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Simon Peter, Thomas the Twin, Nathanael from Cana in Galilee, the sons of Zebedee and two m ore of his disciples were together.

This is a Star Trek type list. It’s in the form of a mission from the Starship Enterprise: Captain Kirk, Mr Spock, Dr. “Bones” McCoy, perhaps Lieutenant Uhura, and two others. And on such missions it’s obvious from the start who won’t be making it back in one piece. If this was Star Trek instead of the gospel we wouldn’t give these last two disciples a prayer of making it back from the fishing trip.

The surprising thing about the gospel is that one of these two is in fact a very significant character: one of these two, last-mentioned, unnamed disciples is the disciple that Jesus loved. And although largely a background figure in this episode, he provides an essential background for the main action.

The emphasis in our gospel is on Christian leadership and ministry, on Peter, the first-mentioned and named. Peter, the leader, initiates the fishing expedition. At the centre of our gospel there is the breakfast at which Jesus breaks bread. It is a Eucharistic breakfast, and Peter performs what seems to be a liturgical function. Peter is already on the shore with Jesus as the rest of the disciples come on in the boat dragging the net of fish. Jesus asks for some of the fish and Peter goes to bring the fish to the Jesus and the charcoal fire. It sounds a little bit like an offertory procession at a modern mass with Peter as the priest receiving the gifts and bringing them to the altar. Lastly there is the protracted conversation between Jesus and Peter. There is an emphasis on Peter’s faith and love of the Lord as well as a command to tend and feed the flock of believers.

However, if Peter (ministry and leadership) is in the foreground, we shouldn’t forget the background. Our gospel closes with Jesus commanding Peter to “Follow me.” If we had read on one more line we would have heard this: “Peter turned and saw the disciple Jesus loved following them”. In the background, then, as Jesus asks repeatedly, “Do you love me?” is the disciple that Jesus loved. In the background as Jesus commands Peter to follow is this same disciple, already following.

This last mentioned and unnamed disciple is just anonymously in the crowd that goes fishing and that lugs the offering ashore, and is just among those invited to the Eucharistic breakfast. But it is this unnamed disciple who is the one to name the unrecognised stranger on the shore: “It is the Lord.”

This gospel is about Christian ministry: the necessary role of liturgical ministry and the necessary ministry of leadership. The gospel tells us that ministry must be rooted in a loving relationship with the Lord, hence Jesus three-times-asked question: “Do you love me?”

But all the while the gospel writer is talking about Christian ministry -its necessity and basis in faith- all the while he is talking about Peter the first named, he keeps in view the last mentioned unnamed disciple. For important as Christian ministry is, as much as it need be rooted in faith and a loving relationship with the Lord, the holiness and faith of the Church is not to be located and not to be carried by its ministers and its leaders. The faith of the Church and the holiness of the Church lies in the nameless disciple that Jesus loves, who follows, who recognises the presence of the risen Lord, and who cries out, “It is the Lord!”
]]> General http://stcuthberts-durham.org.uk/homily/index.php?itemid=32 Sun, 18 Apr 2010 15:19:00 +0100 http://stcuthberts-durham.org.uk/homily/index.php?itemid=31
It caught my attention, because at that tragic moment -taking the body down, the hasty burial- it took me back to the beginning of the story. It is just the sort of thing that was said of Simeon: an upright and devout man, he looked forward to Israel’s comforting. It made me think of Zechariah, and Elizabeth, Mary and Joseph, upright and virtuous, and of the joy that filled their hearts and the joyful, hope-filled songs that they sang: Blessed be the Lord the God of Israel, he has visited his people and set them free; My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord. It made me think of Anna who spoke to all who looked forward to the deliverance of Jerusalem. In other words it reminded me of how much hope there was at the beginning of the gospel, and we are reminded of all that hope, in the person of Joseph of Arimathaea, just as the lifeless body of Jesus is lowered from the cross.

Another line caught my attention from the same Passion narrative; it was Jesus saying, “And yet, here with me on the table is the hand of the man who betrays me.” Again it made me think back to the beginning of the gospel and the first disciples: the sense of mission of Jesus’ first preaching, bringing good news to the poor, liberty to captives, sight to the blind, freedom to the downtrodden; the miraculous catch of fish, and the rapturous joy in which those disciples left everything to be in Jesus’ new community of the Kingdom. And yet, … and yet … present at the first Eucharist is Judas the betrayer. This climactic moment in the communion that the disciples share with Jesus is also the moment of fracture.

