The Empty Tomb

A Sermon for Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church

Easter Sunday 31 March 2024 11.00am

 

Daniel 7.9-14  
Mark 15.47-16.8a

There are some days
          when it can seem as if death has had the last word.
 
We live in a world where death, and terror, and oppression
          seem constantly to get the last word on life,
          and it is, truly, deeply depressing.
 
And after all, none of us are getting out of this alive,
          and for much of our time here
                   we are party to the desires of others
                   to make life far less than it could and should be.
 
People kill people, people terrorise people, people bully people.
          And it has always been so.
 
But what are we to do?
          How are we to respond to the darkness of our world?
 
Denial and business-as-usual can only get us so far,
          and yet reality is too hard to face
          for any sustained period of time.
 
So what is the path through this valley of death?
          How are we to negotiate these treacherous waters of chaos?
 
Well, it seems to me that for much of the time,
          both as individuals and as a society,
                    we just stare ever deeper and harder
                   into the murky depths of the tomb.
 
Our media holds the dark cavern of death before our eyes
          and invites us to look long upon the monsters
                   that inhabit the labyrinthine passages
                   of our darkest fears, and nightmarish dreamings.
 
The rolling news agenda of analysis and voyeurism
          keeps the darkness alive in our imaginations
          and the light of life dimmed to the point of being extinguished.
 
It’s the Easter story,
          re-visited in each of our lives,
          day by day, week by week.
 
We stare death in the face on Friday,
          and we sit in horror and shock on Saturday,
and then on Sunday
          we set out to revisit the grave of all our hopes and dreams.
 
Like a child who cannot leave alone the scab on their knee,
          we pick away at our pain,
          we subvert our capacity to heal,
          and we scar ourselves further.
 
We keep going back to the tomb.
 
This is why terrorism works, of course.
          And this is why the Romans crucified their criminals.
 
The symbolic murder of the representative few
          kills life in the hearts and souls of the many.
 
Those who have stood and gazed upon the cross
          cannot rid themselves of the visions of horror that haunt their nights.
 
Those who have seen videos of beheadings in the desert,
          and read news reports of bombings in airports and subways,
          cannot rid themselves of the terror.
 
And so we keep going back to the tomb.
 
We construct a narrative of fear,
          and then we step into that story
          and we live it into being in our lives, and in our world.
 
We just keep on going back to the tomb.
 
But here’s a thought:
          What if the greatest force of evil in our world
                   is not fundamentalist Islam,
          what if it’s not warlord dictators or elected warmongers,
                   what it's not even homophobic evangelical Christianity?
 
What if the greatest force of evil in our world
          is the capacity of human beings to deceive themselves
                   into believing that truth is a lie
                   and that a lie has become the truth?
 
What if the greatest force of evil in our world
          is how easily we exchange the truth of God for a lie,
          worshipping and serving the creature rather than the creator? (Rom. 1.25)
 
What I mean by this
          is that we idolize our fears,
                   and we allow them to control our actions,
          and in so doing we make ourselves subservient
                   to something of our own creation.
 
We convince ourselves that the tomb contains terrors,
          and then we construct our lives around that falsehood.
We live the lie of fear into being,
          and we manifest that fear in our thoughts and our actions.
 
I’m thinking of the Baptist pastor who said to me
          that he would love to welcome gay people into his church,
          but that he is afraid of being judged by God if he does so.
 
I’m thinking of the person who seeks to control
          and manipulate others to their will
          because they are deeply afraid of being wrong.
 
I’m thinking of the person who is afraid to speak out against injustice
          because they are afraid of the consequences
          for themselves and those they love.
 
I’m thinking of me, and I’m thinking of each of us;
          as we all, in our own ways, allow the terrors of the tomb
          to dictate our thoughts and our actions.
 
We keep going back to the tomb.
 
And then, in an attempt to live with ourselves, and our fears, and our guilt,
          we scapegoat those who do not fit our construction of reality.
We put our fears onto the weak and the vulnerable,
          and then we put them out of our camp
          in a desperate attempt to sleep easier in our beds.
 
Whether it is the scapegoating of those with minority sexuality,
          or those of a different complexion,
                   or those of a different gender,
          or those of a different nationality,
                   or those of a different social standing,
          or those of a different religious belief,
                   or those of a different political opinion....
 
We take the fears and lies
          that inhabit the sepulchres of our minds
and we place these deceptions onto those who are not like us,
          in a vain attempt to rid ourselves of that which haunts our dreams.
 
And yet in all of this we miss the simple truth
          that was revealed to Mary, Mary, and Salome
          that first Easter morning:
 
This is the truth:
 
The tomb is empty.
          The monsters are not real.
The decomposing corpse
          of our shattered dreams and nightmarish fears is not there.
The tomb, is empty.
 
The women hadn’t gone to the tomb of the crucified Jesus
          to encounter an empty tomb.
They had gone to pour oils on a dead and broken body,
          as one final act of love and devotion
          to their shattered dreams and crushed hopes.
 
They knew Jesus to be dead;
          they had seen him die.
They knew him to be in the tomb;
          they had seen him laid there.
They knew that the stone was firmly across the entrance
          and that they would not even have enough strength
          to roll it away to see once again the corpse that lay within.
 
Yet still they went to the tomb, in despair and fear and futility;
          as we all go, in our own ways,
          to gaze again upon the tomb of our own fears.
 
