Previous Letters from the Clergy are available on this page.
April 2024
Locked Down, Lifted Up
The Sunday after Easter Sunday—the main event—is often referred to as “low Sunday”. It is the octave of Easter, a day which is still a feast but not quite as high.
But Jesus isn’t just for Christmas, and he certainly isn’t just for Easter: the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ continues behind locked doors. The disciples were afraid that the crucifixion of their Lord might be just the beginning of terror for them. So, they gathered behind the locked doors of a crowded upstairs room, as though they were hostages trapped by an impending crisis. They were afraid of the authorities from the temple police. They were afraid of one another. But mostly they were afraid of the consequences, if what they had heard and seen concerning the risen Christ might really be true. What then? Better to remain hidden behind locked doors that offer safety.
Perhaps many who attended church on Easter Sunday experienced a rush of joy because the church was full of singing and flowers. But when it was all over, they returned to the shelter of doors locked against acceptance of the story. Better to keep our doors locked, because others might laugh and ridicule us if we actually voiced our belief in the resurrection.
After church on Easter Sunday, what did we do? Did the story of our Lord’s resurrection change our lives in any way? Or did we simply go back about our business, content to leave Easter where we had found it: inside the churches where we had worshipped? Isn’t every Sunday supposed to be a reminder of Easter, thus a Sunday of Easter? Perhaps the time has come to unlock the doors that keep us from believing what the Scriptures clearly tell us is true. Jesus Christ rose from the grave to show us that we shall do the same, each in our turn. Open wide the doors to Christ!
We find ourselves most able to identify with Thomas because doubt is the simplest door to lock and hide behind. Human nature doesn’t allow us to probe the possibilities beyond our present perception. We barricade ourselves behind the doors of our minds which refuse to open to things we cannot yet understand.
Modern skeptics, like the ancient Sadducees, who denied the possibility of resurrection, scoff at a possibility that defies medical science and challenges us to walk by faith which would crash through our closed doors. Scholars scour the centuries in search of physical proof, ranting “If we could touch the wounds or see the nails that pierced him, then we would believe”.
The reason so many have left Easter in the churches where they found it Easter Sunday is that faith doesn’t just happen. It is nurtured throughout our lifetime of Easter celebrations. Those who truly experienced that first Easter, and the days that followed had come to this point in their life—journeys because they had followed Jesus through his earthly ministry. All that Jesus promised had happened. Yet Jesus knew that their minds were still closed and bolted as tightly as the doors in the house where they huddled hidden and afraid. He came and stood among them. They saw him and touched him and spoke to him.
Thomas’ extraordinary request demands sensible truth and evidence so that he will recognise someone that he has known all along; someone whose identity he never questioned. In addition to knowing about all manner of magicians and impostors claiming to be the Christ at that time and wanting to distinguish between them, Thomas demanded the true Christ, the Messiah, and he got him. Once Thomas and the rest experienced the full impact of Easter, their lives were different.
The borrowed tomb of Joseph of Aramathea is still empty. The shock waves of that first Easter Day bring us all out from behind our locked doors to crowd into churches around the world because we really do want to believe. And, just as the upper room of darkness and doubt was filled with His light and presence on the first Easter night, and on that night one week later when Doubting Thomas became Faithful Thomas, our deepest darkness can be illuminated by Christ’s presence, and any false Christs that make claims on us will be buried in the deepest caverns of Hell. The reality of the resurrection does not centre upon evidence, but centres on trust in the Saviour whom we already know, whose Holy Spirit dwells in us.
The Rev’d George M Rogers
March 2024
THE DARKEST VALLEY
“Lazarus is dead,” Jesus tells the disciples. It’s not hard to imagine the questions that might be running through their minds and the hearts of Mary and Martha. They are the same kind of questions I have heard being asked and have asked myself time and again this past year around the deaths we have had in this parish. They are the questions we ask when circumstances show us just how difficult, fragile and beautiful life really is.
The ultimate question behind all is the one God asks Ezekiel. “Mortal, can these bones live again?” That is what I want to know. Don’t you? That question is the valley that cuts through the centre of our lives. And yet, it is not a simple yes or no kind of question. Neither is it answered once and for all. It is a question we live with and ask over and over.
What is the valley that cuts through the centre of your life? What questions did you ask when the Lazarus of your life died? What questions are you asking today? Every time life sets before me those kinds of questions I am reminded, once again, that I live with more questions than answers, and the answers I do have no longer seem to carry the weight and authority they once did. Our lives are filled with unanswered questions.
My experience is that the unanswered questions of life tend to leave us disappointed—in life itself, in ourselves, in someone else: sometimes in God. Disappointment is wrapped up in and bound by our unmet expectations. That is where Mary and Martha are in relation to Jesus. They are disappointed. “Lord, if you had have been here, my brother would not have died,” they both say separately to Jesus. Even the crowd that follows Mary is disappointed. They ask, “could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?” I know that disappointment and I’ll bet you do too. We want answers, explanations and understanding. But maybe there are none; at least, not the kind we want. Maybe life itself is an unanswered question and maybe that is how we are to live it.
Jesus does not offer answers or explanations to Mary and Maratha or to us. Instead, he uses our disappointment as an agency for transformation. He uses it as an opening and entry point into their lives. While we might want to escape our disappointments, life wants to use them. Life does not waste our disappointments and Jesus always stands in the middle of life. Disappointment calls into question our assumptions about life, ourselves, each other and God.
Disappointment asks us to reassess ourselves and our inner world. It is the first step in freeing us from misguided assumptions. It breaks old patterns of seeing and relating that have become hardened and less than life sustaining. It opens our eyes to a deeper way of seeing. Jesus uses our disappointment in the unanswered questions of life to invite us to a larger foundational reality than what we create for ourselves and project onto the world.
That is what he is doing with Mary and Martha— “I am the resurrection and life.” “Take away the stone.” “Did I not tell you that you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?” “Lazarus come out.” “Unbind him and let him go.” With those words Jesus is holding before Martha and Mary the valley that cuts through the centre of their lives. “Mortal, can these bones live again?”
The great question is whether we experience our disappointment as an opportunity for seeing and engaging our lives and world in new, different and life-giving ways or whether we experience it only as a wound that makes us retreat from further participation. It is a question we answer every day. It is a question Jesus answered throughout his life.
Jesus knew disappointment: in the death of Lazarus, the crucifixion, Peter’s drawn sword and violence, Judas’ betrayal, the disciples sleeping in the garden, his Father’s house being turned into a den of robbers, his disciples arguing about who was the greatest, the disciples’ misunderstanding of who he is, the world’s refusal to receive him and in a myriad of other ways. Every disappointment held before him—as it does for us—the choice between engaging or retreating from the world and our lives. Jesus refused to be stopped by his disappointments. Instead, he used them as entry points into our lives. They became points of identification with us. His every disappointment become one more step deeper into the valley that cuts through the centre of our lives.
So, let’s consider this again. What is the valley that cuts through the centre of our lives? Whatever it is it is a place through which Jesus has walked and shown the way forward. It is not the dark place we often think it is. It is an aperture into the light, a path that opens to new life, a clearer way of seeing, a truer sense of ourselves and a deeper experience of Christ. It becomes the place of our unbinding and being let go.
In this valley “the question mark of life becomes God’s exclamation mark”: the exclamation mark of love, the exclamation mark of life and light, the exclamation mark of mercy and forgiveness, the exclamation mark of wisdom, beauty and generosity, the exclamation mark of hope, healing and compassion and ultimately, the exclamation mark of God’s “yes” to us and our lives.
“Mortal, can these bones live again?” The answer to that question echoes throughout the valley that cuts through the centre of our lives.
Yes they can!
Yes they do!
Yes they will!
The Rev’d George M Rogers
February 2024
To Obey or not to Obey? That is the Question
Read the following prayer very carefully:
“Lord, we just want to tell you that we are miserable sinners, and it is just because of the power of the Holy Spirit that we are here, just wanting to worship and serve you. We just want to thank you for all the gifts you have given us, the food you have provided, this banquet of fellowship, our friends, our family, and we just want to thank you for this bounty we are rejoicing in, and we just want you to know that we are just here in your service to do just anything you call us to do, and we just want to thank you for the redemption of the world through our Lord Jesus Christ, and we just want to say alleluia (even though it’s Lent!), and just to praise you Jesus, Father God, and just to bathe in the glory of the Holy Spirit and just to be your blessed children. And we just want you to shine the light of your blessed countenance on our dear children, so they can just go forth walking in the way of the cross to life everlasting, just praising your Holy Name, world without end.”
I just provided you with a prayer. Or rather I just gave you a just prayer, a prayer that I have experienced in other denominations of our faith—perhaps you are familiar with the just prayer too—at least you are now. Now is this prayer a “just” prayer, as in hoping to realise righteousness before God, or just a prayer aiming to coerce God into granting our seemingly just desires and wishes—note the absurd repetition of the word ‘just,’ as though I am placing preemptive limits on my wishes for what God might provide: we just want to thank you for this bounty we’re rejoicing in, and we just want you to know that we’re just here in your service to do just anything.
Righteousness before God means to be in a right relationship with him—where we pray as our Saviour Christ taught us—that God’s will shall be done, as in the Lord’s Prayer. What we are attempting to do in this “just prayer” is not God’s will but tempting God into doing our will. Let’s see how this resonates with Jesus himself being tempted. I think you will recall that Satan tried this on Jesus when the Holy Spirit drove our Lord into the wilderness directly following his baptism.
Weakened by his forty days fast, Jesus is tempted by Satan: turn the stones into bread to eat—directed against Christ’s hunger. Throw yourself from this pinnacle—directed at the illusion of the control one has over life, and the mad desire to preserve this life and all that is in it at all costs.
Look at these vast dominions, they can all be yours if you fall down and worship me—arrogance in thinking that we can give ourselves to God, and in return receive his grace as a reward. These practices are idolatrous; they are attempts to transform God into our own image, mapping our concerns, anxieties and perceptions onto him, that we then hope to use to coerce him to grant us our desires. As Christ replied to Satan, he replies to us as well, “You shall not tempt the Lord your God.”
May we not for a moment read this passage and arrogantly put ourselves in the place of Jesus Christ being tempted by Satan, which is a traditionally insipid interpretation. In many cases, we ourselves are the tempters, and it is not the image of the Saviour that we bear.
So, I would like to consider the nature of temptation. Let’s go back to the beginning in the Book of Genesis; where man and woman find themselves in the Garden of Eden with everything they need, including instructions for how to live in this paradise forever. Their task is to till, plant, keep, replenish and establish dominion over creation on God’s behalf. They have only one prohibition given straight from the mouth of God: Do not eat the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of good and evil.
All is well in Paradise—for a time.
Consider that this story does not say that good and evil should not exist in Paradise, or that the Tree of Knowledge must not be touched (in ch 3: 2-3 Eve tells the serpent God said this, but if we go back to ch 2: 15-17—it is clear God only said do not eat of it).
You see, evil did exist; the fall of the Archangel Lucifer (a.k.a. the Devil, the Adversary—Satan) occurred before the fall of humanity. The artful and crafty serpent who drew man and woman away from the Will of God was in the Garden alongside the other creatures. The Tree of Knowledge grew amongst the other vegetation—near the Tree of Life. Adam and Eve surely would have touched it as they lived out their vocations, tending the plants in the Garden—the thing to remember is that they were told not to eat of this tree: not to eat its fruit.
What the story makes clear is that only God is able to know both good and evil in a way that is not destructive to Creation. Humanity must not eat of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, for in that day it shall die. God said nothing to suggest that humanity might not touch or be touched by it, only that in Paradise it has no power to harm them if they do not eat of its fruit.
The Providence behind the prohibition is that God is the only one in the Garden—and ultimately in the universe—who can know good and evil and do so in a way that is ultimately life-giving.
Do you see now why questions of why God allows evil to exist in the world are ultimately of no import? Why that is not the issue and never has been?
Our relationship with God and what we do in response to his Will in the face of evil is the problem—not who or what God allows to exist.
The Rev’d George M Rogers
January 2024
Walking on Water
Jesus had come to John to be baptised, and John had all but refused. After all, his was a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. Jesus had no need for this. John thought it should be the other way around. But Jesus insists saying, it has to do with fulfilling the will of God. Jesus must step into his vocation, take up his job description and embrace his identity as God’s servant. Coming up out of the water, seeing the Spirit of God descend upon him like a dove, his identity is announced to all around him: “This is my Son, the beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”
From almost the moment these words were recorded by Matthew, the Church saw behind them the prophecy of Isaiah. Jesus was the servant Isaiah had promised. God’s Spirit had rested upon him to bring forth God’s justice to all the people—the nations—the gentiles as well as Israel. Jesus’ life and demeanor seemed personified in Isaiah’s prophecy. No loud, boisterous, imperialist voice like Rome’s or any other warring conqueror, drowning out all others while exerting coercive power to achieve his ends, Jesus is the servant of God Isaiah described. With the bruised he was gentle, always nurturing light in those whose flickering wicks would otherwise have gone out—the sick, the oppressed, the outcast—opening blind eyes and freeing people from their prisons of disease and darkness. And regardless of the opposition and forces set to crush him, he wasn’t crushed. Beyond the empty tomb he still blazes with God’s glory, the covenant and light to the nations Isaiah had promised him to be.
But as years passed, and biblical scholars looked more carefully at Isaiah, they realised that at times Isaiah speaks of the servant as a person, and at times as a covenant community. Even today, within Judaism, the rabbinical scholars have this debate: is the servant one person or the entire covenant community? So too among Christian scholars, is this reference only to one person anointed with God’s Spirit—the Messiah—or to a people upon whom God’s Spirit rests, the Messianic community?
The answer is, of course, “Yes:” Both are right. Clearly, Jesus is the one on whom the Spirit rested to do God’s work of justice. And it was a unique form of justice. Normally, when someone insists on justice, they mean taking things to the logical end of their judgment—an eye for and eye and a tooth for a tooth, a life for a life, evil for evil. But for Jesus, justice was not taking judgment to its logical conclusion. It was stopping short to nurture the good that was left. To those caught in sin he says one of two things: “Your sin is forgiven…, go and sin no more.”
Divine justice preserves and nurtures the good while driving out that which holds one captive. Consequently, Jesus’ work was less a series of healings and other errands of mercy, than one continuing assault on the power of evil. As Peter says in his sermon in Acts, “Jesus went about… healing all who were oppressed by the devil.”
But Jesus was sent not only as the one who transforms creation, undoing those powers set against God’s reign and good life, he also called unto himself a community in which his Spirit rests to continue this work. The servant is both individual and communal, both Messiah and the Messianic community, both Jesus and his church, the risen Christ and you and me as his body in this world. This is Jesus’ job description to be sure, but it is ours as well! (and if we have the Holy Spirit, we have the mind of Christ!)
Outreach is every believer’s calling. Outreach is bearing Christ in each of those places we encounter in life where the power of evil is keeping people captive, whether it’s with street people, children and youth at risk, the homeless or hungry, those imprisoned by drugs, alcohol, food, sex or other forms of addiction—anywhere people find themselves powerless before the forces of darkness. We bear Christ in situations of need that God’s justice might be done, knowing that we’re not the ones who do the work. We’re simply the ones through whom the power of God is unleashed each time we offer ourselves as light in a situation of imprisonment and darkness.
In baptism we enter the water with Jesus Christ to identify with him as in John’s baptism Jesus identified with us. We claim his death as our own—for us—and his resurrection as the promise that awaits us. And we commit to living as his covenant people in the world until then. Go into the world in peace. Render no one evil for evil but return evil with good. Support the weak; strengthen the fainthearted, honour all people, love and serve the Lord rejoicing in the power of the Holy Spirit. I don’t know which of those phrases is the most challenging or frightening. Each is an extraordinary challenge, which is beyond all of us if left to ourselves. We might hold up for a while trying to support the weak or attempting to hold our hand in anger in the face of evil, but sooner or later our resolve will collapse, which is why that charge reminds us to rejoice in the power of the Holy Spirit, and is followed by the blessing, invoking the Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Love of God and the communion and fellowship of the Holy Spirit upon us all—those gifts give to us in our baptism. In these waters we’re given power to live into our vocation, which is why baptism is fundamental to the Christian life. We can’t live life and prosper without it.
The Rev’d George M Rogers
December 2023
Forget being ‘Woke’ – Stay Awake!
