A Brief Sermon For Easter Day

John 20:1-18
I want to begin with one of my all-time favourite stories for Easter Day.

There once was a man who was convinced he was dead. He told his wife he was dead. He informed his work colleagues he was dead. He said to his friends, “I’m dead, you know.” He told the neighbours he was dead.

Everyone became concerned about him, and his friends and family arranged for him to see a psychiatrist. The man agreed, and at their first session the psychiatrist showed the man all sorts of learned medical literature which proved that dead men don’t bleed.

Eventually, having read book after journal after book, the man agreed. “All right, I believe you,” he said, “Dead men don’t bleed.”

At this point the psychiatrist suddenly took a lancet and jabbed the man in the arm. Watching with horror as blood spurted from him, the man gasped, “Good Lord! Dead men do bleed after all!”

Such is the problem with people who will not let the evidence change their minds. Yet that is one of the charges that many of the militant ‘New Atheists’ level at people of faith. In the case of some Christians, it is sadly true.

But the Christian faith is founded on an incident where people of faith did change their minds due to the evidence. That incident is the Resurrection.

It’s not unusual to hear that it must have just been gullible ancient people who came to believe in the nonsense of Jesus coming back from the dead. They talk about myths of gods coming back to life, and assume that’s what the Christian belief in the Resurrection was – desperate and distraught disciples lifted these myths and applied them to Jesus.

But that couldn’t be more wrong. The first witnesses of the Resurrection were all Jews. There is very little about life after death of any kind in their Scriptures, what we call the Old Testament. The only solid text is in Daniel chapter 12, and Daniel is a book that only found its final form in the mid-second century BC. Any kind of belief in resurrection was relatively recent in Judaism, and even then not all Jews believed in it (the Sadducees didn’t) and those who did believe in resurrection only thought it would happen at the end of time, when God judged the world. Not a single one of Jesus’ followers would have been expecting a resurrection in the middle of history.
We get a feeling for this in our reading this morning. Mary Magdalene’s first reaction is to say to Simon Peter and the disciple Jesus loved, ‘They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him!’ (verse 2) An empty tomb doesn’t mean resurrection to her. When Simon Peter and the other disciple run to the tomb, the other disciple does believe (verse 8) but immediately after that John says, ‘They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead’ (verse 9). When Mary does encounter the risen Jesus, she thinks he is the gardener (verse 15). These people may not think scientifically in the way that many people today do, but they are not gullible idiots who will either fall for any old nonsense or who will invent an account to support a set of lies. Why? Because they don’t believe in resurrection in the middle of history.

Something changes them. They have to change their beliefs – and they do so because they become convinced that they have met the risen Jesus. Nobody, friend or foe, doubted that Jesus died. Roman soldiers were expert executioners and knew they would suffer the death penalty if they failed to ensure that the prisoners entrusted to them died. Therefore Jesus could not have merely resuscitated in the tomb. If the tomb was empty and Jesus’ body were elsewhere, an opponent of the Jesus movement could soon have produced the body. The resurrection appearances are not easily explained as hallucinations, since hallucinations are usually solitary and several of the resurrection appearances are to groups. Furthermore, there is a sense of expectation about hallucinations, and as I’ve already said, they weren’t expecting it. And if this were a concocted story, it’s an odd decision to make women major witnesses in a culture where women were not allowed to give evidence.

So in fact here is a group of religious people who find that the evidence does make them change their minds. And that evidence is the Resurrection of Jesus.

The Resurrection makes us change our minds in all sorts of ways. ……

We change our minds about hope, because now we have a sign that death is not the end.

We change our minds about the present, because that hope of God renewing all things makes it worth us working for goodness, love and justice now. Indeed, it’s the best reason. Richard Dawkins says that the universe reflects exactly what you would expect if there is no Creator – he says it reflects a sense of ‘pitiless indifference’. Can you live by pitiless indifference? The Resurrection says no, there is meaning and purpose in this world and it’s worth working to change things for the better.

