Revd Mark Bonney
The Bible is an uncanny book. When I got up on Thursday morning, before coming over to church for Morning Prayer I turned the television on to hear the news - and there were the stories of the first attacks on Baghdad. The first reading that Fr Martin read came from the prophet Jeremiah and had these words:
"A lion has gone up from its thicket, a destroyer of nations has set out; he has gone out from his place to make your land a waste; your cities will be ruins without inhabitant……… Look! He comes up like clouds, his chariots like the whirlwind;…. Besiegers come from a distant land… they have closed in around her like watchers of a field." Jer 4:7,8,16,17
I'll just let that text hang there for a moment and come back to it.
Those of us who were here on Wednesday evening to hear Rabbi Kathleen Middleton speak had what a found a very helpful and thought-provoking talk - not least because of the contrasts with the Rabbi who had spoken the previous week. Amongst many points that she made was the one that the Bible has some pretty unpleasant bits in it - at the moment they are reading through the book Leviticus - here's a little bit from ch 3 that never gets read on a Sunday:
"You shall lay your hand on the head of the offering and slaughter it at the entrance of the tent of meeting;.. the priests shall dash the blood against all the sides of the altar. You shall offer from the sacrifice of well-being, as an offering to the Lord, the fat that covers the entrails and all the fat that is around the entrails; the two kidneys with the fat that is on them at the loins….Aaron's sons shall turn these into smoke on the altar, with the burnt offering that is on the wood on the fire, as an offering by fire of pleasing odour to the Lord." Leviticus 3:2-5
This morning we've just heard what is the most violent of Jesus' action in the NT - and described most violently in St John's gospel - it's only here that we read that Jesus drove them out with a whip of cords. Driving out those who were selling the animals needed for the very sacrifices described in the book of Leviticus. Those who are familiar with their Bibles will be aware that in Matthew, Mark and Luke this incident comes at the very end of Jesus' ministry and is the catalyst for the drive towards Jesus death. In John's gospel this cleansing of the temple appears at the beginning and is a backdrop for all that happens later (it's the raising of Lazarus that becomes the catalyst for the end of Jesus' life in John)- from the point of view of chronology there's no way to reconcile the two accounts - but chronology isn't the heart of the matter. The incident appears in all four gospels because it's pointing to the fact that in Christ there is a new temple as it were - that following the resurrection those who were in Christ were members of the body of the church - a temple not made with hands.
Let me now return to the passage that I quoted at the beginning from Jeremiah that was Thursday morning's reading.
"A lion has gone up from its thicket, a destroyer of nations has set out; he has gone out from his place to make your land a waste; your cities will be ruins without inhabitant……… Look! He comes up like clouds, his chariots like the whirlwind;…. Besiegers come from a distant land… they have closed in around her like watchers of a field."
It was uncanny for obvious reasons - and events subsequent to Thursday morning have only intensified things. I had to steady myself - collect my thoughts for a moment lest I read the passage entirely out of context. The prophet Jeremiah was telling the people of Israel and Judah what would happen to them if they did not repent from their evil ways and turn to God - and the one who would be dishing out the punishment, the one who would be coming like the whirlwind would be God.
Having heard national leaders on the television - calls for the turning from evil ways - and then what is happening you can understand what games my mind was playing; the Iraqi's on one side, the US and UK acting like God…. I had to get a grip of my wandering thoughts. -- there is always a special terror when anyone speaks as though God is on somebody's side at the end of a gun barrel or a cruise missile.
But where is God in all of this?
God is where he always is - in the misery and pain and hurt; in the struggle and the anguish and the grief. And that will be the pain and struggle and hurt of those who have desperately hard political decisions to make as well as those who suffer as a result of action and inaction.
It's somehow part of the foolishness of the cross that we heard about in the reading from 1 Corinthians. The cross is the antithesis of power in human terms - only the powerless died on the cross and yet Paul asserts that the cross is the place that reveals God's power - it is the place where God's ways and human ways are revealed as irreconcilable. Not all see this - which is why it's a stumbling block to so many - but it's only by meditating upon the cross and year by year entering more deeply into its mysteries that we begin to glimpse what it's all about.
The events of our world at the moment, meditating on Christ and the cross made me recall some words of the First World Ward poet Wilfred Owen. In a letter to Osbert Sitwell in 1918 he wrote thus of his wartime experience:
"For fourteen hours yesterday I was at work - teaching Christ to life his cross by numbers, and how to adjust his crown, and not to imagine he thirst until the last halt. I attended his supper to see that there were no complaints; and inspected his feet that they should be worthy of the nails. I see to it that he is dumb and stands to attention before his accusers. With a piece of silver I buy him every day, and with maps I make him familiar with the topography of Golgotha."
A hundred years hasn't changed things a lot - except that somewhat voyeuristically, almost pornographically, it's all on our TV screens.
The passage from Jeremiah that struck me on Thursday was a call to repentance. That remains a call for all of us at this terrible time. We should indeed pray for all involved - for our armed forces and for the people of Iraq.
Writing in the Church Times on Friday the Bishop of Oxford said that having got into war we must be concerned that it is conducted justly - the main imperative being that those who are not directly contributing to the war effort should never be the direct object of attack. But he finished bu making the point that we should never have got where we are now. Of course Saddam Hussein, an evil tyrant that the world will be well rid of, is primarily to blame. But western policy has been complicit for decades, supporting his murderous war against Iran, selling him weapons and failing to act when he gassed 500 Kurds. The prophet Hosea said - if we sow wind we will reap a whirlwind.
