Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost, year B - Br. Andrew

Homily preached by Br Andrew e.f.o. at Springwood on Sunday 23rd August 2015

Andre-Rublev's Saviour

Just frivolity:

I shall share with you something my mate Fr Dave Smith of Holy Trinity Dulwich Hill mentioned in his sermon last week which might clarify things in the end.

He said “Now, in case you’re not familiar with the different understandings that exist between the different Christian denominations when it comes to the Eucharist, the best way of remembering the distinctions, I think, was that given to me by my old mate, Tony Campolo (the great Baptist evangelist) who put it this way:

• In the Catholic understanding, the bread mysteriously becomes the body of Jesus and the blood mysteriously becomes His blood

• In the Anglican understanding, the bread remains bread and the wine remains wine, but to the person who consumes them in faith they become the body and blood of Jesus.

• In the Baptist understanding, he points out, the bread remains bread, and the wine magically becomes grape juice!”

At any rate, if you’re a good Catholic, you may well make an immediate association between this dialogue and the Eucharist – a sacrament that had its origin, you’ll remember, in the ‘Last Supper’ between Jesus and His disciples”

In this the fifth and final interlude of John’s Gospel within this part of the Markan year I intend to state the Non-conformist-middle point of view concerning the understanding of Jesus discourse at Capernaum.

While most agree that the event of the Feeding of the 5000 itself was representative of the first Holy Communion that is where the agreement ends. Protestant Commentators and Theologians such as Matthew Henry and Calvin, agree that Jesus’ teaching in the Synagogue was not about the Sacrament or Ordinance of Holy Communion / Eucharist. Therefore the true meaning intended by his words “He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood lives in me, and I in him.” John 6:56 are of a Spiritual nature and the instruction concerning His Body and Blood is to be understood figuratively.

Note there is no mention of wine.

Calvin commented that this discourse doesn’t relate to the Lord's Supper, but to the perpetual communication of the flesh of Christ, ["De la chair de Christ."] which we obtain apart from the use of the Lord's Supper. Communion alone does not grant us the Eternal life Jesus speaks of unless those that do so also follow His Words. It has been said by the theologians that they are saved who do not receive the Holy Communion and they are lost with it because it is not in the slavish keeping of the Holy Communion by which we are saved but in participating in this perpetual Communication of the flesh of Christ.

Matthew Poole writes, quote  “Feeding is to be meant believing in him; only here is a clearer discovery than was there in John 3:16-18, of the true object of that faith which justifies, namely a Christ crucified, for that is signified by the flesh and blood mentioned.”, end quote. While Albert Barnes draws our attention to the meaning ‘dining together’, had among the Jews, it was expressive of sharing in or partaking of the privileges of friendship.  The happiness of heaven and all spiritual blessings are often represented under this image, see Luke 14:15, “One of the dinner guests, on hearing this, said to him, ‘Blessed is anyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God!’”

Poole also comments on the terrible and awful notion that Jesus intended us to take his words literally and speaks disparagingly of the Council of Trent and goes on to comment that the situation demanded Jesus use the figure of eating and drinking because that was the subject of the  discourse; because the Jews were very proud of the fact that their fathers had eaten manna; and because, Jesus had said that he was the bread of life, it was natural and easy, especially in the language i.e. the specific words,  which he used, to carry out the illustration, and say that bread must be eaten in order to be of any use in supporting and saving men.

At the murmuring of his disciples  at such ‘hard sayings’ Jesus asks them “Does this cause you to stumble what if you would see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before?” John 6:62, a change of subject?

No, far from it, an illustration that points to the following year when Jesus would be crucified, dead and buried, rise from the dead and ascend into heaven. Meyer in his original language commentary uses these words “Will not this impending sight serve to offend you still more” for “Does this cause you to stumble” and says of it that he whom they believe to be mortal to Ascend into heaven is just as preposterous as literally and actually eating his flesh and drinking his blood. But for those future readers who have formed erroneous or heretical Eucharistic conceptions who are already aware that Jesus is God –They are to understand that their practices and understandings have gotten out of hand because the Son of Man has ascended in his flesh and is not here to be feasted upon.