We change our minds about the way we live, because the Resurrection shows us God’s future. It makes sense to align ourselves with that. We have a word for that particular change of mind. There is a Bible word for a change of mind that leads to us living differently. It’s the word ‘repentance’. The risen Jesus calls us to think again about the way we live our lives.

But – what we have here that leads to our change of mind is this. We have evidence, not proof. We have the best explanation for what happened, and with it the best explanation for life. What we don’t have is watertight proof. Nobody has that, whatever their view of life. We have evidence, rather than proof, because God shows us enough on which we can trust him. If he gave us outright proof, there would be no room for proof and no sense of relationship with God.

This Easter, then, let’s consider the possibility that there is enough evidence to lead to a change of mind in every part of our lives and a relationship of trust with God through Jesus.

1

Silence And Darkness

The last of the Tenebrae candles is extinguished, as I suffocate its fire with the snuffer. Peter has denied Jesus. The congregation sits in near-perfect darkness, observing the silence they read about in their orders of service before the light of the final candle died. I have a little assistance as I oversee the service: I have brought the reading light I bought for my Kindle and attached it to the lectern. Together, we enter the dark silence of God. Or should that be the silent darkness of God? Perhaps it is both.

I resurrect the candle flame, and we are to continue sitting in silence. However, the presence of light makes that silence more difficult. People shuffle. I become more aware of the cramp in my toes, and wish I could take my shoe off to put my foot on the cold stone floor. “Could you not wait?” said Jesus.

We leave in silence. The clearing-up is done in a quiet not usually experienced.

This morning, we gather at Holy Trinity church to begin our silent walk of witness to St Hugh’s for our united service. On a cool, bright morning we prepare to remember darkness. As we pass by the Chinese takeaway, the children of the owners are sitting in the window, munching prawn crackers and watching us with innocent puzzlement. Our cross is large, and only tall, strong men are able to carry it. We walk in silence, surely in contrast to the crowds who witnessed Jesus carrying his cross beam. It was a public holiday then, and it is today. But not for us the usual jollity. Instead, we are solemn.

The quiet, slow pace cannot continue for me, though, as I have no time to attend the united service in Knaphill. Instead, I walk home, unlock the car and drive to Addlestone for their united service. Before I engage clutch and gear lever, I check my mileage: it may be the holiest day of the year, but it is also the first day of a new tax year and I have to enter in my records how many miles I have driven in the last twelve months. Even on Good Friday, I am not in a bubble that insulates me from the usual world.

As Richard leads the service, we are invited to write on paper crosses those things we would like to bring to the foot of Christ’s Cross. While singing the Taizé chant ‘Jesus, remember me’, we do just that. I name some fears and feel some peace in placing them at the Cross.
Richard asks us to leave the service in silence. If we want to talk, we can do so over hot liquid caffeine in the vestibule. Except the silence is broken by an announcement that the teas and coffees must be brought into the worship area, because outside the staff of the Addlestone Food Bank are preparing to serve those in need. Noise and chatter, yes, and no silence – but it seems like a fitting response to the ministry of the Cross, as does my conversation with a colleague from another church about the hosting of an Alpha course.

The rushing from Knaphill to Addlestone has seemed so inappropriate for reflection. It is only now I have got back that I can home in on the value of the silence and the darkness. Today and tomorrow, as I remember Jesus lying in the tomb, I can prepare for a different kind of rushing on Sunday. In three morning services, I shall be facilitating joy. I have to link the two. Today is not merely about despair, and Easter Day is more than the happy ending. They belong together. The silence and darkness of betrayal and death, with the noise and light of an empty tomb.

3

Samantha Brick And True Beauty


Samantha Brick’s article in the Daily Mail two days ago in which she bemoans the disadvantages of beauty has caused a (social) media firestorm. The Telegraph reports that some of the criticism seems more nasty than the narcissism of the original piece. In The Guardian, a male journalist has parodied it. In The Independent, a female journalist has defended Ms Brick. All the reaction seems to be in the ‘quality press’ – is this such a deep and important article?

