Janet’s Blog

Psalm 24, Ephesians 1:3-14, Mark 6:14-29

I wonder what is the most exciting thing you’ve ever done?

 

The thing that made your heart race and gave you that thrill of exhilaration.

 

It may well have been a bit scary too…

 

Have you ever had a holy moment? An epiphanic moment when everything seemed clear or bright or holy.

 

 Maybe it was a response to a piece of music or a picture in a gallery or a sunset?

 

There was something, maybe it was sailing in just the right wind, maybe it was looking from a mountain or across a particular sunset…

 

What comes into your mind if I ask you to think of a holy man?

 

Do you think of a monk? Do you think of a great and famous saint? Is it the image of an Indian guru which comes to mind?

 

Who is the holiest person you have ever met?

 

Who is the holiest person with whom you regularly have a cup of tea?

 

When I say holy I don’t mean ‘religious’, necessarily, I don’t mean ‘pious’ or self important, I don’t mean someone who gets ten e-mails from God every day, I mean someone who is holy, who you can see lives in God and God lives in them, I think you’ll know really.

 

Herod has a problem with a holy man. Herod’s problem was with John the Baptist. It was John’s holiness that had led him into trouble, Herod’s wife was Herodias, and he shouldn’t have married her because she was his brother’s wife, and John kept on telling Herod this.

 

Herodias didn’t like this, for all Herodias is painted as the villain in this story she is a woman in a very vulnerable place, as any woman who had married into the Herod dynasty knew.  The last thing she needed was John going on about how they shouldn’t be married.

 

The roman emperor Augustus is quoted as saying that it was safer to be Herod’s pig than his son, this was not a groundless accusation for the dynasty.

 

Herod had ordered that John be arrested, but we hear that Herod is protecting John because Herod knows that John is a righteous and holy man.

 

Our response to holiness can be telling, maybe people are puzzled as we hear Herod is, but we also hear that Herod feared John and protected him.

 

Herod feared John and protected him.

 

I wonder if any of the people you know are afraid of your holiness as a Christian.

 

There are people who today can become scared of holiness. There will be moments when christians are called to say something, or do something in a particular situation, sometimes God will give you an insight into a situation and you need to speak into that situation, this will not always make you popular, if it done truly with love it may be liberating to someone, or perhaps someone will respond to it by actually saying, woah that’s a bit holy, and they might be a bit scared, that is not necessarily a bad thing if it’s done in the right way.

 

Some people can’t stand holiness, some people are scared by holiness, some people are so frightened by the holy that they will show a physical response.

 

Some people respond to holiness with violence.

 

And that is what happens for John, John is holy, Herod knows that, Herod is frightened of this holiness.

 

Why does Herodias do it? Why does she ask for John’s head on a platter? I don’t get it, she was probably my age plus or minus a little bit. Married to a violent and powerful king, so you ask your husband to do something which you know that he won’t want to do, but he will feel forced to do it because of the promise he has made in front of all ‘the men’. Maybe she is worried he will divorce her, or kill her, maybe as a result of John’s nagging, maybe she wants Herod to prove how much more she means to him than John.

 

Whatever her complex motives she asks, she asks for John’s head and Herod feels obliged to give it to her.

 

But Herod was about to learn the holiness lesson of the centuries

U2 have something to say about this…

 

Early morning, April 4

Shot rings out in the Memphis sky

Free at last, they took your life

They could not take your pride

 

Herod was about to learn the holiness lesson of the centuries,

 

you cannot kill holiness with violence.

 

Holiness can suffer violence, but holiness can never come to a violent end.

 

When Herod heard about Jesus what does he say,

 

Goody another itinerant preacher, that will keep the masses happy for a few months.

 

On no, oh no no no!

 

Herod says this

‘John, the man I beheaded, has been raised from the dead.’

 

I don’t think there is any way in which I could possibly give any justice to the sense of panic which would have been rising in Herod’s heart, and presumably Herodias’ too,

 

‘John, the man I beheaded, has been raised from the dead.’

