View or print as a PDF

Advent 1
1/12/2024

Jeremiah 33:14-16
Psalm 25
Luke 21:25-36

---

The Doctor is a time traveller. And if you’re wondering, “Doctor who?” – precisely! In a cunningly disguised time machine, Doctor Who, the last of the Time Lords, travels from the very beginnings of all things to their very end.

Even if you’re not particularly interested in the time-travel/science fiction genre, you likely know the apparent paradoxes of time travel. One of the first questions to which the possibility of time travel generally gives rise is, What would happen if you were to travel back in time and kill your own parents before you were born? The paradox, of course, is that if I kill my parents and so am not born, how could I kill them?

Storytellers have sought to think through this and other time travel paradoxes with varying degrees of success, although, in the end, none of it really makes any sense. And, often enough, making sense isn’t really the point – certainly not in the case of Doctor Who, at least, where the point is more enjoying watching a crazy person and his sassy sidekick do their stuff.

What has this got to do with today’s text from Luke’s gospel, with its apocalyptic foretelling of the end of time? Just this: New Testament apocalyptic thought is a time machine with its own set of paradoxes and contradictions.

The word “apocalypse” relates to the uncovering of the end of the world – the revealing of the goal towards which God draws it – quite apart from the dramatic form apocalyptic thought took. New Testament apocalyptic serves as an itinerary for the end times, by which we might know where we are up to as that time approaches.

Yet the most apocalyptic thing in the New Testament is not any of its “watch-for-this” predictions of what is yet to come but the already-happened resurrection of Jesus.

Resurrection as a general “idea” was an apocalyptic concept at the centre of the religious and political atmosphere of Jesus’ time. The details varied in the different accounts, but the point was not that resurrection was a miraculous return to life. At the apocalypse – the revelation of God’s righteousness – a general resurrection of one sort of another was anticipated as part of a great judgement; it was how the final setting-right touched upon everyone – the living and the dead.  This meant that, in late biblical times, if someone were to stop being dead, this would be a sign that the end of the world had come. By affirming Jesus’ resurrection, then, the church affirms not life after death but that we have seen the end of the world: the goal towards which God is drawing us, even Jesus himself.

This is where the time machine of New Testament apocalyptic kicks in with a couple of temporal twists of its own. The first of these is that the resurrection does not reveal Jesus in the future. Unlike the Doctor and all other time travellers, Jesus doesn’t move through time into the future. Rather, the future is seen in him, here and now. And if his disciples sense that Jesus continues to be present to them long after the events of Easter, then their future is also present to them, here and now in the presence of the future-containing Jesus.

More than this, the Jesus the disciples see in the resurrection is the same Jesus they knew in his prior ministry. The preaching, teaching, exhorting and challenging Jesus was the same as the Jesus encountered in the resurrection. The resurrection was merely(! ) the apocalypse – the uncovering, the revelation – of who Jesus was and how he was related to God. It was not, then, so much that our once-future moves in the resurrection to be relocated in Jesus; it was always in him, even as he walked the dusty roads of Palestine. This would seem to be the point of the Transfiguration of Jesus one ordinary day on a hilltop: here, for a moment, the meaning of Jesus’ extraordinary ordinariness is seen.

The paradox of the New Testament apocalyptic time machine is that the now of Jesus, in whatever condition he might be met, is the future. And the gospel is that this now future might be ours.

Now, as interesting as I hope you’re all finding this to be, I admit that it is not yet very useful! What I’ve tried to say is that time is a central notion in the New Testament’s wrestling with the person of Jesus, and that the outcome of that wrestling is a notion of the past, the present and the future which is quite confounding of ordinary understandings. To confess the resurrection of Jesus is to remember our future, and this must qualify our reading of New Testament apocalyptic such as we find it in texts like today’s from Luke.

The importance of all this – its usefulness – is that, for the New Testament, a Time Lord is not one who controls time – who can wind it forwards or backwards. A Time Lord is one for whom the present time is no impediment to life. Such a one has no need to wind forwards or backwards; now is always good enough. Life does not have to wait for tomorrow (or even return to yesterday, to recall last week’s thoughts).

