Sermons - March 2024

ST COLUMBA’S, PONT STREET
SUNDAY 10th MARCH 2024 11.00 A.M.
(4th SUNDAY of LENT)

“Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness,
so must the Son of Man be lifted up,
that whosoever believes in him may have eternal life.”

Noughts and crosses; snakes and ladders:
This morning, Scripture’s mash up offers us – Snakes and Crosses.

A snake came to my water-trough
On a hot, hot day, and I in pyjamas for the heat,
To drink there.

Arresting opening lines from D H Lawrence’s poem, Snake.
An encounter, one stifling hot Sicilian July, with Etna smoking.
The poet/narrator sees the snake emerge from a whole in the garden wall,
trailing its yellow-brown slackness soft-bellied down,
and make its way to the water trough:
And where the water had dripped from the tap, in a small clearness,
He sipped with his straight mouth,
Softly drank through his straight gums, into his slack long body,
Silently.

For the poet, conflicting voices in his head:
The voice of my education said to me
He must be killed,
For in Sicily the black, black snakes are innocent,
the gold are venomous.

But must I confess how I liked him,
How glad I was he had come like a guest in quiet, to drink
at my water-trough
And depart peaceful, pacified, and thankless,
Into the burning bowels of this earth?
I felt so honoured.

In the end, as the snake disappears back into the earth,
the poet pitches a clumsy log at the departing reptile;
its reaction: that part of him that was left behind convulsed
in an undignified haste,
Writhed like lightning, and was gone …

And immediately I regretted it.
what a mean act!
I despised myself and the voices of my accursed human education.

And I thought of the albatross,
And I wished he would come back, my snake.

For he seemed to me again like a king,
Like a king in exile, uncrowned in the underworld,
Now due to be crowned again.

And so, I missed my chance with one of the lords
Of life.
And I have something to expiate:
A pettiness.

Fascination and fear, fear and fascination.
At a recent school fair, seeking parental brownie points with the authorities,
I was temporarily appointed steward for the visiting reptile room.
The news that there were snakes inside, drew both gasps of horror –
but also, the longest queues.
Fascinated or fearful, can we face scriptural serpents elevated today?

From the Book of Numbers the Children of Israel, in the wilderness –
the long walk to freedom from Egyptian captivity.
The harshness of the road, the detours and delays,
lead the people to grumble.
Impatient with their shepherd, Moses, they murmur against God.

According to scripture, just east of Palestine,
God plagues them with “fiery serpents” for their complaining against Him.
Snakes on the PLAIN!
Unsurprisingly, repentance is swift.
“We did wrong; Moses we implore you,
pray to God to remove the serpents from among us.” (Amen to that.)

Moses does pray. The upshot is unexpected.
A bronze snake is crafted, put on a pole
and raised up in the centre of the camp.
To be “saved” from the real snakes,
they must gaze at an inanimate one –
reminder of the snakes sent, because of their complaint at God,
their lack of trust, in his provision.
This python on a pole, a daily honesty –
to look at one’s failure or sin, in order to be saved from it.
I think of AA’s universal introduction:
“Hello, my name is … and I’m an alcoholic/addict.”

I would much prefer this Old Testament tale,
if having repented and prayed, the result for Moses and his crew,
was the disappearance, once and for all, of these terrifying snakes.
But that doesn’t happen.
Instead of the snakes slithering away, the instruction is clear.
In a snake-bitten world, the serpents stay -
but no one need die.
Israelite salvation will only be found in an ongoing act of faith.
Journey on, trust in God’s provision, persevere.
God has not given up on you.

The Gospel reading references this same tale:
“Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness,
so must the Son of Man be lifted up,
that whosoever believes in him may have eternal life.”

