The Reflectionary

It’s been a busy old week here, Chez Fay. In the last week and a bit, I’ve written two blogs posts, a ‘Thought for the Day’, an intergen slot on Elephant Toothpaste and  a sermon on Trinity, plus revising an academic paper and writing 15,000 word of draft for the children’s book series I’m writing. Yes 15,000 words in just over three days. My fingers were on fire!

There’s too much to post in one week, so the vids will be next week and below are  your liturgy treats based on the Ex 19 and Ps 100 texts and a (hopefully) non-heretical sermon for Trinity.

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Sermon – Matthew 28:16-20

Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

Loving Lord,
May my spoken words
illuminate your written word
and bring us to your living word,
Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.

If Peter’s other name had been Athanasius, instead of Simon

Jesus asked his disciples, “Whom do people say that I am?”

And they answered, “Some say you are John the Baptist returned from the dead; others say Elijah, or another of the prophets.”

And Jesus said, “But whom do you say that I am?”

And Simon answered him saying, “Thou are the Christ, the Son of God. And by God I mean God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity. For the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God, and yet there are not three Gods, but one God, one in essence, and indivisible, yet revealed in three persons, coequal, coeternal, consubstantial, all alike in dignity and each eternal, yet they are not three eternals but one eternal.”

And Jesus said, “You what?”

If you follow the church calendar, you’ll know that last Sunday, the Sunday following Pentecost, was Trinity Sunday. It’s a day when, traditionally, the curate of the church, or some other gullible numpty is given the job of preaching, because the vicar doesn’t want to be burnt at the stake for saying something heretical about the Trinity. Which is pretty much guaranteed, whatever you say.

Now we don’t follow the lectionary readings in the Sunday services, so [Andrew] is safe from being called the church numpty. But we do follow the lectionary on the Wednesdays. And today we have the readings for Trinity Sunday. And they’ve asked me to preach. I leave you to draw your own conclusions.

Now I’m telling right off the bat that I’m not going to speak about the Trinity today. I’m not going to try to explain the unexplainable, that’s way above my paygrade. And I’m certainly not going to try some illustration like ice, water and steam, being different and yet still all H₂O.

Apart from the fact that there is also plasma, a fourth state of matter, which completely banjxes Trinity, the ice, water, steam analogy also borders on tritheism or some other heresy and in fact, hark, do I can hear people stacking bundles of wood in the car park right now?

And to make matters worse, there’s also a fifth state of matter, the Bose-Einstein Condensate which, to be frank, I don’t understand at all. But that’s OK. The fact that I can’t explain it doesn’t stop it being true.

As the great Richard Feynman, Nobel Prize winning Physicist, is widely quoted as saying, “If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don’t understand quantum mechanics.” I have sat through many hours of undergrad physics lectures and I can safely say that I don’t understand quantum mechanics. But my phone, which requires quantum tunnelling to work, seems to function perfectly well despite my inability to explain how. Ditto my computer, TV, washing machine, car, clock, or any of the hundred devices in my home and yours which have transistors in.

If one accepts the weirdness of quantum mechanics, all those handy devices work properly. If I were to reject quantum mechanics on the basis that it won’t fit inside my tiny brain, then a) that’s a really bad reason for rejecting something, making my intellect the arbiter of all truth, and b) my phone would stop working, which would be a pain. The fact that I can’t explain quantum tunnelling doesn’t stop it being true.

And just as quantum mechanics is invisible in our macro world, yet is the underlying cause of how things work, so it is with Trinity. The sainted Ian Paul, former Dean of Studies at St John’s Theological College, said of Trinity that it is “not so much taught in Scripture … but the doctrine underlying all of Scripture, without which Scripture does not make sense.”

The fact that I can’t explain Trinity doesn’t stop it being true. So I’m not going to attempt to reduce God to a clover leaf, or three out of the five known states of matter, or me as mum and daughter and sister. In fact, I’m quitting this topic  now before they stack the kindling in the car park any higher.

And so to our passage.

Matthew chapter 28 starts with the resurrection. “After the Sabbath, at dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to look at the tomb.” And most of the  chapter is taken up with their to-ings and fro-ings  and Jesus telling them, “Do not be afraid. Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.”

And so the disciples go. And so they see. But just as with the resurrection appearances by the tomb, on the road to Emmaus, at the beach, in the room, some of the people who encounter Jesus have a little difficulty getting their heads round it. “They worshiped him”, says Matthew, “but some doubted.” It’s an interesting word, doubt. It occurs a few times in the New Testament and there are different words for it.

In Luke 24, just after the road to Emmaus episode,  “Jesus himself stood among them, and said to them, “Peace to you!” But they were startled and frightened and thought they saw a spirit. And Jesus said to them, “Why are you troubled, and why do doubts arise in your hearts?” Doubts there is διαλογισμός-dialogismos – intellectual doubts. Some in the room were not convinced it was actually Jesus. They thought they were seeing a ghost, perhaps.

