Acts 1:15-17, 21-26; Psalm 1; 1 John 5:9-13; John 17:6-19

This week the text of the four lectures that I gave on the subject of “The Environmental Crisis and the Church” (ISBN 978-1-9163133-1-9) went to the printers and will be published soon. This set me thinking again about a theological view of our planet and its inhabitants.

The word ‘world’, occurs 13 times in our Gospel, but in John’s Gospel it’s use isn’t always straight-forward. In John’s Gospel as a whole, one could easily be forgiven for seeing ‘the world’ as mostly scary and not very nice. Now if that isn’t how you think of it, that’s probably because the bits of John’s Gospel that we hear in Church are generally the happy parts and we tend to skip over the difficult bits. The most famous verse is probably John 3:16

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”

and that’s typical of the happy bits, but what about today’s references to the world?

“While I was with them, I protected them in your name that you have given me. I guarded them, and not one of them was lost except the one destined to be lost” and “I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one”, 

not happy bits are they?

But we can’t just dismiss our ‘broken world’ as something that God doesn’t love either, because if the broken world isn’t the one that’s so beloved of God, then the lifting up of the Son makes no sense at all. Jesus didn’t need to die if He’s only in the world for the sake of the people who like him. And Jesus’ disciples won’t be in danger if they’re to ‘bear fruit’ in a sort of happy isolation huddled away. The reason that they’re to mirror the union of the Father and Son and carry God’slove for them into a world that doesn’t know God, is because God loves that world and wants it to know that love.

Today’s passage is part of an extended prayer for the disciples. Jesus is praying it out loud so that byhearing it “in the world” in which they’re being sent out to spread the good news of salvation, they should share in His joy even as He returns to His Father (an event we marked this week in the Ascension).

The world, created by God, is also a gift of God. Jesus came into the world to live God’s light. However, the world rejected that light, denied the gift, subjugated people, and pushed down all sorts of groups such as the poor, women, the oppressed, the homeless, refugees and so on. So we live in a world so dangerous that Jesus asks God to protect his people from it. This world of death and violence hated Jesus and his disciples. This world of sin tortured Jesus and put him on a cross. We may live in this world but sometimes it feels like we don’t belong, because what gives true life is constantly being attacked and destroyed and some of the things that the world sees as important aren’t.

The word ‘world’, to which we don’t belong, isn’t the whole planet. That would deny thateverything that lives on earth is a gift from God.  If we’re apart from this world, what’s the point of caring for and trying to protect the life of the planet? 

In order to understand the the difference between the world that we live in and must deny and the world that we live in and must work for, we could make a distinction between the world and theearth. The world is that part of our world that consists of patriarchal structures, political squabbling, inequality, violence, war, attacks on the poor, closing of borders, the rich getting richer whilst the rest become poorer, and the wholesale destruction of the earth through greed, exploitation and rampant consumerism.

The earth on the other hand is the planet that gives us life and nourishment and has to do with our most basic requirements of living, who we really are. We’re all made of dust and to dust we will return; those who live in balance and harmony with the natural world, caring for all people, foranimals and plants, for rivers and oceans, valuing and respecting that gift of God which I mentioned earlier. When Jesus becomes human, He’s both God’s gift to the earth and a part of that earth himself, just like we all are.

With this distinction between world and earth, we must be careful not to get into what thephilosopher Alfred North Whitehead called the “bifurcation of nature into two systems of reality,” namely human beings and nature. We’re not separate from nature, we’re very much part of it and can’t possibly control it. There are many possible worlds on planet earth and God’s world is just one of those.

So the message from today’s Gospel is that we must fight against a world of death and destruction that emphasises separation and thrives on putting down and trampling on others, with the power of those people who’re destroying people and the natural world in wonderful place called Earth. 

The world of destitution lies in the hands of those who produce evil and do not recognise that they aren’t either as important as they think they are and are not in control of their destiny either. We do not belong to that world, the Devil or this evil, even though when we turn away from God we can be and do evil! Because of that, Jesus called us into relationship with Himself and God: sacred people living in sacred places with all forms of sacred life, without distinction. The world of destruction has desecrated the world of God, the earth, and all its creatures, including humans. 

The earth of God is also in this world of death, but our work as Christians is to be sanctified, both individually and collectively, by God. Reclaiming our sanctification in God means to become one with God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, God’s people (that is all people), and the world/earth of God. All are sacred and being attacked by the desacralization of life. 

The destruction of the earth can’t be equated with a sign of God’s second coming, the way in which some people interpret the Book of Revelation. We need to change our ways of living and relating to our fellow human beings and all creatures, seeing all of them as sacred and loved by God, so that Jesus’ prayer can continue to reverberate all across the earth.

Amen.

Acts 1:1-11; Psalm 93; Ephesians 1:15-23; Luke 24:44-53

Do you remember the Russian cosmonaut who after he returned from his mission in space said that he hadn’t found God ‘up there’ and so religion, all religion must be false (because he’s been where God is supposed to live and he wasn’t there)? The trouble with such an assertion is that it’s based on a set of assumptions that at best aren’t directed towards the right question and at worst are just plain daft. 

I don’t know how many of you have heard or read the pronouncements of Richard Dawkins on how God is basically a very capricious, vengeful angry old so and so. Well it might come as a surprise to Richard that the God he doesn’t believe in is one that I don’t believe in and the rest of you probably don’t either. So we can at least all be agreed on one thing. If we insist on operating within a framework which concentrates on the wrong things, then of course we won’t be able to see what from a different perspective might be glaringly obvious. 

