Sermon 18th January 2015

Today, one of our Lay Readers, Adrian Parkhouse, continues our study of the Gospel of Luke. The reading is from Luke 7: 36-50

In the house of Simon the Pharisee

“You gave me no oil for my head, but she has put perfume on my feet.  That is why I tell you, Simon that her sins, many as they are, are forgiven:  for she has shown me so much love.  But the man who has little to be forgiven has only a little love to give.” vv. 46/7 (JB Phillips trans.)

1.         We have got a lot to cover this morning and not much time so I want to start at least by taking things at a fair lick. 

First, our text this morning is a painting by Moretto da Brescia. (see http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a7/Moretto_da_Brescia_-_Supper_in_the_House_of_Simon_Pharisee_-_WGA16229.jpg ).   I learn from Wikipedia that the painting hangs in the Church of Santa Maris in Calchera, a town just north of the motorway from Milan to Venice.  It was painted between 1550 and 1554 by Il Moretto who by then was about my age.  He was to die in 1554.  It is said that he was a pious man who fasted before undertaking a religious painting. The painting is entitled “Supper in the House of Simon the Pharisee”.  I will describe the painting a little later but pass around a couple of copies now for those who can an want to look at it

Second, the catch-up:  we and the children are looking at the same passages from Luke’s gospel:  so they like us have had the chance to consider the curious paradox that Jesus consistently presents – the contradiction that marks him out as the one who at the same time both attracts and repels.  So we saw him taking up the scriptures and reading a manifesto of revolutionary theology from Isaiah to his home crowd who were simultaneously bowled-over in wonder and scandalised by horror;  and last week he attracted a crowd with his teaching, so many they filled the house, so the crippled man had to be smuggled through the roof;  and the midst of this rapturous acclamation he shocks by assuring the man of forgiveness.  Attraction and repulsion:  the power to shock, but to do so effectively.

2.         Third, I want to mention a couple of things that we won’t be looking at in any detail.  You see we could look at how this passage, as a culmination of the events set in this chapter represents Jesus working out that commitment to revolution –  bringing healing to the sick, sharing compassion with the desperate widow and now telling good news to this prostitute in Simon’s house.  We might note the report back to John the Baptist on the progress of implementation.  We could explore the “revolutionary view”. But we are not going to do that.  But don’t forget it is in the background.

            Or we could look at this story of the forgiveness of the prostitute in the context both of that compassion to the widow who faced economic ruin and, the start of the following chapter, the naming of the women on whom Jesus has come to rely.  We could look at how, in an obsessively male culture, Jesus did more than he had to do to identify with women, to underline equality.  We could explore the “feminist view”.  But we are not going to do that.  But don’t forget it is in the background.

3.         Back to our text:  Il Moretto’s painting.  They say various things happen as you get older:  the classic example is that policemen get younger.  What I have noticed is that, while others around (including those of you who I have known for several decades) accrue wisdom, like rings on a tree, all I accrue is an increasing awareness of how little I know and how much there is to know.  How many times have I witnessed explanations of Einstein’s theory “E=mc²”?  Do I have any idea what it is about?  None.  Worse asked to repeat it I am likely to say it as “E= MC Hammer”;  and worse still, I don’t even know who MC Hammer is!

