Jonah and the Whale song - an extended version

The song "Jonah and the Whale" is much beloved at Sunday Schools. It's jolly but (like lots of Sunday School versions of the Jonah story) ends when Jonah came out of the fish, and misses out most of the interesting parts of the book of Jonah. In particular, there's no mention of the tree that Jonah shades under and is subsequently eaten by a worm, a strange little parable wrapped inside the whole strange parable that is the book of Jonah.

Here's the original song (written by Hugh Mitchell in 1957 - it's often uncredited but is listed by the Churches Copyright Licensing Authority). The tune can be found in various places online and in an organ version by Canon Quentin Bellamy:

Come listen to my tale
Of Jonah and the whale
Way down in the middle of the ocean.
Now how did he get there
Whatever did he wear
Way down in the middle of the ocean
A-preaching he should be
At Nineveh, you see -
To disobey’s a very foolish notion.
But God forgave his sin
Salvation entered in
Way down in the middle of the ocean.

And here's our second verse (written by myself and my daughter):

God sent Jonah a tree
He said hip-hip-hooree
He sheltered ‘neath its broad and shady branches.
But God sent down a worm
It wriggled and it squirmed
Deep down in the middle of the desert.
The worm ate up the tree
Near Nineveh you see
And Jonah got all hot and tired and bothered.
But God said to Jonah,
Don’t you be a moaner,
Deep down in the middle of the desert. 

Original - copyright Hugh Mitchell, 1957; second verse copyright Magnus Ramage & Alice Calcraft, 2014. (Images: Jonah Journal by Rabbi David Paskin)

Living the Way of Jesus

Sermon preached on 18 May 2014 at Duston URC. Text: John 14:1-14. See also my blog post from 2013 on John 14:6.

So I began talking with the children about what it means to walk along with Jesus, and I want to go into that a bit more – about what it means to live in the way of Jesus. This is a long and quite complex passage, rich with imagery and ideas. There’s material for a whole series of sermons in these 14 verses. So as I did earlier, I’m going to mostly focus on one single verse – though drawing on ideas from the rest of the passage.

Now there are probably bits of the Bible you like more than others. Some parts really hit the spot for you, other parts make you much more uncomfortable. And for me, verse 6 of this passage – “I am the way, the truth and the life, no-one comes to the father except through me” – puts me straight into the discomfort zone. I’ve carried this verse with me for perhaps twenty years, looked at it again and again from different angles. I find it really fascinating but also quite disquieting, with this sense of exclusivity in the second half. It’s a verse beloved of tracts and those posters you used to see at railway stations. It could be seen as closed-minded, creating an in-group and an out-group, rather self-satisfied. Does that mean all the Muslims and the Hindus and Jews, not to mention the atheists, have no chance of finding their way to God? Some Christians would say yes, that’s exactly what it means; others would want to interpret it differently and point to the fact that Jesus said that there are many dwelling places in his father’s house. I’m not sure what I think about this subject, but I think the verse as a whole and indeed the passage as a whole is so rich and interesting that it’s worth working with it for a while to see where it takes us.

Let’s step back a moment. This passage is part of John’s gospel in what’s sometimes called the farewell discourses. It happens at the Last Supper, soon after Judas leaves the others to go and betray Jesus. Before the events of the Passion unfold, Jesus gives his disciples a long set of final teachings, interspersed with dialogue from the disciples. They begin with Peter’s declaration that he would lay down his life for Jesus, and Jesus’ prophecy that Peter will betray him three times. And immediately follows the passage we’ve just heard. Jesus says he’s going to his Father, that there’s plenty of space for the disciples to come too, and that they should put their trust in him.

And then comes Thomas, the original TomTom. Good old Thomas, just as much of a believer and a follower of Jesus as the other disciples, but who was always keen to have things nailed down and certain. The man who’s become known in history as Doubting Thomas, but really was just a bit too keen on clear evidence. Here he’d like a satnav please, telling him the way and when he’ll reach his destination. And in response, Jesus speaks two words, which for a Jewish ear are incredibly resonant.

