Almighty God
Thank you that you meet us where we are
And beckon us into your kingdom
As we journey together
May we encounter Christ Jesus,
Be empowered to live like him,
And understand more fully what it means to be blessed. Amen

‘Life attitudes.’ Robert warren and sue Mayfield.2004 Church House Publishing

All Saints Sherbourne 2007

Twelve years ago my eldest daughter and husband to be emigrated to the USA. They love it out in California; they like the climate; they like the American life style; they like the American attitude to enterprise. Anyone who has been on a PCC in England knows that when a Vicar comes up with his latest bright idea, there are always those who tell him why it won't work. Its not a church thing - its a British thing. In America if you have a bright idea you are encouraged to try it out in a very positive way, Recently Rachel emailed us to say that they were applying for American citizenship; and in due course we received a picture of the happy couple with a glass of champagne and a caption "We are both Yanks now !"

When you change citizenship you change allegiance - its a life shift, and you get a new passport.
Perhaps you noticed that in our second reading Paul reminds his hearers that our citizenship is in heaven. We who are Christians have a new allegiance. We do not share the assumptions of those whose attitude is this worldly. We are perhaps talking about the word CONVERSION. Its a word some folk regard with a little suspicion because of some association with brain washing . Differing Christian groups have varying understandings of the meaning of the word. But in the end it means that we are called to take a stand; to turn away from the world we live in and turn towards the God we believe in. So at our baptism we are asked if we will convert. We ask "Do you turn to Christ as Saviour and Lord" ? One of the themes that crops up again and again in the observance of Lent is the idea of loyalty, of allegiance. Despite what you may hear from the media when it enjoys telling us of how our Anglican church world-wide is tearing itself apart on the subject of homosexuality; this is not something that features all that often in Biblical thinking. In the Bible what is quite unacceptable is being disloyal to your God.. When Jesus went into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil , what the devil was doing was putting the loyalty of Jesus to the test. When we pray Lead us not into temptation - we are praying that we may be given strength to escape from the wiles of that subtle voice we call the devil - the voice that tells you to spoil yourselves because, as the adverts tell you, you are worth it. The voice that tells you to eat drink and be merry because you only live once and tomorrow you die. The voice that tempts you to take the easy way and the selfish way.

As Christians then our loyalty is to Jesus, and our citizenship is in Heaven. It means that for me I am not number one - God is number one. A moments reflection will tell us that that is not an easy option for any of us. To deny yourself does not mean denying yourself things like cream cakes; rather it means saying 'I don't matter'.

If we now turn to our first reading from Genesis we will be drawn deeper into this meditation. Abraham is of course just about the fundamental figure in the Bible . Whether you are a Christian, or a Jew of a Muslim you are a child of Abraham. For the story of Abraham defines for us what the word faith means in our common tradition.

We hear Abraham questioning God. After all he has given up everything and set out on a God inspired journey without knowing where he was going to end up. That is a basic picture of the journey of faith. A journey of faith is what you do when you convert. Our creeds, of course, inevitably give us the impression that we are giving intellectual consent to a series of propositions. But its better meaning is that of trust - going with the flow - letting the force take you - to use more contemporary ways of expressing it. But trust always ends up with more questions, Our initial good will can take a battering when things go badly wrong. I always remember a young woman at the funeral of her mother who had died of cancer. As I attempted to shake hands as she came out of the crematorium chapel she simply exclaimed "You don't expect me to shake hands with you after what your God did to my mum."

So Abraham complains that he has followed God's instructions but that it now seems pointless- he has no children to whom he can leave the promised land. God tells him not to worry - a son he will have.

But that is not enough. For Abraham then says "How do I know this will all happen ? How can I be sure ? I want proof."

And in this of course he is like you and me. It is one of the fundamental questions in the world of religion. We all need to find some answer to the question if we have any inner honesty of mind. This morning, the story goes on to give a weird picture of a strange sacrificial ritual which seems to help our hero to renew his trust in the prompting of God. But of course in the end faith is faith, trust is trust. There is no scientific proof involved. That famous first world war padre known as Woodbine Willie used to say "Faith means I bet my life on Jesus Christ". Of course you may lose a bet. There is always an inbuilt risk you may be wrong. The question is 'do I think the bet is a good one ? Is the invitation to believe a sound one ? Am I willing to take a step further than proof will take me and put my trust in God?". Even Vicars have moments or periods of doubt and unbelief. When people say to me "I wish I had faith like you vicar" I shudder and hasten to assure them that my faith is not so secure as they imagine. As a young priest I went to my boss and told him how fed up I was with God. How boring religion was. Philip eventually said to me: Owen, if you threw it all over and wanted to start afresh, where would you begin ? What is the best life that you know .I thought for a time and then shame facedly had to say "I would have to say with Jesus". There's your answer, he said.