The crux of this communication Jesus is making both to those in the Synagogue and to us is that Jesus intends all that he has taught them to be understood in the Spiritual context 6;63 “ It is the spirit that quickens; the flesh profits nothing: the words that I speak unto you, [they] are spirit, and [they] are life.”

When we and John’s readers, contemplate the spirit we are drawn past the Ascension to Pentecost when the Holy Spirit is given but  John’s subjects remain ignorant indifferent or curious and eager to understand. When those who partake in the perpetual communicating of the flesh of Christ have received this Spirit they will be taught by the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father has sent in the name of Jesus, who will teach them all things and will remind them of everything Jesus had said to them. They will find a deeper meaning than the carnal one as they compare manna from heaven and the Ascension of the Son of Man and will know that Jesus did not intend that the Holy Communion or the Communicating of the Flesh of Christ to be carnal but spiritual.

Any mother will tell you of the amazing experience of ‘quickening’ when she begins to know  her child is truly alive and developing.

This quickening by the Spirit is what brings us to Spiritual birth and keeps us alive in Christ if we “obey his word we will never see death." John 8:51

And "If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our abode with him.” John 14:23

Next verse

But this is conditional on a person being called to perpetual communication of the flesh of Christ (to faith) by the Father for we do not choose God but he chooses us. For faith in Christ is the gift of God, and coming to him, is due to efficacious grace, and is not the practice of man's power and free will. It is truly the will of the Father that all who see Jesus and believe in him may have eternal life; and he will raise them up on the last day. John 6:40

From the pulpit commentary - Christ does not give the hunger, but the bread. From the beginning he saw the existence of the appetite after the bread which he came to bequeath. John 6:40

St Peter gives us the climax “We have come to believe and know that you are the Christ, the Son of the living God."  After declaring there is nowhere else to go.

This Jesus in whom we believe is the very Son of God without whom we can live and so we feed upon Him in our hearts and by this we mean the continual communication between Him and His Body of all he is and has been to us while in the flesh and all he is now in Heaven.

And we keep his Holy ordinance as the New Covenant in His Blood because he asked us to but before hand or certainly at some time we need to harken to the voice of the Father and be led by him through sanctifying Grace into the eternal communication of love between  ourselves and Christ, of the communication of his flesh. United to His Body through the power of the Holy Spirit. 

Holy Trinity Year B- Many Persons in one God

Andre-Rublev's Saviour

Homily preached On Trinity Sunday  by Br. Andrew 5th June 2012

Many Persons in one God

Today is Trinity Sunday and in the readings today Father Son and Spirit have been revealed to us, the Trinitarian blessing pronounced for the first time. God is three and God is one!

I have had difficulty in committing this homily to paper, not because the subject is necessarily impossible but too many pathways’ bring us to this point of Revelation of Trinity and just as many proceed from it.

I have chosen, wisely, I think not to delve into the quagmire of the dogma of the Trinity rather to speak of God and how it makes itself known to us..

God is not the name of our Creator; we worship God, with a capital “G” to differentiate our God from other gods which we consider false, none existent and their representations Idols. The Deity has revealed to us its name and in doing so has entered into Covenant with humanity. In ancient times to know someone’s name was to know the source of their secret strengths or life, to reveal your name to another was a huge step towards being in relationship with that person.

Our Creator, through a burning bush that would not burn revealed The Name on mount Horeb to Moses, a lonely shepherd, revealing something of Divine mystery: –

 “ I Am that I Am” – Yahweh, Y’hw’h without its now unknown vowels the  Hebrew consonant’s when spoken together Yoh- hey, vah, hey—almost sounds like we are  breathing. The Name is the very breath we take to sustain life. Moses was alive because he breathed the breath of Yahweh.

