Second Sunday after Trinity Mark 3:20-end Genesis 3:8-15Who’s Who 2024 is the 176th edition of one of the world’s longest established reference books, brought up to date for this year with just under 500 new names. The latest annual update includes names from science, technology and medicine, as well as business and leisure, literature, art and music, and more. With almost 500 new names, it is probably an interesting read. But what makes a ‘who’? I suppose that, when it comes to an entry in the reference book, it is all about context and achievement. And we may be able to see why it might be helpful to have these entries, indeed for reference. But we all know that there are many other names that don’t make it into the Who’s Who, but who are, in their own right, still ‘who’s’…In the account of Genesis chapter 3, we find Adam and Eve, here called ‘the man and the woman’ after they have eaten from the forbidden fruit tree. Once their eyes were opened to what they had done and they realised that they were naked, they made coverings for themselves and went into hiding. But the Lord God looks for them – ‘where are you?’ he asks, and finds them and the whole miserable story of their disobedience comes out. It is interesting that the realisation of their nakedness is in the context of their downfall. Before, they had nothing to hide and they feel safe; now they do, and it makes them see themselves for the first time as they really are: fallible, weak, vulnerable, unworthy; especially in the company of an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-present, holy God. It has an effect on who they think and feel they are.Identity is important. From the moment we are born, our notion of who we are is being formed in context: our parents and other family first deciding where we belong and affirming who we are. This is in the negative as well as the positive sense. Not every child, sadly, grows up in a loving and safe environment. Jesus grew up in a family who valued him. But in Mark 3, something else is going on. When his family heard what was going on with him in his role of teacher and prophet, they wanted to restrain him; to them, having known him in the past, he is out of his mind. They might have been afraid of what the crowds – and the religious authorities – might do to him. The scribes had been demonizing him, even though he cast out demons and challenged his critics, saying, ‘How can Satan cast out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand. And if Satan has risen against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but his end has come.’ It’s what often happens: when people don’t fit into a certain group’s category, they get labelled in such a way that they can be abused and others won’t take them seriously. The scribes tried to do that with Jesus, so they can safely side-line him. But the label is wrong. Jesus is the stronger one, who has overcome temptation and is bringing in the Kingdom of God. His reproof of being labelled is the most severe in the Bible: ‘Truly I tell you,’ Jesus says, ‘people will be forgiven for their sins and whatever blasphemies they utter; but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin.’ – for they had said, ‘He has an unclean spirit.’ From the moment Jesus began his ministry – his baptism and temptation in the desert affirming his identity as God’s Son – his work has revealed him as the person he is: the Messiah, now reclaiming for God what had been lost. In other words, the real Strong One has arrived and finds his house being burgled, so he is taking action. God’s Kingdom, in which people will find freedom and a new identity, is being proclaimed and inaugurated. A believer will find his or her true identity through faith in Jesus. The scribes are wrong: there is no-one saner than Jesus, who will prove his power and his identity even more in what is to follow. He knows who he really is. And we also can know who we are, by hearing God’s word. How do we know who we are? By knowing whose we are. Amen.