"Why are you so full of heaviness O my soul, says Psalm 42 , and why are you so disquieted within me; O put your trust in God who is the help of my countenance and my God." There is always a leap of faith. Abraham is important because he defines for us what faith means. The narrator says "Abraham believed God and God counted it for righteousness". That became a great text when Paul fastened onto it and pointed out that God blessed Abraham not because he was a good man but because he put his trust in the promises of God That goes for you and me too - its not what you do but how you believe..

An American Oxford don tells of an incident when he was conducting a tutorial with one of his theology students. He asked him "What do you fundamentally believe about God". The young man thought for a moment "I suppose, he said, that God is Love." "Really", said his tutor, "but when you look on the world today at all its misery and injustice and violence; and when you see the church of God so often failing itself and making a fool of itself - then it doesn't sound very likely that God is love." "I agree" , said the student, and pointed to a crucifix hanging on his tutor's wall - "but that guy somehow seems to make it possible".

Lastly we saw that guy, this morning, in one of the most powerful and emotional passages in the gospels. We may ask ourselves , does this Galilean prophet give us a picture of a God we can trust.? He looks down on the holy city of Jerusalem which is stubbornly embarked on a policy which will a generation later culminate in its total destruction by the army of the Roman empire; how does he react ? With immense pity for a humanity which is so wrong headed. O Jerusalem Jerusalem - the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it; how often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings = and you were not willing " . In that passage Luke gives us two pictures of power. There is King Herod who he calls 'that fox'. Herod a wily strong man steeped in power politics. And then Jesus likens himself to a hen bird who calls her chicks to shelter from danger under her wings. The hen image is surely an image of moral strength; the one who faces death to protect her young. Amazingly for his times, Jesus seems to have chosen a female image to demonstrate his kind of power. And of course ever since that first Good Friday Jesus has been worshipped as the Sacred Victim who pays the sacrificial price of human redemption.

Our citizenship is in heaven. You can explain it very simply in a few words. Is your loyalty to the fox or to the hen ?

Owen Vigeon

"My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are my ways your ways" says the Lord

These words of Isaiah are perhaps the key text for all those who seek to make sense of our existence. For there is always a temptation - not least for those who profess a religious faith - to think that we can discern the hands of God in the happenings of their lives, or in the life of their nation, or in the life of the world. Many years ago now but probably many of you remember, York Minster went on fire following the consecration of Bishop David Jenkins. There were many Christians of a certain ilk who were ready to conclude that this was Almighty God’s verdict on a Church which could commit such an act of blasphemy. In other words if you are a godly person you do tend to assume that God shares your point of view. Sometimes the Christian Church has used human logic to insist that what they teach is true. Traditionally the argument of the Roman Church that the Pope is infallible rests on the assumption that when Jesus left this earth God could not have left his holy church without an infallible voice. Couldn’t he ? His ways are not our ways and his thoughts are not our thoughts. When it comes to the worst, of course, we end up in time of war assuming that the Almighty will give preference to our prayers over those identical ones offered by our enemies.

But whatever our world view, we humans still want to discover a reason for the catastrophes which afflict us - we need to have someone to point a finger at to explain our troubles. If our experience of life is painful then we need someone to blame. We are sure we do not deserve it on our own account. So of course we blame God - or in our own ungodly day - the government - for being unreasonable, unhelpful and downright nasty at times..

But the way God thinks is not the way we think; and God’s methods are not the methods of 21st century man - so reveals that old Testament prophet. And my judgement is that he was (of course) right on the ball. It was a stance echoed more than once by Jesus himself. You will remember how Peter was horrified at Our Lord’s prophecy of his approaching death at Jerusalem. And how Jesus replies "Get behind me Satan; for you smell not of God but of man" Nevertheless, we humans will keep looking for a pattern and a reason for those things that trouble or mystify us. Today’s Gospel is really the only place where Jesus is being drawn into a discussion about the question "Why". He is questioned about two recent events - one a natural event like an earthquake ; and the other a tragic human event caused by what we call today an over reaction by the forces of law and order. His interviewers want to know if those who had been tragically killed were marked out

Because they were bad people and deserved to die more than their neighbours. What was particular about these people’s deaths? Why were some picked out and some ignored? It is the perennial question and it is not surprising that the honest teacher and inspired prophet from Galilee should be taxed with it. I am sure John Humphreys would have asked the same question had he been interviewing Jesus on Today

The answer of Christ as it is reported in S Luke’s gospel sounds not a little unsatisfactory - almost a passing of the buck. "No, says Jesus, they were not more sinful than their neighbours; but unless you repent you will all perish as they did"

That answer takes a bit of sussing out. For what it is worth, this is the interpretation that I've come to. I may well be wrong - but one has to start somewhere!

