When we read commentaries on this morning’s Gospel story, we can often find that they concentrate on just one or two aspects of the story. Very often, commentaries tend to focus on the miraculous catch of fish, and on Jesus’ three-fold questioning of Simon Peter. There’s no doubt that these are important and interesting aspects of this Gospel story. The miraculous catch of fish can be seen as an allegory, a story which tells us that when we follow Christ and do as he tells us to do, we’ll make many new disciples whereas, alone and acting without Christ, we can do nothing. Jesus three-fold questioning of Simon Peter has multiple meanings. Jesus’ questions are seen as the correlative to Peter’s three-fold denial of Jesus on the night of Jesus’ arrest. Jesus’ command that Simon Peter should feed his lambs and sheep is seen as Jesus’ commission of Peter as the leader of the Church. And Simon Peter’s response to Jesus’ questions has been the subject of a great deal of debate. In the original Greek, Jesus asks Simon does he agape him, does he love him with true Christian love, the kind of love with which Jesus loves. But Simon Peter responds by saying to Jesus, ‘I phileo you.’ In other words, Simon Peter has brotherly affection for Jesus. Some commentators see the words agape and phileo as interchangeable and so they see no real difference in their meaning, but others see a great deal of difference in their meanings. That there is a difference is shown in the Second Letter of Peter where we find what’s been called a ‘ladder of Christian virtues’ which Peter urges his readers to adopt, and which culminates with brotherly affection and love: phileo and agape.

But as interesting and important as these things may be, I think what’s equally important, especially in terms of our discipleship as we need to live it out in the world, is what happens at the beginning of this Gospel story, the part of the story that’s often simply taken as setting the scene for what’s about to happen So let’s set the scene and see what it has to teach us. 

In the Gospels of both Matthew and Mark, Jesus’ disciples are told that they will see Jesus again in Galilee, and this morning’s Gospel begins with the disciples, some of them at least, back in Galilee, by the Sea of Tiberias. No doubt they were waiting for Jesus to appear but, as the story begins there’s no sign of him. And Simon Peter decides to go fishing. We know that Peter was impatient and impetuous, so I don’t think it’s too big a stretch of the imagination to think that he’d become fed up with hanging around waiting for Jesus to show himself and so he decided to go and do something else. Perhaps the others felt the same and it was simply that Simon Peter, as ever, was the first to speak up, or perhaps it was simply that he was their leader, but for whatever reason, the others decided to go fishing with him.

And how typical is that of us? How often do we get fed up with waiting for something or someone and eventually decide that we’re not waiting any longer and we go and do something else instead? It’s something that we’ve probably all done at one time or another and as it’s something we’re prone to do in our daily lives, it’s something we can so easily do in our discipleship too.

Over the years I’ve known many people who’ve left the Church. Those people have given different reasons for doing that, but quite a few have said they’ve left the Church because they ‘weren’t getting anything out of it anymore’. The usual response to that is to ask what it was they were putting into their churchgoing, but there’s another question that’s just as relevant, if not more relevant, to ask in that situation. It’s this; ‘What did you expect to get out of going to Church?’

Going to Church regularly and becoming a Christian is a life changing thing to do, there’s no doubt about that. But I think some people believe that if they go to Church and become a Christian then, ‘Hey Presto’, as if by magic, their lives will suddenly be changed for the better, that everything in life will suddenly become wonderful and that all their problems and worries will disappear. But it’s not like that at all. We’re disciples of Jesus Christ, who was betrayed, arrested and put to death by those he loved and came to save. Jesus’ story is a story of unrequited love that led to terrible hardship and suffering. Jesus never promised his disciples any easier a time than he himself had, quite the contrary in fact. But what he did promise them was that hard work, and even long-suffering if that’s what it takes, in faithful obedience to him is worth it because, in the end, it leads to eternal life.

