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Easter 4
8/5/2022

Revelation 3:14-22
Psalm 23
John 10:22-30

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In a sentence:
Biblical visions of tomorrow are about how we should be living today

(Last week, we “located” the book of Revelation in the category of “story”, seeing it as a story like any other, simply of a particular genre. Today we take the story-character of Revelation a little further).

There is a certain kind of person who, before reading the first page, likes to jump to the end of a book to see how the whole thing will end. About such people we will make no judgements today!

Concerning our personal stories, of course, and the story of the human being as a whole, the end is not as easily accessible. Nevertheless, now and again the question is put to us or a protagonist in a story we’re reading: if you could know the day of your death, would you want to know it? Take a moment to hear that question, and answer it.

Some will say Yes, some No. We might say No because we fear death, and to know that we will die, say, on the 8^th of May next year, will cast a shadow over every day between now and then, such that we die 365 times, rather than just the once. Here ignorance is bliss because knowledge would be torture.

Or perhaps implicit in the No is my being satisfied that I’m living the best life I can, and there’s nothing I would change if I did know the end. Knowledge of my death might be an inconvenient distraction from simply getting on with life.

Or maybe we’d risk knowing when we will die, hoping that it’s a long way off. If it is still distance, I can cut loose for a while and tidy things up closer to the date. The self-indulgent bucket list can be emptied, with time for righteousness later. Or, if the time is shorter than I thought, I could re-prioritise, go on the trip I’ve always put off, finally get around to writing a will, pray for forgiveness or call my mother.

There are doubtless many variations on these responses and rationales, but the point is that the silly question seriously tempts us to consider our present in terms of our future. If I knew that that is what is going to happen, then I might not do this, now. Knowing tomorrow changes today.

Of course, we already know this, although only in retrospect. If we had known 8 years ago that we were going to sell this property, we wouldn’t have spent all that time and money on trying not to sell the property. The link between now and our future becomes clearer when we look backwards from our present to our past.

This present-future dynamic is at the heart of Christian confession, not least in the book of Revelation. In the passages we heard the last couple of weeks, it was declared, “Look! He is coming with the clouds; every eye will see him, even those who pierced him; and on his account all the tribes of the earth will wail” (Rev 1.7). That is, “all the tribes of the earth cried out”, “If only we had known, we wouldn’t have crucified him”.

Knowledge of the future is the meaning of Jesus’ resurrection. In apocalyptic thinking, resurrection is not primarily the resuscitation of a dead person but an appearance of the end – a sign of the present times. The risen Jesus is the declaration, “This is how it ends”. At least in the Palestinian context of the New Testament, the problem the resurrection presents is not merely that dead people don’t usually stop being dead, but that if one did, we would have evidence of tomorrow, today. And, if the one who was raised had just been crucified by people who imagine themselves to be godly, then the news about tomorrow is simply devasting. “If we knew that, we would not have crucified the Lord of glory” (1 Cor 2.6-8).

If there are those in the book of Revelation who wail because they hadn’t seen what was coming – because they didn’t see the truth of the story Jesus lived – there are also those who did see it. These are the “martyrs”. The important thing about these for the moment is not that they might have been killed because of what they saw and believed, but that the word martyr itself simply means “witness”. These ones saw the future and testified to it, and judged the present in its light. Their martyrdom – being killed for this testimony – was they themselves being judged and condemned because of that vision of the future.

Yet, none of this is merely how ancient people thought. In the middle of an election campaign, we know that the scariest candidates are those whose vision of the future is least like our present. Incumbent governments have to trade on what they have already done. They argue that tomorrow will be like today because today is the fruit of all the good work the Government has done and will continue to do, in the same vein. The gospel – the good news – of the Government is that the kingdom has come.