What Jesus says is “I AM”. John’s gospel has several of these I AM sayings – I AM the light of the world, I AM the bread of life and so on. In Greek, the phrase is particularly emphatic, a strong way of saying who you are; but for Jews it’s dynamite, because it’s exactly God said to Moses from the burning bush in the book of Exodus. When Moses asked God his name, God said “I am who I am” and to tell the Israelites that “I AM has sent you”. It’s the basis for the Hebrew name of God, Yahweh, so holy that to this day devout Jews won’t say it aloud. So in using this phrase, Jesus was making a really strong claim about himself, and his connection to God.

And then he goes into more detail about what he’s saying about himself, in these three words. He says that he is the way, that he is the truth, and that he is the life. I’m not entirely convinced these are separate ideas, or even that they’re meant to be. But they’re individually very interesting, and so I want to look at each in turn and what they can tell us about being a follower of Jesus.

So the first thing he calls himself is the Way – the path, the road. He doesn’t say he’ll tell people the way to where he’s going, he doesn’t say he’ll show it to them. He says that he himself is the way. The first Christians were known as the people of the way, and the idea of the ‘way’ was a familiar one in Jewish thought; Moses used it, as did the prophet Jeremiah when he said “Stand at the crossroads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way lies; and walk in it,  and find rest for your souls”. As I said to the kids, choosing the right path is very important. But these are all about the way as something external, something physical. By saying that he himself is the way, Jesus makes the idea very personal. We will know the way to the Father by following his example, by living our lives as he did. It’s not about what you believe, or pious statements of faith. It’s about how you live your life.

There’s a wonderful poem by a Spanish poet, Antonio Machado, who wrote: “Traveller, there is no road. We make the road by walking.” Paths are fragile, like the one across these sand-dunes I saw once in California. And Jesus tells us that the only path that matters is one that we can’t see, that we make ourselves by the way we lead our lives. So how do we live our lives? Another quote from a traveller, this time the founder of the Quakers, George Fox, a travelling preacher who did a lot of walking, and told said that we should: “Be patterns, be examples in all countries, places, islands, nations, wherever you come, that your carriage and life may preach among all sorts of people, and to them; then you will come to walk cheerfully over the world, answering that of God in every one.”

And then we move on to Jesus’ second word. He says he is the Truth. Now we live in a postmodern world where truth is a slippery concept, where my version of the truth is just as good as your version of the truth. We have more information than ever before in history, and that information sometimes clouds what is the truth. But in the past, uncovering the truth about something has always been important. And again Jesus doesn’t say he’s going to show us the truth, or bring us the truth, or lead us to the truth. He says he is the truth. Many people proclaim that they have a message of some sort which is true for the world, and yet they live quite a life which shows that is not true within their own lives. It’s something we’re all guilty of at times. But Jesus proclaimed that he was the truth, and he lived a life of truth and integrity. And he said something else amazing about truth: “you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free”. So much that goes wrong in the world comes from half-truths, rumours and outright lies that people tell each other or we tell ourselves. But truth brings freedom in it, and by following the one who embodies truth, we find freedom.

The third of Jesus’ words is my favourite of all. He says he is the Life. Again, not that he shows us life, or tells us about life, but that he himself is Life. The word ‘life’ is absolutely central to John’s gospel. It opens with the statement that “In him was life, and the life was the light of all people”. Jesus tells us that he is the bread of life, that those who follow him will have the light of life, that those who believe in him will have eternal life. And it’s in what to me is perhaps the most important verse of the whole Bible [slide 12], also in John’s gospel, where Jesus says “I have come that they may have life, and have it abundantly”. Jesus didn’t come to bring us rules, he hasn’t come to convince us of our sin, to rub our unworthiness in our faces. He has come to bring us LIFE.

But this is not just any old life. This is not the boring and mundane life, the grey life of the 9-5 drudge with little sense of life. This is life in abundance, life lived to the full. Nor is it about greed or excess. It’s not about taking from others. It’s about living a life that is full of joy, that is suffused with an awareness of God’s love. The American preacher and author John Ortberg talks about becoming the people God created us to be. He asks the question: “what do you do that makes you feel fully alive?” This isn’t about momentary pleasure, the sort of kick you get from eating chocolate or drinking your favourite tipple or watching a mindless but fun television programme. It’s about deep satisfaction. What makes us feel fully alive differs for each of us, but I believe that Jesus came to show us that this kind of life, and richer and deeper, is possible right here and right now.