The passage begins in the midst of Jesus’ nighttime conversation with Nicodemus,
the Pharisee who has come to see Jesus for himself,
but under cover of night – fearful of fellow Pharisees,
hostile to this troublesome rabbi.
Jesus and Nicodemus have been talking,
about being born again/from above,
speaking of how the Spirit blows, where it will.
Into the conversation, Jesus introduces the elevated, bronze serpent –
Makes comparison - the Son of Man/the Human One – Jesus –
Anther raising – both metaphorical, and horrifyingly literal - crucifixion.
Nicodemus surely understood the reference.

As the Israelites looked upon the raised bronze snake and lived,
so those who look upon/trust the raised Son of Man –
Christ on the Cross – death and resurrection –
they will find eternal life.

“Look on me and live.
Turn your gaze, attention, focus to me –
what I am about to do,
what I am about to embody.
And in that strange remedy you will find true living –
In that strange remedy you will discover
God’s love made known,
not for the punishment of a broken world
but for its healing and peace.
“…so must the Son of Man be lifted up.”,

I am not sure any of us can explain the cross of Christ,
even as it stands at the heart of our faith –
perhaps wiser, to consider it, a seeker/disciple’s, lifetime’s work,
to gaze upon it;
its meaning and relevance shifting with our own passing years.

T help us we might borrow from others who have gazed before us:
Last Sunday in the London Scottish Chapel
our visiting speaker talked to us of the medieval mystic, Julian of Norwich: (1342–1416).
From her Revelations of Divine Love.

The love of God most High for our soul is so wonderful
that it surpasses all knowledge.
No created being can fully know
the greatness, the sweetness, the tenderness,
of the love that our Maker has for us.
By his Grace and help therefore
Let us in spirit stand in awe and gaze,
eternally marvelling at the supreme, surpassing, single-minded,
incalculable love that God, Who is all goodness, has for us.

Or, perhaps easier to imagine and appropriate this Mothering Sunday,
as the late Cardinal Basil Hume, OSB related:
Once while I was preaching in a parish,
I suddenly caught sight of a young mother with her child,
and you could see the love between them.
I was terribly tempted to say to the congregation,
“Forget what I am saying and look over there,
and you will see what you mean to God.”

ST COLUMBA’S, PONT STREET
SUNDAY 17th MARCH 2021, FIFTH SUNDAY OF LENT.

“Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies,
it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”  John 12:24

“I try to write songs that might step up and make some sense of a moment in time.
A good song makes you feel like you’re not alone in the world.”
Words of Welsh, singer-songwriter Martyn Joseph –
whose combination of passionate lyric and social activism,
lead to references as “the Welsh Springsteen.”

One song, entitled Strange Way, begins:
Strange way to start a revolution
There follows, a litany of strange ways - reflections/ironies -
arising from Joseph’s meditation on Jesus on the Cross:

Strange way to see if wood would splinter
Strange way to do performance art
Strange way to say “I'll see you later”
Strange way to leave behind your heart

Strange way to hang around for hours
Strange way to imitate a kite
Strange way to get a view of Auschwitz
Strange way to represent the light

Strange way to reassure your mother
Strange way to finish your world tour
Strange way to pose for countless paintings
Strange way to gather in the poor. 

Between these stanzas, the chorus/refrain:

Strange dissident of meekness
And nurse of tangled souls
And so unlike the holy
To end up full of holes
Strange way.

Today is Passion Sunday; the circling aircraft of Lent begins its descent to Holy Week.
The crowds gather for the Passover Festival in Jerusalem;
Jesus too, with his disciples.

A group of foreigners, Greeks, request to see Jesus.
Much of the non-Jewish world spoke Greek,
so, it is convenient shorthand for folk beyond Israel’s borders.
Whether these Gentiles are sensation-seeking gawkers or genuine seekers,
their arrival, acts as a sign – like the first leaf of spring.
In contrast to the rebuke to his mother at the wedding in Cana –
“My time has not yet come…” (John 2:4)

Now, the time is ripe – in sports parlance, the business end of the match.
Time is nigh – let the message break forth,
from the confines of one particular place and people –
to become a message for all time and every place.