I’m not going to enter into whether I think Ms Brick is beautiful. It only matters that her husband thinks she is. There are worse things to suffer in this world than jealousy for good looks. And in my case, I have a lovely wife and the most beautiful daughter. All I will say is that I find this a particularly sad debate to have in Holy Week of all weeks. My mind has gone to the final Servant Song in the book of Isaiah, one which Christians have traditionally seen as a prophecy of Jesus and his passion. These verses seem apposite:

Just as there were many who were astonished at him
—so marred was his appearance, beyond human semblance,
and his form beyond that of mortals—
so he shall startle many nations;
kings shall shut their mouths because of him
(Isaiah 52:14-15a)

he had no form or majesty that we should look at him,
nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
He was despised and rejected by others;
a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity;
and as one from whom others hide their faces
he was despised, and we held him of no account.
(Isaiah 53:2b-3)

Does that put all this palaver about beauty into context?

0

Lent, Holy Week And (Heading For) Easter

Last week, I was asked to give an extended talk to a midweek group on this theme. This is the text I had before me when I gave the talk.

I have a series of questions for you this afternoon. Here are the first two. Can you eat chocolate in Lent? And if so, when?
To answer these vital questions, I bring you to another question: how many days are there in Lent? If you answered ‘forty’, then I invite you to count the number of days from Ash Wednesday to Easter Day (for Easter Day is when Lent ends). The answer you will come to is ‘forty-seven’.
So what happened to the so-called forty days of Lent? Well, they are still there if you exclude the Sundays. And that’s the clue to my initial question about eating chocolate in Lent. Sundays were never regarded as fast days. They were still feast days. Hence, if you have given up chocolate for Lent, you can still eat it on Sundays.
I think this illustrates the muddle we get into about Lent. We utterly confuse the beginning and the end of Jesus’ public ministry. The forty days of fasting make us think that it commemorates Jesus’ time of testing in the wilderness immediately after his baptism. But the way that time ticks down near the end, with Passion Sunday two weeks before Easter and Palm Sunday a week before, makes us think instead about the end of Jesus’ public ministry. Which is correct?
The answer is that Lent is connected to Easter. In the early Church, baptismal candidates would be baptised on Easter Day, and Lent was their season of preparation. It was similar for those who wanted to be readmitted to the life of the Church after excommunication. Both groups needed a period of reflection and repentance. Eventually, however, the Church came to see that a season of reflection and repentance would be good for everyone. No Christians are exempt from the need to examine themselves before God, and giving over a particular time of the year for everyone seemed to be a good idea. It doesn’t change the fact that this is something we need to do all year round, it’s just that sometimes dedicating a specific time to this underlines it. Similarly, every Sunday is a celebration of the Resurrection – that’s why we worship on a Sunday and not on Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath – but we still give particular stress to the Resurrection itself on Easter Day and in the Easter season that follows.
This, then, is why we give things up for Lent – not to mimic Jesus’ fasting in the wilderness but for another reason. Fasting is the giving up of something good for a season in order to dedicate that time especially to God. If we give up something in Lent, it is for this self-examination in the power of the Holy Spirit. Churches may try to reflect this in the tone of their Lenten worship. Liturgical churches will omit the Gloria in Excelsis during this time, they will have no flowers in the sanctuary and they will avoid hymns that include the word ‘Alleluia’. How this sits with the idea that Sunday is still a feast day, I have never been sure. It also requires a tricky navigation in order to reflect a sense of discipline but not of dreariness. At its best it provides a suitable contrast for what is to come on Easter Day, although when we get to thinking about Good Friday in a few minutes, I shall want to pose some questions about how we regard the darkness of that day.
But let us now move onto Holy Week, which we begin on Palm Sunday. I cannot think of Palm Sunday without remembering a neighbouring Anglican church which always brought a donkey into worship on that day. The reason I cannot forget – and was not allowed to forget while I was there – is that the donkey had a name. He was … Dave the Donkey. You can imagine the comments.
