disclosing new worlds

Job 42: 1-6; 10-17
Psalm 34: 1-8; 19-22
Hebrews 7: 23-28
Mark 10: 46-52

This is the second occasion in a short space of time on which Jesus asks, “What do you want me to do for you?” The first is in response to a request from James and John (10:35-6); the second is in response to the desperate call of blind Bartimaeus: “Son of David, have mercy on me!” (10:47). The location is important: it’s the last significant stopping place before arrival at Jerusalem. Mark, remember, uses geography symbolically. The steep ascent from the Galilee to Jerusalem – the occasion for Jesus teaching his disciples about the Way of the Cross – mirrors the climb up Golgotha to crucifixion and death. These stopping places are the stations of the cross: time to pause and enter into the enormity of what is happening. It is the road of discipleship – the place of following. The further they travel it, the more the discipleship narrative unravels. The closer they draw to Jerusalem, the stiffer the resistance of The Twelve to the Way of the Cross becomes. And here, in the last stopping place before Jerusalem, the nature of true discipleship is shown, not through Jesus’ teaching, but through an encounter with a man who has become blind.

From the gutter-dweller to hero of faith
Here’s Mark at his subversive best: a marginalised, blind beggar, sitting in the dust, unnoticed by the excited crowd, is heard by Jesus. In the hubbub of excitement, the excited chatter and the shouts, the voice that Jesus hears is the one the crowds are trying to silence.

Look at v48. The people “sternly ordered” (epetimōn autō) Bartimaeus to be quiet. That’s the same word that is used when Mark describes the disciples’ attempts to prevent the people bringing their children to Jesus (10:13). See the pattern? The would-be door-keepers around Jesus – the “bouncers” –try to decide who is worthy to approach Jesus. In each case, the incident follows a discussion about greatness. Earlier in the chapter, Jesus has used a child to deconstruct notions of greatness. Here, immediately after James’ and John’s request, we find a blind beggar – someone isolated socially, spiritually and, in this incident, physically. He’s literally sitting behind a wall of people who stand between him and Jesus, unable to “see” Jesus on two counts: the crowds block his view, and, of course, because he’s blind! He’s voiceless too – not because he cannot shout, but because the people do not allow his voice to be heard. They address him with a “stern rebuke” to be quiet – just as an exorcist would address a demon.

Just as Jesus has earlier told the would-be gatekeepers to allow the children to come to him, and told them (shockingly) that the kingdom, in fact, belongs to them, and that any would-be disciple (as opposed to gatekeeper!) needs to become like them, so now Jesus “stands still” and calls Bartimaeus to him.

What is the significance of Jesus “standing still”? The point is that he has stopped – on the way to Jerusalem. This is a “station of the cross”. It’s a clue for the readers: Jesus is about to teach us more about the nature of discipleship and the Way of the Cross. What is shocking is that Jesus’ “teaching” here consists in hearing the voice the crowds are trying to muzzle and demanding that they make visible the very person they are trying to make invisible (“Call him here”). What is Jesus teaching his disciples? Actually, nothing! This is not an instance of Jesus drawing The Twelve aside and teaching them about the Way of the Cross! 10:42-45 is the last time that Jesus teaches his disciples about the Way. Here, Jesus doesn’t teach. He heals. And the healed blind beggar ends up “following Jesus on the Way” (10:52).

What’s going on here? Jesus’ teaching on the Way of the Cross finishes with “For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many” (10:45). Bartimaeus shows two things: firstly, he shows clearly that the disciples have not understood what Jesus is on about! Bartimaeus is one of the people they try to exclude. He isn’t reckoned to be among “the many” for whom Jesus will give his life. Yet his is the voice that Jesus hears. He “stops” in Jericho only for this man – in response to the cry for help. The Way of the Cross is “bad news” for those who, like the rich man, have everything invested in the status quo. To those like Bartimaeus, excluded and unwanted, the Son of Man comes as a servant. The message of the kingdom is a gift, to be accepted with joy.

Secondly, we’re clearly supposed to understand that Bartimaeus is a true disciple of the Way of the Cross. Jesus doesn’t call him – in fact, he sends him on his way. Bartimaeus chooses to follow him. At the same time, the disciples whom Jesus has called have failed to understand. They will accompany Jesus to Jerusalem, but their abandonment of him shows that they are not “followers”. Mark, in other words, portrays Jesus as having “stopped” on two levels: he has (literally) “stopped” on his journey, and he has “stopped” teaching The Twelve about the Way. There is nothing left to say. The disciples have “seen” the Way, but remain wilfully blind to it. There is nothing left for Jesus to teach. He is not going to change their minds. So, rather than have Jesus say more about the Way, Mark portrays this as incident in which true discipleship is enacted – by a blind man who yearns to see.

Mark portrays Bartimaeus, therefore, as a role model; a summary of all that Jesus has being trying (unsuccessfully) to teach The Twelve. He belongs in the same category as the children whom the disciples try to keep from Jesus: the marginalised, excluded people whom society considers worthless and who are “the first” in kingdom terms. In contrast to the rich man who cannot abandon his possessions, Bartimaeus throws aside his only possession (his cloak) in order to get to Jesus (10:50). He does so gladly! And, unlike the disciples who are wilfully blind to the Way of the Cross, he desperately wants to see.

“Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”
Look at where Mark places this pericope in the narrative. On the one side it is bounded by the request of James and John for power. On the other, Mark places the Triumphal Entry. It’s important to look the implication of the narrative structure here.

