Monday 22 February 2021

Unless you repent, you will all perish

A sermon for Provoking Faith in a Time of Isolation,
the online gathering of Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church
28th February 2021


Luke 13.1-9


According to the Guardian last month,
 
“Persecution of Christians around the world
            has increased during the Covid pandemic,
with … a 60% increase [in 2020] over the previous year
            in the number of Christians killed for their faith.”
 
So here’s a question:
            Do you think because these Christians suffer in this way
            they are worse sinners than other Christians?
 
No, I tell you.
            But unless you repent, you will all perish as they do.
 
And a recent inquiry into the cladding that caught fire on Grenfell Tower in 2017,
            leading to the loss of 72 lives with a further 70 seriously injured,
states that the manufacturer of the cladding
            suppressed the fact that it had not passed fire safety tests.
 
And here’s another question:
            Do you think that those who perished and suffered when the tower caught fire
            were worse offenders than any others who live in London?
 
No, I tell you.
            But unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.
 
Are you shocked? If so, then I think that’s the point.
 
Too often, it’s too easy for us to rationalize to ourselves
            the terrible tragedies that befall other people.
 
The sense of relief that it isn’t ‘me and mine’
            facing persecution in another country,
            or dying in horrific tower fire,
can be so great that we gift ourselves
            an inflated sense of our own cosmic importance.
 
And then, oh so subtly,
            we distance ourselves from the suffering of others.
The relief of ‘It hasn’t happened to me’
            can easily become the conviction that ‘it could never happen to me’.
 
The presence of evil and suffering in our world is always disturbing.
            Tragedy surrounds us on every side.
And the question that bubbles below the surface is now, as it always has been,
            ‘whose fault is this?’
 
And today, as always, there are plenty of people who will offer an opinion.
 
Listen to this wonderful and terrifying quote from the great Richard Dawkins
 
“The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world
            is beyond all decent contemplation.
During the minute that it takes me to compose this sentence,
            thousands of animals are being eaten alive,
            many others are running for their lives, whimpering with fear,
            others are slowly being devoured from within by rasping parasites,
            thousands of all kinds are dying of starvation, thirst, and disease.
It must be so.
If there ever is a time of plenty,
            this very fact will automatically lead to an increase in the population
            until the natural state of starvation and misery is restored.
In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication,
            some people are going to get hurt,
            other people are going to get lucky,
            and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice.
The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect
            if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose,
                        no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.”
            ― Richard Dawkins, River Out Of Eden: A Darwinian View Of Life
 
‘whose fault is it?’
            – No-one’s fault, says Dawkins.
These things just happen, it’s the way the universe is constructed.
 
Dawkins, of course, is reacting against those people
            who persist in ascribing everything to God’s action or intervention.
Why did those people die?
            Because God, inscrutably, has willed it.
Why am I still here?
            Because God, for reasons unfathomed, has deemed it to be so.
 
I remember when I was in my first church,
            and a wonderful young man named Phil was elected as a Deacon.
            He was 21 years old, engaged to be married, and training to be a nurse.
After a chaotic teenage period, he had turned his life around.
            And then, one night, he died.
I had spent the evening with him planning the next Sunday evening service,
            I went home, and he went to bed with a headache,
            and the next morning he was dead of meningitis.
He never made his first deacons meeting.
 
And some people said, ‘God takes those he loves the most’;
            and some people said ‘God must want him for something special in heaven’;
            and some people said ‘God has spared him a life of suffering’.
Others said that his death was a work of the evil one,
            who had snatched Phil’s life from him far too young;
Others said that God could have intervened,
            but didn’t for reasons we know not of.
 
And do you know what, I didn’t and still don’t buy those answers.
            If that’s the way God works, then I’m with Richard Dawkins.
 
Interestingly, in the ancient world,
            people were a lot less willing to attribute evil
            to God’s carelessness, or noninvolvement.
 
They assumed that tragedy generally reflected God’s judgment for sin committed.
            So if and when tragedy came,
                        the ancient logic of the book of Deuteronomy
                        suggested that responsibility must lie with the person
                        who has experienced the tragedy.
            In some sense, they must have deserved it…
 
It was this perspective which led Jesus to respond
            to reports that were circulating
            about a pair of recent Palestinian tragedies.
And in his engagement with these two stories,
            Jesus took popular assumptions
                        about who might be blamed for such suffering
            and turned them into an opportunity for public reflection,
                        and indeed repentance.
 