Traditionally, we see the Triumphal Entry as the beginning of the week which led to Jesus’ death, and this has been held in the Church since the fourth century AD. However, there is no certainty in Mark’s Gospel, the first Gospel to be written, that Mark understood Palm Sunday to begin that week. It comes in chapter 11 of his account, but he doesn’t mention the Passover until chapter 14. Nevertheless, it is fitting in that the way Jesus enters Jerusalem on a donkey ramps up the tension between him, the religious leaders and the power of Rome. In his recent book ‘Simply Jesus’, Tom Wright calls the clashing of these three powers ‘The Perfect Storm’, and that is what we are about to face in Holy Week. We can have all the fun we like, waving palm branches and singing ‘Hosanna’, but the reality is that the conflict is being ramped up, and the subtext of Palm Sunday is that this is going to end badly for someone. Blood will be spilt. It happens that because we know the rest of the story, we know whose blood it will be. But if you were in that crowd when Jesus rode in on the donkey, you probably wouldn’t have seen that, just as his disciples couldn’t understand his repeated prophecies that he would be betrayed, suffer, die – and be raised from the dead.
But let us move on from Palm Sunday, without immediately doing what many Christians do, which is jump over several days. If we’re lucky, we’ll only jump to Maundy Thursday with the Last Supper and the washing of feet. Some will at least jump to Good Friday. Many, though, take leave of absence until Easter Day itself, missing out the unpleasant, gory parts of the story. It’s why in the Lent Course this year we’ve tried to reflect on some of the incidents while Jesus was in Jerusalem during that final week, as the tension increased.
It’s common in more Catholic circles to take a particular journey with Jesus leading up to the Cross, a journey you will have heard of – and perhaps experienced – called The Stations of the Cross. Some churches have icons depicting the story, as did an ecumenical church I served in Chelmsford. Some dramatise it – my first experience of the Stations was to walk around the streets of the City of London, seeing actors perform the story. As a crowd, we walked with the action. In one previous appointment, I joined with the local Anglican and Catholic clergy in each taking a meeting once a week in Holy Week to explore the Way of the Cross.
This, though, comes after Maundy Thursday, with its encircling darkness. You feel the discrepancy between Jesus and his disciples. They aren’t picking up all he has warned them about, so much so they are still arguing about status and greatness and looking forward to a good Passover meal. All the time, Jesus knows what is coming. The betrayal happens, you get those evocative words in John’s Gospel, ‘And it was night’, and the lights go out. We’ll be reflecting that here in our Maundy Thursday service when this year we follow the Tenebrae tradition. Candles will be extinguished, one by one, until finally all is dark.
At least, I keep calling it ‘Maundy Thursday’, but there is an argument for it being Tuesday. There are a couple of days missing from the sequence of the Gospels in Holy Week, and one possibility is this: could all the trials Jesus faced really have taken place in one night? It might also explain the problem with night-time trials, which were illegal.
But whether the trials drag over forty-eight hours or are compressed into one night, Jesus is arrested in Gethsemane after one of the most powerful scenes in the Gospels for showing how much he identifies with us. Not only does he identify with our sin at his baptism and on the Cross, we recognise his full humanity in the Garden as he wrestles in prayer with the suffering that is to come.
All that goes, though, and off he is taken to trials that are a mixture of stitch-up and political expediency. Pontius Pilate is in a weak position, politically. Although he has all the power of being the imperial power’s official representative, he had previously offended Jewish sensibilities about the Temple. The Jewish leaders had sent a delegation to Rome to complain about him, and now he knew that one further false step could lose him his job. So although at first he resists their requests, ultimately he cannot deny their pressure. The loser, in human terms, is Jesus.
And now off he goes, on the Way of the Cross, the Via Dolorosa. Mel Gibson’s film, The Passion of the Christ, may have horrified many, but it did not spare any detail as to the true nature of first-century Roman floggings, torture and execution. Many prisoners died just from the flogging. But Jesus carries his cross beam, the visual sign to all who watch that he is a condemned man.
He is on his way. It is his great journey. It reminds us, amongst other things, that we have not ‘arrived’ spiritually. So often we talk about faith as if now we have found Jesus Christ we have arrived. But we haven’t. It’s like that wonderful U2 song ‘I still haven’t found what I’m looking for’, where Bono affirms his belief that Jesus died for his sins but still insists he hasn’t found what he’s looking for. Why? Because he’s still on the journey. He hasn’t come to the fullness of God’s kingdom yet.
And neither has Jesus. The climax will be the Cross. In the eyes of the world, he will be humiliated there. In his own estimation – and his Father’s – he will be enthroned there. When he is ‘lifted up’ he will draw all people to himself.