I think that the Ascension only starts to make sense when we shift our attention from a Jesus floating away on the clouds to what today’s texts say about the relationship between Jesus and God. On Ascension Day when Anna and I were last in New Zealand, we went to a church full of the latest technology. The service was in many ways a sort of slide show. I counted no fewer that 37 slides of clouds (the fact that I can tell you how many there were must tell you something about the service.

“As they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. While he was going and they were gazing up toward heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them. They said, ‘Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven’”

Acts 1:9-11

Doesn’t this imply a new understanding of heaven. Heaven not so much a “place” but rather a very human way of struggling to articulate where God is to be found. In other words, the meaning of the Ascension is wrapped up in the significance of Jesus now being with God. So what exactly do we mean when we say that Jesus “sits at the right hand of God”?

To think of Jesus’ Ascension as the start of Jesus’ absence: because he ascended, He’s gone, is to focus on the wrong thing. That’s to focus on His physical body only, it implies: since Jesus has “ascended into heaven” we have been “left behind” on earth. Oh dear. But this idea isn’t isn’t what we read in our texts from Luke and Acts. In Acts 1:1 Luke describes his “first book” (that is the Gospel of Luke) as containing an account of “all the things that Jesus began to do and to teach”. The implication is that Jesus hasn’t finished. 

Acts also portrays a Jesus still engaged with the world by healing, associating with His followers, and acting through those who act in his name. The post-ascension Jesus “acts” in a much less hands-on fashion, but throughout the book of Acts the underlying story isn’t one of: “once Jesus was here, now he’s not.”

It would be a mistake to think that Jesus, God and Heaven are all ‘up there’ while we are stuck ‘down here’. The focus is on the will of the Father, through Jesus’ example we too can live ascended lives. Jesus’ Ascension is not about his absence but about his presence. It’s not about his leaving but about “the fullness of him who fills all in all.” It’s not about a location but about a relationship. Presence, fullness, and relationship must surely be what lie behind the question of the men in white, “Why do you stand looking up to heaven?” It’s as if they are saying to us, “Don’t misunderstand and distort this moment. Don’t deny yourselves the gift that is being given you.”

Archbishop William Temple said,

“The ascension of Christ is his liberation from all restrictions of time and space. It does not represent his removal from earth, but his constant presence everywhere on earth.”

William Temple

Christ now fills and sanctifies all time and space.  So the Ascension of Jesus in Luke-Acts isn’t about Where Jesus is but with Who Jesus is. Jesus’ Ascension confirms Him out as the Lord and Messiah, promoted to God’s right hand if you like, and in ways that aren’t primarily physical.

The taking up of Jesus into heaven is about our picture of God. God can no longer be understood as remote from human experience. The ascended Jesus, who sits at God’s right hand, describes a God who’s vulnerable and approachable. When we turn to God in times of distress or temptation we’re not calling out to a deity who’s aloof and can’t relate to what we’re going through. God is right in there, He’s been there, done it, He’s got the tee-shirt as they say. That being the case He can’t only comfort us by identifying with our pain but also assure us that affliction won’t have the final word. All because the risen and ascended Christ is with us and so nothing can separate us from his love. 

Forgiveness is implicit and explicit in today’s readings. The fact that the resurrected Christ appears to his disciples at all is very significant. This bunch who when the going got tough, fled and denied Jesus aren’t having their noses rubbed in their cowardice and faintness of heart. Rather his first words to them are, “Peace be with you”. Just think about it, He must have forgiven them to even bother to come to see them at all. He comes to them and in fact to all who open their hearts to Him, in mercy. The Ascension simply underlines this mission of mercy. 

For all of us the Ascension should be more about letting go than reaching out and grasping. The question for you and me is not, “How do we ascend?” That’s already been accomplished. The question is: “What’s pulling us down?”

What do we need to let go of? Fear, anger, or resentment can weigh us down. The need to be right or in control is a heavy burden to carry. Self-righteousness, jealously, or pride are very effective anchors. Being caught up in perfectionism and the need to prove we’re good enough can become all-consuming. It may be indifference or apathy. Many lives are tethered by addiction. What is it that holds you down and denies you Jesus’ Ascension?

The gravity that keeps us down isn’t creation, the world, the circumstances of our lives or other people. That gravity isn’t around us but within us. So we should all look at our lives and identify the places of gravity, but don’t despair. The very things that hold us down also point the way to ascension. Our joining in with Jesus’ Ascension begins not by looking up but by looking within. 

Amen.

Acts 10:44-48; Psalm 98; 1 John 5:1-6; John 15:9-17

I don’t know about you, but I find the machinations of political parties difficult. I don’t know what it is. Maybe it’s the hubris of politicians puffing up their achievements and those of their party, or rubbishing the achievements of their opponents – neither of which I hope most people are taken in by. Maybe it’s the endless commentary that fills the airwaves. Maybe it’s the lack of connection between grand political plans and everyday life. Maybe it’s the disconnect between what politicians say and what they do. Or maybe it’s just me. Anyway it’s been quite a week for all of that and of course with a minority government in Holyrood and a General Election in the coming months, there’ll be plenty more in the coming weeks.

We’re living through a difficult period, but of course there’ve been many difficult periods before, including two World Wars. Many of the things that we’ve taken for granted are less certain than they used to be and that can be rather unsettling – change always is, and especially when like us you’re about to move house.