It seems to me that Jesus is shown to be standing the question on its head. It is not that those who died were worse than you who survived; but rather that you are no better than they. In a word it could happen to anyone. It could happen to you. When he talks about ‘unless you repent’ he is not talking about beating your breast in church - he is talking about all of us changing our attitudes. If our world goes on doing things its way it will end in disaster. You could take that thought and apply it to the present debates about global warming. People who are drowned in unnaturally severe floods are not being judged by God. Simply unless we change the way we ruu our world we will all suffer the same fate.

The sense of his words, to my way of thinking, is that we need to get rid of our image of God as a sort of puppet-master up in the sky weaving his intricate and incomprehensible patterns. When something afflicts us then that image of God draws us to ask why we have been picked out above the others. Perhaps Jesus is really warning us about the dangers of what journalists call today the culture of blame. We blame the Council for not repairing the pavement so that we tripped up and broke an ankle; or we blame the Surgeon for continuing to operate even though he has begun to suffer from Parkinson's disease; or we blame an unknown meat exporter from the other side of the world for selling us meat infected with some dreaded virus; and so on and so forth; and if no obvious candidate can be found then it is always possible to load the blame on the Government of the day . And finally, in cases of the greatest complexity, you can always fall back on God. A very upset young woman had seen her mother die slowly in hospital of a very cruel cancer. I always remember how she swept out of the crematorium after the funeral and walked past me with the words - "You don’t think I can never shake hands with you after what your God did to my Mum". How very understandable, how very forgivable - and can we doubt that the heart of Our Lord would go out to her in her pain.

And yet, in our desire to find someone to blame, the phrase "Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who injure us" seems to vanish down the plug hole. The ethics of the Kingdom of Christ are exceedingly tough and almost make us cry out in the name of human justice.

However, I suspect that before we back ourselves into a corner we should examine those two words "your God". Is this god who allows elderly ladies to die very slowly and painfully the same as the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ? I rather doubt it - even though his thoughts are not my thoughts and his ways are not my ways. But I think we can say this - that the reason why the Christian faith has endured over two millennia is that it turned the blame culture inside out - it penetrates mysteriously into the heart of the world’s pain. It does not explain it away, it cannot in the end utter soothing noises of a human sort. Even Jesus could only comment that tragedy can afflict any one of us and that there is no divine protection for the good and there is no ill fate for the bad. We would like to think that there is a moral equation which means that the good folk come out OK and the bad folk lose out. But my ways are not your ways and my thoughts are not your thoughts says our God. We all know it does not work out like that.

If we want to begin to understand the healing message of the gospel for the world we live in, we need to disabuse ourselves of the sort of fantasy religion which seems to provide an easy way out of the impasse caused by the hardness of the human heart. Religion can so easily come to be a sort of sentimental idea that it will all come right in the end. Well it may do - but not because it would be lovely if it did.

We need to realise that the Cross, towards which,like Jesus, we are journeying in Lent, tells us that the healing of the real world comes when the good is willing to bear the weight of that hardness we call sin. But on the whole over two thousand years we have looked for other ways; for the way God thinks is not the way you and I think. The price of redemption is more than we can bear.

A few years ago I penned the following verse and perhaps it sums up my message today..

What of that tower where so many died ?

Asked the Lord to the questioning throng

Was there some mystic reason that chose them ?
Were they especially wrong ?

Those who ask silly questions will be answered in kind

If you’re seeking a god you can blame.

For unless you change the ways of your world

You will all of you end up the same

Thank God for Jesus .

Owen Vigeon

And so today we are bid to contemplate what will happen to our blessed Lord Jesus before we gather here on Easter day to celebrate his victory.

Passion is a strange word to use, perhaps, because its present day meaning has a sexual connotation suggesting a strong physical attraction.. But in origin it speaks of suffering. And even then it is deceptive. We think of suffering as meaning pain - well it includes that ; but perhaps at root it means putting up with what you have to put up with. So for the next fortnight we reflect on what Jesus had to put up with as he trod the path of obedience to his heavenly Father.

In today’s gospel we begin our reflections by visualising this cameo picture of a dinner party in Bethany. We see an event of domestic hospitality; perhaps the last occasion when Jesus was not living under threat or duress . We sense a degree of warmth and intimacy - it is a very homely scene.

The gospel records are very understated but we get the impression that this family of a brother and two sisters was the nearest Jesus know of a home where he was welcome unreservedly. The meal we are told was in his honour. There is Lazarus, so recently released from the grave clothes which bound him. There is extrovert Martha supervising the cooking and serving of a slap up meal - her way of showing her devotion to Jesus. Then there is Mary the contemplative one, the day dreamer whose style we remember tends to grate with her more down to earth sister.