So Jesus tells us that he is the way, the truth and the life. He is the one who in his own person embodies the generosity, abundance and integrity that he promises to the disciples and to any who are prepared to follow him. Because he asks us at the start of the passage to put our trust in him. Sometimes that verse is translated as “believe in me”, but really it’s better seen as putting our trust in Jesus, like one of those trust exercises where you lean backwards and let go and trust that someone will catch you.

So how can we live like this? How can we put our trust in Jesus as the way, the truth and the life? How can we really be followers of Jesus? Isn’t it rather presumptuous of us? Well, I think we need to start by remembering who we are. We are creatures who are made in the image of God. George Fox talked about answering that of God in everyone, which to me means loving each person we encounter and working for their good, as well as for the good of all others around the world. But it also means seeing that of God in ourselves, of recognising the image of God inside ourselves, of being prepared to be called into that abundant life which awaits all of us who choose it.

The Protestant reformers talked about the priesthood of all believers. They believed passionately that we don’t need intermediaries between us and God, that every Christian is able to find their way to the father through following the way of Jesus and with the assistance of the Holy Spirit. We started the service with the words of Peter that “you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people”. This is an amazing promise, but it’s also a bit scary and I think we often dodge around it and don’t take it quite seriously. If we are made in the image of God, if we are followers of the way of Jesus, then we really can trust that it is possible for us all to be priests. And Jesus promises us that if that happens, then we will do the works that he did, and even more.

To follow Jesus is to be in relationship with the one who in himself personified the way, and the truth, and the life; and who calls us to have those things now with him and for ever more.

Amen.

Life in abundance – now and for ever

Sermon preached on 9th May 2014 at a residential weekend of Gateways into Worship, part of the Training for Learning & Serving programme of the United Reformed Church. Text: John 10:1-10. 

I listened to a talk earlier in the week by someone who works for Google. He recounts that the software engineers there, in the plain-speaking way of engineers everywhere, have what they call the “WTF question”. If someone presents an interesting but obscure idea, then they’re presented with the WTF question. Jesus could be disarmingly direct and to-the-point, but he also had a liking for parables and complex images, and his disciples seem to have done a fair bit of asking of the WTF question, including in this passage. And as I read on a blog recently, explaining a parable is like explaining a joke: even if you do it really well, you’ve still missed the point.

So it is here. The image of Jesus as a good shepherd is found in all four gospels, and the fourth Sunday after Easter is often called Good Shepherd Sunday. It’s a well-loved image, much preached on and much portrayed in art. The people of Jesus’ time knew about sheep and shepherds, so Jesus kept coming back to stories about shepherds.

Like most of the rest of the gospel of John, this passage is rich in imagery. There are sheep, a shepherd and his voice, gates and sheepfolds, thieves and bandits, strangers. It’s a strange cast of characters. And when we’re told that the disciples didn’t understand it, Jesus introduces another layer of images. What are we to make of it all?

I don’t intend a full verse-by-verse exegesis of this passage. I have two observations to make about the context of the piece, and then I want to skip ahead to the end, the final verse which is the one that really fascinates me. On the context, then. Sheep in 1^st century Judaea were mostly kept for wool, not meat – so that the shepherd kept a herd together and developed a close bond with the sheep over a number of years. So Jesus is describing a long-term relationship, not a short bit of guarding then off to the slaughterhouse. The second bit of context concerns gates and sheep-folds. In the town, sheep were guarded with a proper locked gate. But when out in the country, sheep were kept in a simple pen with walls and one entrance. It didn’t have a gate – instead the shepherd sat or lay across the entrance to keep the sheep in and the predators out. So in saying he is the gate, Jesus is being less obscure than you might think – it was what shepherds did. He knows his flock, he protects his flock.

But on to that final verse, or indeed its second half. “I have come that they may have life, and have it abundantly” – or have it to the full, in some translations. I genuinely believe that this may be the most important sentence in the entire gospel. Elsewhere we are told of Jesus’ actions, of his preaching and life and death. But here he sums up for himself the core of his purpose. He hasn’t come to bring us rules, he hasn’t come to convince us of our sin, to rub our unworthiness in our faces. He has come to bring us LIFE. It’s the great theme that runs throughout John’s gospel. It opens with the statement that “In him was life, and the life was the light of all people”. Jesus tells us that he is the bread of life, that those who follow him will have the light of life, that those who believe in him will have eternal life.