But at the tomb of Jesus,
          the women discovered that the tomb itself was a lie.
 
The stone was rolled away,
          and the dead body they feared to find wasn’t there.
 
The simple truth that confronted the women
          is the same truth that confronts us:
 
The tomb is empty.
          Its power is void.
Its deception is exposed,
          and its hold over us is broken.
 
This is the message of Easter.
 
But how are we to hear this message?
          How do we take deep within ourselves
                   the revelation of resurrection;
          that offers us a way through the valley of death,
                   and guides us through the waters of chaos?
 
Mark’s gospel tells us that when the women got to the tomb
          they looked up, and then they looked again (15.4).
It was only on second sight
          that they saw the tomb to be empty.
 
Like the blind men earlier in Mark’s gospel (8.25, 10.51)
          it was a miracle of seeing that opened their eyes
          to the reality of the new world of the empty tomb.
 
And we, like the women, need to learn what it is to look again,
          we need to learn to see through the lies
                   and deceptions of death,
          to the truth of new life
                   that lies beyond our mortal expectations.
 
In our fears and our imaginations the tomb remains filled with horrors,
          and we are prevented from seeing reality
          by the stone of impediment that blocks our sight.
 
It is only when we are enabled to look again,
          that we can see the stone to have been rolled away,
          and experience the reality of the empty tomb.
 
But this is not something which we can do for ourselves.
 
Like the women at the tomb of Jesus,
          we do not have the strength in ourselves
                   to roll away the stone and let in the light
                   that will reveal the cupboard within to be devoid of terror.
 
The intervention we need in our lives
          is the same as that experienced by the women.
There is nothing we can do to move the stone;
          but by grace, it has already been rolled away for us.
We need only have eyes to see it. [1]
 
We live our lives out of our narrative of fear and death,
          afraid of the darkness within ourselves,
and yet if only we could have the eyes to see it,
          the doorway to the darkness of our souls has already been opened,
          and the light is streaming in to banish the terrors of the night.
 
This is an invitation to a radically new way of being human.
 
It is an invitation to learn to live in an entirely new way,
          where our thoughts and actions are determined
                   not by darkness but by light,
                   not by death but by life.
 
It is an invitation for us to step across a threshold
          and discover the true life that awaits us
          when we confront our fears and find them groundless.
 
Maybe we, like the women, need to hear the divine messenger
          telling us to not be afraid.
 
Maybe we need our own moment of divine encounter,
          to open our eyes to the reality of life reasserted in the face of death.
 
Maybe we need to meet the risen Christ for ourselves,
          present by his Spirit in the place of our deepest fear,
          speaking words of peace and new life to our troubled souls.
 
But see what happens to the women next…
 
Their fears are confounded, and they discover the empty tomb.
          They encounter the messenger who seeks to calm their troubled minds.
 
And then they are told to leave the tomb,
          and head back to the real world,
          back to Galilee, back to normality,
          to encounter the risen Christ in their homes,
                   in their families and communities.
 
We are not called to sit and stare at the empty tomb,
          any more than we are called to linger our gaze forever on the cross.
 
Because new life is for living,
          and if we allow our fears to silence our witness
          to the good news of the empty tomb,
then we simply roll back the stone
          and fill the void once again with the terrors of our imagination.
 
‘Do not be afraid’, says the messenger,
          ‘Go to Galilee and meet the risen Christ’.
 
But Mark tells us that the women fled from the tomb, seized by terror,
          and said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid. (15.8).
 
And there, in its original form, Mark’s gospel ends.
 
Here, the story stops where Mark intends it to stop,
          and the rhetorical force of the hanging ending is compelling.
 
Those of us who read Mark’s account of the empty tomb,
          are invited to identify ourselves with the women.
 
We are invited to see ourselves in their desire to revisit the tomb,
          and to gaze once more on the death of hope.
 
We are invited to share with them their futility
          in the face of the immovable stone.
 
And we are invited to look again with them
          and to realise that the tomb of terrors is thrown open
          and revealed to be empty.
 
But we are also invited to consider what we will do next.
 
Will we, like the women,
          go from here in silence, struck dumb by our encounter?
 
Or will we go seeking the risen Christ,
          and meeting him on the way.
 
New life does not come easily to the world,
          and we do not leave our fears behind us without a struggle.
 
But there are days when life springs unexpectedly
          from the barren soil of existence,
and hope is reawakened
          in the souls of those who thought faith had long gone.
 
Death and resurrection,
          brokenness and healing,
marginalisation and empowerment,
          sin and reconciliation,
          injustice and transformation:
All these shape the very pattern of the Christian life. [2]
 
And our experience of resurrection, healing, empowerment,
          reconciliation and transformation is a pure, unearned gift of God.
 
But it is also the ultimate test of,
          and the only hope for, a disciple’s faith.
 
What difference will the empty tomb
          make for us tomorrow, this week, this year?
 
Where will we face down our fears and find them to be groundless,
          where will we speak words of new life to those trapped in cycles of death,
what opportunities will we take to breathe new life into those we meet,
          knowing that Jesus has gone ahead of us to meet us there.
 
How, I wonder, will Mark’s story of the empty tomb
          find its completion in the narratives of our lives,
as we re-write our own stories
          based on life rather than death.
 