In contrast, those candidates who preach a revolutionary vision of tomorrow – perhaps socialist, or environmentally radical, or “freedom, freedom, freedom” in the mode of right-wing reactionaries – these are the scarier electoral options. They are to the electorate like the book of Revelation is to Paul’s pastoral epistles: storms threatening the calm. These are the voices of martyrs – in the literal sense of “witnesses” – to different futures, wildly varying though those futures may be.

The real work of balancing the present and the future is that which Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition must perform. As the most likely alternative Government, the principal Opposition party has to appear conservative and radical at the same time. Perhaps it does not go too far to say that a failure to do this is why Mr Shorten is not Prime Minister. The Opposition has to argue that the kingdom has not yet come but is almost there – it needs just one more push.

Against the Government and the Opposition, the seemingly radical parties propose a secret hidden in today which will undermine the tomorrow we expect. This secret is the “true” tomorrow which doesn’t arise naturally out of today but comes to meet it unnaturally out of a future only partially glimpsed.

There is, then, a lot in common between the political platforms of the radicals and the book of Revelation. The question is simply, which vision of the future is the true mystery of today – the secret, the hidden thing, by which today is lived appropriately. Revelation offers a vision of tomorrow for a revision of today. We re‑vise – literally, re-see – today, as in a new light. Tomorrow has the crucified Jesus at the heart of all things, with the pressing question now being: if that is the case, how should we be living now?

There will be more to say of this in the weeks to come; it is enough for now to understand the dynamic. The fantastic imagery of Revelation is only the form of the substantial question, What is your personal and political tomorrow? In the case that you are unsure, it is revealed in how you live today.

You may have noticed that I haven’t come yet to the particular reading from Revelation we heard this morning! This is because all I want to do with that passage is de-sentimentalise one traditional reception of it in view of the dynamic of tomorrow and today we have been describing. “Behold, I stand at the door, and knock”, Jesus says in the that passage, “if any hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to them, and will sup with them, and they with me” (AV, alt). This is not about opening the door of your heart and letting Jesus in. The wider Revelation context of this image requires that the door-opening not be about enclosing Jesus in our hearts but about becoming enclosed within his own heart.

Jesus is not cast as our present possession but our calling into the future. Our testimony is not merely what Jesus might do for us, but what will be done, and the difference this will make for us now, “on earth and it is in heaven”.

If tomorrow is the God-given resolution of all injustice, then today is to be coloured not by violent revolution but patient action, in which tomorrow might be glimpsed.

If tomorrow is the day of judgement of all guilt, today is to be a time of turning towards righteousness.

If tomorrow is reconciliation and forgiveness, so also is today to be.

Become then today then, what God promises:

become peace,
become reconciliation,
become justice,
become love.

The book of Revelation is a vision of the future given to change today.

In light of that future, let us become that change: tomorrow’s resurrection life in a world yet shrouded in death.

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Related sermons

27 March 2022 – On being a child of God

10 October 2021 – Against dreams and visions

19 April 2020 – A living hope

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Easter 3
1/5/2022

Revelation 1:1-8
Psalm 30
John 21:1-14

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In a sentence:
As strange as the genre is, an apocalypse tells a human story: our story within the story of God

With the book of Revelation, we come to what looks to be the end of the story. We will probably think many things about “the end” over the next couple of months, but seeing the book of Revelation as the end prompts another question: where does this story start?

This is less straightforward than it might first seem. The obvious place to start anything is at the beginning, but this is difficult because nothing in time has “a” beginning which doesn’t have a “pre-beginning” before it. Where does the story of the current war in Ukraine begin? Few imagine that began two months ago with the first incursion. Perhaps it began with the end of the Soviet Union in 1991? Or in 1917 with the Russian revolution? Or with the writings of Karl Marx in the middle of the 19^th century? In telling a story – a history – we have to choose a point at which to begin. We select some defining circumstance, and the story unfolds from there.

But there is another starting point of a story which is much less obvious. This is the perceived need for the story in the first place – beginning as purpose. The writer wants to tell a story. Even if this is merely to be paid and to eat, she will eat better if the story is a good one. Opinions about what makes a story good differ, but those which sell are stories which themselves justify being written and read; these are the stories which engage us.

