Sermons - April 2024

MORNING WORSHIP & BAPTISMS, ST. COLUMBA'S, PONT STREET
SUNDAY 7th APRIL 2024 11.00 A.M. (SECOND SUNDAY OF EASTER)

Collect: Almighty and Eternal God,
the strength of those who believe and the hope of those who doubt,
may we, who have not seen, have faith,
and receive the fullness of Christ’s blessing,
who is alive and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and forever. Amen.

This week, in the space of a very few minutes,
I heard two different people describe a glimpse of pure joy – an ecstasy.
The way they described it, it had the feel of a religious moment.
Curious?
I hope it will not be too disappointing to hear, it was football.
Specifically, it was being at this week’s dramatic,
Chelsea v Manchester United, 4-3 thriller, at nearby Stamford Bridge.
For the uninitiated, what made it so glorious for some – gutting for others –
home team Chelsea were losing 3-2 with time almost up.
Some “loyal” fans were already heading for the exit.
Incredibly, in the last two minutes of the game Chelsea not only equalised,
but then scored the winner.
Cue – pandemonium and joy among the home faithful.
One man described: “I was just hugging my mate for about ten seconds –
bouncing up and down. It was ridiculous. It was wonderful.”
Another recounted much the same – only more poignantly this was a father-son combo –
made even more special, because in a difficult relationship over the years,
the father realised how many other potential moments of closeness
had been squandered along the way.
Happily, not on this occasion.

I wasn’t there – and Chelsea are not my team.
So, could I/could you, possibly understand how special that moment had been?
A little, perhaps.
Yet, at one level, to really understand, in some senses - I guess you had to be there.

“Have you believed because you have seen me?
Jesus asked Thomas; then added:
“Blessed are those who have not seen, and yet have come to believe.”

Every year on this Sunday – the second Sunday of Easter,
the Lectionary (the scriptures selected for reading)
give us the story of the disciple Thomas - Thomas the Twin/Doubting Thomas.
Some refer to today as Low Sunday,
and after the fanfares of Easter, it can hold a sense of come-down, anti-climax.
As a visiting Moderator of the General Assembly preached at St Columba’s:
“Coming to Church this Sunday, is a bit like showing up to a party,
after most of the guests have left.
Those who remain, tell you what a great time they’ve had, you’ve missed out by coming late.
Could it really have been that great?”  “I guess you had to be there?”
“I guess you had to be there” is a primary theme to Thomas’ tale.
But worth remembering, there is more to Thomas than his famous doubting.
Thomas appears three times in John’s Gospel.
Firstly, when Jesus is on his way to raise Lazarus from the dead.
The other disciples urging Jesus not to go,
because his opponents have recently tried to stone him (John 11:8).
Thomas declares that they should go,
that “we might die with him” (John 11:16).

The second time, Jesus, in the hours before his death,
is talking about his Father’s house,in which there are many mansions;
that he is going to prepare a place for them, and that they know the way.
While others keep silent, Thomas bursts out:
“Lord, we do not know where you are going.
How can we know the way?” (John 14:5).
Without Thomas’ courage to ask the awkward question,
we might never have heard Jesus’ answer:
“I am the way, and the truth and the life.”

Thirdly, the drama of the first week of resurrection.
The first day – empty tombs and familiar strangers in the garden;
Mary, called by name, bearing, breaking news to the disciples.
Then on the evening of that first day
behind closed doors, dreading fates, comparable to that of their Master;
Jesus comes to that justifiably frightened company.
Into their confusion - suddenly, jaw-droppingly, quietly – he is there.

And his first words? After death. After resurrection.
Neither stony silence; nor anger that they went AWOL on the eve of battle.
Instead, “Peace be with you.”
A bridge - from guilt to mercy, despair to hope, fear to courage.
Peace be with you – greeting and gift, restoration and command.

Re-formed, the disciples are swiftly commissioned:
As the Father has sent me, so I send you.
“A boat is safe in the harbour, but that’s not what boats are for.”

Readied for sending, they are resourced.
“When he had said this he breathed on them saying,
Receive the Holy Spirit.”
For John, resurrection is also Pentecost; new life and immediate Spirit.
So, the Church is midwifed into being,
delivered and welcomed into the light
by the forgiveness and breath of the resurrected Jesus.

Famously, like a father caught in traffic, Thomas is late for the birth; misses it.
He hears about these extraordinary things
but demands more than make believe, to make believe.
Thomas, who didn’t yet believe in the resurrection,
intuits that if there is to be a resurrection, it must be linked to the wounds.
It won’t be the real Jesus if the wounds are not there.
“Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, I will not believe.”