            Art is one thing I know very little about.  However, it is an area in which I feel comfortable with my ignorance because I have decided that I know what I like.  I don’t mind whizzing through a gallery casting no more than a glance at its contents, but I am very happy if one work causes me to stop short and tarry awhile, drinking in its meaning to me.  I would stop at Il Moretto’s painting today – stop even if it were in a room filled with the many other paintings of this scene.  Why?  Well let me describe it briefly:  the painting is about 6x4ft and is painted as if in a window with a round top, its curves echoed in the dim outline of the darkened arches of the building in which they sit.  There are 5 figures; 2 servants, one a boy walking behind the main actors:  we see that the man servant carries a bowl of pears blushed pink;  the boy’s red shirt calls our attention almost to the centre of the picture and we follow his eyes as he looks over his shoulder, his own attention rapt by the figure of Jesus.  Two other figures sit at a table –the end we see covered in a cream cloth;  with pewter plates with remains of fish-heads and bread.  Behind the table is the smaller man, in a dark overgarment and a cream head dress, its cloth being brought around under his chin, below a full, if grizzled and greying beard.  He, and it must be Simon, is silent looking forward into the face of the central figure who is Jesus.  Jesus wears a light almost brown-red gown with a black throw over his left shoulder and perhaps a napkin cloth (on which we can clearly see the blue hemming stitches) on his lap. He is sitting slightly to the left of centre with his shoulders turned toward Simon, his head turned towards him and his hands held out at his waist level (echoing a cross?), his left hand resting with open palm on the table near to Simon and his right being straight ahead of him, its fingers dropping down as if to indicate the final figure at his feet.  Jesus is not speaking either.  Perhaps he has just said:  I tell you, Simon that her sins, many as they are, are forgiven:  for she has shown me so much love.  He is silent, Simon is silent: they look into each other’s faces. 

            The final figure is the prostitute.  She alone is dressed in clothes that look more 16^th Italian than Judean - a full sleeved, pleated pale green dress with a covering over her legs ad a shawl.  She is on her knees at the bottom right and her body stretches across the bottom and down to the floor where she rest on her elbow with her right hand holding her long – almost pre-Raphaelite – hair close to her face and close to Jesus leg and her other hand touches Jesus bare foot.  We see the perfume bottle near her. 

We see her face in profile.  And her face is why I have stopped here.  None of the other paintings – even another by Il Moretto of the same scene – shows a face filled with such emotion.  She is serious;  tears are not evident but her pallour suggest they might have been.  Does she hear, has she heard, the conversation about her?  I don’t think so.  Does she understand what Jesus is saying to Simon:  that God’s forgiveness is equally available to everyone – to the prostitute, the Pharisee the tax-collector, the drunkard, the glutton, the outsider?  I don’t think so:  in the painting her face is wrapped up in her own experience of Jesus and her response.

4.         We have spent a long time on our text and it is time to move on but before we do may I suggest three thoughts we might take with us.  I want to start with the prostitute and not Simon because it is her to whom we are drawn in the painting.

·       The tears are important.  Not least they are a difference between this account and the stories told by Matthew and Mark which occur in the lead-up to the Passion.  Surprisingly to me, commentators take different views why she cries.  Some say they are tears of joy – having realised her forgiveness.  I don’t see this:  nor I think did Il Moretto.  I see them as tears shed at a crisis and at its resolution.  It is very difficult to face the truth about ourselves.  It can be distressing.  Which is why we can put it off, we can deny the necessity (“after all I am not a prostitute am I?”  Hello, Simon the Pharisee!), we fear the results (how would it change me?).  The attraction of Jesus is that he – and we as his church – offer the opportunity to be truthful to ourselves:  but it may not easy.  And it will happen again.

·     The confirmation of forgiveness is not the end of the story.  Jesus does not (as he does to another woman in similar circumstances) say “sin no more” as they part, but built into that final “Go in peace” is something more than a simple farewell.  Certainly it a prayer for peace but a prayer too that she be part of the peacemaking.  The forgiveness and the peacemaking are inseparable – as inseparable as the forgiveness and the tears.  The tears are the natural emotion:  the working at peace is the natural outworking, the natural reaction.  To others who observe us, it is evidence of the love we know.

·       And a final thought, concerning Simon.  A Pharisee, a judgmental character, a man fixed in his ways and his religion, the faith of his father.  And yet … open to inviting the new Teacher to supper and open to give a truthful answer to Jesus’ question.  For him too a time to be shaken from the comfort of his tradition?  A chance to challenge his narrow concept of God – to see him at work in everyone?

