Sermons

 

 

 

The Fourth Sunday of Easter - 21st April 2024

“I am The Good Shepherd”
John 10: 11-18

Sheep and shepherds.

A common theme throughout the Bible and one Jesus’ hearers would be familiar with. Shepherds were not only part of the everyday scenery for Jesus, but they were also part of his heritage and culture.

Most people know the 23rd Psalm, “The Lord is my shepherd” and of course many are familiar with the Christmas story and the angels telling the good news of Jesus’ birth to the shepherds on the hillside.

And for Jesus, the image of a shepherd was certainly a common theme in his teachings. This shouldn’t come as a surprise really as we know that Abraham, the father of the Jewish nation, was himself a shepherd owning great flocks of sheep. Moses the lawgiver was tending the flocks of his father-in-law, Jethro, when God called him to the special task of rescuing his people from Egypt.
David was the shepherd boy who became the King of Israel.

When Isaiah the prophet spoke of the coming of the Messiah, he said this, “He will feed his flock like a shepherd. He will gather his lambs into his arms”
And Mark tells us that Jesus had compassion on a great crowd of people. Why? Because they were, as he put it, “as sheep without a shepherd."
And, of course, Jesus himself brought the picture clearly into focus when he told the story about a shepherd with 99 sheep, one having gone astray. 

So when Jesus says “I am the good shepherd”, what is he saying to the people listening and to us today?

Perhaps he was saying “I am the genuine shepherd”. 
He uses this parable to say there are two kinds of shepherd. 
Outwardly, there is no visible difference; they are both tanned and bronzed by the weather; they both carry a fleece to keep warm at night; they both carry a shepherd’s crook.

But one is a shepherd by nature; it is his calling, his vocation. The other shepherd does it as a job and so when trouble comes the hired shepherd with soon disappear because it’s only money to him. 
But the real shepherd stays and protects his sheep, and if needed will give up his life to save his flock.

An image for Easter of course, but also a reminder that no matter what trouble may come our way, Christ will never leave us; never desert us because he is the true shepherd. He is the one who loves each one of us so much that he gave up his life for us.

When I read this chapter, there was a verse that stood out for me. 
In verse four, we read “When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice.”
And in our reading we hear, “I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice.” 
Jesus is saying that although he came for the people of Israel, he is the shepherd for all the world and so the other sheep will become part of his flock. But I love the phrase “they will follow because they know his voice.”

Shepherds protected their sheep overnight; maybe in a walled area in front of a house, or a circular enclosure in the field.  But in the morning they would be called out and the shepherd’s own sheep would respond because they know his voice. 
Just as a baby soon recognises its mother’s voice and smell, so would sheep identify their own shepherd’s voice. They know this is a voice they can trust; this is the one who cares for them and will save them if they get into trouble.
And so for us, how do we learn to recognise Jesus’ voice and respond to it?
There are many other voices in today’s society clamouring for our attention. Numerous opinions trying to influence us and are claiming to offer the solution for all life’s problems.

It seems to be this is all about relationship. In our recent Lent course, we talked about who God is, and the key thing we realised is that faith is not about theories, or discussion but relationship. 
The Father, Son and Holy Spirit are One and in affinity with each other. The amazing thing is that they invite each one of us to be part of that fellowship. My favourite Icon is that of the Trinity, and it shows a place at the table where we can come in and join the meal. 

There is also a place for each one of us at the table here each Sunday; here we can have fellowship with Jesus the shepherd and also with each other.

We need to get to know Jesus’ voice; to recognise it and respond;
to learn to trust it when many others are also calling out to us. 
And then we can know, in all circumstances; in trouble and in joy that we can have confidence in Him; the good shepherd, the genuine shepherd, the one who lays down his life for each one of us.

The question today is “Do we?” Do we know our shepherd and hear his voice? 

When we do listen to him, then we can truly say with the Psalmist:

“The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not want.”

Amen

Ruth Cook, Reader

The Second Sunday of Easter - 7 April 2024

Acts 4 32-5, 1 John 1 1-2:2, John 20 19-end

Have you noticed how BBC television advertises so many of its own programmes now? I recently saw this caption with a BBC advert on the news channel “We don’t just report the story, we live it!” (REPEAT)
Both our first 2 readings this morning are about living, living the Resurrection life; living in the light, living in a radical new way because the Resurrection of Jesus Christ is God’s radical action.

The first Christians were so radical that they sold their possessions and their houses, and brought the money to the apostles so that they could share what they had with one another. They believed that Jesus would soon return in glory, and 20 years later Paul wrote to some Christians who had given up work. He tells them to get a job so that they can give to the poor and not be a burden to the Christian community. He tells them if they are not married to stay single if they can, because he too is expecting the Lord to return soon to this earth.