“My teacher, let me see again”
Jesus asks both the brothers and Bartimaeus, “What do you want me to do for you?” The brothers ask something that Jesus is unable to give: power. Power is not Jesus’ to give, because Jesus has renounced the way of power in embracing the Way of the Cross. Their request shows that the brothers are blind to who Jesus is. Bartimaeus, by contrast, asks for what Jesus can give: mercy and sight. “Have mercy” is answered by Jesus’ “Call him here.” “What do you want me to do for you?” “Let me see again” is answered by Jesus’ pronouncement: “Your faith has made you well”.

Note, too, that both the brothers and Bartimaeus address Jesus as “teacher”. This isn’t accidental. Jesus has been teaching them about the Way of the Cross. The disciples, however, haven’t been learning! That is why they ask for something Jesus cannot give. Bartimaeus addresses Jesus as “my teacher”. It’s very personal. Bartimaeus has learned from Jesus. But what has he learned, and how? He has heard about Jesus – about the healings, exorcisms and the shocking stuff Jesus has been saying about the least being first. And because he is one of the least, he has “learned” about the God Jesus is revealing. Jesus’ God is a God of love and mercy. Hence he understands that Jesus has come, not to condemn him, but to serve him, and give his life as a ransom for him. He recognises the gift.

“Son of David, have mercy on me”
In the following pericope, the people hail Jesus as the Son of David. The title’s right, but they’ve got the content wrong. They see “Son of David” as a designation of power. Bartimaeus sees it as affirmation of grace – that God’s messiah comes bearing the kingdom as an undreamed of gift! Even though everyone else thinks Bartimaeus has no right to try and involve Jesus in his life, Bartimaeus knows that it’s okay to call out to Jesus – because Jesus is the King of Mercy! Bartimaeus, in other words, is here not only as an example of discipleship: it is his acclamation of Jesus as king that is the true reception of Jesus. Jesus is going to Jerusalem as king – but the people do not recognise what sort of king. Bartimaeus does!

Jesus and the God of mercy (Job 42: 1-6; 10-17/Hebrews 7: 23-28)
What are we to make of this week’s other readings? In and of themselves, they each conclude and important section of the book. The passage from Job is the conclusion to the story. The verses from Hebrews conclude the author’s section on Jesus as High Priest. He will change gear in the next verses and look at the implications for the new covenant. Today’s readings are all about summaries and conclusions.

In the context of the Lectionary readings, there is a clear link between the story of Bartimaeus and Job 42: 5 – “I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you”. Bartimaeus had heard of Jesus, but his encounter results in seeing him. Job had not understood what he had heard from Yahweh and about Yahweh; his encounter (such as it is!) with Yahweh provokes an “Ah! Now I see!” reaction. And significantly, Job’s response of faith “heals” him: his fortunes are restored.

There is a parallel, too, in Job’s “priestly” role vis-a-vis his friends. Job. Job prays to Yahweh for his friends, asking Yahweh “not to deal with them according to their folly” (v8). They, like the disciples and the Jerusalem crowds, have “have not spoken of Yahweh what is right” (unlike Job). Yet Job understands their “folly” because he is a human being like they are – and because they are his friends! This is precisely the picture of Jesus as High Priest that the writer to the Hebrews has painted. Jesus is “like us”. He knows us and loves us. He knows our weaknesses and is therefore sympathetic rather than condemnatory. His “instinct” is to plead on our behalf rather than for his own vindication and our condemnation. And, like Job in the story, he alone is “true”. He is “perfect”. He has no need to plead on his own behalf but can devote all his energies to our cause!

Yet there is a strong contrast as well as a parallel. Job’s response to “seeing” Yahweh is given in verse 6: “Therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes”. There’s an “Old Testament/New Testament” thing going on here (and I use the terms “Old” and “New” quite deliberately, because we are supposed to understand something entirely “new” about God through Jesus). Bartimaeus doesn’t “despise himself”, but responds joyfully! What Bartimaeus understands about Jesus is that Jesus is primarily about mercy! This section of the gospel has been about power. Jesus has power – but it isn’t the sort that the disciples are after. That sort of power is annihilative. The power of love and mercy is transformative and Life-giving.

Job is confronted with Yahweh’s “naked” power, and his response is the “worthless worm” sort of spirituality and theology. “I am a miserable wretch, a filthy sinner, utterly unworthy etc”. Now, these things may indeed be true, but what we are supposed to understand in Jesus is that God doesn’t see us in these categories! That is a projection of our own attitudes on to God – the attitudes that bar children, menstruating women and blind beggars from Jesus because they are apparently “unworthy”. Yet God in Jesus welcomes them joyfully! In terms of the Parable of the Lost Son, God sees people in terms of “lost children”, not “filthy sinners”! God looks through the eyes of love that grieve and weep for the lost, not through the eyes of power and self-vindication that despise and condemn. We have much to learn from Jesus about he spirituality of grace!

Not missing the point …
Today’s gospel passage is saturated in symbol. It’s a brilliant piece of narrative construction, and once you start seeing the links, it’s difficult to stop! However, the cleverness of the narrative mustn’t be allowed to distract from the fact that this is also an intensely human drama! This is a story of a blind man who has given up all hope of seeing again. He is in reduced circumstances: he has lost his sight, and with it his place in the order of things. He is a nobody. It’s easy to imagine how hard he has had to fight against “If only …” – in that way lies bitterness and despair.