The opening chapters of Luke’s gospel are filled with a joyous hope, excitement at what God is doing. The death of Jesus is the annihilation of that hope. That is why the disappointment at the end of Luke’s gospel is so bitter and so terrible, so all-pervasive. There is Joseph of Arimathaea. There are the two on the road to Emmaus with their downcast faces: “Our own hope had been that he would be the one to set Israel free.” There are the disciples our gospel whose grief is so terrible that they reject the message of the women as pure nonsense.

We too, in these days, are a community marked by disappointment. We, too, feel that the hand of the betrayer has been with us at the Eucharistic table. Our hopes in this community to which we have committed our lives, have taken a terrible blow. And that disappointment is not easily or quickly dispelled. Priests have betrayed us. Our leadership has failed us. How can we preach, how can we hear, the message of the Resurrection in this disappointment?

Thankfully our gospel is patient with us. In the gospel there are two distinct reactions. First of all we have the women who find the tomb empty. Angels, like the angels that announced the news of Jesus birth to shepherds, now tell the women of his rebirth in the resurrection. Secondly, there are the disciples who are not yet ready to here the women’s news. Their dashed hopes are not quickly revived. The story seems to them pure nonsense. And in between the women and the disciples stands Peter. He runs to the tomb, he sees, and he comes back amazed.

A lot of hope has been damaged in us. And into this disappointment the dawn of resurrection breaks slowly. Hope returns slowly. It is not my job to rally the troops tonight; to pep you up with some Obama-like rhetoric. How could I? I’m as steeped in disappointment as you. It is not my job because it is the work of the Spirit to bring hope back to broken hearts, to bring the joy of the Resurrection into those hearts.

How do we approach this feast of the Resurrection at this time of disillusionment? Well, we do what Peter does. We come like Peter, we gawp at the cloths and the stone, and we wonder. And then we wait to see if the Spirit will break into our hearts with the light, and the glory and the hope of the Resurrection.
]]> General http://stcuthberts-durham.org.uk/homily/index.php?itemid=31 Sun, 4 Apr 2010 15:17:00 +0100 http://stcuthberts-durham.org.uk/homily/index.php?itemid=30
Almsgiving, prayer, and fasting – three key disciplines we associate with the season of Lent. And the Lord’s instruction is to do these things in private – with the minimum of fuss and ostentation… no showing off or grand gestures. And, having heard these words…. and endured these reflections of mine… what will we do next? Fr Paul and I will daub great gaudy, messy blobs of ash on your foreheads… And so, any intention you might have had to keep your Lenten discipline private and unshowy will be thwarted as you go out from here, your foreheads mucky from the ashes!

So, what’s going on? Are we really hypocrites who read one thing in the gospel and then, just five minutes later, before we even leave the building, turn around and do the exact opposite?

I sincerely hope not! The only way I can think of reconciling the gospel’s instructions with this very public branding with ashes is to think in terms of motivation. We don’t line up and receive the ashes in order to show our recalcitrant family members, our unbelieving neighbours, or our sceptical or cynical college roommates how seriously we take our Christianity and how proud we are of our Catholicism. We don’t receive the ashes in order to show off, or even in order to bear witness before the world.

No… we receive the ashes in order to remind ourselves of something. These ashes are what was left when we burnt the palms we waved last Holy Week. Signs of triumph and adulation on Palm Sunday, they had since dried up. No longer were they signs of triumph. They are dust… desiccated…reminders of death.

One of the sets of words used when signing with the ashes is Remember, you are dust, and to dust you will return. Even when we use the somewhat less grim formula Turn away from sin and be faithful to the gospel, it’s hard not to be briefly reminded of our mortality and frailty, as that gritty, messy, smoky thumb makes contact with our foreheads. So… Make no mistake: The signing with ashes isn’t a hypocritical gesture for others to be impressed at… It’s a radically personal and intimate sign for ourselves…

But even that can sound unnecessarily negative… It can sound like the kind of good old-fashioned Catholic guilt that comedians take so much pleasure in sending up – Remember you are dust… Be guilty… Be afraid…But, it seems to me, that that startlingly powerful combination of words, eye contact and touch that occurs when the minister imposes the ashes on your forehead is a call not to terror, scruples, fear, or anxiety…
It is a call to remember what we are… who we are… who made us… in whom is our destiny… It is a call to remember that we are God’s creatures…

It is a call, expressed, so beautifully in the first reading from Joel, to return to him with all our hearts… not with big gestures, but with a change of heart – for he is all tenderness and compassion, slow to anger, rich in graciousness, and ready to relent.