But this is not just any old life. This is not the boring and mundane life, the grey life of the 9-5 drudge with little sense of life. This is life in abundance, life lived to the full. The word in Greek, perissos, has a sense of surplus, of something that is more than enough. My cup overflows. This is not about greed or excess. It’s not about taking from others. It’s about living a life that is full of joy, that is suffused with an awareness of God’s love. The American preacher and author John Ortberg talks about becoming the people God created us to be. He asks the question: “what do you do that makes you feel fully alive?” This isn’t about momentary pleasure, the sort of kick you get from eating chocolate or drinking your favourite tipple or watching a mindless but fun television programme. It’s about deep satisfaction.

What do you do that makes you feel fully alive? It differs for each of us. For me, I feel at my most fulfilled when I’m really properly spending time with my wife and children; when I’m singing a complex piece of music in a choir that I’ve got to know really well and which engages my soul as much as my voice; when I’m writing (whether it’s a sermon, a blog post or an academic paper) surrounded by books and websites and full of ideas in all directions which somehow come together; or when I’m worshipping and totally carried along by the experience. For other people it’s a different combination.

These things are a tiny taste of heaven. But I believe that Jesus came to show us that this kind of life, and richer and deeper, is possible right here and right now. Now the church hasn’t always been very good at recognising this. To paraphrase St Paul, I stand before you as a Presbyterian and the son of Presbyterians. My people are famously dour and joyless. There is a wonderful photo in the biography of John Reith who founded the BBC, and in late life was the Queen’s commissioner to the Church of Scotland general assembly. Reith was a serious man, and he’s shown processing in solemnity into the assembly, under a statue of John Knox looking even more serious. Not much sense of life in abundance. And in their own ways, other churches have been just as bad about denying life. For centuries decent Christian folk supported slavery and persecuted members of other faiths, or the wrong branch of their own faith. There are many churches today who still think it’s acceptable to deny acceptance of those in a loving relationship simply because their partner is the same gender. I believe that Jesus would stand against all these denials of life and lovingly affirm that he has come into the world that all may have life, and live it to the full.

To follow in this abundant life is not to be selfish or materialist. On the contrary. It includes enabling others to have life in abundance. It is focused on others, outward-looking and generous. Jesus’ words here closely follows a healing he conducted of a man who was blind from birth, to whom he gave sight. We are likewise called to heal and help those in all sorts of need. We are participants in bringing about the kingdom of God here on earth, the upside-down kingdom where the last shall be first, where the mighty shall be humbled, and where the meek shall inherit the earth. You may remember the Christian Aid slogan from a couple of years ago which read “we believe in life before death”. That’s the kind of life we’re called to lead and to help others to lead.

And to me, this is our role as preachers – to bring life and hope to those we lead in worship, to show them the way to find abundant life through a relationship with Jesus. To show them that however difficult is their life today, there is a way into a life of joy and satisfaction. Rob Bell writes: “God is love, and love is a relationship. This relationship is one of joy, and it can’t be contained. Jesus invites us into that relationship, the one at the centre of the universe. He insists that he’s one with God, that we can be one with him, and that life is a generous, abundant reality.”

In him was life, and the life was the light of all people. He came to bring that life to the world. He came to bring that life to us, to offer us the chance to live in abundance – right here, right now, and then for ever more.

Amen.

In praise of doubt

At our church, we're doing a study course during the liturgical season of Easter - from Easter Sunday to Ascension Day. That's 40 days, and the course is entitled 40 Days with Jesus. It's very good - written by Dave Smith, founder and pastor of an independent church in Peterborough. The author is clearly evangelical in his background, but manages to present an open-minded account of some of the people Jesus met and interacted with in the 40 days we are told (Acts 1:3) that he spent on earth after his resurrection. (The book is published by CWR.)