Rather than engage in abstract discussion about the misfortunes of others,
            Jesus personalizes the issue, and asks questions of those around him:
            “What do you think?” he asks; “Unless you repent…” he warns.
 
He takes the tragedies of the moment,
            and asks those following him to reflect on where God might be found
                        in the midst of all that horror and suffering.
 
He doesn’t turn his face from the news of tragic and sudden death,
            thanking his lucky stars that he wasn’t there when it happened,
            or muttering to himself ‘there but for the grace of God go I’.
 
Not a bit of it.
            Jesus faces the news of the tragedies square on,
                        and asks that most difficult question:
            Where on earth, and in heaven’s name,
                        is God in the midst of such suffering?
 
William Brock, the first minister of this church, famously said that
            ‘The Bible and the Times newspaper are the best materials for the preacher’
                         – a quote that has been repeated in many a preaching class
                                    over the last 150 years,
                        and not always ascribed to Brock, I might add.
 
Did you know that there’s a tradition ascribing the phrase
            to the great Swiss theologian Karl Barth,
but seeing has he wasn’t born until eleven years after Brock died,
            if he did say it, I think he may have been borrowing.
Anyway, I’m going to claim it back for Bloomsbury
 
To assert that
            ‘The Bible and the Times newspaper are the best materials for the preacher’
is to say that the task of preaching includes the honest and public reflection
            on the events of the day – be they joyful news or tragic misfortune.
 
It was also said of William Brock that,
‘The pastor of Bloomsbury Chapel
            was a man who knew the times in which he lived,
            and he marked the signs thereof.’
 
This, it seems to me, is both appropriate and Christ-like.
 
Can we rightly interpret the signs of the times?
            Do we agree that what happens ‘over there’ should, and must,
            affect who we are ‘over here’?
 
What are we to make of Christians being persecuted unto death in their thousands?
            or people dying in an horrific fire in a tower block in West London?
Where is God in the midst of such horror?
 
Where in all this is the God we worship, praise and adore Sunday by Sunday?
            Where is the God to whom we give thanks for our manifold blessings?
What does it even mean to speak of God in the face of suffering?
 
These questions are not new, and they did not elude Jesus.
 
Some people came to tell him of the tragedy in the temple:
            Pilate, the Roman governor, had slain some Jews
                        and allowed their blood to be mixed
                        with the blood of the sacrifices in the temple.
 
It can be hard for us to appreciate how significant
            this event would have been in Jewish circles.
Such an attack in a sacred setting
            was sure to raise religious passions to a high level.
 
It is as if someone marched into a church
            and started shooting people as they prayed,
or planted a bomb to go off in a mosque at prayer time.
 
In Jesus’ day, this atrocity would have raised nationalistic questions
            as well as indignant outrage.
 
The Jews were fighting back against the Romans,
            Jewish freedom fighters were waging a low-level war
                        against the legionaries in their land.
 
And occasionally Rome struck back,
            with Pilate’s murder of worshipping Jews,
and the subsequent desecration of the temple,
            simply the latest example that he was seeking to make.
 
You can see how some might have wondered
            whether the unfortunate Jews in the temple
            had in some way brought it on themselves.
 
Was this a judgment for their sin, a judgment for their rebellion?
 
No, says Jesus, these Galileans who suffered in this way
            were no worse sinners than all other Galileans.
 
But, before the philosopher-theologians in the crowd
            could get lost in the various possibilities raised by the question,
            Jesus personalises it,
 
‘No, I tell you, but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did.’
 
There is a more fundamental issue here than ‘them’ and ‘their sin’.
            And this is the call to repentance.
 
The call to repent is the call of the Messiah summoning Israel
            to reconsider the meaning of her vocation
                        as the people of God,
and to repent of the national pride
            which interpreted that vocation in terms of privilege and worldly greatness.
 
No, it wasn’t their fault.
            But, says Jesus, if you continue to take up arms against Rome,
            if you continue to meet Roman violence with more violence,
                        eventually you too will die at the hands of the Romans.
 