I Am forever fully present I AM the One who makes all others things be.

In the reading from Deuteronomy Moses extolls the WORD, and reminds them that the LORD has created them; redeemed them from slavery in Egypt, breathed into them his breath of life and makes them whole and in return asks only that they love him. To be responsible!

Yahweh is forever fully Triune; yet at that point in time humanity’s capacity to believe, even in a single faceted deity, was impeded by recent history, the pollution of belief by their Slavers,  with the forgetting of their religious roots and Practices.

 Yahweh reveals only enough about the One who Is as the current paradigm will allow us to have the wisdom and courage to believe.

We could say of an Anthropomorphic God that in choosing to enter into a relationship with us Yahweh became vulnerable.

The Jews of old knew Yahweh as a Father (Ex.4:22), a Shepherd (Psalm 22/23:1), a Husband, (Is.54:5-8), Potter (Jer.18:6), and Vineyard owner, (Ps.80:8-13) they did not as yet know him as a brother; nor would they believe, in a hurry that their Father, would take a wife or sire a human child.

In his humanity Yahweh God was vulnerable because as soon as he entered into intimate relationship with us he knew that one day, when the time was right he, the Word would be born into the world to die for us; to save us from sin and death.

Moses said to the Israelites “Was there ever a word so majestic, from one end of heaven to the other? Was anything like it ever heard…” (Deut.4:32) When we remove the veil from our Eucharistic elements we say – In the beginning was the Word. The Word was with God. The Word was God. Through the Word all things were made. The Word was made flesh and lived among us. (John 1:1-4 NJB) This Majestic Word is Jesus, the second divine personality in Yahweh who became one of us.

While Jesus the Christ was with us he taught us more about Yahweh than was ever yet revealed because He is Yahweh, standing in the flesh beside the people of his time and yet seated in heaven taking care of the world.

There are too many verses to cite the love that Jesus has in his heart for us or to truly understand the terror of execution and the darkness of the grave.

St. Francis of Assisi places the following words on Christ’s lips in the time between the time in the grave and his assumption into heaven – curious that Francis uses the term Assumption as if Christ were being received back into heaven rather than leaving his disciples.

8.    But I have slept, and I have arisen, and my Most Holy Father has taken me up to glory.

9.    Holy Father, You have held me by the hand, you have willed to lead me out, and You have assumed me into glory.

10. For what have I in Heaven, and what have I on earth apart from You? (Psalm 6:8-10)

Before the most Holy Father assumed Jesus into heaven  , Jesus said to his Apostles  'All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.  Go, therefore, make disciples of all nations; baptise them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,  and teach them to observe all the commands I gave you. And look, I am with you always; yes, to the end of time.' (Matt 28: 17b-20 NJB)

This Holy Spirit, the ruach-hakodesh is the third personality in Yahweh, like the Father and the Word it has always been there brooding over the earth during creation, given to the 72 elders,(Num.11 : 14-17,24-29 NJB) reserved for anointed kings, given to Prophets but not always permanently, the Holy Spirit left King Saul ( I Sam 16:14 NJB) who went mad. After sinning with Bathsheba king David prayed. “Do not thrust me away from your presence; do not take away from me your spirit of holiness. (Psalm 51:11 NJB)

In our time  the Holy Spirit is given to all who believe in Jesus - after Pentecost when the disciples were thought to be drunk Peter says “On the contrary, (they are not drunk)this is what the prophet (Joel) was saying: “ In the last days -- the Lord declares -- I shall pour out my Spirit on all humanity. Your sons and daughters shall prophesy, your young people shall see visions, your old people dream dreams.” (Acts 2:16,17:cf Joel 3 NJB)

We alive because we breathe the Spirit of Yahweh

When the Holy Spirit comes upon us it melds with our own Spirit to testify that we are now sons and daughters of Yahweh, inheritors of all good things, brothers and sisters of Christ, one with Yahweh in a multiplicity of Personalities, thousands and thousands of Personalities but one God. Unity in multiplicity.