Of course that’s a daily call – or at least it should be – but the Church offers us this season of grace to do it in a more concentrated way, and to be conscious of one another while so doing. It is a great and most beautiful paradox, that the Lenten call is a radically personal and individual call to turn more closely towards God… and yet despite being personal and individual, it is something we do together as Christians.

Lent originally developed as a time of intense preparation for those who were preparing for baptism at Easter. It was, and still is, described as a ‘period of purification and enlightenment’ for them. With time, the rest of the Church joined them in this period of examination, conversion, and preparation… seeking to enlarge their own hearts by acts of prayer, fasting and almsgiving. And we continue to do that. Our RCIA group meets here on Wednesdays, and as the various members of the group prepare either for baptism, or for reception into full communion with the Catholic Church at Easter, we accompany them with our love, our support and our prayers.

The aim of Lent wasn’t – and isn’t – a reduced waistline or a detox of the system. The aim was – and is – a greater knowledge and experience of God – that the celebration of the Easter feasts might be a more fruitful, powerful and joyful one. We fast now that we may feast then. We remind ourselves of our human mortality now that we may revel then in the Eternal Life won for us and pledged to us by the passion, death, resurrection and ascension of the Incarnate Son of God. We refrain from singing alleluia now that we may sing it repeatedly and with abandon then. We come forward for ashes now, that we may splash in the waters of the font then. For, at its heart, Lent is a journey from ashes to the living font…

From ashes to the living font your Church must journey, Lord.
Baptised in grace, in grace renewed, by your most holy word.

Through fasting, prayer, and charity, your voice speaks deep within,
Returning us to ways of truth and turning us from sin.

For thirsting hearts let waters flow, our fainting souls revive;
And at the well your waters give – our everlasting life.

From ashes to the living font your Church must journey still,
Through cross and tomb to Easter joy, in Spirit-fire fulfilled.
(Words © Alan J Hommerding)

Now is the favourable time! This is the day of salvation!


]]> General http://stcuthberts-durham.org.uk/homily/index.php?itemid=30 Wed, 25 Feb 2009 15:48:00 +0000 http://stcuthberts-durham.org.uk/homily/index.php?itemid=29
“Freedom is everything,” they say in Corinth, “for me, no things are forbidden.” “Don’t you believe it,” says Paul. That’s verse 12, the verse before the start of our second reading.

Between leaving Washington and arriving here I was in Germany for two weeks for World Youth Day. I was with the diocesan youth pilgrimage, so Bishop Kevin was there, a number of priests of the diocese, and a good number of young people. Here was the diocese to which I belong, the universal Church to which I belong, here were friends and young people and new and interesting people to meet, and yet … and yet it was a very strange time.

It was a strange time because a whole web of relationships which had grown organically around me had been severed. I had been brutally cut free. Oh yes, of course I could go back, I would go back and people would know me, but they would not come to me to baptise their children, they would not call me to visit when they were sick, they would no longer expect me to listen and to love them when they were simply sad or distressed. A whole network of relationships had been severed. I wasn’t their priest any more. I had freedom. I owed them no debt of responsibility.

When I arrived here only two weeks later new relationships were created. My task was to get to know you, to show you that I was here for you, to minister to you and to love you. And that, I hope, has happened. A new network, a new web of relationships has been woven. I am held again within a matrix, within a community. You have expectations of me, and those expectations moor me, they hold me in place, and it’s good to be held.

The fortnight between Washington and St. Cuthbert’s was a strange time of being cast adrift: a strange, rootless, anchorless time, a frightening time. “Freedom is everything” say the Corinthians, “nothing is forbidden to me.” “Don’t you believe it,” say Paul. The freedom of not owing anything to anyone is rootless, anchorless and ultimately a terrifying place to be in. Who can live there and remain sane?

Freedom isn’t everything after all. It’s empty and lonely. And that is why we commit ourselves to relationships of debt, of owing love and time and care to people. We sacramentalise some of those relationships in ordination and marriage.