But he has heard about Jesus of Nazareth. Like a starving man, he has wolfed down the stories of Jesus’ healings and extraordinary care for people – people like him! And now he hears that Jesus is in town – is about to pass the very place where he’s sitting! The “if onlys” come in full flood! If only he can get to Jesus! If only Jesus will hear him … and stop … and …”

We ought to imagine his desperation – the desperation that makes him flout convention, risk angering the very people on whose handouts his life is utterly dependent, and which makes him just keep on shouting louder and louder, “Jesus! Son of David! Please! Over here – have mercy on me!”

And we ought to imagine being Bartimaeus – being led to Jesus; being told to take courage because he’s calling … for him! And then hearing those words from the lips of Jesus: “Tell me, what is it you want me to do for you?” Those words from the lips of the only man who can actually do what Bartimaeus wants with all his soul!

And let’s imagine him opening his eyes – seeing again for the first time in God knows how many years – and seeing Jesus. Yes, let’s look at the narrative and see how cleverly constructed it is; how deep; how it articulates so much of what Jesus is teaching. But let’s hear the story with our hearts, because it’s meant to be heard like that. Let’s, with Bartimaeus, open our eyes and “see” Jesus! And let’s respond with the same abandon and joy.

Amen.

2 Samuel 11:26-12:13a NRSV text
Exodus 16: 2-4, 9-16 NRSV text
Psalm 51:1-12 NRSV text
Ephesians 4: 1-16 NRSV text
John 6: 24-35 NRSV text

“I am the Bread of Life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty!” This is what John has been working towards telling us. This is why John has picked the feeding miracle out of all the synoptic miracle stories to relate. Yet it is more than just a summary of the feeding miracle: it also includes the story of the woman of Samaria in 4: 1-42. If you re-read that story, you’ll see some obvious markers. Most notably, the conversation between Jesus and the woman and Jesus and the crowd follows a similar track. Both the woman and the crowd ask the wrong question, and Jesus ignores it, going instead to the heart of what they need to learn. Both are looking for the wrong sort of provision from Jesus: the woman wants water daily to save her going to the well (4:15) and the crowd asks, “Sir, give us this bread always” (6:34). Both their expectations are too low. The gift that Jesus offers is himself – salvation (cf 6:51).

Despite what many commentators seem to think, it isn’t because this is a particularly spectacular miracle. John doesn’t present us with “Jesus-the-super-magician”; John presents us with “Jesus: heaven come down to earth”, or “eternal life incarnate”. For all the apparent heightened emphasis on the miraculous in John, there is a corresponding de-emphasis happening at the same time. Look at Jesus’ statement in 6:26. It’s prefaced by the solemn “Amen, amen, lego humin” – “Truly, truly, I tell you …” This isn’t just a colloquialism of Jesus’, or of John’s writing either (as though he has his Jesus always begin statements like that!). It’s a sign that Jesus is cutting to the chase – speaking with divine insight. He’s saying, “Listen to me. Let me tell you the deepest truth about what’s actually going on here. Don’t misunderstand me or yourselves! You’re seeing the sign – but you’re not reading it properly. You look at me and see a miracle worker. That’s not who I am. I am the stuff of life, sent you from God! Don’t have your minds on your stomachs – look more deeply and face the hunger and thirst for Life that is there at the core of you. Then look at me, and you’ll understand!”

Bread and manna: salvation and provision (cf Exodus 16: 2-4; 9-16)
I made the point last week (and assume the content), but it’s one that bears repetition in a world where two thirds of its inhabitants are starving and the remaining third has problems associated with overeating: when Jesus speaks of being the Bread of Life in John’s gospel, and criticises his hearers for being concerned with full stomachs, he is not spiritualising hunger, nor is he advocating some sort of aesthetic focus on the “spiritual” rather than the “physical”. John’s Jesus is, more explicitly than in any other part of the New Testament, God incarnate. Incarnation is about God’s entry into the human condition, not some sort of flight from it! John has had bad press as a “theological gospel” – by which is meant a “pie-in-the-sky-when-you-die” sort of understanding of God and salvation that leaves human misery and need largely untouched, or so de-emphasised at the expense of “eternal life” that it may as well be untouched! It is the gospel that can be read (illegitimately!) as the least challenging gospel to the rich, the well-fed, the powerful and the “haves”. If Mark’s Jesus can be read as the Liberator of the world, John’s can be read as the Saviour from the world, with Jesus’ constant emphasis “on above”. It’s a bourgeois-friendly gospel, in other words.

That this is illegitimate is clear from v33: Jesus is the Living Bread who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world! “Ah,” you might respond, “but what sort of life? Is it the life that comes from giving bread to the hungry?” Duh! Isn’t that to miss the point that this is a miracle about feeding hungry people – people who have no means of feeding themselves? There is no way in which John presents the feeding as the “stunt from the front” – the trick to hook people in order to get to the really important bit (ie the sermon)! Provision and salvation belong together.

Now, while John clearly sets up the reference to eating manna in the wilderness as “bread from heaven” in order to allow Jesus to make his point, the point Jesus makes is that the true Bread from Heaven is more than temporary alleviation of hunger, not less! In today’s reading from Exodus, we see a parallel: the Israelites are complaining because they are hungry. Note their complaint: “It would have been better to have died in Egypt, where at least we ate our fill of bread!” (Exodus 16:9) It appears to them as though Yahweh has “brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger”!