But that’s not what Matthew is talking about in our passage. It wasn’t that some worshipped but some had intellectual concerns about who this was. They knew it was Jesus. But they were perhaps unsure what to do about it. The word for doubt that Matthew uses is διστάζω-distazo. It means to waver, to be in two minds, to hop from one foot to the other, unsure which way to go. Matthew uses it here and in chapter 14, when Peter walks in the water: “Jesus immediately reached out his hand and took hold of Peter, saying to him, “O you of little faith, why did you doubt?” Peter was doing fine while he kept his eyes on Jesus. But when he looked at the water and the waves, he ἐδίστασας-edistasas. He wavered. He was in two minds. He wasn’t sure what to do. And he sank.

It was like that time when Peter was up another mountain, with James and John, and again, he had trouble getting his head round things. The blinding glory probably didn’t help. Peter wasn’t sure what to do. He offered to build Portacabins for Jesus, Moses and Elijah. Bless him. Always blurting out the first thing that came into his head. It was all a bit confusing, really.

And so back to chapter 28. Jesus has been buried, but has come back to life and told his disciples to meet him in the Galilean hills. They went and they worshipped, but some δίστασαν-distasan. They wavered. They hesitated. They didn’t know what to do about this. It was all a bit confusing, really. It wasn’t that they didn’t believe. They just didn’t know what to do with that belief. What was Jesus expecting of them?

This wasn’t like the previous three years. That had been fine: Rabbi, disciples. They knew where they were with that. He walked and taught, they followed and listened. All well and good. Standard way for a nice Jewish boy to learn.

But what now? Jesus wasn’t carrying on with his teaching and healing ministry. It wasn’t like that anymore. But the disciples weren’t going back to life before they’d met Jesus. It wasn’t like that either. There was, to use a phrase from lockdown, a New Normal, and they weren’t sure what it was. So they wavered, they hopped from one foot to the other, unsure which way to go.

Jesus’ next words didn’t help much. “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me,” he said, “Therefore go.”

I don’t know about you, but these last words of the earthly Jesus make me διστάζω-distazo a bit, they make me waver. The first part is fine. “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me,” he said, and I nod and go, Yes, yes. Jesus has all authority in heaven and on earth. Great. Firmly on this foot.

Then he says, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations,” and I’m a bit, Oh. You want me to go and make disciples? How exactly? Shift to other foot. “Baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,” OK, I get that bit. First foot again. “… and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.” Goodness, that’s a huge responsibility. I think you might want someone better qualified. Other foot.

And then he says, “And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age,” and I’m back on the first foot again. Oh well, I suppose if you put it like that, I can’t really turn down such an offer, can I?

Can I? That foot. No, no I can’t. This foot.

So that’s me, wavering. Not wavering in belief – I’m sure and trust in Jesus – but wavering about myself. What is it God wants me to do? How am I supposed to make disciples of all nations? “Go therefore …” Go where?

Perhaps I can get a clue from one of the other gospel writers. Luke fleshes out Jesus’ words in Acts 1:8. “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

We start in Jerusalem. We start where we are. We live lives to God’s glory in our everyday. ‘Bloom where you are planted,’ they say, or in Peter’s words, “Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.” 1 Peter 2:12

But we look beyond our borders too. To Judea, people like us. And Samaria, people not like us, and the ends of the earth. I don’t know what Judea, Samaria and the ends of the earth look like for you. It’s not my business to tell you what to do. That’s between you and God.

But this call, this Great Commission, is for all of us, for we are part of that long chain of disciples stretching right back to the original 11, and we are part of the chain reaching into the future, and Jesus is with us always, to the very end of the age.

Amen.

(Approx 13 mins)

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Liturgy for Proper 6

Exodus 19:2-8a, Psalm 100

Confession and Absolution

You have spoken to us, Lord, and we have not listened.
O Lord, forgive us.
Bear us on eagles’ wings and bring us to yourself.

You have given us your covenant and we have broken it.
O Lord, forgive us.
Bear us on eagles’ wings and bring us to yourself.

You have made us priestly kingdom and a holy nation, and we have lived like outsiders.
O Lord, forgive us.
Bear us on eagles’ wings and bring us to yourself.

May the God of all mercies forgive us all our sins,
restore us in his image, and set our feet upon the right path,
that we may obey his voice, keep his covenant
and be his treasured possession.
Amen.

Blessing and Dismissal

May the Lord make you glad in his presence,
may you come into his presence with singing,
and may you rest in his steadfast love, which lasts forever,
his faithfulness which endures to all generations.
And the blessing of God Almighty, Father, Son, Spirit,
Fill you, wash over you and surround you and those whom you love.
Today and for ever.
Amen.

Go in the strength of God
To live  his life of love to the world.
In the name of Christ,
Amen.