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Faith Heals Us: Sermon Preached on 30th June 2024 (Fifth Sunday After Trinity)

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A view across the Sea of Galilee from Magdala/Migdal towards the Golan Heights in afternoon sun.

Preached at St Mary’s, Potterne and on Poulshot Village Green

Mark 5. 21-43

“your faith has made you well”

We’ve all been in situations where what people don’t say is more important than what they do. That’s certainly true of Jesus in this morning’s Bible reading. But to understand why, let’s look first at exactly where today’s reading sits in the overall story of Mark’s Gospel.

A realist painting. Jesus, standing upright and in white robes, holds the hands of a girl, who is lying on a bed, also in white robes, and somewhat darker skinned.
Ilya Repin, Raising of Jairus Daughter (1870), hangs in the Mikhailovsky Palace, St Petersburg.

Today’s reading consists of the last two miracle stories in a run of four, all set in Galilee early in Jesus’ mission, that Mark uses to establish Jesus’ power. Between them they establish Jesus’ power over the forces of nature, over disease, over demons, and over death. Last week in church, we heard one of the other of these stories, the stilling of the storm on the Sea of Galilee; the other story, the casting out of demons into a herd of pigs from the poor tormented madman who self-harms constantly, is also one of the most familiar of Jesus’ healing miracles.

The supernatural elements of these stories can make them seem remote from our world. Yet look more closely and we see people who, while perhaps living in a very different culture with very different technology from us, are people who tick just like us. The way Jesus is constantly mobbed by crowds as He travels around these little market towns and fishing villages in Galilee reminds me very much of today’s celebrity culture. Not everyone in these towns and villages thinks well of Jesus, and as much as the adulation of the crowds, the abuse He receives from the Pharisees reminds me of our own culture and its toxic side, which social media has revealed to be regrettably widespread. A third reminder of our own world is the desperation of the chronically ill people who approach Jesus seeking healing, people like the woman with the issue of blood—and for all that we can cure many diseases in a way that would seem almost magical to the people of Christ’s time, the reality is that at some point most of us end up living with chronic and debilitating illnesses, and the fear and misery they bring is unchanged.

That’s the context for us to notice what Jesus doesn’t say here. He doesn’t say, “I’m the Son of God.” He doesn’t even say, “I’m sent from God.” He certainly doesn’t say, “I can heal people by magic, and I deserve to be paid for it—so front up with the readies, folks!”

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Called to be Saints: Sermon Preached on 5th November 2023 (All Saints’)

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Ten status of twentieth century martyrs above the West Door of Westminster Abbey, on the exterior wall.

Preached at Christ Church, Worton and Holy Cross, Seend

Readings – 1 John 3.1-3; Matthew 5.1-12

“Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed.”

This Sunday, we’re keeping All Saints’ Day, the day where the Church celebrates – you know – all the saints. That’s all very well and good, but you wouldn’t want to be too like a saint would you? If you’re being honest, you probably wouldn’t even want to get too close to one of them. In being so good at the whole Christianity business, they rather show the rest of us up. We’re just ordinary Christians – we believe and trust in God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we try our best to live good lives and all that, but we also know we aren’t very good at it. With their constant praying, doing good, being pious, and staying away from all the naughty but fun things we enjoy – from booze to gossip – saints leave us feeling a bit inadequate. Just for example, you wouldn’t want a rector who’s too much of the saint, would you?

Ten status of twentieth century martyrs above the West Door of Westminster Abbey, on the exterior wall.
The Ten Modern Martyrs at Westminster Abbey. © CEPhoto, Uwe Aranas

That’s my instinctive reaction when I hear about saints, one that I suspect many of you share. But I think it’s also an incorrect reaction. Look at your Bibles! The people who were close to Jesus, and went on to build the Church, certainly weren’t perfect. The apostles did plenty of squabbling and bickering with one another – so much of it that you’d think they were just like today’s Christians. Nor did the apostles avoid the good things in life. That St Peter liked getting lavish hospitality from the congregations he visited, for himself and his wife – at least if you believe St Paul’s gossipy comments in his letters.

Saints aren’t perfect. Only God is perfect. We sometimes get a little confused about what a saint is. Saints aren’t just the famous people like Peter and Paul who get a special day in the Church’s calendar. The truth – the frightening truth – is that all followers of Jesus Christ are called to be saints.

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A Few Wise Men: Sermon Preached on Friday 6th January 2023 (The Epiphany)

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Preached at St John’s Devizes, and on Sunday 8th January at St Peter’s, Poulshot and Holy Cross, Seend

Isaiah 60.1-6; Matthew 2.1-12

“Nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn…”

Epiphany (1940) by Max Ernst.

The Epiphany is the fourth most important date in the Church’s year, after Easter, Christmas, and Pentecost. Yet it is often neglected by secular society, and church-goers don’t generally turn out in great numbers for Epiphany services in my experience. Yet it’s a feast of great significance because, with Christ still in His cradle, it established Christianity as an explicitly universalising religion: by that, I mean one that seeks to make followers of people of every nation and language, rather than just from the Palestinian Jewish community who supplied Christ’s followers while He was on earth.

A lot is going on in our two readings this evening, so let me try to unpack some of it.

The fact that these men are identified by St Matthew as coming from the East, specifically, has interesting implications. The East was a place associated with wisdom and spiritual insight. The Wise Men are being identified by Matthew not as any old gentiles but some of the holiest and most intellectually gifted representatives of the entire gentile world. They already know that the new-born child they seek is destined to be king. In contrast, Herod, the temporal king of the Jews, is spiritually blind. This short-sighted and intolerant man can’t see anything in the arrival of these foreign visitors beyond a potential threat to his power. Wisdom and holiness do not come through ancestry: early in his story of Jesus’ life, Matthew has established an important principle.

Yet there is an obvious tension between universalism and the particular here. If Christianity is a universal religion, one might ask why Jesus should have been born as a Jew, as a male, in the Holy Land, in the 1st Century. Why there, and then, and in the form of this little baby born of Mary? Part of the answer must be that if Christian faith truly does encapsulate God’s plan for humanity, then God had to become human as someone in particular. None of us are blank slates. All of us have a culture and a heritage, and no single one of us can be everyman or everywoman. Indeed love can only truly be love if it is directed towards someone or something in particular; love in the abstract remains something unconsummated and unfulfilled.

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