We ought not to be too quick to condemn the Israelites. Behind their complaint is the experience and terror of a slow, lingering death by starvation. We need to have in our heads the pictures we see of malnourished people in Ethiopia and other places: stick-thin bodies, swollen bellies, and hands too weak with hunger to brush the flies from the eyes and sores. Famine was something real and never far away. This isn’t some sort of pathetic whinge by a group of malcontents: an “I’m sick of this! I want to go home!” It’s a hard calculation: “Exodus is all well and good, and slavery killed. But at least we died with full bellies! And given a choice between salvation (with death by starvation) and slavery with whips, brutality and bread, we opt for slavery!”

Nor ought we to condemn them for hoarding the manna against instruction (16:20). It is hard for people on the brink of extinction to trust that, if they ate today at Yahweh’s hand, they will eat tomorrow too. The hard fact of human life in many parts of the world is that we may bless God for the harvest, but that doesn’t stop God sometimes failing spectacularly to ensure that a harvest happens regularly enough to prevent widespread and terrible suffering and starvation.

The wonder of the provision of quails and manna is seen in 16:18b: “They gathered as much as each of them needed”. Here’s the point, then: Exodus (salvation) includes the provision of what is needed to sustain life. When the hungry are fed and the naked clothed; when the poor are given enough and the thirsty given a cup of cold water, this is part of salvation! It is not some sort of “preparatory spadework” for evangelism. And when Jesus feeds the crowd, they do not only have enough, but far, far more than enough. There is “something more”.

It is this “something more” that Jesus goes on to stress. Pay attention to the hunger and thirst of the soul. In a materialistic age, this is an important point. And for those of us who are exquisitely alive to the sense in which the gospel is the Good News of a transformed world order of justice and provision for all, it is important not to neglect the dimension of human existence that is about more than eating, being clothed and having clean water.

Incarnation is about bridging the “gap” between heaven and earth. The spatial metaphor (and it is only a metaphor, as Yuri Gagarin discovered when he went into space!) serves to emphasise the way in which we human beings have built our lives and created our world to exclude God. Individually and collectively, we are cut off from God. That fundamental “gap” manifests itself in injustice, oppression, poverty and death. To talk theologically, sin is both a personal and a structural problem. The “gap” is the absence of the Life of God – in John’s terms, “eternal life” or “life in all its abundance”. That is something we experience here and now – it is not only or even primarily a question about “what happens to us when we die”. We are created for fellowship with God, as children of God. Jesus, as the Word made flesh, does not only show us what God is like: he shows us what it is to be truly human! And to be human as Jesus was is to live in the same relationship to God as he did. It is to live in the awareness of being God’s child and of the constant, immediate and transforming presence of God in our lives. In Paul’s words from last week’s reading: it is “to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, and be filled with all the fullness of God” (Ephesians 4:19). That is “eternal life” – in other words, a dimension of life, rather than only a question of duration.

Hungering and thirsting for God
Why is evangelism apparently the exclusive preserve of so-called “evangelicals”? There ought to be no such thing as a “non-evangelical” Christian! I frequently hear evangelicals described as “born again Christians”. What they are wonderfully alive to is the startling difference that a relationship to God in Jesus Christ makes to life. God in Jesus is personal – however embarrassing some of us might find that! Abundant life in Jesus is a life that overflows. We are made for joy, for love, for hope, for laughter, for deep relating. Yet these depth experiences of God in Jesus and through the Spirit are pooh-poohed as “emotionalism” or something equally unimportant and ephemeral. Not so! No wonder so many Christians are uncomfortable with notions of evangelism! Yet if knowing and following Jesus – being “born again” – is genuinely a new birth and transformation of personal life, then evangelism is nothing more sinister than passing on good news. DT Niles said (in a way that is marvellously appropriate to today’s readings) that, in evangelism, “We are nothing more than beggars telling other beggars where to find bread”.

We fail people if we do not recognise the reality of spiritual hunger. Yet the signs of the hunger for the Bread of Life are evident everywhere to any eyes that are open. Look at the current explosion of spirituality. The bookshops are full of self-help books on the subject. Magazines carry stories and accounts. Psychic fairs, seminars on spirituality, meditation centres and classes on eastern mysticism are all flourishing growth industries. Millions of people who have nothing to do with the Church are desperate to make connections with spiritual reality. And yet the Church is failing singularly to help them make any connection between their own deep sense of spiritual hunger and Jesus, the Bread of Life! We stand by in embarrassed silence, while people who have found something of significance in witchcraft, meditation, Buddhism, wicca, yoga, astral travel and reincarnation share their experiences eagerly and find them equally eagerly received. If the reason for our failure is that we do not recognise in it a mirror of our own deep hunger and thirst for God, we ought to examine ourselves, lest we, like the crowd, fail to read the sign correctly.

“Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for justice” (2 Samuel 11:26-12:13a)
Jesus told his hearers (in that Sermon) that the yearning for justice is like a gnawing hunger and parching thirst. It is something that consumes one – fills the horizon. The drive to be filled and to slake one’s thirst becomes the most and only important thing worth doing.

There is a deep connection between justice and spirituality. It’s what Nathan exploits to bring home to David the seriousness of what he has done over the murder of Uriah. David is blind to the corruption of his own power, yet still alive to the issue of justice, so that Nathan is able to tell him a story of injustice that has David filled with godly rage – precisely the point that Nathan is trying to make about Uriah and Bathsheba. Yawheh is displeased with David because of David’s abuse of power, and Nathan uses the story of the lamb as a device to get David to feel about his actions in the way that Yahweh does.