I really like the idea of taking the season of Easter seriously. In our society we have a problem with over-preparation for events which are then over in a moment. Of these, the most notable is Christmas, where "Christmastime" or the "festive season" takes up most of December, sometimes spilling out to November, but more or less ends on 25th December. In many Protestant churches, we follow this trend in society with Christmas, for which our celebrations are great on 25th Dec but end there. It's even more so with Easter. Many of us have started to follow Lent quite arduously, giving things up and following study courses and the like. And many Reformed churches are taking Maundy Thursday and Good Friday quite seriously (much more so than a generation ago when celebrating either would have been considered 'Papist'). And of course Easter Sunday is the great celebration in all churches everywhere. But afterwards - nothing. Nada. Back to normal life.

The Catholics do these things better, taking the liturgical year much more seriously, and this is something the Anglicans kept when the Church of England had its partial Reformation, and have nurtured well for the past several hundred years. But in other Protestant traditions, not a lot happens between Easter Sunday and Ascension (perhaps even skipping that one and going straight to Pentecost). So I really welcome Forty Days with Jesus.

We're on Day 10 of the course. It takes one encounter with the risen Christ each week, and has daily study material for each encounter (supported by other resources). This week, it's the meeting of Jesus with the disciples on the road to Emmaus. It's a great story, and one which has teased and intrigued Christians throughout history. Why didn't the disciples recognise Jesus? What kept them from realising who he was? What did he tell them on the road? How did it feel when they realised who he was? Why did he disappear after they realised this? It's been the subject of many artworks as well as scholarly works - this is Caravaggio's version, one of my favourites.

Today's reading is entitled "Vision blurred by doubt". Dave Smith writes: "[I]t is worth being alert to how doubt can prevent us from 'seeing' Jesus, wherever we are in our spiritual journey. It seems as if the main reasons why the disciples failed to recognise Jesus on the Emmaus Road, even though He was standing right there with them, was because of their unbelief" (p.40 of the book). The experience of Thomas, often called the doubter, follows next week - we'll see what Dave Smith has to say then.

I really don't agree with him on this one, either in the case of Emmaus or generally about doubt. Here's what I'd say about Emmaus. It was the third day after Jesus had been executed. The disciples were bewildered, depressed and fearful. And then there were these strange stories that he had been spotted. Cleopas and his companion must have been besides themselves, unable to recognise anything much going on. And they knew Jesus was dead, so why would they expect him to be there? It wasn't a matter of doubt or unbelief but simply normal expectation.

But what if it was about doubt? Is that so wrong? Oliver Cromwell, not a man we associate with doubt or a lack of self-esteem, famously said: "I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken", which minus the bowels bit has been preserved to this day in British Quakers' Advices and Queries. And a bit of healthy uncertainty is extremely important. It's the basis of the scientific method and the Enlightenment - Immanuel Kant summed up the entire thesis of the Enlightenment in two words, Sapere aude (loosely translated, 'dare to question').

Those who are certain about the truth of something are the most dangerous people in the world. It's that certainty which causes wars, conflict, persecutions. The cause might be an excellent one, or it might be a repellent one, but if you believe it with no room for doubt, you're left with no room to change, and no room to compromise with those you meet.

We might have excellent reasons for believing something. I have excellent reasons for believing, variously, that: the sun will rise tomorrow; if you hit yourself with a large object it hurts; I will die within the next century; we were created by a loving God. My reasons for believing these are different kinds of knowledge. Nonetheless, it is appropriate to doubt each of them.

But this kind of doubt is essentially about intellectual belief in the truth of abstract propositions. Faith is a different matter. As has been written by various Biblical scholars, the Greek word "pistuein", often translated as "to believe", really means more like "to trust". Faith is about relationship, it's not about believing intellectually that your partner will come home to you each night but rather trusting it with all your heart. And that's the kind of thing we can do without doubting.

Shakespeare discussed doubt and trust as follows (in Hamlet):

Doubt thou the stars are fire;
Doubt that the sun doth move;
Doubt truth to be a liar;
But never doubt I love.

The disciples on the road to Emmaus were right to doubt that the person they met on the road was Jesus. It didn't come from lack of faith in him. But they were equally right, once their eyes had been opened, to put their full trust in what they had seen and experienced - the risen Christ.

Is 'free' a lie?