This, of course, messes with our usual sense of time. The time which matters here is not the ticking of clocks, as it usually is in sci-fi time travel. It can be that, but this is scarcely a very interesting type of time. The biblical sense of time is entirely social and political – and so is utterly interesting if we are paying attention – and we come closer to the truth if we say that time is what passes between persons. Such time is more a quality than a quantity. The ticking of clocks is a mere medium for that human passage, that human exchange.

If a Time Lord is properly one for whom time is no impediment to life, then this means that my set of relationships here and now are not merely where I happen to live. The here and now – and not the tomorrow – is where I can be truly alive, God’s will done on earth, as in heaven.

It is our failure to live in such a timely fashion which bears in on us from all sides. Time – in the mode of our current relationships – is something from which we constantly seek to escape. This is the meaning of Israel in Gaza, of Russia in Ukraine, of the rhetoric of our politicians, or of our dismissal of the insufferable neighbour, colleague or spouse. It is the meaning of lonely old souls in nursing homes, of binge-watching streamed TV series and of comfort chocolate. In our fractured relationships with each other and our lack of reconciliation within our very selves, true life is only to be found in the kind of future which comes from the further ticking of a clock. Peace, reconciliation, oneness – heaven – are always put off till tomorrow.

It is in contradiction of this that the risen Jesus is the future, here and now. In him, longing for the future is met with his fullness of life in the present. Jesus is lord over time by reconfiguring the relationships around him. He reconciles, heals, joins, uncovers new possibilities, overcomes without destroying. The future in him is now because God is able to work with our now. It is as Lord over this kind of time that Jesus is Lord over all time, which is to say that the Incarnation is the meaning of the Resurrection.

And us? Unlike the Doctor, Jesus is not the last of the Time Lords, the only one who can pull off life in the midst of death. By God’s grace, he is the first among a great family of Time Lords, called to live the future in the present, to find life in all its fullness in the midst of the change and decay which surrounds us. The Body of Christ is called to be timely in the way of Jesus himself.

If the point of watching Doctor Who is to enjoy a Time Lord and her sassy sidekick do their crazy thing, then the point of Christian discipleship is to be Time Lords. This will often make us seem crazy. For most of the world, it is well understood that if the life of heaven were our destination, we would be poorly advised to try to get there from here.

But our call is the call to the Now.

And even if it is crazy, we do our reconciling, relationship-renewing, time-bending thing anyway. This is because our sidekick is especially sassy: Jesus the Christ, who is first and last, who is today, yesterday and forever, and in whom we now and finally live, and move and have our being.

With a God like this, every time is God’s time, and ours.

View or print as a PDF

Pentecost 26
17/11/2024

1 Samuel 2:1-10
Psalm 16
Hebrews 10:11-14, 19-25
Mark 13:1-8

Sermon preached by Yoojin Song

---

Have you ever watched a Superman movie or read the comic? Most of us have probably heard of him or know his story.

In 2013, another Superman movie was released, called Man of Steel, directed by Christopher Nolan.

In the movie, Superman wears a suit with an ‘S’ symbol on his chest. For a long time, I thought this ‘S’ stood for ‘super.’ But there’s a scene in Man of Steel where Lois Lane asks Superman what the ‘S’ really means. Superman explains that it’s not actually an “S” but a symbol for hope in his world.

While many focus on Superman’s superhuman powers, his true role is to bring hope to seemingly hopeless situations. In moments of crisis, disaster, or danger, people look to Superman with hope, waiting for him to appear and save them. In fact, in the Superman series, we often see scenes where people wait for his rescue in their most desperate times.

Not just in movies, but in real life, many people try to hold on to hope in the face of an uncertain reality and future. But where people place their hope can be very different. Some place it in wealth, others in their own abilities, but what really matters is if our hope is in the right place.

Just as people look to Superman in moments of crisis, trusting in his power to rescue them, we, too, have a Savior who stands ready to respond to our needs. Through the Holy Spirit, Jesus is always with us, deeply understanding our struggles and listening to our prayers. Our hope in Jesus takes shape as a daily reliance on His presence, His strength, and His unchanging love.

This hope allows us to do our best in what we can control, while entrusting what we cannot to Jesus, finding peace in knowing He is always near. Like the words of Psalm 23, we can trust that He will lead us in goodness. With this trust, we find true peace and freedom here on earth, knowing that He is guiding us faithfully each day. Just as Superman’s symbol represented hope, the cross of Jesus reminds us of a far greater hope: a Savior who not only hears our cries but walks with us, offering peace in every circumstance.

