It’s now just over a year since my great friend and colleague, Fr Neville Ashton, died. I know that most of you knew Fr Neville too because he came to St Mark’s and St Gabriel’s numerous times to cover for me when I was on holiday. So I know too, because many of you have told me, just how well-liked Fr Neville was. That’s not surprising because he was a very friendly and approachable person, not to mention a very good pastoral priest, he was a good listener, especially when people came to him with problems. I also know that Fr Neville was well-liked for his preaching.

I knew Fr Neville for over 40 years and so I know that his style of preaching changed over the years. At one time he’d hand write or type out his sermons and preach from the pulpit. But over the years he stopped doing that and started preaching in front of the people. He also stopped preaching from a text and started giving short, homely talks that didn’t tax people too much either by their length or with complicated, academic style, theological arguments. But however Fr Neville’s preaching changed over the years, one thing about it remained constant and that was that there was a recurring theme in his sermons. And that theme was death. 

Death was a theme in Fr Neville’s sermons so often in fact that, when he was my parish priest, there was often a conversation in the vestry before Mass about how far he’d get into his sermon before he mentioned death; because he almost always did. Typically, he’d use the Gospel of the day to make a point about following Jesus’ example more closely and then he’d go on to say something like this:

“And you need to start doing this now because you never know what’s going to happen. The only thing we do know is that we’re all going to die. But we don’t know when. You might not be here tomorrow. I might not be here tomorrow. So you need to start doing this now because tomorrow may be too late.”

At which point, the servers in the Sanctuary and the choir in their stalls would all look at each other and smile.

To be fair to Fr Neville, he was making a very good point, and one that needs to be made. The trouble was, he made it so often, that it lost its impact and became something of a running joke.

And that’s a shame because what Fr Neville said so often does need saying from time to time. I’ve mentioned it today because, to all intents and purposes, it’s exactly what Jesus is saying in this morning’s Gospel.

When we read this Gospel story, we have to bear in mind the understanding of the people of Jesus’ day. To them, personal sin had a direct effect in and on life. So, if someone was ill, or if something bad happened to them, such as with the people mentioned in the Gospel, it was regarded as the result of their sins; the punishment if you like, for their sins. And that’s what Jesus is referring to when he asks if people think those Pilate had killed and those who died when a tower fell were worse sinners or more guilty than other people. In the popular understanding of the day they probably were but Jesus tells them, ‘No’, they weren’t. These people were no worse than anyone else and so if they could die so suddenly and unexpectedly, it could happen to anyone, at any time. And Jesus says that his listeners will die in the same way unless they repent.

We also need to think here about the circumstances of these people’s deaths. We’re told that the Galilean’s blood was mingled with the blood of their sacrifices. We can only assume that the blood of their sacrifices refers to the blood of the animals they were sacrificing to God. So these Galileans must have been killed whilst they were at worship. The tower at Siloam that fell killing eighteen people must be associated with the Pool of Siloam in which Jesus told a blind man to wash, in the course of restoring his sight. We know that the Pool of Siloam was adjacent to the Temple Mount and that water from the pool was used in temple worship at times. So these eighteen may have either been leaving the temple or making their way to the temple when the tower fell and killed them. In other words, all these people probably died either shortly before worshipping God, while they were worshipping God, or shortly after worshipping God.

That gives an added dimension to Jesus’ words. These people who died were, to all appearances, good people. They were good Jews who worshipped God. And yet they died, suddenly and quite horrifically really. And Jesus tells those he’s speaking to that they are no better than these people. He’s telling them that, if this can happen to people who worship God, people who are no worse than anyone else, it can happen to you too, at any time. These words of Jesus suggest that those who died, and his audience were all in the same boat, they worshipped God, but they were all unrepentant sinners too. Does that also apply to us? Those who died were no worse than those he was speaking to, but they were probably no better either. They worshipped God but they died, suddenly, and if it can happen to them it can happen to anyone, it can happen to you, and me, too. And they, and we, might not be here tomorrow so the time to repent is now. Which is the warning Fr Neville gave people so often in his sermons.