 

‘John, back from the dead’, followed by a huge gulp and intake of breath…

 

It wasn’t the case, it wasn’t John back from the dead but Herod had learned that holiness can never come to a violent end.

 

Jesus, the epitome, the prime example of holiness,

 

he would too suffer violence as a response to his holiness,

 

and he would show ultimately how holiness can never come to a violent end,

 

true holiness is eternal, and you cannot keep it down, even with death.

 

 

It is not surprising that some of the most heart stirring fictional writing is, and always has been, along the themes of holiness and violent response to it. For those of you of a philosophical bent perhaps there is actually only one story which exists, and all other stories are part of that story, the story of the encounter with holiness…and the response to it.

 

So what is our response to holiness, as a community and as individuals? Will we respond to holiness with violence, will we submit to holiness, or will we step one step further and ask God to make us holy too, so that we can do holy things together.

 

It is part of these spiritual blessings that God has lavished upon us.

 

God has chosen us since before the creation the world to be holy. Will we accept the challenge to be holy. God has lavished his grace upon us.

 

 

11In him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will, 12in order that we, who were the first to hope in Christ, might be for the praise of his glory. 13And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, 14who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession—to the praise of his glory.

 

 

We are marked in him with a seal, we bear the holy mark of Christ, but how are we called to be holy?

 

It is like we start off knowing that God is holy, then we dare to think that we want to be holy too, then we ask God to make us holy, because when we are holy God and us can do things together until we are so caught up in holiness we cannot go back.

 

This doesn’t happen quickly and we make mistakes, we do or say stupid things, or things which are deliberately wrong.

 

So why should we want to be holy? Not because of a sense of pious self congratulation, but because we know that there is not anything more exhilaratingly exciting. We cannot think of anything better than to find our lives caught up in the purpose of God, but we know however exciting it may be we are 100% safe,

 

because even if our holiness would suffer violence, it can never come to a violent end.

 

Psalm 130, Mark 5:21-43, 2 Corinthians 8:7-15

Waiting

Waiting…

I wonder what you think of waiting…

Waiting is a strange, poignant, emotional phenomenon

and a practical everyday occurrence.

Maybe as British we have a cultural view on waiting because we so often wait, and wait nicely in queues. Neatly.

The emotional side of waiting is the key in the production of literature, plays and films.

Brief Encounter, that classic British film, is essentially about tow people waiting for a train, and what happens to them during that wait.

I wonder if you remember the play waiting for Godot

Waiting for Godot follows two days in the lives of a pair of men who divert themselves while they wait expectantly and unsuccessfully for someone named Godot to arrive. They claim him as an acquaintance but in fact hardly know him, admitting that they would not recognise him were they to see him. To occupy themselves, they eat, sleep, converse, argue, sing, play games, exercise, swap hats, and contemplate suicide — anything “to hold the terrible silence at bay”.

Godot never turns up, it ends up with the fact that these men have been waiting hopelessly for a considerable time, and Godot does not show his face.

The first person we hear who is waiting in today’s passage is the Psalmist.

I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I put my hope.

My soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning, more than watchmen wait for the morning.

The watch before dawn is the stuff of legend, the stuff of difficulty, the stuff of trauma. There is a fellowship of those who sit and wait in the night, they sit and watch for danger, they sit beside the ill and the dying, they tend to animals or small children, they guard armies or cities, and it is the watch the waiting for the dawn which is the important thing.

When the dawn comes, it brings renewal of hope. But in the last bit of the watch there must be a temptation to share the doubts with the  philosopher David Hume, that just because, we have always seen the sun rise in the morning, but we cannot show that it must do so tomorrow. For all we know, it shall not.

And so the watchman waits for the morning, waiting for the clarity of light, the warms of the Sun the companionship of others, but the psalmist waits in hope for the lord.

What is hope?

If I asked you to define hope where would you begin.

Oscar Wilde reflects the Psalmist’s thoughts when he says that

“all of us are in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”

 

 

“all of us are in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”

Hope isn’t some dream that one day things might get better.

