In recent years we’ve heard quite a lot of criticism of American presidents, haven’t we? It would be difficult to catalogue the number and range of criticisms that were levelled at Donald Trump during his presidency and now it seems the knives are out for President Joe Biden as his competency, trustworthiness and not to mention his handling of the situation in Afghanistan are all being questioned. But no matter what people may think of Messrs Trump and Biden, the one who is widely regarded as the worst, and certainly, I think, most infamous of all Presidents of the United States, at least in living memory, is Richard Nixon.

Most of us here will remember Nixon, I’m sure, but for those who don’t, Nixon was forced to resign from office during his second term of office as President to avoid impeachment for obstruction of justice, abuse of power, and contempt of Congress.

There’s no doubt whatsoever that Nixon fully lived up to his nickname of ‘Tricky Dick’ and ended his term as President and his political career in disgrace, and yet for many people, including myself, he remains a fascinating character. He is widely regarded as a man who had the ability to be a good, perhaps even great President of the United States. He can be credited with some notable achievements, opening relations between the United States and China, negotiating the first nuclear arms limitation treaty with the Soviet Union and ending American involvement in the Vietnam War, for example. And yet he ended up being regarded as one of, if not the, worst Presidents ever and a disgrace to himself, the Presidency, and his country because of his shady way of doing things and attempts to cover up his involvement in illegal activities carried out on his behalf. So why was Nixon like that? I think the answer lies in his own words.

Towards the end of his farewell speech to his Cabinet and Staff, Nixon said this,

“Always give your best. Never get discouraged. Never be petty. Always remember others may hate you but those who hate you don’t win unless you hate them. And then you destroy yourself.” 

I don’t anyone has ever given a more accurate epitaph to themselves than Nixon did in those words. Nixon could be extremely petty. He believed people were always trying to put him down, so he tried to put them down. He believed people were out to destroy him, so he tried to destroy them. He believed that people hated him, so he hated them. And in the end, he did destroy himself. 

I’ve chosen to speak about Nixon this morning because I think he is a very high-profile example of what can happen to us if we don’t take the lessons of this morning’s readings to heart and try our best to live by those lessons. In our both our Old and New Testament readings this morning, we’re urged to live as God intended us to live. We’re urged to keep God’s commandments and, in the Letter of St James, not to let ourselves be contaminated or stained by the world. And that’s a message that’s taken up and reinforced in our Gospel reading, in Jesus’ own words:

“Hear me, all of you, and understand: There is nothing outside a person that by going into him can defile him, but the things that come out of a person are what defile him.”  

On one level, this is a teaching about ritual purity. It’s a teaching that eating without washing our hands first, whilst it might not be very hygienic, doesn’t damage our relationship with God because that is based on the kind of people we are in our hearts, not in our stomachs. And although this morning we don’t read the verses that actually say this, it’s also a teaching that there isn’t really any such thing as ritually unclean food because again, the food we eat simply goes into our bodies through our mouths, through our stomachs, and then out of our bodies.

But on another level, this is a teaching about what can enter into a person from outside and can contaminate and stain us. Jesus says,

“What comes out of a person is what defiles him. For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts…”

some of which Jesus names before he says,

“All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”

I’ve spoken before about the ancient understanding of the heart. For people of ancient times, it was the heart, not as we understand, the brain, where decisions were made. For the ancients, including the people Jesus was speaking to, everything that a person experiences in life entered the heart. It was in the heart where everything was considered and where the appropriate response was formulated. And so it was from the heart that actions came. And if these actions, and the thoughts that created them, were contrary to God’s commandments, it was these things that came from within a person, from their heart, that defiled a person. What this morning’s readings are telling us then, is that we mustn’t allow what we experience in the world to corrupt us by leading us away from God and abandoning his commandments.