Just listened to a great talk given at the RSA by Aral Balkan, about the reality of free data. Quite a bit of it is the usual line of "if you're not paying, you're the product not the customer", but it's put in a pretty hard-hitting and punchy way, and it contains some genuinely new insights. Didn't agree with it all, and a certain level of salesmanship (he's a social entrepreneur founding a company called IndiePhone) but well worth a watch for those into digital issues. 

My favourite quote: "The business model of free is the business model of corporate surveillance". (He extends this idea at some length in his Indie Tech Manifesto.) In a moment of irony, I copied down this quote on Evernote via voice recognition on my Android phone...

I'm getting more and more interested in the ubiquity of information, as enabled through portable devices, and its positive and negative impacts, so this is very timely. 

The Triumph of the King? A sermon for Palm Sunday

The Triumph of the King. It sounds rather ponderous, like one of the bits of Tolkien that only hardcore geeks read. Or worse, it sounds presumptuous. Because we all know what happened in this triumph. Decent preacher from the north country, comes sweeping into the capital city, gets arrested by the authorities for sedition, put to death in a really nasty way. Some triumph. Of course, we also know happened two days later, on the great day that we’ve come to call Easter Sunday, when he rose from the dead.

Nobody knew this was going to happen on a Sunday morning when that preacher, the firebrand from Galilee who went around preaching the kingdom of God, and performing healings, and opening people’s eyes to God, when that man Jesus entered the gates of Jerusalem. And while what happens next really matters, and many of us here will spend the coming week remembering it and mourning it and celebrating it, I want to invite you to think yourself into the minds of the people in the crowds that Sunday morning. Forget what you know about the events of the following week. What kind of strange event was going on that morning?

As a way into this, I thought we might start with a quiz. So, a show of hands please. What does Hosanna mean? Is it: A. Hail, O Lord! or B. God be praised! or C. Save us, Lord! or D. Give me oil in my lamp.

And the answer is… C: Save us, Lord! I was genuinely surprised to find the answer to this one when I read it a few days ago. You know the word hosanna. You’ve sung it many times in different songs [including this morning??]. But have you stopped to think what it means? I hadn’t done so before I started reading about this passage. I guess I thought it meant something like A or B, something similar to the word ‘hallelujah’. But it doesn’t. It refers back quite explicitly to the psalm we spoke together, with its line: “Save us, we beseech you, O Lord!”. So it’s not a cry of praise at all, it’s a cry for help. It’s a cry from the heart, like the psalm which says “out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord. Lord, hear my voice!”

And the people of Jerusalem needed help. They needed to cry out to God. They were living under an oppressive ruler who was the puppet of the world’s largest empire, noted for its brutality. And yes, God answered. He sent them what they were asking for. But it wasn’t quite what they were expecting. They expected a very different triumph from the one they received.

Let’s talk about that word Triumph a bit more. The cities of Europe, old and new, are full of arches like this, set up by victorious military leaders to celebrate their victories. They’ve been around for millennia. This one, the Arc de Triomphe, was put there by Napoleon. There are at least two in London. But they were perfected by the Romans, as a way of celebrating the victories of their generals and rubbing it in for the defeated people.

These Roman triumphs had similar features. There was a victorious leader, riding on a war-horse or in a chariot, accompanied by his troops. The local dignitaries would make grand speeches about the leader’s achievements. The leader and his party would go to the grand temple to give thanks to their gods. And they would bring the spoils of the war – the treasures they had looted, the slaves they had captured, often killing those captives at the end of the process to show their power.

Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem was certainly celebrated and was triumphal in its own way. But it was different from the Roman triumphs in almost every possible respect.

First, he didn’t come in on a war-horse or a chariot, like the Roman leader in the picture here. He came into the city on a colt, a young donkey (so young that its mother came along with it). Now, there was a prophecy involved, which Matthew quotes from Zechariah. But there was also the basic fact in that region that donkeys were humble animals ridden by simple folk. You might know the hymn to the tune of Drunken Sailor, which goes “We have a king who rides a donkey… and his name is Jesus”.

Next, he didn’t get lots of grand speeches. Of course there were palm branches and those shouts of hosanna. But there were no local dignitaries telling us of his great deeds. Instead there were people openly saying “WHO? FROM WHERE?” Not so much scorn as plain bewilderment.