5.         The obvious question – of the four listeners in the painting who are you? 

·       The busy servant whose eyes are focused on the messy table

·       The innocent child hearing of the grace of God for the first time

·       Simon:  faithful but challenged to expand his faith

·       The woman facing the truth about herself and the love of God?

“Then he said to her, “your sins are forgiven  …  Go in peace”.

Sermon 11th January 2015

Today, our Vicar, Cameron Barker, continues our study of the Gospel of Luke. The reading is from Luke 5: verses 17-26.

For a range of reasons it’s been a while since we last had a sermon-joke. Feel free to judge if this one is the seasonal cracker that it has been claimed. So: what do you get if you cross a Christmas tree and an iPad? // A pine-apple, of course!

As well as trying to be funny, that one was deliberately both Christmas-themed, and short – because my real opening is actually rather more sombre. It’s this confession, that when Gill and I planned services together last Monday (before she got ill!) I made a bad mistake. All I did was to open the Bible, check the heading for today’s passage, and close it again! “Jesus heals a paralysed man (GNB) / paralytic (NIV)” was enough for me, after a quick check that it was the through-the-roof one. ‘I know that story’, I thought; though I made a silent promise to re-read it thoroughly before starting writing a sermon, of course.

So I’m wondering if you thought something similar yourself when it was read aloud? Did you tune out; either because the story really is familiar to you; or because you think that it is? Now maybe you do know it: it’s told by Matthew and Mark as well as Luke; and it’s certainly dramatic enough to stick in the mind. But it struck me that the start of a new year is a very timely opportunity: both to make this confession and then to issue a challenge off the back of that. So: how about we each make a commitment to try and engage with the Bible afresh throughout the year ahead? What about trying to set aside what we know, or think we know; and choosing instead to be open to God saying and doing new things?

OK, this now being the second Sunday in January, I’ll lower my sights in line with most New Year resolutions; and suggest that we try to do that today! Maybe, hopefully, we will want to keep on doing it, to keep on having newly-opened ears and hearts. Either way, the fact is Christmas, in a very real sense, can act as a re-set button. We have just gone back to the beginning of Jesus’ story (though God has been at work for centuries on either side of that birth of course.) Having said that we’ve gone back to the start, we’ve since leapt on by 30 years in the course of just 3 Sundays. So trying to have fresh ears and hearts for this story that we’ve arrived at in mid-chapter 5 is probably an extra good aim to have today.

Now, I’m not sure we’d want to say that we’re in good company here; but there were others who were meeting with Jesus for the 1^st time in this story. Again lots of us may have a picture in our heads about the ‘Pharisees and teachers of the Law’. They are familiar characters in all 4 of the gospels; but not at this point in Luke! So, the whistle-stop tour is that his chapter 2, after the story of the shepherds and the angels, ends with a snap-shot of Jesus aged 12. Chapter 3 explains the role of John the Baptist, including Jesus’ baptism. Chapter 4 opens with Jesus being tested in the desert; and then launching his manifesto in Nazareth that we heard about last week. There’s a brief flurry of Jesus doing miracles before he invited Simon-Peter, James and John to be his disciples. Chapter 5 continues with yet another healing, a key mention of Jesus’ prayer-life; and that has all got us here.

That was also what had brought those ‘Pharisees and teachers of the Law’ to Jesus for the 1^st time. They (as many others clearly had) had heard about what he was saying and doing. Even our whistle-stop tour is enough to suggest that there was good reason for people to flock to Jesus. Here was a man who’d claimed to be the fulfilment of OT prophecy. In the space of likely only a matter of weeks he’d already performed many sorts of amazing miracles to accompany his amazing teaching about the coming of God’s kingdom. And it was that last part, the coming of God’s kingdom, which attracted the attention of the Pharisees. That was their special area of interest, and expertise; and if someone was saying very different, then …

Jesus was saying very different from what they thought, expected and believed; so this delegation came, from all over the country Luke says, to check out these reports for themselves. Now, at this point, before we get to the detail of what Luke said actually happened, actively try to set aside any preconceived thoughts; even if they did perhaps come from the reading itself …

Right, when you’re ready, let’s engage with the word-picture that Luke paints. Picture yourself, if you can, on a tube or train station at rush-hour; or in Oxford St just before Christmas; or at the gate of a Premiership or international match. The house that Jesus was in (wherever it was) probably wasn’t very big; but that was the kind of crush there was inside there, around him.