Two of the best known WW1 poets Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen wrote some of their most moving pieces whilst living in the former hydropathic hotel at Craiglockart, which was requisitioned by the British army in October 1916 as a hospital for officers suffering from “psychological trauma as a result of battlefield conditions”, shell shock to you and me.

As the war progressed, Sassoon increasingly developed angry feelings about the conduct of the war and was sent to Craiglockhart for writing a letter of protest to his Colonel in July 1917, stating his alarm at the prolongation of the war, and the political blunders that he felt were leading to the unnecessary sacrifice of soldiers’ lives. Along with his poetry, much of what came out of the trenches and the reflections of those they left at home didn’t strike the note of heroic sacrifice and glory that came from the political rhetoric of the time.

In just a few words, poetry permits an economy of expression that can be very powerful indeed. Poetry can say things that simply can’t be articulated in ordinary everyday speech. Hamish Mann packs so much into his short poem ‘To-day’:

A rifle fired … a groaning man sank down to die …
An anguished prayer to his white lips leapt …
Far on a highland hill where browsing cattle lie
A waiting woman wept.

‘To-day’ Hamish Mann

“Love one another”, Jesus says to His disciples and “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” All this is part of Jesus’ final instructions to his disciples on the night he was betrayed, arrested and taken away to be crucified. Jesus’ love for his disciples, and indeed for all of humanity, for which he was willing to lay down his own life (what we might call the ultimate sacrifice). The massive challenge is that He also makes clear that these words are meant for his followers, and by extension all of us here today:

“I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.
This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you”.

John 15:11-12

As the Great War continued, people like Sassoon and many of the others in the trenches found it difficult to see what was going on as heroic sacrifice. Many war poets give us the sense that war is neither glorious nor noble; many don’t go along with the notion of sacrifice, although many did themselves perform heroic acts of bravery under fire to save others who were fighting alongside them. Acts of sacrifice not for King and Country, but for a fellow human being in need.

One such was Noel Chavasse, son of the Bishop of Liverpool Francis Chavasse. Noel was the only man to be awarded the Victoria Cross twice during the Great War. In 1916, he was hit by shell splinters while rescuing men in no-man’s land. It’s said that he got as close as 25 yards to the German line, where he found three men and worked throughout the night under a constant rain of sniper bullets and bombing. He showed similar acts of heroism in the early stages of the battle at Passchendaele in August 1917. On that occasion he was badly injured and although operated on, he died of his wounds two days later, and was subsequently awarded a second Victoria Cross becoming the most highly decorated British officer of the First World War. 

“No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends”. John 15:13

Martin Luther King Jr. however took it a step further, in the spirit of Jesus’ injunction not only to love one’s friends, and one’s neighbours, but also to love one’s enemies. As Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, “Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you.” In his final sermon, the night before he was assassinated, Martin Luther King said that he knew he personally was facing death threats: “from some of our sick white brothers”. Yet, he said: 

“Now we’re going to march again, and we’ve got to march again, in order to… force everybody to see that there are thirteen hundred of God’s children here suffering, sometimes going hungry, going through dark and dreary nights… For when people get caught up with that which is right, and they are willing to sacrifice for it, there is no stopping point short of victory”.

Final Sermon by Martin Luther King – 3rd April 1968

There are many groups in our society and around the world who are hurting, for a whole host of reasons to do with injustice, inequality and hate. Jesus in this morning’s Gospel promises: “if you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love”. This is my commandment”, he says, “that you love one another as I have loved you”. And then he tells us what that love ultimately requires: “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends”. That’s probably the most challenging thing that Jesus said.

Many from the Highlands did lay down their lives for friend and comrade, one such was Ewart Alan Mackintosh who wrote these lines. After I’ve read them, let us keep a silence as we hold before God all of those who have died in past wars, in famine, in the present conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza, all who have in whatever circumstances followed that most challenging of Jesus instructions and all those who’ve been left behind to grieve.

So you were David’s father,
And he was your only son,
And the new-cut peats are rotting
And the work is left undone,
Because of an old man weeping,
Just an old man in pain,
For David, his son David,
That will not come again.

‘In Memoriam’ Ewart Alan Mackintosh

Amen.

Acts 8:26-40 • Psalm 22:25-31 • 1 John 4:7-21 • John 15:1-8

Do you ever wonder what the Church looks like to those who don’t yet belong to it?

What do you think people suppose that it is?

As people walk past church buildings, I wonder just what they are thinking.

Some congregations have made an attempt to communicate what their message is and who they are with brightly painted signs hung on notice boards and in church porches. Here are some great real life examples I came across this week.

‘Over 2000 years old and still under the makers guarantee’

‘Can’t sleep? Don’t count sheep – come in and talk to the shepherd!’

‘Down in the mouth? Come in for a faith lift’

‘As you pass this little church, Be sure to plan a visit, So when at last you’re carried in, God won’t ask “who is it?”

‘Let us help you study for your final exams’

‘Happy Easter to our Christian friends, Happy Passover to our Jewish friends, To our atheist friends …. Good luck!’

Being a self supporting minister in a ‘secular’ occupation can sometimes be really instructive – flying under the radar  of day-to-day ‘church’ life sometimes allows me to come face to face with people’s perceptions of the Church and the various ways in which it is seen – though I know we don’t have to necessarily be incognito before people will tell us their thoughts about the church to which we belong.

To many people, the church appears to be a self-serving irrelevance – a social body existing principally for the entertainment of its aged members. For others it is a cagey, rather sinister institution seeking to exercise power by inspiring guilt in its members. For yet others it is a well-meaning charitable organisation rather like Greenpeace but filled with people wearing socks and sandals.