That is how the 1st Christians lived, how are we to live today? Religious communities of brothers and sisters do give up all their possessions, share all that they have and live simple lives of prayer and service in the communities where they live.

The community of Little Gidding founded in the 17th century by Nicholas Ferrar is the only example that I know of in England where families have lived as a religious community sharing their possessions. About 30 people were members but it ceased to exist when the last members died. 
                                                  
Now, most of us are not called to the religious life as monks or nuns, or to join a community like that at Little Gidding. So how are we to live? Do we live in ways that are different from our neighbours or different from non-Christians around us?

Muslims are required to pray 5 times a day and to fast between dawn and sunset during the month of Ramadan. We have no such rules about when to pray or fast (unless you have been ordained a deacon or priest, then you are required to say Morning and Evening prayer daily). Because we have no rules that require everyone to fast or pray on set days or times it doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t do  either of these things, we are required to live as our individual consciences prompt us.

We are told that the first Christians had no needy people among them as they shared their possessions and property. How are we called to act so that we ensure that there are no poor among us?

We are called to live in a new way because Jesus Christ is risen from the dead. We are not to be conformed to the ways of this world but to be transformed because of the death and Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.
There is a hymn or song in our little brown hymn books that says this clearly. I’m not sure that we’ve ever sung this at St Andrew’s but you may know it and it goes like this. 

“I am a new creation,
No further condemnation,
Here in the grace of God I stand.
My heart is overflowing,
My love just keeps on growing,
Here in the grace of God I stand”.
                                             
During Holy Week we walked on a journey that took us from death to new life. We were not just remembering the events of 2,000 years ago but participating in them, living them. Like the TV advert “We don’t just report the story, we live it”!

We experienced the Last Supper, the Watch and praying in the Garden, The Trials and Crucifixion on Good Friday. The children who took part in Easter Cracked before Easter also experienced it as they shouted out “Crucify him” as we also did during the reading of the gospel on Good Friday. Such involvement in the drama helps us to realize that we have a part in that death, it was not just Pontius Pilate, Herod or the crowd in Jerusalem 2,000 years ago that were responsible for the death of Jesus, but we ourselves, Christ died for us as well, we too have caused his death.

This year it was the Easter Vigil Service on Saturday evening that touched me most. The darkness of the tomb in the body of the church and then the candles filling it with the light of the Resurrection, Easter in daylight isn’t quite the same! 

I have been to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. The mount of Calvary and the tomb are said to be inside this ancient church. The chapel of Calvary inside the church did not move me, it was busy and noisy, but the Chapel of the Resurrection did. It is a tiny chapel, no longer obviously a cave or a tomb now. We had to queue to go in and we were allowed only a short time inside, but the presence of God in that tiny place was very real. 

The Resurrection is real, Christ lives, and we are called, by the grace of God, to live new lives in Him. We are called to share in that death and Resurrection, to live for Christ, to be a new creation. 
As the hymn says: “I am a new creation, no further condemnation,
 here in the grace of God I stand.” 

May God guide us all to live new lives, lives transformed by the Risen Christ.

Janet Fulljames

Easter Day - 31 March 2024

“Very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, (the women) went to the tomb.”

Even for us, who know the story so well can feel the drama building.

Only two days before, they had seen their Lord, for whom they had given up everything to follow, arrested, unjustly tried and crucified. Jesus had died, and with him all their hopes for the future. As in any bereavement, their world had come to a shuddering stand.

After an experience like that, they could have been forgiven that morning if they had simply rolled over and stayed in bed. Emotionally, physically, exhaustion cannot have been far away. But there was still one thing they can do. One final act before they let go of their old life, and that was to anoint Jesus’ body for burial.

We can imagine them, can’t we, walking through the garden towards the tomb as dawn breaks, carrying their spices and wondering how on earth they were going to get in to him, past they great big stone at the entrance to the tomb. A practical question, but regardless at what stage they had thought of it, it was a question that remained unanswered.

Until, in our mind’s eye, they rounded the corner and found the stone rolled to one side as if it were a mere pebble, and a young man sat by its side…

Perhaps he was tired!

But the art of rolling away tomb stones was quicky forgotten as the man spoke…

“Don’t look for the living among the dead. He is risen. He is not here.”

And then…

“Go back to Galilee – where it all started – you’ll see him there. Oh, and before you go, tell the others.”

Unsurprisingly, it took a while for the women to get their heads around this, for they fled. And although Mark tells us they said nothing to anyone, they must have spilled the beans eventually, because we know what happened next.

As it happens, what happened next is left to the other Gospel writers to record. The most ancient authorities have Mark ending right here – with the women fleeing in terror. It may be that the Church, seeing the evangelist missing a trick here, added a bit more. But not much more. Look for yourself when you get home.