Of course, we believe in a God who is loving and merciful. We believe that the price of our sins has already been paid, in blood, by Jesus on the Cross. So we don’t have anything to worry about do we? But, as I said in my sermon last Sunday, we have a covenant with God, a deal, a deal sealed in the blood of Jesus. We can be forgiven and have eternal life, but we have to believe in Jesus and follow his teaching and example. Part of doing that is to be repentant. We have to accept that we are sinners but do our very best not to sin. We can’t think that Jesus’ sacrifice on the Cross means that we can do as we please and we’ll be OK because Jesus has already suffered for our sins and paid the price of them. We have to keep our side of the covenant. And this is what the parable of the unfruitful fig tree we heard this morning is telling us.

The fig tree had been unfruitful for three years, so the owner decides to cut it down. But the man who tended the fig tree wanted to give the tree another chance, one more year to see if it would bear fruit. In the context of his ministry, what Jesus seems to be saying here is that the people have had three years to repent and bear fruit; they’ve had the three years of his ministry to do that. But that ministry is now coming to an end because he’ll shortly be making his final journey to Jerusalem where he knows he’s going to be betrayed, arrested and put to death. At this point, there’s still time to repent and bear fruit, but there’s not much time left.

And isn’t that always the case for us? We’ve had a lot more than three years to listen to Jesus, to repent and bear fruit, in fact, we’ve had our whole lives, or at least, the whole of our lives from the time we first heard the Gospel, to do that. And for most of us, there’s still time, plenty of time hopefully, to repent and bear fruit. But we can’t ever be certain of that because none of us know exactly how much time we’ve got left do we. We may live another ten, twenty, thirty years. Some of us may live a lot longer than that. But on the other hand, we may walk under a bus tomorrow and then our time will be up. We simply don’t know.

What we do know is that one day our time will be up and then our future will depend not on what we could do or could have done, but on what we did do. And we never know when that time will come. You might not be here tomorrow. I might not be here tomorrow. So if we’re going to repent and bear fruit, the kind of fruit that we’re called to bear under the terms of the deal we have with God, the time to do it is now, while we still can, before it’s too late.

Amen.

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

Our readings today start with a story from the Book of Genesis which, in today’s hyper-sensitive, woke society, must be in some danger of being radically altered if not actually ‘cancelled’ for being offensive to some, and unsuitable for the young. Whatever our own views on such things are though, we must admit, this story about Abram killing and cutting in half various animals as a sign of a covenant between himself and God, is a strange one to us. But then I’m sure that many things we do would be strange to someone of Abram’s day and one very important thing this story does remind us of, is that a covenant is a deal between two parties because, just as we cut a deal, so Abram cut his covenant with God, quite literally in his case.

We read about lots of covenants in the Bible. God makes covenants with individuals, such as this one with Abram, and he makes covenants with groups of people, such as the one with the people of Israel that we read about in the Book of Exodus. In these covenants, as in any deal, there are promises made by the parties concerned. In return for his faith, God promised to give land to Abram’s descendants, and in return for their obedience to the law, God promised the land to those descendants, the people of Israel. As with any deal, all concerned had a responsibility to keep their promises and, as with any deal, if the promises weren’t kept by one party, the other party had no obligation to keep to their side of the deal either. And as we know, the people often didn’t keep their side of the deal and they ended up being exiled from the land God had promised and given them.

A covenant with God always involves a change in the status quo. The person, or people, with whom God makes a covenant are expected to change and become the kind of people God wants them to be and in return, God offers them a reward. As Christians, the covenant we’re most concerned with is what we call the new covenant, the deal we’ve cut with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Under the terms of that covenant, we’re required to have faith in Jesus and to follow his teaching and example and, in return, God promises us eternal life. And this is what St Paul is speaking about in this morning’s reading from his Letter to the Philippians.

Our reading begins with St Paul urging the Philippians to follow his example, the way of life he taught them. If we look at St Paul’s letters in general, that’s a way of life that shows a complete commitment to Jesus as Lord and Saviour. And St Paul says that those who don’t or aren’t doing this are destined to be lost. In other words, if they don’t keep their side of the covenant they’ve made with God, neither will God keep his side of the covenant. Then St Paul speaks about the change that keeping the covenant will bring about. He says,

‘…our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself.’

That suggests a change that will take place in the life to come but perhaps what St Paul is really saying is that this is a change that will be completed in the life to come because we know that he believed it was a change that started in this life. It’s a change that begins as we change our mortal lives and conform them to Jesus’ teaching and example.