As Desmond Tutu puts it in his book, ‘An African Prayerbook’

Victory is Ours

Goodness is stronger than evil;

Love is stronger than hate;

Light is stronger than darkness;

Life is stronger than death;

Victory is ours through Him who loves us.

---

[1] A quote from Ched Myers et al, Say to this Mountain, p. 206
[2] Say to this Mountain, 209

The End Times?

A sermon for Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church

17th March 2024

Mark 13.1-8, 24-37

Don’t misunderstand me when I say this,
            but I genuinely believe that we are living in ‘the last days’.
 
Let me be clear.
 
I emphatically do not mean,
            that the current wars around the world,
            or indeed the growing effects of global warming,
            are signs from God that the world is coming to an imminent end.
 
Humans have faced times of war, famine, disease, and disaster
            many times in our history,
and just because these are the signs of our times,
            doesn’t make us in some way specially chosen by God
            as the final generation of humanity.
 
The question of where God is to be found in the midst of suffering and death
            is not a new question,
but it is our question, for our world,
            as it is the question for each generation of the faithful.
 
One way or another, the world will keep turning,
            nations may rise and fall,
            societies and empires come and go,
but short of total nuclear annihilation,
            or runaway global warming to the point where the planet is uninhabitable,
a new generation will come,
            and they will adapt, and build their world in their time.
 
This is not to minimise the seriousness of the present situation,
            or the challenges we face.
But it is to offer a sense of historical perspective.
 
We’ve been here, or somewhere like here, before,
            and it’s awful, and it’s horrible, and heart-rending, and tragic,
            but it’s not the end of the world.
 
So what do I mean when I say
            that I still believe we are living in ‘the last days’?
 
Our Bible reading for this morning
            is from the so-called mini apocalypse from Mark’s gospel,
and to understand its end-times, last-days language,
            we need to understand something of the context of the first century.
 
It’s likely that Mark’s gospel was written right at the end of the 60s,
            which was a time of ever-increasing political tension in the land of Israel,
as Jewish revolutionaries gathered their forces,
            in expectation of a great battle with the forces of Rome.
 
Their mission was simple:
            liberate Jerusalem,
                        throw out the Romans,
            re-establish the Jewish state
                        as a religiously and politically autonomous entity;
            or die trying.
 
And for the community Mark was writing for,
            the temptation to join these revolutionaries was great.
 
So in his gospel he tells events from the life of Jesus,
            events which happened some thirty years earlier,
and he tells them not as abstract stories for use in Sunday school lessons,
            but to directly address the question,
of whether it is appropriate for his congregation
            to join the Jewish rebels
            in the seemingly inevitable and imminent battle against Rome.
 
From Mark’s perspective,
            which he believes is a perspective grounded in the life and teaching of Jesus,
            the really important battle isn’t actually against Rome;
and so for his people to take up swords and fight for their political freedom
            would be selling their souls to the self-same forces of violence
            that already lay at the heart of empire of Rome.
 
They might win the battle for their holy city,
            but if the cost was complicity in violence,
                        they would have lost their souls,
            and would in the end simply reinvent
                        the same oppressive powers under a different name.
 
And this is so often the case, is it not,
            that those who take up arms for the cause of righteousness
end up as agents of violence
            as the innocent and the vulnerable
            perish in their tens of thousands.
 
For Mark, as for Jesus,
            the true revolution is not about taking up swords
                        against an earthly enemy,
            but is rather a new and nonviolent way
                        of people drawing near to God,
            of discovering what it means to live in peace with one another.
 
And this Jesus-revolution, as we might call it,
            this revolution of the Kingdom of Heaven,
will be achieved not by swords, but through suffering,
            as people of faith do battle with the forces of violence
                        not by overthrowing them,
but by unmasking their evil, by absorbing the violence,
            and leaving the allies of darkness nowhere to go
            but deeper into their own depravity.
 
This is the way of the cross,
            this is what it means for Jesus and his disciples to draw near to Jerusalem,
for Jesus to take his stand
            against the religious system of the Temple,
                        (which he denounces for its oppression of those who are poor),
            and against the political ideology of nationalism,
                        (which he denounces for its inherent violence).
 
The only way through this,
            the only way out of the death-trap of spiralling violence,
is the way of Jesus
            the way of the cross,
            the way of suffering and death.
 
And Mark wants his readers to understand, in their first century context,
            that dying in the cause of the kingdom of God
                        is not defeat at the hands of the enemy,
            but is rather the path
                        through which the new world of Jesus comes into being.
 
Mark wants his community to realise that the cross is not defeat,
            death is not the end,
            but is rather the moment of the unveiling of the glory of God.
 
From a historical perspective,
            the Jewish rebels continued their rebellion,
and the Romans fought back, with a massacre taking place in Jerusalem,
            and with the destruction of the temple in the year 70,
            just a year or two after Mark’s gospel was written.
 
But what Mark offers,
            in this strange ‘end-times’ chapter that we have before us this morning,
            is a theological perspective on the events of history.
This is Mark inviting us to consider where God is
            when the evidence of history seems to be denying God’s presence.
 
And here I want to offer a very clear statement
            about how we might read Mark chapter 13,
            and other passages like it.
 
These are not prophecies or predictions
            about some future world-ending cataclysm,
and to read them as if they are,
            is to miss the deep wisdom that they offer
            to each succeeding generation including our own.
 