Does anybody know what time it is? Time—we’re consumed by it, and in this town, almost always outdone by it.
This is the question raised on the first Sunday in Advent… And it’s the question that was being asked by Jesus’ disciples as they sat on the Mount of Olives, overlooking Jerusalem. Jesus had just warned that the Temple, the symbol and centre of God’s presence among the people, would one day soon no longer stand—not one stone left upon another—and the disciples wanted to know when. What signs would precede it? Jesus’ response was to warn of times of great suffering and turmoil, times of war and rumours of war, times of religious persecution, international crisis and cosmic chaos, all before the Son of Man appears to gather his elect. But, says Jesus, these are merely signs; don’t confuse them for the time. It seems no one knows that time except the Father, and he’s keeping his own counsel. What then, are we to do without an apocalyptic watch? We’re to take up a different kind of watch: we’re to keep awake.
Over two thousand years later, more than one of us has asked, does it make any sense constantly to be on the watch for the second coming of Christ? The watchfulness Jesus calls forth from us is living with a gospel perspective on life and the events taking place around us, and doing so until Christ returns to bring God’s reign of universal justice, mercy and peace.
What is this gospel perspective? First, the world isn’t out of control or going religiously mad, though a brief review of headlines could easily convince one otherwise. God is still in control—recall the Sunday before Advent is the Feast of Christ is King! What’s wrong is that humankind finds itself approaching the end of its own tether. All our schemes for self-improvement, for extricating ourselves from the traps we’ve set for ourselves, have come to nothing. We’ve now realised that we can’t save ourselves and that apart from the intervention of God, we’re totally and irretrievably lost. Thus, like the Israelites who encountered a similar despair, we must call on God to intervene, to tear through the heavens and save us.
But to do so means more than simply praying “Yet you, O God, are our Father; we are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the works of your hands,” expecting a loving God to do something. More than simply pleading for God’s intervention and expecting a response, it also means confessing the roles we’ve played in bringing the world to thus. It means expressing our sorrow over the world and its condition, not simply in sentiment, but also in repentance.
A gospel perspective understands that this is still our Father’s world, and that God responds to the pleas of God’s people when offered in both repentance and faith. For faith without repentance is simply religious ideology.
Second, a gospel perspective means the suffering and dreadful events that we’re currently experiencing are not new to the world or to the people of faith. Yet, whether the suffering is the escalation of bi-partisan political conflict, acts of terror by religious extremists, the effects of climate change exacerbated by the politicisation of the Covid-19 pandemic after which a global recession that will leave a multitude unemployed, financial portfolios in ruins and pensions depleted—they all come from the same source: the human sin that emerges from our alienation from God. It’s what happens to life when it’s lived apart from or in rebellion against its maker. And so it seems a very good time to join Isaiah in prayer. For like the Israelites of Isaiah’s day, are we not living in the clutches of our own iniquities? But one more word about praying for God to intervene.
To pray in repentance and faith in the face of our current dreadful possibilities is to confess our conviction that God’s plan and our destiny have a deeper dimension and future than the limitations the present personal and social crisis would impose. This is the kind of time Advent calls us to embrace.
Third, a gospel perspective trusts there’s a point on the horizon of the world’s future in which God will act to make all things right—and it will involve all of the people of God. Jesus spoke of this as the coming of the Son of Man. The Church speaks of it as the second coming of Christ. To live in expectation of that event, to let that over-arching conviction inform our decisions and actions in the personal and social crises of twenty-first century living, is to “stay awake.” It is to recognise that only the coming of the Christ, rather than any work that you or I might do, will bring salvation in the midst of the world’s ever continuing predicament, turmoil and confrontations.
Nonetheless, this conviction means living by the dual commitment to prayer and work. It means living a life driven by the constant prayer that God will come and redeem the world he has made. And it means living life with a view not only to that future, but also with an eye to those places where Christ’s reign is already present and amongst us in those who are bearing him faithfully in the crisis points of their own daily lives. Prayer and work prays for peace, but also speaks out against war as the ultimate solution to conflict. Prayer and work prays for God to contain the horrid ravages of terrorism unleashed in a religiously driven madness, but also works to address those things that turned human beings into terrorists in the first place.
Prayer and work prays for justice and righteousness in our own country’s affairs, but also works to confront a different kind of religiously driven madness: the corporate greed that has and is devouring our economy and our peoples’ retirement resources. Calling upon God to act means also allowing ourselves to be driven by the Holy Spirit to speak out and take action ourselves in those places where we can make a difference now.
Fourth, a gospel perspective means that as the Church who lives in fellowship with Jesus Christ, we have been given what we need to sustain us in this time of trouble. Like the church at Corinth, we are not lacking in any spiritual gift as we await the appearance of Jesus Christ. He will not only strengthen us to the end, but he will also present us, in St Paul’s words, “blameless on that day”.
So, what time is it? It is time to live into God’s future rather than be paralyzed by the present. It is time to quit taking our spiritual pulse or searching our Bibles as though they were religious almanacs, spiritual horoscopes or esoteric manuscripts about a hidden future. Christ will come with signs that no one will miss, we can be sure. Until then, you and I have watchful work to do, knowing that we are already in the presence of the Coming One—as he meets us here, week after week in word and sacrament, in prayer and work. That is what it means to stay awake.
The Rev’d George M Rogers
November 2023
The Fatted Café
I have enjoyed some great meals, from earthy neighbourhood cafés to elegant fine dining. And yet, it is easy to recall which meal was the most memorable or satisfying. 35 years later, I remember almost everything about it: the texture of the meat; the freshness of the tomatoes; the warm and attentive hostess smiling in the dim light of the restaurant; the hooting of the owls in the background. Yes, that’s right: owls. The place was a pub a few miles from Inverness, where we had just arrived back from a full day of hiking.
When we arrived it was after 8.00, and we hadn’t eaten anything but a couple of bacon sandwiches around 9.30 that morning. As we entered, the woman running the place showed us our table and asked what we would like to drink. “We’d really like something to eat first,” we said. She grimaced: “Oh, we just closed the kitchen.” Naturally, there wasn’t another place for miles in any direction. She paused for a moment. “Are you hungry?” she asked. I wanted to shout back, “We’re starving!” (we’d hiked about 30 miles) “Do you have anything we can eat? Anything will be fine; a sandwich, fruit, whatever you have.” She looked at us sympathetically. “Wait one moment,” she said, and disappeared into the next room. A few minutes later she returned. “What would you like to eat? We can offer you some ham and eggs, fried bread, beans, and tomatoes; would that be okay?” We nodded eagerly.
In less than ten minutes, thick slices of ham, fresh eggs, baked beans, slices of fried bread, and tomatoes appeared before each of us and we devoured it gratefully, savouring not just the flavour but the experience of eating itself, the satisfaction of feeling that gnawing hunger gradually melt away. After a while, our hostess reappeared. “Have you had enough,” she asked. Now, we weren’t about to ask for seconds after she had been so gracious, so I instinctively said, “Yes, thank you!” Then I realised, quite to my surprise, that it was true: I wasn’t hungry anymore. She smiled and said simply, “It’s my pleasure; I won’t have people going hungry when I can feed them.” The food, of course, wasn’t really what made this so memorable a meal. What made it so was the combination of our helpless hunger and her unexpectedly gracious response embodied in those three simple questions: “Are you hungry? What would you like to eat? Have you had enough?”
“Are you hungry?” Jesus doesn’t need to ask the question; one look at the crowd of people surging toward him tells him the answer. They had been with him for a while. The crowd keeps growing and following as Jesus keeps moving; they have seen what he has been doing, and they want to see more.
As he watches them struggle up the mountain to catch up, there is no question of whether they should try and feed these people or send them off to fend for themselves. Jesus has seen the need, and he has decided to do something about it. He leans over to Philip and says, “So, where are we going to buy bread for all these people to eat?”
Philip’s head snaps round to stare at Jesus. Where should we buy them bread? He looks out at the expanse of the crowd as it draws closer. Where isn’t the question; the real question is how. “Six months’ wages wouldn’t buy each of them more than a handful,” he sputters. Philip can’t believe what Jesus is thinking. Even if there were a bakery here, it wouldn’t matter; they would never have enough bread to go around. And even if it did have enough, we would never have enough money to buy it all.
Philip was right; there was no way to buy that much bread. But it wasn’t really fair of Jesus to ask, because he never had any intention of buying bread. Out of one boy’s provisions, he walks through the crowd, tearing off hunks of bread and chunks of fish and presses them into the hungry hands waving all around him. He passes through the entire crowd and comes back, crisscrossing back and forth, handing out more food until everyone’s hunger melts away and they lie back on the grass, satisfied. And as they do, they watch the disciples scatter through the crowd, each holding a basket, as they pick up the leftovers. Six months’ wages could have only provided a handful each, yet Jesus provides enough not only to satisfy 5,000 men as well as women and children, but to fill twelve baskets at the end. It is a memorable meal; it is the only miracle that appears in all four gospels, and the versions agree on the smallest details in ways that even the accounts of the Lord’s Supper do not. Clearly it was an important event.
But it seems like a premier league miracle for a district league need. Philip asks the question, “how,” but he never asked the question, “why?” Is the plight of these people really important enough for Jesus to make this kind of fuss over? Sure, they’re hungry, but they’re not starving. This isn’t making the blind see and the lame walk; why is Jesus worried about giving a sandwich or two to people who couldn’t be bothered to pack their own lunch? Jesus is a spiritual leader, not a tour guide; why does he think he has to make sure that everybody gets enough to eat, and nobody gets left behind in the loo before the group moves on to the next site? If he had asked it, I suspect Jesus would answer Philip’s question of “why?” “I’ll not have people going hungry when I can feed them.”
That’s what Jesus is doing in a spectacular way: feeding hungry people because he can, and because it pleases him to do so. Jesus will have no one who follows him go hungry when he can feed them.
Perhaps that is why it is so tempting not to accept this story at face value, to domesticate it and moralise it; it seems like a long way to go just to save people a few stomach rumblings and a hike to the nearest town. There are those who want to minimise the miracle here and talk about Jesus’ actions as mere teaching, setting a moral example. The ridiculousness of the miracle gets in the way, they say, so what else could have happened? Maybe Jesus didn’t really multiply those loaves and fish out of thin air; but when he stepped out in faith with what the boy gave him, others were inspired to give what they’d brought and soon the food multiplied, and everybody had all they needed: that’s possible-imaginable; that makes sense…
… and it misses the point of the story. Jesus is not simply teaching people how to behave; he is revealing who he is and what he has come to do. Of course, it is impossible, even unimaginable! The point is that Jesus offers unimaginably real, impossibly abundant grace to meet not simply our crises or chronic conditions, but even our common needs. Jesus, quite literally, easily, and willingly offers the 5,000 people on this hillside an “all you can eat” feast that they’re unable to provide for themselves, for no reason except that they’re hungry, he can feed them, and it is his pleasure to do so.
“What would you like to eat?” Now that is a dangerously open-ended question. Jesus, quite wisely, never gives the crowd even that much of a loophole. Graciously meeting people’s needs is one thing, but can you imagine taking special orders for 5,000 people? And Jesus’ actions here are about meeting people’s needs, not their every desire. Jesus gives them all bread and fish—the basic staples of a seaside diet. But he gives them all they can eat, and that’s enough to get their imagination going. Hey, we should hang on to this guy, they say to themselves. Let’s grab him, keep him in one place, call him king, and let him take care of us. If he can do all this with a couple of fish and some bread, imagine what else he can do for us! There are so many other things we’d like that he could give us. And it’s hard to argue with that: who better to make king than someone who can give you all you can eat?
It is easy to fall into that trap. In claiming and celebrating the central message of the gospel, that God’s saving grace is given to us in and through Jesus Christ, it’s easy to start thinking of that grace as currency that we can use to get what we want, all the things we would like to consume, own or experience.
We have heard (or at least heard of) the charismatic preachers in the sharp suits who preach the “prosperity gospel:” confess Jesus as Lord, make a big donation to my ministry, and God will bless you with success and wealth as a sign of his love for you. Now, it isn’t hard to debunk that message; even a passing familiarity with Jesus’ teachings on poverty and wealth should do it. But the message of have faith in Jesus because he will give you what you want, has to be one of our most popular heresies; it shows up everywhere, often in the guise of being innocuous or even helpful.
I flipped through a Christian book catalog I received the other day and there were books telling you how to use the power of your faith to lose weight, get a partner, make more friends, conquer depression, and manage anger. Even what often passes for Christian evangelism falls into this category: “have faith in Jesus and you will get into heaven.” That is not the purpose of faith; faith is not a commodity to be traded—its futures guaranteeing a reward if we hold it in our portfolio long enough. Faith in Christ is its own reward; it’s the way we recognise and experience God’s saving grace abundantly present and at work in our lives before we even know to ask for it, meeting our deepest needs and teaching us what we should truly desire.
“Have you had enough?” When it comes to the grace of God, can you ever get all you can eat? It seems like the answer should be no, doesn’t it? But it isn’t. When we recognise that our needs have been abundantly met beyond all obligation or expectation, and for no reason other than the giver wanted to do it that way, the only possible response is humble, grateful satisfaction. Anything else is a failure to grasp the totality of what has been given. At this memorable meal, Jesus is doing nothing less than answering the same prayer given for the Ephesians, explaining what it means, “to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.” Filled with all the fullness of God; that’s an unimaginable gift. But no matter where you are on your journey of faith, whether you are following with vigour, collapsing with weakness, or just starting out, that is what Jesus offers you. So come and share in the feast; no matter how hungry you are, no matter how long it has been since you last ate, come and you will be filled. There’s more than enough; Jesus will not have anyone who follows him go hungry when he can feed them with all they can eat.
The Rev’d George M Rogers
October 2023
Hospitality and the Household of God
To many, the main message of Christianity is love, joy, and peace. We define peace primarily in terms of happiness and success. If something happens to disrupt that feeling of happiness and success—in the world, at work, in marriage, the family, and the Church—then peace is shattered and we’re sure this cannot be of God. But in today’s Gospel, the Prince of Peace himself gets our attention with these strange words: “Do not think that I have come to bring peace…” “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.”
That’s surprising because we tend to define “peace” in terms of the lack of something—the lack of conflict, anger, warfare, death, or tears. Jesus, however, defines “peace” in terms of what really makes for life. Jesus defines “peace” in terms of the Cross—his Cross and ours, that he demands we take up for his sake, and the salvation of our souls. The true and fundamental warfare of our existence is between death and life, sickness and health, division and separation on the one hand and reconciliation, unity, and oneness on the other. Such things determine our emotional reaction of happiness or sadness, success, or failure.
Jesus says that he will bring division amongst families—the biological family—and he’s not bringing peace but a sword. Part of this is Jewish hyperbole that Jesus uses to make his point clear—he overstates and goes to extremes. In this case, he’s quoting the prophet Micah in his account of dysfunctional family relations—that which Micah sees as intolerable familial relations is only the beginning of Jesus’ revaluation of these very relations. Another example is Jesus’ statement about the wandering eye causing one to sin, for which one must pluck it out. Jesus doesn’t literally intend for us to pluck out our eyes, but this is how he underscores his disapproval and disgust. Yet part of Jesus’ statement is literally true—the message he imparts demands such a faithful adherence to his teaching that anyone who follows eventually will find him or herself at odds with those who choose not to. As you know in some non-Christian families, a terrible division arises if one member converts to Christ.
Jesus is redefining the biological family and this is to be expected of the Christ we know as the radical redefiner of what is taken for granted. This brings me to the second part of the Gospel reading where Christ says that to welcome Him is to welcome the one who sent him—to welcome God the Father himself.
To welcome a prophet is to deserve the prophet’s reward—in essence to be that prophet. To welcome a righteous person is to deserve the righteous person’s reward—in essence to become that righteous person. What Jesus is speaking of here is hospitality, a radical hospitality, radical because it transforms relationships from exercises in mere reciprocity to relationships beyond all economies. The discourse on hospitality will redefine the biological family not as the ideal organization of human beings.
Jesus is implicitly placing on us the injunction to be hospitable, to be welcoming of others—and the others aren’t the easiest people to accept in our midst. The prophet as we know from the Old Testament can be a person who breathes fire and brimstone, who calls the community to repentance. The righteous person is counter cultural, is not at all typical of society.nBut these are God’s people and the teaching is for us to accept them, and in the process to have our identities assimilated to them. The little ones should receive their cups of cold water and more because they’re vulnerable and need to be protected. That is discipleship; recall after the resurrection, Jesus told Peter to feed God’s sheep. But ultimately, we’re not just being hospitable to other people in doing these things—we’re being hospitable to the Holy Spirit in welcoming God into our lives and souls.