And then there was Jesus’ actions when he entered. As I said, the Roman generals went straight to the temple. They brought animals to sacrifice, gifts to give to their gods. Jesus also went straight to the temple. But not to sacrifice. He went to turn things upside down – he drove out the money-changers and salesmen, he cured the blind and lame. He took away the petty acts of exploitation that the temple brought upon those who came to worship there, and he healed people instead. In other words, he fulfilled that cry of hosanna, save us, straight away – but to save the people from the ways they were exploited and oppressed by their own people.

So how did the people respond? Let’s look at that a bit more.

They waved palm branches of course. That’s the famous thing about the day. It was traditional to wave palm branches on Sukkot, the Feast of the Tabernacles, which was a harvest festival which also remembered the way the Israelites lived during the Exodus. But they were also the symbol of Judas Maccabeus, celebrated as the man who liberated the people of Israel two centuries earlier. And for the Romans the palm branch was a symbol of the goddess of victory. So there was celebration in the waving of palms but there was a political statement too.

And of course the very next thing the people do, according to Matthew, is to cry “Hosanna” – save us, Jesus. Save us from the people who oppress us. Deliver us from our enemies. They call him the son of David, and they say that he comes in the name of the Lord. Again these are quotes from the psalm, but they are strong statements about the kind of king they want, the kind of king they see Jesus as. This is a moment of transformation, of change. If you know the musical Jesus Christ Superstar, perhaps you remember the moment when the crowds are singing “Hosanna, hey sanna, sanna sanna ho”, and at the same time the priests are singing “Tell the rabble to be quiet, we anticipate a riot – this common crowd is much too loud”. This is a triumph of a very kingly sort, albeit a Jewish triumph rather than a Roman one.

And then he’s in Jerusalem and something strange thing happens. The tone of the crowd changes. It’s no longer “hosanna” but rather it’s “who is this man?”. They don’t know what to make of Jesus, this strange radical figure. One reason for this, perhaps, is that there are two crowds – the palm-wavers are the people who have followed Jesus from Galilee, while the ones asking who he is, are those who live in Jerusalem. But it’s still a great question, and one we might spend our whole lives answering: who is this Jesus for us?

And if that’s how the people responded, can we respond today?

Two thoughts. The first is from Helder Camara, long-time archbishop in Brazil and a man of great spiritual wisdom. He was once asked how he kept his humility in the face of all the wealth and power that comes with being an archbishop. He said that he imagined himself entering Jerusalem in triumph – but not as Jesus. He imagined himself as Jesus’ donkey, carrying him to where he needed to be.

And the other thought is a bit like it. I mentioned earlier the hymn “We have a king who rides a donkey”. It ends with the following words: “What shall we do with our life this morning? Give it up in service!” 

Because that’s what Jesus did. The road through the gates of Jerusalem led Jesus to Calvary, and to giving up his life for others. Palm Sunday is a triumphant time, but it’s not the kind of triumph that the Romans expected, or that the Jews expected, or that the disciples expected.

Jesus came into Jerusalem in an act of triumph, but it was a triumph that turned everything upside down just as much as his earlier preaching and actions had done. He came to proclaim a victory of the humble over the mighty, of the weak over the strong, of the oppressed over the oppressors. Now that’s what I call a triumph.

The Song of the Mother: a sermon on the Magnificat

[Sermon preached at Duston United Reformed Church, 30th March 2014, Mother's Day. Text: Luke 1:46-55, The Magnificat. The sermon was immediately preceded by the hymn Tell Out My Soul.]

So we have heard and we have sung a song, the great song, of the mother of Jesus. I’ve promised to be short this morning, but I want to talk a bit about Mary’s song, often called the Magnificat from its first word in the Latin version. It’s a song that has resonated down the ages from her time to ours. It’s got it all: joy, praise, concern for others and the world, and a deep sense of hope for a revolutionary kingdom of God present here on earth that will overturn the powers of the world.

If someone invented a Bible version of Desert Island Discs, and I had to pick a single passage, then Mary’s song might be well it. Martin Luther (perhaps not the first person that comes to mind when talking about Mary) wrote about the song that “She sang it not for herself alone, but for all of us, to sing it after her”.