Rather, these strange apocalyptic images,
            are a way of understanding
                        how God is at work in the very real events of human history,
            and specifically in the crucifixion of Jesus
                        as the inauguration of God’s new kingdom.
 
Once we grasp what God is doing
            in and through Jesus’ journey towards the cross,
we are better equipped to understand what God is doing
            in the difficult and traumatic experiences of our own lives.
 
This is what Mark wants for his readers,
            he wants them to understand the significance of the cross,
            so that they can better understand their own context.
 
And the same is true for those of us who read this gospel in later centuries:
            if we can understand the cross as victory, and not defeat,
            if we can understand the death of Jesus as the revelation of God’s glory,
then we too will be able to understand
            how the kingdom of God is coming to us in our world.
 
So this is what I mean when I say
            that I believe we are living in the ‘last days’:
ever since the moment of Jesus’ crucifixion,
            the world as we experience it,
                        a world dominated by powers of violence and oppression
            has been under divine judgement.
 
And whenever and wherever the people of Christ
            offer their faithful witness to the power of the cross,
the new world, that is forever breaking into this old world,
            is made more real
as people are liberated from the twin powers of sin and death.
 
As we’ve seen with other passages from Mark’s gospel
            on our journey through it this year,
the shadow of the cross intentionally falls over the whole narrative.
 
We see this particularly in the last few verses
            of our reading for this morning:
 
Therefore, keep awake--
            for you do not know when the master of the house will come,
            in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or at dawn,
or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly. (13.35-36)
 
This instruction to ‘keep awake’
            is the same request that Jesus made to his disciples in Gethsemane;
and the reminder that God is the master of the house
            is an important reassurance that other earthly powers
            do not hold ultimate power over people’s eternal souls.
 
Mark even gives us four time-markers,
            of evening, midnight, cock crow, and dawn,
to point us straight to the last night of Jesus before his crucifixion.
 
The evening is a reference to the last supper,
            which Jesus celebrated with his disciples
            on the night before he was betrayed (14.17).
Midnight is a reference to the long dark night of Gethsemane,
            when the disciples slept as Jesus prayed in anguish (13.32).
The cockcrow is a reference to Peter’s denial of Jesus (14.30, 68, 72),
            and the dawn is when Jesus is handed over to Pilate to be crucified (15.1).
 
Just as the disciples slept through Gethsemane,
            even as Jesus told them to keep awake,
so Jesus leans out of the pages of Mark’s gospel
            to tell each of us who reads it
that we must keep awake and ever alert
            to the changing of the times
as the old world passes, and the new world comes.
 
The master of the house is coming,
            and his presence can be felt by those of us
            who are watching faithfully for the signs of his in-breaking kingdom.
 
We are the citizens of a new world,
            that offers a new way of being human before God,
a new way of relating to one another,
            a new way of peace ,
the gift of the Holy Spirit
            to those whose lives are lived in the midst of chaos.
 
But what will this new world look like, when it comes?
            And will the old powers of violence and oppression
            continue to reassert themselves?
 
Well, they always crouch at the gate, waiting to pounce.
 
But as the people of God in our time
            we share with Mark’s readers
            the task of building a different, a better world;
and we do this not by embracing violent revolution,
            nor by playing the world at its own game, seeking power over others,
but by living out in our own lives
            what it means to offer sacrificial love for one another.
 
We too are gathered in Gethsemane,
            and we need to keep awake.
 
Like Mark’s first readers, and the disciples of Jesus before them,
            we too have to discover that the meeting place of God and humans,
                        the place of the ultimate revelation of God’s glory,
            is encountered in the cross of Christ.
 
Where people die, God is.
            Where people suffer, God is.
Where people live in fear, God is.
            Where people are victimised, God is.
Where people are faithless, God is.
            Where people doubt, God is.
Where people betray, God is.
            Where people repent, God is.
Where people love one another, God is.
            Where people make sacrifices for others, God is.
Where people risk their safety for the lives of others, God is.
            Because God is love.
 
And the love of God is made known in and through the death of Jesus,
            God’s son, our saviour.
 
And so we take another step towards the cross,
            as we journey together towards Easter.

Love of God, Love of Neighbour

A Sermon for Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church

10th March 2024

Mark 12.28-34
Deuteronomy 6.3-6   
Leviticus 19.9-18 

In our story this morning from Mark’s gospel this morning,
            a Jewish scribe tries to get Jesus to answer a question
            that he and his fellow scribes had clearly spent a long time debating: 

And the question is this:
            ‘Which command lies at the heart of following God?’
 
In his reply, Jesus starts with the orthodox answer,
            the answer that the scribe would have expected,
which is that the heart of discipleship
            is the love of God.
 
In his answer, Jesus quotes the verse known as ‘the Shema’,
            from the book of Deuteronomy.
 
'Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one;
            you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart,
            and with all your soul, and with all your mind,
            and with all your strength’
 
And really, who could argue with that?
 
The whole revelation of God through scriptures and prophets,
                        from Genesis, to Abraham, to Moses, to Jesus himself
            is consistently that God is God,
            and that humans are creatures
                        who find their true fullness of life
                        when God is central to their lives.
 
Scripture also repeatedly warns, that when humans act in ways
            that displace God from the centre of their world,
by seeking instead to prioritise and worship
            idols and constructs of their own making,
then the door is opened for hell on earth.
 