Jesus is making it clear that those who refuse his summons to change direction,
            who refuse to abandon their flight into national rebellion against Rome,
            will bring down suffering and death not only on themselves
                        but on the many innocent ordinary people
                        who will find themselves caught up in the violence.
 
Those who take the sword will perish with the sword.
            And they will not perish alone.
 
Do we think that every Palestinian in our own time is a terrorist?
            Of course not, but nonetheless many innocent Palestinian
            women and children and men face death and suffering.
 
Do we think that every Israeli in our own time is an oppressor?
            Of course not, but nonetheless many innocent Israeli
            women and children and men face death and suffering.
 
Do we think that every Muslim is a threat to national security?
            Of course not, but nonetheless many innocent Islamic
            women and children and men face death and suffering.
 
Do we think every American is a colonial oppressor?
            Of course not, but many innocent Americans died in New York in 2001.
 
Do we think every Brit is a colluder in oppression?
            Of course not, but many innocent British people
            have died here in this very city
            as the spiral and cycle of violence continues to our own day.
 
Do the innocent deserve to die? Never.
 
But, unless we repent, we too will die like they die.
 
Jesus cites a second event to make the same point.
            Rather than a political tragedy, this is a natural catastrophe,
                        something akin to a hurricane or an earthquake:
            a tower at Siloam has collapsed and eighteen have died.
 
Siloam was a small area of Jerusalem,
            close to the centre of the ancient city, just to the south of the Temple itself.
Here was an event apparently beyond anyone’s control.
            And the question bubbles up again:
                        Who was responsible this time?
            The last time it was conflict with Rome that triggered the massacre,
                        but what about this time…?
            Maybe disasters are different?
 
Jesus’ interpretation is exactly as before.
            Without repentance, all die similarly.
 
Building accidents happen, people die, it’s not their fault.
            But, says Jesus, if the Jerusalemites continue to refuse God’s kingdom-call to repent,
                        if they continue to refuse to turn from their present agendas,
            then those who escape Roman swords
                        will find the very walls of their city collapsing on top of them
                        as the enemy closes in.
 
The victims of tragedy, whether due to the vindictive severity of Pilate
            or to unforeseeable accident,
must not be regarded as outstanding sinners
            especially singled out for divine retribution.
Sometimes people are simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.
 
BUT the reminder of human mortality and the fragility of life
            nevertheless provides a salutary reminder
that there are choices to be made in life:
            choices which can lead to death,
            and choices which can lead to life,
            both for themselves and for others.
 
Ultimately, when people resort to violence, violence wins.
 
And this is why Jesus must go to Jerusalem,
            to confront the violent regime of Rome
                        not with a terrorist dagger or a popular uprising,
            but by embracing the violence of the cross
                        and by taking the worst excesses of human suffering
                        and redeeming even the horrific death of an innocent man.
 
This is why we need to hear this passage in Lent,
            as we too are journeying towards the cross.
 
Like the unfruitful fig tree
            which is given one last chance to respond to special treatment,
Jesus’ call on Israel is that they must use the respite,
            which God in his mercy has given,
            to bring about a national reformation.
Or else, they will face death and suffering as Rome crushes them.
 
The gospel of Luke presents the fall of Jerusalem at the hands of the Romans in 70AD
            as a direct result of refusing to follow the way of peace
            which Jesus had urged throughout his ministry.
 
And all this raises some profound questions for us
            as we try to discern the signs of our times,
as we grapple with the question of where God is at work in our world,
            of where God is at work in our lives,
and as we try to work out what it might be for us,
            as the people of God in the twenty-first century
            to bear the fruit of the kingdom of God in the vineyard of our world.
 
And as we ponder these issues,
            there are some key questions we can ask ourselves
that might help us find some answers.
 
Firstly, where, in our world, do the innocent suffer?
            Where are the tragedies of suffering and death to be found?
 
Secondly, what are the mechanisms by which we, either individually or as a society,
            distance ourselves from that suffering?
What are the subtle mechanisms we employ to assuage our guilt
            and relieve ourselves of responsibility?
 
And thirdly, what do we need to repent of,
            what do we need to do differently?
 
The challenge before Israel was to turn from violence
            and that challenge is before us, too.
How often in our world do we meet violence with violence,
            and in so doing create spirals of suffering that encircle the innocent?
 