Today’s reading from Mark chapter 13 connects back to events in chapter 12. In chapter 12, while Jesus was teaching in the temple, He criticized the scribes. Their actions were not just small mistakes; they had twisted their religious responsibilities, making faith seem confusing and shallow. Jesus spoke out against their hypocrisy and empty show, and then He pointed out a poor widow who was giving her offering in the temple.

While the wealthy gave a portion from their abundance, this widow gave all she had to live on. Jesus praised her offering, teaching that the true value of giving lies not in the amount, but in the heart of faith and sincere devotion behind it.

In Mark 13:1, one of Jesus’ disciples says, “Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!” Admiring the beauty of the temple, he was impressed by the grand stones and impressive structure. This reaction makes sense because the temple was the center of Israel’s religious life. The temple in Jerusalem, built by Herod, was known for its grand and beautiful appearance. The Jewish historian Josephus even described it as being made of white marble stones, carefully arranged to look like waves flowing across the walls when viewed from a distance.

But Jesus responds differently. He says, “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.” He is foretelling the complete destruction of the temple—a prophecy that was fulfilled in A.D. 70 when Roman soldiers destroyed it.

Hearing this, the disciples ask Jesus when these things will happen and what signs to look for. Here, it’s important to understand that biblical prophecy is not given to simply satisfy curiosity about the future. While prophecy may indeed point to future events, its purpose goes deeper: it calls believers to respond in the present with faith and a renewed commitment to live according to God’s will. This is what sets biblical prophecy apart from secular predictions or fortune-telling, which often aim to exploit fears about the future. Biblical prophecy always carries a message that urges us to live faithfully now, no matter what lies ahead.

So in Mark 13:32, Jesus says, “But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.”

Jesus didn’t focus on the outward beauty of the temple building. Instead, He saw the inner corruption and predicted its destruction. This message reminds us that the true temple is not a building, but the community of believers, created through Jesus’ sacrifice, resurrection, and ascension (Acts 2:44-47). It also reminds us that our own bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19). Our true hope and trust should rest in Jesus Christ alone.

In our lives, we might also rely on things that are ultimately temporary, like the temple that would be destroyed. Jesus warns us in verse 6, saying, “Many will come in my name and say, ‘I am he!’ and they will lead many astray.” We should reflect on whether there are things in our lives that we hold onto as if they could replace Jesus.

In Counterfeit Gods, Timothy Keller, the former pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York, explains that our modern society is not so different from ancient cultures. He says that each culture has its own idols. For example, places like offices or gyms can become “temples,” where people pursue blessings for a happy life and try to ward off misfortune. In our personal lives and society as a whole, we can find gods of beauty, power, money, and achievement, all holding a near-divine place. Keller points out how young people today, especially young women, often struggle with depression or eating disorders due to an extreme focus on appearance. Many prioritize money and success as the highest values, even at the cost of family and community.

Similarly, the temple in Jerusalem during Jesus’ time was created for a good purpose—to connect God and His people. Yet, over time, an obsession with the temple itself led the leaders to become addicted to wealth and status, while the people suffered under misguided teachings.

He also shares the story of Chris Evert, a top tennis player in the 1970s, who idolized success. With the highest career win rate in history, she considered retirement with great fear. She once said in an interview, “I was afraid of letting go. Who would I be and what would I do without tennis? Winning gave me a sense of worth and applause, and I needed it to feel like someone.”

Yet, in times of crisis, wealth, status, and achievements often fail us. Wealth, status, and achievements cannot protect us from war, famine, economic instability, or natural disasters.

Like the disciples who admired the beauty of the Jerusalem temple, it’s easy for us today to be swept away by the glamorous progress of modern civilization without stopping to question it. Yet, as Christians, we are called to see beyond the glamour of the world and recognize the increasing corruption and moral decay hidden beneath.

Just as Jesus reached out to those who were marginalized and became a source of hope, our purpose as God’s children is to love God and love our neighbors. Jesus’ cross may have seemed like a failure in the eyes of the world, but it became the foundation of our hope and the beginning of new life.

Jesus, who became fully human and experienced life as we do, is not a distant observer of our struggles and pains. Even now, through the Holy Spirit, our heartaches and burdens are brought before Him. He sees our sorrow and suffering as His own and desires to show us a way forward in hope. When we bring our frustrations to Jesus in prayer, He listens to our stories and responds with compassion.