This is the embodied Gospel. As the Anglican priest-poet Malcolm Guite writes:
“Oh doubting Thomas, father of my faith,
You put your finger on the nub of things
We cannot love some disembodied wraith,
But flesh and blood must be our king of kings.
… … …
Your teaching is to touch, embrace, anoint,
Feel after Him and find Him in the flesh.”

Touch, embrace, anoint:
There is no better reminder of the flesh, than the presence of a baby –
Today, Edward, here for his baptism.
(Others too, who have made that same journey in recent times.)
Any parent of a newborn is utterly familiar with the embodied basics of humanity;
birth itself, hunger and feeding, bathtime, warmth, comfort, distress, touch, sleep, rest.

There is a scriptural suggestion/link between this embodied Gospel,
and our baptismal gathering.
On Good Friday, we read the Passion Story/account, according to John’s Gospel.
Towards the end of that account there is the description of the request
to remove the crucified bodies from their crosses, before the Day of Passover.
Gruesome noting, that the way to speed up the dying –
break the legs of the prisoners - in effect to cause them suffocation.
“But when they came to Jesus and found that he was already dead,
they did not break his legs.
Instead, one of the soldiers pierced Jesus’ side with a spear,
bringing a sudden flow of blood and water. (John 19:33-35)

Edward, as yet knows nothing of this - the blood and the water –
threads so woven into our faith – sacrifice and washing – communion and baptism.
In time, with the help of his parents, godparents, faith community – he may learn more.
The blood and the water:
The love of God poured out for him –
not because he has earnt it, passed an exam, achieved great things.
But because he is his own unique, never-to-be-repeated life.
Precious, fragile, human. Welcomed.

Welcomed into a community of the followers of Jesus –
a community that knew/knows fear and failure, expressed doubt and disbelief.
But from time to time, discovers, that like Thomas,
God can accept honest doubt,
and bless and multiply the witness of a disciple who struggles to trust,
yearns for God but finds the path of faith rocky and hard.
Jesus says: Put your hand into the heart of who I am.
Then carry on/share such things - touch, embrace, anoint.
To follow into the humanity, the whole broken, beautiful mess of it –
To follow: “I guess we have to be there.”

MORNING WORSHIP, ST. COLUMBA'S, PONT STREET
SUNDAY 21st APRIL 2024 11.00 A.M.
(4th SUNDAY OF EASTER)

“I am the good shepherd.
The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.
(In contrast): The hired hand runs away because a hired hand does not care for the sheep.
I am the good shepherd.” John 10: various

“Where’s your coat?”
“I don’t need it.”
“I think you do. It looks like it’s going to rain.”
“It won’t.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure.”

Depending on the level of parental resolve,
a child goes to school either with, or without the contentious coat-in-question.
As was once remarked:
“Why do I have to wear a coat because you’re feeling cold?”
Which makes me think of the quote:
“There is no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing.”
That is from the pen of contemporary writer and hill farmer, James Rebanks,
author of, The Shepherd's Life: A People's History of the Lake District.

Rebanks writes with authority, about the toughness, the wildness,
the reality of sheep and shepherding, even in the Lake Districts of today.
That is echoed by Scottish poet, Kenneth Steven, in his piece, entitled, Lamb.
One day, amid wintry conditions on Scotland’s west coast,
he stumbles upon a new-born lamb

“I found a lamb,
tugged by the guyropes of the wind,
trying so hard to get up.

It was no more than a trembling bundle –
a bag of bones and wet wool,
a voice made of crying, like a child’s.

(He reflects):
What a beginning, what a fall,
to be born here on the edge of the world
between the sea and America.”

We know from our Christmas tales – the birth at Bethlehem –
shepherds inhabited the edge of society;
untamed places, beyond the respectable.
Yet the image of a shepherd tending the flock was deeply ingrained
in the religious imaginations of the Israelites;
they had a long history with shepherds.
Rachel was a shepherd.
Moses too, before God commissioned him to lead the Israelites out of slavery;
and of course, King David started out as a shepherd,
famously and unexpectedly called in from the fields,
to partake with his brothers in a royal beauty pageant.
(“You’re hired!”)

The prophet Ezekiel (Ezekiel 34:15-16) records the Lord God as declaring:
“I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep.
I will seek the lost,
and I will bring back the strayed,
and I will bind up the crippled,
and I will strengthen the weak,
and the fat and the strong I will watch over;
I will feed them in justice.”