Whatever the case, Mark’s way is to show us an enigmatic Jesus, doing enigmatic things, posing questions that we must answer for ourselves. The stone is rolled away. Jesus is not there. He is risen. It’s as if Mark is saying to us, “What do you make of that, then?!”

Because, somehow, without really comprehending it at first, the women have stumbled upon something that God is rather fond of doing…

It’s called a New Beginning.

Again and again, God sets before individuals life changing possibilities…

To childless Abraham and Sarah, promising that his descendants would be greater than the grains of sand on the seashore.
To Jacob, who wrestles with God and prevails, who becomes the father of a nation.

To Jospeh, whose fortunes are turned around by the gift of dreams.

To Hannah, whose unexpected gift of a child, Samuel, who would one day anoint David king, whose descendant was Jesus himself.

To Mary the Mother of Jesus, who became the God-bearer.

To Peter, James, John, the fishermen, who became fishers of men.

To Mary Magdelene, from woman of disrepute to holy saint, and witness to the Risen Christ.

To Paul, whose zeal for God was refocussed so he became an advocate of the Gospel rather than its oppressor. The list goes on.

Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, Hannah, and so on … all big names. All names that have been remembered and will be remembered for all time. All players in God’s story, the Easter story; all people whose faith, whose risk-taking, is brought to fulfilment because Christ is Risen.

But what about Quinn, who has come to be baptised today. What does it mean to him to say that Christ is risen?

The birth of a child is, of course, a new beginning in itself. We look at the newborn and we think, “What will become of this child? What will their life be? What will they do?”

And we look at the world they are born into, and we see injustice, fear, violence, poverty, and our terrifying capacity as a human race to plot our own destruction. We feel apprehensive, frightened even. What does it mean to say that Christ is risen in the face of all that?
The answer lies in Peter’s address to the household of Cornelius in Acts chapter 10, read a few minutes ago. He speaks of Jesus as one anointed with God’s Holy Spirit and with power; how he went about doing good, healing and casting out evil; how he was put to death, but God raised him and commanded Peter and the other witnesses to testify that he is the one ordained by God to judge the living and the dead, and in whom all who believe receive forgiveness of their sins. Because Christ is risen, there is a smile at the heart of the Universe that has final say in all things. Because Christ is risen all these things are true.

So, yes, we do see a world where there is injustice, where a small number of people use their power to protect their own interests and limit the potential of the powerless.

But, nevertheless, Christ is risen.

We do see a world where people and nations rise up with bombs, bullets and even their own bare hands, to destroy those different from themselves, or in quarrels over land, or resources, or ideologies.

But, nevertheless, Christ is risen.

Yes, we do have a world in which some do not have enough to eat, where people are abused or discriminated against for their race, gender or sexuality.

But, nevertheless, Christ is risen.

And we do have a world which groans under the pain of climate change, where we seem unable to agree what to do because it is always someone else’s fault.

But, nevertheless, Christ is risen.
And because Christ is risen, there is always hope. Not just for Quinn, and for all of us who call upon the name of Jesus but hope for the world which still belongs to God, and hope… sure and certain hope… that, in spite of appearances, goodness is stronger than evil, love is stronger than hate, and in the final analysis truth will prevail.

But remember this. Like those first disciples, we are witnesses to these things, pointers to a greater reality, believers in a better path, the path of self-sacrificing loving service to each other and the world in which we live. How will the world know it is loved; how will people have hope for a better future unless we live out and tell the story of Jesus.

In the meantime, today, Quinn joins us as ones who proclaim, whose life of discipleship is underpinned by that great cry of victory, in the words of St Augustine, that…

We are an Easter people, and Alleluia is our song!

Amen.  

 

Good Friday - 29 March 2024

May your kingdom come to Your praise and Glory

Totally Unexpected
John’s gospel from the beginning prepares us for Christ’s death and resurrection and yet we can miss his clues and pointers. We can hear and read his account and fail to see how we are being prepared for the cruellest of deaths and the astonishing resurrection.

An early clue is ‘The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.’ (1.05) Th Scribes and Pharisees, the so-called holy people, the keepers of the Jewish faith, did not recognise that Jesus was bringing new light and life to transform their religion. Here’s the second again in the prologue: ‘He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.’ (1.11) When he turned over the tables in the Temple and drove out the traders he was cleansing their practice in their holiest place.

But the revelation of this newness of Jesus, so totally unexpected, this breaking with the old and the bringing in of the new ways of Light, Love and Spirituality, comes is at the end of his first ‘miracle’ when he turns water, the basic fluid of life, into wine (2.10). John concludes that wedding story with these powerful words: ‘He thus revealed his glory’ (repeat) ‘and his disciples put their faith in him.’ Track how glory and glorify feature more and more in this gospel.