Stories engage us by answering a question or – what is probably the same thing – by questioning answers we already have. All good stories have this in common, even though differences in genre make it less than obvious. The relationship between a Mills and Boon romance, a grisly murder-mystery TV series and a Marvel Cinematic Universe action blockbuster might seem tenuous, but they all treat the same basic thing. While the romance or the criminality or the spaceships mark them off from each other, each is deeply concerned with the actions and interactions of people like us in those very different contexts. Stories are always about us. And so Disney’s Toy Story movies are not about toys but about people who happen to look like toys but nevertheless do all things which people do. The children in the Narnia books do not interact with talking beavers and lions but with people who look like beavers and lions. A six-year-old knows that when Peppa Pig gets into trouble for being mean to Suzie Sheep, this is not farmyard ethics but schoolyard ethics. It means that she herself – the six-year-old – shouldn’t be mean to the other kids at school. The genre gives colour to the story but doesn’t change its essential purpose. Whether it is a dark indie dystopic tragedy or a mainstream children’s animated comedy, the story is told to tell us something about ourselves.

What we receive in the hearing or reading of stories, however, is no mere information about ourselves. Certainly, we learn what kind of world it is in which we live and what kinds of creatures inhabit it. But, more importantly, we learn how to navigate that space. We are given instruction and warning: this is how it should be done, or not how it should be done. We learn what we are, what we do and what we can expect. Stories locate us in the world – they tell us the nature of the time in which we live.

The point of recognising here the human purpose of stories is to “locate” the book of Revelation. Its genre is 1^st century Christianised Jewish apocalyptic. Instead of the safe combination locks of the great heist, it has scrolls and seals; instead of the superhero it has the archangel Michael; instead of the belligerent geopolitical superpower, it has a seven-headed, ten-horned dragon. Yet that’s just how you write a story in that genre. For all that is strange about it, this too is simply a story revealing something about human being.

If there is anything which distinguishes the book of Revelation (as a story) from other stories, it is only that it is explicit about its purpose. Most stories don’t tell us what they do as stories. This is implicit, but it’s also possible that the writer and the reader might not even be aware of it in the writing and the reading.

An apocalypse – as a kind of storytelling – is literally an unveiling or a revealing. It tells you what it does – with all stories – and what we are exposed to in hearing stories. This – declares an apocalypse – is what it means to tell or hear a story. And so the opening verses of Revelation declare that it will uncover what you are by uncovering what God is, in the uncovering of Jesus as the Christ. Revelation intends to tell us who we are, what we do and what we can expect.

But again, this uncovering doesn’t merely give us information, although the text of Revelation is often treated this way. Like those maps we find at a zoo or in a shopping centre, the story lays out the terrain and locates us with a glaring yellow arrow: “You are here”, the “here” being now not a location but a condition: you are like this, and you will likely do that, and this is what will happen to you.

The question then is not, Does the way Revelation locates us “make sense”? It makes as much sense as any other location a story might propose for us, whether it’s the bowels of a starship where we work out our daddy issues with a lightsabre or a garden party hosted by the Queen of Hearts.

The question to ask about Revelation is, Is this true – in the way that stories try to be true? Because stories – as accounts of how we are and act – have to do with the truth about us. And, while they propose to locate us, they can get it wrong. There is a story which says that if they are weak and we are strong, we can take what is theirs. There is a story which says that when the going gets tough, stay in bed. There is a story which says he cannot change. There is a story which says “The only way you can preserve peace is to prepare for war.” These are not good stories, at least from the point of view of Revelation.

The test of the value of a story – including the story Revelation tells – is whether it tells the truth about us, for better and for worse, in sickness and in health. Does it speak truly what we are, what we do and what we can expect? This requires honesty and careful reflection, which are not virtues to cultivate.

