Sermon for All Saints' Sunday: 30 Oct 2016

MORECAMBE PARISH CHURCH          30 Oct 2016

ALL SAINTS DAY

Luke 6: 20 - 31

Introduction

Ok we’re going to start with a quiz. Which of these phrases are from Shakespeare and which from the Bible?

(Shakespeare died in 1616 which means he was around when the King James Bible was published in 1611. They have both come into our language and conversation and stayed.

Put your hand up if you think it’s the Bible / Shakespeare

A man after his own heart                          1 Sam 13: 14

Cast thy pearls before swine                     Matt 7: 6

I must be cruel only to be kind                  Hamlet

All they that take the sword

shall perish by the sword                           Matt 26: 52

Neither a borrower or a lender be                        Hamlet

Do to others as you would

have them do to you                                   Luke 6: 31

You should all have got that one right, we’ve just had it read to us! It is quoted often by people who don’t know if it comes from Shakespeare or the Bible, because it’s so good.

Luke’s Beatitudes

Jesus had the most amazing way of seeing through to the real point of a matter and expressing it in the most pithy, memorable and often surprising way.

These verses for instance, which we know better probably from Matthew’s version, are so full of a profound understanding of human beings and how societies work; they are so appealing and yet so uncomfortable and radical.

Is this what a SAINT looks like, on this All Saints day?

Poor, hungry, weeping, excluded, reviled, defamed on account of the Son of Man (v 20-22). Like so many in our world – they are the ones, Jesus says, who are blessed.

And is this God’s verdict on all who oppress the poor?

 (v 24 – 25)

woe to you who think you’ve made it through wealth and don’t share it,

woe to you who are full of yourself,

 woe to you who laugh and sneer at others’ misfortune?

Woe to you when you live only for the approval of others

It’s all going to get turned upside down.

It is very difficult to get away from the fact that Jesus is making a political statement here. His congregation were the poor, the marginalized, the oppressed and he wanted to give them hope, not false hope, but real hope that things would get turned right way up. You will be filled, you will laugh and rejoice and leap and dance v 21 & 23, he promises.

But Jesus says to those that listen, v 27, you have a responsibility in this:  “ love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you”  which is summed up in v 31: “do to others as you would have them do to you”

In between (v 29 – 30) Jesus gives some examples of how that might be worked out, which would have been obvious to those who heard him at the time but which perhaps need explaining today.

Turn the other cheek

V 29 If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also. Matthew is more specific – “the right cheek”.

OK Mike I’d like you to come and strike me on the right cheek. I’ve asked Mike because I know he’s not a violent man!

How are you going to do it?  

Mike: Either with my left hand, or back-handed.

But in the Jewish Law the left hand was only used for unclean tasks (you may know or I’ll leave it to your imagination!)  So this aggressor must have used his back hand.

And the back hand was (and is) not to injure, but to insult, to humiliate, to degrade. It was not administered in those days to an equal, but an inferior. Masters back-handed slaves; husbands backhanded their wives; parents their children; Romans backhanded the Jews. The whole point was to force someone who was out of line back into place.

So, Jesus says, “if anyone strikes you (with the back hand to humiliate you), turn the other cheek”.  The people Jesus was talking to were used to being degraded and he says, refuse to accept this kind of treatment anymore. If they backhand you, turn the other cheek.

And if I turn to you the other cheek Mike – what are you going to hit me with? Right fist

The left cheek offers the perfect target for the right fist but only equals fought with fists.

So this was an act of defiance – it said to the slave master or the Roman oppressor, “I am your equal. I’m a human being just like you. I refuse to be humiliated any longer. I am a child of God.”

What Jesus is saying loud and clear to the poor and excluded and reviled is: don’t co-operate with anything that humiliates you. Stand up to your oppressors, assert your humanity. BUT don’t treat the oppressor in the way he treats you. “Do to others as you would have them do to you”. Find a different way of being which is neither being a victim or being violent.

Give away your shirt

It’s the same principle with the next phrase:

“from anyone who takes away your coat, do not withhold even your shirt.”. This would mean stripping off all their clothing and standing there naked. (We are not going to have a demonstration!)

Imagine the guffaws this must have evoked from Jesus’ congregation. We think it’s funny, so did they but they were also aware that for the Jew it was shameful; any kind of nakedness was a taboo. In effect the man is saying “you want my coat, here, take everything.”

Imagine him walking away with nothing on. His friends and neighbours would be aghast – ‘what happened to you?’ They would be outraged by him being so degraded. The point was made – ‘we can’t put up with this humiliation any longer’.

But, Jesus says, in your resistance: “Do to others as you would have them do to you”. *

Conclusion

We can read through the gospels and see how Jesus lived out these principles. Always resisting violence, but never submitting to the bully (Matt 26: 52, John 19: 11).

