There’s a saying in the Church, and about the Church, which perhaps some of you may have heard, and which goes “The Church would be a wonderful thing, if it wasn’t for its people.” That seems a rather strange thing to say I know because the Church is its people, in fact there wouldn’t and couldn’t be a Church without its people. But nevertheless, there is more than a hint of truth in this saying. Because if we think about what the Church is called to be, and then think about how it is in reality, whose fault is it that the Church isn’t the wonderful thing it’s called to be, except for its people? The most common accusation made against the Church and its people is that of hypocrisy, of not practicing what we preach. And there can’t be anyone else to blame for that other than the Church’s people themselves. 

As we know, disciples of Christ, the people of the Church, are called to love one another. We’re called to bear with each other’s faults and failings and to forgive one another if we sin against each another. We’re called to follow Jesus’ teaching and example in our own lives. But as we know only too well, we don’t always live up to those high ideals and all too often, what we actually see in the Church, is behaviour that’s no different than anyone else’s behaviour. We see behaviour that’s every bit as worldly as anyone else’s. We know it shouldn’t be like that because we’re called to be in the world but not of the world but in fact, in far too many cases, the people who make up the Church act rather as though they’re in the Church but not of the Church. 

None of this does anything whatsoever to help the mission of the Church. For quite a few years now, the Church of England’s focus has been on mission, about how to proclaim the Gospel in both word and deed, with the purpose of fostering Church growth. But to be perfectly honest, unless the people in the Church start to act a bit more like the Christians they ought to be, we’re simply wasting our time.

I’m sure I’ve told you before about a conversation I once overheard in which two women, who were regular churchgoers, we’re chatting about the latest argument in their parish congregation and offering their opinions of the people involved, when they were interrupted by a man who was in their company at the time. He said words to the effect of,

‘You people go to church, you talk about love and forgiveness, but then, as soon as you leave, you do nothing but call and criticise one another. You’re always falling out and arguing among yourselves. Is it any wonder people don’t take you seriously? Perhaps if you tried practicing what you preached people might take a bit more notice of you and what you say. I know I would.’

When it comes to mission, I think that conversation sums up the Church’s problem in a nutshell. Unless we, the people of the Church, start to act in a more Christian way, we’re not going to be able to encourage enough people to come to church to stop the decline in our congregations. And we’re not going to be able to lead the Church into growth because we’re not going to inspire people to become Christians themselves, unless we act like Christians ourselves.

We all want to be better Christians, I’m sure of that, but of course, we’re human beings too and that often gets in our way. We all like to have things our own way, and that applies in the Church as much as in any other area of life. And when other people stop us from having things our own way, usually because they want things their way, we can end up arguing and falling out, and criticising and calling one another. All very un-Christian things to do, but we do them because they’re all very human things to do. And we see these things being played in this morning’s Gospel.

In the early chapters of St Mark’s Gospel, we read about Jesus healing many people, but he also pronounces the forgiveness of sins, and he heals on the Sabbath and these things were taboo. So by the time we get to this morning’s reading, it’s clear that Jesus is doing things in a way that some people aren’t happy with. And, whilst he’s attracting a big following, he’s also stirring up some opposition. Some people think Jesus is mad or possessed by Beelzebul (and in Jesus’ day madness, mental illness, was usually seen as some kind of demonic possession). And when his family hear of all this, they come to take him away and restrain him. 

And isn’t this what often happens in the Church? We might not use the same terminology, but we can do, and to all intents and purposes say, the same things. We might not say people are mad, but we might say that they’re stupid, that they don’t know what they’re talking about and that what they’re doing or suggesting is stupid and wrong. We might not say that they’re possessed by demons, but we might say that what they’re doing and saying is un-Christian. And if what they’re doing and saying is done in the name of the Lord and is un-Christian, then they’re leading people astray. In that case, what they’re doing and saying is anti-Christ, it’s evil. It may even be an unforgiveable sin against the Spirit. But are they being un-Christian? Or is it just that we don’t like or don’t agree with what they’re doing and saying? And whilst we don’t take people away or restrain them in the way that Jesus’ family wanted to do with him, we can and do put them away and restrain them. We isolate them by not allowing them to have any say or influence in what goes on in the Church. Only a few weeks ago I told you about Hans Küng, who had his teaching license revoked by the Roman Catholic Church for daring to say, that Church was wrong in some ways and denying the doctrine of papal infallibility. But we can do this in so many ways and we do it whenever and wherever we exclude people from things simply because we don’t like or agree with what they say and do. 