We – his disciples of today – are to put our faith in him; keep with him even when our trust starts to wobble. We are bidden to see His glory and follow in His steps through his dark terrible crucifixion into the resurrection. John’s calling us to do that – to be transformed this Lent. As one minister (Stephen Finamore) puts it. ‘May God take the offering of the ordinary stuff of life (water) along with our religious practices at home and in church, and enable Jesus to transform us into the new wine of his risen life!’ 

That’s the first truth this Lent has given me. Jesus is showing us how we can be changed according to his ways, unexpected and different as they are, and so become closer to God and Him.  The next request from Jesus is for us to make time to be with him; time to be still and silent and really looking at him. To be gazers!

Years ago a French priest saw a man in his village kneeling before a crucifix in church. ‘What are you doing?’ The old man replied: ‘I gaze at him and he gazes at me.’ (repeat) That story caught the priest’s imagination. Looking at the crucified Jesus is a sure way of getting to know Jesus and becoming like him. At our Lent Wednesday night on prayer such gazing would have been called adoration, a contemplative wordless form of saying, ‘I love you Lord, you who suffer for us. You who take our sins upon you. Bless you, Lord. And thank you. I adore you and know you love me.’

In case you think you do not use adoration, if you prayed yesterday evening and stayed for the Vigil, you may well have gazed in silence at the lilies and the altar in the lady chapel; picked up the smell and the stillness. Just gazed. Richard Rohr, the Franciscan blogger and teacher of Jesus’ ways of turning us upside down, has become a gazer: ‘the more I gaze without judgement … without critique, the more beautiful everything becomes’ . (Slightly adapted quote).

It’s time to do some gazing ourselves. Perhaps describing is a better word. This picture – of a mosaic from Hosios Loukas monastery north of the Gulf of Corinth in Greece – is for you to use in any way that you like. It is our crucifix. Gazing is silent receiving - and silent responding. What do we need to know about this crucifixion scene? I am hoping that somehow our camera can show it briefly to those online; and that we might be able to put a picture of it on our website.

It is an Eastern church picture, like an icon, made in 1022. It’s over a thousand years old. A scene of simplicity that has a monumental and eternal-like quality to it. A standard depiction for those times. It is of the dead Christ, he who was ‘truly God’ and ‘ truly human’ (Harries, p29). His eyes are shut, his head askew, his body twisted and sagged, he wears a loin-cloth and blood flows from his outstretched hands, his right side (where a spear was thrust into him) and his feet.

On his right is his mother Mary, pointing to him. To his left stands John the beloved apostle, his grieving head propped by his right hand. I can’t imagine how sad they are feeling. Under Jesus’ hands are the words from John 19. 26-27 when Jesus handed his mother over to John who takes her into his home. A gesture of love and caring amidst the greatest suffering. Above the cross is the Greek word for the crucifixion (barley legible). The two discs on either side of his head are the sun to his right and the moon, both with faces inside them. Over them are the initial letters in Greek of the words Jesus Christ.

Below Jesus is the (little) hill of Golgotha with the skull of death which reminds us that Jesus, ‘Humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even on a cross.’ (Philippians 2).

Legend has it that Adam was buried in Golgotha. The blood that is soaking off Jesus’ feet into Golgotha is redeeming both the first man and us, and gives new hope for humanity.

Please use the picture or any other that helps to gaze at the crucified Jesus or the empty cross.

Lest we find this picture and its story too far-fetched or cosy, words from psalm 22 cry out to us, ‘My God, my God why have you forsaken me?’ And not just us but those who’ve waited for hospital appointments or results or ended up in Casualty for hours; those who’ve been bombed and driven to a kind of Hell in Gaza with virtually nothing; those living in poverty who’ve been forced to use food banks or shoplift to feed their children; those who are trapped for months in a faceless building waiting for their asylum claims to be processed by an unfair system. All who suffer! 

Here's the centurion’s imagined response to Jesus’ death:

“I’ve seen some crucifixions in my time,

But never one like this: the victim

More concerned for others than himself,

Asking forgiveness for his murderers.

And then that awful darkness, when the 

World died with him, and the cry that

Pierced the darkness, pierced me too.

Did he say, ‘Finished?’ The  way I feel,

It’s only just begun.” 

(Ann Lewin Watching the Kingfisher Poems and Prayers, Canterbury Press, 2021)

Good Friday is the day when hurting and pain come to the fore. God’s banner message to his world, in this mosaic and all depictions of the cross, is that Father and Son suffer with us. We feel abandoned, yet we are not alone. And our sins are forgiven.

As Jesus gazes at us, let us gaze at him.  Amen

                                                                               Jeremy Harvey

I have also drawn on The Passion in Art by Richard Harries (Ashgate, 2004) written when he was Bishop of Oxford.

For picture, please click on the link below:

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Maundy Thursday - 28 March 2024

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