The apocalypse – the revelation – of Jesus Christ has at its centre the throne of God, around which the action of history flows and from which comes judgement of all that happens. The story places us in the midst of all this with a big cross and a declaration: You are here. This is the truth the book invites us to consider: Does this “You are here” – that cross on the map which is the very cross of Jesus himself – locate us truly?

We will have more to say about this in the weeks to come, but today it is enough to ask, What is the story which speaks the truth about us? Perhaps, “Life’s a bitch, and then you die”. Perhaps, “We can construct heaven, but the bricks will have to be made with bones and the mortar with blood.” Perhaps, “Fingers crossed…”

Or perhaps the story which matters is the proposal of the Apocalypse: “Behold, I am coming soon” (Rev 22.7). Blessed are those who read, and hear, and keep this story, writes John the Seer at the beginning of his apocalypse of the world in God (1.3), for this tells you where you will finally be found.

Regardless of where you find yourself now, you will find yourself with God, your story within the story.

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Related sermons

6 February 2022 – On being a true lie

16 August 2015 – Our true story

27 June 2021 – The full story

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Easter 2
24/4/2022

Revelation 1:1-11
Psalm 148
John 20:1-18

Sermon preached by Rev. Em. Prof. Robert Gribben

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If the curiosities of calendars interest you, the latest date on which Easter ever falls would be tomorrow. This year we have coincided with Ramadan and with Passover. It’s interesting that we now notice such things. But the two families of the Christian Church do not mark Easter on the same date, for reasons I won’t give now; though this year we couldn’t be closer – a mere week apart. Today is Orthodox Easter. In my ecumenical days, I often attended both Easters in the various cultures and languages. So, we join our Orthodox neighbours in the cry Christ is risen!

The descriptions of worship in the Book of Revelation often remind me of Orthodox worship. At the front of every Orthodox church there is the iconostasis, the icon-stand, a wall of portraits; the worshippers are standing on the floor of heaven, surrounded by the saints. There are vestments, candles, incense, and exquisite choral music – but no organ or other instruments. There are cultural reasons behind Orthodox liturgy, including living for centuries under repressive regimes (like the Ottoman and the Soviet) and it is true that Orthodoxy never had a Reformation.

Revelation chapter 4 paints us the picture:

‘… at once I was in the spirit, and there in heaven stood a throne, with one seated on it!… around the throne are twenty-four thrones and seated on them are twenty-four elders, dressed in white robes, with golden crowns on their heads… and in front of the throne burn seven flaming torches which are the seven spirits of God’ …

In our own plain building, which has its own beauty, we may not have the furnishings of heaven (and we don’t!), but we do take care that our liturgy is ordered and theologically true to our Church’s doctrine; we take care in our preaching and in our prayers; we use space and colour and movement, and we even use ikons – in our own way. I’m sure that one reason for our weekly pattern of word and sacrament is that we add an action and symbols to the words. I’m glad we do: it is faithful worship. But I do wonder why no-one else in the Uniting Church wants to follow us?

It seems that John ‘the Divine’ (in the sense of a theologian) knew all these churches, all within 30 to 80 km inland from the island of Patmos. Many are close enough to be visible to each other across the plain of western Turkey. He names seven of them for whom he has a particular concern: Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamon, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia and the notorious Laodicea. They must have had tiny congregations and no buildings, and John’s about to do a thorough presbytery review of them, but he sees them through the prism of the glory of God and the Orthodox created a tradition in that light. It is truly iconic.

This is what the Risen Christ said to them in John’s vision:

‘Grace to you and peace from Him who is and was and who is to come… and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the rule of the kings of the earth.’

‘I am the Alpha and the Omega’, says the Lord God.

His vision is of the Christ in majesty, to whom he gives several titles. The first is ‘the faithful witness’ – that is, the witness which Jesus faithfully gave to the nature of God, of God’s love and grace, ‘for no-one knows the Father but the Son’ – and the whole of the Gospel of John is built around that.