This is what it means to be disciple of Jesus, a Saint. Do you remember the drama about our Patron, St Laurence which Brian wrote and we enacted a few years ago? He was a saint who followed Jesus in non-violent resistance – there are many.

And I believe this is the invitation of Jesus to all of us; “find a different way of being; let my life be in you and I will give you what you need to be neither violent nor a victim”, “do to others as you would have them do to you”, and you will be blessed.

*Taken from : ‘The powers that be’ Walter Wink p 102 - 5

- Sue Kiernan, Reader at Morecambe Parish Church

Sermon for 16 October 2016 (Trinity 21)

Sermon for 16 Oct 2016.    Trinity 21

2 Timothy 3:14 – 4:5

[Peter and Barbara were marking their golden wedding by renewing their marriage vows.]

A lot of people fear that the art of letter writing is dead. If, like me, you have embraced modern technology and correspond with typed letters, email, Facebook Messenger or other online methods, then sitting with a real pen and paper is quite a daunting experience. My handwriting was never good, and over the years it seems to have deteriorated to the point where even I can’t read things I’ve written in a rush. So, Peter and Barbara, I hope you’re impressed how neat my writing was on the card I sent you. I wrote it very slowly!

The Bible contains quite a lot of letters. Most of them are in the New Testament, and the majority are credited to St Paul, including the second letter to Timothy that we heard read earlier. The section we heard captures what seem to be a kind of farewell address from Paul to his young companion and he packs lots of points in.

My daughter, Ellie, is now at University in London, and she’s phoned and also sent messages about what a great time she’s having. It prompted me to remember phoning home from University in the early 80s. First you needed some coins, then you queued up to use a payphone, and then as the money was running out, you quickly said everything you needed to say before it cut you off. This part of the letter feels like that – it reads like someone rattling off a lot of points before the time runs out. And it may well reflect Paul’s final thoughts before his execution in Rome in the late 60s AD. The next sentence after the bit we have printed, it says “the time of my departure has come”.

So, if you only had a brief time to say what you needed to say, what would you want to include? It’s a good question to reflect on.

Timothy was a young side-kick to Paul. His mother was a Jew, but his father was Greek. And in verses 14 & 15, the first thing he is reminded of is to hold on to the wisdom and teaching that had been handed down to him. Those sacred writings – scripture – would only be what we call the Old Testament, which had been collected together and even translated into Greek by this time.

Next week is Bible Sunday, but we have something different coming up then. It’s really helpful that this reading came up this week. What does Paul say to Timothy about Scripture.

The first thing he says is that it is inspired. (v16) In the original language, it says god-breathed. Some religious traditions have sacred writings that are regarded as having been dictated by God. The Quran has to be correct in every detail when printed, and in Arabic for that reason. The book of Mormon is believed by Mormons to have been delivered on gold pages by an angel.

Christians have never seen the Bible in that way. It isn’t a dictated set of instructions, although as verses 16 and 17 state, it is believed to be useful for guiding and correcting. Much of the Bible is story or poetry, but within that unique and special story, people have found inspiration and faith.

It’s quite remarkable that through the history of the church, people have found faith just by reading the Bible. St Augustine and Martin Luther were converted whilst reading verses from the letter to the Romans, and John Wesley’s heart was strangely warmed, as he put it, by reading what Martin Luther wrote about Romans – it even worked second-hand!

It’s one reason that the Gideon organisation still try to ensure Bibles are placed in hotels, hospitals and other public places. They believe that God can still speak into people’s lives today through the words of this ancient and sometimes difficult book, because our faith is that it is inspired.

Second, he says it’s useful.

I have quite a lot of useful things in my house and garage. For example, I have a soldering iron. My dad gave it to me – he spent a lot of his working life, working for a telecoms company, using a soldering iron. He still uses one a lot at the age of 88, which causes me a degree of anxiety, as you can imagine. Whenever I visit him, there is always an old radio that someone has asked him to fix, as he will know what to do. He probably has the valves in his shed, and he’s handy with a soldering iron. My soldering iron is useful; it’s just that I never use it.

However, I do have a mini vacuum cleaner that’s rechargeable. It’s absolutely brilliant for chasing round after all the fluff that our dog, Dino, leaves around the house. I find little bundles, like tumbleweed around the place, and this gadget sucks it all up. That’s useful – and I use it.

The scriptures – the Bible – is the essential tool for the Christian life, says Paul. It’s what you use to shape and correct your life; to line it up to God’s way.