Whatever the expectation of those people (and we’ll find out soon enough about some of them), Luke makes it clear that Jesus was there to teach. Yes, “the power of the Lord was present for him to heal”; but that was secondary; again, as we’ll see. Already in Luke Jesus had been asked to stay in a place to perform more miracles; but he’d told them that he had to go, to preach God’s Good News as widely as He wanted. And the immediate question this puts to us is if we want Jesus on our own terms, or his? Are we willing to follow his agenda; or do we want him to do as we tell him, or think he should?

There’s a question that’s worth pondering – honestly – in the days and weeks to come. What kind of follower of Jesus am I going to be in 2015? The kind who comes to get, or say, what I want? Or the kind who comes to listen, and learn; and to follow Jesus’ radical agenda instead of my own? We all have mixed motives: of course we do; God knows that; and He meets us where we are; with all the needs that we have. This story proves that too; but being Jesus’ disciples involves a process of transformation, in which we learn to live for him in all things. And that journey has got to be rooted in listening to him; learning from him; and it means engaging with what Jesus says and wants.

Into that crushed and charged scene walked some men with another man on a mat, or bed. Or they would have done if they could! There was literally no way through to Jesus; but there was also no putting them off. Up onto the roof they went; and then through it! The cultural aside here is that houses in 1^st-Century Palestine had stairs up to a flat roof, which could be dismantled; just as those men did. It was then easy for them to lower the paralysed man to Jesus; and it was very clear to all why they were doing that.

Did you hear that it was “when Jesus saw how much faith they had” that he responded? Well, there’s something else to come at afresh, I’d suggest.  We tend to think, and maybe to encourage others to have faith in God’s ability to hear their prayers, meet their needs; and quite right too. There are other Bible stories where that is what Jesus responded to; and again others where there’s no mention of faith at all! As we do – hopefully! – try to come at things afresh we must be careful not to be too narrow in how we think. But we must engage with what we find. And here it is that the faith of others is what made the difference. For many of us that could well be as much of a challenge as an encouragement – which might also be said of their persistent determination, of course. Just how faith-filled, and persistent, are we in our praying for others, in bringing them to Jesus?

Again we need to engage with how Jesus then dealt with that paralysed man. Let’s be honest, it’s not what many of us would say to someone in that position, now is it: “your sins are forgiven”? And, talking of expectation, it certainly wasn’t what the ‘Pharisees and teachers of the Law’ wanted, or expected, to hear. Their instant thought, and very understandably, was that this was blasphemy. As they said, or thought, it’s only God who can forgive sin; and no mere human is God. All of this Jesus – somehow – knew; and he confronted it, and them, head-on.

Here’s how Tom Wright puts it in his own translation of verse 24: “If you want to be convinced that the son of man has authority on earth to forgive sins …”; and then he told the man to get up and go home. Now let’s not miss the most obvious, and glorious, parts of this story: the man was healed; and his sins were forgiven. The clear implication here is that, for him, that was one and the same thing; and that needs to be engaged with for what it is too. Again, we need to be very careful – for all sorts of reasons – not to make this into a universal truth; because it is abundantly clear in other New Testament places that it’s not. But there are times when it is so, when sin is the cause of sickness; and that need taking seriously too.