This is the basis of Paul’s argument about sexual ethics. The cry for freedom can pretend that we don’t owe anything to anybody, that we can do what we want. Paul says no: we owe God, and we owe his Church. Our bodies belong to God he says. It is in our bodies and through our bodies that we give the worship that we owe to God. There’s a link here to Romans 12 where Paul urges the Romans to make their bodies a living offering to God. In other words, our worship is the offering we make in the concrete, bodily acts of our lives.

Paul goes on to say this, “You know, surely, that your bodies are members making up the body of Christ.” Our bodies not only belong to God, but they belong to his Church, the Body of Christ. We are inserted into its fabric. It is the matrix, the web of relationships that hold us. I am not free to do what I please because I owe something to the rest of you. And it’s good to owe something to you, it’s good that you have expectations of me, that you need me to be here for you, and even (though I might not always feel it) that you make demands on me. Each of us owes something to, has responsibility for, the rest of us. If one is weakened, if one sins, the whole fabric, we corporately, this community, God’s Church is weakened.

Personal sin is never personal. It is always corporate. It weakens not only the individual, but the whole body. And individual forgiveness restores not just the individual, but the whole body, the whole people.

“Freedom is everything” say the Corinthians, “nothing is forbidden to me.” “Don’t you believe it,” says Paul. Being held within relationships of debt and responsibility, where care and love are owed, is the only sort of life worth living.
]]> General http://stcuthberts-durham.org.uk/homily/index.php?itemid=29 Fri, 23 Jan 2009 10:33:28 +0000 http://stcuthberts-durham.org.uk/homily/index.php?itemid=28 Two cowboy hats, one black one shocking pink (the latter retrieved from the garage roof where it must have been thrown by a passing hen party)
One Venetian carnival mask
A box of sound effects: two coconut shells for horses hooves, a gazoo, a bicycle bell, various bird calls and animal noises, a train whistle a swany whistle and a contraption that simulates the sound of rumbling thunder.
A nativity star with a face sized hole in the centre
One very large sheep with detachable fleece on green background
Zacchaeus’s tree in felt (together with a miniature body)
A cut out figure of a WWF all-in-wrestler with movable mouth.

You could say that it’s my treasure chest. It’s a props cupboard. Some of its spoils come out regularly, maybe annually, whilst other productions are revived less frequently. I do take some pride in my treasure chest. This is pretty close, it seems to me, to the scribe described in the gospel: the scribe of the kingdom who is like the householder who brings out of his treasury things both old and new.

However, there are other things that I have in my house. There are a few prized pieces of furniture. These make the house look nice, classy, I like to think, and welcoming, of course. Yes, it’s not really for me, it’s to enable me to entertain well: the numerous visitors who come and stay in the presbytery, and home-sick students. Except that I wince when, at the end of a meal, the heavy framed, and now well-fed students lean back heavily, and the joints of the delicately made chairs groan in complaint. With Wall-E, my chairs make the rebuke of the inanimate to the over-consumption of humanity. Also, I inwardly seethe at a wet glass, or a hot mug placed on a polished wooden surface.

So there are things in my house that are at the disposal of others and at the disposal of the gospel, and there are things that are not, and a little inventory is not a bad exercise.

I’m highlighting this verse, and taking a break from my usual concentration on Paul, because it is such an important verse in Matthew’s gospel. All the scholars say if you want to understand Matthew, the gospel writer, forget the story about the tax-collector called from his tax booth: we have no real reason to think that has anything to do with the evangelist. The line that describes Matthew is this one: the scribe of the kingdom is like the householder who brings forth from his storeroom, his treasury, things both new and old. This, they say, is how Matthew understood himself and what he was doing. Matthew is the gospel writer who brings out the old to tell the new story of the good news of Jesus. It’s Matthew who uses the phrase, “All this happened to fulfil the words of the scriptures …” He pulls out the words of the Hebrew scriptures and brings them into the service of the gospel. It is in Matthew’s gospel that we hear the words of Jesus, “Not one jot, one iota of the law shall pass away until its purpose has been achieved.” Matthew is a Jewish Christian who sees the value of the old in telling the new story of the gospel.

I’ve always found the description of the scribe an important one for my vocation as a priest. At my ordination I lay face down on the floor in a symbolic gesture that signalled my desire to give my life to God, his people and his gospel. But how do I live that gesture? Well, partly by putting my life, in all its constituent parts at the service of God, his people and the gospel. Not just the physical items in my house, but my experiences, all the anecdotes, some old, some new, all the reading and learning that I have: all of it is in the service of, or at the disposal of the gospel and should be put to use in preaching the gospel message.