We're in a mess - but God is ceaselessly at work making something better out of the mess that we've made of things - that's part of the foolishness of the cross; even in our destruction he draws some good out of evil and invite us to share in the work.
Some words of a prayer to finish - they were by the German theologian Reinhold Niebuhr , written during WW2 .
"Look with mercy, O Lord, upon the peoples of the world, so full of pride and confusion, so sure of their righteousness and so deeply involved in unrighteousness, so confident of their power and so imprisoned by their fears of each other…"
Look with mercy O Lord for your truth's sake. Amen
This morning I want to talk about 'Passion'. Many of you will know today as 'Passion Sunday' - I'm sorry to have to tell you otherwise, but that's not it's name - at least not any longer (it's the 5th Sunday of Lent)- and historically it was only called Passion Sunday for a very short period of time. The name Passion Sunday isn't in the Book of Common Prayer, and in the CofE it was only the 1928 Prayer Book that designated it 'Passion Sunday' (and the 1928 Prayer was never legal!)- it wasn't in the ASB and isn't in Common Worship, and the RC Church and many Provinces of the Anglican Communion use the title Passion Sunday not for this Sunday but for next Sunday - the reason is pretty obvious - Palm Sunday is the Sunday when the Passion narrative is always read. However we do call it Passiontide - and one of the ways we mark that moving closer to our celebration of the last week of Christ's life is by veiling the crosses - and keeping the liturgy as simple as possible. Passiontide marks a change of gear as we get closer to the celebration of Holy Week.
But the beginning of Passiontide is a good time to reflect a little bit on that word 'Passion.' Like many words it will convey different meanings in different contexts - we may describe someone as being passionately involved with their work - they may have a passion for gardening - a passion for music - even a passion for golf. The word has an intensity about it - when it comes to the complex arena of human relationships passionate may be the word that is used about affairs of the heart - the intensity of the flames of passion in that context can be exciting in the right context and terrifyingly dangerous in the wrong one.
There are two linked roots to the English word Passion - one Latin the other Greek. The Latin root pati is to do with suffering. The Greek root is the word pathos - linked to the Latin word passio - and means a commanding and overpowering emotion - the feelings expressed may be of love, anger and a range of other emotions.
We use the Greek word in various conjunctions - particularly the two words sympathy and empathy -Counselling and pastoral care draws a distinction between empathy and sympathy - the little word sym in sympathy means with - when we sympathise we are with the emotion of someone else - the sympathetic remark is something like "oh, I understand the same thing happened to me last year" - it's OK to a degree, but not when you're then given the blow by blow account what happened to your sympathiser.. The em bit of empathy means 'in' and when we empathise we are completely focussed on the other person and their emotions - understanding them, entering into the other persons feeling and not focussing on what may or may not have happened to ourselves. Training in pastoral care, needless to say works at developing empathic skills.
Passion in its many forms and compounds is about suffering and about intense emotion.
There is an intensity of suffering and an intensity of emotion about the Passion of Christ - about this Passiontide. We enter into it in different ways and at different levels - the sufferings and emotion of Christ's Passion aren't just past event - they are played out again and again in our world - not least in the current theatre of war and its consequences. A couple of weeks ago I quoted a Wilfred Owen letter that linked the playing out of the Passion in the sufferings and emotions of the First World War - I hope you will forbear with me if I read the lines again because they are so poignant:
"For fourteen hours yesterday I was at work - teaching Christ to life his cross by numbers, and how to adjust his crown, and not to imagine he thirst until the last halt. I attended his supper to see that there were no complaints; and inspected his feet that they should be worthy of the nails. I see to it that he is dumb and stands to attention before his accusers. With a piece of silver I buy him every day, and with maps I make him familiar with the topography of Golgotha."
Passion and passionate aren't things that we English are always very good at - and especially when it comes to our faith and our practise of religion. But without an element of passion - both it's emotion and its suffering - our faith and its practise is likely to be pretty cold and drab stuff.
The words of today's gospel are passionate - they point to suffering and they contain emotional words; "Very truly I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies it remains a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Those who love their life will lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life."
Very often actions speak louder than words - to be passionate about Christ's passion - to get a little bit further beneath the surface of what it's about we need to do something rather than say something, and that's why the celebration of Holy Week that will begin next Sunday is so much focussed on action. It's very tempting to come to church next Sunday and then not come again until Easter Day - for some it may even be tempting only to come on Easter Day and rarely at other times. Those who do that miss so much - the great Three Days of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and the Easter Vigil are amongst the oldest and most traditional services in the Church - they are certainly demanding emotionally and spiritually - they're passionate, and ask passionate involvement of us - and that can be scary - but passionate involvement was what Christ did for us - and if we're really followers of his then a little bit of emotional involvement probably won't go amiss!
For William and Abigail being baptised in a moment this is also a scary moment - at least in some ways it ought to be - but they're not old enough to know! In a most symbolic way they are entering into the Passion of Christ -because the waters of baptism and the font itself represent the suffering and death of Christ - and they do that so that they can come into the resurrection life of the whole Church family. All of us, and parents and godparents particularly, have what I hope is a passionate desire that this beginning of the journey of faith will grow and grow so that William and Abigail will one day want to say for themselves that they are Christ's.
Jesus also said in the gospel this morning, "Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am there will my servant be also". The invitation id for each one of us to come and follow and passionately share in the life offered us by the one and only living God who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.