This is the family that Jesus enjoins upon us. A family that is at first glances difficult to bear, but nonetheless our family as Christians.
The Rev’d George M Rogers
September 2023
Seeds for Sowing
The parable of the sower is among the best known of Jesus’ sayings about the reign of God. And like all good parables, it has a straightforward message. If you were asked to say what this one is about, how would you answer? Is it about the sower, about the seed, or the kind of soil the seed falls on? What if it is about none of these? What if it is about the ultimate victory of God’s reign?
In the previous two chapters of Matthew’s gospel, Jesus has encountered one rejection after another. It began with John the Baptist’s doubts, and continued as crowds were attracted to Jesus by his miracles, but turned off by his words, and concludes with his mother and brothers coming to take him home because they think he has gone round the religious bend. Jesus responds to this with a series of seven parables about the reign of God and its future among such unbelievers. This parable is his first. Jesus is saying, “God sent me to scatter the seeds of the kingdom. I’ve spread the word far and wide, to any and all who would listen. And though most of the seed has fallen on hard, rocky, weed-infested, unproductive ground, those in whom the seed has taken root will produce a harvest of extraordinary measure beyond any reasonable comprehension. (Remember, Jesus is still talking to a mixed crowd.) Jesus is saying that though three-fourths of his work seems fruitless, those in whom his word does take root will produce a harvest of faithfulness beyond measure.
Now in that day, a harvest of four to tenfold was considered normal; fifteen-fold was exceptional. In that context, one hundred, sixty, even thirty-fold was beyond anyone’s comprehension. Jesus is saying that though the seed of God’s reign doesn’t take root in every life that hears it—three fourths of the seed seems to have been wasted—when it does take root it produces a harvest of phenomenal abundance that far outweighs any loss of those who have rejected him. As Jesus told it, this parable is about God’s reign in the face of the rejection Jesus is currently experiencing.
By the time Matthew wrote this gospel, this parable had taken on a life of its own—it had become an allegory—probably because of the rejection the young church was experiencing. Its fixed allegorical interpretation had become so well-known that Matthew was constrained to include it in the text, under the guise of Jesus interpreting the parable for his inner circle of disciples. The result is a significant shift in meaning.
No longer a parable that promises the triumph of Jesus’ ministry and God’s reign, it has become an allegory about four different kinds of soil, begging the question: “What kind of soil am I?”
In its first century context, the parable-turned allegory explained a whole series of questions that vexed the Church. By now the sower is Jesus Christ, who continues to be in and with the Church through its hardships, its own rejections, its persecutions and perceived failures, scattering his word through them, far and wide. It explains how the word of the risen and sovereign Lord can be rejected: the hard baked quality of the lives of those shut down to it; the rocky condition of some people’s lives, who have not enough good soil within them to allow the seed to take root; those of good soil, in whom the word did take root, but who later allowed the pressures of life, the concerns of the world to choke out any concern for God or God’s reign. All of these circumstances were present in the church for which this gospel was written.
And, of course, this allegorical interpretation of the parable is as applicable today as it was in the first century Church. There are some in our world who, if Jesus showed up in a face-to-face encounter with them, would refuse to accept it—so closed off are they to anything having to do with God, Jesus or the Spirit. You know, you live and work among such people; we all do. And there are the spiritual enthusiasts whose lives are rocky indeed, desperate for a word of good news. They hear it, and it springs up with great enthusiasm within them. But when the goosebumps of good news begin to fade, when faith begins to be tempered by fire, when the magic they hoped would come in and transform the rockiness of their lives turns to the hard work of discipleship, they fade. They go looking for another saviour.
And, of course, there are those in whom the gospel does take root, but who are not prepared to nurture their life in God’s reign as something of extraordinary value, but only one choice among many. Often, their initial response is strong. But soon, there are other concerns: family difficulties, a weekend country home that needs to be used, the children’s sport clubs that meet on Sunday, riding lessons for the kids, the boat, work at the office—simply taking a Sunday or two off from worship, a month or the summer—the list is as endless as the things we decide are also important to us. And that’s the key: also important, which, of course, means equally important.
Now I know that put this way, few of these folks would equate their faith and a weekend away playing golf as of equal importance, but in fact, their actions say they are. These folks ultimately say foolish things like, “I believe in God and Jesus, but certainly don’t need the Church to do that.” Remember, we’re not talking about belief—even the demons believe. We’re talking about living the Christian life faithfully.
Finally, there are those in whom the seed of the gospel, the life of Christ, takes deep root. It sustains in both blistering heat and swamping rain; it supports and gives hope in otherwise times of hopelessness; it gives meaning and direction to life, whatever its condition, and always, always, it changes one’s life for the better. Around here, we call it the life-transforming power of Jesus Christ.
Again, this allegory always raises within us the question, “What kind of soil am I?” Know this good news: whenever you listen to the word, you can let it take root in your life, make the gospel a priority in your life that shapes how you live, how you think, what you do with your time and your resources. In undertaking this, you are responding to the risen Christ in word and sacrament; that sounds very much like good soil to me.
But the allegory raises a second question: how do I ensure that I remain such good soil? The answer to that is provided by St Paul. He says, it’s a matter of mind-set. It has to do with setting our minds on Christ, and what it means to be in Christ in the day-to-day activities and events in our lives.
In his Letter to the Romans, Paul has been insists on us recognising the reality of sin in human life—it’s not an option; it’s a given. Sin is a power that you and I—all human beings—are absolutely unable to tame or conquer on our own. Sin is written into the fabric of who we are. It’s so bad that even our best intentions often fail us. Last week we heard Paul speak of this reality in the universal first person saying, “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.” Paul says sin is such that when we want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand, to subvert our actions. And, against such evil, all humankind is powerless. Then Paul asks his famous rhetorical question: “Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” Answering his own question, he continues: “Thanks be to God who gives us the victory through Jesus Christ our Lord! There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”
In an extraordinary explosion of theological praise, Paul reminds us that in Jesus Christ, God has destroyed the ultimate power of sin—death—and consequently, our failures aren’t ultimately held against us. But more, joined to Christ in baptism, we’ve become bearers of Christ’s Holy Spirit in our daily lives. When we set our minds on Christ, we’re given Christ’s power for victory over sin. It’s a matter of mind-set. In Christ, we have the power to dig up the boulders and rocks that choke out our garden. We have the ability to cultivate a Christ-like life, becoming the rich, deep soil in which the seeds of the gospel not only take deep root, but produce astounding fruit. When we set our minds on Christ, the power of Christ is present in and to us to cope with the challenges, to face the temptations, to lead us through the hard places.
The mind set on Christ finds worship a place of nurture that is as critical to life as food, drink, and air. The mind set on Christ takes time to pray. The mind set on Christ treasures prayer in all circumstances, not simply at emergencies, but through the daily activities of life—the moments of thanksgiving as well as challenge. The mind set on Christ is eager to know more about what it means to be in Christ, and strives to understand one’s faith as well as live it. The mind set on Christ bears Christ like a garment in the day-to-day events, conversations, and other dealings. The mind set on Christ is concerned with the plight of others in need, be that need for the basics of life—food, clothing, shelter, friendship—or a more profound need—the need to hear the Christian gospel and experience the life-transforming power of Christ. These are the things that cultivate the soil of a life of faith when we set our minds on Christ.
What kind of soil are you? What is your mind-set? Who do you bear in the day-to-day events, transactions and conversations of your life? Whose word is the root in your life? The risen Lord is still in his church, casting the seed of his gospel, giving life to any who will set their minds on him. He bids us come to this, his table, to taste and see what that means, and then bear him from this place back into the day-to-day events of our lives, cultivating the soil of our lives.
The Rev’d George M Rogers
August 2023
Called not to Worry and be Happy
Unexpected twists grab our attention. How often have we seen a film advertised as worth seeing because the trailer states, “You won’t believe how it ends” or “The conclusion will leave you breathless”? Long-running programmes like “Spooks”, “Coronation Street” and “Silent Witness” regularly end their seasons with show-stopping last-minute turns-of-events nobody expected. Some years ago the popular film starring Bruce Willis, “The Sixth Sense” shocked viewers round the world with an ending that retrospectively changed the entire film they’d just spent two hours watching. Even jokes are funny because their punch lines are unexpected.
Matthew 6 has its own arresting twist. In this passage, Jesus has spent several minutes sketching out a life of calm repose and trust. “Don’t worry,” Jesus says over and again. “Don’t be anxious about food, drink, or clothing. Your heavenly Father will take care of everything you need. Be calm! Be happy! Put anxiety aside in favour of trusting your Father for every last thing you need.” Don’t get into a knot about tomorrow—God is always-already ahead of you and will take care of tomorrow. Extraordinary. When you add up Jesus’ words, you arrive at a portrait of calm… which is why verse 34 is properly shocking. Because Jesus pretty much says, Therefore, don’t worry about tomorrow. Just let tomorrow worry about itself. And in any case, today life is bad enough as it is.
Quite. After the promises of God’s provision for our lives, we end with a blunt admission that we’re sunk neck-deep in troubles already! I might have expected to hear something like, “Don’t worry about tomorrow because it’ll be as chock-full of blessing as today already is.” You might have thought Jesus would say, “Don’t fret tomorrow because it’ll be as sunny and wonderful as today:” but that’s not the case. He says not to worry about tomorrow because there’s plenty of troubling stuff going on right now. Jesus goes from saying, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart” to “life is often difficult” without missing a beat and without seeing any contradiction.
But it is difficult holding such things in tension. Life is either good or bad… but we struggle to accept that life can be good even when it’s undeniably bad. Here is Jesus encouraging faith in God even though he doesn’t deny that the fretful circumstances in which we need to nourish such trust can be tough. What do we do with this advice?
Stop for a moment and think how many different sinful actions and attitudes come from anxiety: anxiety about finances can give rise to coveting, greed, hoarding, resentment and stealing. Anxiety about succeeding at some task can make one irritable, abrupt and surly. Anxiety about relationships can make us withdrawn, indifferent and uncaring about other people. Anxiety about how someone will respond to you can make you cover the truth and lie. So if anxiety could be conquered, a lot of sins would be overcome.
But what is the root of anxiety… and how can it be severed? To answer that we go to our text. Four times in this text Jesus says that we shouldn’t be anxious.
- 25: Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life.
- 27: And which of you by being anxious can add one cubit to his span of life?
- 31: Therefore do not be anxious.
- 34: Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow.
But the verse that lays bare the root of anxiety is v. 30: “But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O men of little faith?” That is, the root of anxiety is lack of faith in God’s providence. As disbelief gains the upper hand in our hearts, anxiety arrives on the scene.
When the author of the Letter to the Hebrews writes, “Take heed lest there be in you an evil heart of unbelief,” it can be understood: “Take heed lest there be in you an ANXIOUS heart of unbelief.” Anxiety is one of the evil conditions of the heart that comes from disbelief. Much anxiety, Jesus says, comes from little faith. Kierkegaard may have been spot on in asserting the opposite of faith is not doubt, but sin.
This is an unexpected conclusion, perhaps hopeful in the end. Jesus says that most days are troubling and troublesome in one way or another. What is your experience? Are things perfect for you; is your life calm, do you really have what you want: all the respect, money, square footage and acreage, friends, reputation, security, power, health and holiness that you strive for? Is the pace of our working lives following a beautiful vision of an eternal Sabbath? I doubt it. Nevertheless, Jesus says, these are the same days when we can trust that God the Father is well aware of our needs. These are the same days when we can seek first the kingdom of God and its righteous good way to conduct ourselves. The life of discipleship and prayer doesn’t take place outside of the anxious everyday nature of our lives but right within all that occupies us, and all that even drives us round the bend.
Jesus says, “But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” Jesus calls us to be citizens of a greater kingdom than of this world. He asks us to explode our presently sinful horizon so we can live into the panoramic kingdom of his resurrection, urging us to prioritise. True, Jesus urges us to render to Caesar—to this world—those things that belong to it. We have our responsibilities here, but they take second place to our ultimate responsibility as citizens of Christ’s kingdom.
Therefore whatever we do now, we do from the standpoint of the resurrection; whatever we see, we see with God’s eyes; whatever we think, we do with the mind of Christ. We’re new creations born of the Holy Spirit of God. We’re adopted sons and daughters, brought into the highest standing possible. We’re entrusted with the responsibility of spreading Christ’s kingdom. We’re His beneficiaries, His representatives, His ambassadors, His agents.
We’re to seek first those things of the Holy Spirit that will represent Him while we’re amongst each other.
And we’re to seek His righteousness: a call to holy living.
The Rev’d George M Rogers
July 2023
The Fellowship of the Holy Trinity
The notion of God as three but one emerged out of the first three hundred years of the church’s life as its best thinkers tried to work out what it meant to say “Jesus is Lord,” that word in the Old Testament which is virtually synonymous with God, and who, since the book of Deuteronomy, God’s people have worshipped as the only God. At the same time the church was trying to understand how the Holy Spirit encountered at Pentecost could be both the Spirit of God which had been promised by Jesus upon his return to “The Father” and the Spirit of Christ, who, as we hear in the Gospel, had promised not to leave them desolate, but to be with them always, to the end of the age.
God, the Almighty and eternal One, whose breath at the beginning of creation hovered over the formless void, was the same God who breathed that life-giving breath into Adam to turn clay into a living being. As God’s Spirit had brooded over creation, as it had brought humanity to life, it had also seized and spoken through prophets, one of whom promised that the Spirit would ultimately descend on all God’s people. There was a connection between Pentecost and creation—the Holy Spirit—whom they’d name in the creed as “the Lord, the giver of life.”
But there was also a connection between the God they knew behind creation, and the Lord they knew who had died, been raised, and with all power and authority in both heaven and earth had sent them forth to make disciples of all peoples. That connection was nothing less than that same Spirit. The Spirit of God was and is who binds the Father and the Son in unity. But this bond is more than a tether tying one to the other. This bond of unity is so pervasive that what belongs to one belongs to all, what one does, all do. Though each of the three has a special relationship, not only to one another, but also to the world, each also participates fully in the work of the other. Creation wasn’t just the work of the one Jesus called “Father.” The Father, Son and Spirit were creators in the beginning. Just as Father, Son and Spirit were redeeming the world in the incarnation, life, death and resurrection of the Son. Father, Son and Spirit continue to sustain the world as it moves to its ultimate point of redemption, when God will make all things new in the resurrection of the dead. It’s why the phrase “Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer” is a dreadful metaphor for the Triune God.
Apart from sounding like components of a car, those are actions or tasks in which all three play a part, and therefore they don’t distinguish the relationships either to one another or to us. “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are names which speak of relationships unique to each of the three.
But the three aren’t separate gods, but the one God who has revealed his very self to the world in these three faces: the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. The grace they knew firsthand. Jesus had done for them what they couldn’t do for themselves: he’d opened the door into the heart of God, and in doing so had given them a new status as beloved children of God. As Jesus has called God “Father,” so too were they able. But the name isn’t a description of God, as though God were male. The word “Father” isn’t about gender, but about relationship. What Jesus had done enabled them to rush into God’s presence as those who were as beloved as was the other child—the Only Begotten Son of the Father through whom God had first made all things. What he’d done was pure grace.
But that grace had been driven by something more preeminent still, God’s love. God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him might not perish, but have everlasting life. That’s what lies behind the grace of their Lord Jesus Christ: the love of God. And all of that is united by nothing less than the communion and fellowship of the Holy Spirit.
The Spirit was the link by which the disciples had found themselves connected to the risen Lord, following his ascension. The Spirit is the link through whom the faithful have found the risen Lord present in their preaching, teaching, healing, and baptising, in their prayers, their breaking of bread, and common life. The Spirit was and is like a conduit which joins them and us to God, even as it holds the Father and the Son in eternal unity. The Spirit was the one through whom they and we experience God, the present tense of God! The word ‘κοινωνία’ is multidimensional. It means community, together in common purpose, mutual relationship, sharing partnership, and contribution—to be held together in common because of that connection. When we pray for the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, we’re not simply praying for the presence of God’s Spirit, we’re praying to be bound by God’s Spirit to one another in precisely the same way the Father and Son are bound together in the Spirit.
