Sermon 29th January 2017

Today, one of our Lay Readers, Simon Brindley, continues our study of the story of Jesus as told in the book of Matthew. The reading is from Matthew 9, 1-17.

Doctoring the sick

As some of you will know I have had a new job for nearly 3 years now, working for an organisation called the Financial Conduct Authority in Docklands, after the government closed my old office in a reorganization. It’s good but it is very different to the old place. It’s a much bigger organisation for a start. And in some ways it’s a stricter environment to work in.   One issue the FCA, as it is known, has to take very seriously is the way it handles the information it holds about the businesses and people it regulates. Here is an example:

The day before I arrived there the FCA issued a press release containing information about some serious action it intended to take in relation to historic bad practices in the insurance industry. This could have involved a lot of money being returned by the big insurance companies to ordinary people with insurance policies like you and me. The information was taken at face value by the businesses and investors who read it in the papers and a lot of money was wiped off the value of the shares in what are called listed insurance companies, and when I say a lot of money I mean £billions of pounds, because everyone thought those companies were going to have to pay back a fortune to customers they had treated unfairly. But the information in the press release in fact was partly wrong. It implied we were going to do something in a way that in fact we were not. It took the FCA longer than it should have done to correct its press release. Too many senior people were working from home or did not realize how serious it was quickly enough. It was corrected in the end and the share prices recovered, but for a while there was what you might call “chaos in the markets.” It was really serious. Lengthy and expensive enquiries followed and hearings of Parliamentary committees. Some of the most senior FCA people had to leave. Even the Chief Executive was badly wounded by this careless disclosure of misleading information and was sacked a year or so later.

And, partly because of the risk of that sort of thing happening again, there are very tight rules in my office about handling information. Documents are marked “Controlled Distribution” (that means only people whose names are on a particular list can see it) or “Highly Sensitive Information” (that means if it leaks out at the wrong time there could be chaos in the markets and you might get the sack! Got to be very careful indeed with those ones!!).  Or they might be marked “Urgent – for immediate attention!” if something needs to be looked at immediately. And everyone at the FCA is now even more careful about the way we handle the sensitive information we see every week.  We have all seen what can happen if we are not really careful….

In everything he is saying and doing, in the passages we are hearing from Matthew’s gospel over these few weeks of sermons, Jesus, it seems to me, is shouting out for people to take notice. It is like everything he is doing and everything he is saying is marked “Urgent! For immediate attention!” or, “Highly important information!” And there are a number of reasons for thinking like this:

The over-arching reason, it seems to me, is that Jesus is so different to anyone that people had seen before talking or teaching about God. This was a highly religious society. Their beliefs were absolutely fundamental to everything they did every day – and no doubt there were many, many genuinely good and holy people in that society – but, whatever the situation had been before, Jesus stood out a mile because he was so different. And there is no doubt whatsoever that this is one thing that Matthew is trying to tell us:

-       “the crowd was amazed at the way he taught”, Matthew has already written in Chapter 7, verse 28, “he wasn’t like the teachers of the Law; instead he taught with authority.”

-       “what kind of man is this?” Matthew has already written in Chapter 8, verse 27, “even the wind and the waves obey him!”

-       and here today in Chapter 9, verse 7, when the people saw what Jesus did and said as the man who has been paralysed for years simply gets up and goes home, “When the people saw it, they were afraid”, writes Matthew in Chapter 9, verse 7, “and the people praised God for giving such authority to men.”

In what he says, in his power over the natural world and in his power over illness and disease, Jesus is radically different to anything the people had seen before because he acts and speaks in a very new and different way and he does so powerfully and he does so with real authority. It’s as if Matthew is stamping all over his gospel, “Urgent and important! For immediate attention!!”  “You must listen to what I am trying to tell you about this man…..!”

And you can see this difference and newness and power and authority in each of the three sharp scenes that plays out ,one after another, in today’s reading:

-       first the paralysed man is healed. Now in those days people thought illness was a direct result of sin so Jesus tells him, with authority, that he is forgiven and when the teachers nearby say to him “You can’t do that!” “Only God can do that!” in effect Jesus tells them, “Yes I can” and anyway, I don’t mind quite how I put it to this man, because what I am actually telling him is to get off his bed. And the man gets up, rolls up his mattress and walks home;