Now when we think of the Bible correcting or challenging people, we might have an awful vision of people with big Bibles, placards and condemning words. That’s not what Paul means. He debated, he had conversations, he wrote letters, he argued, he preached. In every circumstance, his toolkit was his memory of the scriptures and his knowledge of the story of Jesus. It was his anchor, his reference book and his guide.

We all have useful things we don’t use; Paul’s plea is that Bible isn’t one of them

But following on from that, thirdly, it is the place we find Jesus.

Verse 15 on the first page, our faith is in Jesus Christ. If you listen to some Christians, they sound like their faith is in the Bible. But that’s wrong – it’s in a person. Christians are people who are committed to following Jesus, not a set of statements, a constitution, a flag or a book. And our lifelong task is to work out what is means to be faithful followers as we face the many and varied challenges of this life.

The key to doing that is to spend time with the story of Jesus. For Paul, that would have meant listening to people who were eye-witnesses, and Paul himself wrote a bit down – especially the story of the last supper. It may be that he heard or even read early versions of what would become a gospel – it’s not possible to say. But he clearly knew the story.

And knowing your story is important. There’s a series on the First World War just started on BBC4. It’s good because it doesn’t just focus on the western front – it goes into what was going on in Austria and Serbia and inside Germany, which helps to explain how things happened. And those events probably affected all of our families. My grandmother’s first husband was killed in the trenches, and at least one other relative was gassed. My grandad was out there from Jan 1916. It was only because of the war that he met my gran, who was a widow, and they got married. I still remember standing in the Pozières cemetery looking at the memorial to my gran’s first husband and reflecting on that very strange thought that if he hadn’t died, there would be no memorial and I wouldn’t exist. There’s the big story of the war, and yet in the middle of it is part of my family’s story and my story. It’s part of who I am.

In the same way, those who are followers of Jesus are shaped by the story of Jesus. His story is our story. That’s why we have a gospel reading at every communion service. We reacquaint ourselves with the person we follow, and the story that has shaped us. And we hear more of that story in the communion prayer itself. We’re reminded of the story before we share in communion, which are the symbols and sign of the climax of the story – the death and resurrection of Jesus. It’s part of who we are.

So reading, reflecting, discussing, sharing, learning and wrestling with the story of the Bible is essential to us all, otherwise we don’t know who we are, where we came from, or where we are going. Most of all, we need to know who we are following.

So the Bible is inspired, not dictated, which means it speaks for itself and changes lives.

The Bible is useful – sometimes bewildering, but correcting, challenging and informing us.

But most of all, the Bible is our family story – a story of struggle, rebellion, forgiveness, reconciliation and most of all, the story of Jesus, the one we are called to follow. 

Mike Peatman, Rector of Morecambe Parish Church

Sermon for 3 July 2016

3 JULY 2016

EPHESIANS 2: 19 – 22
JOHN 20: 24 – 29

Just like today, in every Greek city in Paul’s day there were strangers and aliens. And their life was not easy. They were regarded with suspicion and dislike because they were foreigners, resident aliens.

I remember when I was in the Philippines we had to register every year as Resident Aliens. Believe it or not, that was what was written on the form! We were, in my experience, welcomed in that country and treated with wonderful hospitality, even though in 1762 Britain had occupied the capital, Manila for two years. So they had every reason to not like the Brits. People have long memories but also an amazing capacity to forgive.

But we didn’t really belong; it wasn’t home – in fact we talked about returning to the UK or wherever our home country was, as ‘going home’.

The Ephesian Church
Foreigners in Ephesus in Paul’s day would have gone for the work there. Then they would set up home, get married, have children, and pay their taxes for the privilege. But ‘home’ was somewhere else. They were outsiders, on the fringe, never fully accepted and often made to feel like resident aliens.

Perhaps what attracted them to the Christian faith was Paul's inclusiveness, he was a Jew and yet he preached this new message to Gentiles as if they were equally welcomed by God. Then they discovered that other churches that were mainly Jewish were not quite so generous hearted. The Jewish churches felt this new faith was theirs. Jesus had been a Jew after all and they were shocked when Paul welcomed Gentiles and treated them as if they had equal status.

Even though the story spread about Peter the apostle having had an extraordinary experience which convinced him that God didn’t have favourites – even though the leaders in the Jerusalem mother church said they had to put prejudice aside, there was still the feeling in many Jewish hearts that God preferred them to Gentiles.

Prejudice among the ‘in crowd’ is hard to break through; the walls we build to keep out people who are different from us, are very difficult to pull down.

And so Paul writes his letter which includes these lines. He is determined that the people in these new Gentile churches will not feel inferior to the Jewish churches. As far as God is concerned they are of equal value. They must not be part of God’s church out of sufferance. They are all together citizens of the society of Jesus, full members of the family of God. They are, through Jesus, at home with God, there is a place at the table for them.