To know the communion and fellowship of the Holy Spirit is not only to be empowered by the one who is the Lord and giver of life, but also to be bonded with, united to, infused by that power which bonds Son to Father and Father to Son, and binds both of them to us.
The communion of the Spirit comes from the Father through the Son and into our lives. It’s what causes us to know God in the first place and call Jesus Lord. That fellowship is signed and sealed in our lives when we are baptised. That communion continues to link us to God, whether we’re in prayer, or are listening for God to speak in a lesson, anthem, hymn or sermon, or are experiencing God’s presence in the Eucharist. When we’re gathered in worship, we’re in the communion of the Holy Spirit: we’re praying to the Father, through the Son, by or in the Holy Spirit. It’s the Spirit which urges us to call on God in the first place. But it’s not limited to only these moments of worship.
Being in the Spirit is more than prayer and worship. It’s the same communion, same fellowship which emerges in one of those other moments when we’re suddenly aware that we’ve been encountered afresh by the holy. When we’re in a committee meeting, a choir rehearsal, a mission project, at the coffee hour, we’re in the communion of the Holy Spirit. It’s the bond by which we’re drawn into the Holy Trinity and made one with not only God, but also one another. God’s unity includes the addition of you and me. Just as one, plus one, plus one, plus one, plus …, equals the one people we know in this place, so too, in the Holy Spirit of God, you and I are drawn into the divine unity of God’s life and love, a connection so strong nothing shall ever separate us from it.
The Rev’d George M Rogers
June 2023
Ascension
“Jesus prays, “I ask that they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I am in you…” There’s a correcting theological truth here that’s often missed by those church leaders who insist that only their church is the true church—that battle that still exists between Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox bishops to this day. Jesus’ prayer that we be one as he and the Father are one isn’t a plea that we be conflated into one human organisation that homogenises or obliterates differences that are a part of our historical identities as Christians. Jesus, the Father and the Holy Spirit are one with one another in the Godhead but each continues to maintain their own identity within their unity.
Why isn’t it possible for us to see our unity as Christ’s church in the same way, each of us maintaining our identity before one another, but our unity in Christ by the bond of God’s Spirit, the bond, who keeps the Son and the Father One rather than two? This is a truth that the so called emergent church—which in some places is being called the post denominational church—seems to have grasped: the assertion of Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour, our commitments to follow him into this world as Lord of our lives, our receptivity to the Spirit to make us faithful as we bear Jesus’ name and presence, and our openness to recognising the marks of the Spirit and presence of Christ in those beyond our own tradition. Wherever we encounter someone who bears the name of Jesus in faith, hope and love, we’ve met another member of Christ’s church, regardless of the name of their church affiliations.
We don’t have an Anglican faith, a Presbyterian faith, a Methodist faith, a Lutheran faith, and so on, not even a Protestant faith, Roman Catholic faith or an Orthodox faith. In Christ’s church there is only one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all.” The unity Christ prays for is given if we but recognise and affirm it. But to do that, we must give up the desire of needing to be first, even if it’s first among equals.
Think of how differently the world would respond to the gospel if we embraced our unity in Christ. Remember, the purpose of the unity Christ prays for is that the world may believe that the Father sent him. I’ve often wondered how much the fracture in the church of the third to sixth centuries and the preoccupation with theological arguments that set aside the church’s mission to the poor and outcast, laid the groundwork for the spread of an Arab tribal religion we now know as Islam.
Had we been united in Christ, rather than worrying about who was in and who was out on the basis of this or that system of theological tenets about Christ, this would be quite a different world.
Jesus suggests that the world’s belief is dependent on our unity and prays for it. We, on the other hand, insist on fractures and divisions based on this issue or that, leaving historic denominations on the verge of implosion. Little wonder that the world doesn’t believe. But when our unity is in Christ rather than issues, organisation or tradition, God’s presence and glory are manifest and recognised in us and God’s power for redemption, healing, renewal and new life emerge. And this a second reason Jesus prays for our unity: when it happens, God’s presence becomes visible in and among us.
How does God become visible in our world? Jesus prays that the bond of love and power that exists between him and the Father will exist among us as well. But notice something about that love. The love between the Father and the Son isn’t a static ecstasy only for them alone. The love that exists between the Father and the Son—the love that the Holy Spirit brings from the Father to the Son and vice versa—doesn’t leave them gazing eternally into one another’s eyes, but rather, turns them to looking outward on the world as one. This bond of love between Father and Son doesn’t shut out the rest of the world—as lovers seek to shut out the rest of the world to be absorbed in their own ecstasy—but leads them into a life that transcends both for the world. This is what Jesus prays for and is his reason for doing so: so that the bond of love between them may be the bond of love among us and them and us and one another, so that we can transcend ourselves on behalf of the world. The body of Christ is called into the world, not for itself, nor even for Christ, but in order that Christ may be present in and to the world through each one of us, bringing all creation back to its source so that we may live in communion with God, with nature and with ourselves.
Our failure to do that on our own is causing our world to fall apart, not only organically and ecologically, personally and civilly, but regionally and globally. What does it mean that we have the capacity to bear and share Jesus’ presence and power here and now—a power that drives out evil, as Jesus silences the evil spirit that had possessed that girl in Philippi?
And what is at risk if you and I fail to do so?
The Rev’d George M Rogers
May 2023
The Eternal Nature of Jesus Christ
During this season of Christ’s resurrection I would like to focus directly on a matter of Church doctrine, namely the “Hypostatic Union.” Both children and adults of All Saints Parish have asked about this doctrine in one form or other, so I think it is necessary to address their questions now.
The hypostatic union refers to the Incarnation and expresses the revealed truth that in Christ one person subsists in two natures, the Divine and the human: how God the Son—Jesus the Christ—took on human nature, and remained fully God. The Christ always had been God, but at the Incarnation, took on human flesh, becoming a human being (see the Nicene Creed: “eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one being with the Father”). The result of the combination of the divine and human nature is Jesus, the God-man. “Hypostasis” literally means, “that which lies beneath as basis or foundation”—an individual, complete substance (being) existing entirely in itself.
Hence it came to be used by philosophers of antiquity to denote reality as distinguished from appearances (Aristotle, On the Universe IV, 21). It occurs also in St Paul’s Epistles (II Cor. 4; 9, 17; 11.1, 14), but not only in the sense of person and in Heb. 1, 3.3. Previous to the Council of Nicæa (325 CE) hypostasis was synonymous with “ousia” (meaning at different times ‘being and essence’) and even St Augustine (On the Trinity V, 8) avers that he sees no difference between them. A “substance” is the kind of thing that most properly speaking exists (a being in the most primary sense). For example a cat—as opposed to the colour of the cat, its volume or its being-bigger-than-a-mouse. The cat itself is a substance and these other things are its “accidents.” The “essence” of something is what makes it what it is. Normally this means what makes it the kind of thing it is. For example the essence of a human or of humanity is, according to Aristotle, to be a rational animal. A human being is essentially a rational animal, meaning: one cannot take away its rational-animalness without making it no longer a human being. This does not mean that all human beings always think or act rationally, so there may be some question about what exactly this “rational-animalness” amounts to.
Besides “essence,” Aristotle also calls this the “what-is-it” and then “what-it-would-be-to-be.” There is a problem however: the English words “substance” and “essence” (like the Latin words substantia and essentia) both translate the same Greek word, “ousia,” which means sometimes one, sometimes the other. Sometimes it is not clear which it means, which is why ousia is sometimes translated, “essence (or ‘substance’)”. “Essence” may be the right translation but “substance” is also a possibility.
A human person is a hypostasis endowed with reason. The distinction between “ousia” and “hypostasis” was brought about gradually in the course of the controversies to which the Christological heresies gave rise, and was definitively established by the Council of Chalcedon (451 CE), which declared that in Christ the two natures, each retaining its own properties, are united in one subsistence and one person. Christ, the divine Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, includes in himself a human nature. Accordingly, Christ’s divine will is separate from his human will (Lk. 22.42): “Father, if thou art willing, remove this cup from me; nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done.” However, both wills are always in perfect harmony because his human will always aligns itself with his divine will (a point St Augustine asserts humanity must strive for in On the Trinity). Jesus’ two natures—human and divine—are inseparable. Jesus will forever be the God-man, fully God and fully human, two distinct natures in one Person. Jesus’ humanity and divinity are not mixed but are united without loss of separate identity. Jesus sometimes operated within the limitations of humanity (John 4.6; 19.28) and other times in the power of his deity (John 11.43; Matthew 14.18-21). In both, Jesus’ actions were from his one Person.
Jesus had two natures, but only one person or personality. The phrase hypostatic union was adopted by the fifth general council at Constantinople in 533 CE. That council declared that the union of two natures is real (against the Arian heresy), not a mere moral or accidental indwelling of God in a man (against the Nestorian heresy), with a rational soul (against the Apollinarian heresy) and that Christ’s divine nature remains unchanged (against the Eutychean heresy).
The Rev’d George M Rogers
April 2023
Rock and a Hard Place
He was between a rock and a hard place. Moses had an unruly mob on his hands quarreling with him for water and about to stone him for bringing them into the wilderness to die of thirst. From their miraculous deliverance at the sea, they’d moved deeper into the wilderness, setting camp at an oasis, only to run out of food. In that crisis they’d questioned God’s purpose for them, wishing they were still back in slavery. Yet God responded with the gifts of manna and quail. Now in a new camp, they had a new crisis: their water supply had run short. And so they ask the recurring question: Is the Lord among us or not?
We know how that feels when “good fortune” turns against us. The illness or death of a loved one, loss of a job or observing an unexplained and ongoing tragedy unfold. We wonder what sense it makes to speak of God being aware that we exist, much less continuing to care for us. Is the Lord among us or not? Or, we move more deeply into our private wilderness, coming to realise both how precarious and precious life really is. In these and other crises, we begin to pray with an intensity that otherwise wouldn’t characterise us. But in so doing, we also question whether or not we should be storming the throne of grace with such request. These lessons today answer that question. They tell us this is precisely what we’re to do. Moses is the model here. Though tempted to take it personally, he makes the only move possible to him in such a situation: he takes the crisis to God.
It’s more than an adroit move to avoid stoning. It’s the fundamental reflex of faith! “What am I to do,” he cries out to the Lord. Notice the answer: “Go on!” Keep moving. I haven’t abandoned you. God says, “I will be standing before you on the rock at Horeb. Strike it and you will find water.” Moses went on and found God standing on the rock at Horeb. As he struck it, water poured forth. It wasn’t the last time Moses would find himself in such a crisis. But each time he cried out, he discovered God’s presence with him, leading and saving. The second thing for us to hear is that God has a mysterious ability to work in and through such hardship, not only to conform us to God’s purposes for us, but to reveal to us—confirm in us—God’s power and love for us. God is with us in the crisis, waiting to reveal himself to us in and through it. The apostle Paul—no stranger to such hardship and suffering—would find this so true that he could exhort the church at Rome to boast in such adversity. Why? Not only because “suffering produces endurance, endurance produces character and character produces hope.”
Though virtues, these are little help when in a crisis. Had Paul stopped there, we could accuse him of hoping only in hope. But Paul continues, such “hope doesn’t disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.” In our crying out to God, we’re in fact embracing that divine connection whereby God’s Spirit infuses our lives and leads us ever more surely, ever more deeply into the life God has promised. God sends the Spirit to dwell in us, well up within us, gradually transforming us so that we finally become in our day-to-day lives who we’ve been declared to be: the beloved of God. This is illustrated for us in today’s gospel lesson.
The Samaritan woman whom Jesus had engaged in conversation at Jacob’s well, was herself between a rock and a hard place. It was startling enough that this Jewish religious leader should be talking to any woman in public, much less a Samaritan. Not only did such leaders not engage women in public conversation, Jews had no dealings with Samaritans. The longstanding controversy over where to worship God—at the temple in Jerusalem or the Samaritan’s temple on Mount Gerizim—had boiled over into a conflict in which the Jews had finally destroyed the Samaritan temple. There was great antipathy between them. Yet, in spite of these barriers of race, gender or religious hatred, Jesus has initiated a conversation with a request for a drink from Jacob’s well. Knowing that to offer him a drink from her own cup would render him ritually unclean, she’s astonished and says so. Jesus responds that if she knew the gift of God and who was speaking to her, she would ask him for living water. Typical of Jesus in John’s gospel, the words are loaded with double meaning which at first is misunderstood. In her incomprehension she asks Jesus for less than he offers, hoping only to no longer have to make the daily trip to the well. But where Jesus had been impatient with Nicodemus and his incomprehension, here, with an outsider, he’s astonishingly gentle, yet purposeful.
Increasing the pressure, Jesus asks her to call her non-existent husband. The conversation has become more revealing than she might have wished. She attempts to deceive Jesus—telling him she has no husband—only to discover him a prophet. On the spot now, she tries avoidance again, and initiates a theological conversation about worship. Jesus, undaunted by her living situation, and unwilling to condemn her, draws her beyond the question of Mount Gerizim or Mount Zion, and to himself: there is no other temple in which to worship God, but himself. The hour has come to worship God in spirit and truth.
The time has come to worship God by responding to God’s presence in himself. She tries to dodge this response by confessing hope in a coming Messiah, only to have Jesus reveal even more about himself: “I am he, the one who is speaking to you.” He is a source of water which wells up to quench all thirst, and in so doing will not only transforms her situation but also her life. And that’s precisely what happens. Before it’s over, not only she but also her townspeople have encountered the one they will call “the saviour of the world.” He has come even to them.
What better illustration of the Gospel is there than this? God comes to us in Jesus Christ, regardless of our circumstance and offers us the Spirit to dwell in us, well up within us, gradually transforming us, so that we finally become in reality who we are declared to be: people who have been reconciled to God. Between a rock and a hard place, she stayed in the conversation, maintained the link, and embraced his gift. She discovered not only the Messiah, but God’s presence in the flesh. A spring of living water welled up to spill over into her life, giving her new life. In this well Jesus Christ meets each of us. His gift hasn’t changed. He gives us himself. As we ask “Is the Lord among us or not?,” he says “Go on! I will be standing before you on the rock!”
As we trust him, keep conversation with him, worship God in and through him, we discover his presence with us. We discover him present to sustain us in our mission as Christ’s body to sustain us in those moments when we have lost confidence in ourselves, to give us hope in those moments when we have lost confidence in life itself. Thirsts are quenched and crises are endured. Life is not only renewed in hope, it’s transformed. Are you between a rock and a hard place? Go on! God is standing before you on that rock. God is there with you, not only waiting to reveal himself to you in and through the crisis, but more, waiting to give you new life. Cry out to him. You will not be disappointed.
The Rev’d George M Rogers
March 2023
Resolute
Life is filled with tests, and no one likes them. Among life’s most challenging tests are those we call temptation. Jesus knew what it meant to be tempted. It is his encounter with temptation that helped convince the early church of the fullness of Jesus’ humanity. Though only the first three Gospels report Jesus’ encounter with the devil in the wilderness, all four agree that Jesus encountered temptation throughout his ministry. He became like us in every way—knowing life as you and I know it—was tempted as we are, says the letter to Hebrews, yet did not sin. This encounter between Jesus and the personified power of evil was no accident. All three Gospel accounts agree, it was the Spirit of God who led Jesus into the wilderness for this encounter with the devil.
Luke and Matthew call him the devil, and Mark—the earliest account of the temptations—refers to him as Satan. Satan is the Hebrew name for someone who is an adversary, accuser or prosecutor. In the Old Testament, Satan is a member of God’s heavenly court. Recall him from the story of Job, where Satan functions as God’s quality control agent. Satan’s primary role in the Old Testament is to play the prosecuting attorney in God’s legal disputes. Consequently, Satan often appears on the scene to test people, often using entrapment or provocation to see if they will remain true. When the Old Testament was translated from Hebrew into Greek, the word for Satan was translated diabolos—from which has come the English word Devil—which basically means someone who makes false or malicious statements about another in order to defame. It is what led to the notion that Satan is a liar, and someone who provokes to evil.
