In our reading from 2 Corinthians this morning, we find St Paul discussing one of what we might call his favourite themes, which is his anthropology, his understanding of humanity, of what it means to be a human being. It would be very simple to say that St Paul has a dualistic understanding of human beings, that we’re made up of both a body and a spirit, which are often in conflict with one another. But that doesn’t really do justice to St Paul’s understanding of humanity, which is actually far more complicated than that.

For St Paul, human beings are very complicated creatures. We’re made up of a body, which is neither good nor evil and can be transformed and raised to life again after death, but our bodies are made of flesh which is evil and can’t. To simplify that, we might say that our bodies are about being in the world, whereas our flesh is about being of the world. We’re also made up of mind which allows us to contemplate and understand the ways of God, and of heart which motivates us to act in the way we do. Finally, we’re made up of soul, which is the essential and immortal part of human beings, and of spirit which is that part of us that can enter into relationship with God.

So, for St Paul, being human, and especially being human and a disciple of Christ, is a very complicated business. The inherent weakness and frailty of human beings as creatures of flesh and blood, constantly sets us against our inner self, our mind and heart, and our soul and spirit, so that, as St Paul puts it in his Letter to the Romans:

‘For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin. For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.’ 

So, for St Paul, the real problem with being human, and a disciple of Christ, isn’t that we don’t know how to do what God wants us to do, nor that we don’t want to do it, it’s that the weakness and inherent sinfulness of our bodies of flesh and blood conspires against us to stop us being the good, Christian people we know we should be, and actually want to be.

But that leaves us with quite a problem doesn’t it, because in this morning’s reading St Paul warns us that,

‘… we must all appear before the judgement seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil.’ 

But if we don’t do the good that we want to do, but only the evil we don’t want to do, that’s going to leave us with quite a lot to answer for isn’t it? So how can we deal with that problem?

Well, having set the problem, it seems St Paul also supplies the answer because, as he says in his Letter to the Romans,

‘Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!’ 

And for St Paul, it is always Jesus who is the answer. His death frees us from sin, his resurrection is our promise of eternal life, and the gift of the Holy Spirit is the guarantor of these things. So, regardless of the evil our flesh might have compelled us to do whilst we’ve been inhabiting our earthly bodies, it’s always better to be with Christ than to be in our bodies. And so, as we read this morning, St Paul can say;

‘… we are always of good courage. We know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord, for we walk by faith, not by sight. Yes, we are of good courage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord.’ 

But of course, to be at home with the Lord in the way St Paul means it in our reading this morning, means to be with Christ in our heavenly home, and we might like to be at home with Christ before we get there. And the good news for us is that we can be. We can be at home with Christ, in a spiritual sense at least, by entering the kingdom of God and, as we know, God’s kingdom is not just in heaven, but anywhere and everywhere God’s will is done. But where we ought to be able to find the kingdom most easily, is in the Church because the Church is called to be an earthly manifestation of God’s kingdom, a place where the world and it’s ways are not done, and God’s will is.

We know that God’s will is that all people should be saved, and so we know that his kingdom is open to all people. And that accords perfectly with what Jesus says in this morning’s Gospel when he says the kingdom,

” … is like a grain of mustard seed, which, when sown on the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth, yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes larger than all the garden plants and puts out large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.”

And if that’s the way it is in the kingdom, that’s the way it should be in the Church too. So there should be no place in the Church for the ‘We don’t want their sort here’ attitude we sometimes find amongst Church people. We always have to bear in mind that if entry to the kingdom was based on merit, we’d all have a pretty hard time getting in, if we could get in at all. And it’s just as well for us that is the case because, as St Paul says, we don’t do the good we should do and want to do, but rather the evil we shouldn’t do and don’t want to do. So the Church too must be open to all. And if it’s not, then the Church in that place isn’t a manifestation of God’s kingdom, but rather a manifestation of the sinfulness of the flesh.

None of us can stand in judgement on other people because, like them, we’re made up of the same stuff; we all have the same weakness, our flesh that’s prone to sinfulness. And so, when someone wants to be at home with the Lord in the Church, we should be more concerned about making sure they can be, rather than about the kind of person they are. They might not be the kind of people we’d choose to have in the Church, but it’s not our Church, and so just because they’re not our cup of tea, doesn’t mean God isn’t calling them.  I’ll give you an example of what I mean. 

A few years ago, before I was ordained, a few of us from the parish church were out for a drink when a certain lady came over and asked if she could join us.
Now, this lady was a well-known character in the parish. She drank like a fish, swore like a trooper and in her younger days, so it was said, including by some members of her own family, she’d been a ‘lady of the night’. Nevertheless, as Christians should, we invited her to sit down with us, and as soon as she had, she started asking us about the Church and our faith. As the time went on, a few people made their excuses and left until, in the end, there were just two of us still sat with her. After chatting to us for quite some time, she asked where she could buy a Bible, we told her, and with that she left us. We thought that was the end of it. But the next Sunday, the lady was in church, in fact she was in church every Sunday after that. She was confirmed and she became a regular pilgrim to Walsingham with us. That lady didn’t come to church after any prompting by the Church, she approached us out of the blue. She was, I’m sure, typical of the kind of person whom some would say, aren’t wanted in the Church. But, because of how she came to the Church and what happened afterwards, how devoted she was, I don’t think there’s much doubt that God wanted her there and called her to be there. 

I tell you that story because, in a sense, that lady’s story is our story too. We might not have committed the same sins that she had, but nevertheless, we are all sinners. That lady might not have been worthy to enter this earthly manifestation of the kingdom of God we call the Church by her own merits, but neither are we. We’re all here for no other reason than that by some means and for some reason, God called us to be here because he wants us to be here. And that is good news, for all of us. It’s good news because it means that, despite the weakness of our flesh, despite the fact that we do the evil we don’t want to do rather than the good we do want to do, we can be of good courage and full of confidence that we will one day be at home with the Lord in heaven. Because why would God call us, we creatures of weak, sinful flesh, and want us to be at home with the Lord in the Church, his kingdom on earth, if he isn’t also calling us and wants us to be at home with Lord in his heavenly kingdom?

Amen.

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The Propers for the 11th Sunday of Ordinary Time (Trinity 2) can be viewed here.

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.

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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.

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The Propers for Corpus Christi can be viewed here.