So, who could argue with the central command
            being one of wholehearted devotion to the Lord God,
to the exclusion of all other claims on human allegiance.
 
But what’s interesting in Jesus’ reply is that he doesn’t stop here.
 
He goes on to couple the basic command
            to love God above all else,
with a command from the book of Leviticus (19.18),
            to love one’s neighbour as oneself.
 
For Jesus, it seems that simply loving God isn’t, actually, enough.
            The way of discipleship must also involve love of neighbour.
 
Indeed, you might say
            that there is no love of God,
            except in the love of neighbour.
 
You might say
            that for the hope of heaven to have any meaning,
            heaven must come to earth.
 
You might even say, as Jesus himself said,
            that for the kingdom of God to offer any meaningful hope,
            the kingdom of God must come on earth, as it is in heaven.
 
And so the fact that Jesus combines Deuteronomy with Leviticus in this way
            is very interesting, and worth thinking about a bit further.
 
The Deuteronomic tradition within Judaism
            found in the book of Deuteronomy and a few others,
was a religious tradition primarily concerned
            with ensuring faithfulness to the Jewish God Yahweh,
and it was centred around this command
            to worship no other gods, except the Lord God of Israel.
 
This Deuteronomic worldview, as it’s known,
            was one where the worshipping of other gods
            would always lead to sure and certain disaster,
whilst the way to a good, prosperous, and Godly life
            lay in avoiding the temptations of idolatry,
and in remaining faithful
            to the covenant relationship with Yahweh.
 
By contract, the Levitical tradition
            that Jesus combines with the Shema from Deuteronomy
brings a different, additional, perspective:
            It defines godliness in terms of love of neighbour,
            and particularly in terms of non-exploitation of one’s neighbour.
 
The verse that Jesus cites from Leviticus
            is, as we heard, the culmination to a list of commands
prohibiting the oppression and exploitation
            of Israel’s weak and poor (Lev 19.9-17).
 
This is a list which includes:
            caring for the impoverished immigrants,
                        not stealing or dealing falsely with others,
            not oppressing one’s neighbour,
                        not exploiting employees,
            not discriminating against the disabled,
                        not showing partiality or injustice,
            and not slandering or bearing false witness.
 
The scribes were the heirs to the Deuteronomic tradition,
            and so, the one asking Jesus the question in today’s reading
                        would have been right there with him
            when he cited the shema, the command to love God above all else,
                        because this was at the heart of their religious practice.
 
But, according to Mark’s gospel,
            these same scribes were complicit in many practices
            which exploited and oppressed the weak and the poor.
 
For these scribes, the desire to love their God
            had overwhelmed the obligation to love their neighbour.
 
Their commitment to the religious institutions of the Temple system,
            had led to their complicity in systemic practices of exploitation,
            where the vulnerable were oppressed even as God was worshipped.
 
It remains tragically true even today
            that the church maintains an uneasy relationship
            with those movements which agitate for social change.
 
This has particularly been the case
            when churches have sought to align themselves closely
                        with the structures of secular power,
            often with the intent of seeking to sanctify those structures,
                        but also with the intent of securing their own ability
                        to worship God with impunity.
 
In the eighteenth century,
            the established church all too readily sanctioned the slave trade,
            whilst distancing itself from those Christians
                        who were agitating for emancipation.
 
And in the present day,
            the silence of the church on progressive social change,
                        or even its opposition to it,
            reflects something of this same tension
                        between establishment interests and cultural transformation.
 
It’s significant that even though the scribe who came to Jesus
            appeared to agree in theory
                        with Jesus’ agenda for social change,
            and even though he cited Hosea (6.6)
                        in agreement with what Jesus has said,
            Jesus still stopped short of embracing him,
                        simply telling him that he was ‘not far’ from the kingdom of God.
 
This man had the theory,
            but he didn’t have the practice,
and so, whilst he was close to the kingdom,
            he nonetheless remained beyond it.
 
The sovereignty of God, it seems,
            demands more than orthodoxy,
            more than intellectual agreement with the principle
                        of ‘love God and love neighbour’.
 
There must also, always, be the practice of justice
            if the worship of God is to have any meaning.
 
For too many years, in our western Christian tradition,
            there has been a division between those Christians
                        who have prioritised the love of God
            and those who have prioritised the love of neighbour
 
Back in the day, whenever the day was,
            this was often characterised as a division
                        between the so-called evangelical churches
                        and the so-called social-gospel churches
 
The evangelical churches
                        often looked down on the social-gospel churches,
            who they felt didn’t give sufficient emphasis
                        to the transformation of the individual,
                                    that is brought about
                                    by an encounter with the living spirit of Christ.
 
Meanwhile, the social-gospel churches
                        often looked down on the evangelical churches,
            who they felt didn’t give sufficient emphasis
                        to the transformation of the world,
                                    that the spirit of Christ is seeking to bring about
                                    through those who name Christ as their Lord.
 
This is the nub of the question:
            Is it more important to love your God,
                        with all that this entails?
            Or is it more important to love your neighbour,
                        with all that this implies?
 
And so we’re back to the question
            asked of Jesus by the scribe.
 
And into this division
            echoes the voice of Jesus,
who sets the two side by side, alongside each other,
            and says, very clearly,
            that, like a horse and carriage,
            you can’t have the one without the other!
 
It seems that for Jesus,
            love of God is inseparable
            from right treatment of neighbour.
 