Nathan’s parable is actually a strange “fit”, isn’t it? Yes, it’s about greed and the abuse of power to steal something important to someone else. But apart from the instinctive unease we ought to feel today about the implication of women being men’s “property”, it’s difficult to see an obvious correspondence with David’s conduct – other than the fact that this is an example of blatant abuse of power. And that is enough. When Nathan says, “Thou art the man!”, David’s understanding is immediate. He recognises in himself Yahweh’s righteous anger at injustice.

The hunger for justice, in other words, has converting power. Part of what Jesus means when he says, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice” is that it is a hunger that puts us in touch with the heart of God. It gives energy and power in the struggle for a new world. But here, in this story, we see something unusual: the hunger for justice can be the vehicle for the conversion of those whose power is that from which the world needs saving! David is part of “The System”. He is “The System”! While God’s chief concern is for those who are the victims of injustice, God is nevertheless concerned too for those who wield power and who are trapped (albeit differently!) in the cycles of injustice, oppression, despair and death. Here is the story of a powerful tyrant who is converted – because Nathan is able to appeal to a hunger and thirst for justice! And the blessing for David, as the man who wields power abusively, is that he recognises the problem, is repentant, and is restored.

Beyond bread (Ephesians 4: 1-16)
This is a rich passage! There is the theme of unity, which could be followed. Yet, in the context of this week’s readings, I want to make only one point: Paul here talks about the Church as a body which needs “feeding”. In v7, he writes, “To each of us was given grace according to the measure of Christ’s gift”. That evokes strong echoes of the Exodus passage, where each Israelite gathered manna which, when measured, was exactly enough (even though some gathered much, and some little).

Whether we are talking about bread, manna or spiritual gifts, the point is that they are all gifts of grace. Grace is a measure of God’s love. It is also God’s provision. Grace means that God provides life and that which is necessary to sustain life. Grace further means that God provides the means of growth. Bodies are not just meant to exist: they are meant also to grow and develop.

Grace, in other words, is purposive. God’s intention is to make us Christ-like, just as God’s intention is to make the whole of created reality Christ’s. The gifts of the Spirit are given, not to individuals for their own glory, enjoyment or ownership, but to the whole Church. They are manifested in individuals precisely in order to make us interdependent (hence the image of the body).

Christian life is essentially communal. We make a great deal of “I don’t have to go to Church to be a Christian! I can worship God on a golf-course or up a mountain just as well as at Church!” Well, not according to Paul! This isn’t a point about church membership or attendance: it’s a point about growing. We are all given gifts for the common good. Unless we take an active part in the life of the Christian body of which we are a part, we are amputating part of the body and failing others. Similarly, unless we are part of the body – of the flow of the life-blood of the Spirit (4:16) – we will remain stunted in our own growth. The image of a body growing by means of the grace given through gifts stands as a strong critical counter to the excessive individualism of our present age. One of our challenges is to restore the Church’s “body image” – to discover and make it work.

A rich diet
“Don’t be children, blown about by every wind of doctrine. Grow up, for Christ’s sake!” says Paul. I am astonished at how determinedly and deliberately so many people remain in a state of Christian infancy! Having been “born again”, it’s as though they are content to remain babies. A new baby is a beautiful thing: a 10-year old baby is a tragedy! Yet churches are full of babies.

What Paul is telling the Ephesians is that they need to be theologically sophisticated. Despite the popular anti-theological perception one frequently encounters, theology matters – or good theology does! This isn’t about some sort of “theological league table for churches”! It’s not about a middle-class drive for an educated church population. It’s about discernment and faithful discipleship.

The point is that there is an awful amount of absolute c*^p doing the rounds in church circles. Churches can be hotbeds of all sorts of dodgy practices, emphases and rank superstitions. And the danger is that they distract and prevent proper discipleship of Jesus Christ. They even obscure and “lose” Jesus! Paul’s “corrective recipe” is a sound theology, deeply rooted in the scriptures.

Of course, this begs the question of what theology is! If it is a tick-box list of hard philosophical concepts, people can hardly be blamed for not being remotely interested. Yet if theology has to do with life – the life of faith and the life of the world – then theology and the bible should rightfully be part of the answer to our ongoing hunger and thirst for God. It is interesting – but by no means accidental – that both Paul and John get the most passionate about faith when they are at their most “theological” – which in their cases, means most deeply aware of grace! Because that, at the end of the day, is what this all about: a God who answers hunger and thirst with a gift that is far, far more wonderful and life-giving than we can possibly imagine: the gift of Jesus. This is not dead, dry, academic puzzles: this is Living Bread! And we are invited to come and eat and drink … if, of course, we are hungry and thirsty in the first place!

Amen.

Isaiah 6: 1-8 NRSV text
Psalm 29 NRSV text
Romans 8: 12-17 NRSV text
John 3: 1-17 NRSV text

Nuns on the Run is the story of two small-time crooks (played by Robbie Coltrane and Eric Idle) who are on the run both from the Police and the Triads. They hide out in a convent, disguised as nuns, where Eric Idle finds himself scheduled to teach the A-level Religious Education class. He’s horrified. Robbie Coltrane, a lapsed Catholic, tries to reassure him by telling him how easy it will be. What’s your first lesson on?” he asks. “The Trinity!” Robbie’s face falls. “The Trinity! Now that’s a bugger!”