Thomas
It’s not only race and religion that can make us feel left out. Just thinking for a moment about our gospel passage: I wonder if part of the problem for Thomas on that Sunday after the resurrection was that he felt left out. Why hadn’t Jesus waited till he was there to meet with the apostles? After all, he was one of the closest – he’d been with Jesus since the early days of His ministry. Why did Jesus have to turn up on the one Sunday evening Thomas had something else in his diary?

I wonder how Thomas felt to be left out. But I also wonder: did it help him to identify with others who felt left out? Maybe this is why Thomas went to India and founded the church there in Kerala State, and where he was martyred for the faith.

When I was in Abu Dhabi last year there was a church of St Thomas, Mar Thoma, meeting on the same compound as the Anglican Church. The church Thomas founded has lasted all this time - often persecuted, and also with many rifts and divisions down the centuries. They also needed this teaching of St Paul to learn to live together in peace and mutual understanding and respect.

The Temple image
The picture Paul uses to illustrate this, is that of a building – but not just any old building; he uses the Temple as a template. He takes the most important symbol of Judaism and turns it inside out.

The Temple was not just a religious place of worship; it was the political, social, cultural, musical heart of Jerusalem and it was the place of pilgrimage for Jews from all over the world - because they believed it was the place where heaven and earth met, where God had promised to take up residence in a special way.

Now Paul is declaring that God is replacing this Temple with a new Temple – a Temple consisting not of stones and arches and pillars and altars but of human beings. No one had ever said anything quite as radical as this.

God was going to build a community that would be more permanent, longer-lasting, more beautiful than any Temple they had ever seen.  And it would include anyone and everyone, Jews and Gentiles, men and women, rich and poor, slaves and their aristocratic owners, residents and refugees.

What this community has in common is Jesus – who came to us as a stranger into a world that would reject him, who became a refugee in Egypt; who befriended all the outsiders he came across: Gentiles, women, the mentally fragile, the physically disabled, and finally who was condemned by the religious elite and crucified outside the city wall with the foreigners.

God had come to us as an outsider in Jesus and he wasn’t going to leave behind a community that excluded people.

The stones of this new Temple, the Church, would be laid side by side, rubbing the sharp corners off each other. They would often be supporting other stones and the weight would feel heavy; at other times the stones would need to be leaning on other stones and they themselves would be carried. There's no room for judging or criticising the other stones; you might need them one day soon. And Jesus the cornerstone would hold it all together – in fact without him the whole building would collapse.

God would take up residence in this 'building'; it would be his dwelling place where heaven and earth meet. It would be his home, where all the residents would be at peace and no one would feel a stranger or a foreigner. This is Paul's vision / dream for the church – may it be ours too.

Sue Kiernan

Sermon for Trinity 5, 26 June 2016

Before I preach today, I think it's important to say something about what has happened with regard to the referendum.

We need to acknowledge that the last few days have seen the most important political decision for our nation in my lifetime and probably yours too. As many of you will know, my convictions were and still are that staying in the European Union was the better choice for the United Kingdom, and for the international community. I know a number of you, like me, are shocked and concerned at such an outcome. Others will be of the opposite opinion as we gather today. Whichever way we voted, we have yet to see what the future may hold, or indeed who will lead us into it.

I'm not going to say any more personally on that, as I don't think it would be helpful, so I'm going to read the joint statement issued by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York on Friday. Our service today also includes prayers and a litany published by the Church of England in the aftermath of the vote.


The Statement

On Thursday, millions of people from across the United Kingdom voted in the referendum, and a majority expressed a desire that Britain’s future is to be outside the European Union.

The outcome of this referendum has been determined by the people of this country. It is now the responsibility of the Government, with the support of Parliament, to take full account of the outcome of the referendum, and, in the light of this, decide upon the next steps. This morning, the Prime Minister David Cameron has offered a framework for when this process might formally begin.

The vote to withdraw from the European Union means that now we must all reimagine both what it means to be the United Kingdom in an interdependent world and what values and virtues should shape and guide our relationships with others.

As citizens of the United Kingdom, whatever our views during the referendum campaign, we must now unite in a common task to build a generous and forward looking country, contributing to human flourishing around the world. We must remain hospitable and compassionate, builders of bridges and not barriers. Many of those living among us and alongside us as neighbours, friends and work colleagues come from overseas and some will feel a deep sense of insecurity. We must respond by offering reassurance, by cherishing our wonderfully diverse society, and by affirming the unique contribution of each and every one.

The referendum campaign has been vigorous and at times has caused hurt to those on one side or the other. We must therefore act with humility and courage – being true to the principles that make the very best of our nation. Unity, hope and generosity will enable us to overcome the period of transition that will now happen, and to emerge confident and successful. The opportunities and challenges that face us as a nation and as global citizens are too significant for us to settle for less.