But there are also other, more subtle ways,
            in which we might need to reject the lies of self-justification
 
The Joint Public Issues Team of the Baptist Union, Methodists and URC
            published a report a few years ago,
called ‘The Lies We Tell Ourselves’
            which seeks to end what it calls ‘the comfortable myths about poverty’.
 
The report highlights ways in which evidence has been skewed
            to put the blame for poverty at the door of the poor themselves.
 
Let me read you a short except:
 
‘The myths exposed in this report, reinforced by politicians and the media,
            are convenient because they allow the poor to be blamed for their poverty,
            and the rest of society to avoid taking any of the responsibility.’
 
The report suggests that a number of "myths" about welfare claimants
            have arisen as a result of statistics being misused.
These are then repeated by the media
            and find their way into the popular consciousness.
 
The myths, according to the report,
            pin the blame for poverty directly on those who rely on welfare benefits
            while ignoring the more complex reasons
                        that really lie behind people’s experiences of poverty.
 
The report says that these incorrect ideas must be challenged.
            ‘Everybody is complicit - politicians, the media and the general public.
            But still many people prefer to believe
            that bad things only happen to "bad people".’
 
The reality, of course, is that in poverty
                        as in so many other areas of human suffering
            bad things do not only happen to bad people,
            sometimes bad things happen to good people who don’t deserve it
 
And any viewpoint, whether religious or secular
            which seeks to blame people for their suffering
is surely something that, in the name of Christ, need to be exposed and opposed.
 
This was the issue which Jesus was tackling
            when he addressed the news reports
            of the tragic deaths in Jerusalem.
 
He challenged those unaffected by the news of other people’s suffering
            to hear in those reports a call for their own repentance.
And that same challenge echoes down the centuries to our world.
 
Did you hear about the poor, the homeless, the dispossessed,
            the asylum seeker, the terminally ill, the tragically killed,
            the long term sick, the war zone victim,
            the depressed, the possessed, and the repossessed?
 
Did you hear?...
 
And did you think for one moment
            that their suffering was nothing to do with you?
Did you find a way of justifying
            your own continued existence before God?
Did you wonder if they in some way deserved their suffering?
 
No?
 
But I tell you,
            unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.

Saturday 20 February 2021

God’s love, in Christ Jesus

A Sermon for the Service of Thanksgiving for the life of Bill Somerville.


Romans 8.31-39


Occasions such as this, when we gather in the face of human mortality,

            are often occasions for asking profound and troubling questions.

 

Death, for all its brute reality, remains a mystery,

            and quite rightly we find ourselves asking the great existential questions of,

            Why? and What now? and How has this happened?

 

The reading we had just now, read by Bill himself on an earlier occasion,

            is a text packed full of just such questions.

 

But, and I don’t know if you noticed,

            Bill added short introduction to the reading,

            a brief statement of faith that prefaced the questions that followed.

 

This passage is, said Bill, about ‘God’s love, in Christ Jesus’.

 

This is the absolute, the basic conviction of faith:

            that God is love,

            and that God’s love is made known to us in Christ Jesus.

 

This is the certainty that Bill himself lived by,

            and it is offered to us today

            in the face of the questions of this day.

 

So when the questions come tumbling,

            we already have the beginnings of the answer.

 

When uncertainty beckons, and doubt descends,

            when faith wavers, and grief overwhelms,

we have this assurance of faith:

            ‘God’s love, in Christ Jesus’.

 

And so the ancient apostle Paul leans out of the text of his letter to the Romans,

            and asks of us, today, ‘What then are we to say about these things?’

 

What is there to say in the face of death?

            What is there to say in the face of loss, grief, and mourning?

 

Just this: ‘God’s love, in Christ Jesus’.

 

But Paul is not yet done,

            and his next question explores this conviction in greater depth:

He asks, ‘If God is for us, who is against us?’

 

Despite any evidence or feelings or convictions to the contrary,

            Paul’s assurance is steadfastly that God is for us.

 

And if God is for us, will not God with Christ Jesus

            give us everything we need at the point of our deepest need?

 

If God is for us, who can accuse us? Who can condemn us?

            Who can separate us from the love of Christ?

 

Let’s see, says Paul…

            Will hardship, or distress, or persecution,

            or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?

 

No, none of these, says Paul,

            can separate us from ‘God’s love, in Christ Jesus’.