Going to Church and being a Christian doesn’t take the problems of life away, it simply gives us a different perspective on the problems. For example, Simon Peter was a fisherman and perhaps one of the reasons he went fishing that day in Galilee is because he had to earn his living. So do we; and going to Church and being a Christian doesn’t take away that need. But what it does do, or should do, is stop us from succumbing to the greed, selfishness and materialism that we see so much of in the world. Going to Church and being a Christian changes our lives but it doesn’t make them any easier. Going to Church and being a Christian isn’t a magic spell that suddenly makes our lives trouble free and if that’s what people are waiting for, if that’s what they mean when they say they don’t get anything out of it, then they’ll be waiting a long time indeed. In that case, it’s no surprise if they get fed up with waiting and go and do something else instead.

In this morning’s Gospel Jesus does appear, eventually. But it seems from the Gospel that the disciples don’t recognise him at first, it’s only after the miraculous catch of fish that the beloved disciple tells Peter,

“It is the Lord!”

at which the ever-impetuous Peter throws on some clothes and leaps into the sea because he’s so eager to get to Jesus. And again, this often-overlooked part of the story can tell us so much about what it means to be a disciple of Christ.

This part of the story tells us that Jesus can come into our lives at any time, whatever we’re doing at that time. He can come into our lives when we’ve become so fed up with waiting that we’ve gone to do something else instead. It tells us that we have to be ready for Jesus to enter our lives at any time and in any place. But it also tells us that we have to be able to recognise Jesus when he enters our lives and to be ready to act at a moment’s notice when he enters our lives.

In the Gospel, despite the miraculous catch of fish they’d just made, only one disciple realises who is responsible, who it was who was calling to them from the shore, and it was the beloved disciple. This story tells us that we can recognise Jesus when he enters our lives by what happens. It tells us that when we act as Jesus says we should, good things can happen. Not necessarily good things from a worldly perspective, although that may happen too, but good things from a spiritual perspective or in terms of the growth of God’s kingdom. But this Gospel story tells us too that, if we’re going to recognise Jesus, we have to be close to him.

The beloved disciple was the one who sat closest to Jesus at the Last Supper, and he was the one who recognised Jesus in this Gospel story. So if we want to recognise Jesus when he comes into our lives, we have to be close to Jesus too. We have to know him; we have to know what he taught and know what he wants from us. We have to know what he would have us do in whatever situation we find ourselves in. And when we do recognise Jesus as he enters our lives we have to be ready to act at a moments notice, just as Peter did that day in Galilee.

And yet, how often does Jesus enter our lives and we miss those chances to meet him and to do what he calls us to do because we don’t recognise him? How often do we miss chances to meet Jesus and do what he calls us to do because we’re too busy with other things to recognise him and to hear him calling to us? To use an analogy from this morning’s Gospel, how often are we too busy hauling in the nets to stop what we’re doing for a moment and think how Jesus might be calling to us in a situation, and how often do we fail to recognise Jesus in a situation because of that? How often are we too preoccupied with what we’re doing to stop hauling in the nets and go to him by doing what he calls us to do? Are we ready to be like Simon Peter, to stop what we’re doing and go to Jesus, or are we more likely to finish what we’re doing before we can spare the time for Jesus? And if that’s what we do, how often do we miss Jesus when he enters our lives because an  opportunity to act as his disciples has come and gone? 

Coming to Church and being a Christian is life-changing, but it isn’t about having an easy life. It’s life that can bring great joy and happiness, but much of that joy and happiness comes from a changed outlook on life, rather than from an easy life free from problems and worries. The reward for being a disciple of Christ is, quite literally, out of this world, but having the reward  involves a lifetime of discipline and hard work. It means being prepared to wait on Jesus, how ever long we have to wait. It means staying close to Jesus always so that we can recognise him when he comes into our lives. And it means being ready to drop what we’re doing at a moment’s notice and to do what he calls us to do, whenever and wherever he enters our lives.

There is so much in this Gospel story, let’s make sure we don’t miss out on what it can teach us about living as a disciple of Christ and as a member of his body, the Church.

Amen. 

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The Propers for the 3rd Sunday of Easter can be viewed here.

Among the things that I, and all priests, are ordained to do is to administer the sacraments of the Church. And no one in the Church should be in any doubt about this because during the ordination service, the bishop asks all the candidates for ordination this question:

Will you faithfully minister the doctrine and sacraments of Christ as the Church of England has received them, so that the people committed to your charge may be defended against error and flourish in the faith?