-       then Jesus walks past a hated tax collector, a man called Matthew (and possibly the writer of the gospel himself), hated because he was on the road side in his grubby little booth, taking money from the people to pay the Roman occupiers and probably keeping a whacking big cut for himself. But instead of just walking past, ignoring him or sneering at him or cursing him, like just about everyone else, Jesus speaks to him and tells him to follow him. And he does it with such authority, to this hated outcast of society, that he too gets up immediately, no debate, no questions, no arguments and follows after Jesus. And what do they do next? Do they go off, the two of them, to give a carefully considered public seminar on the moral choices facing His Holiness the Emperor’s Revenue and Excise Duties Mid-ranking Customer-facing officials?  No! They head off to Matthew’s house to get something to eat! And a load of other tax collectors hear about this man, who may just be able to show them a way to deal with their hated existence, and join them for the meal. And a whole pile of other outcasts of the society of the day (we aren’t told who they are but you can imagine who they might have been: beggars, the diseased, prostitutes, the dirty, the homeless) head there too and there is a Big Feast. “What on earth does he think he is doing?” ask the religious leaders to Jesus’ disciples, “Doesn’t he realize he will get contaminated?!” and Jesus cuts right through their religious rules and their piety, shows it up for the shallowness it can bring and gets right to the heart of true religion. Show people kindness, show them mercy, don’t you realize they are just as valuable as you are?” Who ever told you that God looks down on what you call the dregs of society? No, He doesn’t. He loves them and respects them and wants to see them healed and restored. Your religious rules about sacrifices will mean nothing if you forget that.

Whatever your views might be about the circumstances or moral choices of anyone that your society looks down on, it seems to me that Jesus is saying here, show them love first. If you don’t, anything you might try to debate or discuss or say about their choices will come with no authority;

-       Then, finally, the debate about fasting. Going without food for the day would have been part of religious practice in those days on many occasions over the year as people looked backwards to celebrate key moments in their history. “So why don’t your lot do it?”, ask the followers of John the Baptist. We do and we’re part of this new movement. Is it not still key to our religious observance? Is this not what God wants us to do??................     Listen, says Jesus, looking forward to his own death, there will be a time for that when I am taken away, but what you really need to understand now is that everything has changed. I am not merely patching up the old with some new add-on ideas. That won’t work. No, everything is new and you need to change too. The new wine of the Kingdom will be poured into you but you too will be radically changed, you will be made new. Then we can work together.

Before I suggest one way in which we can look at all these stories and the similar stories of Jesus’ ministry in these chapters of Matthew’s gospel I just want to think for a moment about this idea of authority, because whenever Jesus speaks or acts it is this that the people all seem to notice. There is something about the way in which he works, something about his actions and his voice that command attention. And here are a few scenarios that have seemed to me, in things I have seen or heard in just the last few weeks, to hint at what real authority can feel like:

-       So I am reading the BBC website a week or two back and I see a clip about 4 girls from the Mulberry Comprehensive girls’ school in East London, at least two obviously Moslem, remembering their visit a year or two ago from the First Lady of the United States, Michelle Obama, and how incredibly impressed and inspired they were by her about what women could achieve and about what black and minority ethnic women could achieve and about what women from relatively poor backgrounds could achieve, given half a chance. And watching the video of that visit it is clear the speaker undeniably speaks with authority. I look out at you and see myself she says, you are just like I was 30 years ago. And if I can do it, so can you. I have been there, I really do understand, I am not distant, I am not elite;

-       I am sitting in a church one lunchtime from work a week or two back listening to a former prison chaplain talking about his ten years at Brixton prison and talking about the tenderness you find between prisoners who will look after each other as well as the widespread anger of alienation. And he tells us about a hardened former serious criminal who he asks to speak in the chapel about his own faith and the difference it has made to him. I can’t do that sorry says the former criminal at first because every time I speak the name Jesus I start to cry.  And the former chaplain speaks compellingly and compassionately and realistically but with authority about working in jails because he has been there for ten years and seen it all, not theoretically, not remotely, but genuinely;

-       I hear about the tragic early death of the vicar’s daughter from Ealing, Jill Saward, who was raped in a brutal attack on her home and family some 30 years ago and I am reminded of her incredible ability to forgive the perpetrators and her passionately effective work for decades to change the way that society and the legal system deals with the victims of sexual violence and I see the authority of someone who inspires forgiveness because she has been there, no theory or dogma but reality;

-       And then finally I am visiting a Christian friend in hospital and the nurse tells me on the way out how impressed she is with how my friend deals with her troubles.  She goes to church doesn’t she, asks the nurse….I want to go to that church some time. Because she has seen, it seems to me, something of the authority that comes with someone whose faith really does make a difference to the way they live and deal with what life throws at them.