The right worship of God
            requires practical works of justice and mercy.
 
To put it another way,
            Deuteronomy needs Leviticus,
            every bit as much as Leviticus needs Deuteronomy.
 
This isn’t about winning salvation by good deeds,
            it is about the transformation of human relationships,
            across boundaries of power, and divisions of economics.
 
Which brings us to how this might apply to us
            in our world,
            in our communities, our city,
            and in our church.
 
I do hope you have etched Thursday 25 April into your diaries,
            because this is the day of the London Citizens Mayoral Assembly,
when we will be engaging with the next mayor of London
            on key issues that matter very much to the future of our city.
 
This will be a great opportunity for us to turn our faith into action,
            to fulfil the command to love our neighbours
            by working with others of good faith
to shape a city that benefits the vulnerable not just the wealthy.
 
If you get the weekly News Email,
            you will already have received the Citizens Manifesto,
and if you’ve had a chance to read it
            you will see that we’ll be asking the next Mayor
            to make some very specific commitments,
which have the capacity to improve the lives
            of some of the most disadvantaged people in our city.
 
From issues relating to work and wages,
            such as the Living Wage and Living Hours campaigns;
to commitments on refugees and asylum seekers
            such as improved access
            to English language lessons and public transport;
to ambitious asks on affordable housing,
            bad landlords, and repairs to social homes.
 
All of these are areas where our action, inspired by our faith,
            can make love of neighbour a reality
            for those who are literally our neighbours.
 
And we don’t do this alone,
            because on that same day,
we will be hosting an interfaith event here at Bloomsbury
            where people from the Christian, Jewish,
            and Muslim communities of London,
will be coming together to say that our faith in God
            unites us in action for the benefit of the poor and the needs,
more than the differences of our theology divide us.
 
Friends, this is faith in action,
            this is love of God, and love of neighbour, taking shape in our world,
and we, as the community of this church,
            have our part to play at the heart of it.
 
So please, put the date in your diary now,
            sign up for your tickets on the link in the email,
and let’s make sure that our faith in God and our trust in Jesus,
            is good news not just for us,
            but for all those who hunger for justice in our city.
 
And so we’re back to the scribe who met Jesus.
            He was, I am sure, a very religious person,
            with a sophisticated and caring theology.
 
But the system he was a part of
            was a system that had turned its back
            on issues of financial justice for the poor and vulnerable.
 
Worse than this, it was a system that was actually complicit
            in their ongoing oppression.
 
This was why Jesus told the good scribe
            that he was only near the Kingdom of God
            rather than part of it.
 
If we are serious about living our lives
            as citizens of the inbreaking kingdom of God
then we too need to continue to take seriously
            issues of systemic injustice,
                        both within our own world
                        and within the systems of which we are a part.
 
There are many issues
            where we as churches can be a prophetic voice,
            calling the world to account for exploitative and oppressive practices.
 
Whether it’s the living wage, or affordable housing,
            whether it’s challenging exploitative lending
            or investing in ways that poorer communities,
we have a role to play
            in the kingdom of God coming on earth, as in heaven.
 
And it starts, for us, with the naming of Jesus as Lord,
            but it doesn’t stop there.
 
So as we reflect on the encounter between Jesus and the scribe,
            we are reminded of the importance
of not just believing in the values of the Kingdom of God,
            but also living them out in our daily lives.
 
The scribe, despite his religious devotion and good intentions,
            was part of a system that perpetuated injustice and oppression.
This should serve as a wake-up call for us as well,
            to examine our own complicity in systems of inequality
            and to take action to bring about change.
 
It is not enough to simply profess our faith in Jesus as Lord;
            we must also follow his example
            of challenging the status quo and advocating for the marginalized.
 
As citizens of the inbreaking kingdom of God,
            we have a responsibility to work towards
            a more just and equitable world.
 
This means taking a stand on issues
            of justice and righteousness in our world.
 
We cannot be content to sit on the sidelines while others suffer.
 
We must be willing to speak out against systemic injustice
            and use our voices to call for change.
This requires courage, conviction,
            and a willingness to challenge the powers that be,
            just as Jesus did.
 
But it is not enough to simply speak out; we must also take action.
 
This means getting involved in our communities,
            supporting organizations that are working for justice,
            and using our resources to make a difference.
 
It means being willing to sacrifice
            our own comfort and privilege for the sake of others.
 
As we strive to live out the values of the Kingdom of God,
            let us remember that the journey towards justice is not always easy.
            There will be obstacles and setbacks along the way.
 
But we can take heart in knowing that we are not alone.
            We are part of a larger movement of people
                        who are working towards a better world,
            inspired by the love and compassion of Jesus.
 
So let us go from this place today with courage and conviction,
            knowing that the work we do is not in vain.
 
Let us be the hands and feet of Jesus in the world,
            working to bring about the Kingdom of God,
            on earth as it is in heaven.
 

Flipping Tables

 A Sermon for the Commemoration of Benefactors Service

Robinson College, Cambridge: 3 March 2023

 

 
John 2.13-22
The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.
 14 In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables.
 15 Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables.
 16 He told those who were selling the doves, "Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father's house a marketplace!"
 17 His disciples remembered that it was written, "Zeal for your house will consume me."
 18 The Jews then said to him, "What sign can you show us for doing this?"
 19 Jesus answered them, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up."
 20 The Jews then said, "This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?"
 21 But he was speaking of the temple of his body.
 22 After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this; and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.
 