Then ‘The firstborn from the dead’, by whom we have been ‘freed from our sins by his blood’ and who has opened the gate of heaven to all. This is expressed in the ikon on today’s service order. The Risen Christ grasps Adam and Eve by the hand, and with them all humankind, and rescues them from the realm of death, into the kingdom of the Father.

The Greek word for him is the ‘Pantocrator’, the All-powerful; but Easter has taught us again, that God’s power is not as other users of power are: it is ‘crucified power’.

Those of us mourning the death of our friend Wong Tik Wah, Methodist Bishop in Malaysia, five days ago, rejoice in this hope of belonging to the ‘first born’.

I leave President Putin, Russian Orthodox Christian by his own claim, to ponder what it means that Christ Jesus is already ‘the ruler of all the kings of the earth’ (1:5) as we pray that God’s kingdom will come in its fullness. And the ‘mighty will be brought down from their thrones and the lowly lifted up’ (Lk 2:52).

Finally, is the calling to the church – the people of God – ‘to be a kingdom, priests serving his God and Father’ (1:6). Here is the origin of that most characteristic of Protestant claims, that we, the baptized, are a ‘priesthood of all believers’. John of Patmos did not know how explosive this biblical word would become in Christian history in the west! We have often arrogantly have used this as a weapon against churches with a different practice of priesthood.

It is hard for them as for us to take an old word and give it a new, or recover an old, meaning. All agree there is one priest in the Christian tradition and only one: Jesus Christ himself, the anointed one. Any other people with the title do so because all the baptized are priests. We all have ministries. That does not mean there are not formative tasks to be done in the church which might be characterized by the word ’priest’ and by ordination.

A priest, biblically speaking, is a servant of God, who has responsibility for the true worship of God. It is not his own worship which is of importance, but that of the whole people with whom he stands. John of Patmos is precisely saying that our worship is shaped by the God we worship, and how we live our lives, and how we love our neighbour. There are gifts required for this task, which the Spirit gives for every part of the church’s life. In the church, Edward Schweizer said, ‘there is no superiority or inferiority, but only joy in one another’s gifts.’ Some are called by the church to the building up of the body and the equipping of the saints (Ephes. 4:11).

The second element is of equal importance. The kind of God we worship also determines our mission or rather, God’s mission. It too is a ‘crucified’ mission, not, as the Japanese theologian, Kosuke Koyama point out, a crusading one. It is self-sacrificial. It is service. In the mission of this God, every act of compassion and generosity, every act of justice, will express the love of God on the ground, as it were, giving God the glory.

‘Grace to you and peace from Him who is and was and who is to come… and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the rule of the kings of the earth.’

‘I am the Alpha and the Omega’, says the Lord God.

May our worship and our lives always reflect his.

To Whom be glory in the church for ever. Amen.

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Easter Day
17/4/2022

1 Corinthians 15:19-26
Luke 24:1-12

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In a sentence:
Resurrection life is a life of eyes-opened love for each other

In 1789, Benjamin Franklin wrote to Jean-Baptiste Le Roy concerning progress on the new Constitution for the United States:

Our new Constitution is now established, and has an appearance that promises permanency; but in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.

(In fact, Franklin’s observation was probably drawn from an earlier source). That last part has entered into conventional wisdom: nothing in life is certain but death and taxes.

Christian confession adds to this sardonic observation the following: while we might think death and taxes to be two things, we live as if they were one. For this to be clear, we must see that taxes have to do with our responsibilities to each other, the claims we make on each other, and it is these which place death-like limitations on what we can be or do. In her full moral claim on us, the other person is our limit, our end, and so our death. Death and taxes – our end and our moral accountability – coincide.

This might seem a strange place to begin our reflections on Easter Day, when we might expect to hear a clear word about resurrection. Yet, surely, a clear word about resurrection requires a clear word about death. If resurrection is somehow an “answer” to death, we have to get death right for that answer to be worth hearing.