And the self-revelation of Yahweh to his people goes on!

Do We Really Want To See Jesus?

Torah

“Moses said to YHWH, “But, never in my life have I been a man of eloquence,

either before or since you have spoken to your servant.” Ex 4:10

LENT 5B: Do We Really Want To See Jesus? 

All of our lectionary readings for this Sunday make it difficult for me to choose which to develop. So I will go for Jeremiah and John. The prophet Jeremiah (31:31-34) reveals God’s new covenant with the people. Unlike that of Sinai, it will be written on each person’s heart. With the law written on the heart each person can act instinctively in God’s ways. They could live out the covenantal requirements with exterior acts that flow from a heart turned to God. “I will place my law within them and write it upon their hearts.” God still seems to be writing on people’s hearts from every race, religion and nation. How many good people have we known, or heard about, who have given their lives to help others? The doctors and nurses who went to Africa to help Ebola patients or to war zones come to mind. They left their comfortable homes, careers and family, risking their lives to help others. Some out of religious conviction, others not. They just wanted to serve others in severe need. What could stir each of them to make such sacrifices? I believe that it is God who writes on our hearts and transforms them to be Christ-like.

In John's gospel (12:20-33) we see the still-writing-God at work in the Greeks who went to Philip and asked, “Sir, we would like to see Jesus?” As John was writing his gospel Christians were being persecuted and martyred as the consequence of professing their faith in Christ. So, John links the sufferings Christians must bear in their lives and the glory that awaits them as he records the words of Jesus who said; “I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat. But if it dies it produces much fruit.” Jesus was not just referring to gardening. Martyrdom is a reality for all Christian generations. Archbishop Oscar Romero, the martyred bishop of El Salvador, soon to be a saint was killed by wealthy land owners and military people who called him a communist. “Unless the grain of wheat dies....” Sr. Dorothy Stang worked for 30 years as a tireless advocate for the poor of Brazil. She was opposed and threatened by the ruthless land owners who were stripping the Amazon rainforest and displacing the peasants. As her assassins approached her on an isolated road she pulled out her Bible and read aloud from the Beatitudes. They shot her. “Unless the grain of wheat dies….” The movie “Selma” reminds us of the brave women and men who marched with Dr. King 50 years ago from Selma to Montgomery. On March 7, 1955, “Bloody Sunday,” at the Edmund Pettus Bridge, many were beaten by the police. In that same month Rev. James Reeb, a Unitarian Universalist minister one of the marchers, was murdered. “Unless the grain of wheat dies….”
There are many different forms of martyrdom. A martyr is one who accepts the sacrifices and pain which come from being faithful to Christ and his ways. Jesus invited his disciples to take up the cross and follow him. He challenges each of us to make choices that might be painful or costly. What can I give to those who lack; what will I not do in my work and social life to witness my faith; how much of my time and resources go to my church and community; whom will I defend when my companions label or stereotype those who are different? Jesus has modelled for us the costs of being faithful to God’s will. “Yet what should I say, ‘Father save me from this hour?’ But it was for this purpose that I came to this hour.” If we want, Christ in us will enable us to die to our will and seek after God's will.

Those who came to Philip wanted to see Jesus in the flesh. For John “seeing” symbolises coming to faith. John is suggesting that outsiders were hoping to “see,” come to believe in Jesus. In his own lifetime Jesus’ ministry was almost exclusively confined to his own people. The Greeks who came asking to see Jesus represent the Gentile world - all people. How would they come to believe in Jesus? Jesus said, “And when I am lifted up, I will draw ALL to myself.” Jesus is no longer in the world in the flesh; but we are. Through our words and works, people will come to “see” Jesus through us. On this fifth Sunday of Lent, before we enter the week of Christ's passion, let us take the time to pray with our - new covenant heart's - that others may come to "see" Jesus in us and in the Christian community.