Between the writing of the Old Testament and Jesus’ day, the Persians had conquered the land, and brought with it Zoroastrianism, with its full-blown dualism of a god of good and a god of evil, both engaged in mortal combat for the outcome of the world. As a consequence, by Jesus’ day in Palestine, Satan was no longer a prosecutor for God’s sake but the tempter. The personification of evil, and in full rebellion against God, Satan or the devil—the two are now synonymous—seeks to establish his own kingdom against God using all of his powers of deception, provocation, and entrapment to accomplish his ends. This is the one the Spirit of God leads Jesus into the wilderness to encounter during a forty day fast in which Luke tells us Jesus ate nothing and was famished.
“If you are the Son of God…” The phrase can equally be translated, “Since you are the Son of God,” but that is probably more than the devil can bring himself to admit to Jesus. “Command this stone to become a loaf of bread.” If you are the Son of God, prove it! Jesus is hungry. What possible harm could there be in succumbing to this temptation of the flesh? Why not use his power for himself now and then? On the other hand, if he does, where will that end? How will that affect what he has been sent to accomplish? Exploiting Jesus’ hunger, the devil seeks to derail Jesus’ role in God’s work of salvation. What, after all, does it mean to be God’s Son? Is this status for privilege or for service? And, whose bidding has he come to accomplish? Whose son will he be? Jesus responds with a quote from Deuteronomy, “It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone.’” The first test is passed.
The second test steps by the question of who Jesus is, laying aside the devil’s initial challenge to Jesus’ relationship with God and moves to his relationship with the world, his mission as Lord and saviour. “You want the world, its kingdoms and its powers to save it? You want dominion over the world for your good purposes? You want its fame, its glory, its authority,” asks the devil. “I can give it to you. It has been handed over to me, and is mine to give to anyone I please. Just worship me.”
How much easier it would have been. No resistance to Jesus and his message. No passion, suffering and death. In one small act of indiscretion, all that could have been avoided. Think of how much easier his life and mission could have been.
But are the means in life really secondary to the end? Does the end really justify the means or must the means be in accord with the end, if the end is to have any final integrity?And an even more fundamental question: is the world and its power and glory really the devil’s to give? He says so, but let’s not forget that the devil is a liar and the father of lies. Remember that the tools of his trade are deception, provocation and misrepresentation of reality. Jesus knows the devil is a liar and Jesus knows who is sovereign in life. Can one truly accept dominion over world-kingdoms from someone other than God? The devil may be subtle, crafty and certainly is more powerful than the sons and daughters of Adam. But the devil isn’t God! Whose son will Jesus be? Quoting the Law again Jesus responds, “Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.” Jesus will fulfill his purpose and mission trusting only in the dominion and power of God.
“Very well then,” says the devil, “since you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from this temple tower. For it is written, ‘He will command his angels concerning you to protect you… lest you dash your foot against a stone.’” Jesus has withstood the first two temptations by quoting Holy Scripture. Now, the devil is throwing Scripture back in Jesus’ face, quoting Psalm 91. We must take note that even the devil can quote Scripture and knows it far better than any biblical scholar. Likewise, there is no magical power in simply hurling a verse of Scripture at someone, as will soon be demonstrated. But first, why shouldn’t Jesus prove himself now, right at the beginning, and if not prove himself, at least reveal himself?
Such theatrics would certainly convince the crowd in Jerusalem, who otherwise will, before the year is out, be calling for his death. Further, Jesus is about to embark on his divine mission. Ought he not first test the resolve of the One who has sent him to ensure his safety and survival when things get life-threatening? Doesn’t the Son have the right to have a sign of such warrantee from the Father before embarking on his mission? Or is it that true sons and daughters know their heavenly Father and have no need for further proof? Is love tested an act of love—is it fidelity or faithlessness, trust or doubt? “It is said, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’” Once again, the Word of God speaks. The devil may be able to quote Scripture, but absent the Spirit of God, Scripture has no power. It is not a magic talisman or weapon. Without the gift of God’s Holy Spirit accompanying them, the Scriptures, no matter who quotes them, are just words. Weak and exhausted though Jesus may be, he is still being sustained by the Holy Spirit. Spoken in the Spirit, the words of Scripture become God’s word, and temptation is overcome.
Jesus has proved himself to be who Luke has told us he is. He is the obedient and faithful Son of God. But he is also the faithful son of Israel. He has remained true to God’s covenant through each of the three tests that the children of Israel failed in their wilderness wandering. They clamoured for bread, they fell into idolatry and worshipped the golden calf, and they put the Lord to the test. But here from among them now, the faithfulness of God is revealed in this obedient and righteous Jew who has come to be saviour, not simply for Israel, but for the world.
The devil is smart enough to know when he has been beaten. Luke tells us he leaves Jesus until a more opportune time. Jesus will now take up his mission as a Son.
He will use his power, not to command a stone to become a loaf of bread, but to cause five loves and two fish to feed thousands. He will demonstrate his dominion over evil, not by succumbing to idolatry, but by worshipping and serving God alone. In his encounters with evil on his way to Jerusalem, he will cast it out, healing the lame, the blind, the diseased and crazed. And when the devil returns to that more opportune hour in Jerusalem, Jesus will trust the power of his Father to sustain and care for him through scourging, mockery and death, not simply to be saved from it, but to be able to save through it.
The test had three questions:
- Can sons and daughters of God trust God to provide for their physical needs, or will they use and abuse their relationship to God for their own ends?
- Will God’s daughters and sons remain true to God alone when other false sources promise us life, when easier means seem available for our ends; will we sell out to evil to accomplish a good end?
- Can God’s sons and daughters live trusting in the providential care of God, even as we face death, or must we force God’s hand to prove that we are loved?
These are the tests we encounter every day of our lives. When we’re tempted to use our faith for personal comfort or gain, to be successful rather than faithful—making compromises rather than standing firm—and to avoid the path of sacrifice and suffering that will come to each of us if we are faithful, we must remember our baptism. We have been made sons and daughters of God, sisters and brothers of Christ in the waters of baptism and given the very same Spirit that Jesus received in his baptism. This means, among other things, that we have the same resource Jesus had in his temptations. In the Holy Spirit, we have the power not only to resist evil, but to overcome evil with good. “In the Holy Spirit”— this is not an innate attribute we bring to the test, nor is it a reaching deeper within ourselves to garner more willpower. Rather, it’s relying on the power of God to provide for us. It is trusting the power of God’s Holy Spirit to give our work and witness dominion in a world that has unwittingly sold out to the power of the devil because it has been taken in by his lies.
And it is depending on God to care for us, not only in death, but through death, into new life where there is no rebellion and no lying, much less the father of lies. Then we shall be by nature, what we are today by promise—daughters and sons of God who will have matured to the fullness of Christ.
When the tests come, as indeed they will continue to come, we must pray for the power of the Spirit to keep us true. To pray for the power of Christ, God’s living Word, to fill us in our weakness and give us power to overcome evil with good. We must not take the temptation on out of our own resources—we will surely fail. Rather, may we rely on God’s Word and pray as our Lord has taught us to pray “give us today our daily bread; forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us. Save us from the time of trial, and deliver us from evil.” That’s enough. Why? Because the kingdom, the power and the glory are God’s, now and forever.
The Rev’d George M Rogers
February 2023
The Last Day of Christmas
The Presentation of Christ in the Temple is a major feast which occurs in the Epiphany season, but it’s connected to Christmas and actually brings the observance of Christ’s Nativity to a close. This feast also has another old title, the Purification of Saint Mary the Virgin. Let us look at each title’s meaning.
First and most obviously, there’s the Presentation of Christ in the temple. According to the Law of Moses, every first-born son had to be dedicated to God in memory of the Israelites’ deliverance from Egypt at the Exodus, when the first-born sons of the Egyptians died and those of Israel were spared, or “passed over,” by the angel of death. This Presentation of the son occurred forty days after the child’s birth; thus the actual day, 2nd February, falls forty days after 25th December. The Presentation required an offering to be made for the first-born son, an ongoing sign of the miracle of God’s preservation of Israel since the Exodus up to the present moment.
It’s worth noting that in the story of the Presentation by the Holy Family, Mary and Joseph took the option offered by the Law for a poor family. The Law prescribed either a lamb, which was the rich family’s offering, or, for the poor, a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons, as the offering to be made for the child.
Secondly, the ritual of Presentation included the rite of Purification for the mother, who had undergone the blood shedding involved in childbirth. As a daughter of the covenant, she was delivered from the dangers of pregnancy and restored to a more normal, or at least less delicate, state.
Present at the scene with the Holy Family were two old saints, Simeon and Anna, who prophesied concerning Jesus. Simeon said he could now die in peace, because he had laid eyes at last on Israel’s Messiah. He also said Jesus’ career would mean the fall and rising again of many in Israel, and would pierce the heart of his own mother Mary. Anna gave thanks to the Lord and spoke of Jesus to all who looked for Israel’s redemption.
So it was, that when Mary placed her infant Son into Simeon’s arms, the dispensation of the Old Testament encountered the new dispensation of the Gospel. Seen from the perspective of our faith in Jesus Christ, we can see Christ, God’s gift to our Lady, being presented and offered back to the Father by his Church, personified by Mary and Joseph.
If you think about it, we have here the image of the way Christians pray and worship and witness and work at all times. Looking far ahead from Christ’s infancy, through Lent, to Holy Week, we come to Good Friday, where Jesus completes his self-offering. He takes us from his Presentation in the Temple to the Altar of the Cross.
When Mary and Joseph presented Jesus in the Temple, God revealed how it is that we have access to him. This access was brought to perfection on Good Friday, when it was no wonder that the veil covering the Holy of Holies of the Temple was torn in two from top to bottom. When Mary underwent the old purification rite as Christ’s mother, she was prefiguring the purification all Christians receive as we learn more and more to live and grow in Christ, bearing him to the world.
May we go and do likewise, rejoicing in the power of the Holy Spirit.
The Rev’d George M Rogers
January 2023
Our Holy Name
On Epiphany we commemorate the Baptism of our Lord. But beyond recognising that Jesus was baptised by John the Baptist, what does it mean and, what does it have to do with you and me? Since we’re sinners and Jesus was not, how is our own baptism like his?
Each of the four Gospels has a different account of this event, and that should not disturb us. If each of us had been a witness to the event and then been called on to tell what happened, each would have told the story differently, from our own perspective, highlighting a particular aspect. The differences in the four accounts attest to their authenticity. Only a forgery would insure that each of the four Gospel accounts were identical. So it is often helpful to look at those things which are unique to a particular account.
Luke tells us that the people were filled with expectation and questioned if John might be the Christ. John denies their expectation as he draws a distinction between his baptism—one with water alone for the repentance of sin (the baptism Jesus will receive), and the coming One’s baptism with Holy Spirit and fire.
Luke does not record the actual baptism, but reports that it took place. In the Gospel of John, though the John the Baptist is not identified as the one to baptise Jesus, he reports seeing the Spirit descend on Jesus as a validation that Jesus is the Son of God. It suggests that if John is not the one who actually baptised Jesus, still, he was present. Luke makes a greater distinction: he removes the John the Baptist from the scene completely, inserting an interlude about the John’s troubles with Herod which lands him in prison. Only after he is incarcerated, does Luke tell us that Jesus has been baptised along with other people.
There was significant messianic expectation about John among the people, and John had his own disciples, who were baptising people into John’s movement. Luke wants to make the distinction between Jesus and the John Baptist clear. John isn’t “the coming One,” rather, he is the last of the prophets, the end of that age, and the one who has been sent both to prepare for and point to God’s “coming One.” Jesus is that promised One, the beginning of the new, the one in whom the reign of God is breaking into human life.
Next, unlike the other baptismal portrayals, Jesus is praying when the Holy Spirit descends on him. The descent of the Spirit is visible not only to Jesus, as is the case in Matthew’s account, but to others nearby. God’s voice from heaven announces to Jesus his identity: “You are my Son, the Beloved….” It is as though Luke wants us to know that the gift of the Spirit in Jesus’ life (the power that will distinguish him from others) and the moment in which he comes to understand his own identity as God’s Son, have nothing to do with John the Baptist’s baptism. They’re unique to Jesus and his relationship with his Father.
Here is the break with the past, something completely new: the reign of God has broken into human life and is present in Jesus. The baptism we commemorate today includes us in this New Age and empowers us to live into God’s reign. John’s was a baptism of repentance for Jews, a way for them to embrace their identity as members of God’s covenant people. Jesus’ baptism is inclusion into this New Age—the Kingdom has broken in and is among us. But more than simple inclusion, it promises power to live into that reign.
I’ve used the phrase “New Age” intentionally, for the term “New Age” isn’t nearly as new as many proponents of contemporary New Age thought might think. The breaking in of God’s New Age is precisely what John the Baptist was prophesying. He was warning the people of Israel to change their ways. A fire-storm was on its way. Their birthright wouldn’t save them. But when the New Age broke in, it was a different kind of fire. It was a zeal, not only for God, but all God’s people. John the Baptist was expecting a conquering warrior who would burn things down. When God’s reign broke into the world in Jesus of Nazareth, it came as a baby and appeared as a different kind of fire—light and life.
To participate in Jesus’ baptism is to share not only in his light and his life, but also in his identity. For baptism is not only incorporation into the Christian community, it is also union with Jesus Christ. In baptism you and I have been ‘clothed with Christ,” which means that when God looks at us, He sees his Son, the Beloved, the one with whom He is well pleased. Remember, baptism is about the forgiveness of sins.
It is a sign that God has washed them out, clothed us in Christ, and now sees him in us, even when you and I cannot see Christ either in ourselves or in one another. We believe in “one baptism for the forgiveness of sins,” as a sign of what God has done. Regardless of how we might profane that, sully it with behaviour that is less than Godly or even turn our backs on it, God remains God, what God has done, God has done, and God remains faithful.
To participate in Jesus’ baptism is to share in his power. We are not just baptised into Jesus as though Jesus were a solitary movement, or the only dimension to God’s reign, but into the economy of the Holy Trinity. We baptise in the name of the Father, for God has chosen each of us as his child, in the name of the Son, that we might be joined to Christ as brothers and sisters (putting on both his death and resurrection by the forgiveness of our sins), and in the name of the Holy Spirit, that we too might receive the gift of God’s power to do as he wills.
The power that descended to Jesus from the Father in bodily form, confirming his relationship with the Father is the same Holy Spirit which descended on you and on me in our baptism. God has not only promised to be our parent, he descended on us with fire and Spirit to make each of us his anointed sons and daughters, giving us a new name—his Son’s name—making us each little Christs with all the powers and privileges that appertain thereunto. You are God’s beloved. With you God is well pleased. You may not be, but God is. After all, God looks at you and me differently than we look at ourselves and each other. God sees Christ in us, even when we’re not Christ-like. God knows our potential and the ultimate outcome and purpose of our lives. You are God’s own beloved daughter, God’s own beloved son. That is the power of your name.
The Rev’d George M Rogers
December 2022
(The Day after) Christmas
There is a swift change in tone from Christmas Day—25 December to the death of St Stephen on 26 December. This is an example of the non-acceptance of Jesus and his message. Being prophetic as Jesus was evoked extreme reaction to Stephen. His death is portrayed like that of Jesus, forgiving his executioners and commending his spirit to the Lord. We are called to rely on the Lord who remains faithful to us in all situations. Accepting Jesus and becoming a follower has its cost but it is the way to life abundant and eternal. Stephen gives us a profound message about forgiveness in the spirit of the teaching and example of Jesus.
It can seem strange to celebrate St Stephen, who was martyred, right after Christmas Day when our dominant emotion is joy in the birth of Christ. The point, however, is that this is why Christ came on earth, to save us from our sins by his death on the Cross. Very few of us have any understanding of the reason why Jesus Christ died. If sympathy is all that human beings need, then the Cross of Christ is an absurdity and there’s absolutely no need for it. What the world needs is not “a little bit of love” but a major op.
When we find ourselves face to face with a person who is spiritually lost, we must remind ourselves of Jesus Christ on the cross. If that person can get to God in any other way, then the Cross of Christ is unnecessary. If we think we’re helping lost people with our sympathy and understanding, we’re being traitors to Jesus Christ. We must have a right-standing relationship with Him ourselves and pour our lives out in helping others in His way— not in a human way that ignores God. The theme of Christianity today is to serve in a pleasant, non-confrontational/non-engaging manner with the Vicar as ‘front of house’.
But our only priority must be to present Jesus Christ crucified—to lift Him up all the time. Every belief that is not firmly rooted in the Cross of Christ will lead people astray. If we believe in Jesus Christ and are trusting in the reality of redemption, his words will be compelling to others. What is extremely important is for our simple relationship with Jesus Christ to be strong and growing. Our usefulness to God depends on that and that alone.