The case of President Richard Nixon is an example of what can happen to a person if and when they allow the world to make them angry and bitter. His example shows us what we can become if we choose, and it is a choice, if we choose to repay people in kind for the insults and injuries and hurt they’ve caused us, or we think they’d like to cause us. His, is a high-profile example but it can happen to all of us in so many ways. I remember, for example, saying one time to an old school friend of mine that he wasn’t very nice to his girlfriend at times. His answer was that his last girlfriend had done the same things to him, so he was just getting his own back! But how many people have we met who’ve been through a bad experience and then treated other people, people who had nothing to do with the experience in question, badly as a result of that experience. Treated them as though either they were responsible for what had happened or as though they would do the same thing if they got the chance? It’s something we’ve probably all experienced, and probably all done at some time, and when we’ve done it, we’ve probably excused it by calling it the ‘baggage’ we’re carrying with us. 

It is easy to allow the world to make us like this because there are so many things that happen in the world, and to us, as we go through life that can make us angry and bitter. But if we do allow the world to make us like this, and that is our choice, these things damage our relationships with one another as individuals. They can damage relationships between groups of people. They can damage relationships between nations. And they damage our relationship with God too because being angry and bitter at others for what has happened to us, is allowing the world to contaminate or stain us, not least because it stops us from loving our neighbour as God intends us to.

Whatever the world throws at us, and whatever enters into our hearts as a result, Jesus calls us not to let these things turn us to evil thoughts because from evil thoughts spring evil actions. Whatever the world throws at us, and whatever enters our hearts as a result, we’re called to remain uncontaminated and unstained by them and faithful to God’s commandments and Jesus’ teaching. We know the rewards both for faithfulness and unfaithfulness to God and Christ and I’m sure we all want the reward that faithfulness brings. So whatever the world throws at us and whatever enters into our hearts as a result, we have to do our best to remain uncontaminated and unstained. Perhaps then, we could do a lot worse than take those words from Richard Nixon’s farewell speech and apply them to our own situation as Christians:

“Always give your best. Never get discouraged. Never be petty. Always remember others may hate you but those who hate you don’t win unless you hate them. And then you destroy yourself.”

Amen.

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The Propers for the 22nd Sunday of Ordinary Time can be viewed here.

As I go about the daily business of being a priest, I quite often have the chance to meet and talk to people who don’t usually go to Church. That gives me the opportunity to find out both what they think about the Church and the Christian faith and also what some of the prevailing attitudes towards the Church and the Christian faith are in society generally. Perhaps one of the most surprising things about this is that I never have to bring the subject up. Invariably, it’s the people I’m speaking to who want to talk about the Church and the faith.

Usually these conversations start in one of two ways. Sometimes they start when the person I’m speaking to tells me that they used to go to Church.  People who start the conversation in this way usually then go on to tell me what the Christian faith is all about and they often end when I tell them that being a Christian is about a bit more than they’re saying it is. (These are the people who often use that old chestnut ‘You don’t have to go to church to be a Christian’ which they often do to end the conversation). Or the conversations start when people ask how things are in the church? By that, people almost inevitably mean how many people are going to a particular church. When I tell them, I usually get a response that goes something along the lines of how much the world has changed and quite often something about how the Church needs to change its ideas and ways to fit in with the world. Another thing people who start conversations in this way often say is how many other things people can do on Sundays now that they couldn’t do in years gone by when going to Church was pretty much all you could do on Sundays. The implication being, it seems, that people only ever went to Church because there was nothing else they could do on Sundays. 

I know, that in the vast majority of cases, the people I have these conversations with are very well intentioned. Occasionally I do come across people who have some kind of issue with the Church and who want to have a bit of a rant and rave at a vicar about it, but those people are few, and far between. Some people who tell me what they think being a Christian is all about are perhaps trying to excuse the fact that they don’t come to Church, or don’t come anymore, by saying that they’re good, nice people, nonetheless. But most people I have these conversations with, I’m sure, mean well and are perhaps even trying to be helpful. But, in the vast majority of cases, they’re also quite wrong in much of what they say.

One way in which people get things wrong is in believing, as many seem to do, that being a Christian is about having good morals, about doing right, doing good, and, as many also say, about being nice. But what are good morals? What is right? What is good? What does being nice entail? The problem with trying to express the Christian faith, and especially the Christian life, in these terms is that they’re far too subjective to be of any use at all. I’ll give you an example of what I mean.