This is all the authority, I think,  of putting your money where your mouth is, of actually identifying with those less fortunate than yourself, of taking tough decisions when you and your life and your values and your future are really on the line.

And Jesus, it seems to me has all of this. And in large measure.  He is maybe the shining example of practicing what you preach of sacrificial love. But in his case there is more. What Jesus offers, it seems to me, is much more than the human authority of good and inspiring actions and of genuine living. He demonstrates and claims authority over illness, he is prepared to claim authority to forgive sins. He claims to have come for a purpose and He asks people to follow him and they do. He says he is the bridegroom at a wedding feast and we do not suspect him for one moment of grandiose posturing. Because Jesus brings the authority of heaven, the authority given to him by his Father.

So no wonder it is as if these documents have written all over them “Highly urgent!” “Highly important information”; “Marked for immediate attention!”

Because Jesus’ impact is not just on the individuals in these stories, the paralysed man, the hated tax collector and the disciples of John the Baptist, as important as that is for each one of them. What we are being shown I think is his Godly nature. And not just that but we are being given signals to what is to come. Jesus speaks and the paralysed man is raised up from his bed; Jesus speaks and the hated tax collector is raised up from his hated lifestyle; the day will come when Jesus is to be taken away.  In the language used we are being shown pointers to his death and his being raised up, pointers to his own resurrection.

And so the response I suggest that is being asked of us is not just to applaud the way he deals with the outcasts, not just to try to think how we might copy that in our own lives. It is, I suggest, to ask what this same Jesus Christ might actually be saying to me.  Speak to me Lord, speak into my own paralysis, speak to me Lord into the darknesses and uncertainties of my own lifestyle and my own choices.  Show me again this new and different life you call me to, show me again what it means to follow you as my Lord and my God.  I can sense and I can begin to see your authority in my life, from its beginning to its end. Come and make me new and fill me with your new wine.  Lord, call me again today…

And this message is not marked Controlled Distribution (that is the one only for the few names on a list). It is for the Immediate attention of all of us…

Amen

Sermon 22nd January 2016

Today, our Assistant Minister, Gill Taylor, continues our study of the story of Jesus from the book of Matthew. The reading is from Matthew chapter 8 verses 23-34. 

Who is this man? 

A family had twin boys whose only resemblance to each other was their looks. If one felt it was too hot, the other thought it was too cold. If one said the TV was too loud, the other claimed the volume needed to be turned up. Opposite in every way, one was an eternal optimist, the other a doom and gloom pessimist.
Just to see what would happen, on the twins' birthday their father filled the pessimist's room with every imaginable toy and game. The optimist's room he filled with horse manure.
That night the father passed by the pessimist's room and found him sitting amid his presents crying bitterly. "Why are you crying?" the father asked.
"Because my friends will be jealous, I'll have to read all these instructions before I can do anything with this stuff. I'll constantly need new batteries, and my toys will eventually get broken." answered the pessimist twin.
Passing the optimist twin's room, the father found him dancing for joy in the pile of manure. "What are you so happy about?" he asked.
To which his optimist son replied, "There's got to be a pony in here somewhere!”

I wonder how optimistic you’re feeling this morning? How optimistic about your life, your future? How confident in your ability to handle it? To handle the challenges YOU face, day to day and in the long run? The challenges of your life, and of our city, our nation and our world in 2017, political changes and all?

However confident we may feel about our life and our world, even on our best and brightest days, when we’re most optimistic, (or perhaps when we best fool ourselves about our abilities and control over life,) deep down we know there are some things life can throw at us that are beyond our control. There are some things that we cannot overcome by simply trying harder, things that will not respond to “pull your socks up” or “raise your game”. There are problems way beyond all that.

For a start there’s illness and disease, which strikes where it will. We don’t try and get ill, it just happens. (Well, once we tried to ‘make’ our son catch chicken pox from his big sister, to get it over with, and we bathed them together and shared spoons and everything – nope, John didn’t catch it!)

There are reminders all around us of illness, disease and disability, physical and mental, that we cannot control. Thankfully many people can be treated, even cured – but we all know there are many that cannot, and face life-limiting or deteriorating health conditions. Out of our control.