As those who hope and trust in the living God, let us pray for all our leaders, especially for Prime Minister David Cameron in his remaining months in office. We also pray for leaders across Europe, and around the world, as they face this dramatic change. Let us pray especially that we may go forward to build a good United Kingdom that, though relating to the rest of Europe in a new way will play its part amongst the nations in the pursuit of the common good throughout the world.

Archbishop Justin Welby and Archbishop John Sentamu

[opening prayer]

Sermon: Galatians 5:1,13-25

Paul’s letter to the Galatians is one of his earliest letters. We can’t be certain, but there’s a reasonable consensus that it was written by 50AD, and possibly as little as 15 years after Paul’s conversion. It’s written in a brusque, quite aggressive style, as Paul shows the enthusiasm and zeal of a relatively new convert and communicator, eager to convey how meeting with the risen Christ has fundamentally changed his understanding of all the traditions and rituals he had kept to in the past.

The central message has been for Paul to convey to his readers that they should not feel bound by the Jewish rules that had applied to him before he met with Christ. Following Jesus is not about adopting a set of laws and rules, and then adding on Jesus; it’s a whole new and free way of relating to God directly through him. However, some people had been pressurising the Galatians to do precisely that, and adopt Jewish religious practice as a precondition of Christian conversion. Paul has some pretty harsh words for those trying to influence in this way, and warns the Galatians to reject them.

That’s what the first sentence we have here is all about. Christ has set us free from those requirements of religious ritual and practise, so there’s no need to go along with those who teach otherwise. That’s what the yoke of slavery is – the religious duties of the old era that didn’t even work in connecting people to God and giving them a living faith.

Now, if you say to a bunch of people that they are free from rules and regulations, you can immediately see the potential risks. It can lead to chaos, potentially placing people in great danger. For example, if I thought that I am set free from the rules and regulations of the highway code, I could infringe them in ways that don’t place anyone at huge risk. For example travelling at 41mph in a 40 limit breaks the rules, but is unlikely to expose me or anyone else to great danger. However, if I drove on the right instead of the left, it could cause a fatal accident.

So Paul is well aware that giving free reign to the people he’s writing to could be disastrous, without further advice. This chapter is that advice. By the way, the Church of England set readings omit verses 2-12, perhaps for taste and decency as they cover circumcision and castration! Anyway, our focus is on 13 onwards, with verse 1 provided to add come context.

Freedom is a gift, Paul is saying, which we should steward well. The key to that is "love your neighbour as yourself" (Leviticus 19:18). That word love in the original is the Bible’s special word for love – agape – sacrificial committed love. The love expressed by Jesus on the cross, prepared to put all self-interest at stake for the well-being of another, not just emotion or simple friendship. This is the expectation he has for the Christian community. To reinforce the point, Paul says “become slaves to one another” – a memorable way of putting it, picking up on his earlier argument, which was all about slavery and freedom.

The opposite of living in a community of selfless committed love is, of course, a collection of people pursuing their own competing and conflicting self-interests. Paul cautions the Galatians that taking that path will consume them – destroy them (v15).

Paul refers to these two ways of life – love and selfishness – as spirit and flesh. The next section spells those out. Now this can sometimes look like a long puritanical naughty list, but they actually connect with what he has said earlier about living together bound by love. So sexual immorality – translated here as fornication - damages families, marriages, and communities, and undermines mutual trust. Idolatry and sorcery – religious and occult practices that take people away from being committed to Christ – questions loyalties, disrupts community and questions the authority of Jesus.

You may notice dissension and faction in that list (v 20) – quite topical to say the least. That isn’t about honest disagreement. The New Testament is full of profound disagreements between people of sincerely held but conflicting views. We see it in the life of Jesus, when he confronts the Pharisees and other religious leaders. We also see it in the account of the early church in the book of Acts, especially when the leaders are debating precisely this issue about the role of Jewish laws and regulations.

Here again the original words have more depth in their meaning. Perhaps a better word for our day would be fragmentation. If a Christian community fragments, it is destructive. Finding ways to disagree well will be the key for the Church to maintain its life. We know that in the Church of England over profoundly held opposing views on issues such as the ordination of women and our understanding of same-sex relationships. The latter being something that the Church of England is very much engaged with at this time, along with other Anglican churches throughout the world. Perhaps disagreeing well is what the wider community needs right now as we come to terms with the result.

Likewise the word for faction in the original Greek has the same root as the English word heresy. It carries with it a sense, not just of disagreeing or disliking views, but of things becoming more personal. There have been shameful times in the church’s history when heretics were thrown out of the community, or even tortured and executed. So it’s about when passion about an issue turns into personal abuse about the holder of the view. That’s one we’ve all fallen for at some time in our lives, I’m sure, perhaps even over the last few days.