But if it is not any of those things, (and I confess there are times when it comes dangerously close to all of them,) then what is it? If you were put to the test, how would you describe the Church? I don’t mean our beloved St Finnbarr’s or St Andrew’s in particular, neither the buildings, nor the people. What I mean is the Church with a capital ‘C’, which is the body of Christians across the whole world.

There are various ways in which we might have a go at describing just what the Church is and many great theologians down through the ages have tried to do exactly that. Most of their efforts fall into four categories.

Some describe the Church as a group of people with shared beliefs. Those bound together, for example, by their adherence to the Nicene Creed that we usually recite here on a Sunday. And this is a fine description, as far as it goes. It gives us a picture of the Church as being rather like a college or a some sort of educational society, where we are trained to believe and understand the things of God, where we are joined together by shared knowledge.

Alternatively, others understand the church as being rather more like an Army or a hospital – an institution bound up with a particular purpose, and having a job of work to do which defines it– whether healing, or teaching, or doing battle with the forces of wickedness and injustice.

Then again others make Community the focus, describing the Church as a kind of global village, a worldwide body of people called to live together in friendship and mutual affection, exercising gifts of tolerance, generosity and forgiveness.

Others go further and say that the Church is like a giant Noah’s Ark. An institution defined simply in terms of having been redeemed – rescued from the perils and dangers of the world.

Here we have four pictures of the church – a society based on belief, an army based on action, a village based on community, and an ark based on salvation.

None of these pictures is particularly wrong, and you could find ample justification for each of them in our scriptures, but I wonder if each of them on its own is rather incomplete.

This morning’s gospel passage tells us How Jesus describes the Church – and, as is so typical, he puts it quite simply.

 ‘I am the Vine,’ he says, ‘and you are the branches.’

Consider that, for a moment. The Church is defined in relationship to Jesus – a sinuous living plant from which we are offshoots. The branches are an integral, physically connected, part of the vine.

This is no ‘club’ that we dip in and out of. We are sustained and fed by being connected to the vine, and our life depends upon that connection. What is more, we are dependent on each other, we live in communion. A sickly or infected branch affects all the others.

Just as those who looked after the vines in ancient Palestine knew, and as they know today, a grape vine requires careful and continual care for many years before it will yield any grapes at all. It is a work of painstaking devotion to tend a vine, and for this reason it was often used in the Old Testament as an allegory of Israel- God’s faithful people (or, more often, as the prophets suggest, his unfaithful people!) bearing fruit according to their deeds.

St Paul uses a different, but related metaphor, when he says ‘You are the Body of Christ’. Like limbs on a body, or branches on a vine we are completely dependent on the whole body, the whole vine for our health and survival. The vine is an organic structure, a living, growing organism adapting itself to its surroundings, whilst being trained, pruned and fed by an intelligence beyond itself.

But consider this too…as we share, by virtue of our baptism, in the life of Christ, we have been given a special dignity, a most awesome privilege. Unworthy as we are – weak, inconsistent and prone to failure – we are the way in which Jesus makes himself available to the world.

Though the vine is hidden from sight, the branches hang down rich with fruit to refresh and intoxicate all of creation – with love, and forgiveness, and healing, and mercy, and reconciliation, and peace.

God has called us, his people, the Church, to bear his fruit, to give his gifts to the world, to be the vessels of his grace. The Church is most truly itself not when it is a body of people trying very hard to do things that please God, but when it is a united body, alert to the grace flowing through it from God.

As Jesus said to his disciples:

“Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father.” (John 14.12)

Greater works than these! What a humbling and undeserved honour, we have been given.

What remains for us my friends is to be alert to God through prayer. To meet Him faithfully in His Sacraments. To open ourselves up to the Holy Spirit that flows out like sap from the true vine, to refresh us, renew us and build us up.

When we succeed in doing that, and we hang heavy with the abundant fruit of God, then the world will taste and see that the Lord is gracious. They will look at the Church, and they will know that the Risen Christ is present in their midst.

Acts 4:5-12; Psalm 23; 1 John 3:16-24; John 10:11-18

On the Fourth Sunday of Easter we shift from an historical recounting of the events following Jesus’ resurrection to Christological reflection. The idea is to assist us as we, like Mary and the disciples, try to understand what happened then and what’s happening to us, the disciples of today.

Over and over again in the Gospels (especially John) people are trying to understand who Jesus is and where he comes from. For example John reports

“Are you greater than our father Abraham, who died? . . . Who do you claim to be?”. (John 8:53)

Over the years, decades, and centuries, the followers of Jesus have sought ways to express, in words and images, who this person Jesus Christ is. John, opens his Gospel with the grand vision of one who was before all time and through whom all things came into being. Jesus, the very Word of God in human flesh. And they turn to the images Jesus uses to teach them about himself. He tells them that He’s the true vine and they’re the branches. He tells them that He’s the bread of life and living water that can banish their hunger and thirst. He teaches them that He’s their shepherd; and they’re his flock.

Using this latter metaphor, Jesus indicates to the Pharisees and to his disciples, that the religious teachers of the day are leading people astray. That the way to find God that they’re advocating is focussed on making them important. A way to make them gatekeepers, intermediaries who profit from having a monopoly position between the people and their God. Jesus is warning his hearers to beware of those ‘bad shepherds’. That’s not the way, this is false teaching, this isn’t how to find life. Today, He describes himself as the ‘good shepherd’, he earlier describes himself as the gate. The straight-forward and uncomplicated way through which all may pass. The way in which we might encounter the true and life-affirming God. 