 

Hope isn’t David Hume’s questioning that the sun might rise, true hope knows that the sun will rise, that God will smile on us. The Psalmist knew this,

 

 

7 O Israel, put your hope in the LORD,

       for with the LORD is unfailing love

       and with him is full redemption.

 

 8 He himself will redeem Israel

       from all their sins.

 

And so we wait in hope.

 

Hope is knowing that unlike Godot in the play, God will turn up.

 

In the gospel passage we find that the woman is waiting, she has been waiting a long time.

 

She has been waiting for God to turn up as they say in the states, the longest time.

 

This woman had been unclean for 12 years, unable to take part in the normal patterns of life, for twelve years, we don’t know anything else about her but commentaries suggest that because of the bleeding she would likely to have been unmarriagable or divorced. So vulnerable, and we hear that she had been suffering at the hands of the doctors.

 

This should be a woman who is hopeless, she has no right to hope, her life is truly hopeless and as she wait, as one with no hope. Because what hope could there be for her?

 

No hope of children, no hope for a marriage, I wonder how she supported herself this woman for whom even prostitution wouldn’t have been a viable option…

 

And so she does something daring, she feels her waiting is over and she comes up and touches Jesus. When she touches Jesus she should be making him unclean, anyone she touches she makes unclean, she can’t make God unclean. The only possible outcome from this encounter is that God makes her clean.

 

I don’t know how often I have heard people say ‘I am not good enough to come to church or be a Christian’  I sometimes find it hard to know where to begin with contradicting that statement, but maybe this would be a good place to start. This woman comes up to Jesus, untouchable, unclean she has been waiting for so long, in Jesus she sees enough hope and reaches out to touch him to see if this hope is real.

 

She has spent twelve years lying in the gutter, and now she believes that the stars are now close enough to reach and she reaches out, and is healed.

 

She has waited, and now Jesus waits.

 

Then follows a short but very tense wait, Jesus is not going to go until he knows, he is not going to go until this person has come to come and he has spoken to the person who has touched him.

 

I wonder what the woman expected, harsh words of declamation, a condemnation of how could someone who is so unclean dare to come into a crowd.

 

 

33Then the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell at his feet and, trembling with fear, told him the whole truth. 34He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.”

 

 

Others have been waiting,

 

Jesus has made them wait and their wait has been agonising.

 

Jairus has just seen Jesus’ heal this woman, this untouchable woman, and at home, his beautiful daughter has been lying dying and then they turn up and say that because Jesus’ has made them wait it is too late.

 

It’s too late, don’t bother Jesus any more, it’s too late, and hope has gone. Jairus’ wife has been waiting, she is now convinced her daughter is dead, and Jesus’ gets to the house and finds a commotion, people crying and wailing, these people who believe that hope is gone, hope has fled that house, there was waiting with hope, but the hope is gone. They had given up hope and turned to despair, they had stopped looking for the stars, instead they were looking at the gutter.

 

Jesus sends them away, he dismisses them.  He goes and wakes up the girls and tells them to give her something to eat. I hope, I so hope that it was good Jewish chicken soup. Apparently there is clinical proof that the way traditional Jewish chicken soup is cooked is good for you.

 

So this morning what is it that we hope for?

Are we hoping to win the lottery? Are we hoping that we will be rich, that money will solve our problems? Are we hoping merely for a good nights sleep? Are we hoping that we will feel better? Are we hoping for healing for ourselves, or for someone we know?

 

Whatever it is that we hope for we do just that live our lives in Christian hope.

 

Jesus promises us at the end of Matthew’s gospel that he will never leave us or forsake us.

 

We may feel that we are lying in the gutter but Jesus promises that however remarkable it may seem we can reach out and touch him, we can reach out and touch the star we are looking at any time.

 

This encounter itself will bring hope, a sure and certain hope, and that sure and certain hope will affect how we wait. It will affect how we wait for the bus, it will affect how we wait for news, it will affect how we wait for anything.

 

Jairus’ family had to wait for Jesus’ but they found out that when you hope in Jesus’ that hope is not in vain.