First Sunday after Trinity Mark 2:23-3:6 Deuteronomy 5:12-15What was the Sabbath made for? We are reminded in Deuteronomy that the Sabbath was instituted as a day of rest, as a holy day to the Lord our God, but the rationale given in Deuteronomy is a bit different from the way it is mentioned in Exodus 20. Here, in Deuteronomy, the people are reminded that they ‘were slaves in Egypt, and that the Lord their God brought them out from there with a mighty hand and outstretched arm; therefore, the Lord God commanded them to keep the Sabbath day.’In the passage from Mark’s Gospel, it is the Pharisees who object to Jesus’ disciples plucking heads of grain as they were going through the grainfields on a Sabbath. In their eyes, the disciples might have been doubly at fault: travel and work (walking further than necessary according to Sabbath principles, and harvesting) being against the Sabbath rule. The very fact that they were there to observe, may of course raise the question why they had ‘travelled’ the distance on the Sabbath themselves…. They might have thought that what with all the different astonishing things that Jesus had been doing, he and his disciples needed watching. Mainly, I suppose, to see if this Jesus, who was such a different teacher, was a proper, loyal Jew. In his reply, however, Jesus doesn’t respond to that implication, but he simply summarizes the story of David who commandeered food for his soldiers (1 Samuel 21:1-6) when they were hungry, which is a detail that the story doesn’t say but is implied: ‘David entered the house of God, when Abiathar was high priest, and ate the bread of the Presence, which it is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and he gave some to his companions.’ Keeping the Sabbath was one of the Ten Commandments, and through centuries of Jewish teaching, as well as the prophets, this had been reinforced down the generations. It was even one of the things that set the Jewish people apart: it reminded them that they were God’s people. Jesus, more than anybody else, would know this. In fact, in his reply to the Pharisees’ criticism, he doesn’t deny that they are not observing the Sabbath. Instead, though, he pleads that there are special circumstances and a scriptural precedent in David’s story. Jesus’ words are also saying something else: by referring to David and the incident mentioned, he puts himself in the same league as King David, and more: assuming the title ‘Son of Man’. His words, ‘The Sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the Sabbath; so the Son of Man is lord even of the Sabbath.’, refer to the new Kingdom now breaking in. In other words, Jesus is assuming his authority as God-given, for the purpose of the redemption and the renewal of humankind. He, as the Messiah, as the true representative of humanity, reshapes the rules, in the light of the work of salvation that he was about to perform. This work is to be God’s mighty act in the world on behalf of its people, as a new Exodus, as a new rest for a new creation. What is the Sabbath for? It is a gift of God to his people, to remind them of who he is; so that we may know how much he loves us and honour him. Amen.
Trinity Sunday John 3:1-17 Romans 8:12-17We were all born. Whether it happened a long time ago or fairly recently doesn’t matter. As soon as we enter into the world, we are a part of it as living and breathing human beings. Most of us have a birth certificate to prove the date and place, with the name that we have been given. But we don’t carry it around all day to prove it. The fact that we’re alive is more important than a piece of paper that mentions it. Last week we celebrated the birth of the Church, Pentecost. It was that first Pentecost, after Jesus’ Ascension, when the promised Holy Spirit came upon the disciples as they gathered, which gave ‘birth’ to the Church, the Body of Christ on earth. So what about our proof of being ‘reborn’ in Christ? How do we give evidence of our existence as living members of the Body of Christ, reborn through faith?Nicodemus, a Pharisee, who came to visit Jesus by night, was challenged about this. He was a religious teacher. But it took some reassessment of his spiritual understanding for him to see why he could not be complete without the renewal inside him by the Son of God, Jesus Christ. Baptism with water was already an ‘outward sign of an inward grace’, of a turning towards God, recognising him as Lord. But baptism by the Spirit, or being born of the Spirit, takes our faith to the next level. Those words of Jesus that he says in John 10: ‘I have come that they may have life and have it abundantly’, are an expression of the same thing. It’s not enough to have an academic knowledge of the divine; you need to make it your own, in your heart, to allow faith to have an effect on your life. That’s where the evidence lies; not just on paper but in the way you live your faith. Paul talks about that, in his letter to the Romans, saying: ‘So then, brothers and sisters, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh – for if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry ‘Abba! Father!’ it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God.’ In Judaism, God was already known to the people for who he is as Almighty, the One True God, but through Jesus, God becomes their Father. And through the power of the Holy Spirit in their lives, they can have a relationship with him and the Trinity. In that famous Rublev Icon, of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, the figures are placed around the table in a way that invites the onlooker in. No more distance, but relationship and intimacy, between us and the divine, who has been revealed to us as Father, Son and Holy Spirit – three persons, one Holy Trinity. As mind-boggling as it may seem, that is what God invites us to! We may wonder how all this happens. Some Christians have a dramatic spiritual experience that comes like a flash of lightning and that makes God’s presence known to them very distinctly. For others it’s a much more gradual process, more as dawn followed by sunrise rather than a light-switch moment. It doesn’t matter which journey one travels in that way, as long as it leads to the completeness of being ‘born of water and the Spirit’, as Jesus says to Nicodemus. The signs of life that we project as re-born Christians should be the proof that we have been made new in Christ. Those signs are love, kindness, generosity, humility, patience and self-control. We can’t show that to others on paper! We can’t just wave about our baptism certificate – rather, we should wear it on our sleeve, as it were. That way, obviously, we are alive in Christ, as it makes a difference for all to see. So let’s be open to the work of the Holy Spirit in us. Then we can show the world that we’re really alive, in the way we are connected to God, the Three in One, as he guides us into the ‘heavenly things’. Amen.