As our passage begins, we learn that the goodness of the true shepherd comes at a cost. While the hired hand, who doesn’t care for the sheep because they’re not his own, runs away when the wolves come, the good shepherd doesn’t. The good shepherd lays down his life. Jesus contrasts himself with the hired hand, who thinks only of himself and not the sheep; running away at the first sin of danger. Jesus explains that not only is He the shepherd who’ll give up his own life for His flock, He does this willing. It may look as though He’s captured and executed by the authorities, but in reality,

“No one takes it [my life] from me, but I lay it down of my own accord”. (John 10:18)

Jesus always tries to help His followers to understand the truth of God’s Kingdom using illustrations that are familiar to them. In His situation, sheep and shepherds, and fish and fishermen are obvious metaphors for the Kingdom, for the ways of God and for God’s people. Now I’d guess that metaphors involving sheep and shepherds, work best for those who’ve been lambing these past weeks, but I guess we can all see what Our Lord’s getting at.

What Our Lord’s saying, isn’t that there’s only one way to do things or that we should all become clones of each other, or that we shouldn’t have any freedom. What He’s saying is that there are some basics we need to get right and not be distracted by those who might lead us away from how we should behave or how we might have life-enhancing encounters. It’s out of such teaching that the Christian Community as we know it today emerges.

The central message is – be careful who you trust, because if you misplace your trust the consequences can be serious. False teaching and spiritual or physical abuse are sadly not unknown in today’s church.

In our first reading from Acts, Luke describes a community that supports everyone according to their need, that pools resources, that works together, that prays together and that are thankful for what they have. He’s describing the Christian community of the early Church, but he could just as well have been describing any well functioning congregation.

A close knit community that looks out for each other, welcomed the stranger into their midst and thrives in their relationship with each other. A community first and individuals second, rather than seeking to be, above all else, individuals. Now there’s a splendid model for any Christian community especially in any remote area where people are particularly dependant on others, such as on St Kilda a century of two ago or in the Highlands or on Fair Isle today.

In John’s Gospel, Jesus illustrates what he is by the use of the words “I am the”, seven times. Today it’s the gate for the sheep, followed by the good shepherd, at other points, the bread of life, the world’s light, the way, the truth and the life, and the true vine. All these metaphors are chosen to be thoroughly ordinary, to be part of the everyday experience of his hearers. He’s not setting himself apart from the ordinary, quite the reverse. He shows that simply being humble and ordinary and true to what you are, is all that it takes.

Scripture uses the language of sheep and shepherding to underline this ordinariness.

As Peter says in his letter:

“By His wounds you have been healed. For you were going astray like sheep, but now you have returned to the shepherd and guardian of your souls” (1 Peter 2:25)

and John in his Gospel:

“Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” (John 10:9-10)

The idea is the same, no matter whether the community lived two millennia ago or today in war-torn Palestine, a couple of centuries ago on a tiny island group 60 miles out in the Atlantic, on an isolated island between Orkney and Shetland, or today here in Tain, East Sutherland, or wherever else. 

Amen.

Acts 3:12-19  •  Psalm 4  •  1 John 3:1-7  •  Luke 24:36b-48

Last weekend, Peter and I went along to the 80^th birthday party of a dear friend. We had a most lovely time meeting new people and  catching up with one or two who we had not seen for ages. It just so happened that on the way back I was reading an article about the ‘World’s Greatest Party Crasher’. This title has been unofficially given to an american called Fred Karger.

It appears that over the years, Karger has crashed hundreds of high-profile parties and celebrity events. He even ended up several years ago as an uninvited guest on stage at the Academy Awards and got himself into the White House Correspondents’ Dinner for President Obama. Karger claims there is no high-profile party or wedding or funeral or political event he can’t crash. He says the key to being a successful party crasher is to look confident, act as if you belong there, and no one will question you.

Our gospel reading for today made me think of Fred Karger and the “art” of party-crashing.

In our reading, though, the party crasher was Jesus and the interesting thing is that it wasn’t a party until Jesus showed up. In fact, before he turned up, things were looking rather gloomy.

Jesus wasn’t exactly an uninvited guest in this story, but he certainly was unexpected. After his crucifixion, his disciples were trying to sort out the meaning of the reports they had been receiving about appearances of the risen Christ. It must have been totally confusing to them. Was it a hoax? Perhaps it was some kind of ghost. Last week we heard about Doubting Thomas. But it’s important for us to see that at first it was difficult for all his followers to deal with Christ’s resurrection.

Then suddenly it happened. The disciples were gathered together in one place and the crucified Christ himself stood among them. The disciples were startled and frightened. Then Jesus said to them, “Why are you troubled and why do doubts rise in your hearts? See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself . . .”

The response of the disciples is a sermon in itself. Luke tells us that they “disbelieved in their joy . . .” It was simply too wonderful to be true. He was alive and he was with them—right there . . . in their presence! He had been raised from the dead. Talk about bringing life to a party! No wonder they had difficulty believing. Some people still have that problem today. Many desperately want to believe but something holds them back. “See my hands and my feet . . .”

When I was training for ministry, I remember attending a session being delivered by a Prison Chaplain who was telling us about the work she did and sharing some of the stories of people she had worked with. One such person was Maxine (of course I have changed her name to be as discrete as possible – but her story is a powerful one).