Where I want to focus as I begin to draw to a close, though, is to where Jesus draws our attention. My own – hopefully fresh – engagement with this story convinces me that Luke has written this as it was. Maybe you didn’t spot that at no point is the focus on the paralysed man personally. In one sense this is not a story about him at all. That’s not at all to say that he, or his healing, don’t matter. There is no doubt that his life was transformed by him being carried to Jesus by his faith-filled friends. But Luke’s communication is so much bigger than that. This is about who Jesus is; what he can do; how he brings in God’s kingdom; and how that reality changes all things for all people for all time. And I’d suggest that that is plenty for us all to ponder on.

Now I could have preached a very different sermon on this passage; and in fact, I spent all week expected to! But at the start of what could well prove to be another momentous year in Herne Hill, here is some of what I think God may well be saying to us: don’t think you know it all already; open your hearts and minds to engage with what’s actually in front of you; focus on being the right kind of disciples; i.e. bring Jesus to centre of your life and community; make it all about him; have faith; be persistent; be ready to be surprised; and, above all, to praise God for the remarkable things that He does. And so now let’s pray …

Sermon 4th January 2015

Today, one of our Lay Readers, Trevor Tayleur, introduces us to a new study series, beginning with a look at the Gospel of Luke. The reading is from Luke 4: 16-30

Running Thread

May 7^th 2015 is only just over four months away. It will be the day of destiny for the main political parties. Who will govern the country for the next five years? It’s a very hard election to predict, according to the pundits. And soon all the parties will be putting out their manifestos to try to persuade us to vote for them. The party manifestos will set out their agendas, their promises for government and what they hope to do if they win the election.

Theologians sometimes describe the words of Jesus we have just heard in our Gospel reading, the words he spoke in the synagogue, as ‘the Nazareth manifesto’. It is a public statement setting the agenda for Jesus’ ministry and his promises for his ministry. The Nazareth manifesto tells us what Jesus is going to do. In modern parlance it could be described as Jesus’ ‘mission statement’. And as we start a new year, it seems very appropriate to be looking at the Nazareth manifesto, Jesus’ mission statement.

The New Year also brings us a new series for both adults and Children’s Church. We’re all following the Scripture Union materials for four Sundays, starting today, and we’ll be looking at some passages from Luke’s Gospel. Jesus challenged the people of his time with some radical demands, and we’ll be wrestling with what those demands mean for us today.

We’ve just celebrated Christmas, the birth of Jesus. And indeed the birth of the Son of God is cause for great celebration. But I fear that many people have left Jesus in the manger and have conveniently forgotten that he grew into a man who challenged the society of his time – and also challenges society today.

In the synagogue in Nazareth Jesus overturned people’s understanding of who he was. And if we come to this series with open minds, we may find our view of Jesus is being turned around. The carpenter’s son became a preacher and claimed the power that only God has, to forgive sins. He treated Mary Magdalene as a disciple – not too shocking for us, but unthinkable that a first-century rabbi would include a woman in the circle of disciples. Jesus was – and is – challenging to be around.

The Gospel writers do not always put events in chronological order, so we cannot be entirely sure when the events in the Gospel reading took place. Both Matthew and Mark record similar incidents, which may well be the same event, although they do not record what Jesus said in the synagogue. The fact that Luke puts this here, near the beginning of his Gospel, is significant, as he is emphasising the importance of the Nazareth Manifesto for Jesus' ministry. In it Jesus was setting his agenda.

When Jesus lived, it was a time of great expectation for the Jewish people so far as the Messiah was concerned. At the heart of all these expectations, there was the idea that the Messiah would be a military leader who would rescue Israel from their hated Roman oppressors. He would be a great king who would re-establish Israel as a powerful independent kingdom. And the people of Nazareth would have shared these expectations.

So let’s take a closer look at our passage. There are three parts to it. The first is Jesus’ sermon, the second is the response to the sermon and the third is Jesus’ further explanation of his sermon.