We know these things go on because they’re all too visible. They go on in local congregations but, as the conversation I related to you a few minutes ago shows, they become visible to those outside a congregation too, because people talk about them publicly. They go on within denominations of the Church, and we only have to look at the bickering that goes on between the different traditions of the Church of England to know that. Perhaps the worst example of this in recent times has been the quite appalling way those on different sides of the debate about women’s ordination have treated each other at times. I, personally, have heard people speak, quite publicly, about their ‘vituperative hatred’, a bitter and abusive hatred of those on the other side of the debate. And people referring to those on the other side of the debate as ‘the enemy’. Again, also quite publicly. And it goes on at a worldwide level, between the different denominations of the Church. Who can ever forget the disgraceful spectacle from a few years ago of monks, belonging to different denominations of the Church, brawling at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, one of Christianity’s most sacred sites, simply because each wanted to worship there, but they couldn’t countenance worshipping together, at the same time? 

All these things are symptoms of what Jesus calls in this morning’s Gospel, a house divided against itself. And, as Jesus also says, a house divided against itself can never stand. And so, as long as the people of the Church continue to act in the un-Christian way the so often, and far too often do, whilst we may have some local successes, our attempts at mission in the wider sense will, I think, be very sadly doomed to failure.

If we want mission to succeed, if we want to encourage people to come to church and inspire them to become Christians so that we can lead the Church into growth, then everyone in the Church, from the child in Sunday School to the highest Archbishop, Pope and Patriarch, needs to learn how to see everyone else in the Church as our brothers and sisters and mothers and treat them accordingly. That doesn’t mean we have to agree with everyone else in the Church about the way to do things, but there are two things we do have to realise and accept. We have to realise and accept that there is only one thing to do in the Church, and that is to do God’s will. And we do God’s will by following the teaching and example of Jesus, not by insisting on having our own way. And we need to realise and accept that, as God has called each of us by name, so his will for each of us is unique to us. And so, just because other people don’t do things our way, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re wrong, or evil. Just because people see things and do things differently than we see and do them doesn’t mean that they’re not looking to do God’s will too. 

When it comes to mission, the Church is talking the talk, but it needs also to walk the walk. And that means that the people of the Church, each and every one of us, need to do that. Because until we do, the Church will continue to be a house divided against itself and our attempts at mission will be maintenance, running repairs to stop the house from falling down, rather than construction to build it up. As individuals, or even as a congregation, we might not be able to make much of a dent in the work that’s needed on the whole house, but we can build up our own small part of it. So let’s do that. Let’s be the people, the Christians, we’re called to be so that, when people talk about this place, this church, this house of God, they won’t say ‘The Church would be a wonderful thing, if it wasn’t for its people’, but rather, that church is a wonderful thing, because of its people.

Amen.

---

The Propers for the 10th Sunday of Ordinary Time can be viewed here.

Even though it’s almost 20 years since his death, and much, much longer since his heyday as an entertainer, I’m sure most people will have heard of Bob Hope. And if you have, you’ll no doubt also know that Bob Hope’s signature tune was a song called Thanks for the Memories. He first sang that song in a film in 1938, but it became one that he sang at every performance he gave, usually with the lyrics altered to suit the particular occasion or venue of his show. I’ve decided to start my sermon on this feast day of Corpus Christi, this day of thanksgiving for the gift of Holy Communion, by talking about Bob Hope, because I think there is a sense in which some people in the Church, many people in the Church in fact, reduce this great gift of Holy Communion, to something akin to Bob Hope’s signature tune, Thanks for the Memories.