Most ministers and preachers appear to experience a similar sinking sensation when Trinity Sunday comes round. Far from a sense of excitement and awe at a service focused very specifically on God, the overwhelming sense is one of dismay – how to explain the inexplicable! “Trinity” means pulling out illustrations of shamrocks and sun, sunlight and warmth. For me, it conjures up the memories of trying to get my head around Barth’s “Revealer, Revelation and Revealedness”, or of listening to Nicholas Lash expound his (helpful) notion of the Trinity as “speaking of God in three ways”.

Having worked for a couple of years in local government with a Shi’ite Muslim, it also conjures up memories of heated debates, Shabir demanding that I explain how I can possibly call myself a monotheist when I clearly believe in three Gods! And in parenthesis, I must say that one of the most helpful things I have discovered on the doctrine of the Trinity is Moltmann’s insistence that to be Trinitarian is what it means to be Christian, and to be neither a monotheist nor a polytheist.

The drama of salvation
But all of this is to miss the point that our texts make so clearly this week: the “doctrine of God” is not a matter for academic debate or catechesis, but the outcome of our experience of God in Jesus Christ. The Trinity is a necessary corollary of salvation. Jesus, in this famous chapter from John’s gospel, talks of having descended from heaven, being the only-begotten Son of the Father (who loves the world and has sent him to save it) and of the Spirit who blows like the wind, bringing new life/birth. The Trinity, in other words. And if our response is, “Yes, but I’ve always thought that this is a great “gospel” passage”, then the response is, “Precisely!” Let me put this as forcefully as I can: the fundamental point to be made on Trinity Sunday is that the doctrine of the Trinity means nothing less or other than rehearsing the story of salvation! And if we do something other than that in the pulpit this Sunday, we are taking a drama and turning it into a conundrum – and that is neither faithful to the Scripture nor is it the place of preaching! The Trinity is the story of God’s passionate determination to be present with the world. It’s the reminder that God’s primary disposition towards the world is of love, not judgement. It is about the fact that the saving God is the God of resurrection and recreation, giving new birth and Life to human beings. And it is the reminder (in the person of Nicodemus) that none of this makes sense or fits easily into good religious schemes about reward and punishment, or stringent holiness movements, because God is a God of grace!

The Trinity, in other words, doesn’t just tell us who God is, but about what God does and what God is like! This is the day to get into the pulpit and tell again the wonderful, joyful story of who God is and how passionately, uncontrollably, inexplicably and inescapably this world is loved. It’s the Sunday to re-awaken a sense of wonder and to renew faith, because it is Gospel Sunday!

The “Three-in-One” stuff
If the Trinity is about the drama of salvation – about rehearsing the gospel story – what’s the point of all the stuff we usually think of in connection with the Trinity? What about the “Three-in-One” stuff? The doctrine of the Trinity attempts to safeguard our thinking and talking about God. It helps us to “get it right” – not in the sense of “explaining” God, but in the sense that we don’t create an idol in place of the Living God whom we worship in Jesus Christ and through the Spirit. I want to pick up on three aspects of the gospel story of God that the “Three-in-One” formula enshrines and protects: the fact that relationship is fundamental to the life of God; that the Spirit draws human beings into the very life of God through resurrection and adoption; and that it is appropriate to worship both Jesus and the Spirit because they are divine.

Three Persons: Love and relationship in God
The “Three Persons in One Godhead” stuff (Triunity: three in one) isn’t a cleverly-devised formula to keep Christians (and everyone else!) scratching their heads for millennia, or for keeping theologians in business! Again, it belongs to the drama of salvation. Look at the gospel passage. There is the Father, the Son and the Spirit. Three Persons. Not one Person. The story of salvation in Jesus Christ teaches us that it doesn’t do simply to talk about God only in singular terms. God may – indeed must – be One, but there is relationship within God. Three Persons in dynamic relationship. And the “cement” holding them together is love. There is a dynamic unity of love and will which means that God sends Jesus into the world to be its saviour, which will necessitate death. But Jesus is no unwilling sacrificial lamb! Jesus is a volunteer! In John’s gospel, Jesus’ high priestly prayer does what the Gethsemane account does in the Synoptic Gospels – it establishes that there is a unity of divine will! The love of God for the world is matched by the love of the Son in going to the cross. The loving self-sacrifice of the Son is matched by the love (not anger!) of the Father, who abandons himself to the loss of the Son. Which constantly makes me wonder, by the way: why does so much Christian preaching lead people to suppose that Jesus loves the world, but has to appease God who is angry with it?

The Spirit is sent in the same way as the Son is sent. In John’s gospel, the Spirit is “Another Christ”. Paul picks up on this, as we have seen in recent weeks, when he insists that anyone who has the Spirit belongs to Christ because the Spirit is the Spirit of Christ (as well as the Spirit of God). In John’s gospel, the role of the Spirit is to “lead the disciples into all truth” (14:26, 15:26). Jesus makes the Father known to them. He does so as the Word made flesh– the one who has come from the bosom of the Father (1:18). As such, the disciples can trust absolutely what they know of God through Jesus. To see Jesus is as good as seeing the Father.

That is why the disciples preach Jesus! Jesus came (in John’s gospel) to make the Father known. However, he was rejected and crucified. The rejection of Jesus was also the rejection of the God whom he called Father. Yet God does not allow the crucifixion to stand as the last word. Unknown to those crucifying him, Jesus is the Lamb of God, whose death takes away the sin of the world (John 1: 29). This means that the disciples preach Jesus. They don’t just repeat his message: now they have a further story to tell – the story of God walking among us in Jesus and saving us though his death and resurrection. They can tell this story because it is God’s story! The Jesus story is not simply the story of God acting through a man: it is the story of God as a man! Jesus is the act of God.

