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Our first reading, Genesis 15:1-18, recounts God making a covenant with Abram. Covenants were usually two-way affairs, binding both parties. This acknowledged by them each passing between divided carcasses, symbol of the dangers of division. In this instance, only God is bound. Promising that God will remain faithful even when humanity fails. It is trust in this promise that gives Jesus the courage, in Luke 13:31-35, to continue on his way to Jerusalem despite the dangers that await him. He is given the opportunity to flee, to act in his own self-interest, but refuses. He understands that standing up to power has consequences but so does appeasing power, it will lead to his people being scattered like the chicks who refuse to be gathered together by their mother hen.
We are currently witnessing something similar play out on the international stage. In the face of threats (to impose tariffs, end military assistance, cut aid) governments around the world face the choice of putting their own interests first, protecting their own backs, or standing in solidarity with the weakest and most vulnerable. Our decisions may not be so far reaching and yet we all make choices that result in affirming or denying our solidarity with one another and with those most in need. We too can be agents of gathering or scattering. We cannot always trust those with power to use it for the good of all. We need to trust that God’s power is manifest always in gathering and never in dividing.
On the first Sunday of Lent our readings reflect on the importance of the wilderness, a place of uncertainty, where we are not in control and can no longer rely on our own strength. It is in the wilderness that we learn to trust in God and are formed into the people he made us to be. In Deuteronomy 26:1-11, the people of God have left the wilderness but are reminded of its lessons: that they are made by God, that their flourishing depends, not on their own hard work, but on God’s grace and that they are to share their blessings with others. Like his people before him, Jesus heads into the wilderness in Luke 4:1-13. Here the voice of Satan tempts him, encouraging him to be a Messiah who can feed the people, perform miracles, gain power and authority. Jesus resists these expectations by his commitment to listen only to God. We too are tempted by many voices, society, culture, family and friends all have expectations of who we should be but only God can tell us who we are. When we have lost our way, when we feel unsure of ourselves, God is inviting us to listen so that we can be formed and shaped back into the person God made us to be.
On Sunday 9th March at 6.30pm in church, our monthly choral Evensong service. During Lent Churches Together in Clapham worship together in the evening so we shall be welcoming our sister churches and Rev Kit Gunasekera from St James’ will be preaching. All welcome.
In Lent we keep Jesus company as he journeys towards the end of his earthly ministry. Today, the last Sunday before Lent, we are reminded of the start of that ministry. The voice of God, heard by the disciples in Luke 9:28-43a, tells them that he is God’s son just as the voice of God spoke at his baptism claiming him as his own beloved child. Jesus appears transfigured, transformed, somehow different to the everyday Jesus they knew. The voice tells them to listen to him, to pay attention.
By the time they return to the bottom of the mountain, the blinding light and the divine voice are gone and Jesus is the same Jesus he always was. Here we encounter another parent and another son. This son is sick and, because he is beloved, his father begs Jesus to pay attention to him and Jesus does. The love with which God claims Jesus as his own enables Jesus to claim this child too, as loved, as worthy of value and attention. It is this divine love which heals and makes whole.
The voice of God is there at our baptism too claiming us as beloved, chosen, worthy. This love will, if we allow it, transfigure us, give us the capacity to be filled with the power of God; a power to perceive others as chosen, special, worthy of attention. We, like Christ, are children made by God’s love to be a channel of that love to a world in need of transfiguration.
Joseph, however can afford to be forgiving because it has all turned out well for him. But what of those enslaved under Roman occupation, whose oppressors show no remorse and to whom Jesus preaches the power of love and forgiveness in Luke 6:27-38?
Jesus is right that it is costly to love your enemy and yet he presents this not an act of submission or weakness but a sign of strength. He offers it as a way of rejecting and subverting the power of the mighty; a way of demonstrating to those with power a different way to live.
Under Roman law, a master was permitted to strike his slave on one cheek but not on both. By asking his listeners to offer the other cheek Jesus is recommending a kind of civil disobedience which challenges the right of the master. It was lawful for a Roman citizen to force a non-citizen to carry his belongings for a mile, but no more, walking the extra mile, as Jesus urged, would compel the Roman to break his own law. In effect, Christ is saying that when our opponents go low, we need to go high. Forgiveness is not a call to put up with bad behaviour, it is a call to model a different, better way of living.