To which all those wishing to be ordained as a priest must answer,

By the help of God, I will.

Along with the vast majority of the worldwide Church, the Church of England recognises seven sacraments: Baptism; Confirmation; Holy Communion; Reconciliation; Anointing the Sick; Holy Matrimony; and Ordination. Only a bishop can confirm and ordain people so, in practice, a priest can administer five of the sacraments. Of course, in order for a priest to administer the sacraments, people have to want to receive them and, leaving aside the dearth of people who want to be married in church these days, of the five sacraments that I as a priest can administer, two are sadly, I might even say woefully, underused; anointing of the sick and reconciliation, or to give that sacrament it’s more common name, confession.

On Tuesday of Holy Week I, along with many other priests and people attended the Chrism Mass at Manchester Cathedral. That’s a service at which the clergy renew their ordination vows and the Holy Oils, including that used for anointing the sick are blessed by a bishop. At the end of the service, the bishop of Burnley, who celebrated the Mass and blessed the oils urged the clergy to ‘use the oils generously’, to ‘have healing liturgies so that people can receive this sacrament and be drawn into closer relationship with Christ.’ At which point I thought, ‘I do have healing liturgies, but no one comes to them!’ Actually, that’s not entirely accurate because some people do come to them, but very few people do, and it’s always the same few who come to them.

I must admit, I find it very strange that people are so reluctant to take advantage of the sacrament of anointing. All of us, at times suffer in body, mind or spirit and so we all need healing. So why then, are people so reluctant to come to God, to be anointed with oil in the name of the Holy Trinity, and to seek his help when they’re in need of help and healing? And if the answer to that is because people think it’s something only Catholics do, and by that mean Roman Catholics, I’m sorry, but those people are utterly and completely wrong. The sacrament of anointing is recognised by the Church of England, a Church which, by the way, has always, and only ever claimed to be a Catholic reformed Church. But in any case, anointing the sick with oil is one of the very oldest practices of the Church, and predates the Roman Catholic Church by about 1,500 years. We know that with certainty because we read this in the Letter of James:

Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven. Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed.

We’re sure that was written by James, the brother of Jesus, and leader of the Jerusalem Church, and it was probably written no more than 15 years, and perhaps less than 10 years, after the Lord’s Resurrection.

In that passage from his letter, James also speaks about the need to confess our sins, and that brings us to the second woefully underused sacrament I spoke about, the sacrament of reconciliation, or confession.

This past week, I heard a confession for the first time in a long time. In fact, if memory serves me correctly, the confession I heard this past week was only the third confession I’ve heard since I’ve been the vicar in this benefice. I said this was a sacrament that’s woefully underused and when you realise that I’ve only been asked to hear confessions three times in 5 years, I think you’ll understand why I said that.

I do know that this is a sacrament people are reluctant to use for a number of reasons. One very common reason for not using the sacrament of reconciliation is that it is something only ‘Catholics’ do. I think the fact that the Church of England recognises the sacrament of reconciliation, and what we read in the Letter of James should answer that objection to using the sacrament. But more than that, the confession of sins and the pronouncement of absolution by the Church has clear dominical authority. In this morning’s Gospel do we not hear Jesus himself say to his disciples,

“Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld.”  

So Christ clearly gave his Church authority to pronounce the forgiveness of sins. But how can the Church pronounce forgiveness of sins if it isn’t aware of them? I think it’s obvious that in order to forgive we have to know what needs to be forgiven. So to take advantage of this wonderful gift that Christ gave to his Church, the authority to say to people that their sins are forgiven, the Church needs to know what those sins are. And so people need to confess those sins.

Obviously, no one likes to admit they’ve done wrong, and we often don’t want others to know what we’ve done wrong, so pride and embarrassment also stop people from making confession of their sins. But pride itself is a sin, and one of the worst sins. So if pride is stopping anyone from using the sacrament of reconciliation then, to coin a phrase, they’re just heaping more coals on their heads by being too proud to confess their sins.