Today’s reading from Paul comes from his great “resurrection chapter”, perhaps a strange place to look for ideas about death. On a surface reading, Paul seems to be arguing the case for the resurrection of Jesus, and our resurrection with it. I suspect, however, that what is really at stake is the timing and meaning of death. The pointer to this “hidden agenda” is that the Corinthians seem to have believed in resurrection already. Theirs was a richly blessed church:

^1.5 …for in every way you have been enriched in [Christ Jesus], in speech and knowledge of every kind…⁷so that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ.

The Corinthians had a strong sense that the kingdom had come, that they had been set free from the bondage of death. And yet, they jostled each other for priority in the community, took each other to court, were confused about obligations in marriage, argued about rights against responsibilities, and overlooked the needs of the materially and spiritually poor in their midst. It’s worth remarking that this letter contains two of Paul’s best-known passages: his teaching on the mutuality of church members with its notion of the church as Christ’s unified Body, and his “love” chapter, most favoured at weddings and funerals. As communal and love-oriented as these chapters are, we have them precisely because of the absence of the loving mutual responsibility they describe.

To recall where we began, we could characterise the Corinthians as having given up on “taxes”. Resurrection life is, for them, the overcoming of that death which is the limitation of self in responsibility for each other. Death is here social obligation: the constraints the bodies and needs of others place on us. The poor person makes a claim against our use of resources, the indigenous person against our colonising intent. The Israeli makes a claim on the Palestinian and vice-versa. The refugee makes a claim on an economic system they’ve not (yet) contributed to. Being present to us in this way, the other threatens to be the death of us.

The Corinthian church saw this sense of death overcome in what was effectively a decision not to see the presence and needs of others. Resurrection – life in freedom – is here a closing of our eyes. Their exclusion of the poor from the Lord’s table was a closing of their eyes; rejecting the spiritual objections of the weaker believers among them was a closing of their eyes. Closer to home, “terra nullius” was a closing of eyes. “Haven’t got time” is a closing of eyes. “Just a woman” is a closing of eyes. They and we overcome death’s claim on us and so are resurrected in this way: sweeping aside what feels like deathly obligation by closing our eyes.

If this is what has been happening in Corinth, then Paul’s “resurrection chapter” is strangely out of place if all he wants to do is to assert and defend the resurrection of Jesus (and our own). But, given what the Corinthians understood resurrection language to imply for their “common” life, Paul’s recurring phrase – “raised from the dead – should likely be read with the emphasis not on “raised” but on “dead”. His concern here is not, first, resurrection, for this is accepted if misunderstood. His concern is instead with the when and the meaning of death, and his message to the Corinthians is, you still have some serious dying to do.

For the Corinthians, to be dead is to see and feel the claims of others, and to be risen is no longer to need to see the other, no longer to have to “pay taxes” (so to speak), no longer to have real responsibilities towards each other. Their life together reflects this – for they do not see each other properly – and they think this to be resurrection. Here it becomes clear that an interest in death and resurrection is no mere “religious” infatuation but has deep moral consequences.

And so Paul insists on an entirely different sense for death and resurrection: to be dead is not to see but no longer to be seen. Death is “the last enemy” which “hides” us from each other and, in a way, from God. The death of Jesus is not that, like the Corinthians, he closed his eyes to us but that we closed our eyes to him. He is cast out, relegated to the worthless, a stone the builders rejected.

And so, for Paul, to be resurrected is to be seen again. When the church confesses that Jesus is risen from the dead, it says that God refuses to let us keep our eyes closed to Jesus. Perhaps it is not for nothing that Paul favours the word “appeared” rather than “raised”, in his apparently traditional account of Easter:

…Christ died … ⁴and … was buried, and … was raised on the third day …, ⁵ … [and] he appeared to [Peter], then to the twelve. ⁶Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died. ⁷Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. ⁸Last of all, as to someone untimely born, he appeared also to me…

To be raised from the dead is to be seen again.