Lastly, there is more offered by this verse than an explanation of the evangelist and an explanation of your priest. At another point in his gospel, Matthew quotes Jesus, “When you pray go into your private room.” The word used is the same as the words used here for storehouse or treasury. Now that’s an interesting idea for all of us. When we pray we go into that same place, the place where our treasures are: the treasures of our most precious memories and experiences, and we pray out of them, we put all of that stuff at the disposal of our prayer and our relationship with God. In your prayer go into your treasury, your storehouse, and bring out things both new and old.
]]> General http://stcuthberts-durham.org.uk/homily/index.php?itemid=28 Mon, 28 Jul 2008 15:53:19 +0100 http://stcuthberts-durham.org.uk/homily/index.php?itemid=27
In 64 AD there was a great fire in Rome, the fire through which Nero fiddled. Nero blamed Christians for the fire and so the first serious persecution of the Christians in Rome began. It is during this persecution that we think Peter and Paul were martyred. Paul was beheaded at the place we now call Tre Fontane (a name which comes from a legend about his death) and Peter was crucified, upside down in Nero’s Circus. Both were buried near to the site of their execution by Christians: Peter on the Vatican hill, and Paul on the via Ostiense. These sites seem to have remained important to the Christian community and when Constantine converted to Christianity, large Basilica churches were built over the tombs. One we call St. Peter’s, and the other St. Paul’s outside the walls.

Both Peter and Paul were executed outside the city walls (all executions were outside the ancient city). Both were buried outside the old city. Strange then, that we call one church St. Peter’s and the other St. Paul’s outside the walls. The Pope lives at St. Peter’s, and he goes to St. Paul’s when he’s being ecumenical, to open the holy door with the Archbishop of Canterbury and ecumenical Patriarchs. He is there this weekend opening this Pauline year with the ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholomew I.

The geography and the language of these two churches reflects the way we feel about the two saints. With Peter we are at home, as the Pope is at home. With Paul we are playing away from home, St. Paul’s outside the walls is a place to meet the other. We are very at home with the simple, flawed fisherman disciple. We are away from home with the cerebral, irascible apostle to the Gentiles. Why on earth, we are tempted to think, has the Pope dedicated a year to a major Protestant theologian?

The year dedicated to St. Paul will demand that we move away from home, away from our comfort zone. We will preach about Paul, and reflect about Paul. We’ll have to wrestle and tussle with him as the communities he founded did. We’re very at home with the gospels, but we struggle with the epistles. And just as the Pope goes to the church outside the walls to meet ecumenical Patriarchs, and bishops and leaders of other Christian communities, so studying St. Paul will take us beyond the safety of home to meet, and better understand other Christians who know this saint better than we.
]]> General http://stcuthberts-durham.org.uk/homily/index.php?itemid=27 Mon, 28 Jul 2008 15:49:32 +0100 http://stcuthberts-durham.org.uk/homily/index.php?itemid=26
What rains will come?
What floods will rise?
What gales will blow?
What slings and arrows of outrageous fortune will hurl themselves against your houses?

I was in my previous parish for three years. Towards the end of my time there I looked out across the sea of faces at mass and I remember thinking: This is a different crowd of people than the people I had seen here three years ago. They were the same people, of course, but what I saw was different because now I knew what the suffering of each one was.

There was the woman whose husband had died of a heart attack in the next room –only in his mid fifties- as she cooked his tea in the kitchen.
There is the family who lost their child in a road accident.
There are the elderly couple that worry about their mentally ill son and who will look after him when they die.
There is the family living with the shame and humiliation of bankruptcy.
There is the mother who never comes to communion because of a disastrous first marriage and now she brings up her family with a new partner.
There is the family that lives with addiction.
There is the family that lives with the bereavement of suicide.

I haven’t made any of those up. Some of those descriptions could equally well apply to people in this parish as to the people I’m thinking of back in Washington. I could keep going with the list. There were moments (admittedly not on a Sunday) when I would sit in church and think, “I know the great sadness in the life of every person here”. The shocking thing is that tragedy isn’t a rare occurrence. Our churches are packed with wounded people.

And look at you, so young and hopeful. The bad news is, guys, that if we bring you all back in thirty or forty years time, you’ll be a crowd of people like that. What rains will come? What floods will rise? What storms will hurl themselves, wrecking havoc, into your lives? The newspapers don’t report the same things that they used to: fewer ocean liners sink, there are no pit disasters, at least in this country, any more, people don’t die of all the old diseases, and yet we haven’t written tragedy out of the human story. The bad news is that tragedy will find its place in the lives of many of us here.

