to the man who was robbed and beaten.  And this fits with Jesus’ teaching in general. In St Matthew’s Gospel we read,  

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you”

And St Luke’s Gospel tells us,

“But I say to you who hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. If you love those who love you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners do the same.” 

So if we take this story of the Good Samaritan in the context of Jesus’ teaching as a whole, the answer to the question ‘Who is my neighbour?’ is ‘Everyone is my neighbour’, even those who hate me are my neighbours, even Jews and Samaritans are neighbours, and we’re to love everyone, even them, as we love ourselves and treat them as the Good Samaritan treated the man who was robbed and beaten in the story.

But just think about what we read towards the end of this story;

“Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbour to the man who fell among the robbers?”He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” And Jesus said to him, “You go, and do likewise.”

If we take this story out of the context of Jesus’ teaching as a whole, we can read this to mean that my neighbour is the one who acts as the Good Samaritan did. In other words, my neighbour is the one who does good to me and cares for me and it’s those people who we’re called to love as ourselves. And I have heard that interpretation put on this story. But that contradicts what Jesus says about loving our enemies so it can’t be the right interpretation of this story.

What all this shows us is just how careful we have to be when we’re reading and interpreting Scripture. It shows us that we can’t treat stories in the Scriptures as stand-alone stories but that we have to treat them as part of the whole and we have to read them both in the context in which they’re set in the Scriptures and in the context of the whole of Scripture. And it shows us too that, as helpful as commentaries can be in helping us to understand the meaning of what we read in Scripture, we have to be careful that we use good commentaries and good interpreters rather than commentaries and interpreters who are trying to push their own agenda by distorting Scripture to make it say what they want it to say. People who, in effect, are trying to turn the Word of God, into their word.

Amen.   

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The Propers for the 15th Sunday of Ordinary Time can be viewed here.

Today, 3rd July, is the 18th anniversary of my ordination as a deacon and 17th anniversary of my ordination to the priesthood. So I’ve now been a member of the clergy for quite some time, and in that time, I’ve obviously met and worked with many other members of the clergy. I’ve met and worked with clergy who’ve had many different talents, clergy from many different backgrounds, clergy with many different understandings of theology, clergy of different churchmanship, and clergy with many different understandings of what being a priest means and how to go about putting that into practice in their own ministry. But when you remember that the clergy are a group of people drawn from so many different backgrounds, with so many different life experiences, the fact that they do have so many differences is only to be expected. One thing the vast majority of clergy I’ve met over the years do seem to have in common though is their rather lukewarm attitude towards meetings.   

This does seem to be a very widespread attitude among the clergy and speaking to them over the years, it stems from a number of things that are inter-connected. One reason is that the clergy are expected to attend so many meetings (and the list seems to grow ever longer as time goes by). Another is a feeling that all these meetings impinge upon time that could, and probably should, be better spent doing other things. And then there’s the feeling, which is by no means unique to the clergy, that meetings usually involve a lot of time and effort for very little, if any, reward in terms of decision making and progress. As the American comedian, Fred Allen  famously said,   

“A committee is a group of people who individually can do nothing, but who, as a group, can meet and decide that nothing can be done.” 

And I’ve attended more Church meetings than I care to remember where that has been undeniably true.   

Having said that, the PCC meetings in this benefice are, on the whole, amongst the better Church meetings that I’ve attended. On the whole, PCC meetings in this benefice are fairly short, they’re conducted in a friendly, though business-like manner, people stick to the meeting agenda, we do what we need to do, and rather than putting things off for further discussion, we try to make any decisions that need to be made, there and then, we get through the agenda, and we close the meeting and go home.   

Unfortunately, that can’t be said of a lot of the PCC meetings I’ve attended over the years. I’ve been at PCC meetings that have gone on for hours, and I do mean hours. I’ve been in parishes where PCC meetings that started at 7:30pm were still going on after 10:30pm and had to be adjourned without the agenda being completed. The reason for that was usually because the meetings were neither friendly nor business like; they were either too friendly, occasions for people to chat about their social lives rather than to address the business of running a parish church (I’ve even been to meetings where people started passing photos from their holidays around instead of getting on with the business of the meeting), or they were very unfriendly, occasions for people to argue, lose their tempers and fall out, for people to threaten to resign if they didn’t get their own way, and for people to walk out of the meeting if it wasn’t going their way. And when meetings turn into this kind of bad-tempered free-for-all, any hope of conducting any meaningful business goes out of the window. And I’ve been to PCC meetings where it was almost impossible to get a resolution or decision on anything because the PCC’s answer to any question was to form a sub-committee to discuss the particular issue further. And if you’ve ever heard that committee’s meet to have meetings about meetings then, in my experience, PCC sub committees are the example of that par excellence.  