On the Sabbath, Jesus went to the synagogue, which was his regular routine.  Following the usual custom, he stood up to read a passage from the Hebrew Scriptures, and then sat down to teach. Jesus deliberately chose one of the Servant Lord passages from Isaiah chapter 61. The Servant of the Lord was a mysterious figure, someone who was predicted in the OT, someone who was going to come and put things right, someone who would bring about God’s Kingdom, justice and peace. His listeners would have understood it as referring to the Messiah. And Jesus said, in verse 21, “Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” If you want to know whom the prophet was writing about, look at me. I am the one!

So, how did his listeners react? Actually, there is some uncertainty about their initial reaction. The translation in the NIV suggests that initially they responded favourably, but some scholars suggest that the NIV doesn’t capture the meaning accurately, and that their comment, “Isn’t this Joseph’s son?”, shows that their response was disparaging right from the start.

But whatever the case, the crucial part comes with Jesus’ explanation of his comments to his hearers. Jesus sensed that they hadn’t really got his message, that they were ready to taunt him with proverbs such as “Physician, heal yourself!”

Then Jesus quoted two examples from the Old Testament involving the great prophets Elijah and Elisha. Verses 25-26 describe a story from Elijah's time – the 9^th Century BC (1 Kings Chapter 17) - when there was a drought and a famine. God told the prophet Elijah to go and stay with a woman from Sidon - a foreigner. This woman, a widow, had almost run out of food and she expected that she and her son would soon die of starvation. But during the time Elijah stayed with her, her supplies of food and drink did not run out.

Now, Elijah was a great prophet, revered by the Jewish people, and the point that Jesus was making is this: God sent Elijah to help a widow – but not an Israelite widow.

Verse 27 describes an event from Elisha's time. Elisha succeeded Elijah, and he was also revered as a great prophet. Naaman, who was the Army commander of Israel's enemy, the Syrians, contracted leprosy. Naaman’s wife had an Israelite servant girl who said that there was a prophet in Israel would be able to heal him. And God used that prophet, Elisha, to heal Naaman. Elisha was sent to heal one leper – and the leper was the commander of the enemy army.

So why did Jesus choose these two stories?   In both these stories, the hero (or heroine) was a foreigner, not an Israelite. And God rescued both of them miraculously. It’s probably not surprising that the people of Nazareth reacted so negatively. They were, after all, waiting for God to liberate them from their pagan enemies.  Some Jewish texts from that time record a longing that God would condemn the wicked nations and destroy them. Instead Jesus pointed out that when the great prophets were active, it wasn’t the Israelites who benefited, but the foreigners.

So, what was the essence of Jesus’ message – the Nazareth manifesto, the point that the people of Nazareth missed? When Jesus said that he had come to proclaim good news to the poor, to proclaim freedom for the prisoners, to give sight to the blind, to set the oppressed free and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour, the people of Nazareth thought they were the poor and the oppressed and that they deserved God’s favour. “We’re good moral people,” they thought. “We come together each week to hear the Scriptures. We try to do our best to obey God, but we are under the thumb of a foreign power – idol worshippers, pagans. Yet some day the Messiah will come, and he will lead the good people to victory over the oppressors.” So when Jesus told them that they had got it all wrong, they were angry and wanted to kill him. They had missed the point; they thought they were the poor and the oppressed who would, according to Isaiah’s prophesy, be delivered by the Messiah. But they didn’t understand who the poor and the oppressed really were.

Jesus said he had come to bring good news to the poor. So, who are the poor that Jesus was referring to? There is a lot of debate about whether Jesus meant the spiritually poor or the actually poor. I think he meant both: the Gospel is for the spiritually poor, but especially the actually poor. 

Jesus came to those who are spiritually poor. In his explanation of the Servant Lord passage, Jesus referred to two people, the widow from Sidon and Naaman, the Syrian general. One of them, Naaman, was rich. He didn’t choose two actually poor people as examples. You don’t have to be literally poor to receive salvation, and being literally poor doesn’t mean that you’re automatically in. But what Naaman and the widow had in common was that they were spiritually poor, and that they realised it. From the perspective of the Israelites, they were religious outcasts, moral outcasts. Naaman, although rich, was willing to listen to his wife’s Israelite slave girl and to humble himself, after a bit of encouragement, before an Israelite prophet. He realised his spiritual poverty.