“Three on one” therefore insists that we have first and always to speak about God in terms of relationality. To be God is to be in relationship. The relationship between God and the world flows out of the relationship of love that exists between Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It means that Jesus is not just a man of God, but God as a man! And if Jesus shows us not only what God is like, but what it means to be human, then we come to understand that to be truly, fully and freely human – to have “Life in all its abundance” – is to be related in love to God and to one another.

The Spirit of Resurrection and Adoption: being drawn into the life of the Triune God (Romans 8: 12-17)
Jesus (particularly in John’s gospel) comes to reveal the Father. This revelation is not “facts about God”: it is to draw us into the very Life of God, so that we become in reality what we are intended to be through creation – children of the Living God. The risen Jesus does this through the Spirit.

The primary role of the Spirit in Romans 8 is resurrection. This is the Spirit of Life who liberates us from death (8:2). To have the Spirit dwelling in us is to belong to Christ (8:9). We saw this last week. The Spirit is the Spirit of Christ. Yet look at 8:10, and what Paul says: he has just finished explaining that if the Spirit of Christ indwells us, we belong to Christ. Then he says, “But if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness”. Note that, in Paul’s, eyes, having the Spirit is the same thing as having Christ. This is not because Jesus and the Spirit are the same. They are distinct persons. Rather, it is the Spirit of resurrection who raised Jesus from the dead and now dwells in us, so that we undergo death to the old life and resurrection to the new. What happened to Jesus at Easter happens to us through faith in Christ: we immediately pass through death and resurrection, so that we are already on the other side of our own death! That is why Paul can talk as he does about there being no more condemnation for those of us in Christ Jesus (which is how he has begun the chapter and concludes it in vv31ff).

But this means that the Spirit is also the Spirit of Adoption. Not only are we raised from the dead, as Jesus was, but we are drawn into Jesus’ life as child of the God whom he addresses as Father (v15). Isn’t it curious how much time and energy we often spend worrying about what will happen to us when we die? It’s as though the answer to that question has yet to be settled – when Paul goes to extraordinary lengths to explain that it has already been answered! The only person whose death was open to question in this way was Jesus himself – and God raised him through the Spirit! Now we who have the Spirit have Christ. We have already died with him and been raised with him – and we shall be glorified with him. That is already settled. We have been incorporated into the life of the Triune God! That is what “Life in all its abundance” means! We are incorporated into God’s family life. That is why one of the most ancient formulas of salvation was, “He (Jesus) became a man, that we might become divine”. And that is exactly right! How about that for a message for Trinity Sunday, eh? We share in the life of God!

The Oneness of God: Love and worship
I have suggested that the Trinitarian formula of “One God in Three Persons” is made necessary because of salvation. We encounter God in three Persons – Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And yet Judaeo-Christian faith has always insisted that God is One. There is only One who is worthy of worship, and that is God. There cannot be more than one God, because that could be potentially conflictual! What if one God wanted one thing and another God another? Where would we poor humans be? How would we decide what to do? We have already seen that we talk about Three Persons as a way of expressing the unity of will between Father, Son and Spirit – the unity of love. This unity of will and purpose means that we have to do with three Persons, not three gods! The statement “God so loved the world …” is an expression of the love of the divine family for the world. We cannot preach or believe as though there is a difference in attitude towards the world among the three Persons – particularly between Father and Son.

I remember hearing a sermon by Rowan Williams in which he said – almost as an aside – that “We must not preach the cross as though there is a difference of attitude between Father and Son”. Suddenly, all the unease I had felt about the gospel as I had heard it preached came into focus. I had heard it as, “God is holy and we are very sinful. God is angry with our sin. By rights, God should judge us. Yet the sinless Jesus gave his life for us voluntarily. Jesus took the punishment from God that was ours by right, so that, if we have accepted Christ as our personal saviour, God looks at us and sees the righteous Jesus and accepts us”. There was a sense there – no matter how often and forcefully I heard John 3:16 quoted – that the Father is basically itching to let fly with some thunderbolts, but Jesus (who is the “nice guy” in the godhead) deflects all that anger on to himself, so that God’s thirst for judgement is satisfied and we’re okay. Now I know that that’s to caricature things – but actually, it is to do so only slightly and far less so than we fondly imagine we are doing! Grace is as much the Father’s idea as the Son’s! There isn’t a “playing off” of holiness against mercy within the godhead. We are loved by God – Father, Son and Spirit – with the same saving love. And our response to that grace ought to be love: to love God with heart, soul, mind and strength.

Love issues in worship. What set earliest Christianity apart from other messianic Jewish sects was the insistence that it was appropriate to worship Jesus. Now, if worship belongs only to God, then this was a very serious error … unless Jesus is as divine as the Father. That is what John tries tirelessly to tell us in his gospel. His is the story of Jesus that is constantly presenting us with the divinity of Jesus and the outrage that it caused. Jesus’ claim to divinity in John’s gospel is unequivocal: “Before Abraham was, I AM!” It is in John’s gospel that Thomas confesses Jesus as “My Lord and my God”. This is the faith of the Church. But it is not about playing metaphysical games, or rehearsing ancient controversies. It is saying something fundamental to everything we are and do as churches: we love Jesus and worship him as God. So Trinity Sunday ought to be the Sunday when we worship as on no other day! It’s a day for renewing our love and celebrating God’s story in worship.