So, to Jesus’ declaration: “I am the Good Shepherd.”
In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus has just healed a blind man on the Sabbath,
and the religious elite are less than chuffed.
Moreover, it is the Feast of the Dedication (the holiday we know as Hanukkah),
celebration of the rededication of the Temple,
after the victory of Judas Maccabeus in 2nd century BCE.
Jesus is in the Temple itself – location, par excellence,
that venerates the unique, covenantal relationship with God.

It is apparently, there and then,
that Jesus equates himself with God, the Good Shepherd.
Just when the religious authorities are celebrating the centrality/supremacy of the Temple,
Jesus suggests that God's presence is actually better found elsewhere?
Elsewhere, being the wilderness, where the wolves and thieves roam,
along with hireling shepherds and straying sheep?
In other words, among the outcasts, the irreligious, the ritually unclean,
and the politically suspect?
What, or who am I about? Asks Jesus.
Am I museum curator of the splendid sanctuaries, noble as they are –
or mountain rescue, search-team leader, beyond the corridors of power?
As one contemporary writer questions awkwardly:
“Where is my Temple? Where is my wilderness?
Where are the places I assume God doesn’t dwell?”

“I am the good shepherd.
The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.

When Jesus identifies with the shepherd at the periphery –
he also draws attention to the cost of shepherding.
“The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.”
Jesus says it five times in this passage.
Echoed in John's epistle: “Jesus Christ laid down his life for us.”

Threatened by predators, the shepherd’s life, involved danger.
Jesus spells out the contrast between the committed shepherd
and the hireling shepherd.
The hireling will scarper at the first sign of danger,
the genuine shepherd, like the sentry on duty, stands to.
“Because he's in it for the long haul,
he not only frolics with lambs, but wrestles with wolves.
He not only tends the wounds of his beloved rams and ewes;
he buries them when their time comes.” Debie Thomas, Journey with Jesus

The life that Jesus lived; the life that he gave up, allows John’s Epistle to assess:
“We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us …”
Then concludes: “We ought to lay down our lives for one another.
Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action.” 1 John 3

Where might we be encouraged for truth and action?

Last Sunday we heard a little of the work of ReStart Lives the charity that organises the weekly, Friday Night drop-in meal for sometimes up to a hundred guests –  some homeless, some simply seeking a warm meal and some companionship.

The Newsletter this week also highlights the ongoing work of Glass Door,  the charity that co-ordinates the winter season schedule of Night Shelters –  which thanks to staff and volunteers from within and beyond St Columba’s, has offered food and floor space overnight on Sundays, throughout the winter.
Practical help – offered by ordinary people –  of various traditions of prayer, and none –  finding common cause – giving, yes –  but also, often bearing witness to what they receive.

One example more: This week we received a letter of thanks from Firefly International, the Scottish-based charity working with young people living with the consequences of war –  charity chosen for this year’s Lent Appeal.

The Appeal money will go towards the work of a multi-faith youth project in Bosnia:
In the charity’s letter of thanks:

“We live in terribly dangerous times,
and I am sorry to say that children and young people in the Balkans,
almost completely forgotten these days, face danger too.
Your investment in our peace-keeping work,
led by young people in Brcko for the benefit of their own community,
is not only generous but also thoughtful and insightful.

The money raised via the Appeal will go towards a summer camp, off-site, for the teenagers.
Giving young people the chance to get out of Brcko,
to spend a week together making art and music together,
and simply enjoying each other's company in a beautiful rural setting,
is a great gift to them.
It rewards them for bucking the trend,
in being prepared to meet and socialise with 'the other'.
It reinforces the message that it is safe and normal
for young people from different faith backgrounds
to leave their home and neighbourhood and travel away together,
have fun and build strong bonds of friendship.
Jane Critchley Salmonson, Director, Firefly International

Is it fanciful to think of Balkan teenagers –
Muslim, Orthodox, Roman Catholic, other –
enjoying the freedom of new spaces and experiences –
fanciful to think of them recognising their differences,
but also discovering their commonalities – the ties that bind,
the underlying unities of a single human flock?
Is that too much to hope for, to pray for – to work for?

We began with a desolate lamb struggling to rise, buffeted by the wind,
“…born here on the edge of the world
Between the sea and America.”
But Kenneth Steven’s poem finishes with a promise –
“Lamb, out of this island of stone
yellow is coming, golden promises,
the buttery sunlight of spring.”

That is Easter’s promise – the Good Shepherd always rising, always returning:
To seek the lost,
bring back the strayed,
bind up the wounded,
strengthen the weak,
watch over the flock and feed them in justice.”