 

But what about death itself?

            No, says Paul, not even death

            can separate us from ‘God’s love, in Christ Jesus’.

 

And so we come to the final verse of the reading,

            in which we encounter one of the great articulations of the Christian faith.

 

After all the questions, Paul circles back to God,

            and to God’s faithfulness to all that God has made,

            and to God’s love that transcends even death itself.

 

For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, n

            or angels, nor rulers,

                        nor things present, nor things to come,

            nor powers, nor height, nor depth,

                        nor anything else in all creation,

            will be able to separate us

                        from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Amen.

Tuesday 9 February 2021

Take off your mask!

 A sermon for Provoking Faith in a Time of Isolation,
the online gathering of Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church
14th February 2021


Luke 9:28-43a
Exodus 34:29-35 

Listen to this sermon here: https://soundcloud.com/bloomsbury-1/2021-02-14-podcast
 
Controversies about face-coverings
            are not simply a COVID-19 phenomena;
and whist I must confess to finding the politicised reluctance
            to wear a mask in the interests of public safety
as mystifying as the trend to wear masks on the chin or under the nose,
            nonetheless, arguments about whether to cover one’s face
            are nothing new.
 
The controversial French law of 2011,
            which made it illegal to wear a face covering veil
            or any other mask in public spaces      
led to the United Nations Human Rights Committee declaring in 2018
            that France's ban disproportionately harmed the right of women
                        to manifest their religious beliefs,
            and could have the effects of "confining them to their homes,
                        impeding their access to public services and marginalizing them."
 
And the irony is not lost on me that in August last year
            Paris was one of the first places
            to make wearing a face mask in public compulsory!
 
But of course, face and head coverings can also be oppressive;
            symbols of a patriarchy that excludes women
            from functioning fully within society as equals.
 
So from Covid facemasks, to religious head-coverings,
            the issue of whether or not to conceal one’s face
                        remains a contentious issue,
            and frequently becomes indicative of clash
                        between the demands of religious practice or ideological position,
                        and the requirements of civic society.
 
Which is probably a good point to take a trip back in time,
            to Moses coming down from Mount Sinai
            with the two stone tablets containing the ten commandments.
 
Whilst up the mountain,
            we are told that he had been talking with God:
                        face-to-face, as it were.
And then when he came down from the mountain
            his face was shining with the glory of God.
 
But after giving the commandments of God to the people,
            Moses then put on a face-veil because, we are told,
                        the people were afraid.
 
The significance of this is that,
            at the very moment of the giving of the Law,
                        intended to show people
                        how to relate to one another and to God,
            we find not unity but division.
 
Rather than bringing people together,
            the revelation of the law through Moses
                        instead brought social disruption
                                    as Moses was veiled from his fellow Israelites;
                        and spiritual disruption
                                    as the manifest presence of God
                                    was veiled from the people of God.
 
It can be hard to make sense of Moses’ experience,
            but I think Victor Hugo gets close in the book Les Misérables,
where he describes the old bishop
            Monseigneur Bienvenu with the words:
            ‘He did not study God; he was dazzled by him.’
 
And I think this contrast between studying God
            and being dazzled by God
is helpful to us as we contrast the different responses
            of Moses and the people of Israel.
 
The Israelites focussed on the tablets of the law,
            which they made their object of study;
whilst Moses focussed on the brightness
            of the revelation of the God who gave the law.
 
And here we have the heart of the problem
            – religious people through the ages
                        have persisted in finding themselves much less troubled
                        when they have a law to keep and apply,
            whilst those whose faces
                        reflect their encounter with the divine
                        are feared and segregated, veiled off from society.
 
In the sociology of religion,
            it is often the case that things are originally declared taboo
                        because they are considered too holy,
            but that those things declared taboo
                        eventually come to be reviled as unclean.
 
And one might note here,
            that those men who find that their study of religious law
                        requires them to enforce restrictive legislation on women
            might believe they are acting out of a desire
                        for careful observance of the commands of God,
but the tragedy is
            that the glory of the gift of fully equal humanity
                        becomes veiled as they do so,
            and human society as God intends it
                        becomes segregated,
becoming in the process so much less than it could and should be.
 
The law of Moses,
            which should have provided the mechanism
                        for genuine and open relationship
                                    between people and God,
            became instead the excuse
                        for segregation, division and distrust.
 