As are natural disasters. Hurricanes, cyclones, tsunamis, earthquakes. Just this week we’ve watched the search for survivors at the quake-triggered avalanche that deluged a hotel in Italy. Warnings about the severity of the drought in the horn of Africa, in Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya is currently threatening over 15 million people and expected to worsen. In other parts of the world it’s the opposite, it’s floods and typhoons that claim many lives. Natural disasters out of human control.

And then there’s evil. In the last few days we’ve heard about widespread abuse in children’s homes in Northern Ireland, the murder of 16 year old Leonnie Weeks, never mind the ongoing mass horrors of war, torture and terrorism.

I realise that’s rather sobering, especially if you started the day happy and optimistic. But whatever mood we’re each in, confident or despairing, our Bible reading today clearly brings good news! The great news that Jesus has authority and power over every aspect of our world and our lives! Even disease, natural disaster and evil.

It’s all in Matthew chapter 8. Let’s look over it again.

2 weeks ago Cameron preached on the first part of this chapter, which started with the story of the healing of the man with leprosy, in verses 1 to 4. Next the Roman officer and his servant in verses 5 to13: Jesus healing again, but this time at a distance, in response to the officer’s remarkable faith. Then last week when Trevor was preaching there were more stories of healing, Peter’s mother in law and then many people, in verses 14 to 17, before the discussion of the cost of being a follower of Jesus. In this chapter of Matthew’s gospel alone, Jesus has conclusively demonstrated his authority and power over disease and sickness.

And then, the storm on the lake. Have you ever been in a boat in a storm? I haven’t, but I think the sea can be a bit scary even when it’s calm. As Bishop Tom Wright says in his excellent commentary on Matthew’s gospel: “Standing beside the ocean, there’s so much of it, for a start! When the tide comes in, up a beach, imagine how many gallons of water have moved down the coastline. And it’s doing that all the time, day & night. Then stand beside it when the wind gets up. Watch how those millions of gallons leap & dance about like water splashing in a child’s bath. Then, if you dare, stand on the deck of a small boat as it sets out into those waves. Feel their power lift the boat high in the air and drop it down again with a crash and a smack. Watch the huge waves rise up, and up, in front of you, like a monster in a horror movie, alive and threatening.” Scary stuff!

The Sea of Galilee was – and is – prone to sudden storms. Apparently it’s to do with the geography, being on a fault line, being nearly 700ft below sea level, and how the mountains and valleys lie around it. The weather can change from calm to massive storm in minutes! Jesus and his disciples were in a boat on the lake, probably about 20ft long wooden boat with sails, when one of these storms suddenly hit. The waves towered over the boat – also 20ft high or higher – with no motor, or life jackets or radio calls for help – and the disciples were scared stiff, even though some of them were experienced fishermen, used to this lake. Right to be scared stiff too.

But Jesus was asleep! Asleep! Can you imagine?! And the disciples woke him up saying,

we’re going to die!

And Jesus said, “Why are you so frightened? How little faith you have!” And then, he simply ordered the wind and the waves to be calm, and they were!

Extraordinary! “Even the winds and the waves obey him!”

“How little faith you have!” Little faith. The proper response to Jesus is faith. Faith that is quite simply a trust that Jesus is the sovereign one who has authority and power over everything. We’ll come back to this idea of faith in a minute, but for now let’s notice that the disciples didn’t have much of this faith, just a little. But they started to ask questions: What does this mean? What sort of man is this? Good questions! Answers are coming, we need to keep reading! Having noted how Jesus demonstrated his authority and power over the natural world. First over disease, then over nature.

On to the story of the men with demons, and Jesus had authority and power over them too. Tom Wright again: “In a way, it’s the same sort of thing. Think of the wild sea, with wind and waves doing their worst. Now turn that into a human being, with the wind and waves inside them. Not a bad image for how it is with some people who find that, for whatever reason, their imagination and emotions, their thinking and acting, seem to have been taken over by forces beyond their control.

Today we struggle, in the modern Western world, to explain what’s going on inside people like that. In Jesus’ time, and in many parts of our world today, the accepted explanation is that some evil force or forces have taken them over. Devils or demons was the regular way of describing that condition. Modern western medicine has found alternative diagnoses for many people in this turbulent state, but there remain some for whom the ancient explanation still seems to be the best.”

But however we understand what the root of the men’s problem was, the point of the story is that Jesus had authority over not only the wind and the waves on the lake, but also over the shadowy forces of sickness & evil, however we describe them.

Let’s look at what happened. There were 2 men, who lived among the burial caves, so fierce that no one dared travel on that road.