At the moment, the coronavirus pandemic has been ousted from the news headlines by events in Afghanistan and the return to power of the Taliban. From our western, democratic and at least nominally Christian outlook, the Taliban are seen as wrong, bad, perhaps immoral, and certainly not very nice. But I’m equally sure that to the Taliban and people of a similar outlook to them, it’s us in the west who are wrong, bad, immoral and not nice. And if that example is too extreme, then simply look at it this way: if we were to come across anyone doing something that we thought was immoral, or wrong, or bad, or just not very nice, and especially if what was happening was hurtful and causing harm to someone else, we would probably think the moral, right, good and nice thing to do would be to stop what was going on. Those we were looking to help or protect would probably agree, but would those whose actions we’d interfered with or stopped agree? I’m sure they wouldn’t and that they’d rather see us as interfering busybodies, at least, and to them we’d be the ones who were in the wrong and they’d hardly be likely to regard us as nice people.

As the saying goes, one man’s meat is another man’s poison, and so morality, right and wrong, good and bad and perhaps especially niceness, are far too subjective to be the basis of faith. Those things are far too closely linked to the society we live in, the way we were brought up and the people we associate with to be of any use to us in describing how to live as Christians. In fact, being a Christian, living out the Christian faith, is about one thing and one thing alone; it’s about following the teaching and example of Jesus Christ. And if you think that’s all about being moral, right, good and nice, then just look at a crucifix. The priests, Pharisees and scribes of Jesus’ day sincerely believed themselves to be moral, right, good, and probably very nice people too. So if you’re ever tempted to think that being a Christian is about these things, look at a crucifix and see just what moral, right, good, nice people can actually be, and do.

Another way in which I think people get what they say and think about the Church wrong is in attributing the low number of people who go to Church nowadays, to the fact that there is much more to do on Sunday now than there used to be in the past. There’s no doubting that the world has changed nor that, as part of that change, people can do much more on Sundays now than they could in years gone by. But whilst that has had a negative impact on Church attendance, I don’t think that’s all there is to it. The world has changed but so has people’s attitude to life, and I think that has had just as much, and perhaps even more impact on Church attendances than the increase in what we can now do on Sundays.

When I took some time out from full-time ministry and returned to the secular workplace, one thing I found very noticeable, and very different, about the workplace to that I’d known before I was ordained, was the change in people’s attitude to being told what to do. I was very surprised at the number of people, especially younger people, though by no means only younger people, in the workplace there were who seemed to think that they could do what they wanted to do, when they wanted to do it, that they didn’t have to do anything they didn’t want to do, and that no one could make them do anything they didn’t want to do. Again, this is something I’ve also picked up on in conversations I’ve had with people, especially people in supervisory or managerial roles. So it would seem that this is a prevalent attitude, perhaps especially amongst younger people, in society generally. And it’s an attitude that spells trouble for the Church.

I’ve already mentioned that to be a Christian is about following the teaching and example of Jesus Christ. But the two things we need to do that are obedience and discipline. To put it very bluntly, we need to do as we’re told, and we need to do as we’re told even when we don’t want to. In other words, to be Christians, we need two attributes that seem to be in very short supply in our society. And if this is a problem that’s particularly prevalent amongst younger members of our society, it’s a very big one for the Church because it’s amongst the young that we need to find our future congregations.

I think we all accept that to attract new, younger people into the Church, we probably need to change some of the things we do so that younger people will want to come to Church.

But what we can’t do, and must never do, is change what we teach and that includes the need for Christians to have obedience and discipline.

The Christian life isn’t an easy one, but Jesus never said it was. This morning’s Gospel is an example of Jesus teaching his followers something that was hard for them to accept. It was so difficult in fact, that many of them couldn’t accept it and stopped following him. Reading between the lines of this Gospel story, it seems that Jesus may have thought that everyone was going to desert him on account of what he was teaching because he asked the twelve if they wanted to leave him too. But, as Peter said,

“Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.”