Time prevents us going through them all in detail. Meanwhile, the contrast is what the Holy Spirit brings: Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. That's a sermon for another day, so I'll only a brief comment now.

Notice how they contrast with the previous list. These are all qualities that build community and build each other up. Love and generosity are the opposite of self-interest. You don’t need laws to regulate them, and in nurturing these qualities within ourselves and in others, all the evils of the previous list would be prevented, without the need for the application of preventative law.

Freedom is not a free-for-all. Paul is telling us that God has set us free – free from the obligations of religious law, from the slavery of ritual, and from fear of getting it wrong. But he has not given us licence to do exactly as we please, because it's not about us or what we want. Instead he has given us the ultimate example of love in the person of Jesus, and the gift of the Holy Spirit that we may follow in his way, not simply in our words, liturgies or prayers; but in our lives, attitudes and actions.

Mike Peatman, Rector of Morecambe Parish Church

Sermon for Sunday 5 June 2016 (Trinity 2)

Sermon for Trinity 2 Luke 7:11-17

For any newcomers or visitors, my name is Mike Peatman, and I’m the Rector here at Morecambe Parish Church. It’s been quite a long time since I preached here at MPC on a Sunday morning, as my wife, Debbie, died a few weeks ago, and only now am I starting to get back to things.

I’ve been torn between two options this morning – whether to just prepare a sermon as Anne, Sue or David would, or whether to address more directly how I understand faith relating to Debbie’s illness and her dying.

Well, before I had seen the readings, we had selected today as the date I would try preaching, as part of my way back into things. One look at the Gospel reading and the decision was taken for me. Jesus restores to life the son of the widow of Nain. A story of bereavement and loss, and of healing and restoration.

Let’s just get the scene clear in our minds before we start. This story only appears in Luke’s gospel – it’s a piece of the Jesus story that only he chose to include, and probably only he was aware of. Nain would only have been a very small place – no more than a small English village, and even now it’s a small community, located near Mount Tabor in the north east of modern-day Israel.

Jesus enters Nain with a crowd following him, and they meet a very different kind of procession – a funeral – carrying the body of a young man out of the village for burial. His mother was a widow. She’s already suffered one loss – the loss of her husband. Now she has lost her only son.

Following Debbie’s death, I’m slowly getting used to describing myself as a widower. Along the way I’ve discovered all sort of things. For example, I am deemed to have a child who is a dependant. As a result, I receive an ongoing allowance from the DWP, which I was surprised still existed. It has certainly helped, but it wasn’t essential to save me from destitution. I would have had a roof over my head, food in the fridge, and the light would have stayed on. However, back then, women depended on men to work for an income. With her husband dead, her son would have been looking after her. Now he had also died and she was not only facing the pain of a terrible bereavement, but also poverty and dependency on the generosity of others. She might have to turn to begging, and she would have known that some women resorted to prostitution as the only way they could generate an income. Her grief was multiplied.

Then the two processions meet, and Jesus stops the cortege, and restores the young man to life and gives him back to his mother. It’s a happy ending – who could possibly have a problem with such a lovely story, or begrudge such happiness to the woman?

Many of us here will have experienced bereavement at some point in our lives. In some cases, they may have felt a very natural end to a good and long life. For example, my own mother died a few years ago at the age of 80. It’s not the kind of situation where we would have been looking to Jesus to do anything like this. In other cases – and Debbie is an example – it feels very different. We may well be asking the Jesus in this story as to why he didn’t do anything in our case. Why do something here, but not there? Any of us who have seen loved ones suffer would give anything for a miracle like this

Then we find ourselves with a pretty stark choice. We either have a lot of frustration and even anger to resolve with God for not selecting us or our loved ones for a miracle, or we end up saying that we don’t believe any of this. There is, at least, some cold comfort in choosing to believe that no miracles ever happen – at least everyone gets the same deal. This is not a new problem. Wiser people than I have written many thousands of words trying to come to terms with the same dilemma.

So are those two choices the only ones available? Get angry or be an atheist?

Let’s go back to this story, and see if we can identify why something happened here, and why this might not be the template for our expectations of Jesus today.


Compassion

Firstly, there seem to be overriding compassionate grounds for Jesus to intervene here. As I have already said, this widow had been through a great amount of suffering and probably feared for her future. Luke specifically records that Jesus had compassion for her. In the original language, it’s the same word that he uses in the parable of the Good Samaritan to describe how the Samaritan felt when he saw the man who had been robbed and beaten. It’s also the word used for how the father felt when he ran down the drive to greet the Prodigal Son when he returns home. There’s a very specific depth of feeling here.