Our calling is to expose and avoid sin and to reveal Jesus Christ as Saviour. Consequently—like Stephen—we cannot always be charming and friendly, but must be willing to stand fast on the rock of Christ. We’re sent by God to lift up Jesus Christ, not to give wonderfully beautiful speeches. We must be willing to examine and encourage others as deeply as God has examined and continues to encourage us. We must also be sharply intent on sensing those Scripture passages that will drive the truth home, and then not be afraid to apply them (the word of God is a sword that cuts both ways).
Christian joy is a strange thing to the world—it’s not an emotion but a deep peace which remains even in the midst of great opposition and difficulty. This is the peace of God that passes all understanding, and it is the peace that Jesus gives, not as the world gives. This will always be part of the Christian life and it is a peace in which we may dwell and into which we can welcome others. I pray this Christmas season that the Lord may give us wisdom and strength in the challenging situations that we encounter and continue to pour his grace upon us so to that we can exuberantly live into the life he has given us.
The Rev’d George M Rogers
November 2022
The Alpha Male and Omega Man
As Advent approaches, the cycle of the Christian year comes to an end with a festival that celebrates and proclaims Christ’s lordship over all things. Whether we call it the festival of “Christ the King” or by the more contemporary name, “The Reign of Christ,” the message is the same—Jesus Christ is Lord, the image of the invisible God. The Biblical language around this is unequivocal, straightforward, particular and unmistakably clear—he is the image of the invisible God—the one through whom you and I can be drawn into the very presence of God.
Christ is the head of the body, the Church―not just the Church of England, the Orthodox Church, the Roman Catholic Church or myriad of other Protestant Mainline, Free, Evangelical, or Pentecostal churches. He’s the head and is present in each and all who faithfully proclaim his word and celebrate his sacraments. Those are the two marks John Calvin used to identify the true Church when that question was being asked in the 16th century. In the 21st century, I’d like to suggest another mark of the true Church—where women and men not only hear Christ speak in the proclamation of the Word and receive Christ’s presence in water, bread and wine but then make Christ present in this world, as they bear him faithfully in their daily living.
Therein the Church, regardless of the denominational name by which it goes, demonstrates who is its one true head—its Lord. The Church, the body of Christ, becomes his living presence when we bear Christ from the church building after worship into the many places God has called on each of us to bear witness to and serve him. You are Christ in your office, in your school, in your parenting group, the playing field and in all of your associations and relationships, public and private. Each of us who has put on Christ in the waters of baptism and lives into that identity, becomes a means by whom Christ is present in this world.
Christ reigns in and through each of us. As a consequence, you and I are called to be Christ to others, seeking reconciliation where there’s alienation, healing where there’s brokenness—brokenness in the Church, in this nation, and in this world. If we dare to claim the name of Christ, we must bear him, heeding his call to heal divisions, restore life and seek peace. That is what it means to be a Christ bearer. For Christ not only saves souls—reconciling them to God the Father—Christ calls on all souls to be reconciled to one another and to work for peace and security between enemies.
Christ commands that you and I find ways to address whatever injustices we encounter, wherever we encounter them, and resolve them peacefully. As Christ bearers, we are called to be as concerned for the value of life in Afghanistan or Ukraine as we are for the unborn life in a mother’s womb here in Orpington. Why? Because it is Christ’s life that is at the centre of all life in this world, holding it together for his and his Father’s purposes. He is head of the Church and becomes present in this world each time we make him sovereign in our own lives.
Christ the beginning, not only the One through whom creation came into being, but the One through whom the new creation is unfolding—the new beginning—the firstborn of the dead. Our hope in the face of death and despair is the resurrection of Jesus, the Christ of God. As God raised his Son, and breathed his creative Spirit of life back into Jesus’ dead body to raise him to life beyond this life, so too God promises that same act of re-creation for each one who embraces that promised gift in faith. God promises to raise us beyond the power of death and give us life so radically transformed that we can only speak of it as a new beginning, a new creation.
Christ is the end—the one in whom all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, not only to redeem and restore, but also to reconcile all things, making peace through the blood of his cross. His disciples understood this, the thief on the cross next to him realised it as well. Christ’s sacrifice on the cross was not simply to reconcile us to God. What we need to realise is that there are two realities occurring simultaneously: The first is of the Romans and the Jews, with Jesus of Nazareth crucified between two thieves. This reality is a negation of the fullness of God being pleased to dwell in Christ. Here, Caesar is king. The Jews are subjects of him. They think they have Jesus the son of the carpenter… and they’re right… on one level. They just don’t know the whole story. What they are mocking Jesus with, he is actually accomplishing—he is the King of the Jews, he is forgiving them, reconciling heaven and earth by the forgiveness of their sins, and he is saving souls as he promises the thief he will be with him in paradise. There is a deep level of irony here.
In literature, irony occurs when there is a difference in the levels of knowledge. It is ironic that the Romans and Jews do not perceive this. They don’t realise that they are making salvation possible—even the possibility of their own.
The true reality is Christ the King. The enmity that invaded creation, revealed in the chaos, hatred, warfare and brokenness so apparent in life today, has been overcome through the blood of Christ’s cross, and has
opened Christ’s realm of peace to any who will embrace it in faith and faithfulness. Christ is not only the source and sustainer of all creation, he is also the goal towards which all creation moves. Christ is not an abstract idea, but is a person—the crucified One who died, was raised, reigns and promises to come again so that you and I, and the whole created order, may be transformed (as we speak) in God’s act of new creation. Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again. May we live into God’s promise: he is good to his Word!
The Rev’d George M Rogers
October 2022
Better Business Practice
Imagine a business and imagine that one of the employees has been secretly stealing money over a number of years. One day he’s found out, all comes into the open and everyone sees the evil that he’s been doing. Far from being repentant, he’s defiant and proud. HR calls him in and he expresses his contempt and hatred of his employers. They sack him. He has until the end of the week to leave the business.
In the days remaining, he begins to sow distrust among the staff, accusing them and deceiving them. He accuses the secretary of stealing stationery. ‘You’re just like me,’ he tells her. ‘You’re a thief and don’t belong in this business.’ He even tells HR about the wicked things he has seen others do. And then he also deceives the rest. He tries to convince some of them that he’s heard HR is about to sack them. And others he tries to puff up, telling them they had be better managers—that everyone thinks so—and that they should try to go for the top job. All become agitated and unsettled: after all there is a kernel of truth in some of what he is saying and they long for the end of the week when they will be free of him.
In the Book of Revelation, God gives a picture of Satan just like this business scenario. Satan has been outed as the father of lies, as Jesus calls him. He and his demons fight with St Michael and his angels, who are the ultimate victors. Of Satan and his demons we hear that ‘there was no longer any place for them in heaven’—they’d been dismissed, sacked, thrown out from heaven to the earth. The angels had won, but the victory was only achieved ‘by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony’. Christ has won salvation. ‘Therefore rejoice O heavens and you who dwell in them! But woe to you, O earth and sea, for the devil has come down to you in great wrath, because he knows that his time is short!’ He knows that he only has until the end of the week. He knows that there is no chance of victory, that his defeat is complete. But this only emboldens him to attack whomever he can.
God warns us about these two ways that the devil will attack us. First, he will accuse you: ‘The accuser of our brothers has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God.’ All of us should be able to recognise this tactic, especially you as children of God, with whom He is very pleased, whom He loves, whom He delights in coming into His holy presence on Sunday.
So the devil focuses his attack, telling you the opposite, that you are worthless: that you are nothing but a phony, that you are a bad parent, that you are a bad friend, that your secret sins disqualify you from God’s kingdom, and that God really despises you. That is what the father of lies tries to convince us of, accusing us and condemning us. But stronger than God’s hatred of our sins, is His love for you—don’t ever listen to anyone trying to convince you otherwise. God’s love for you is stronger than the devil and his accusations. God’s love for you has led to the cross, where Christ has defeated all of the devil’s accusations.
In the face of these accusations, one of the worst things we can do is to try and fight him ourselves: to try and prove that we’re really great people, to try and prove that we don’t really commit any great sins. That is a victory for the devil, puffing up our own pride on a foundation of lies. Yet we have a Saviour who has already paid the price for our sins. Our lives are built on Christ—the rock—the sure foundation, who has bought us for himself, and who forgives us for all of our sins. And in so doing we defeat the devil.
In the Book of Revelation, God warns us of a second demonic tactic. He calls him ‘that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world’. Satan trades in deception, and just as he deceived our ancestors Adam and Eve, so too he’s deceiving the whole world, including you. There are many ways that he does this but there are two particular kinds of deception. We should also consider how the angels might help us in overcoming the deception of Satan. Every week we confess our belief that God created everything, seen and unseen, visible and invisible. And so we confess our belief in the angels, whom we don’t see but who are with us and who are for us. The angels are for you, messengers of God to bring you freedom from deception of the devil.
One way in which the devil tries to deceive us all is to try and get us to believe that our own story is the most important in the world—that my story is the only real story going on. Even if we may not really believe this, the devil at least tries to deceive us into living this way, as if the world only exists through our own eyes. If the devil succeeds in this deception that our story is the only story, we can find it very hard to enjoy God’s creation. We always think, “what’s in it for me,” when we look at a nice house, when we hear laughter, when we go to a concert. It becomes clear how this deception not only robs us of loving other people, but robs you even of ourselves.
The message of the angels can cure us of the devil’s deception, because the message of the angels is about Christ and his story. At the birth of Christ they proclaimed his story. At his death they proclaimed his resurrection. And today they’re with us, gathered round the throne of God, proclaiming the salvation story of Christ. And when they proclaim this message, they’re saying ‘Do you know there’s a greater story, there’s the great story of Jesus Christ, it is more real than any story and you can be a part of it, you can share in his glory and holiness, you can share in his great story, and so be freed from your own deception that your story is the greatest. In Christ, you can be freed to have joy in God’s creation, a love of other people, because Christ has made you his brothers and sisters’. With the angels we can see things as they really are, existing outside of us.
One other way that the devil can deceive us is the opposite of being caught up in our own story. Instead of thinking that only our perspective counts, the devil can deceive us into thinking we are nothing, that our story is a non-story. We don’t want even to think about our lives because it’s too painful. We don’t want to engage with other people because we believe we’re worthless, worth nothing.
Again, the angels bring you good news, to free you from this deception. In proclaiming the good news of Christ to you, they’re saying that we’re not nothing. That our story is not worthless. That our story is important to God. In Christ, God wants to weave our story into the story of Christ, to make us a part of his great story. God even wants to take the painful bits of our story, and incorporate them into the same pain that Christ suffered, and so share with us the salvation and joy of Christ.
The Rev’d George M Rogers
September 2022
Ditched Up
Popularly known as the parable of the Good Samaritan, most folk have turned this theme into a morality play about doing good in order to inherit eternal life. Not only does that miss the point entirely, it reduces Christianity to a set of moral imperatives by which we continue to try and measure ourselves, while turning the church into a collection of “do-gooders” looking to align ourselves with the latest “progressive cause”. Is it surprising to know that the word “good” never appears in the story? What is this parable about, and how do we measure up?
Jesus’ followers have just returned from a mission trip, astounded at the power of their message—even the demons have submitted to them in Jesus’ name. As they rejoice over this, Jesus tells them how blessed they are. A lawyer, evidently not one of the seventy, stands up to test Jesus. This is an expert on the Law of Moses, a Biblical scholar, a thoughtful, committed religious man. Having heard Jesus tell the seventy they are blessed, he wants to know what he must do to be so blessed as well. Already recognised as a significant religious leader of the community the lawyer asks what he must do to inherit eternal life.
Jesus answers by asking a question: what does the Law say? With wonderful irony Jesus twists things to make a point: not only is the lawyer the expert, but the answer has been here all along, yet he has not seen it. The lawyer quotes two texts from the Torah, here-to-fore not connected in Jewish life. The first comes from the Shma—every good Jew would recite it twice daily—and a text from Leviticus. What must you and I do to inherit eternal life? “Love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbour as yourself.” This plants the flag of God’s sovereignty over the whole on one’s life. How do we measure up? Heart, soul, strength and mind, no part of ourselves is to be withheld from God. It’s not good enough just to think a particular way about God. It’s not good enough to love God with our mind, but not our bodies. It’s not good enough to serve God by working in this or that programme for the poor and not also serve him in regular worship. For when not here, we’re worshiping something else. There is no portion of our life which is exempt.
We’re to love our neighbour as well as God. Now, the word “neighbour” in the Levitical context means another member of the covenant community—another Israelite. However, the story doesn’t end there.
Read the 19th chapter of Leviticus a bit further to discover that the command also includes the resident alien, where the text virtually repeats itself by saying “you shall love the alien as yourself…” You were once strangers in a strange land. Learn from that experience and live!
Love of neighbour—including the alien among us—is foundational to the love of God. But the gospel raises the stakes. Jesus tells us not only to love our neighbours but our enemies as well, and, to pray for them. St John puts it this way: “Those who say ‘I love God’ and hate their brother or sister are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen”. We can’t love God and despise, loathe or disdain another member of the community. We must constantly be guided by the need to think about and care for the benefit of one another, or face the fact that we’re as wanting and flawed in our relationship with God as we are with one another. Love of God means love of one another. How do we measure up? There is a third love as well.
We must love ourselves—not easy. Given what we’re beginning to discover about the impact of not only of dysfunctional parenting in the lives of children all of their lives, but even the normal developmental process, it may not be as easy to love ourselves as it first sounds. More than one psychologist has pointed out that in order to be loved by our parents we strive to emulate them, thinking that if we behave like them long enough they will love us as we want to be loved. The problem is that as children we think we are the centre of the universe. As a consequence we can never be loved the way we think we need to be. We end up not only suspecting we’re not lovable, but also adopting much of our parents’ behaviour patterns, quite unwittingly. Haven’t we all experienced it? We go home for a visit, and see a reflection of ourselves in our parents’ behaviour. Sometimes it’s not very pleasing. So foundational is this problem that we might well reverse the order of the three loves to love of self, love of neighbour and love of God. For without a healthy love of self we’ll never be able to love one another, and, until we learn to love one another we’ll never be able to love God.
The lawyer answered the question correctly but then Jesus raised the stakes. He said, “Do this and you shall live”. This is about how to have life here and now. It’s not about life after death—do-gooding for the great payoff in the sky—it’s about living now! The lawyer hears Jesus clearly and feels the pinch, Jesus’ answer has excluded him and he knows it, just as I suspect it excludes us. Wanting to justify himself, he asks, “And who is my neighbour”?
Jesus tells his famous parable in which a man lying in a ditch half dead is left for dead by the most respected people in the community—the priests and the Levites. This shouldn’t surprise the lawyer. The very law about which he was so expert explicitly prohibited priests and Levites from even coming into the proximity of death. To this day, a Jew named Levi is not permitted in a Jewish graveyard, not even for his own parents’ burial. So we can’t turn this into a cheap morality play about the bad, self-centred priest, too concerned with religious things to worry about someone in need. The priest and the Levite were simply obeying the law. Nor is Jesus ridiculing the law. Remember, this is a parable. It has a point to make and it hasn’t yet been made.
Finally, we must not distort the story by putting the adjective “good” in front of the Samaritan. We don’t know a thing about his moral character. If we do that and we will miss Jesus’ point entirely. Samaritans were despised by Jews in Jesus’ day and for very good reason. They were half-breeds who had refused to help rebuild Jerusalem after the return from Exile. They’d sided with the Syrians in their wars against the Jews. In return, a Jewish high priest had destroyed the Samaritans’ temple. The hatred between Jews and Samaritans was both ancient and contemporary. Just one chapter earlier Jesus had tried to enter the region of Samaria and had been turned away because he was on his way to Jerusalem. James and John were so angry they asked for permission to command fire from heaven to consume the Samaritans, but Jesus simply used it as an illustration of what an outsider he really was, welcome neither among his own people or his own people’s enemies. Yet, it’s the outsider who becomes the hero when Jesus asks: “Who was a neighbour to the man in the ditch?” “The one who showed mercy.”
We must not miss what it means to be a neighbour. It is not about do-gooding, it’s about showing mercy. This isn’t about the good Samaritan, it’s about the merciful outsider: Jesus Christ, the plumb line that has been set in the midst of Israel.