For some people in the Church, the Eucharist, and the sacrament of Holy Communion itself, is simply a memorial; it’s nothing more than a way of remembering what Jesus did at supper with his disciples on the eve of his death. And we remember it in the way we do simply because Jesus told us to remember it in this way. And, for those people, that’s all there is to it.

It’s true that memory, and remembrance do play a very big part in what we do at every service of Holy Communion, every Mass, every Eucharist. In the Scripture readings and the Eucharistic Prayer, for example, we remember and call to mind the things that God and Jesus have done for us. And, in the way that Bob Hope changed the lyrics of Thanks for the Memories to suit the occasion, the first part of the Eucharistic Prayer, the part we know as the preface, or proper preface, the things we remember change according to the time of the Church’s year or the particular day we’re celebrating.

What we remember especially at every Eucharist of course, is the Lord’s Supper, the last meal Jesus shared with his disciples the night before his death. And we do this by taking, breaking and eating bread, and drinking wine, in obedience to Jesus’ command to do this in remembrance of him. But, whilst remembrance, thankful remembrance, is a very important part of what we do in the Eucharist, the Eucharist itself, and especially the sacrament of Holy Communion, is about much more than simply remembering what Jesus did at supper with his disciples on that night in Jerusalem almost 2,000 years ago.

So why do we have these two very different understandings of Holy Communion? I think that, yet again, the problem is largely one of language. It’s a problem caused by words that don’t translate directly from their original language into another language and, because of that, when they are translated, the meaning of the words is changed, and the original understanding of the words is lost. And that problem’s compounded because people take the meaning of the translated words, try to impose that meaning on the original language, and so on to people to whom the translated meaning didn’t apply, and into situations and events in which the translated meaning didn’t apply. And Jesus’ word that we translate as ‘remembrance’ is a prime example of this.

For us, 21st Century English speaking people, remembrance is a purely mental exercise. What we mean by remembrance is a mental picturing and recollection of past events. We may mark the remembrance in some way by holding an anniversary event or some such thing, but to us, what has happened in the past, can’t be made present again, in the present. But we always have to remember that Jesus didn’t speak English, he was a Jew, and he lived a long time ago. He was steeped in the ritual and religious understanding of his time and his people. The Passover meal, which it’s usually thought Jesus’ last meal with his disciples was, is a ritual memorial of the events of the first Passover in Egypt, it still is amongst Jews today in fact. And for Jews, including Jesus and his disciples, remembrance in this context, wasn’t that mental recollection of past events that we mean by remembrance, but what the Old Testament refers to as zikkaron.

Zikkaron, and it’s Greek equivalent anamnesis, don’t have equivalents in English. In fact it has been said that these words are all but impossible to translate into English. What zikkaron and anamnesis refer to is an understanding that, through ritual memorial, especially communal ritual memorial, God can cause the events remembered to be made present, in the present, for the people who remember them. That’s not to say that the original events are repeated, but that when they’re ritually remembered, the people who remember them in the present, become included in and part of the original events. It’s not unlike an understanding that we find in many ancient cultures, and even in some still today, that even though a person may physically die, they’re not really dead and they can still play a role in everyday life, as long as their name is remembered.

It’s an understanding of remembrance that’s very strange to us. It’s much more than a simple mental recollection of an event in the past, but it stops short of being a repetition of the original event itself. So, in the Eucharist, whilst, as part of our ritual remembrance, we are repeating what Jesus did at supper with his disciples, we’re not sacrificing Christ again, as some in the Church erroneously claim we do in the Eucharist. It’s rather that, through the power of the Holy Spirit, God allows us to be included in the original events of Christ’s sacrifice, themselves. By God’s power and grace we become part of these events, even though they happened so long ago. In the power of the Spirit, we are there, at supper with Jesus. And Jesus is here with us, because through zikkaron, through anamnesis, his sacrifice, made once for all, is made present for us again, here and now, whenever and wherever we obey his command to ‘do this in remembrance of me’.