Jesus would also know the story of Elijah in the Old Testament – it was the other reading we could have used today. He also revived the son of a widow he was staying with who died, and the connection between the scene Jesus had in front of him, and the great prophet from the history of Israel, may well have come together to mean that Jesus knew he had to intervene here.

And, of course, there were lots of people Jesus didn’t heal or restore to life. He came with the limitations of a human body in a particular place at a particular time, and he ministered to the people he met. His mission was not to cure everyone, everywhere, but to preach God’s message.


His Mission

Another clue is in the next bit of Luke’s Gospel. It’s a limitation of having a service sheet that I can’t point you to other passages. We finish at verse 17, but in verse 20 John the Baptist’s followers come and ask Jesus if he is “the one who was to come”. Are you the real deal?

Jesus says this:

“Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight [Luke 7:21], the lame walk [5:17-26], the lepers are cleansed [5:12-16], the deaf hear, the dead are raised [this passage], the poor have good news brought to them [6:20].”

We have to wait until chapter 11 for a deaf man to be healed [the man who was 'mute' is often assumed to have been deaf also], but you get the idea. We can find ourselves thinking of miracles as arbitrary things, where Jesus was caught in a good mood, so he delivers the goods. But actually, this is very different. It may well be that the specific tragic circumstances meant Jesus chose this funeral and this moment to do this miracle. However, we shouldn’t think that he was wandering round looking for miracles to dispense to worthy candidates, or to people who said or did the right things. This is part of a pattern of revelation of who he is.

And as we’ve already noticed, it places him as the successor to the great prophets of old who risked all to speak God’s message in their own day.

Resuscitation vs Resurrection

Finally, (and this may sound strange) this is a resuscitation, not a resurrection. This young man will die again, and we don’t know when that was to be. Jesus has not taken away his mortality by restoring him; he has extended his biological life. Dying is an inevitable part of being human, and this miracle doesn’t do away with that. In a very real sense, this miracle merely postpones what for all of us is an acute and profound issue – that of our own mortality.

Instead of taking away that mortality, what Jesus did come to bring us was something else – the message of resurrection. I quoted Debbie during my address at her funeral when she observed that Jesus didn’t die to stop us having to. Denying the reality of death is to deny our humanity. However, what Jesus brings through his life, death and resurrection is the possibility of having the fear of death lifted from us. The raising of the young man is not what opens up that possibility; it is what Jesus goes through himself.

There is something unique here in the Christian faith. We believe in a God who came in a specific contained human form, experienced all of the limitations that brings, knew hunger, thirst, love, grief and pain from a human point of view, and then went through suffering and death and out the other side. He doesn’t come to take our humanity away, with all its complexities, but to transform our experience of being human, knowing we are loved to eternity.

That doesn’t answer all the questions. It doesn’t stop me having moments of frustration that Jesus didn’t turn up at the Hospice and say “Debbie get up”. It doesn’t stop me sometimes feeling it’s not fair. But it does help me not to throw everything away, and encourages me to hold on to the hope that in Jesus we don’t have a temperamental wonder-worker who sometimes delivers the goods, but that in him we have something truer and deeper. A hope that in the love that he revealed, our fears can be calmed, we can know we are loved, and we can trust ourselves and our loved ones for eternity.

Jesus and Divorce

This passage came around again for Sunday 4th Oct 2015. We wanted to explore the other passage set for the day, but didn't want to duck the issues raised by the Gospel. Here's a sermon preached by Mike Peatman on a previous occasion the reading came up.

Sermon – Divorce. Mark 10:2-16

Today’s Gospel reading confronts us with a stark challenge on an issue which will be very familiar to many of us – either in the lives of our friends, of our families or ourselves. Here, Jesus discusses divorce with the Pharisees – the purists of the Jewish community – and appears to prohibit divorce altogether.

Yet in our own experience we will have known, or perhaps are ourselves people who have been in relationships which have come to an end – for all kinds of reasons, ranging from unfaithfulness or even domestic violence, through to the relationship just not functioning any more. What seemed to have promise at the start has just ceased to be.

If we take this text at face value, and in isolation, then Jesus’ words prohibit any future relationship of this kind. A second marriage cannot overwrite the first one, based on these word alone.

So we’re then faced with the kinds of choices we always have to make over a moral issue:

1. We take it as it stands, and live with the consequences. The Roman Catholic Church holds this view, although it does have the option of annulment – effectively saying that the original commitment was defective, and therefore the marriage never really existed in the first place.
2. We reject the text. Of course, once you reject one text, it begs the question why you don’t throw out the rest. Why love your neighbour, care for the poor, or even do this [the Eucharist] in remembrance of Jesus, if the instruction contained in Scripture carries no weight.
3. We do some more work on it – that’s the option we’re going to take this morning.