In his Second Letter to the Corinthians, St Paul speaks about the veil that Moses had to place over his face after he’d spoken to the Lord, something he had to do because the Israelites couldn’t bear to look at him because his face shone so brightly with the reflected glory of God. St Paul says that through Christ, the veil has been taken away and we can now see the glory of the Lord. He says,

‘But when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.’ 

So for St Paul, there’s no doubt that this change from what we were to what we should be, from what we are to what we will be, from lowliness to glory, that will be completed in the life to come, begins in this life when we turn to the Lord, to Christ, and we allow the Holy Spirit to enter and guide our lives.

It’s all very well to say that though, the difficulty, as we all know, is in putting it into practice. We’ve all set off on the road to glory, and make no mistake, we have set off on that road, we wouldn’t be in the Church if we hadn’t, but how many degrees do we move before we come to a stop, or even slip back?

If we look at this as a clock face with the lowly, earthly person at the bottom, at ‘6’, and the glorious, heavenly person at the top, at ‘12’, with 180o of glory between them so that they’re exact opposites, then if we’re absolutely honest with ourselves, how far have we moved towards ‘12’ before our ‘clock’ has stopped? And let’s be really honest here, how often have we found ourselves having to reset the clock to ‘6’ and start again?

The difficulty isn’t in believing that we have to make a change from lowliness to glory, it’s not in understanding what we have to do to start making that change, the difficulty is in actually doing something about making that change. One of the great assets we have as Christians though, is that we have lots of help in this respect. We have the lives and examples of the saints, those who’ve struggled to make this change before us. They can guide us. We have each other and that should never be overlooked. We’re all trying to keep the same covenant with God; we’re all on the same journey, and so we can all help each other along the way. That’s exactly what St Paul was doing when he urged the Philippians to follow his example. And of course we have the teaching and example of Jesus himself to show us how to keep the deal we’ve made with God, and the Holy Spirit to guide us when we’re not sure what to do.

One thing we always have to remember is that while Jesus is the divine Son of God, he was also as every bit as human as us and as a fully human being, he was under the terms of a covenant with God too. So Jesus was one of us, a fellow traveller on the road to glory and for that reason, Jesus ticks all the boxes when it come to being able to help us on our journey towards glory.

This morning, we have different Gospel readings at St Mark’s and St Gabriel’s. At St Mark’s we read the story of Jesus’ Transfiguration, the story of Jesus being changed and appearing in glory to Peter, James and John. They saw Jesus in his glorious state. In that moment, Jesus appeared to them as the fulfilment of the law and the prophets, and they heard him acclaimed from heaven as the Son and Chosen One of God. A truly dazzling vision of Jesus in glory.

But at St Gabriel’s we read about a very human Jesus. In this Gospel story, we see Jesus in a quite belligerent mood and even engaging in name calling. When some Pharisees warn Jesus that Herod is looking to kill him, so yes, there were obviously some good Pharisees, Jesus responds by saying,

“Go and tell that fox for me, listen…”

And then, in essence, proceeds to say that he’ll be about his business, whatever Herod wants. Isn’t that exactly how we often react if someone tries to stop us doing what we want to do? And then we find Jesus speaking about his own death, something that, as a human being he had to face up to, as we all have to, eventually. And as he does that, and no doubt thinks about what his death means, what its purpose is, he laments over Jerusalem. He’s deeply, deeply upset because Jerusalem, and by implication, Israel, will not listen to him. They won’t change their ways, they won’t turn to him so that they can see God’s glory openly, with unveiled face, as St Pauls puts it. Because they won’t do that, they can’t begin that degree by degree change from lowliness to glory. But Jesus loves Jerusalem, and so he shows the very human emotion of grief. Some translations say that Jesus even wept for Jerusalem. But even so, Jesus knew the terms of the covenant; if Jerusalem wouldn’t listen then, on their own heads be it. How many times have we reacted in these ways when we’ve tried to help or advise someone, and they wouldn’t listen to us?

So in these two Gospel readings we see two very different images of Jesus. On the one hand we see Jesus in glory, the glory to which we’re called through our obedience to him and to the covenant, the deal we’ve made with God. And on the other hand we see a very human Jesus, a Jesus in the lowly state he shared with us during his earthly life; a Jesus with the very same human thoughts, feelings and emotions that make it so hard for us to change from lowliness to glory, even by degree. This is why Jesus is such a great help to us, not only through his teaching but because his example of keeping to the covenant he had with God is an example of someone who was exactly like us being able to keep to their covenant with God.