Jesus’ message in Nazareth was that he was coming to those who were spiritual outcasts, to those who knew they could not bring anything of value to God. Jesus was contrasting the people in front of him with the spiritual outcasts to whom he had been sent. He was in effect saying, “I haven’t been sent to people like you, but instead to people who realise that they are spiritually poor.”

The problem for the people in Nazareth was that they didn’t realise their spiritual poverty. They thought they could get to God through leading a good life. If they did what the Hebrew Scriptures told them to do, if they worshipped regularly, then they would be fine. They thought that they could control God. If they tried hard enough, God would owe them a good life, he would have to answer their prayers. But it’s not like that. God doesn’t owe us anything.

So who are the spiritually poor? They are people who are willing to look below the surface. If we look on the surface, then we can all find things that we’ve done well. For example, we love our parents, we love our children, we’ve helped people in need, we’ve tried hard. If you don’t look below the surface, you will be tempted to think that, because you’ve tried hard and have done some things well, God owes you a good life. 

But the spiritually poor person will look beneath the surface and realise that that is not enough. God owes us nothing, and we can only be saved through God’s grace and absolute mercy. We can only find God through what Jesus did on the Cross. And as we come to Communion today, let’s use that as an opportunity to reflect on what Jesus did on the Cross.

Only those who are realise that they are spiritually poor, no matter how they may look on the surface, can understand the good news that Jesus brings. It’s very easy for us to criticise the people of Nazareth, for failing to see the truth, but we could easily fall into the same trap. Do we think we can reach God by being good? Do we think that because we’re good people God should bless us? Or do we realise that we are spiritually poor – that we are totally dependent on God’s grace and mercy?

Jesus came to bring good news to the spiritually poor – but especially to the actually poor. If we read the Bible carefully, over and over again, when we have a poor person and a powerful person, a woman and a man, a racial outsider next to the racial insider, it’s almost always the person without power, the person on the outside who gets it – who understands what the good news is about. In the resurrection accounts in the Bible, it is the women who are first convinced that Jesus has risen from the dead, while most of the men were originally sceptical about the resurrection. In the story of Naaman, it was an Israelite slave girl who saw the way things were, not the great general. Over and over again, it is the outsider who understands the good news, not the insider.

We can only receive Jesus by realising that we are spiritually poor. People who are successful in worldly terms run the risk of thinking that they’ve got to the top through their own work, through their own merits. So they don’t see their spiritual poverty. But the outsider, the marginalised person, is much more likely to see their need.

The people of Nazareth, so sure of their own 'most favoured nation' status with God, rejected God's messenger, indeed God’s son.

Jesus was saying to them, if you want to be part of God's kingdom, you have to show the same kind of faith that the Sidonian woman and Naaman demonstrated; you need to acknowledge your spiritual poverty. But the people of Nazareth were not willing to listen to this message. Those who were supposed to be God's people could not see God at work. And in their anger they tried to kill Jesus.

In the next few weeks we shall see how Jesus put into practice the Nazareth manifesto. No broken promises for him! We shall see how he reaches to the outsiders and the outcasts, how he brings the good news to the poor and the oppressed. And as we move into the New Year, for us the Nazareth manifesto remains very much alive: Jesus still wants to forgive the unforgiveable, welcome the unacceptable, embrace the unembraceable and teach the unteachable. Are we willing to follow him?

Let’s pray. Father, help us to acknowledge our spiritual poverty, our need for God’s love, mercy and grace. Help us all to share in bringing the good news to those who are on the margins of society. In Jesus’ name.

Amen.

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[i] 4 January 2015