The two stone tablets with the ten commandments on
            were placed in the Ark of the Covenant,
which was placed in the holy of holies
            at the heart of the Jewish temple,
            separated from the people by, of course, a veil
                        (Ex 26.31-35; 2 Chron 3.14).
 
And only the high priest could go beyond the veil
            into the holy of holies,
and only then once a year
            on the day of atonement (Lev. 16; Heb 9.7).
 
That which was holy and given as a gift of grace
            became taboo because it was so holy;
and in time it became untouchable
            and something to be avoided by almost everyone.
 
If we fast forward through time a few centuries,
            we come to another prophet
                        ascending a mountain
            for a face to face encounter with the divine.
 
Jesus goes up the mountain to pray
            with three of his disciples,
and whilst there he has an experience
            which is analogous to that of Moses.
 
Luke’s gospel tells us that
            ‘while he was praying, the appearance of his face changed,
            and his clothes became dazzling white’ (9.29).
 
It’s no accident that this imagery echoes that of Moses:
            Luke is clearly telling us that Jesus is a prophet like Moses.
In fact, he is telling us more than that:
            The way Luke sees Jesus, he is the new Moses,
            bringing into being a new covenant between God and humanity,
                        predicated not on the giving of stone tablets
                                    inscribed with commandments of law,
                        but on the direct revelation of God himself,
                                    revealed through the person of Christ.
 
To hammer this point home,
            we discover that Jesus is now mysteriously accompanied
                        on the mountain by none other than Moses himself,
            together with the prophet Elijah.
 
Here we have the great symbolic representative individuals
            of the Law and the Prophets,
accompanying Jesus
            at his own moment of face to face encounter with God.
 
And then, just when you think it couldn’t get any more apocalyptic,
            we have a cloud and a disembodied voice from the cloud.
 
Those of us who know the Exodus story
            will recognise the imagery:
the cloud is the cloudy fiery pillar
            which led the people of Israel
            from slavery to freedom through the wilderness of Sin,
and the voice is the same divine voice
            that dictated the commands of the law to Moses.
 
But this time, rather than speaking words of law,
            the voice from heaven offers only one command:
                        ‘This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!’ (9.35).
 
This is the new law, given to the new Moses,
            in fulfilment of the law and prophets of old.
This is the new law,
            which will lead those who keep it
            safely through the wilderness
                        from slavery to sin and death
                        and into the promised land of the dawning kingdom of God.
 
It is this new law which completes and fulfils the old law,
            and this new law is written not on stone tablets,
            but is embodied in the living person of Jesus Christ.
 
Those who want to know how to live
            according the new law
need study no longer the words of the commandments,
            instead they need to be dazzled
            by an encounter with God in Christ.
 
And so Jesus, the new Moses,
            the personification of the new law,
comes down from the mountain,
            just as Moses came down from the mountain of Sinai.
 
And this is where it gets interesting.
 
Moses, as we have seen, had to veil his face
            because the people were afraid.
Jesus, on the other hand,
            comes down the mountain to an encounter
                        with a terrifying spirit
            which is causing a young child to shriek and convulse
                        and foam at the mouth.
 
The symptoms of the young man’s illness
            closely match those of epilepsy,
and indeed in the parallel account in Matthew’s gospel
            he is described as an epileptic.
Whilst modern medicine
            may have a better understanding of this condition
            and how it can be controlled,
the result of a violent epileptic fit
            is as terrifying today as it has ever been,
and clearly this young man’s life
            was subject to forces of chaos
            beyond his or anyone else’s ability to control.
 
It turns out that the disciples have been attempting to play exorcist,
            and have been trying unsuccessfully to heal the boy
            by casting out the disruptive spirit.
 
What Jesus says next is significant.
            The unspoken ‘Oh for goodness sake!’ is almost tangible,
            as he mutters despairingly
                        ‘you faithless and perverse generation,
                        how much longer must I be with you and bear with you’ (9.41)
            before commanding the father to bring the young boy to him.
 
The healing is then straightforward,
            as Jesus rebukes the spirit
            and brings peace to the convulsing child,
                        before restoring him back to his father.
 