And that, I think sums it up in a nutshell; if we don’t follow Jesus, to whom shall we go? He has the words of eternal life and so we have to follow him no matter how difficult what he asks us to do might be. And so, whatever we change in and about the Church in an attempt to fit in with the world and attract new, younger people into the Church, we cannot and must not change Jesus’ words. We cannot and must not change his teachings to make them easier to follow. And if what the world, or at least our part of the world, our society, or any individual in our society thinks is moral, right, good and nice doesn’t comply with Jesus’ teaching then we’ll just have to let world and society and those individuals make of that what they will.

Neither the world, nor anyone who follows what the world says has the words of eternal life, but Jesus does. So let’s have the obedience and discipline to follow him, no matter how difficult that might be and no matter how much we’d rather follow the world. And let’s make sure too, that we tell people that this is what being a Christian means. Because if we don’t, we’re leading them astray and away from the words and path of eternal life and, however nice and easy that may be in worldly terms, it is not the moral, right, good, or nice thing to do in Christian terms.

Amen.

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The Propers for the 21st Sunday of Ordinary Time can be viewed here.

One of the things that I’m sometimes very surprised at are the things that people, committed Christians, say about their faith which betrays either a lack of understanding of the Christian faith, or at least a very strange understanding of the faith. As a priest, I’d like to say that these comments come from the laity, but I must admit that over the years I’ve heard some rather curious things being said by the clergy too.

For example, in one diocese in which I served, a Lenten leaflet was produced, by the diocese, for distribution to the parish congregations during Lent. The subject of the leaflet was the difficulty of finding God in a graceless world. When I read that, straight away, my hackles were raised. We may say that God’s grace often goes unseen and unrecognised in the world, but we simply can’t say that the world is graceless because to say that is to imply that God is not present and active in the world and that the Holy Spirit is not present and active in the world. To be blunt, to say that the world is graceless is heresy. But what made that statement even worse was that it was endorsed by a bishop.

On another occasion, I heard a priest, in his Midnight Mass sermon, say that God sent his Son into the world so that we could love him, love God that is, because God needs our love. There’s nothing wrong with the first part of that statement but to say that God needs our love, or anything else for that matter, is to imply that there is a deficiency in God. It’s to imply that God is not whole or complete in himself but needs something from outside himself to be whole and complete. We may say that God wants our love because he wants us to be saved, that’s why he sent his Son into the world. But to say that God needs our love is to imply that God is in some way diminished if we don’t love him. Again, this is heresy and heresy made all the worse because it was preached by a priest of the Church.

So it’s not only lay people who say strange things about their faith but, as you might expect, I have heard some pretty strange things from lay people too. Such as the person in one parish in which I served who told me they wanted to ‘Come back as a horse.’ This person had been going to Church all their life, but it seems they thought Christians believe in reincarnation. I pointed out that we don’t, to which they responded, ‘Oh. What do we believe in then?’ ‘Resurrection’, I said. To which they replied, with a very puzzled look on their face, ‘Isn’t that the same thing?’

But when it comes to misunderstanding the Christian faith, perhaps one of the most revealing things I’ve ever heard anyone in the Church say was about the person whose life and example we remember today, the Blessed Virgin Mary, and her son, our Lord Jesus Christ. What this person, again someone who’d gone to Church all their life, said is that the reason Jesus was so much better than us is because Mary was so different to us. And what that statement reveals is a complete lack of understanding, or complete misunderstanding, about the essentials of our faith, including the two great pillars of our faith; the Incarnation, the birth of God’s Son as a human being, and the foundational event of our faith, Jesus’ Resurrection.

To be fair to the person who said these things, they did go to a very high, extremely Anglo-Catholic church. If I were to tell you that, as you walked through the front door of that Anglican parish church, on the wall in front of you was a very big portrait photograph of the then Pope, John Paul II, I’m sure you’ll get the idea. And given what the Roman Catholic Church teaches about Mary, and especially what some elements within that Church would like the Church to teach about Mary, a misunderstanding like the one this person had is perhaps not so surprising.