 

 

I wait for the LORD, my soul waits,

       and in his word I put my hope.

 

 6 My soul waits for the Lord

       more than watchmen wait for the morning,

       more than watchmen wait for the morning.

 

 7 O Israel, put your hope in the LORD,

       for with the LORD is unfailing love

       and with him is full redemption.

 

 8 He himself will redeem Israel

       from all their sins.

 

 

Psalm 54, Hebrews 13:10-16, Matthew 10:29-30 Patronal Festival for Thomas Becket

(we transfer it usually 29th December see http://www.excitingholiness.org/first-edition/index.cgi?m12/d29.html )

 

What is your favourite sort of river?

Would you choose a grand majestic city river like the Thames in London or the Vltava in Prague or the Tiber in Rome, or even the Avon in Bath.

Maybe you like your rivers a little smaller perhaps a little navigable river, on which one can paddle a canoe or row a little boat, maybe there are bits of the Wye which stir your heart.

Perhaps you like your rivers even smaller, perhaps little like the Bybrook, perhaps even a mountain brook or stream which will flow bubbling and gurgling  through the heather topped moor until it meets up with others in similar vein which will come together to make a larger watercourse.

When Abraham left Ur on his great journey when he discovered that all of God is everywhere his route was determined at the beginning by the flow of the two great rivers the Euphrates and the Tigris. Abraham began his journey needing the support of those two rivers and the communities they supported.

Rivers are important they give us water to cleanse and sustain us they provide landmarks to follow and even transport and recreation for those who enjoy swimming, fishing, kayaking or even recreational bridge building.

Many of the great old testament narratives involve rivers. The events of the beginning of Exodus occur around the river Nile, the events of the second half of Exodus are defined by the lack of a river, or any much water at all in the wilderness.

Then the beginning of the next stage of the story finds God’s people crossing the river Jordan into the promised land.

In the New Testament narrative of Jesus’ ministry again begins with a river, the river Jordan again, as Jesus is baptised, and his position as God’s Son is revealed and confirmed to him and all those around him. Jesus is baptised in the river where hundreds of people had been coming and turning from their sins and coming back to God. As John baptises Jesus, the two soggy cousins dripping with river water, a voice comes from heaven and speaks of Jesus ‘You are my Son with whom I am well pleased.’

And as Abraham began the great human journey into what it means that God is God, beside rivers that give life, then John’s great vision of heaven in the book of revelation also speaks of a river.

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.

Some of you are currently sitting above a river, probably.

What I can say is that if you go and stand on top of the table at the back there is water flowing in a channel underneath, where it travels underneath the downstairs old boiler room I do not know.

We live in this place, this geographical place, which is defined by its water.

The Spring which somehow feeds not very poetically into our old boiler room and then I know not where. The Springs which rise in the Spring field and then travel through the water course via the pond in the wilderness in to the Bybrook. The Bybrook itself.

All these water sources have defined our place and the people of this place for years past. The evening that Fiona Castle came to speak here one of the band who were playing came up to me and said, a proper church building, he’d only ever belonged to house churches. And I was so proud when I said to him, people have been praying in this place for at least 800 years, this place and the community around it which is defined by the water on which we sit and flows around us.

So what was it and what is it that has defined the faith of the saints in this place over approximately a millennium give or take a few centuries we don’t know about.

 

Our reading from the Psalm today includes this phrase,

 

Surely God is my help;

       the Lord is the one who sustains me.

 

This was written thousands years ago, but the Psalmist recognises that it is God who sustains. God has sustained the Christians in this place, like the rivers and water here sustains the physical life God has lifted up and sustained the Christians here over centuries. God has provided them with water of life both physical and spiritual.

 

God sustains us with his care, one of my favourite Christian poems is this,

 

Hair 54, 329, 635 fell out today

God noticed.

 

God isn’t an absentee creator God, he didn’t create the world say, that’s good then disappear, he stuck around to sustain and care for us.

 

When Jesus says

“Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered.”

One of the hardest conceptual tasks for the Christian is to believe and to live our lives like we believe it.