Embarrassment though, whilst it might be a symptom of sinfulness, isn’t a sin in itself. In fact and in a sense, being embarrassed, ashamed about what we’ve done, and feeling uncomfortable talking about it is a kind of self-inflicted penance for our sins because we wouldn’t be embarrassed about what we’d done if we hadn’t done it. But there’s no need to be embarrassed coming to a priest to make your confession. In my 17 years as a priest, I’ve never heard anyone confess to anything that I’ve been either shocked or disgusted by. A priest is also bound by what’s often called the Seal of Confession, they’re forbidden by canon law from repeating anything that’s said to them in confession, to anyone. And a priest won’t think any less or worse of you because of the sins you confess because we’re all sinners too. In fact the very last thing a priest says to the penitent, the one who’s made their confession, after absolution has been pronounced is this:

My dear brother/sister in Christ, God has put away your sins, go in peace and pray for me, for I too, am a sinner.

So there’s no pride or holier-than-thou attitude in the priest in confession.  Priests don’t absolve people from sin, we can’t because we’re sinners too. What a priest does in the sacrament of reconciliation is pronounce God’s forgiveness by the authority that Christ gave his Church to do that.

Another objection to using the sacrament of reconciliation is that, as it’s God who forgives sin, there’s no need to go to a priest to confess your sins. Many people do take that approach, and for them, the General Confession at the Mass or Eucharist is enough. But the problem with this is one of  certainty. If we don’t receive the spoken assurance of absolution from the concrete sins we’ve confessed to, how can we be certain that we’ve been forgiven for them? It’s a problem summed up by the German Lutheran, Dietrich Bonhoeffer in his book Life Together. Bonhoeffer said this;

Why is it that it is often easier for us to confess to God than to a brother? God is holy and sinless; he is the just judge of evil and enemy of all disobedience. But a brother is as sinful as we are. He knows from his own experience the dark night of secret sin. Why should we not find it easier to go to a brother than to the holy God? But if we do, we must ask ourselves whether we have not often been deceiving ourselves with our confession of sin to God, whether we have not rather been confessing our sins to ourselves and also granting ourselves absolution. … Who can give us the certainty that, in the confession and forgiveness of our sins, we are not dealing with ourselves but with the living God? God gives us this certainty through our brother … A man who confesses his sins in the presence of a brother knows that he is no longer alone with himself; he experiences the presence of God in the reality of the other person.

Anointing of the Sick and Reconciliation. Christ gave these great gifts and great authority to his Church for a reason. He gave us these things to bring us healing in body, mind and spirit, and to give us the assurance of the forgiveness of our sins, so that our relationships with God, with our neighbour and with our own selves can be put right. By the authority Christ gave to his Church, I’m here as a priest to make these things available to you and for you. So I urge you to make use of them.

Amen.  

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The Propers for the 2nd Sunday of Easter can be viewed here.

In my sermons on Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, I spoke about those things, the things we remember and celebrate on those days, as being about life. I spoke about them as being about the life we receive and share through our sharing in Holy Communion, about the life of service and self-sacrifice that all Christians are called to live in obedience to Christ, and I spoke about the life we can lead in which our sins can be forgiven, if can only accept ourselves as sinners in need of forgiveness, turn to Christ in faith, and ask for his mercy. I said that if we can only do these things, then the life that Christ offers us through his Passion and Cross is a mortal life that leads to eternal life. And today, on Easter Day, it is that promise that we can have eternal life that we praise and worship God for as we celebrate the Resurrection of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ.

If we look at the Bible as a whole though, we can see it all as being about life. It begins with God’s creation, without which there would be no life at all. But we very quickly move on to what we know as the Fall, the time when the life that God gave us was marred by sin. From then on, the Bible is about God’s calling of people to return to him and the life he created them to live. That’s a story which culminates in the coming of Jesus Christ and his Passion, Cross and Resurrection. The rest of the Bible, is primarily concerned with the way the early Church tried to live out the new life Christ called them to. And if we look at the Bible in that way, we can see this morning’s Gospel reading as the event which brings the story full circle.