 
A popular internet meme, in Christian circles at least,
            involves an artistic depiction of the cleansing of the Temple.
 
The text that accompanies it reads:
 
“The next time someone asks you ‘What Would Jesus Do?’
            Remind them that flipping over tables and chasing people with a whip
            is within the realm of possibilities.”
 
It’s funny, it’s snappy, and it nicely punctures the façade
            of Charles Wesley’s ‘Gentle Jesus Meek and Mild’.
 
The subtext is clear:
            Christians might be all, ‘turn the other cheeky’…
                        but don’t count on it!
            Sometimes they can get shouty and punchy too.
 
But I have to say that I find this rather disturbing,
            and the reason it disturbs me,
            is to do with a podcast I’ve been listening to,
about the rise and fall of Mars Hill church in Seattle,
            whose pastor Mark Driscoll notoriously promoted
                        what he described as a more aggressive form of Christianity.
 
His critique of mainstream churches was that they promoted a weak, passive faith,
            and that if people who lived
                        in what he called the ‘real world’ were to experience God,
            then they needed to meet a Christ
                        who could hold his own under any circumstances.
 
In other words, they needed a Christ
            who could flip tables and chase people with a whip.
 
In support of this macho, cage-fighter Jesus,
            Driscoll turned to the book of Revelation,
            a text almost certainly known to the author of John’s gospel.
 
Driscoll says:
            ‘In Revelation (the last book of the New Testament),
                        Jesus is a prize-fighter with a tattoo down His leg,
                        a sword in His hand and the commitment to make someone bleed.
            That is the guy I can worship.
                        I cannot worship the hippie, diaper, halo Christ
                        because I cannot worship a guy I can beat up.’
 
Similarly, in his sermon on the cleansing of the temple,
            delivered against a backdrop image of a large whip,
Driscoll says the following:
 
            “Here comes Jesus and he is furious, he is angry…
            Now some of you will be very surprised to hear that Jesus got angry
                        because you have wrongly perceived
                        that Christianity just means that you be nice.”
 
What may not surprise you, hearing this,
            is that his 15,000 strong church closed down in 2014,
over accusations that its pastor engaged in persistent bullying,
            both of staff members and of people from the congregation.
 
Now, I need to be careful here,
            because I am very aware that only one who is without sin
            should cast a stone at another for their sin,
and so I don’t want to get too drawn into a direct critique of Mark Driscoll,
            who I’m sure has many redeeming qualities.
 
Rather, my critique is of the attempt to shape Christianity,
            as a religion of hyper-masculine aggression;
because this is a project which, I think,
            fundamentally undermines the witness of Jesus,
            as the one who’s life, death, and resurrection bring an end to violence.
 
What is at stake here, as far as I’m concerned, is something that really matters,
            because it takes us right to the heart
            of what it means to be a Christian.
 
At my church in London we have long taken the view that we are a ‘peace church’:
            we have our peace candle lit each week,
            we sell white poppies in the run up to Remembrance Sunday,
            and we hear sermons on the importance of taking nonviolent direct action.
 
Of course, not all Christians agree with this stance,
            with many drawing on Augustine’s Just War Theory,
to argue that there are circumstances where it is entirely appropriate
            for a Christian to engage in violence and warfare.
 
Indeed, many of the early Baptists took this position,
            and fought on the side of Cromwell in the wars of the seventeenth century;
similarly many from our churches
            fought in the two world wars of the twentieth century,
and many of us will know, love, and respect people
            who serve in the armed forces today.
 
So, to suggest that we worship a nonviolent God,
            made known in the person of a nonviolent Jesus,
and that this means those who follow that revelation,
            should also be nonviolent people,
is not an uncontroversial statement.
 
And it strikes me that any attempt to argue for Christian nonviolence
            must grapple with what is going on
            in the cleansing of the temple,
which is the single event in the ministry of Jesus,
            where he gets anywhere near an act of violence.
 
So just what was it that got Jesus so worked up,
            that he took a whip in his hand, in the Temple courtyard in first century Jerusalem?
 
The Hebrew Bible was clear that the Temple
            should have been the place of divine encounter,
            it should have been the place where God’s blessing was made available for all,
and it should also have been the place that defended justice for the weak,
            the place where the vulnerable could come for sanctuary.
 
But the Temple had become a place where the wealthy could gain easy access to God,
            while the poor faced often insurmountable costs to purchase their sacrifices.
The Temple was not a place where God was available to all,
            it was a place of benefit for the few, not the many.
 
There is something important here that the author of the gospel wants us to grasp,
            about the revelation of God in the person, life, and ministry of Jesus:
and this is that God will not be contained or constrained
            within religious institutions;
the blessings of God are not to be the exclusive preserve of the elite.
 
It’s noteworthy that what Jesus said as he enacted this visual parable,
            is different in John’s account compared to the other three gospels.
 
In Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Jesus declares,
            “It is written, ‘My house shall be a house of prayer’;
            but you have made it a den of robbers." (Matt. 21.13; Mar. 11.17; Lk. 19.46)
 
In the fourth gospel, by contrast,
            Jesus makes no mention of either prayer or robbers.
Instead he cries:
            ‘Take these things out of here!
            Stop making my Father's house a marketplace!’ (Jn. 2:16)
 
John’s version of this story isn’t a critique of corrupt mismanagement,
            but rather a critique of the entire financial system
                        that had grown up around the presence of God;
it is a condemnation of the very principle
            of buying divine grace and favour.
 