As Christians, we have this covenant, this deal we’ve made with God. The deal is that if we have faith in Jesus, if we’re obedient to his teaching and follow his example, we can have eternal life. God doesn’t break his word, so let’s do our best to keep our side of the deal. In Jesus’ Transfiguration, we see the glory to which we’re called, so let’s do as God asked Peter, James and John to do that day and listen to Jesus. Let’s listen to him and try our best to do as he says and to do as he did so that we can have some degree of glory now and have it fully in eternity.

Amen.

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

Something that I share with many other people I know, is a love of chocolate. I’m sure we all know that chocolate isn’t the healthiest of things to eat but it’s very nice and if we eat it in moderation, it’s not going to do us any real harm. The trouble with chocolate for most of us, I think, is that it is so nice it’s very difficult to eat it in moderation. I know that, if I open a bar of chocolate, break off a piece and eat it, I’ll immediately want another piece, and another, and another and, if I didn’t make a conscious effort not to, I’d eat the whole bar there and then. And I know that lots of other people have exactly the same problem with chocolate.

In that sense I, and lots of other people, could be called ‘chocoholics’. Actually, that’s a bit of a misnomer because the word chocoholic implies an addiction to chocolate but, according to research, there’s nothing in chocolate itself that’s addictive. It seems the problem with chocolate is the sugar that’s added to it, to milk chocolate especially, to enhance the flavour by taking away chocolate’s natural bitterness. The sugar, it seems, gives us a ‘sugar high’ when we eat chocolate and it’s that, coupled with the taste of the sweetened chocolate that makes us crave more of it. So whether it’s actually addictive or not, for lots of people, chocolate is certainly very ‘moreish’.

Another way of talking about chocolate would be to say it’s very tempting and, as Christians, temptation, and especially resisting temptation, is something we’re very much focussed on during Lent. So, if we wanted to give up chocolate for Lent, or perhaps cure ourselves of our ‘chocoholism’ more permanently, how would we go about it?

One way would be to simply not have any chocolate in the house; if we don’t have any chocolate, we can’t eat it. That would be, if you’ll pardon the pun, a quick, simple fix. But that would probably only be a short-term solution too. It would be OK if we were giving up chocolate for Lent, but if we wanted to give up or cut down our consumption of chocolate on a long-term basis, it probably wouldn’t be a practical way to do it. We’d be bound to come across chocolate somewhere at some time and then we’d have to face the temptation to eat some of this very moreish stuff. And that’s a problem lots of people do have with chocolate, me included. People tend not to crave chocolate when they don’t have any to hand, but when they do have it, they start to eat it, and then they want to eat it to excess. So, if we wanted to be cured of our chocoholism rather than just give up chocolate for Lent, we’d have to find a different way to do it than simply not having any chocolate in the house.

In the end, the only way we’d be able to stop eating chocolate or cut down on how much of it we ate, on a long-term basis, would be to build up the strength of character, the will power if you like, not to eat chocolate even when we do have it to hand. And that’s the solution to dealing with all temptations on a long-term basis; to be able to face temptation, to be in the presence of what tempts us, but to have the strength of character not to give in to temptation.

I think people often miss a very important point about temptation. Temptation is about wanting something that we shouldn’t have, or perhaps wanting to do something that we shouldn’t do. But there’s a big difference between wanting and having, wanting to do and doing. And the most dangerous temptations are those things we want and shouldn’t want but can have; the things we want to do and shouldn’t do but can do. To give an example. In recent days, more than one person has said to me that they’d like to shoot a certain politician, whose name I won’t mention, but it was the president of Russia. Christians shouldn’t want to do that, but it’s not a temptation to those who’ve said it to me because they can’t do it anyway. On the other hand, if those people had said to me, they’d like to shoot their next-door neighbour, that would be a temptation, and a very dangerous one, because it’s something they could do. So resisting temptation isn’t about not doing what we can’t do anyway, such as not eating chocolate when we don’t have any chocolate, it’s about not doing what we could do; it’s about not eating chocolate when we’re surrounded by it. This is one of the lessons we can learn from the story of Jesus’ Temptation in the Wilderness.