When Maxine was six years old, her mother told her to kill herself because no one wanted her. Can you imagine a mother saying that to her daughter? When she was nine, Maxine’s mother abandoned her, leaving her at school and not turning up to collect her. Maxine’s grandmother was granted custody of her, but she beat her quite brutally. It’s no wonder that when Maxine grew up, she turned to drugs, and eventually crime to help her deal with her painful past.

In time Maxine ended up in prison, which actually turned out to be the best thing that could have happened to her, because it was there that she first heard the message of Jesus. Through the prison chaplaincy, she learned that Jesus was the embodiment of God’s love and that he came to die for us on the cross to take away our sins and give us new life.

As Maxine told the prison chaplain about her background, she showed her some of her scars, the scars left behind by her childhood beatings and her drug use and rough living. Eventually, Maxine became a prison chaplain herself and was no longer ashamed of her scars. As she said, “How could I help other wounded people if I did not make friends of my own wounds?”

The risen Jesus showed the disciples his scars because he was going to send them out to do the work the Father had sent him to do—to save wounded people. And they couldn’t save wounded people unless they could see and touch and make friends with Jesus’ wounds. Only then could they proclaim with confidence the limitless love of God.

Many people desperately want to believe, but something holds them back. Maybe if they could see his scars, it would make a difference.

How?

Well for one thing, some people have difficulty believing that God really cares about people so much—that he would give His life for them. A Saviour with scars in his hands and feet and side? Some of us are more comfortable with an impersonal God, one who is a far off King on a throne, who is the root of all being, the source of life and power, but not of personality. The idea of God with nail prints in his hands and feet and side because of His great love for us is an idea we are not ready for.

Professor Maria Teresa Dávila put it this way: she writes that Jesus’ resurrected body shows his disciples that the triumph of life over death is “not a victory without cost.” God’s love for us required that He humble Himself, give up His power and authority, take on human form, and suffer humiliation and injustice and persecution and torture and death to save us. As Dávila writes, “Victory didn’t erase the scars. He continued to carry on his very skin the evidence of a life lived in radical commitment to God’s love and justice.”

How outrageous are the claims of the Gospel? The divine Creator of all that lives and moves and has its being, came down to earth and suffered and died to say to us that no one on this earth is beyond God’s love and concern.

In trying to deal with the meaning of the cross on which Christ died, the early church came to understand that those nail prints in the hands and feet of the Master should have been ours. But God so loved the world that he sent his own Son to bear the burden brought about by the iniquities of us all. Can you believe that God really cares about you that much?

It’s like the judge a few years ago, who heard a dispute for a landlord who wanted to evict a deaf couple who couldn’t afford to pay their rent arrears.

Judge Donald McDonough was accustomed to dealing with more than a hundred such disputes on an average Friday, so this wasn’t the first time he was called upon to pass judgment on a situation like this. But there was something about this deaf couple and their grim situation that touched Judge McDonough’s heart. Before he gave his judgment, he excused himself from the bench and went back to his chambers. A few minutes later, he returned with £250 cash, the exact amount of money the deaf couple owed in rent. He handed it to the landlord’s lawyer as he pronounced his judgment: “Consider it paid.”

What beautiful words— “Consider it paid.” Those are the words Jesus Christ speaks to us. Our sins, our debts, our failures. “Consider it paid.” The empty grave, the empty cross, the wounds in Jesus’ hands and feet and side—those are all physical reminders of God’s ultimate announcement to humanity: “Consider it paid.” That’s how much God loves us. And yes, it is hard to believe that God loves us that much, but his scars are a reminder.

There are lots of people though who simply have difficulty believing that life really goes on beyond the grave. It seems too wonderful to believe that there is a world beyond this one—another existence in which that which dies here is resurrected to new life there. Yet such a conviction is at the very heart of our faith.

It is very difficult for most of us to face the thought of dying. There is a story of a family returning from a funeral. The mother says to the children in the back seat: “Well, yes—we’ll see Granddad again soon, when we get to heaven.” 

With that, the smallest child in the family says, “Can I just wait in the car?” 

I can understand that sentiment. None of us wants to die. But that’s life. No one gets to wait in the car. The truth is we will all die. But thankfully, that’s not our final destiny. We were created for life, not death. God did not bring us into being for this world only. Christ showed us that death is no longer our enemy. Death has been conquered. Because Christ lives, we too, shall live. We no longer need to fear death. Without the Easter faith not only death but life itself is ultimately meaningless.

Those who have seen the scars of the risen Savior need not fear talking about death. Jesus is alive and because he lives so shall we live!

Many people resist believing the Good News that Christ is alive. Some cannot believe God really loves us that much. Others cannot believe that life really does go on beyond the grave. But even more significantly, most people do not want to deal with the implications of those two truths. What if Jesus really did rise from the grave, what does that mean for our lives today?

What if there really is a God who is intimately concerned with our lives? What does it mean if this life really is but a prelude to everlasting life?  And what difference would it make in your life to see the hands and feet and side of the risen Christ? Would it cause you to take more seriously your walk with the Man from Galilee? Would it have some effect on the goals you have set for your life? After all, if life is indeed eternal, some of our goals are going to seem awfully short-sighted and self-serving, are they not?

Come and see the hands and feet of the risen Christ and you will know that there is more to life than death. Those who live their lives in the light of eternity never run out of a purpose for life.

“See my hands and my feet . . .” said Christ to his fearful disciples. God really does love us that much. Life really does go on beyond the grave. How will you live in response to these two great truths?