This is the wonder of the Christian faith. What the world considers shameful we say is glorious. Our Muslim friends have a big issue with the Cross. The Qur’an can be read as denying that Jesus died on the Cross, but that he was snatched away and someone else died there instead. They have a terrible problem with the idea that Jesus would have to endure this. Indeed, if he did die on the Cross it is for them one further strike against the idea of his divinity, because surely God would not be humbled and humiliated like that.
Yet the Christian says yes, that is precisely what happened, and that is the wonder of the Christian faith. Our Lord was even willing to taste the worst humiliation in identification with humanity at its basest in order to bring salvation. Our account of God is not about One who is remote from suffering and evil, it is about One who is deeply involved with blood-stained hands in fight against it.
All of which brings me to two contrasting stories. See what you think of these.
Story number one: I am in a vestry before a Good Friday service. The steward prays for me before the service. The whole tone of his prayer is about how Good Friday is the worst day of the year. He seems to miss the word ‘Good’.
Story number two: I am an enthusiastic young twenty-something Christian, and I am at the annual joint Free Churches Good Friday service in my home town. It is being held at the Baptist church, but my Methodist minister is speaking. He introduces a worship song that was popular at the time. It begins with the lines, ‘I get so excited, Lord, every time I realise I’m forgiven.’ The congregation sings it – like a dirge. Michael, my minister, berates the assembled throng for this. “Can’t you understand on Good Friday the joy of being forgiven through the Cross?” he asks.
How do you respond to those two stories? Had the church steward missed the heart of the Gospel? Was my minister belittling the sufferings of Jesus? Somehow we have a difficult tension to hold together on Good Friday – both the sorrow for our sins which took Jesus to the Cross, and yet joy that he was willing to do that for us. Like so much of life, we have to live with tension. It’s like the question of the tone you set for a funeral. Is it to grieve, or is it – as is more and more requested these days – a celebration of the deceased’s life? Grief or celebration? Actually, I think you need both at a funeral.
And the greatest tension – or paradox – is on the way at this point, the tension between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. Some major on one, but not on the other, yet we have to hold to both. One of the greatest theologians of the last fifty years, a German called Jürgen Moltmann, says we need to speak both of ‘The Resurrection of the Crucified One’ and ‘The Cross of the Risen One’.
But in terms of our own lives, we are awaiting our own empty tombs. We shall die and await the great resurrection of the dead. We live in that time between Good Friday and Easter Day. We live on that one day we so rarely mark in the Christian calendar, because we are too busy getting ready for Easter morning. We live in Holy Saturday. (Not Easter Saturday, by the way, because Easter only starts when the Resurrection has happened.) Holy Saturday is that time when Jesus is still in the tomb. That is where we spend a lot of our lives. Suffering is real. It takes its toll. Prayer seems unanswered, and God’s great deliverance has still not come. It’s quite appropriate that Holy Saturday this year is when one of our church member’s ashes will be buried in Bisley churchyard. She awaits her great deliverance, her resurrection after her suffering.
And so I won’t move on in this exposition of the season to talk too much about Easter itself. We’ll have plenty of opportunity here on Easter Day and in the succeeding weeks, when we are going to delve deeply into the meaning of the Resurrection. We’re going to close these reflections at Holy Saturday, because it is where many of us exist. Often we are in that cold tomb, with grave clothes wrapped tightly around us.
Pete Greig, the founder of the 24-7 Prayer movement, wrote a wonderful book about his experience of … unanswered prayer. While all the wonderful stories of answered prayer were happening as 24-7 prayer burgeoned around the world, his wife Sammie suffered a brain tumour. Greig puts his reflections on that experience in a book called ‘God On Mute’, and he shapes a spirituality around Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday and Easter Day. He has this to say about Holy Saturday:
No one really talks about Holy Saturday, yet if we stop and think about it, it’s where most of us live our lives. Holy Saturday is the no-man’s land between questions and answers, prayers uttered and miracles to come. It’s where we wait – with a peculiar mixture of faith and despair – whenever God is silent or life doesn’t make sense.
As we turn to explore the silence of God, we are compelled to address the problem of unanswered prayer more literally than we have done so far, examining the times when God simply doesn’t reply to us when we pray. It’s not that He’s saying ‘yes’, ‘no’ or ‘not yet’ to our prayers; it’s that He’s not saying anything at all. We pray and pray but God remains silent.
But … Sunday is coming. And we can eat chocolate.
5