Words, Water and Wilderness!

Torah Scroll

“Moses said to YHWH, “But, never in my life have I been a man of eloquence,

either before or since you have spoken to your servant.” Ex 4:10

Lent 1B 2015: Words, Water and Wilderness! 


This week we begin the season of Lent which can help us to celebrate the very heart of our faith - the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is a time for penance and of hope. It is a time when we reflect upon the profound meaning of the word "covenant". The word covenant is an ancient word that speaks to the power of a promise spoken and made between two persons. In the Christian scriptures, God is the one who always takes the 'initiative' to make covenant with humans. We take up the Noah story in Genesis (9:8-17) after the Flood and read the words; "See, I establish my Covenant with you, and your descendents after you; and also with every living creature ..." and of Jesus taken by "The Spirit" into "the wilderness" (Mark 1:9-15) where he experienced temptation.
As in the time of Noah, the sights and sounds of evil are present in our society, seen in our exposure to the wilful abuse of one human being by another; the night time TV dramas that celebrate and act out violence against persons. The emphasis on sexual images does violence to the fully human nature potential in people. The documentaries on the events of war and atrocities, political corruption and commercial greed, can lead us feeling numb and down hearted. What about God's tolerance for the evil of human kind? God saved eight people from the evil generation around them by means of water. God saves us from the evil generation around us by means of water and Spirit through Baptism.
I have often wondered what thoughts ran through Noah’s mind after the flood, as he surveyed the scene before him. Did the destruction, loneliness and isolation terrify him? What did he think of the God whose divine power seemed to have caused such destruction? The Genesis text gives us only the basic details. What about Jesus, alone in the wilderness, with only "wild beasts" for company, was he to lonely, and frightened by his isolation? Mark’s account doesn’t give us any of the details. There is no reported conversation with Satan. We are left to fill in the blanks for ourselves about Jesus’ self-encounter. This type of self-encounter encounter can happen during Lent as we enter our lonely interior landscape. "The Spirit" can 'drive' us if we are willing into the wilderness through our practices of fasting, self-denial, and prayer. In our "secret" prayerful quiet times, we will find all that we tend to avoid through our busy frenetic routine days, that can hide our deep anxiety, insecurity, and fearfulness. Our authentic prayer can reveal our deep helplessness in the face of our sin and the chaos of the world in which we live. It is no easy work to make sense of the past or to face the claim that God has put on our lives through our baptismal covenant.
The good news of scriptures is that this is not the end of the story. The message of the Noah and Jesus story is not centered on either the chaotic devastation of the world or of the Satan (accuser) who threatens to undo us. It is centered on the promise and power of the One who not only created this world and called "it good", but the One who promises to protect, sustain, and restore the world and ALL who live in it. We can feel at times despair and doubt as we face our weakness, with temptations within and fears without. However, God remains loyal to the disloyal; faithful to the faithless. The "rainbow" sign says, that God’s intention for his creation is to end the cycle of violence and retribution with love and compassion. God is with us in our wilderness and like Jesus we are given strength beyond our own and "the angels" to care for us. Lent challenges us to come to terms with the fact that though devastation and the isolation of wilderness are far from God’s original intention for creation, it is through these terrible, harsh realities that God brings forth new life. The "rainbow" represents an unconditional promise, of God’s willingness to limit God’s power and freedom for the sake of the life of the world that God so loves. It is in the self-denial of the wilderness that Jesus confirms before God, his identity and the mission of life through death that flows from it.
The scripture readings of lent will remind us that being drawn through death for the sake of new life. They will lead us to a greater understanding of God’s compassionate presence, promise keeping, and self-denying love for a broken world proclaimed on the cross. When we enter into our personal lenten wilderness, we too can experience the power