What is her contribution going to be to the feast ?

As ever she is impulsive, she is intuitive; and acts dramatically and emotionally - some would say hysterically. She fetches a large bottle of Chanel Number 5 and pours it over the feet of Jesus and wipes it away with her long hair; and the perfume fills the house.

This triggers off a furious reaction.. In other gospels the muttering is general - it comes from some of the disciples. In John’s gospel he puts the finger on Judas.

"Judas moneybags" John almost calls him.Certainly he was the first church treasurer in the history of the Christian faith. It is a piece of typecasting that every church treasurer seems to have to live down ! Judas was very likely one of the more well educated and practical of the young men Jesus gathered around him. So we find him tutt tutting like mad. Like any sensible business man he cannot see the point of these hysterical reactions. What a waste ! He says. Just think - it could have been auctioned and the proceeds given to Christian Aid ! And no doubt many people would agree with him. That perfume must have been very precious if it represented a year’s salary - shall; we say minimally £10,000 in our coinage ? Indeed what a waste !

But as one commentator puts it , this is really the point at which Judas betrays Jesus. He may understand the laws of a cash book but he does not understand the laws of love. Love if it is to be real love must always go beyond reason and sense. When you buy your beloved an engagement ring you probably spend more that ins sensible - but you would not have it any other way.

And there is no scale of charges for loving God. So Jesus tells Judas to get off Mary’s back. He sees her impulsive act as an anointing of his corpse in advance. The outpouring of Mary’s action is a symbol of his death - the outpouring of his life in sacrificial love.As she threw away the perfume so he is going to throw away his life..You can write a cheque for Christian Aid any day of the week, he says, but there are some occasions which cannot be valued reasonably in cold blood. You will not always have me.

I think that behind this story is a deep conviction that nothing given in love is ever really wasted. And as in the coming fortnight we see Jesus inexorably sucked in to that process which culminates in his horrific and degrading torture and death; so we see it is coloured and given meaning by Mary’s prophetic gift.

We can sensibly see the passion of Christ as the waste of the best of our humanity. But Our Lord consecrates it as an act of love. Not love in a romantic or sensible way. But love as shown by that young 19 year old paramedic girl in Iraq who rescued a comrade from his tank at the peril of her own life.

I can’t do with all this love talk Vicar , said a retired half colonel to me once. Its duty that matters. Its duty that makes our men do these mad things. Duty was for him his word for what we call sacrificial love. It doesn’t of course need to he as dramatic as that. It can be an elderly husband devoting every hour of his life the the care of a wife suffering from advance Alzheimer’s. That is the glory. That is the glory of Easter.

At a time when the world sees our Anglican church squabbling about the interpretation of moral values, I think it is very important for us to remember this. Our Christian faith,truly understood, is not a moralistic religion. For it was one of the great insights of early Christianity that the idea that if you lead a good enough life you will get through the pearly gates was a misunderstanding. None of us is ever good enough for that- so it cannot be good news. That is no gospel. Rather our faith is a faith for lovers. If we do not understand that, then the festival of Easter will be shorn of most of its meaning..

I have brought with me some nails. I have found it a useful devotion over the years to bless nails on Passion Sunday. In a moment I give each of you a Passion Nail. The idea is that you keep yours about your person - in a pocket or handbag or purse or whatever; so that between now and Good Friday you will be always reminded that the Easter story is not just a pretty story of Easter bunnies and chocolate eggs.. Always remember that Jesus was not crucified on a silver cross between two candlesticks but on a wooden cross between two criminals. It is a story of a real horrifying and agonising event; an event when we dare to believe the human race crucified its God.

But finally let us remember that the great tradition of Christian belief is that Good Friday and Easter Day are indivisible - and that the story is one of triumph not disaster. It is like taking an exam. When you hand in your paper you have passed or failed. But you don’t know till the results are published. Such is the glory of Easter day; it is the day that the results are proclaimed.

St John’s Gospel is always more subtle than it seems . Later in the same chapter from which we read this morning,, Jesus says: "I if I be lifted up will draw all men unto me". The reference is obviously to being hoisted up onto his cross. But the word ‘lift up’ has a second meaning of glory. How can this be ? We have been hearing recently that at last the new Wembley stadium is ready for action. When the cup final is finished the captain of the team that won will go up and be presented with the Cup and he will turn round and lift it up high and all the supporters will cheer wildly. That is glory - the joy of winning. They will all shout "We’ve won !" But they haven’t - they are only the supporters - it is the men on the pitch who really won.

That may help us to a tiny glimpse of how Jesus viewed his coming passion and death as the moment of God’s glory. On Easter morning we will shout "Christ is risen Alleluia!" But in old money we are really being like a football crowd who shout with joy and delight "We won!"

Owen Vigeon