Slow Down, You Move Too Fast

Gerard Kelly on the importance of slowing down for greater spiritual depth:

Vodpod videos no longer available.

Via the Inspire Network – originally here.

UPDATE: sorry, the video doesn’t seem to be working here. (Not sure what went wrong with Vodpod on this occasion.) I suggest you click the link above, watch the video on the Inspire Network site or here and then come back here to comment.

4

Mistaken Identity

Can I just say, please? This is not me.

There are several vital differences. He’s good looking. I’m not. I wear glasses. He doesn’t.

Most importantly, he can sing. I can’t. When church audio-visual teams fit me up with a radio microphone, my first question is whether they will fade me down during the hymns.

I write this, because I am starting to get Twitter followers who think I am this singer. They will be disappointed.
It’s not the first case of mistaken identity I’ve had. In my late teens, when I wore NHS glasses, I was once mistaken outside HMV’s Oxford Street store for Elvis Costello. In my mid-twenties, I visited an evangelical church, only for some of the  young adults there to think I was Clive Calver, then the general secretary of the Evangelical Alliance.

Like anyone, I have namesakes, and that seems to be the issue here. Believe those people are me, and I’ve had an interesting life. I was a member of Great Britain’s gold medal winning Olympic hockey team in 1984 and am now performance director for England Hockey. I was the lead singer of Aussie rock band the Hoodoo Gurus. I have been in politics, having led Newcastle City Council and head of highways for Flintshire County Council. I am a criminologist, which is ironic, given that I was also an American police officer, murdered in 1981. (Yes, I know that last one is ‘Daniel Faulkner’, but he seems to come high in Google if you search for my name. I’ve no idea why.)

Have you ever been mistaken for someone else? Are there any interesting stories out there?

2

Sermon For Palm Sunday: Where’s Wally?