God with us – the foundation of Word and Sacrament (Isaiah 6: 1-5/Psalm 29)
Poor old Isaiah! He’s in real trouble – and he knows it! He’s in the temple, and he sees the Lord, glorious and lifted up. That is not good news! He knows he is in mortal danger. To see Yahweh is to die, because Yahweh’s majesty and holiness is awful. Yahweh’s voice can smash mighty cedar trees, uproot cities, flash forth flames of fire, shake the wilderness, send huge oak tress skittering and strip the forest of its leaves (Psalm 29: 5-9). Yahweh is no tame god! So Isaiah’s first response is “Woe is me! I am lost!” (Isaiah 6: 5). That’s a very polite version of what he’s effectively saying!

Isaiah 6 and Psalm 29 belong to a venerable tradition of the threat of Yahweh’s presence. Yahweh has no business being on earth – it’s far too dangerous for human beings. It’s dangerous for two reasons. The first one is moral: Yahweh is holy, and we are not. Yahweh’s holiness is a “consuming fire”. The second reason is one that is less dominant in the Bible but strong in the classical Greek tradition: God is God and Spirit; we are creatures and mortal. That which is spirit has no place among the earthly. In fact, the aim of human living is to discover how to flee the earthly into the realm of the spirit.

Here in Isaiah 6 we have a moment of the same sort of grace that we will see in spades in the Incarnation: God’s presence doesn’t destroy, but cleanses, liberates and commissions. That Jesus is God incarnate is an affirmation that God is not the sort of god who cannot be present on earth. Nor is God restricted to the sterile environment of the Holy of Holies. In Jesus, God enters into the depth of human darkness and living. Neither the fact that God is creator nor God’s holiness can keep God out! The grace of love is too passionate – too driving a force. It is transgressive. It bursts through the boundaries of purity and divinity with startling, life-giving energy and power. It is a astounding because it is entirely inappropriate! We look around, and suddenly discover, in Jesus, that God is among us!

And isn’t this precisely what we mean by Word and Sacrament? “Sacrament” means that God can be present in created stuff. God can be present in bread and wine and water because God was present in a human being – Jesus! And because it is God’s incarnate presence in Jesus that is foundational, we know that God’s presence is a good thing! It is liberating, cleansing, forgiving and saving. It is grace, not judgement and destruction! It means that this world is a place where we can and do expect to encounter God.

Astonishingly, it also means that this world is the place where things happen to God! Now that is totally outside the rule book on How to be God! Things don’t happen to God. But things happen to the Triune God who walks among us in Jesus Christ! God took suffering and death into God’s self. In Jesus, God embraced human history. And as a result, God continues to be among us, present not only in Word and Sacrament, but in people and relationships. We meet God “in many a guise”. And we do to God in Jesus Christ. When we give a cup of cold water to someone who is thirsty, we do it to Jesus. And when we do anything to the very least of our world, we do it to Jesus. When we are agents of grace (we children of God), people encounter God in and through us.

God’s mission and our mission (Isaiah 6: 6-8)
Isaiah is not consumed by the fire; he is cleansed by it. And the cleansed and renewed prophet is faced with Yahweh’s question: “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” God is a missionary God. The earliest theological use of “mission” (meaning “sent”) referred not to sending missionaries, but to the sending of the Son by the Father and the sending of the Spirit by the Father (and the Son, depending on where you lived!). Mission is God’s idea, and God’s project. To be drawn into the life of the Triune God is to be drawn into God’s saving project of transforming the world into the kingdom. To be “ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven” is not only to “sing God’s praise” but to live it out in involvement in the world.

What makes out involvement particularly special? After all, there are many other groups and people who are involved in transforming the world – often with more commitment and to greater effect! That is perfectly true, and it means, for a start, that Christians ought to be far more generous about recognising allies and fellow-workers, regardless of what faith (or none) they profess. According to the parable of the sheep and the goats, we ought to recognise them as brothers and sisters, because what we do is as significant as what we say. In other words, the disturbing challenge of mission is that it blurs our neatly-drawn boundaries of who’s in and who’s out. It means that Christians who oppose the transformation of unjust structures (in Palestine, for example) are enemies of the kingdom, opposed to God’s salvation, while humanists and communists who deride any faith in Jesus but who do his will are worshipping the Triune God!

What is Christianly distinctive about our involvement, though? It is because it is done in the name of the Son and in the power of the Spirit. That is not playing games with doctrinal formulations. All I have been saying implies that it means that our involvement in the world, its people and its transformation can never be separated from our faith in the missionary God we discover in

Jesus and through the Spirit. Being translated, that means we cannot extract our actions, activities, the deployment of our resources, our priorities and decisions from the gospel story of God in Jesus. Mission and Christian faith and proclamation go hand in hand – because mission is the making a reality of the Good News of what God has done in Jesus Christ to save this world.

That means that we might be no more effective than others (although we believe that God is able to take a mustard seed and grow a mighty tree from it, so that the effects of what we do can be totally disproportionate to their size). We might be less effective than other groups who may, for example, have a far better grasp on how structures work than we do. The point is, though, that we believe and proclaim that the transformation of the world into the place where peace and righteousness kiss is more than a human project. It is God’s project. The transformed world discloses the gracious God who walks among us in Jesus and is present in and with us through the Holy Spirit. This is the God who yearns to draw us into the divine Life itself. We cannot but continually set out the clear invitation: come and find Life! Come and love and worship the living God – Father, Son and Holy Spirit, to whom be glory in the world and in the Church forever!

Amen.