In the Book of Genesis, immediately after the sin of Adam and Eve, we find the story of God walking in the garden, looking for his people and calling out to them because they’d hidden themselves from him on account of their sin. Today we heard the story of men and women, again in a garden, but this time they are looking for looking for God, in the person of Jesus, God’s Son. In the story in Genesis, it’s the man and woman who are hidden, but in this morning’s Gospel, it’s God who’s hidden, at least in a sense and for a short time, because Mary mistakes Jesus for the gardener. But even this of case of mistaken identity has its roots in the Genesis story because God appears as a gardener there too: he planted the very first garden, in Eden.

The image of God as a gardener is a very good one. If we go back to the very beginning of the story of creation we told,

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.

So what we read here is not only that God creates, but that he also brings order to chaos. And isn’t that just what a gardener does?

If we think about what a piece of land is like when it’s untended, we could say it’s chaotic; it’s simply an unordered tangle of wild growth. We’ve both had and have areas like that around our churches, so we know what a piece of land looks like when it’s left to grow wild. But if we put a gardener onto that piece of land, it becomes very different; the wild growth is cut back, harmful plants, weeds and so on, are removed and replaced with good, beautiful plants, flowers, shrubs and lawns. In time, a gardener can turn what was once an overgrown mess into something beautiful so, in effect, a gardener, just like God, creates order from chaos.

This idea of God creating order from chaos is one that was very deeply ingrained in the Jews of Jesus’ day. In fact, their whole view of the world and the universe was based on it. Even the Jerusalem temple was built to mirror this idea of God creating order from chaos. It’s a view of the world and the universe that’s sometimes likened to the rings of an onion. For the Jews, God was at the centre of all and then here were various stages of closeness to God and furthest from God, where God’s presence wasn’t known or wasn’t at work, there was chaos. And chaos was closely associated with death.

In the Old Testament, the dwelling place of the dead was known as Sheol. Sheol was described as a place very reminiscent of the world we read about at the beginning of Genesis, a place of darkness and deep waters. We also find in the Old Testament the idea that those who dwell in Sheol, the dead, are cut off from God. So if Sheol, the dwelling place of the dead can be equated with chaos, then chaos can be associated with death, and in that understanding, the life and ministry of Jesus, his teaching and example, and especially his Passion, Cross and Resurrection, which are all about life, must also be about bringing order to chaos.

In the Creeds of the Church we profess our belief that, after his death on the Cross, Jesus descended to the dead, he went into Sheol, that place of chaos, to bring order and life even there by proclaiming the Gospel to the dead.

And if we think about it, isn’t that exactly what Jesus brings to us too; order to the chaos of our earthly, human lives?

If we think about human life as it’s lived without any belief in God, or obedience to Christ, what is it but a chaotic mess? What is it but a chaos of self-centred, competing individuals and nations who all want their own way? To use the gardening analogy, what is life without belief in God and obedience to Christ but a chaos of self-centred individuals and nations who all want the garden to be ordered according to their own idea of how it should be ordered? A chaos of self-centred individuals and nations who aren’t even content with ordering their own garden in the way they want, but who are quite willing and happy to tear up anything that any other gardener plants so that they can order everyone else’s garden in the way they want it to be ordered?  And ultimately, where does all this chaos lead any of us except to the grave? Where does all of the chaos of human life lived without belief in God and obedience to Christ lead any of us except to death?

But with belief in God and obedience to Christ, the chaos is replaced with order and death is replaced with life. Through his life and ministry, through his teaching and example, and through his Passion and Cross, Jesus offers us life. He offers us a life in which we can once again walk with God in his own garden, a world ordered according to his plan. And he offers us that life not only for the brief time of our earthly lives, but he offers us the chance to live that life for eternity. He offers us the chance to live our lives on earth according to God’s plan so that, when our time on earth is done, we can escape the death and chaos of Sheol, and live and walk with him forever in God’s heavenly garden.

For many people, that perhaps seems too good an offer to be true and so it’s an offer they can’t, and don’t, take seriously. But today, Easter Day, the day when we celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, not only our Lord and Saviour, but our brother and fellow traveller through the chaos of human life, is the proof that his offer is a true one. So let’s take him up and that offer and walk with him in this life so that we can live and walk with him forever in paradise.

Amen.

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The Propers for Easter Sunday can be viewed here.