It was the Temple institution itself that came under Jesus’ condemnation,
            because the blessings of a restored relationship with God
                        had become contained and constrained within an economic system
                        which privileged the wealthy, and disadvantaged the vulnerable.
 
When Jesus says, ‘Stop making my Father's house a marketplace’,
            the Greek word used here is emporion,
                        from which we get our word ‘emporium’
                        meaning a ‘centre of commerce’ or a ‘place of trading’.
 
The trigger for Jesus’ action in flipping tables and grabbing a whip,
            was not sinful behaviour on the part of those trading in the temple,
                        but the very economic and religious system
                        that required their presence in the first place.
 
So when we look at who, or what, is under judgment here,
            we find that it’s not individual people being whipped for their corruption.
 
This wasn’t Jesus taking an action of anger
            against acts of personal sinfulness.
 
Rather, it was an act of condemnation against a societal system
            that had turned the free and abundant grace of God
            into an economic transaction that generated profit for the powerful,
                        advantage for the wealthy,
                        and which kept the poor far from God’s grace.
 
It would be very easy at this point
            to find ourselves making analogies with Martin Luther,
                        railing against the selling of indulgences;
            but where we need to depart from Luther,
                        is in the alignment he made between corrupt Catholicism
                        and what he regarded as Jewish legalism.
 
Jesus was not here condemning Judaism,
            he was restoring it,
bringing it back to what it was always supposed to be;
            which is a religion of grace,
            founded on the free gift of God’s presence.
 
What was judged was not Judaism,
            it was the religious system;
which had turned the gracious gift of the covenant
            into a transactional system for the benefit of the privileged.
 
This condemnation of the Temple becomes even clearer
            in the exchange which follows,
where Jesus makes a parallel between the Temple and his own body.
 
It’s important for us to realise
            that Jesus is not here casting himself as a temple-destroyer.
 
He does not say that he will violently destroy the temple.
            Rather, he says to the priests:
            ‘destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up’;
and we are invited, as enlightened readers of this gospel,
            to realise that Jesus is speaking not about the Jerusalem Temple at all,
            but of his own body, the new revelation of God’s presence on earth.
 
The Temple had become a system of violence,
            a system of oppression,
and the original readers of John’s gospel would have known
            that the Jerusalem Temple was, in fact, destroyed by the Romans,
            some thirty years after the death of Jesus.
 
The author of this gospel, written towards the end of the first century
            is inviting his readers to make a comparison
between the violent end of the Temple,
            and the violent death of Jesus on the cross.
 
The oppressive system of religious exclusion
            that had grown up around the presence of God in the Temple
            met its end at the hands of the Romans in 70CE;
and although the body of Jesus,
            also had its moment of violence
            at the hands of the Romans on Good Friday,
the testimony of the faithful was that in this case,
            violence was not the end of the story
 
The cleansing of the temple is therefore to be understood
            as an enacted parable of the crucifixion,
            as a sign of the new way that God is present with people.
 
Jesus is the nonviolent revelation of God’s abundant grace for all,
 
No longer is God to be made known through exclusive institutions,
            no longer is God to be sold for profit,
            no longer will God be complicit in systems of exploitation
 
And the people of God, the church of Christ,
            continually need to re-hear and re-learn
                        the lesson of the cleansing of the Temple,
            if we are to remain faithful to the revelation of God in Jesus.
 
It is too easy, I think, for us to become focussed
            on the conservation of our institutions,
too easy for us to seek the preservation of our Temples,
            too easy for us to fall into the trap
            of monetising that which God would give freely to all.
 
And whilst I recognise that we are here today
            to mark the generous benefaction of Sir David Robinson,
            and the others who founded and funded this wonderful College,
 we must keep before us the profound truth
            that the wealthy do not get more privileged access
            to God than the less wealthy.
 
So as we consider Jesus’ enacted parable of judgment
            against the Temple in Jerusalem,
we need to ask ourselves honestly
            whether there are barriers of power and privilege
            that creep into our institutional life?
 
We need to keep ourselves honest about, for example,
            our attitudes towards wealth and educational opportunity,
particularly as these intersect with ethnicity, gender, and sexuality.
 
This is an invitation for us to consider our own situation,
            and to identify those barriers
                        that we construct or perpetuate within our own communities;
            barriers of access which keep people from grace,
                        the negotiating of which turns places intended for the benefit for all,
                        into a free market economy of privileged access and powerful elitism.
 
And it is an invitation for us to think once again
            about what it means for us to be followers of Jesus,
the one who absorbs the violence of the cross
            turning the certainty of death into the possibility of new life for all.
 
It is an invitation for us to consider what it means for us to be a people of peace
            who nonetheless take nonviolent action
                        to challenge those systems of domination
            that embody oppression and exploitation
                        in our society and in our world.
 
If the blessing of life in all its fullness,
            is not experienced abundantly by all, without exception,
            (and I’m afraid it is not),
then, my friends, we still have a task before us
            as together we embody the good news of Jesus Christ
            in a world of inequality and injustice.
 
So, who’s up for overturning a few tables?