You see the real problem is that we shouldn’t read the Bible like this [wave reading sheet] It suggests that this is the complete picture. We should always look at the setting of the story or the teaching – what happens before and after, who is Jesus talking to, what issues lie behind this, and crucially what does the rest of the Bible have to say about marriage?

Well, there is a problem with the idea of ‘Biblical marriage’. It’s a phrase banded about a lot by people opposed to marriage being available for gay people. However, the whole of the Bible shows a very diverse range of understanding what marriage is. In the Old Testament, men have several wives, often concubines in addition. Abraham has a child by his servant as his wife is infertile. Women are, in effect, property of their fathers until they are married when they become effectively property of their husbands. And so it goes on.

One thing that lies behind this challenge from Jesus is that we know from other records that women were often discarded by their husbands on very trivial grounds. In a society with no proper welfare system, this frequently left them with no option but to beg or even resort to prostitution to survive. So one issue here is that Jesus sees women being demeaned and discarded, so he challenges the Jewish men that they should take their commitment seriously. With our eyes, this text can seem lacking in compassion, but for women in Jesus’ time, this was quite the opposite – it represented valuing and respecting women in a horribly sexist world.

Secondly, contained within that challenge is a reminder of what their marriages should be – the vision, the ideal. Men and women made to be one. Joined by God, in a union to be respected and not attacked.

Now I have taken probably 150 weddings in my ministry and I’m pretty confident I’ve never married a couple that weren’t setting off with that intention. Whether they fully understood what was involved is a different question. They may have been naïve, over-optimistic, sometimes getting the giggles, and perhaps simply blind to the harsher realities of working at a relationship, but none of them didn’t mean it, insofar as they understood what they were doing.

However, I do know that a number of those marriages came to an end. Statistics suggest 1 in 3 first marriages fail, and about ½ of second or subsequent ones do. I have had the sad responsibility of writing a copy certificate for someone involved in divorce proceedings, where I also had previously officiated at the wedding.

So the question remains: what would Jesus have us do with people where that has happened? What do we do when someone has returned to the church for a new start with a second relationship, so that they might seal it by getting married?

This is where we need to look beyond this passage for clues. When Matthew tells this story, he includes Jesus referring to an exception, where adultery means divorce and remarriage is permissible. Likewise St Paul gives us another exception in 1 Corinthians 7, saying that where a Christian is abandoned by a partner who is an unbeliever, they are not bound by the original marriage.

So even at an early stage, the Christian community was struggling with what should happen when a marriage fails.

And it’s worth pausing with that word ‘fail’. There is often a lot of guilt around the break-up of a marriage. Once the initial trauma and anger have subsided, I have often come across an abiding guilt, even where, at least on the face of it, the balance of wrong seemed to lie with the other partner. For example, when someone has seen their partner leave to be with someone else, they are bound to feel angry, but quite often they also feel some guilt – was it my fault, should I have done something, or just I have failed.

Given that’s the case, a straight ‘no’ from the church to second marriage in church has always seemed very wrong to me. It makes divorce a kind of unforgiveable sin, and can only reinforce in people who have been through a difficult and testing time, a sense of guilt and failure.

And crucially we know from the life of Jesus that his ministry is rich in forgiveness and new starts – prostitutes, tax-collectors, the thief on the cross, the woman caught in adultery. Is it credible that under all circumstances, and in all cases, that Jesus would have us turn people away? I think not.

There will be exceptions. The national guidance we have from the Church of England on this issue identifies some problem areas:

1. where the relationship of the couple wishing to marry was materially responsible for the break up of a previous marriage.
2. where issues are unresolved from the previous marriage – finance, custody, etc.
3. where a partner was violent or abusive in a previous relationship.

An unwillingness to discuss them can prevent the marriage being booked. (Church of England clergy and parishes aren’t obliged to carry out second marriages, unlike first marriages of eligible couples.)

But these aren’t easy to prove – clergy aren’t private detectives. My view is that we have to leave it to the conscience of the people involved – in the end it’s God who knows their hearts. Furthermore, we need to bear in mind that in the case of people who have not been married, but have been involved in long-term relationships, these issues might be present, but we can’t subject them to the same scrutiny.

So Mark 10 is challenging, but it’s for a specific audience, with a particular history, and it’s not the only word of Scripture on the subject. This passage teaches us that we should regard marriage as a vital and precious commitment, and we should do all we can to help people to prepare, and support couples in their commitment. But the wider testimony of Scripture also affirms that we should be a place where people can find forgiveness, reassurance and peace, and have the opportunity of a new start.