There are, of course, other disagreements between Christians about the Eucharist and the sacrament of Holy Communion. People disagree about the sacrament itself, whether it is the body and blood of Christ or simply bread and wine that symbolise his body and blood. Even when they agree that the sacrament is the body and blood of Christ, they can, and do, disagree about how Christ is present in the sacrament. Is Christ present by transubstantiation, that the substance of the sacrament is entirely the body and blood of Christ with only the outward appearance of bread and wine? Is Christ present by consubstantiation, the sacrament is both the body and blood of Christ and bread and wine? Or is Christ present in the sacrament in a spiritual rather than physical sense?

Whatever people’s views on these things are, I think that if Christians would simply take the time and trouble to consider what Jesus meant when he said ‘do this in remembrance of me’, instead of imposing their own understanding of remembrance on him, then the Eucharist, the Mass, the Lord’s Supper, Holy Communion, call it what you will, would be regarded with more of the reverence and respect it deserves, rather than as something akin to a Christian version of Bob Hope’s Thanks for the Memories. Perhaps then too, this day of thanksgiving for the gift of Holy Communion, Corpus Christi, would be given the status it deserves and would become a day that’s celebrated by all Christians, with great thanks, for the wonderful gift that Jesus himself gave us when he took and broke bread, took wine, gave them to his disciples and said to them, and to us, ‘do this in remembrance of me.’

Amen.

---

The Propers for Corpus Christi can be viewed here.

Despite what I said last week about the difficulties of communicating with people who speak different languages, there can’t be any doubt that language is of the greatest gifts we have as human beings. In fact, in the minds of many people, language, the ability to communicate through the spoken word, is perhaps more than anything else, what defines us as human beings. That’s not to say that other creatures don’t have languages that are at least in part made up of verbal communication, but none have a way of communicating that has the depth or complexity of human language. Dolphins, for example, are often held up as examples of highly intelligent animals which do communicate with one another by means of language and researchers into the field of animal languages have estimated that the patterns of clicks through which dolphins communicate, make up a vocabulary of about 36 ‘words’. By comparison, the average human being has a vocabulary of between 25,000 and 30,000 words.

Nevertheless, human language still has its difficulties. There’s the problem of communication between people who speak different languages. That actually hinders communication between people, it can separate them and because of the misunderstandings that can cause, it can cause serious disagreements and problems between people. And human language has its limitations too. Despite its depth and complexity and descriptive power, there are some things that human language can’t fully describe or explain.

For example, we all know what pain is because we’ve all experienced it. We all know how pain feels, but could we actually describe pain, not what it’s like, but how pain itself feels? A dictionary definition of pain is an unpleasant physical sensation causing discomfort and distress. But that would also apply to having insomnia, being unable to sleep, or to travel sickness, or to being too hot or too cold, but we wouldn’t usually say any of those things are painful. It’s actually very difficult to explain or describe pain itself and so we rely on the fact that people know what pain is and use metaphors, similes and analogies to describe it. We say something is a burning pain or it’s like being stabbed or that a pain is so bad we don’t know what to do with ourselves because whatever we do, we can’t get comfortable.

Whilst all those things show the descriptive power of language, they also show the limitation of language too. The fact that we have to use metaphors, similes and analogies to describe something, shows that we don’t have the words to describe the thing itself.

And we could say something similar about love too. I’ve spoken before about the limitations of the English language in speaking about love, as opposed to Greek, for example, which has multiple words for different kinds of love. But even so, what do we mean by love? I don’t mean the kind of love that the Christians are called to feel for all people, agape, the love that seeks to do good to all people, regardless of our personal feelings towards them. I mean what’s generally meant when people talk about love. We all know what that kind of love is, I hope, because we’ve all loved, and been loved, and probably been in love with someone. But how can we describe love itself. A dictionary definition of love is an intense feeling of affection for something or someone. But why do we have that feeling for one thing and not another, for one person and not another? We could say we love someone for their kindness and generosity or some other admirable or attractive character trait. But we probably know many people with those kinds of qualities so why do we love some but only like or admire others? And what is that undefinable thing that makes us fall in love with one person and not another? We sometimes call that the ‘spark’, but that’s another metaphor for something that we can’t describe or explain directly. We’ll know what it means to be ‘in love’ if we’ve experienced it ourselves, but if we can think back to the first time we fell in love with someone, we also know what a strange, new and indescribable experience it was. So it’s very difficult to explain to someone who hasn’t experienced it for themselves. Or even to someone who has because how often do we hear people say, “I don’t know what they see in him, or her”?

