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Today, on Mothering Sunday, we celebrate our Mother Church and all those (related and unrelated, male and female) who nurture and care in our lives and in our world.
We hear again the story of the infant Moses from Exodus 2:1-10 and the community of individuals of different faiths and ethnicities who came together to keep him safe and raise him. In it, Pharaoh’s daughter names him Moses (which comes from the Hebrew verb Moshah to draw or pull out of water) “because, she said, I drew him from the water”. When Moses was drawn from the water, he was given a new life just as we are when we emerge from the waters of baptism. Just as Moses is given a new family, we too are part of a much wider family because of our baptism, a family, like Moses’, which is made up of people who are like us and people who are not. We are called to care for them, protect them and nurture them, to be mothers to one another. Pharoah’s daughter was taking a risk when she protected Moses, by law she could have been put to death. In Luke 2:33-35, Jesus has just been recognised by Simeon as one who will care for not only his own people but all people, Simeon knows that this will come at a cost. Our readings remind us of our baptismal calling, asking us to become a community of mothers who take the risk of extending love and protection to all those God sends to us.
If you attend the Church regularly, you might like to be on our electoral roll.
The Electoral Roll is a list of the members of the Church. If you are on the Electoral Roll, you can vote at the annual parochial church meeting (APCM).
Why, Isaiah 55:1-9 asks, do we spend our time, energy and resources on “that which does not satisfy” whilst refusing the gifts God offers freely? The answer has something to do with why Jesus’ contemporaries thought that those who suffer misfortune were worse sinners than those who escaped misfortune: we think that we are responsible for good gifts we enjoy, we think that we have earned them. Jesus and Isaiah are each try to change the way we see both ourselves and those who are in need. We are all in need of God. None of us can succeed by our own efforts alone. We are the same. All of us are vulnerable. And if all of us are vulnerable, how should we act towards those in need? In Luke 13:1-9, Jesus, having castigated those who think people bring trouble upon themselves, tells a parable of the man who wants to cut down his fig tree because it is not bearing fruit, it is not paying him back for the efforts expended on it: the feeding, watering and tending. But the gardener asks that, instead, the fig tree be given even more time and even more care. Jesus is inviting us to stop seeing the world in transactional terms but instead to view life in relational terms. When we are aware that we too are needy we are more likely to show empathy for others in need. If our eyes are opened to see that there is no distinction between the fortunate and the unfortunate perhaps we will be more committed to building a world in which the needy are responded to with the abundant compassion and generosity of the gardener.
Our first reading, Genesis 15:1-18, recounts God making a covenant with Abram. Covenants were usually two-way affairs, binding both parties. This acknowledged by them each passing between divided carcasses, symbol of the dangers of division. In this instance, only God is bound. Promising that God will remain faithful even when humanity fails. It is trust in this promise that gives Jesus the courage, in Luke 13:31-35, to continue on his way to Jerusalem despite the dangers that await him. He is given the opportunity to flee, to act in his own self-interest, but refuses. He understands that standing up to power has consequences but so does appeasing power, it will lead to his people being scattered like the chicks who refuse to be gathered together by their mother hen.
We are currently witnessing something similar play out on the international stage. In the face of threats (to impose tariffs, end military assistance, cut aid) governments around the world face the choice of putting their own interests first, protecting their own backs, or standing in solidarity with the weakest and most vulnerable. Our decisions may not be so far reaching and yet we all make choices that result in affirming or denying our solidarity with one another and with those most in need. We too can be agents of gathering or scattering. We cannot always trust those with power to use it for the good of all. We need to trust that God’s power is manifest always in gathering and never in dividing.
On the first Sunday of Lent our readings reflect on the importance of the wilderness, a place of uncertainty, where we are not in control and can no longer rely on our own strength. It is in the wilderness that we learn to trust in God and are formed into the people he made us to be. In Deuteronomy 26:1-11, the people of God have left the wilderness but are reminded of its lessons: that they are made by God, that their flourishing depends, not on their own hard work, but on God’s grace and that they are to share their blessings with others. Like his people before him, Jesus heads into the wilderness in Luke 4:1-13. Here the voice of Satan tempts him, encouraging him to be a Messiah who can feed the people, perform miracles, gain power and authority. Jesus resists these expectations by his commitment to listen only to God. We too are tempted by many voices, society, culture, family and friends all have expectations of who we should be but only God can tell us who we are. When we have lost our way, when we feel unsure of ourselves, God is inviting us to listen so that we can be formed and shaped back into the person God made us to be.