Acts 4:32-35; Psalm 133; 1 John 1:1-2:2; John 20:19-31

What are the last recorded words spoken words by one of the apostles and what did he say?

It’s a shame that Thomas is remembered as ‘doubting Thomas’ because he ought to be remembered for the most forthright confession of faith in the Gospels:

“My Lord and my God”

John 20:28

and yes that’s the answer to my question. It’s the most direct statement of who Jesus is that you could devise. Jesus replies:

“Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”

John 20:29

And that’s us, you and me.

But this is ground that we’ve been over many times before. Thomas seems to have been branded as a doubter because he’s honest and forthright. But the thing that we often overlook in the story of Thomas is that he’s not there with the others. Have you ever wondered where Thomas was that evening?

John’s tells us:

“When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week”

John 20:19

So that’s Easter Day, the day that Mary Magdalene comes to them with this incredible story of seeing Jesus…Alive. And what do they do? They hide away:

“the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews”.

John 20:19

All of them that is except Thomas, he isn’t there. So where’s he and what’s he doing?

None of the Gospels shed any light on that, but elsewhere John’s gospel gives us a picture of Thomas as one of the boldest disciples. Thomas urges them all to go with Jesus back to Bethany near Jerusalem when they hear that Lazarus has died. Everyone else is terrified that returning will lead tothem being stoned to death. Not our Thomas:

“Thomas, who was called the Twin, said to his fellow-disciples, ‘Let us also go, that we may die with him.’”

John 11:16

So when the other disciples tell Thomas about Jesus appearing to them, that’s the same people who just a couple of days ago deserted Jesus and publicly denied knowing him, he’s just supposed to shrug and trust what they say?

Let’s think about this doubt for a minute. Would you have trusted them?

We live in a world that seems to be simultaneously skeptical and gullible.  People refuse to believe in certain things…but believe in all kinds of other things with very little evidence. Whether it’s about Covid or vaccines or climate chaos or economics or many other weird and wonderful things. 

People who steadfastly refuse to believe in God because he doesn’t meet their ‘evidential standards’ or ‘it’s just a bunch of fairy tales’, will swallow any number of far more implausible ideas about the world if they read it on social media.

We live in a world where: “Show me…Prove it…where’s the evidence”, sits side by side with conspiracy theories, fake news, half-truths, words and images taken out of context and out-and-out lies, leaving aside the photoshopped, staged, promotional propaganda. And here we are in an election year!

We’re all doubters (or at least we should be). Doubt isn’t the opposite of faith, certainty is the opposite of faith. We all need to take a deal of care about what we do or don’t believe.

None of that helps us with where Thomas was, but it does help us to see Thomas’s situation more clearly.

One thing our Epistle shares with our Gospel today is the insistence on:

“what we have heard, and what we have seen with our eyes.”

1 John 1:1

But what does John’s Epistle say next? 

John’s first letter begins: 

“We declare to you what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life – this life was revealed, and we have seen it and testify to it, and declare to you the eternal life that was with the Father and was revealed to us”

1 John 1:1-2

Now in the Gospel account, none of the other disciples touch Jesus, they just see and rejoice, but then neither does Thomas , he just declares:

“My Lord and my God!”,

John 20:28

when Jesus invites him to touch. The testimony of the Epistle is:

“We declare what we have heard…and seen…and touched with our hands.”

1 John 1:1

Clearly Thomas is unfairly seen as the doubter, they all were, as we heard in our reading from Luke’s Gospel on Thursday.

Now what about us? What really sustains us in our faith? Is it not a combination of our own experience, what we as disciples see with our own eyes, and the fellowship of other Christians, with whom we worship on a Sunday or any other day and with whom we are united across the globe? The faith of each other, helps you and I to reinforce our own faith, as it did with the disciples in the locked room, but that doesn’t mean that there’s no room for uncertainty, for questioning or for growth in of our faith and our understanding of God the world.

There are, of course, plenty of things in our lives that we should properly worry about, but there are other things that we can do no other than leave to God. Do you, like me, lie awake at night churning over things from the day before, or worrying about things to come? But what does the psalmist say in psalm 4 (next week’s psalm)?

“Know that the Lord does wonders for the faithful; when I call upon the Lord, he will hear me. Tremble, then, and do not sin; speak to your heart in silence upon your bed.”

Psalm 4:3-4

An invitation not to lie awake worrying, but to open yourself up to listening to God. He goes on:

“I lie down in peace; at once I fall asleep; for only you, Lord, make me dwell in safety”.

Psalm 4:8

If you spend those waking hours crowding out God’s voice then the opportunity is missed. As the writer of Psalm 4 says:

“the LORD hears when I call to him”

Psalm 4:3

– the only problem is, will I be attentive enough to hear the reply?

So why wasn’t Thomas there that first night? Maybe Thomas was out being an apostle, carrying out the hard, messy work of God’s mission: bringing reconciliation, pressing for peace, advocating for justice, rather than hiding, fearful and doubting.

Following Jesus isn’t about overcoming doubt, it’s about being willing to reach out and touch the wounds that we inflict on each other…in order to bring healing. It means risking your heart, and being willing to step into the messy, difficult, and scary places of hurt and grief that are always left in the wake of violence, in order to bring peace.

Maybe Thomas wasn’t there that night because he was out doing what Jesus had bidden them all to do And maybe he’s with us every year, just after Easter to remind us that following Jesus means being present with your whole self, doubt and all, and standing with others in difficult situations, just think of the example of the aid workers from World Central Kitchen. 