Death is not seeing and feeling the imperative to act morally, as the Corinthians seemed to think and rejected. Death is closing our eyes and ears. Death is declaring Sovereign Borders so as not to see, and keeping detention centres out of public view. Death is covering our ears to the painful claims of indigenous peoples on the beneficiaries of colonisation.

In such decisions, Paul asserts, we mistake the means of death as the means of life. And so, again, we see how theories of death and resurrection are no mere religious additions to otherwise secular life. Affirmations of death and resurrection are active all around us. With the commencement of election season, we have entered into 5 or 6 weeks of sound-bite sermons about what should or should not be seen, what will or will not be raised to life.

Christian talk about resurrection has to do with the opening of our eyes to see each other, and the extent to which we are ourselves seen.

We are not good at this. We don’t see well, and so we are poor lovers. We need constant reminding that we are mutually-sustaining members of a common body, that only love finally endures. For now, we see only as if through a glass darkly, and so our testimony to the resurrection is itself dark and blurry. The last enemy – the death which darkens our vision – is not fully overcome for us. But when it is, we will see as God sees us: clearly, face-to-face. Heaven is being seen in all that we are and need and can be, and resurrection life is seeing ourselves seen.

To confess that Christ has been glimpsed in resurrection is to expect that we also will rise, scales fallen from our eyes. In the meantime, faith is learning to open our eyes – learning to see and love – and heaven begins to take shape among us.

To misquote Charles Wesley, for an interpretation of the verse of the last hymn we will sing today:

Soar we now where Christ has led,
following our exalted Head;
made like him, with open eyes:
ours the cross, the grave, the skies.

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Related sermons

5 April 2022 – Open your eyes

3 April 2022 – Jesus is the life, and the death

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Good Friday
15/4/2022

Numbers 5:1-10
Matthew 27:24-26,32-54

Sermon preached by Matt Julius

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God, may my words be loving and true, and may those who listen discern what is not. Amen.

We have learnt over the past two years that the world is filled with fragile bodies.

The pandemic and war; fires and floods; famine and drought.

Set against this is the chronic call of justice for marginalised people, whose bodies continue to be bound, imprisoned, and disposed of.

And the call too on behalf of the Earth’s own fragile body: the natural order stands on the precipice of catastrophe; all the world’s experts unable to tame the insatiable drive of death pushing us over the edge of a cliff.

We have learnt that our bodies do not end at the boundary of our skin.
My body extends out to what I aspirate, and to what I discharge.
Bodies have become news items, with regular reports of case numbers, death rates, and sewage detections of viral particles.

Our common humanity has been revealed as a common fragility in the face of an ambivalent natural order, and forces of death which hold our common life in their grip: ambivalence, greed, hatred, prejudice, self-entitlement, trauma.

Fragile bodies captive to the forces of death become corpses.

Into this contemporary experience we are in this place to hear again the story of the corpse of God. We hear this story in a year where we have had to navigate the risk of disease; where we have lost loved ones – some without the grace of a final touch. Even today we may be in aching bodies; aware that as we gather for worship to hear the sounds of scripture and song, around the world others hear the sounds of gunshots and bombs.

Fragile bodies captive to the forces of death become corpses.
And corpses defile.

Hear these words from the law:

“… put out of the camp everyone who is leprous, or has a discharge, and everyone who is unclean through contact with a corpse; … put out both male and female, putting them outside the camp; they must not defile their camp, where [the Lord] dwells among them…” (Num. 5:2-3)

In the framework of the ancient Jewish law, the Torah, the holiness of God must be set apart from the defiling forces of uncleanness. These sites of uncleanness remind us of the constant spectre of death which looms over humanity. Leprous skin that evokes the paleness of corpses, discharges which mark our life force leaving our bodies, and above all corpses themselves. The power and holiness of the living God cannot stand the presence of these spectres of death. The source of life can have only umbrage with death.