These Greeks are the latest in a long line of seekers –
“Sir, we wish to see Jesus.”
But which Jesus do they want to see?
The storyteller - whose parables made them laugh and made them think?
The miracle worker – turning water to wine, raising Lazarus from the dead?
The political provocateur - who debated Roman taxes, 
And blessed the peace-makers –
yet welcomed both tax gatherers and Roman centurion?
Or the renegade rabbi - who violated purity laws, broke the sabbath,
embraced the sexually suspicious, ate with ethnic outsiders,
and profaned Israel's most sacred space, the Temple?

“Sir, we wish to see Jesus.”
Jesus knew, many might be seeking him,
knew also, these seekers already had a particular Jesus in mind.
(Which Jesus are we after? Which Jesus are we prepared to see?)

According to the Gospel, Jeus neither says yes/no to the request of the Greeks.
Instead, he responds with a meditation on his death:
A tiny parable - understandable to any culture and any age.
“The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.
I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls into the ground and dies,
it remains only a single seed.
But if it dies, it produces many seeds.”

The seed requires its earthing - a burial of darkness, obscurity and change.
That is the only way the seed can eventually burst from its tomb,
Something unimaginably beautiful –
a lily of the field, a bushel of corn –
a tree, in the branches of which, the birds of the air find shelter.

“I will be that grain of wheat” Jesus predicts: 
Then admits the cost and the fear: “Now my soul is troubled.” 
As a church member reflected this week: “Easter is brutal.”
(Easter, in the sense of the whole Passion story – the events and cruelties of Holy Week.)

Undoubtedly grotesque, Golgotha (the place of the skull) is also a gathering place;
“When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all people to myself.”
I have come this far. Now, the last, hardest yards.
The road required – to be endured, completed, seen through - all the way.
For only in the seed’s relinquished life, harvest.
Only in the crime and the agony, the communion and the glory.
Only by the Cross, the love that will not let us go.
(It is most assuredly a strange way.)

“We want to see Jesus.”
As the shadow of Holy Week approaches,
I wonder if we really do – at least the Jesus of the Cross.
If we are impatient for resurrection –
eager to fast forward/skip the dying,
we are in the biblical tradition of discipleship.
Jesus had plenty of crowds, fewer followers.
By the end, that was down to a handful of women keeping a distanced vigil –
As one preacher drily observed: “… when they saw where Jesus was going,”
the disciples “remembered they had something else to do!” B Brown Taylor.
Or as another commentator admitted discomfort,
with the vulnerable, broken Jesus of Good Friday:
“I want a muscular, superhero Jesus. 
I want the dramatic rescue, the quick save. 
I don’t want to learn the discipline of waiting at the tomb,
in the shadowed place,
in the realm where my questions far outnumber the answers.” Debie Thomas

There is no shame in recognising that human preference
for clarity, for security and safety.
But ultimately, superhero Jesus would have little to say to the hour of need;
times of tribulation, either personal, or in the lives of loved ones.
George MacLeod, founder of the Iona Community declared
of Jesus on the cross:
“Never has there been a greater discrepancy,
between what a man deserved, and what he got.”
Jesus on the cross takes the Oscar for undeserved suffering.
But the consequence – when we find ourselves in a pit -
deserved or not –
when we think we are forgotten by God –
there, of all people, we find/see Christ himself.
He knows that place of fear and despair,
because he has walked that path before us –
and promises to walk it with us, now.
Because he once asked and answered his own question:
“Should I say – Father, save me from this hour?
No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour. Father glorify your name.”

Strange dissident of meekness, nurse of tangled souls
Martyn Joseph’s sings: So unlike the holy, to end up full of holes.
It concludes, both with the longing that Jesus’ way could be different,
but also recognition, that in that “strange way” lies its mystery and power:

The world is too much with us
Could we not now just elope?
Strange way to hold us closer
Strange way to give us hope
Strange way.