So despite its complexity and descriptive power, language can’t really convey what we mean by things like pain and love as those things are in themselves. We can use metaphors, similes and analogies to give others a sense of what we mean but we have to rely on the fact that people have experienced these things for themselves if we want them to really understand what we’re trying to say. And if that’s usually true when we speak about things such as pain and love, it’s most certainly true when we speak of God as Trinity.

We simply don’t have the words, in any human language, to describe how something can be three separate and distinct things and yet, at one and the same time, be only one thing.

We understand the words, but the words don’t allow us to explain or to understand how such a thing can be, or to explain and describe what such a thing is really like, in itself. And yet this is the uniquely Christian way of speaking about and describing God.

And so, because we can’t explain or describe the Trinity directly, we use various similes to try and convey this understanding of God. Perhaps one of the most well known is the image of God as Trinity, being like water. Just as God is three persons but one God, so the same water can exist as a solid, ice, as liquid water, and as a gas, steam. But this doesn’t describe the Trinity accurately. The same volume of water can be three distinct things, but it can’t be those three things at the same time and yet still be the same volume of water. What this simile actually describes is a heresy known as modalism. The Modalists taught that the three persons of the Trinity were only transitory, that is, God could be Father, or Son, or Holy Spirit, but not all three at the same time. So, for them, the Trinity referred to three states, or modes, hence their name, in which God could exist depending on which role God chose to fulfil at any one time.

Because of the difficulty we have in speaking about God as Trinity, it’s often said that the Trinity is simply a mystery of faith that defies explanation, and for many people it’s sufficient to leave it at that. But in the same way that we can use people’s own experience of things like pain and love to speak about those things, so we can use people’s own experience of God to help us when we speak about the Trinity because the Trinity is something that people have experienced.

The idea of God as Trinity is implicit in Scripture from the very beginning:

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.  And God said, “Let there be light”, and there was light.

In those first three verses of Genesis we read that God is the source and creator of all. This is the one we know as the Father. We read that God’s Spirit, the one we know as the Holy Spirit, was present with the Father before all things. And we read that all things were made through God’s Word, the one we know as the Son, and as the one St John calls the Word made flesh, Jesus.

And if the idea of God as Trinity is implicit from the very beginning of the Scriptures, the understanding that Father, Son and Holy Spirit are all present at one and the same time is found in the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ baptism.

‘And when Jesus was baptized, immediately he went up from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened to him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on him; and behold, a voice from heaven said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”’

What is that other than an experience of God as Father, and Son, and Holy Spirit all being present at one and the same time in a definite time and place in human history?

And any hint of modalism or of there being three Gods, is dismissed in Jesus own words. When asked what is the greatest commandment, Jesus began his answer by saying,

“The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.”

But, if we think about those words, aren’t they a strange way to say there’s only one God? Wouldn’t a better way to express that be to say, ‘The Lord our God is the one Lord’? Don’t Jesus words give the impression of more than one, coming together in and as one?

So the idea of the Trinity is implicit in Scripture form the very beginning and it’s an idea that’s reinforced by the experience of people who, through the years, have come to know God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And it’s an idea and understanding of God that finds expression in the Christian doctrine and understanding of God as Trinity. It might be beyond the limitations of human language to adequately explain and describe this understanding of God but that shouldn’t worry us because being able to do that would mean having the ability to know and understand God, as God is in himself. In that sense, the Trinity is and must remain a mystery. But it’s not one we can’t believe in, nor speak about, because it’s one we can experience for ourselves, even if words do fail us in trying to explain and describe it.

Amen.   

---

The Propers for Trinity Sunday can be viewed here.