Following His example, may we, both as individuals and as a community, look around to see where help is needed and live as a light of hope, sharing God’s love and justice with the world. Amen.

View or print as a PDF

All Saints
3/11/2024

Revelation 21:1-6a
John 11:32-44

Sermon preached by Rev. Rob Gotch

---

Over the past few weeks, the lectionary has drawn passages from the middle chapters of Mark’s gospel, and also from the letter to the Hebrews.  This letter explores the obedience, suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus as the one begotten by God and appointed as great high priest to appear forever before God on our behalf.  The many significant declarations made in this letter follow the no less significant introduction: ‘Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom he also created the worlds.  Jesus is the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being, and he sustains all things by his powerful word.’

In order to speak this powerful word, Jesus arrives in the midst of human history, gathering a community of disciples and engaging in a ministry of healing, truth telling, justice seeking, and restoration.  As this journey unfolds, Jesus teaches his disciples about the kingdom of God, a kingdom that he inaugurates through his own humble self-giving.  Over and against assumptions that kingdoms are created and sustained only through the exercise of oppressive imperial power, Jesus inaugurates the kingdom of God by submitting to that power.  Three times in Mark’s gospel Jesus describes his impending passion, and on each occasion the misunderstanding and fear of the disciples beckons to us across the centuries and invites us to wonder about our own discipleship.

On this day that recalls the All-Saints tradition of the church, we shift briefly away from Mark’s gospel to read from the gospel according to John.  We read about the raising of Lazarus, and the apocalyptic literature in Isaiah 25 and Revelation 21, in which God’s oppressed and persecuted people hear words of hope about how God will wipe away all tears and swallow up death forever.  I suspect that much of the church’s most precious literature was written by those who were facing the end of life as they knew it.  So perhaps that’s the key for how we should read that literature in our own place and time.

There are many things in our own context that threaten life as we know it:  the obscene profit of those who peddle weapons of war;  the unaccountable exploitation of the politics of fear;  the loss of confidence in, and commitment to, shared truth;  the blind reliance on economic growth to build common wealth;  the rampant greed of industries that refuse to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.  And just recently, the word apocalypse has been used to describe the shocking devastation of life, limb and infrastructure in Gaza, and the flood ravaged Spanish city of Valencia.  These things certainly threaten life as we know it, but do they also constitute an apocalypse in which the hiddenness of God is revealed to sustain God’s people in faith and hope?  Indeed, what would such an apocalypse look like?

In the gospel passage we hear the pain of Mary’s grief when she says to Jesus: ‘Lord, if you’d been here, my brother would not have died.’  And we also note the deep irony in the lament of her community:  ‘Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept Lazarus from dying?’

How does this connect with your own experiences, feelings and fears about the things that threaten life as we know it?  Can you imagine yourself lamenting:  ‘Lord, if you’d been here, the things that threaten life as we know it would not cause so much anxiety and grief?’  Friends, if you can ask this question, then I hope you can also believe that, just as Jesus wept for the family and community of Lazarus, so too does he weep over your uncertainty and disorientation.

But note that his weeping in the gospel passage is not the end of the story.  It’s not enough for him to draw alongside Mary and Martha and their community in empathy and compassion.  He prays for that community, but not for some vague blessing, or that God will draw near in comfort and peace, or that God will journey with them and sustain them in hope.  These are all fine sentiments, and I’ve used such words myself many times, but this is not what Jesus offers in his prayer.  Rather, he declares that the purpose of his prayer is that those hearing him may believe that he has been sent by the one to whom he prays.  And it’s because he’s been sent by the God of life that, upon the command of Jesus, Lazarus comes out of the tomb.  We’re told that many people who see what Jesus has done believe in him.  They come to faith in Jesus, not just as a great teacher or miracle worker, but as the one who has power over life and death.

Indeed, this is the real and only purpose of miracles in the gospels – miracles are signs that Jesus is himself the embodiment of the kingdom he proclaims.  Apocalyptic literature graphically recalls the life denying forces in our world, but it also affirms that these forces have been overcome by God;  the God, according to John’s Gospel, whose Word became flesh to speak life into the world.  This Word, silenced briefly upon a cross, now speaks forever through an empty tomb, breathing the peace of his Spirit upon his fearful disciples in every age.