Our parish churches are filled with people who suffer, people whose lives have been marked by great and tragic sadness. But, the good news is this: our churches aren’t full of people who have been flattened, who’ve been defeated by life and its rains and floods and storms. Thank God, our churches are full of people who are alive, who still have the courage to have hope, who still find it in their hearts to love generously, even recklessly.

The people who fill our churches: when you first look at them they seem normal enough, an average crowd you might think. They don’t display publicly the scars that life has laid upon them. There’s little way of knowing what rains, what floods, what storms have thrown themselves at that crowd. And they look normal, they look all right, because they are still standing, because as well as the hidden scars there are also the hidden foundations. These are people who have faith. These are people who have found hope in the resurrection of Jesus. These are people who, despite the hurt, have found the strength to love again, and to love like Jesus, in a generous gift of themselves.

The great gift of being a priest is being given this insight into people’s lives. The thing I wish I could share with you is the love for God’s people which those insights give you. Sometimes I’m so moved by the people who are part of the life of our parish. You are growing into that people. You’ll have all the tragedies, I’m afraid, but you’ll also develop the foundations: faith, the strength to hope, and the courage to love.]]> General http://stcuthberts-durham.org.uk/homily/index.php?itemid=26 Sun, 1 Jun 2008 10:49:00 +0100 http://stcuthberts-durham.org.uk/homily/index.php?itemid=24
The backdrop to this gospel is the town. Now not all the manuscripts agree what the town is: the majority of the best manuscripts say Sychar (and that’s what we heard this morning), others say Shechem. So Shechem hasn’t an awful lot to recommend it other than the fact that there’s a well there which has been thought to be the well of the gospel since at least the fourth century which is about 70 yards out of the town.

So let’s at least imagine it like this: the well in the foreground, the town as the backdrop. That’s the way that John sets the scene. If it helps –and to be honest, it helps me- you can imagine it like one of those weather vanes with a little woman with a parasol, and a little man with an umbrella. That’s the Samaritan woman and the disciples. The Samaritan woman is out first and the disciples are in the town. Then they come out and she goes in.

We can keep this parallelism going: the disciples have gone into town to get food; the Samaritan woman has come out of town to fetch drink. And if we push a little further we realise that Jesus gives the woman a water metaphor and the disciples a food metaphor.

To the Samaritan Jesus offers Living Water,
Anyone who drinks the water that I shall give will never be thirsty again: the water I shall give will turn into a spring inside him/ her, welling up to eternal life.

To the disciples he talks of the food that is doing the Father’s work. And there seems is an implied criticism of the disciples here. Jesus asks them to look up and see the harvest ready for reaping, the fields already white. Doubtless there were fields of crops, but, I think, also in Jesus view is the town of Sychar or Shechem, the town that the disciples have just visited for food, as blinkered as the woman coming for her water. They went into that town, but without seeing the crop ready for the harvest. Probably that has a lot to do with the town being Samaritan, they didn’t perceive it as a harvest.

And right on cue, out comes the Samaritan woman again with the harvest. [Stage direction: Disciples with umbrellas withdraw].

Let’s now go back to that first question: “Give me to drink”. In the first paragraph we hear that Jesus is tired after a journey, he’s sat right down, and the disciples have gone for food. “Give me to drink” seems like a very direct and straightforward question. If we’re honest, it appears that Jesus only goes all metaphorical when he doesn’t get his drink.

But, the woman, at the end of the narrative has become this fountain of water, welling up to eternal life that Jesus has spoken of. Her witness has reaped the harvest of the town that the disciples didn’t even see. Notice that the titles by which she addresses Jesus get progressively more exalted: You a Jew, Sir, Lord, I see you are a prophet, perhaps he is the Messiah, and the highest title is the collective judgement of the town she has harvested, Saviour of the world. Notice she leaves her water jar when she hurries back.

Maybe that first question is key, maybe it isn’t so straightforward after all. “Give me to drink” is a challenge and an invitation to be a completely different person. “Give me to drink”: be someone who gives life, be someone who overflows with life. Don’t be someone blinkered and confined within the perimeters of one’s own needs.
“Give me to drink”: Give the Life of knowing Jesus.