One of the problems with committees and meetings is that people bring to them what we commonly refer to as their ‘baggage’. I don’t mean bags to carry things in, though they often do that too, I mean their past experiences and long-held attitudes, and it’s these that are usually the root cause of the arguments and the lack of decisiveness we often get in committee meetings. For example, people might bring bitterness and even anger at past events to meetings. At one PCC meeting I attended (and I only use PCC meetings as an example, all meetings are prone to the same problems) a neighbouring parish which was struggling with falling numbers and failing finances had asked if we’d consider forming a team ministry with them. One person on the PCC was vehemently opposed to this and when he was asked why he was so against it he said, 

“I’m sorry they’re having problems, but so are we, and they’ve never offered to help us, why should we help them?”  

I’ll leave you to form your own opinion about the depth of Christianity revealed through that statement.   

Or, as there are on every committee, people might bring their pedantry with them. I experienced a prime example of this in another parish where the PCC member who was responsible for putting up the flag on the bell tower refused a request from the British Legion to fly the Union Jack on Battle of Britain Day because it wasn’t on his list of days when the flag should be flown. There are, in fact, no set days to fly flags from church buildings, only local custom and practice. Nevertheless, he refused to put the flag up, which caused an argument in and a delay to the meeting. Then, when someone else, who thought the flag should be flown, put it up, the designated person resigned because someone else had done his job.   

And on a wider scale, and stepping away from committees and meetings, we see something similar I think, in the Church of England’s dogged determination to stick with its ‘Marks of Mission’. I’ve heard it said that this is because these Marks of Mission have stood the test of time. But the mission of the Church is to proclaim the Gospel, to teach people all that Christ taught, and to make new disciples and baptise them into Church membership, and considering that in the almost 40 years since the Marks of Mission were first introduced, attendance at Church of England services has declined by around 50%, then I think it’s quite justifiable to ask in what sense have these Marks of Mission stood the test of time, except that time has shown they haven’t worked? And yet the Church of England is very reluctant to leave this particular piece of baggage behind.  

When it comes to mission and ministry, in all its forms, including the business of running a parish church and including all the meetings that now seem to go with being an active member of the Church, we simply can’t afford to carry baggage with us. And when it comes to the business of the Church, neither can we afford to waste time in trivial matters that have nothing to do with moving our mission and ministry forward. And this is one of the central messages of this morning’s Gospel reading. We find it in Jesus’ instruction to the seventy-two;  

“Go your way; behold, I am sending you out as lambs in the midst of wolves. Carry no money bag, no knapsack, no sandals, and greet no one on the road. Whatever house you enter, first say, ‘Peace be to this house!’” 

Shortly before this in the Gospel, we’re told that Jesus was passing through Samaritan territory, and we know that there was a great deal of enmity between the Samaritans and the Jews. So, in part at least, this was perhaps a warning to the seventy-two – they were being sent out as lambs among wolves, and the less they carried, and by keeping themselves to themselves until they got to where he’d sent them, the less likely they were to be attacked and robbed. But we can also think of Jesus’ words as instructions on how to go about our work for the Church.  

If we’re going to carry out this work of mission and ministry that Jesus has given us, we’re going to have to step outside our comfort zone. And there’s perhaps nothing so comforting to us as what we know and are familiar with, our baggage. But we have to leave that behind. What we do need to carry with us into this work, is the Gospel that Jesus gave us. And when we’re about this work, we’re called to go straight to it and get on with it. So we’re not to stop for other things that are going to slow us down or stop us in this work of proclaiming the Gospel. In other words, if we’re going to carry out the mission and ministry that Jesus gave us, the mission and ministry of the Church, we can’t afford to do all the things that we so often do in church meetings. We can’t afford to bring our baggage with us, we have to leave that behind and step away from what we know and are comfortable with so that we can get on with what Jesus has called us to do. And we can’t afford to get side-tracked by things that are irrelevant to our mission and ministry and that stop us from getting on with the work that Jesus has called us to do. These things apply to us as individual Christians, they apply to the committees, the councils and synods that the Church has put in place to carry out the work of the Church, and in the meetings where these committees get together to decide how to carry out the work of the Church. And they apply to those who meet to decide Church policies at deanery, diocesan and national levels too.  