So it is that the Rabbi Jesus, who is called the Holy One of God, is led out of the camp, towards the cross … to the place they call the skull … to become a corpse.

“This is Jesus, the King of the Jews.”

This is the defiled one, whose corpse will surely become a defiling presence —
unable to stand in the presence of the living and holy God.

As he is becoming a corpse Jesus calls out: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
Set outside the camp alone, Jesus gives up his Spirit – breathes his last: his life force discharged from his body.

The Holiness of God must be set apart from the defiling forces of uncleanness: the spectres of death. The source of life can have only umbrage with death, seemingly even with the corpse of God’s own beloved child.

Holiness stands against death.

And yet … At that very moment … At the point of death itself … As the Holy one of God has his very life snuffed out, his fragile body crushed and beaten, pierced and bloody …

Time collapses in on itself.

Is this not the Holy One who healed those with leprous skin?
Is this not the Holy One who cast out the presence of evil spirits?
Is this not the Holy One who healed the woman with the discharge of blood, the One who raised even the dead?

At the point of death the holiness of God explodes out from the cross itself
The curtain in the temple that kept uncleanness out tears, no longer able to keep the holiness in
The world captive to the forces of death has its foundations shaken
The corpses of saints in their tombs are imbued with new life

The world is cracked open by the wooden stake of the cross driven into its heart
The sources of defilement are met face to face on the cross and there defeated
Holiness turns and goes on the attack, and uncleanness and its death-like pall must go on the retreat

All are released from the bondage of sin

Fear not the captive forces who keep us bound in death
Fear not the un-making powers which erode the earth
Fear not the fragility of bodies caught in the bonds of oppression
Fear not the spectre of death

For everything is being made holy
Death cannot hold the holy in its grip, but holiness and life and love and the divine breath of God are exploding out into the world

Everything is being made holy,
everything is being made holy,
everything is being made holy.

God will never, ever leave us.
God can never, ever leave us.
There is a new creation: and the Holy One of God in the midst of death is re-making this world as holy

And those in Ukraine whose corpses litter streets are holy
And the queer ones who pray to be different or be dead, they are holy
And the trans kids whose bodies have become objects of political rancour are holy
And black lives bound and imprisoned unjustly are holy
And refugees are holy as the years of their life eek out in indefinite detention
And the disabled bodies who are disregarded as invalid are holy

Until we see the corpses rise to life we must see the presence of the Holy working in those who beckon us to a more just world.
Holiness draws all things into the loving life of God: everything is set apart for God’s purposes of love and mercy, peace and joy, justice and truth.

Hear these words from Anglican Trans* Poet Jay Hulme:

Holy! Holy! Holy!

If God is everywhere, then everywhere is holy,
everything is holy, everyone is holy.
The blaspheming tongue – holy.
The maze of streets – holy.
The broken street light that flickers at 2am
to welcome home the dying – it too, is holy.

The homeless are prophets and saints
as much as these bones and fragments.
Treat them with reverence and love them
for they are as holy as any other.
I am holy. You are holy.
The spit that flecks your lips as you curse out a stranger
is disgusting, but holy.

We are disgusting, but holy.

When we leave strangers to die
we are leaving the holy.
When we abandon the lost
we abandon the holy.

Take your neighbour in hand,
lead them to a crowded [ED],
see the doctors pull on their gloves;
the gloves are holy.
The hospital is holy.
The cracked linoleum and buzzing vending machine;
Holy! Holy! Holy!

To save a life, is holy.
All life is holy.

Lord, even death can be holy,
when a person is ready to go.

–

… today we tell the story of the corpse of God, which does not defile, but is re-making the world to be holy, holy, holy. We tell the story of the fragile body of God whose holiness emanates out for the sake of the world, and against the forces of death.

Truly this is God’s son
Truly this is God’s law
Truly this is God’s life for the world.