It seems that the reason the disciples
            had been unable to heal the child
            was because they were part of this
                        ‘faithless and perverse’ generation.
They belonged the latest of the many generations
            which had encountered God with veiled minds.
They had not faced
            the dazzling and transforming character of God
                        with unveiled faces,
but instead had been shaped
            by a religion which focussed on the study of the law
            and the application of its commandments.
 
The healing of this young man,
            like so many of the healing stories in the gospels,
is not primarily about the physical cure,
            although there is certainly a physical element to what happens.
 
Rather, it is a story about the restoration of the young man
            to his rightful place in society.
We are told that after his healing
            he is restored back to his father.
 
Epileptics in that day were greatly feared as well as pitied,
            as they were believed to be inhabited by demons
            which caused their fits.
So they, and others with similar conditions,
            were kept at the margins of society,
                        hidden away and out of sight,
                        veiled off from the rest of the population.
An epileptic was an all too real reminder
            of the chaos that was believed to lurk
                        just below the surface of the world,
            threatening to break through
                        and overwhelm people at any moment.
 
The disciples had been unable to heal him
            because their minds were still veiled,
and they were focussing simply
            on a spiritual cause
            for the physical manifestation of his sickness.
 
But when the epileptic boy was brought to Jesus,
            he encountered this new Moses with an unveiled face,
and rather than pity or fear, or a desire to problem-solve,
            he met in Jesus
                        the God who brings equality between humans,
            who brings healing to society
                        and restoration to those who are cast aside or curtained off.
 
The healing of the young man was not just a spiritual act,
            it was not just a physical act,
it was a social act,
            restoring him to his family;
and it was a political act,
            as it challenged the structures of the society
            that had acted to segregate him away.
 
And in this healing of the young man,
            we see the implications of what it means
            to encounter God in Christ with unveiled faces.
 
The faithless and perverse generation
            is one which is beset by demons of all kinds,
which divide us one from another,
            sowing seeds of chaos and confusion,
            disorder and disruption.
I’m sure we could, if we wanted,
            name some of the demons of our own culture.
 
Today is Racial Justice Sunday,
            and the evils of racism have been laid bare for us
                        over the course of the last year,
with the Black Lives Matter movement
            calling us to a better vision of humanity.
 
From racism to sexism, to homophobia, biphobia and transphobia,
            the evils of exclusion and division are all around us
as God’s good creation becomes distorted
            and humanity is disrupted.
 
The faithless and perverse generation has veiled minds,
            looking for mechanistic solutions to presenting problems.
The faithless and perverse generation
            can study the law ‘til kingdom come
            and be none-the-wiser about the path to freedom.
 
But, those who encounter God in Christ
                        with unveiled faces
            are called to be those who bring holistic healing
                        to a world that remains frustratingly fragmented.
 
The call is upon all of us to keep the veils from our own faces
            as we, with Christ, descend from the mountain of revelation.
 
The call is upon each of us to resist those forms of our religion
            which perpetuate an us-and-them mentality,
            and which seek to veil person from person,
            or to keep our own revelation of divine love veiled from others.
 
If, in Christ, we have received the law of the Spirit of Christ,
            who is given to bring healing, restoration and renewal,
then our task is to allow that revelation to shine into the whole world,
            to illuminate the darkest places
            and bring healing to the most troubled and chaotic souls.
 
We are all too adept at finding effective ways
            of dividing our own community one-from-another
            along grounds of ethnicity, social standing, gender and sexuality
and when we do so, we not only divide the body of Christ,
            we also place a veil over the whole church
in such a way as to conceal such light as we have
            from those who most need its revelation.
 
Those who meet the world with unveiled faces
            are called to be those who see the structures and systems in society
                        which exclude the weak and the vulnerable,
                        which diminish and demean the oppressed,
                                    which stigmatise the demented,
                                    and segregate the unfamiliar.
 
Those who encounter the world with unveiled faces
            are called to bring the healing, restoring, transforming presence of Christ
                        to those whom others have written off
                        as irredeemable.
 
The veil between God and humanity
            was ripped in two at the moment of crucifixion,
the veil which lies over the hearts of humans
            is swept aside in Christ.
 
As none other than Paul himself put it:
            ‘all of us, with unveiled faces,
            seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror,
                        are being transformed into the same image
                        from one degree of glory to another;
            for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit.’ (2 Cor 43.18).