I suppose this may have come across as a lecture on what I expect from PCCs and PCC members. I think though it would be more accurate to say that this is what I’d like from PCCs and PCC members but, as we read in this morning’s Gospel, what Jesus expects from all his disciples. It might be yet another hard thing to do, but if we can do it, if we can leave behind our baggage and avoid being side-tracked by irrelevancies, if we can avoid all the things that hold us back from carrying out the mission and ministry that Jesus entrusted to us, and simply get on with it, then perhaps, just like the seventy-two, when we meet Jesus, we can rejoice that our names are written in heaven too.  

Amen. 

The Propers for the 14th Sunday of Ordinary Time (Trinity 3) can be viewed here.

Last Tuesday, along with the churchwardens of the benefice, I went to the archdeacon’s visitation service. For those who don’t know what that is, it’s an annual service at which churchwardens, deputy wardens and sides-people are sworn in by taking an oath to fulfil the duties of their various offices. Being the senior member of the clergy in attendance, it falls to the archdeacon to preach at these services. To be honest, not many people look forward to these sermons  because they’re often used to talk at great length about money and what a terrible state the Church of England and the diocese in question is in from a financial point of view. But the archdeacon’s sermon last Tuesday was not like that at all. Instead he spoke about the need to get people into church, about the need to invite people to come, or come back, to church. And that’s something I don’t think any of us can argue about because we all know it’s something that needs to happen.

The archdeacon started his sermon though by recounting the story that someone had told him about their first visit to a church. This person hadn’t gone to church for any particular reason except that it was pouring with rain, and he wanted somewhere to shelter. The church was open, and he went in. But it’s what he found there that made this story worth telling. He said that what he found on entering that church, was an overwhelming sense of anticipation, a feeling that something important and very special was about to happen. And so he stayed. And not only did he stay on that day, but he also became a member of the Church and eventually went on to be ordained.

I don’t know which church that man entered on that day, but I wish I did because I’d visit the place to see if I could find out what they were doing there to create such a sense of anticipation in people who go into that church. Because that’s something we very rarely find isn’t it? It’s sad but true that more often than not, when we walk into a church, don’t we find something that resembles a marketplace or social club more than a place of holiness and holy expectation?

Some of us will no doubt have been in churches where cards have been put up or placed in the pews which say, ‘Speak to God before the service, and to each other after the service.’ The fact that these cards are commercially produced shows that there is a need for them and also shows the extent of this problem.

If we think about what happens when we walk into a church isn’t it true that, rather than the time before the service being spent in prayer and preparation for our meeting with the Lord in word and sacrament, it’s far more often spent engaging in social chit chat? Isn’t it true that, rather than spending time before the service thinking about the past week and contemplating how well we measured up to the example of Christ, and calling to mind our sins, it’s far more often spent chatting about what we did during the last week, where we went, what we watched on TV and so on? Isn’t it true that, rather than spending time before the service in anticipation of an encounter with the Lord, it’s far more often spent discussing our plans and social calendars for the next week?

If we are honest, we know that all this very often is true. In the past I’ve thrown people out of vestries because, just a few minutes before a service , while I was vesting and trying to pray in preparation for the service, the vestry was full of people discussing a party they were planning for later that day. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been in vestries trying to pray in preparation for a service against a veritable cacophony of voices outside the vestry. On more than one occasion, at services where there’s been no introit hymn I’ve come into church, and even got to the altar to start the service and people have still been milling around chatting. Where is the sense of anticipation, either in the people or in the church, when this goes on? Where is the sense of the holiness of the church or of what’s about to happen in church when this goes on? Where is the sense or understanding of the church as a time and space set aside from our daily cares and concerns and dedicated to God when this goes on?

Of course, part of the business that goes on in churches before services is church business, and that has to be done. Another problem in these days, when priests have multiple parishes, is that a priest can’t stay around too long after a service to chat to people because they have to be away to another parish for another service. So if people want to speak to their parish priest, the only time they can do it is before the service. But surely all that can be done while still leaving enough time for people, all people, to be able to spend some time in prayer and contemplation in preparation for the service? Surely all that can be done while still leaving some time for everyone to spend some time in anticipation of their meeting with the Lord in word and sacrament?