]]> General http://stcuthberts-durham.org.uk/homily/index.php?itemid=24 Sun, 24 Feb 2008 15:11:00 +0000 http://stcuthberts-durham.org.uk/homily/index.php?itemid=25
We’re pretty sure that Matthew wrote his gospel with Mark in front of him. So what’s going on? Why does Matthew feel the need to edit Mark’s text and change “Rabbi” for “Lord”? Well, Matthew doesn’t like the word “Rabbi”. Matthew is both the most Jewish and anti-Jewish of the gospels. Matthew writes for a predominantly Jewish-Christian community, but one which has been expelled from the synagogue. It is very likely that “Rabbi” was a title used by synagogue leaders with whom Matthew’s community was in conflict. So in Matthew’s gospel and only here, Jesus teaches, call no one on earth “Teacher/ Rabbi”.

Why is that significant? Well, firstly, one of my tasks in preaching to you in Lent is to prepare you to celebrate Easter. On Palm Sunday you will hear the Passion from Matthew’s gospel, and you will hear hard words. You will hear the crowd shout to a man, “His blood be on us and on our children.” Remember when you hear those words that Matthew’s account is flavoured by the fact that his community has been expelled from the synagogue, and is in conflict with the local Jewish community. You’ll also hear the table talk of the last supper, and the disciples asking in turn, “Not I, Lord, surely?” All, that is, except Judas who asks, “Not I, Rabbi, surely?” Then I hope you recall that “Rabbi” is a dirty word in Matthew’s lexicon.

But there’s more to it than that. If “Rabbi” is a dirty word for Matthew, it certainly isn’t for other gospel writers. Mark, as we’ve seen, has Peter address Jesus as Rabbi. We have three gospels to go before Palm Sunday and all of them are from John, and guess what, in all of them Jesus is addressed as Rabbi. And on Easter morning, Mary Magdalene will recognise the Risen Lord with a simple word, “Rabbuni”. There are guest preachers for these next two Sunday’s so I want to alert you to this theme.

Rabbi, Teacher, is not an adequate title to describe Jesus. He is Lord, he is Saviour, he is the Christ, he is God’s beloved Son, but he is also still our teacher. This Lent the gospels invite us to come away with the Lord and to allow him to teach us. And in that private space he teaches us who he is and what he does for us.

This is not just the theme for the coming gospels. It is a theme, too, for this Sunday and for last. Matthew might not like the title, but he likes the idea. And the Church chooses gospels from Matthew that also invite us to come away to a private place with Jesus so that he might show us who he is.

When Jesus was baptised God’s voice spoke and announced, “This is my Son, the beloved, my favour rests on him.” The Gospel of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness explore and explain that identity: “If you are God’s Son …?” Satan asks. Peter identifies Jesus as “the Christ, the Son of the Living God”. Jesus then predicts his passion, his suffering and death. The transfiguration displays Jesus identity and makes clear just who it is who is offering his life for us.

Last week we were invited into the wilderness, into that private place of prayer with Jesus. This week, too, Jesus withdraws to a place of privacy. His public ministry in Galilee ended with the question on the road to Caesarea Philippi. Jesus withdraws with his disciples, and then again with a chosen few, just as he will on Gethsemane.
Jesus took with him Peter and James and his brother John and led them up a high mountain where they could be alone.

Our faith has to be apostolic. It has to be a public thing, a thing put into action, it has to be a faith of moral choices and social conscience. But this Lent invites us to be the Lord’s disciples and allow him to teach us. He teaches us who he is, he teaches us that he loves us -“the disciples fall on their faces overcome with fear, but Jesus came up and touched them and touched them”- and he teaches us what this love promises: forgiveness, healing, sight and resurrection.
]]> General http://stcuthberts-durham.org.uk/homily/index.php?itemid=25 Sun, 17 Feb 2008 15:13:00 +0000 http://stcuthberts-durham.org.uk/homily/index.php?itemid=23 I’m told there was an old priest in Gosforth who would begin his midnight mass sermon by looking at his watch and saying, “Exactly nineteen hundred and seventy (fill in the given year) years and seventeen minutes ago …”
Tonight is about a meeting at a certain time and in a certain place, but, in truth, the time and the place are not certain. But that’s not to say the time and the place aren’t important. I want to talk about that time tonight. I could talk about the place as well, but I’m planning on having a good few Christmases here so it’s worth holding something in reserve.