Since the early days of the Church, this nameless outsider from Samaria has been seen as none other than our Lord. He is the one walking down the road, tending those who have been beaten, robbed and left half dead. He is the one who washes off our dirt with water, and tends our wounds with oil and wine. He is the one who picks us up, brings us to an inn of care and gives us the bread of life. He is the one who loves us, even when we do not love ourselves.
He is the one who has the capacity to love us as each of us have ever yearned to be loved. That insight alone is the beginning of new life.
If we want to know how we measure up, we first ask ourselves who it is that has lifted us from the ditches in our own lives. Then we must remember that we have been rescued from the power of darkness and transferred into the kingdom of God’s beloved Son. Ours is to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light. That is who we are. That is how we measure up. The outsider has come and touched us. At that very moment, when we had been left beaten and lying in the ditch of life, half dead, Jesus picked us up, brought us to the inn called his church, and gave us new meaning and purpose in life, new work to do.
That is the reason the story ends with Jesus saying “Go and do likewise.” Do you want to know how to have life? Once we have been lifted from the ditch, once we have had the wounds healed, once we know that he is committed to our lives and continues to return to this place to care for us, what more is there to do but practice the three loves? Everything else is a diversion or an attempt at self-justification. Jesus Christ is restoring our lives, using his own as the plumb line, doing so, until we become like him. As we trust and follow him, we can find power to love as he has loved.
The Rev’d George M Rogers
Aug 22
BREAD FOR THE JOURNEY
A dinner party turns into a preliminary audit. The issue is not monetary; not all audits are financial. The issue in this assessment is gratitude and its inevitable partner, generosity and what a life looks like once it is responding authentically to the touch of God’s love and grace.
Jesus is invited to dinner by Simon the Pharisee. Simon has been drawn to and intrigued by what he has seen in this itinerant preacher and healer who, in both word and deed, is bringing good news to the poor and poor in spirit. In his Gospel, Luke has documenting Jesus’ ministry. Not only has Jesus announced the new values, commitments and behaviours that will be a common bond among those who are his followers, he has touched people in their need. He has healed a leper, a paralytic, a man with a withered hand, restored sight to the blind, cast out demons, saved those close to death and even raised a widow’s dead son. Is it any wonder that Simon is interested in Jesus? Who would not be? Could Jesus be the prophet long promised by Moses?
But Simon also has a reservation about Jesus. Jesus’ admiration for and acceptance of John the Baptist’s ministry and baptism for the repentance of sins has left Simon guarded if not leery. The Pharisees refused to be baptised by John, seeing his abstinent nature and lifestyle as too acerbic and John’s sweeping call for repentance from even them as more than misguided. After all, the Pharisees were the ones committed to the rule of Torah in every aspect of Jewish life. They were among the most faithful Jews of Jesus’ day. And so, Luke tells us, in just a few verses above, that the Pharisees had refused John’s ministry and baptism, believing it to be demonically driven. Jesus on the other hand, though baptised by John, seemed the exact opposite. Jesus appeared almost libertine—eating, drinking without regard to the law, healing on the Sabbath, even accepting the attention and support of women, earning for himself the titles “glutton, drunkard, friend of tax collectors and sinners”, and even womaniser. All this lies behind Simon’s invitation for Jesus to join him at his table.
No sooner does Jesus take his place at Simon’s table than a nameless, notoriously sinful woman from the city barges out of the crowd gathered in the surrounding courtyard of Simon’s house. She situates herself behind the reclining Jesus. It is interesting that Luke neither names this woman nor tells us what her notorious sin actually is.
In other gospels she is portrayed as a harlot but not here. Nor is she Mary Magdalene, who appears at the end of this lesson, though popular religion, literature, drama and art have long portrayed her so. This is simply an anonymous but notorious sinner—she could be any one of us—one who, having learned that Jesus is dining with Simon, has brought an alabaster jar of ointment to anoint him as an act of gratitude. Have she and Jesus had a previous encounter in which Jesus announced her sins forgiven, or is it that she has only heard about this holy man who welcomes sinners? We don’t know. All we know is that upon coming to Jesus, she does two scandalous things—she lets down her hair and she begins to touch Jesus’ feet—both gestures no woman concerned about her reputation would dare in public, as each bore significant sexual overtones. As the meal continues, she kneels behind the reclining Jesus, bathing his feet with her tears and drying them with her hair. Then, applying the soothing and fragrant ointment, she does something even more extravagant still—she begins to kiss and anoint Jesus’ feet.
Simon’s reserve about Jesus seems to have been well placed. Jesus cannot, Simon reasons, be who Simon thought he might be. For if Jesus were a prophet he would know just what kind of woman this was and not allow her to defile him with her touch or behave in such an outrageous way, especially in public.
Luke’s telling of the story is wonderful, for no sooner has Simon mentally discredited Jesus as a prophet than Jesus demonstrates that he knows not only about this woman’s past, but also what sort of man Simon is and precisely what Simon is thinking; Jesus is a prophet of far grander proportion than even Simon can dream. As the woman continues her service of devotion and gratitude, Jesus tells Simon a simple story about a creditor who had two debtors, one with an enormous debt—better than a year’s wages—and the other with a significant one—both unable to be paid. And that is the point. As neither could repay their debts, the creditor canceled both. “Which of the two”, asks Jesus, “will love the creditor more”?
“Why it is obvious”, says Simon, “The one for whom he cancelled the greater debt”.
Precisely! Turning to the woman, Jesus says, “Simon, do you see this woman”..? Thereupon he begins to contrast her lavish expression of affection and gratitude over against Simon’s measured, meager and guarded hospitality. Point for point, the woman Simon has judged as a notorious sinner and outsider has outdone Simon, not only in acts of hospitality, but also in showing honor to Jesus.
Simon’s fixation with the woman’s sin has caused him to miss the reasons why he too should be grateful. This is the story of two sinners whose debts have been forgiven, one who is grateful and one who is not.
This anonymous woman, knowing herself better than anyone in the story, had finally experienced acceptance and forgiveness surpassing her need. She now has need to give thanks for all of that in uninhibited and extravagant ways, unconcerned about the Simons of life. Simon on the other hand, convinced of his own righteousness because of his regard for the law, has no sense of his own need—of his own indebtedness—nor of his being met with the same acceptance. He is clueless to God’s grace. All of this is sparkling clear to Jesus, who indeed is the prophet.
But Jesus is more than prophet, as he now demonstrates. Turning to the woman, he announces her sins forgiven. No one in that day, not rabbi, not priest, not even a prophet, would dare claim the authority to do such a thing. But now the one labeled a friend of sinners and outsiders, reveals his true authority—he forgives sin and restores to life. This is not lost on the other guests at Simon’s table. “Who is this who forgives even sins”? they mutter to one another while Jesus turns to the woman saying, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace”.
Who is this? This is the friend of sinners, tax collectors, any weighed-down in their lives by past actions or current circumstances, any who will respond to the invitation to live life as the object of God’s love and care. A notorious sinner trusted in the gracious word of God, accepted it as a liberating truth and with a love born of that acceptance, responded in thanksgiving and generosity. That is the recurring pattern of what happens to a life when it is touched by the grace of God. If joy is the indelible sign of the presence of God, then gratitude expressed in generosity, is the undeniable sign that God’s presence has been welcomed and received. It was not that the woman’s great love earned her the forgiveness of her sins. Rather, her great love proves that her many sins have been forgiven. It is well that she is nameless. For Luke wants us to know that she is anyone who turns to welcome God’s forgiving embrace. Doing so, they inevitably become a fountain of love and generosity. This, says Jesus, is what it looks like when your faith engages the welcoming, forgiving presence of God in your life. The Bible calls it salvation, life marked by generous love and gratitude as a means of saying “thank you”.
The alternative is Simon’s world—a sanctimonious preoccupation with religious propriety where precepts are more important than people.
Life becomes a joyless judgment of self and others, parsimonious in its love, short on generosity and mean in gratitude. We don’t know what happened to Simon. Did he get it? Did he wake up to the fact that he was being welcomed and visited with the same gracious and accepting presence of God’s love and forgiveness? Did this preliminary audit become a wake-up call in his life?
What about us? What does Jesus’ parable say to us about our lives? The currency is love, gratitude and generosity, tokens that give expression to the welcome of God’s loving, forgiving, life-giving presence. On the basis of those criteria, what does a preliminary audit reveal to us about our lives? Are we more like the nameless woman or closer to Simon the Pharisee?
Are we largely outsiders, not yet sure about all of this, vaguely aware that something is missing in our lives, but not quite sure what to do about it? You go to church, listen, think about commitments, but are not by nature a committed person and are not sure you want to give your life over to someone as demanding as Jesus (we like living by our own rules). Or, are we like Simon judged the woman to be? You know yourself notoriously separated from the things of God and have pretty much become resigned to the fact that this is the way it will always be for you? Or do you find yourself in Simon’s shoes, going through the motions of trying to be a good person, living the form of a religion you were reared in, or have chosen, void of the passion or joy that accompanies the presence of God?
Unless we see something of ourselves in the character of Simon the Pharisee, we are so blind to our own need that we have failed to hear the story. After all, we are all in a debt impossible for us to repay. What then does the preliminary audit of Jesus’ parable tell us about ourselves?
The Gospel message: Jesus, the friend of sinners, tax collectors and other outsiders, is also the friend of the confidently pious and religiously empty and otherwise clueless; his purpose for everyone is always the same. He comes as God’s forgiving, welcoming presence. He comes to each one of us to embrace and fill our emptiness with the power of God. He welcomes us just as we are, just where we are, to touch us authentically with the love and grace of God. Return that embrace. You will learn the truth of his words, “Your sin is forgiven; your faith has saved you. Go in peace”.
The Rev’d George M Rogers
July 22
The Holy Trinity
Trinity Sunday is when the church proclaims and celebrates the mystery of the three ways we know the One God. The term “Trinity” is never mentioned in the Bible, and for good reason: scripture isn’t interested in God’s essence and being as God exists in and for God’s self. It focuses on God’s being and action in the world on behalf of the world. The concept of the Triune God began to emerge as Jesus’ followers grappled with the relationship among these three ways they knew and experienced God. Though clearly three different experiences, there was a unity that made them one.
The process began as early as the New Testament was being written. Paul, concluding his second letter to the church at Corinth, invoked upon them this blessing: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit…” Further along we learn that “ we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, whose love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.” By the time Matthew’s gospel was being written the Church was baptising in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
The One Paul called God, Jesus called “Father.” But Jesus went even further. He said that he and the Father are one. In John’s gospel Jesus continually proclaims this unity with the Father. It’s not an emotional unity, nor even a unity in purpose. It is an essential unity, as in the same substance. In the same gospel, Philip asks Jesus to show them the Father, to which Jesus responds, “Have I been with you so long Phillip, and still you do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.” For the next 300 years the Church would wrestle with how God, the Maker of heaven and earth, could be present among them in Christ. They believed he revealed his very self in human form. They believed he redeemed the world by giving up his life. They knew he created a means for having a new and life-giving relationship with him and they believed he opened the way not only to new but eternal life through the resurrection of the dead.
The confession that would come from these intellectual struggles describes Jesus as God from God, Light from Light, true God from True God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father; through whom all things were made. Jesus and the Father are one substance and have been so from before the beginning. The phrase, “through whom all things were made,” is a reference, not to the Father but to the Son. It was he who laid aside his divine privilege and power to become incarnate in the Virgin Mary and become one of us. The Son was present at and took part in God’s act of creation as the Word of God, through whom the Father created.
But another was present at creation as well, the One who blew life and animation into the created world, the Holy Spirit. It was this same Spirit that had fallen on the disciples to give them new life at Pentecost. It was the Spirit that had been the bond of love between the Father and the Son in Jesus’ life and ministry. It was the Spirit who joined them to Christ in baptism, the Spirit by which they experienced Christ present in the Lord’s Supper, the Spirit which prayed within them even when they did not know how to pray.
According to Augustine the Spirit that is the will of God that acts as the bond among us and God now, and is the force that calls, draws, and keeps all of us Christians together loving one another as Christ loves us. And so the Church confesses that the Spirit is “the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father, who with the Father and Son is worshiped in glorified.” The Spirit who is worshiped and glorified with the Father and the Son, is one of them, one with them.
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—three personifications of the one God, three ways in which we know God. Each is identified by a way of being for us: one a way of being over us, one a way of being with us, one a way of being in us, yet each, the one and same God. The concept of the Trinity emerged in the Church to confess that though we know God in these three different ways, it is always the same God acting. It is one personal God, living and acting in three different ways, always at the same time.
One more word about this, each of the three participates in the work of the other. What one personification of the Triune God does, all three do. Every person of the Trinity is involved in every outward action of God. We have already seen that all three were active and present in creation, though it is common to call the Father, “Almighty,” and “maker of heaven and earth.” All three were active in Jesus incarnation, life, ministry and redemption, though we commonly speak of atonement and redemption as the work of Christ. All three are equally present to give us new life and make us holy, though that is commonly ascribed to the work of the Holy Spirit. While we can speak of one of the three being eminently involved in a given operation, all three are involved in the operation of each. What one does, all three do as One. All three participate in God’s world to create, redeem and sanctify.
The Rev’d George M Rogers
June 22
HOSPITALITY TO THE TAX MAN
As 5 April has past, let us reflect on St Matthew the Tax Collector, Apostle, Evangelist, genealogist and witness by his testimony and blood to our Lord Jesus Christ. St Matthew was all of these things, and he and a few of his colleagues as well as sinners outraged the Pharisees when Jesus was seen enjoying their company at table. Recall that being at table with Jesus is central to his ministry then and now. A visit from a tax collector such as Matthew was not like an audit by HMRC. It was more like a legal visitation from a local mafia boss and his associates, who would demand ‘protection’ above and beyond the taxes already being exacted by the government (which in Rome were much higher than ours). No one enjoys paying taxes, most of all to an occupying foreign power, and no one likes having to spend time with representatives of such an oppressive force. Yet Jesus not only spent time with tax collectors and sinners, he specifically called one of them—Matthew—to follow him, as he calls each of us individually and then corporately as the Church to do the same. To follow Jesus is to take up our own bespoke crosses and follow him wherever he leads, come what may: We must ask ourselves, what does it mean to follow Jesus—the Christ, the Son of God, fully human and fully God, the visible aspect of the Father?
If we’re looking for a quick answer, we will read the Creeds as illustrations of our faith in Christ. Yet the Creeds might be deconstructed into mere words and even empty signifiers if we do not speak from the position of intention in which they begin: “I believe…” Speaking in such wise means when we say we believe, we do so because we incarnate the very tenets of the faith we claim is so dear to us—so much so that speaking them retroactively names and affirms the manner of lives we have always-already been living: lives transformed by the redemptive power of Christ at our baptism, justified by our faith, strengthened by each devotion and reading of Scripture and each reception of Holy Communion. In other words, lives of love—specifically working themselves out in acts of hospitality to the greater Glory of God.
The hospitality of which I speak is that practiced by Jesus, specifically at table with those who were most unlike him: sinners and tax collectors; a motley crew of people in all shapes, sizes and world-views. Yet Christ welcomed them and welcomes us with the same intention of offering redemption from the sin that binds us.
As is traditional in classical hospitality, Christ does not ask a person’s identity beforehand to discern his or her worth; he welcomes all and demonstrates what each can become. This is what Christ means when he states that he requires mercy and not sacrifice. If the sacrifice is meant to appease, it is redundant. If it is filled with praise and thanksgiving, it is adequate, yet not required. Yet if it can be passed by because humanity realises it is already made holy by Christ’s Incarnation, then we can be merciful—something lacking in the world these days.
If we already have begun to identify areas where we are succeeding in Christ-like hospitality, then we have made a good start in witnessing to Christ as our Lord and Saviour. The harder part is to believe what we say we do, to reconcile what we call Christ with what we actually do in practice. As disciples of Christ, we must be hospitable and welcome those who not only are not like us, but are repugnant and irritating to us… in the Name of Christ. Can we stop judging others for what they presently appear to us to be and instead look to what we all may become through Christ? If Christ invites us to eat and sits in our midst whenever two or three are gathered in his name, how do we dare to look at others with prejudice and decide whether they are worthy to eat at a table which is not even ours?