I think the problem really is that many people seem to see coming to church as simply another part of everyday life. And because they see coming to church as part of everyday life they don’t think anymore about preparing for what they do in church than they would about preparing to go shopping or taking the dog for a walk or watching Coronation Street or Match of the Day on TV. And I think that also comes over in people’s attitude towards church attendance. If people think there’s nothing special about coming to church then it really won’t matter to them if they don’t come. And so they adopt a take-it-or-leave-it attitude towards coming to church.

But coming to church is not simply another part of everyday life. Coming to church is a time set aside from everyday life in a place set aside from everyday life for us to encounter the holiness of God. And coming to church is not simply another part of everyday life because it’s also part of our commitment as disciples of Christ and, as this morning’s Gospel reminds us, being a disciple of Christ takes priority over everyday life.

In this morning’s Gospel, we read about three individuals who either say they’ll follow Jesus or are asked to follow Jesus. The first says he’ll follow Jesus wherever he goes. But Jesus responds by saying,

“Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.”

That’s quite a strange answer but it tells us that, whatever we might think following Jesus entails, it’s not an easy thing to do. Jesus doesn’t even have a home on earth and so following Jesus means leaving earthly concerns behind. Following Jesus means putting him and the kingdom of God before the things of everyday life. And so that part of following Jesus that we call coming to church is not simply another part of everyday life, it is more than that and needs to be treated as more than that.

Jesus then meets someone else whom he invites to follow him. But the man wants to go and bury his father first. That’s a very understandable request but in response Jesus says,

“Leave the dead to bury their own dead. But as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.”

That seems a very harsh and even uncaring thing to say. But Jesus himself wept at the grave of Lazarus. Jesus knew all about the pain of bereavement. So there must be more to his answer than it seems on the surface. What we can say about this encounter is that, in response to Jesus’ invitation to follow him, this man’s first response was to make an excuse not to follow, at least just yet. It may also have been that the burial the man was referring to was the second burial that was the norm at the time, when the deceased’s bones were collected and placed in an ossuary. In that case, Jesus’ answer is something of a pun in which he meant, let the spiritually dead bury their physically dead, you follow me and proclaim the kingdom. What this tells us is that our commitment to Jesus comes first; it comes before the concerns of everyday life, even if it clashes with our commitment to something really important in everyday terms, even family commitments. And that goes for our church attendance too.

So we should come to church. And when we’re in church, our commitment to what we’re in church for, to meet with the Lord in word and sacrament, and to worship the Lord, comes before anything else we might want or need to do in church. Chatting about everyday things, even doing church business, can wait until we’ve done what we’ve really come to church to do in the first place.

The third person Jesus meets in this morning’s Gospel offers to follow Jesus, he even calls him ‘Lord’ but, like the second man, he wants to do something else first, in this case, say goodbye to the people at home. And again, Jesus responds in what seems to be a quite harsh way;

“No one who puts his hand to the plough and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”

Jesus’ answer though, is a metaphor. This man offered to follow Jesus, but wanted to go home first, and then follow. But that’s not the way to follow Jesus because, just as someone ploughing a field who keeps looking back will veer off course with the plough, so someone who starts to follow Jesus but who keeps looking back to earthly things will also veer off course in their discipleship. And yet how many people do this when they come to church? How many people having come to church as part of their commitment to follow Jesus, when they get to church, are so concerned with everyday things that they seem to forget what they’re actually in church for? Isn’t the very reason why so many people don’t spend time in preparation for their encounter with the holiness of God in church – because they’re so busy dealing with everyday things when they come to church that there’s no time to prepare for what they’re about to do? Isn’t this why people are in vestries planning parties a few minutes before the service starts? Isn’t this why there’s so much noise in church until the moment the service starts? And isn’t this why some people are still chatting about everyday things even after a priest has made their way to the altar to start the service?

In his sermon last Tuesday, the archdeacon spoke about someone who was so captivated by the atmosphere of anticipation in a church that he stayed and eventually became a priest. I wonder what people would think if they came into this church on a Sunday morning. Would they be similarly captivated by the air of holy anticipation of people waiting to encounter the Lord in word and sacrament? Or would they think they’d walked into a church fair or social meeting? Which do you think it would be, and which do you think would be more likely to captivate them so that they came back again, and again, to worship the Lord and to become a disciple of Christ?

Amen.

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The Propers for the 13th Sunday of Ordinary Time (Trinity 2) can be viewed here.