On Sunday 9th March at 6.30pm in church, our monthly choral Evensong service. During Lent Churches Together in Clapham worship together in the evening so we shall be welcoming our sister churches and Rev Kit Gunasekera from St James’ will be preaching. All welcome.
In Lent we keep Jesus company as he journeys towards the end of his earthly ministry. Today, the last Sunday before Lent, we are reminded of the start of that ministry. The voice of God, heard by the disciples in Luke 9:28-43a, tells them that he is God’s son just as the voice of God spoke at his baptism claiming him as his own beloved child. Jesus appears transfigured, transformed, somehow different to the everyday Jesus they knew. The voice tells them to listen to him, to pay attention.
By the time they return to the bottom of the mountain, the blinding light and the divine voice are gone and Jesus is the same Jesus he always was. Here we encounter another parent and another son. This son is sick and, because he is beloved, his father begs Jesus to pay attention to him and Jesus does. The love with which God claims Jesus as his own enables Jesus to claim this child too, as loved, as worthy of value and attention. It is this divine love which heals and makes whole.
The voice of God is there at our baptism too claiming us as beloved, chosen, worthy. This love will, if we allow it, transfigure us, give us the capacity to be filled with the power of God; a power to perceive others as chosen, special, worthy of attention. We, like Christ, are children made by God’s love to be a channel of that love to a world in need of transfiguration.
Joseph, however can afford to be forgiving because it has all turned out well for him. But what of those enslaved under Roman occupation, whose oppressors show no remorse and to whom Jesus preaches the power of love and forgiveness in Luke 6:27-38?
Jesus is right that it is costly to love your enemy and yet he presents this not an act of submission or weakness but a sign of strength. He offers it as a way of rejecting and subverting the power of the mighty; a way of demonstrating to those with power a different way to live.
Under Roman law, a master was permitted to strike his slave on one cheek but not on both. By asking his listeners to offer the other cheek Jesus is recommending a kind of civil disobedience which challenges the right of the master. It was lawful for a Roman citizen to force a non-citizen to carry his belongings for a mile, but no more, walking the extra mile, as Jesus urged, would compel the Roman to break his own law. In effect, Christ is saying that when our opponents go low, we need to go high. Forgiveness is not a call to put up with bad behaviour, it is a call to model a different, better way of living.
This morning’s readings explore the power of forgiveness. In Genesis 45:3-11, 15, Joseph’s brothers “could not answer him, so dismayed were they at his presence,”). They are filled with shame, as well they might be, having beaten him, left him for dead and allowed him to be trafficked into slavery. Yet Joseph shows only mercy and kindness, begging them not to feel bad, promising them land and livelihoods, “for it was not you who sent me here, but God.”
Joseph, however can afford to be forgiving because it has all turned out well for him. But what of those enslaved under Roman occupation, whose oppressors show no remorse and to whom Jesus preaches the power of love and forgiveness in Luke 6:27-38?
Jesus is right that it is costly to love your enemy and yet he presents this not an act of submission or weakness but a sign of strength. He offers it as a way of rejecting and subverting the power of the mighty; a way of demonstrating to those with power a different way to live.
Under Roman law, a master was permitted to strike his slave on one cheek but not on both. By asking his listeners to offer the other cheek Jesus is recommending a kind of civil disobedience which challenges the right of the master. It was lawful for a Roman citizen to force a non-citizen to carry his belongings for a mile, but no more, walking the extra mile, as Jesus urged, would compel the Roman to break his own law. In effect, Christ is saying that when our opponents go low, we need to go high. Forgiveness is not a call to put up with bad behaviour, it is a call to model a different, better way of living.
Life isn’t fair. But is God fair? Jeremiah thinks so, he tells us, in Jeremiah 17:510, “I the Lord test the mind and search the heart, to give to all according to their ways, according to the fruit of their doings.” This belief underlies a persistent idea that people get what they deserve: that those who are healthy and prosperous must be doing something right and those who are not must be at fault in some way.
Jesus refutes this idea, in Luke 6:17-26, when he refers to the poor, the hungry and the despised as “blessed” and those who rich, full and joyful as “woeful”. In the beatitudes Jesus separates success from virtue. The poor are no longer blamed or shamed for their predicament. More than this, for Jesus, blessing is something transformational: the hungry will be blessed “for they will be filled” and those who weep “for they will laugh”. When God first chose a people to bless it was in order that they might be a blessing.
At times, we are the ones who are empty and grieving and in need of blessing and sometimes we are the ones who have blessings to share. Whatever our situation, we are to understand that no blessing is earned; that all blessings are a gift from God; and we are only blessed in order to be a blessing to others.