Amen.

Alleluia Christ is risen, 
He is Risen indeed Alleluia!!

Easter always seems to me such a relief after all the austerities of Lent and after the grief and sheer dreadfulness of the cross (I trust that there were some austerities over the last seven weeks). So today has the cross has been turned into joy? it’s a sort of trick question because in that idea lies a trap. The Cross hasn’t been replaced by joy, after all that awfulness, defeat and gloom of the Passion, like Heaven stepping in and provided the happy ending after all, just as Walt Disney would have told it.

Friedrich Nietzsche, the nineteenth century philosopher, wrote about Christians and Christianity. He praised Christianity as a religion but he never became a Christian. When asked why not, he said “For a group of people who claim to believe in Resurrection, none of them looks redeemed”. Oh dear!! For Nietzsche an undeniable sign of Resurrection is Joy, looking redeemed and in so doing, bringing a sense of hope to others that’s tangible and irresistable. It’s not shallow but deep, abiding and enduring and even death can’t break it’s hold and suffering and persecution often strengthen it. It brings light in the darkest of places. It knows fear but isn’t paralysed or controlled by it.

“It brings good news to the oppressed, it binds up the broken-hearted, it proclaims liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners; it brings recovery of sight to the blind, it proclaims the year of the Lord’s favour.”

Just as Isaiah said it would. And Jesus told those that he read that passage out to in the synagogue that

“it had been fulfilled in their presence”.

All wonderfully positive stuff. Easter doesn’t cancel out the Cross, no it’s what the Cross is actually about. Of course there are two events, the Crucifixion and then three days later Resurrection from the dead. But these two events are part of the same story and that story has a single meaning. Resurrection is, if you like, the punchline of the story. 

Christian faith isn’t a pair of rose-tinted spectacles through which to look at the Cross. The Cross is still a terrible instrument of torture and horror, one of the cruelest ways ever devised by human beings to kill each other. Christian faith doesn’t gloss over all of that. No Christian faith looks through the cross, and sees in that awfulness the mystery of love, the mystery of unconditional forgiveness, the mystery of hope and the very mystery of God.

Easter isn’t an alternative to the Cross, its a necessary part of the journey. The services from Maundy Thursday through Good Friday and Holy Saturday and Easter Day are connected, some would argue that they are in fact just one in a number of episodes. But therein lies another trap. If you do what the BBC iplayer would like you to do and binge watch them as what they call a boxed set, or even telescope them all into one, and don’t allow the impact of each to seep in, you skip straight from the start to the end, without your feet touching the ground (let alone getting washed). And if you do that you risk missing the meaning all together. 

Jesus washing the disciples feet in loving service, Jesus sharing of His body and blood in the bread and the wine, the betrayal by Judas one of his chosen followers, all the Disciples falling asleep and then running away, Peter’s denial that he even knows Jesus, Jesus pardoning both the penitent thief and the unrepentant religious authorities and Roman soldiers, Joseph of Arimathea finding the courage to ask for Jesus’s body and carefully laying it in his own tomb. And finally the discovery that the stone has been rolled away and the tomb is empty. All these are essential elements of the Easter story, without them the Resurrection doesn’t make any sense at all, does it? There’s no mysterious joy of Easter without the tears shed by the women at the foot of the cross on Good Friday.

Ok so what is the Resurrection? Well if I could nail that (no pun intended) in a couple of minutes, I could write the book offer it on Amazon and retire. This man Jesus carried obedience and love to the point of destruction (not just the torture of the cross, but death, an ending, a total failure, finito) because of this, he’s been raised up beyond death to pure love and that folks is the life of God.

The Resurrection of Jesus was the creation of the new bodily practical, down to earth world, not some sort of etherial existence in the clouds, the new way of being human, the new way of being a person in this world. The risen Jesus didn’t enter paradise. He is paradise. Heaven isn’t a place up there beyond the sky. Sorry if it comes as a disappointment, but missions to the moon, to Mars or to the very edge of the solar system or beyond aren’t going to bump into heaven on the way, no matter how far they go. Heaven is the Risen Christ, the Body of Christ, living by love, pure love, which sets no conditions, no boundaries, the beginnings of risen humankind, the ultimate future of humanity. 

In the holy mystery of the Eucharist we share in the embodied life of the Risen Christ and it’s because we belong to this new world, that we can conquer death, that we’re able to live not just for ourselves but for others in love. The love that Christ showed us, in everything he taught and every thing he did. And its because of love that we celebrate the Cross at Easter.

Resurrection brings together two great benefits of Christ’s Passion. It frees us from the prison of the past (what others have done to us and what we have done and regret) through the forgiveness of sins – “Father forgive them, they know not what they are doing”. It also frees us from the fear of the future, opens us to the sheer unexpectedness of God, to the gift of life everlasting with God, with one another and with the renewed creation, so that we can live our lives in love, the love that is God.

If we’re paralysed by the past or the future, we can’t fully live in the present. Resurrection gives us the ability to be present – to live, not just forever, but for now. 

Leo Tolstoy wrote that:

“he became a Christian because he saw that the men and women round about him who believed in the faith, received from it a power that enabled them to face life and death with peace and joy”

So would you rather be more like the people that Leo Tolstoy found around him or the ones that Friedrich Nietzsche met.

Alleluia Christ is Risen, 
He is Risen indeed Alleluia!! 

Amen.