In other words they were violent, isolated, and alienated from normal life, creating a no go area around them. And these very disturbed men, at once cried out to Jesus, “What do you want with us, Son of God?”

Son of God?! Matthew doesn’t use the term Son of God very much, he prefers Son of Man; as a good Jew he’d rather not say or write the word God. In the Old Testament, Son of God is often a way of describing God’s coming king, or messiah. And the demons asking Jesus if he has come to punish them before the right time, shows they know who he is, and they know that he will one day come in a final judgement, to do away with all the powers of evil, and rule a new heaven and earth with justice, love, peace and joy for all. The demons know their ultimate fate, but want to carry on causing havoc as long as possible. But with one word, “GO”, Jesus sends them away to their fate, into the pigs, who are then drowned in the lake.

It’s an aside, but we have to ask, what about the pigs, poor pigs? Well let’s remember that to Jews pigs were unclean animals, not cute stars of Babe as they might be to us. And to non Jews, Gentiles, pigs were food, and this herd was of substantial financial value. Did Jesus have to let the pigs be drowned? I don’t know, but it seems Jesus is valuing the freedom and health of the men more highly than the price of the pigs.

And the men are freed, are healed, to begin a new life. Presumably they came back to live in community and peace. And so this chapter of Matthew’s gospel ends, with Jesus having shown his authority and power over evil. Over sickness, nature and evil.

How then, might we respond to this? We see several different responses in the passage.

One was the questioning, asking “What sort of man is this?” Who is this man?

We might be here in church this morning, not sure who Jesus really was and is. If so, keep asking, keep thinking, keep reading the gospels, keep talking with others. Who is Jesus? is truly one of the most important questions of our lives! The little booklet, “Why Jesus?” at the back may help you continue your questioning. The demons in the story knew Jesus was the Son of God, and Matthew presents that as the answer to the question, and I’d urge you to keep asking to see if that answer makes sense and is relevant to you!

…………………………….

Another response to Jesus came at the very end of the chapter, when the people begged him to leave their territory. Why would they want Jesus to go away? Well I should think they were afraid of his supernatural power. They had never seen anything like it before and I imagine it was pretty overwhelming. Way beyond their understanding, never mind control.

They may have been upset about the loss of the herd of pigs, more than thrilled about the men’s deliverance; I don’t imagine people thought very highly or kindly of those violent and unruly men!

And we might hear about Jesus’ authority and power, and think, I don’t want anything to do with that, or him! If I accepted his authority in my life, what might Jesus do, or want me to do? Trevor talked last week about the cost of commitment; there is a cost. But asking Jesus to go away, would be a big mistake, the biggest missed opportunity of a lifetime! To reject Jesus, the chance to know him, his love and forgiveness, and power to live a new way, God’s way, would be the biggest loss, for now and for eternity.

So what would be the best response to Jesus, the most appropriate response to his authority and power? Faith! You little faiths! Yes we may have only a little, like the disciples, but it only takes a little to get started.

Having faith in Jesus, and trusting him, following him, is the best and appropriate response to someone with authority and power over everything. Everything the physical world and the non-physical world can throw at us. Jesus is the one we can trust with every aspect of our lives, not only in the good times but in the difficult times too.

The storms of life (if you like) can arise very suddenly and unexpectedly: a medical diagnosis, the death of a loved one, the loss of our job or home, financial ruin, a relationship betrayal or breakdown. We can trust Jesus to lead us through every situation in life, knowing his love and presence with us.

Of course he doesn’t always take away the problem, any more than he removed all sickness, natural disaster and evil then. We know that from the Bible: Jesus didn’t make a pain-free, suffering-free world. “Even” the circumstances of his birth, the Christmas story we’ve so recently celebrated, ends with ALL the baby boys under 2 years old being killed by jealous King Herod. We might call that evil. Right through to the torturous way Jesus was put to death, even though he was an innocent man. For now, our world is shot through with suffering and death, with disease, natural disaster and evil. Not forever, because he said he would return in judgement, to end all that and create a new heaven and new earth for eternity, full of his kingly rule, justice, mercy, love, peace and joy.

So having faith and trust in Jesus, and his authority and power over the world, then and now, doesn’t mean life becomes easy. It means we choose to believe and keep following Jesus regardless, choose to keep living his way regardless, and knowing his love and presence with us no matter what. That’s the Jesus we’re invited to have faith in, and trust, now as then.

So what will OUR response to Jesus be, this morning?

Keep questioning, don’t push him away, have faith and trust. Let’s pray that we might…