There’s so much to say about it but today I want to focus on what Mary’s song can say to us about a mother’s love, which seems appropriate today for anyone who’s had a mother or is a mother or lives with a mother. I’m going to talk about three kinds of love that the Magnificat can tell us about: joy, risk, and justice.

Mother’s love: joy

The first kind of mother’s love that the Magnificat tells us about is joy. Those opening words, “my soul magnifies [or glorifies] the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my saviour” are words of such joy. Mary starts with praise and rejoicing. Before anything else, she praises God and rejoices in him. The rest of the song will outline the reasons why she praises him, but before anything else, she praises God and rejoices in him. The rest of the song will outline the reasons why she praises him. She praises him for her coming motherhood, for the things he has done for her, but also for the amazing things he has done for his people and for the whole world.

Mary’s song sits within a very long Jewish tradition of powerful women singers: Miriam in Exodus after the parting of the Red Sea, Deborah the judge, Hannah the mother of Samuel and Judith who questions the faith of Israel’s ruling class. Although she talks about herself as lowly, and although the status of women in 1^st century Palestine was pretty bad, her song is full of power.

So that’s the first expression of a mother’s love in the Magnificat: heartfelt joy. It’s a lesson we can all learn from, joy towards God and joy towards those we love.

Mother’s love: risk

The next kind of love is that of risk. All relationships have risk inherent to them. There are common images of Mary and Jesus in the history of art. Here is one, of her cradling the infant, and it’s found in many places  – this statue is in St Matthew’s Church here in Northampton.

Once a baby is born, it enters the world and becomes subject to all sorts of risks. That is the case whether the baby is the son of God, or any other human being. Mary talks about this one less in the Magnificat, but soon after Jesus’ birth (also in Luke’s gospel), she was warned about it by Simeon, who said that “a sword will pierce your own soul too”.

And from the moment Jesus was born, he was in a place of risk. He was born into poverty, in a borrowed place. His family had to flee into exile for fear of his life. His ministry was with the marginalised and the outcasts. He was pilloried by the state as a dangerous radical, betrayed by his friends, and put to death. No wonder Mary’s soul was pierced.

So there’s another image of Mary cradling Jesus. This is a version of the Pieta, the image of Mary holding the dead body of Jesus after his crucifixion. It’s by a German artist, Käthe Kollwitz, whose own son was killed as a soldier in the First World War. Many of her images are of mothers and children. Kollwitz knew about the risks of love. So did Mary. But loving someone, in a dangerous world, always involves risk.

Mary’s message to us is that it’s a risk worth taking.

Mother’s love: cry for justice

Mary’s song tells us about one more form of love: a cry for justice, for your own children but also for all the children of the world. 

The history of world is full of mothers who have sacrificed things for the sake of their children (yes, fathers too, but more often mothers). I’ve watched a couple of TV documentaries recently about food poverty in Britain. One of the most shocking parts was the number of times that mothers were shown going without food so their children could eat. In a rich country it is simply unacceptable that this should happen. But it’s something mothers have always done. This is another picture from Käthe Kollwitz about how this was in the depression of the 1920s in Germany.

And because it’s mothers who so often sacrifice things, it’s often mothers who call for justice for the world. Mary’s song is a statement of extraordinary radicalism. She says that God casts down the mighty and sends the rich away hungry. As the picture says in the style of a Pentecostalist church, “sing it again, Mary!”

The Peruvian theologian Gustavo Gutierrez, who was the first to talk about liberation theology, talks of the great promise of the Magnificat, writing that “[its] thanksgiving and joy are closely linked to the action of God who liberates the oppressed and humbles the powerful. The future of history belongs to the poor and exploited.”

For those of us who have a decent income in a rich country, that puts us in an uncomfortable position! But it’s a very clear statement about justice. William Barclay wrote that: “There is loveliness in the Magnificat but in that loveliness there is dynamite. Christianity brings about a revolution in individuals and revolution in the world.” Mary’s song makes it clear to us: a world in which there is hunger and food banks and cities with vast wealth on one street and grinding poverty on the next – that is not the world of God’s kingdom. God is on the side of the oppressed and the marginalised, the people with whom Jesus spent his time.

The Song of Mary gives us a threefold statement about love for Mother’s Day, and a challenge for us all: love with joy, love with risk, love with justice. Amen.