People have lived their lives here for centuries knowing and believing this, they have lived here through the Black Death, the Peasants’ revolt and the industrial revolution, two world wars and the rest, and the faithful have known this, that God sustains and cares for each one.

So what has given the saints, and by that I mean all those Christian believers through the centuries, so what has given the saints their confidence to believe that the omnipotent creator God cares for them and the boldness to approach this God. The confidence comes through Jesus, through knowing that he has made it possible for us to approach God. In the Hebrews passage it says this.

 And so Jesus also suffered outside the city gate to make the people holy through his own blood.

We, the people, have been made holy through the blood of Jesus.

What then should we use as a symbol of this holiness, well for centuries we have used the symbol of water. For those of you who have either been lucky or unlucky enough to attend a baptism which I have conducted here recently will appreciate that I like the symbolism of water, very much

 

Remember your baptism…

When by water you were washed

Not to clean your body

But to clean your soul.

 

For in baptism God has promised

To forgive you, to renew you,

To let your sad and soiled life be clean again:

You are not destined to be dirty.

 

And so the river reminds us that like the saints throughout the ages, we are sustained by God’s goodness, like the saints throughout the ages we are cleansed through his grace.

 

What should our response be to this sustenance and grace?

 

The Psalmist knew how to respond,

 

I will sacrifice a freewill offering to you;

       I will praise your name, O LORD,

       for it is good.

 

Hmnn a freewill offering, a sacrifice, should I be sending for the goats…

No, what does the writer to the Hebrews say.

Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise—the fruit of lips that confess his name. And do not forget to do good and to share with others, for with such sacrifices God is pleased.

What sacrifice does God like Christians to make? He is pleased when we praise him, and when we do good and share with others.

 

That is what God calls us to.

 

I have preached for more than ten minutes on the day we remember Thomas a Becket, or ordinary Thomas Becket if you prefer, without mentioning him once.

 

Thomas is a man with a chequered reputation, was he just a stuck up Archbishop trying to pull one over on the King, or was he a holy man whose holiness annoyed the King so much that the only response to such holiness was obliterate it with violence. More than 800 years later it’s probably hard for us to see through the veil of history, we know thought that lots of people were very upset when he died, not least the King, who was penitent to the extreme.

 

The last lines of the psalm

 

For he has delivered me from all my troubles,

       and my eyes have looked in triumph on my foes.

 

So what for Thomas, surely if God loved him God would have stopped him being hacked to death in his own cathedral. It is no accident of design that Thomas’ emblem is a sword hacking through  a Bishop’s mitre.

 

Did God love Thomas? A or just plain Thomas Becket, of course he did, in fact he still does. And when the sword went into Thomas’ head God knew each hair that fell as he was killed, he knew the number of each one as it fell on to the stone floor.

 

What does the river teach us of this?

 

Back to revelation,

 

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the great street of the city.

 

Life from God is not just for now, here on earth, but we cannot be separated from God’s love by anything, especially not death. We no longer rely on physical water to sustain or cleanse us, but the image of new life in heaven still stems from the river. This river of the water of life, but the sort of life with God we find hard to imagine, and when John tries to write down his incredible vision of it he struggles to find words to describe it. But amongst the words he does find, the image that we find accessible is the river the water of life.

 

So next time you see running water, maybe even as you leave the church today maybe you can remember these truths, these truths which sustained the Christians here over the ages, and Thomas himself. That God cares and sustains for us, giving us life physical and spiritual. That God has cleansed us from our sins through Jesus’ death and resurrection, that we are not destined to be dirty.

 

Then let us remember that this care and forgiveness is not only for now, but also for the future, remembering the image of the river of life in heaven.

 

If I could have held this service in the Bybrook I would have done. But that’s OK we have our image, and we know water passes beneath our feet.

 

 

We come to the river to pray, we come to give our sacrifice of praise. We come to the river to pray,  we come to repent ,to receive forgiveness and be cleansed. We come to the river to pray, We come to rejoice in God’s gift of life,