As I’m sure you all know, the Roman Catholic Church teaches as dogma, that is, as irrefutably true and something that we must believe in order to be saved, the Immaculate Conception of Mary; that Mary, unlike the rest of the human race was born without original sin. The Roman Catholic Church teaches as dogma, the Assumption of Mary, that at the end of her life, Mary was taken, body and soul, directly to heaven and entered into glory. And there are those who would like the Church to teach other things about Mary as dogma too. Mary as Mediatrix, the mediator of all divine graces. Mary as Co-Redemptrix, which refers to Mary’s essential role in the salvation of all people through her acceptance of God’s call to be the mother of his Son. And Mary as Advocate, the one who pleads our cause to Jesus, her son, who then mediates between God and humanity.

As most, if not all of you will know, I’m a regular pilgrim to Mary’s shrine in Walsingham. That’s something I’ve been for the best part of 30 years now, and it’s something I’m keen to encourage others to do too. So I have a great personal devotion to Mary. But if we’re not careful, we can, I think, go a little overboard in what we say about Mary. Whilst the Church does teach Mary’s importance in the story of our salvation, the Church is also very keen to emphasise that she is subordinate to Jesus, her son. But popular piety, what people think and believe, doesn’t always follow what the Church actually teaches. A very good example of that is the number of people who think and believe that the Church of England is a Protestant Church when, in fact, the Church of England does not and never has claimed to be a Protestant Church. The Church of England claims to be, and has only ever claimed to be, a reformed Catholic Church. And if we take what the Church teaches about Mary simply at face value, don’t some of these teachings suggest that Mary has roles that are the same as those of Jesus? Mediator of divine grace, Redeemer, heavenly Advocate? So is it any wonder that people can start to think that Mary is very different to the rest of us?

But whatever we say about Mary, one thing we must always remember is that Mary was not different to us, except perhaps in her devotion to God. Mary was just as human as you, or I, or anyone else. She had to be because Jesus‘ humanity came from Mary and if her humanity was not the same as ours then neither was his.

In the Letter to the Hebrews we read that Jesus,

‘… had to be made like his brothers and sisters in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.’

So if Jesus’ humanity was not the same as ours then our faith comes tumbling down in ruins. If Jesus’ humanity was not like ours, the Incarnation is meaningless to us because God’s Son was not made man. If Jesus’ humanity was not like ours his sacrifice on the Cross is meaningless to us because he didn’t die as one of us. If Jesus humanity was not like ours his Resurrection becomes meaningless to us because he wasn’t raised as one of us. If Jesus’ humanity was not like ours his Ascension is meaningless to us because he wasn’t raised to heaven as one of us. And if Jesus’ humanity was not like ours his role as our heavenly Advocate is at least severely limited because how can one who doesn’t know what it is to be human in the same way that we’re human possibly be a ‘merciful and faithful high priest’ for us, one who is able plead our cause to God the Father?

So Jesus’ humanity had to be like ours, and for his humanity to be like ours, Mary’s humanity had to be like ours too. That doesn’t mean we can’t venerate Mary for her very great role in the story of our salvation. It doesn’t mean we can’t venerate Mary as the mother of our Lord Jesus Christ and, by extension, the Mother of God. It doesn’t mean we can’t ask Mary’s prayers to aid and assist us in our prayers. It doesn’t mean that we can’t honour Mary in the way the Church has done throughout its history. But it does mean that we can’t say that Mary was any different to us as a human being.

Whatever titles we want to give Mary and whatever roles, attributes or greatness we want to ascribe to Mary, we always have to remember that she was every bit as human as the rest of us. But that doesn’t diminish Mary in any way. We know how hard it can be to be a Christian and to follow God’s will. But if Mary, who was just like us, could do that in such a great and exemplary way, so can we. Mary’s example to us then becomes all the more shining and relevant in and to our lives. And in that sense, remembering Mary’s humanity can actually her give even more honour.

Amen.

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The Propers for The Blessed Virgin Mary (The Assumption) can be viewed here.