Firstly, the Year
It would seem that Luke gives us very precise information: A census under Caesar Augustus, while Quirinius was governor of Syria. We know that Quirinius did hold a census, but that he was only made governor in 6AD. Moreover, Herod the Great –who Luke has given as a time signature already in his gospel, and who is integral to Matthew’s narrative- died in 4BC. (I’m sorry: perhaps you expect this sort of thing from the Archbishop of Canterbury. And here you are getting it from me too. Well the children’s mass is in the morning. This is the adult mass and we have to face facts.)
We don’t know, can’t know, the year when Jesus was born. It’s true that every few years there’s a seasonal news item that confidently proclaims: “Jesus born in 6BC, shock …etc.” The truth is that we can’t accurately know the year of Jesus’ birth. It’s just not accessible to us. The calendar beginning with the incarnation wasn’t adopted until the sixth century. It was speculation.

The Time of Year, the Season
Again, the adoption of the 25th December as the date of Christmas came late: in the fourth century in fact. Earlier, third century sources put the date as the 20th May. Choosing the 25th December probably had a lot to do with supplanting a pagan feast. There’s no mention, of course, of any date in the gospels. The only scholarly speculation is to say that shepherds would only be out in the fields between March and November.

The Time of Day
Here, at least, we have some scriptural information. After the birth of Jesus we are told about shepherds who take it in turns “to watch their flocks during the night”. It doesn’t say precisely that Jesus was born at any particular time, but the gospel suggests something taking place at night. It fits, too, with Matthew’s story of the magi being guided by a star. And so all our Christmas cards show night time scenes. We do it ourselves. Last year at the morning mass we had a little nativity with the children: I was the star, I mean I played the part of the star, and so the first thing we did was bring on a bit of the night sky, and there it is, hanging above the crib. In both gospel traditions of the birth of Jesus there is light appearing in a night sky: Matthew’s guiding star and Luke’s angelic host.
It’s thought that the tradition that Jesus was born at midnight, might come from the line from the book of Wisdom: “When all things were in quiet silence, and the night in its swift course was half spent, your all-powerful word leaped down from heaven’s royal throne.” Isn’t that a beautiful expression of the incarnation?

Time to do a little bit of rebuilding
Hosting an Australian through three autumnal and winter months makes one very conscious of the weather. And so, one particularly dull day I found myself saying to Denis, “You can see why we need to have a winter festival.” And for many Christmas has returned to that pagan winter festival to brighten the gloomy succession of short grey days followed by long black nights. Saturday was the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year. And however non-Christian our culture becomes, no one is yet forecasting the demise of Christmas. The population at large is held in the grip of a collective urge to hang up lights, crowd around warm fires in cosy pubs or homes, and join in communal singing.
In this most unlovely times of year we fill our houses and our shop windows with pictures of angels and choir boys and a new born baby with an adoring mother. In this most cheerless of seasons we surround ourselves with Santa’s “Ho, Ho, Ho!” (hanging from not a few front doors around Durham).

A Christian Take on all this
The wintry season and long nights are powerful symbols. The year, the date and the time may be speculative, but they’re not arbitrary. Here we are at midnight, just on the right side of the shortest day of the year. We’re not yet saying, “Aren’t the days getting longer!” but we know that they are. We’re living through the same short grey days and long black nights as everyone else. And we’re gripped by the urge to light cheering lights, to gather together and indulge in some singing (which always has a dose of nostalgia). But for us the words of the songs hold true. For us the gathering is a community gathered by faith and in real hope. The candlelight recalls the words of Simeon meeting the child in the Temple: “my eyes have seen your salvation, a light to enlighten the nations.”
And so the short days, the long nights –midnight in one of the year’s longest nights- this too, becomes a powerful metaphor. It’s not without meaning that we celebrate at midnight on this long night. Tonight is about a meeting in a certain time and a certain place. God sends his Son and he meets us in our long dark nights. Jesus comes as light breaking into our longest, darkest of nights. Our experiences of despair, our experiences of unworthiness, our experience of sin is all held in this picture of the long, dark night. It is into human hopelessness, into human depravity, into human sin, it is into all this that light breaks, God’s Son breaks.
This meeting at a certain time: the certain time is the long dark night of our human experience, into which light breaks, Jesus breaks.
]]> General http://stcuthberts-durham.org.uk/homily/index.php?itemid=23 Tue, 25 Dec 2007 15:05:00 +0000