The Rev’d George M Rogers
May 2022
Demanding Thomas
St Thomas seems to be a skeptic, asking for proof of Christ’s resurrection merely to score a point: perhaps that the disciples who report seeing the risen Christ are mad. He says clearly, “unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.” After appearing to Thomas and the rest of the disciples, Jesus says, “Happy,” or “Blessed are they who have not seen and yet have come to believe”.
Are we to assume that Thomas was unhappy? Not exactly—when Thomas was confronted by what he demanded—the risen Lord in his midst and the opportunity to feel his wounds, he became the first to proclaim Christ as Lord and God. Let this be a lesson to all of us: you’d better be careful what you ask for—especially from God, because you just might get it! Looking closer, we begin to see that St Thomas was not looking for mere proof of a phenomenon he had no interest in—like proof of the possibility of life on other planets or reports of Elvis Presley sightings—being a disciple of Christ, he was predisposed to believe, and in his predisposition to believing in Christ, he was making a claim not only for the present but also for the future.
What was Thomas asking to see? Christ resurrected from the dead or the fulfillment of the promise that Christ made to his disciples? He was not merely interested in a report about Christ’s resurrection, he was interested in a first-hand experience of this revolutionary act of Creation—an experience of God’s Providence. When are we acting as Thomas did—not only realising that doubt might be the underside of faith—but that faith is the action and substance of our relationship with God, meaning that even when we’re in doubt, we are still in active dialogue and relationship with God. It’s all right to doubt so long as it doesn’t become an eternal condition—it is a conversation with God, and it will always lead us closer to him. If we didn’t care, we wouldn’t doubt, we’d swallow all doctrines, tenets and creeds in one go without ever feasting on them, digesting them and letting them become the holy sustenance for our living.
I think that it is essential for us to recognise when we ourselves are acting as Thomas did—when we’re looking for God’s Providence in a world that seems so unaffected by Christ’s rising from the dead almost all of the time.
Perhaps we act like “Doubting Thomas,” with friends and loved ones go through hopeless unemployment, when we interact with the poor, when we suffer with loved ones who are sick, when we’re victims of addiction, when we see the suffering in the world, the crime, conspiracy, wars and rumours of wars—and especially when we recognise evil in ourselves… is this not enough to make us demand to see an Easter vision, to demand from God to live up to his Holy Name and to show himself resurrected and give us that dose of grace so that we too can make good on what we’re predisposed to do, to have faith?
An agnostic makes no claims and plays it safe—this is not a position of great responsibility in the beginning or the end. An atheist posits God then negates him; always already operating from a secondary position of negation, thereby undercutting and preempting all of his atheistic claims with theological premises.
The Christian doesn’t merely know about something and doesn’t hold back in claiming what is known. He/she doesn’t merely know about Christ as a kindly moral teacher from ages past but experiences him. The Christian knows the truth—perhaps nothing but the truth, because he/she meets the truth and recognises the truth because he/she knows and is in relationship with Jesus Christ. This is to say that there is a chasm of difference between knowing the truth in Jesus Christ and hearing about truth from some other source. Christ is nothing but the truth itself and presents himself and his teaching for those who have ears to hear and souls to redeem at first hand—we receive the truth from God first hand.
This receiving of the truth at first hand has revolutionary consequences for us, because in receiving the truth in this way, we are established as contemporaries of Christ—in the same generation as Thomas and all of the disciples about whom we read in holy scripture. The claim that we make as disciples of Christ warrants that we will demand to see God’s Providence at work in our lives. We know the truth—the resurrected Lord, and we are predisposed to proclaim this truth not only with our lips but in our lives.
The Rev’d George M Rogers
April 2022
SEEK AND YOU SHALL FIND…
If you have ever wept over the loss of someone beloved – parent, child, partner, dearest friend – then you can understand Mary Magdalene’s grief over Jesus’ death. Lost in the confusion of grief’s pain, Mary Magdalene is unable to comprehend what has taken place. Finding the stone removed from the mouth of the tomb fills her with fear. Panic-stricken she runs to Peter and the beloved disciple to tell them what the evidence suggests: someone has stolen Jesus’ body. Peter and the other disciple race, in a mixture of terror and anger, to see for themselves what further violence can have been done to Jesus’ body. Had he not been mortified enough, humiliated enough, disgraced enough? Yes – his body is gone. What can it mean? The men examine the tomb with its grave clothes strewn across the floor, only the head covering rolled neatly in a place by itself. Wanting to believe but unsure of what even such belief might mean, the two return to their homes leaving Mary to weep.
As the story further unfolds, the risen Lord stands behind Mary asking, “Whom do you seek?” It is this question he had asked of his very first two disciples, at the beginning of his ministry. It is the same question he had asked of the chief priests, Pharisees and soldiers the previous Thursday evening when they had come to the garden to arrest him. Now, supposing him to be the gardener, Mary pursues her single-minded thought: the whereabouts of Jesus’ dead body. Who of us does not feel her aching, empty longing when she says “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away”? He calls her by name “Mary!” And we reverberate with the mixture of wonder and joy which form her cry of recognition as she surges forward to embrace him. He is not dead. He is alive, he is risen! He had said he would be taken away and they would weep and mourn, but their pain would be transformed into joy. She had not understood; none of them had. He had said “I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you.” So this is what he had meant. Like their friend Lazarus before him, he was alive again.
But not quite.
Like Lazarus, Jesus has come forth from the tomb in flesh that is absolutely recognisable. Without any doubt Mary knows who he is and seeks to embrace him. But he is quite unlike Lazarus. Lazarus emerged still wrapped in the grave clothes, awaiting Jesus’ command to unbind him and let him go free. Jesus has left the grave clothes behind, scattered throughout the tomb. Lazarus would die again. Jesus has left death behind him forever.
The risen Jesus emerges from the tomb with a body quite unlike what Lazarus knew. This is a body which will never die again. This is a body which will never again know the limitation of time or space. This is a body which will never again know pain, sorrow or tears. This is a body fashioned for a new creation, a new heaven and a new earth, a body which is flesh and blood of a different order, fit for a reality of a different order. The disciples had feared some kind of violence. And in a way, they were right. This is violence all right – a Holy Violence – not so much the undoing of death, as an entirely new act of new creation. God has stretched the cosmic number of creation from seven to eight. In the old seven day cycle, death appeared, entering through the first Adam and remains on the scene to this day, the vanquisher of us all. But on this eighth day God has done a new thing – created life beyond death – stripped death of its triumph, vindicating not only Jesus’ life, word and identity but demonstrating for all who will look, that the new day is dawning, the new age unfolding. Easter – the eighth day of creation – Jesus steps from the tomb revealing God’s new thing. Death has been left behind, resurrection has broken forth. Christ is the first fruit, his empty tomb the foretaste of what awaits each of us.
At Easter we shout “Christ is risen, the Lord is risen indeed!” as affirmation, not only of the empty tomb, but as an assertion that the tomb of death contains none who belong to Christ. The grave is not a final resting place. It is but a marker of transition into God’s new reality – the new heaven and earth – the new creation. Those who have gone before us have stepped through the door of death, led by our risen Lord and now find themselves held firmly in his awaiting arms. Their lives are hidden in him, awaiting that day of his return when all the saints – all those gathered about him at the celestial table – will appear with him, and will be found to be just like him. We gather to remember not only his resurrection. We gather to remember that because he lives, they live as well. Because he lives, we too shall live. As the Apostle Paul reminds us “If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.”
But if for the next life only we have hoped in Christ, then we are to be pitied as well, for then we are missing the power of his resurrection now. Christians worship not some distant Lord, separated by the past, as though our object of hope were the historical Jesus. Nor do we worship some distant Lord obscured by other worldly celestial transcendence. We worship Jesus Christ, the risen Lord who is present to us now in word, in sacrament, in the community and fellowship of faith by the power of God’s Holy Spirit.
We worship the risen Christ who comes to us in our loss and confusion, as he came to Mary: to comfort, to give hope and power for new life.
When Jesus said to Mary, “Do not hold onto me….” he was not prohibiting her from touching him. Later that evening he would invite his disciples to do precisely that. Rather, Jesus was saying that his work was not yet complete. He must return to the Father. Mary is to tell his brothers and sisters that he goes forth to complete his work. For there is yet more for him to do. There are still enemies of this gospel afoot in this world. There are still those in life – principalities and powers, soldiers and sovereigns – who are set against the purposes of God’s redeeming and transforming love. The power of death is still very real in the world. Jesus returned to the Father to be able to deal with them, to put them “under his feet,” to defeat them, as he has defeated the tomb. Only then – when he has destroyed death, once for all – will he hand the reign back to the Father, his own work complete.
But Jesus ascends for another reason. He returned to his Father that he might reach out to you and to me, to everyone who calls him Lord to give us power to live beyond death now. As he called Mary by name, amid her tears, he calls us by name when overwhelmed with the death of those we love, to remind us that they are not dead, but live hidden in him. When he appears, they shall be with him. He calls us by name when overwhelmed with the death around us, to remind us that the tomb is empty – he has power over those things that entomb us. New life is to be found in him. He calls us by name to transform our lives, to turn our pain into delight, promising a joy so powerful, so eternal, that it will never be taken from us. He calls us by name in the frantic pursuits of daily life and asks his continuing question: “Whom do you seek?”
The Rev’d George M Rogers
March 2022
Prayer & Fasting in Lent
Lent is a season when the people are more conscious of their spiritual character. The passages of the Gospels and the Epistles, the hymnody and prayers, the spirit of the Church all endeavour to help the Christian cleanse himself spiritually through repentance. “Repent” is the first word Jesus Christ spoke in His proclamation to the people, as the epitome of His Gospel. Repentance is the main motivation of the Christian which acts to free him from sin. One’s recognition of his sin, contrition over it and lastly the decision to make an radical change of disposition are the steps of repentance. During the period of Lent the Christian is called to self-examination and self-control by the radiance of the Event of the Resurrection of Christ. This is why the Church designated such a period of time be observed before this great feast day.
Fasting in its religious setting is abstinence from food, always in relation to a religious event or feast. Fasting in itself has no meaning in the Christian Church and is not to be accepted as a mere custom without a spiritual purpose: “Fasting was devised in order to humble the body. If therefore, the body is already in a state of humbleness and illness or weakness, the person ought to partake of as much as he or she may wish and be able to get along with food and drink,” (Canon 8 of St. Timothy of Alexandria, 381). Thus fasting is understood as a means of temperance and sobriety, especially in relation to prayer, devotion and purity. It is also understood to be related to giving alms to the poor. The roots of fasting in the Christian Church are to be found in the Old Testament and the Jewish religion—both for certain days and certain foods. As a general rule, fasting precedes a religious feast. Such verses in the Old Testament refer to this: “Thus says the Lord of Hosts: the fast of the fourth month, and the fast of the fifth, and the fast of the seventh and the fast of the tenth, shall be to the house of Judah seasons of joy and gladness, and cheerful feasts; therefore, love, truth and peace,” Zechariah 8:18-19.
In continuation of the practice of fasting, the Christian Church determined the period of Lent to depend on the great Feast of Easter, as set forth by the First Ecumenical Council in 325. The Church determined the day on which the Resurrection of Christ would be celebrated, according to the conditions that existed at the time of this Event.
Thus, the Council set forth that the great Feast of Easter would be celebrated on: the first Sunday, after the full moon, after the Spring Equinox (March 21), and always after the Jewish Passover. Thus, this great Feast is a moveable date in the calendar. Therefore, Lent, which depends upon the date of Easter, also is moveable, each year being celebrated on a different date, (Sunday), depending on the above conditions.
The disciples said to Jesus, “Teach us to pray.” And our Lord did not respond with a lecture on spontaneity. He gave explicit, practical advice, including a model on prayer. Seven specific suggestions which have been commended by many Christians throughout the ages:
- Pray each day at the same time. Treat it as the most important appointment in your day, and don’t let anything intrude upon it, or crowd it out.
- It is helpful to have a regular place as well as a regular time for prayer. Jesus recommended a closet, perhaps in a modern home it ought to be a bedroom, study or other quiet place. Lock the door if possible, for your ability to concentrate is directly related to your assurance that no one will see, overhear or interrupt you.
- The posture you assume in prayer does not matter to God, but it may make a great difference to you. Kneeling is a physical act of humility, yet an uncomfortable position may be a distraction.
- Prepare for prayer with a brief period of devotional reading. It helps to make the transition from the hectic world to the quiet mood of prayer and focus your attention on God—an act which is both the precondition and purpose of prayer.
- Pray as long as you need to or want to and no longer. Our Lord warned that long-windedness is not a virtue in prayer and the model prayer he gave us is only 67 words long.
- Pray whether you feel like it or not. Everyone, even the most saintly, go through frequent dry periods when they do not feel the least bit prayerful.
- Do not be ashamed to offer selfish prayers or seek God’s help in the little things of life. Jesus included in his model prayer a petition for daily bread, which is about as mundane a request as you can make. But do not let personal petitions dominate your prayer. There are four other kinds of prayer that you might practice deliberately: intercession, confession, thanksgiving and adoration.
Intercession is described as loving your neighbour on your knees. Confession is the prayer in which we acknowledge our sins and accept God’s forgiveness of them. Thanksgiving means counting your blessings. Adoration is the highest form of prayer, meaning to lift up your heart to God and say in whatever words you find most meaningful, that you acknowledge him to be worthy of your utmost love and obedience. The Lord’s Prayer begins with a simple expression of adoration—“Our Father, which art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done.”
Ask yourself how regularly do you pray. Have you ever thought of prayer as a holy habit to be cultivated like any other habit? Would praying at the same time and same place help you to cultivate the prayer habit? Analyse the content of your own prayers. What proportions are devoted to petition, intercession, confession, thanksgiving and adoration? Are there types of prayers in which your rarely or never engage? Let prayer help you to keep a holy Lent.
The Rev’d George M Rogers
February 2022
The Gift that Keeps on Giving
The Presentation of Christ in the Temple is a major feast which occurs in the Epiphany season, but it is connected to Christmas and actually brings the observance of Christ’s Nativity to a close. This feast also has another old title, the Purification of Saint Mary the Virgin. Let us look at each title’s meaning.
First and most obviously, there’s the Presentation of Christ in the temple. According to the Law of Moses, every first-born son had to be dedicated to God in memory of the Israelites’ deliverance from Egypt at the Exodus, when the first-born sons of the Egyptians died and those of Israel were spared or “passed over” by the angel of death. This Presentation of the son occurred forty days after the child’s birth; thus the actual day, 2 February, falls forty days after 25 December. The Presentation required an offering to be made for the first-born son, an ongoing sign of the miracle of God’s preservation of Israel since the Exodus up to the present moment. It is worth noting that in the story of the Presentation by the Holy Family, Mary and Joseph took the option offered by the Law for a poor family. The Law prescribed either a lamb, which was the rich family’s offering, or, for the poor, a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons, as the offering to be made for the child.
Secondly, the ritual of Presentation included the rite of Purification for the mother who had undergone the blood shedding involved in childbirth. As a daughter of the covenant she was delivered from the dangers of pregnancy and restored to a more normal or at least less delicate state. Present at the scene with the Holy Family were two old saints, Simeon and Anna, who prophesied concerning Jesus. Simeon said he could now die in peace, because he had laid eyes at last on Israel’s Messiah. He also said Jesus’ career would mean the fall and rising again of many in Israel, and would pierce the heart of his own mother Mary. Anna gave thanks to the Lord and spoke of Jesus to all who looked for Israel’s redemption.
So it was that when Mary placed her infant Son into Simeon’s arms, the dispensation of the Old Testament encountered the new dispensation of the Gospel. Seen from the perspective of our faith in Jesus Christ, we can see Christ, God’s gift to our Lady, being presented and offered back to the Father by his Church, personified by Mary and Joseph.
If you think about it, we have here the image of the way Christians pray and worship and witness and work at all times. Looking far ahead from Christ’s infancy through Lent to Holy Week, we come to Good Friday where Jesus completes his self-offering. He takes us from his Presentation in the Temple to the Altar of the Cross.
When Mary and Joseph presented Jesus in the Temple, God revealed how it is that we have access to him. This access was brought to perfection on Good Friday, when it was no wonder that the veil covering the Holy of Holies of the Temple was torn in two from top to bottom. When Mary underwent the old purification rite as Christ’s mother, she was prefiguring the purification all Christians receive as we learn more and more to live and grow in Christ, bearing him to the world.
The Rev’d George M Rogers
All Saints', The Parish Church of Orpington 