This morning’s readings explore the power of forgiveness. In Genesis 45:3-11, 15, Joseph’s brothers “could not answer him, so dismayed were they at his presence,”). They are filled with shame, as well they might be, having beaten him, left him for dead and allowed him to be trafficked into slavery. Yet Joseph shows only mercy and kindness, begging them not to feel bad, promising them land and livelihoods, “for it was not you who sent me here, but God.”
Joseph, however can afford to be forgiving because it has all turned out well for him. But what of those enslaved under Roman occupation, whose oppressors show no remorse and to whom Jesus preaches the power of love and forgiveness in Luke 6:27-38?
Jesus is right that it is costly to love your enemy and yet he presents this not an act of submission or weakness but a sign of strength. He offers it as a way of rejecting and subverting the power of the mighty; a way of demonstrating to those with power a different way to live.
Under Roman law, a master was permitted to strike his slave on one cheek but not on both. By asking his listeners to offer the other cheek Jesus is recommending a kind of civil disobedience which challenges the right of the master. It was lawful for a Roman citizen to force a non-citizen to carry his belongings for a mile, but no more, walking the extra mile, as Jesus urged, would compel the Roman to break his own law. In effect, Christ is saying that when our opponents go low, we need to go high. Forgiveness is not a call to put up with bad behaviour, it is a call to model a different, better way of living.
Life isn’t fair. But is God fair? Jeremiah thinks so, he tells us, in Jeremiah 17:510, “I the Lord test the mind and search the heart, to give to all according to their ways, according to the fruit of their doings.” This belief underlies a persistent idea that people get what they deserve: that those who are healthy and prosperous must be doing something right and those who are not must be at fault in some way.
Jesus refutes this idea, in Luke 6:17-26, when he refers to the poor, the hungry and the despised as “blessed” and those who rich, full and joyful as “woeful”. In the beatitudes Jesus separates success from virtue. The poor are no longer blamed or shamed for their predicament. More than this, for Jesus, blessing is something transformational: the hungry will be blessed “for they will be filled” and those who weep “for they will laugh”. When God first chose a people to bless it was in order that they might be a blessing.
At times, we are the ones who are empty and grieving and in need of blessing and sometimes we are the ones who have blessings to share. Whatever our situation, we are to understand that no blessing is earned; that all blessings are a gift from God; and we are only blessed in order to be a blessing to others.
The start of Jesus’ ministry in John’s gospel begins with an excess of wine and in Luke 5:1-11, with an excess of fish. The characters in both stories begin with a fear of scarcity and move to a place of abundance. What causes them to move, to act on Jesus’ words, when all he has done is talk?: “we have worked all night and caught nothing,” says Simon, “yet if you say so we will let down our nets.”
The power of words is also explored in Isaiah 6:1-8. At the start of his ministry Isaiah is afraid because “I am a man of unclean lips and live among a people of unclean lips.” He does believe that he has the words to convey the promises of God and yet he is willing to try “here I am, send me.”
In today’s world we know the power of words, we have seen social media posts lead to violence and government announcements lead to market faltering. Each week we gather and declare our belief in the power of God, in the abundance of grace, in the excessive nature of God’s creative mercy but do we live as if we truly believed them? And, if we did, would it make a difference to ourselves and the world around us? Isaiah believed that God had given him “the tongue of a prophet, that I may sustain the weary with a word.” Words matter, let’s make ours count.
Today is the last day out for Nativity figures, tomorrow they will be packed away, until next Christmas. Since Christmas we have been celebrating those moments when Christ was revealed as the light of the world: at Cana, at the Jordan, to the Magi and today, to Anna and Simeon in the temple. When Mary and Joseph brought Jesus to the temple, Luke 2:22-40, they were doing what the parent of every child would do. Yet Simeon and Anna see in him something unlike every other child, in him they see God was fully present, they see the human and the divine united. This moment of realization comes only when they all meet together: Anna, Simeon, Mary, Joseph: the rich and the poor, the male and the female, the old and the young. We too are chosen as God’s children, mere human beings who, nevertheless, have the capacity to be more than the sum of our human circumstances. We have the capacity to be enlightened and changed by others who are not like us and yet share with us the calling to shine God’s light in the world.