We could interpret the temptations Jesus’ faced in certain ways so that they apply to us, but the temptations themselves really don’t. If we were hungry, we might look at a stone and wish it was bread, but we couldn’t possibly turn a stone into a loaf, so that wouldn’t be a temptation to us. But it was to Jesus because he could have turned the stones into loaves. And the stones were there, probably all around him, so it would have been a very real temptation to Jesus, one he had to face and resist.

We might be tempted by the prospect of power and authority, but we’re never going to rule the world, no human being, no matter how powerful has ever been able to do that. As we know, a few have tried over the years, but they’ve all failed. So the prospect of ruling the world in return for worshipping the devil isn’t a temptation to us because it’s a power we can never have. But it was a temptation to Jesus because he could have used his divine power for his own ends, to pursue his own glory rather than the will and the glory of his Father. So this temptation, which would be so ludicrous to us as to be no temptation at all, was a very real temptation to Jesus because it was a power he could have had.

And the final temptation Jesus faced, that of putting God to the test by throwing himself from the top of the temple is, again, not a temptation to us. Unfortunately, people very often are tempted to put others to the test, and they often succumb to that temptation. They succumb by using others as nothing more than a means to satisfy their own desires, or by taking others for granted, which is very often simply another way of saying that people have put their own desires above the needs of others, simply because they think they can, and can get away with doing that. But would any of us really consider throwing ourselves off the roof of St Marks’, or St Gabriel’s, to test whether God loves us or not? In the 40 plus years I’ve been an adult member of the Church, I’ve never met anyone who thought they could do something like that and get away with it. So this isn’t a temptation to us, but it was to Jesus. Jesus knew his mission was to fulfil the Scriptures, that’s why the devil tempted him by quoting the Scriptures. So Jesus knew that he could have thrown himself from the top of the temple in the absolute certainty that no harm would come to him. And so this was another temptation that Jesus had to face and resist.

When we think about temptation, we have to be clear about what we really mean. Are we talking about unachievable goals or hopes, things we’d very much want to have or do but which, in reality, we know we can’t? Because those are pipedreams, not temptations. Or are we talking about real temptations, things we’d very much like to have or do, that we know we shouldn’t want or do, but can or could have or do? It’s these things, real temptations and not pipedreams that we should be concerned about and that we need to resist.

But, when it comes to resisting real temptations, how do we know that we’re resisting them and not simply hiding from them? The only way we can know that, is if we actually face them, just as Jesus did during his 40 days in the wilderness. 

In the Lord’s Prayer, we pray that God our Father may,

‘…lead us not into temptation,

But deliver us from evil.

But we know from Jesus’ Temptation in the Wilderness that God can, and sometimes does, lead us into places and situations where we can be tempted. So what we’re really praying for here is first of all, that we won’t be tempted by what we find in the places and situations that God leads us into. And we’re praying too that, if we are tempted by what we find in those places and situations, we may be delivered, saved, from the evil of giving in to temptation and all the evil that may flow from that. If we look at these lines from the Lord’s Prayer in the light of Jesus’ Temptation in the Wilderness, we’re not praying to have temptations hidden from us by being spared from being led into places and situations where temptation occurs, because that wasn’t Jesus’ experience; he was led into the wilderness, the place of temptation, by God the Holy Spirit. We’re praying that if, in following where God leads us, we do find temptation, we may have the strength and the faith to act as Jesus did; the strength and faith to face up to temptation and resist it.

If we’re a chocoholic, we can hide from our chocoholism by avoiding contact with chocolate, by hiding from chocolate. But we’ll never know if we’ve freed ourselves from chocoholism unless we have chocolate in front of us, and don’t eat it, or at least can resist the temptation to eat it all in one go. And in the same way, we can try to hide from the temptations that we may find in the places into which God leads us. But the only way we can do that is by not going where God wants us to go, by trying to hide from God in effect, and as Christians, that’s not an option. As Christians we’re called to follow Christ and to go where God leads us and sometimes that means going into the place of temptation and facing up to what we find there and resisting. That may not be easy but it’s the only way to be sure that we really are able to resist temptation and that we’re following this example of Jesus.

Amen.

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The Propers for the First Sunday of Lent can be found here.