The crises of our time are deeply challenging, and it’s tempting to define them as an apocalypse.  They certainly seem to threaten life as we know it, but it’s not clear to me how they also declare hope in the God who draws near.  In fact, the most significant crisis before us is also the most unexpected one, because it comes to us through the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  The phrase ‘lurching from one crisis to another’ is sometimes used to describe a person or an institution that is out of control and about to descend into complete chaos.  This phrase reflects the notions of control and power that are so desired in our society, and in which a crisis is something to be avoided or managed.

But the Gospel declares the crisis of the cross;  not a crisis to be avoided or managed, but a crisis by which we are invited to recognise the tombs of darkness, doubt and despair from which Jesus yearns to release us.  Thanks be to God, whose Word gathers his saints in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, welcoming them to his banqueting table, where he offers himself in bread and wine, and raises us into life as his body.  Thanks be to God for the one who declares: ‘Behold, I am making all things new.’

And now to the holy, blessed and glorious Trinity, three persons and one God, be all glory and praise, dominion and power, now and forever.  Amen.

View or print as a PDF

Pentecost 23
27/10/2024

Hebrews 7:23-28
Psalm 34
Mark 10:46-52

---

“Teacher, let me see again”, asks Bartimaeus son of Timaeus, a blind beggar, sitting by the roadside as Jesus left Jericho.

Most of us know this story pretty well, so I won’t spend too much time on the details, other than to note that the miracle in the story – the opening of Bartimaeus’ eyes – is the miracle we are ourselves to expect when we gather in this way to hear and consider these accounts of the ministry of Jesus. The question to bring to the text is not whether Jesus “could” open a blind person’s eyes, but whether we are sure we can see.

The religious and the secular

So, rather than unpack our text directly this morning, I want to invite you into a space about which I’ve been recently pondering. This space is the rise of what is being called “Christian nationalism”, in the US, as well as in Europe and part of South America. What is there to see here?

What is interesting about this resurgence of religious identity at a political level is that is is happening now, after several generations of a predominantly secular outlook in the modern liberal West. In Western societies, religion has been reduced to an optional concern within the wider range of human pursuits which make up the secular city. Secularity has served as a kind of political and social neutrality which allows for religious conviction but does not require it. The secular is the universal – common to all – and the religious (and other things) are options within that universality.

On the face of it, the resurgence of religion within some social and political spaces looks to be a simple anti-secular move in which religion is reasserted as having public relevance: the churches (or mosques, etc.) are fighting back. But the resurgence of religion can be read to have less to do with conventional religion than the rejection of social, political and economic universals which deny local interests and commitments. This includes the rejection of many of the conclusions and impositions of Western secularism.

Religion is a useful means by which local or national communities can protest against a prevailing universalist order. If the religious are outsiders or a subset within a secular national or international liberal polity, then we can reject an imposed universalism like Western secularity by appearing more religious. The intention here is less to be religious than to be politically and culturally particular, against perceived imperialisms imposed from without. Such communities are not so much “religious” as just non-secularist, if acceptance of secularism means assent to a set of political, economic and anthropological narratives which we experience as oppressive or alien.

The irony here is that the secularism of Western liberalism has started to seem rather parochial, rather limited, rather like a religion, despite having no commitment to a god conventionally understood. And so as certain polities claim their religious heritage, they do it explicitly against the West: the West is not our religion.

Everything turns into religion

Of course, the secularist doesn’t want to look religious. Yet if, as the secularist holds, religion is divisive, it is reasonable to characterise what is divisive as broadly religious. And so it has become almost passé to observe that we “now live in broad settled ideological tribes,” which tribes “demand from us a devotion to orthodoxy and they abide not reason, but faith.” (to quote from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s 2022 Reith Lectures [the BBC])

Faith and religion are usually invoked in this way to signal decay; the notion is usually that common experience and rationality have been abandoned and we are back in the realm of metaphysics and credulity. But it is just as possible that this new religi‑fying of human existence is less a zombie-esque paroxysm of the previously suppressed disease of religion than the re­‑cognition of an ineluctable reading of the human – homo religiosus, the human tendency to construct fractious, religio-cultural political systems and, through these, to project universalised transcendences which suck the rest of the world into them.

The important point is that modernist secularity, with its intention to bind with certain social and political norms, is experienced by many as divisively religious in this sense. Adichie’s suggestion, then, that we “now” live in broad settled ideological tribes, is inadequate; the difference between “now” and the implied non-tribal “before” is not the recent emergence of religion-like ideological tribes but the re‑cognition of what was previously de‑cognised: the human as tribal, ideological, religious. The old turtles are now displaced by pieties and devotions: it’s religion, all the way down.

“Religion”, of course, is redefined here as what develops when two or three of us gather with intent. But if the redefinition holds, the current resurgence of religion in politics is not the political problem to be treated. Rather, this resurgence is simply the resurfacing of our Midas-like capacity for turning everything into religion, even our secularity. If I – a nation even – wish to resist the imposition of someone else’s idea of what I should do or be, religious identity is an effective means of resistance. Contemporary religious resurgence takes a nationalistic shape because borders are convenient fault lines for breaking away from oppressive socio-political impositions. In this, nations are less claiming themselves as profoundly Christian, Muslim, or Hindu than they are simply being polities with majorities having a particular religious heritage, which is useful for reinforcing a distinct local identity.

This is to say that politics becomes inherently theological. To say that religion is both universal and problematic is to say that the political problem is the religious problem; there is no neutral politics, certainly not “democracy”. And it is to say, further, that conventional religion is no convenient scapegoat for explaining our fracturing political compromises, as if human religiosity were a disease which could be treated. The resurgence of religion is a response to secular religion itself. “Christian” nationalism is not the problem; the deep-rooted and divisive religion of nationalism is: Make [America / Hungary / Brazil / Poland / Russia / etc.] Great Again.

Any lamenting of the resurgence of religion, then, misses the point. If it is true that our tendency is always to be divisively religious even as we try to be secular, the political question becomes not what to do with religion but which is the best kind of religiosity for the future of humankind. This is because it is the best religiosity which gives us the best secularity, the best political unity.

Eighty years ago, the Christian thinker Dietrich Bonhoeffer was sitting in a Nazi prison in Tegel, thinking through the relationship between particular religious experience and universal human experience. In his own case, he asked how Christian religion could be more than just for God-botherers, or the weak or the fearful? How does the God of all things break out of the confines of local religious identity into the wider world, speak from a particular tradition into all traditions?

Central to Bonhoeffer’s tentative thinking here was the idea of “religionless Christianity”. To modern minds, of course, this is a contradiction in terms, for what is Christianity if not a religion? And so what is it but limited and divisive?

The simplest explanation is to look at the example of Jesus himself, whose own existence we could say was “non-religious religious”. Again, this seems a contradiction in terms: as a Jew, Jesus looks to be thoroughly religious. And he is, in the way that we all are, one way or another.

Yet the Jesus who matters here is not the one defined by synagogue attendance but the one who stands simultaneously for and against his religious tradition, necessarily religious in some mode but not limited by that religiosity. This is a religiosity “for” others rather than over against them, a particularity which connects rather than isolates. Jesus stand as one for others, rather than against them. As a man who sees, Jesus is “there for” Bartimaeus, the one who does not.

This, of course, is precisely what is not happening in the resurgence of so-called Christian nationalism. Nations are doing what they have done pretty much since the rise of the nation-state – making themselves great. And, as has also been the case since the rise of the nation state, religion has been pretty useful for this – so useful that the nation and the religion tend to coincide and feed from each other.

What can we do about this? Jesus’ own fate is sobering – his purported resurrection notwithstanding – as was Bonhoeffer’s own fate. This may be what Christian maturity – religionless religiosity – looks like in a radically religious world: an actual or metaphorical death at the hands of the dominant religion, society and politics of one’s day: a death for God at the hands of the gods, a death for the other at their own hands.

Thinking this way about what is happening with religion in the world at the moment (and all moments) doesn’t give us an easy out. It simply clarifies what is happening and what is at stake. Whether it is conventional religion, or secularist and philosophical variants, religion is everywhere, and it’s killing us, as it always has.

We are in this place today to hear about Jesus only because we hope this might be a place where we might, with Bartimaeus, see such things a little more clearly. And if we do, then the invitation is clear: Let us, again with Bartimaeus, throw off the heavy cloak of religion and follow Jesus “on the Way”.