I expect you’re familiar with the ‘Where’s Wally?’ pictures and illustrated books. You see a large, detailed picture containing hundreds of people and your task is to find Willy. Unless you are tuned in to what Wally looks like, or you have eagle eyes, it will take you quite a while to find him. Our dentist has a large ‘Where’s Wally?’ picture on the wall in her surgery to occupy the children.
Similarly, our children’s school recently had a Book Week and on the Friday invited children to dress up as their favourite book characters. So did the staff. The Head came dressed as Wally, and challenged the children to find him later in the day. It was a bit unfair: he hadn’t told them he would be changing back into his suit and going to a meeting elsewhere!
What does that have to do with Palm Sunday? It’s a story with a lot of hiddenness about it. We are so used to thinking that Jesus comes in on a donkey to demonstrate that he is the Messiah, fulfilling the prophecy of Zechariah. In particular, we point out that to come in riding an ass means that he was coming in peace, not in war. We think he is acclaimed as Messiah by the crowds as they sing, ‘Hosanna’.
But, but, but! We may know that Jesus fulfils Zechariah’s prophecy, but Mark doesn’t quote it. You need eyes to see. We may know that he was claiming to be king, but the Romans didn’t seem worried about this little demonstration. We may acclaim Jesus as Messiah, but when the crowds sang ‘Hosanna’ they didn’t quite go that far in what they said.
It’s all hidden. It only becomes apparent later. You need to know the rest of the story. You need to read the Scriptures in the light of Jesus. You need the help of the Holy Spirit. At the time, had you lived in Jerusalem and witnessed what we call ‘The Triumphal Entry’, you wouldn’t have guessed.
What, then, do we know that wasn’t apparent at the time?

Firstly, we see the Triumphal Entry as a sacred duty. On Palm Sunday, I always recall an Anglican church that was a neighbour to one previous Methodist church I served. Every Palm Sunday, they would always have a donkey in church. The reason I never forget this, is because the donkey had a name. Dave. Dave the Donkey appeared every year. For some reason, certain people made it their business to ensure I always knew about him.
And the donkey – laughing stock character as it is to some – is where we get the sense of sacredness and holiness on Palm Sunday. How so? Well, have you ever wondered why Mark goes to such detail to talk about the animal? Clearly it’s significant. Note Jesus’ specification: it is to be ‘a colt that has never been ridden’ (verse 2). This seems to reflect the Old Testament requirements that animals used for holy purposes had in every way to be unblemished. Jesus is making clear to his disciples his intention that the manner in which he will enter Jerusalem shows that this journey is a sacred duty.
The nature of Jesus’ entry as a holy task, a sacred duty, will not surprise you. But who in heaven and earth focusses on a donkey for such work?
Jesus, that’s who. A humble ass is the way he makes clear to those with eyes to see the nature of what he is doing. It’s part of that whole approach to life in our faith which deeply values the physical and the material. Archbishop William Temple said that Christianity is ‘the most avowedly materialist’ of all religions. That is a claim that sounds shocking to our ears when we have been taught that materialism is wrong. And if materialism means worshipping material things, then it is wrong.
But if materialism simply means valuing the material aspects of life, then we see that our faith is shot through with materialism. We believe in a Creator God. We believe in Jesus who took on human flesh, and whose lasting symbols are water, bread and wine. We believe in the resurrection of the dead – and that means bodily resurrection, there is no other kind. Our ethical beliefs touch on the most material and physical aspects of life – money, sex and so on.
Sometimes, though, we veer off this course. When someone dies we are prone to saying that their body was just a shell for the real person, but this is wrong. When we grieve a death, we are waiting for the day when that person will be raised to new life with a resurrection body animated by the Holy Spirit.
All of which is to say that when we look at Jesus’ use of the donkey for his purposes, let us dedicate the physical and material dimensions of our lives to his glory. Let us seek to use our physical bodies and material possessions in a holy way. When we take up the offering later in the service, let us remember that we are not simply raising enough subscriptions to keep an institution going, we are offering the physical to God in holy worship and service. We shall live out the meaning of the offertory prayer every day.
Secondly, let’s look at the use of the Scriptures in this story. There are a few things to put together here. One is what I mentioned at the beginning, namely that there are hints in this story that Jesus fulfils the prophecy of Zechariah about a messianic king coming to Jerusalem in peace. Another in the use of the donkey seems to reference at text in Genesis (49:11) which is part of Jacob’s blessing of his sons, but which was later taken as a messianic prophecy. Finally, we have the crowds singing ‘Hosanna’, and in doing so quoting one of the Psalms, and in particular one that was used by pilgrims coming to Jerusalem either for the Passover or the Feast of Tabernacles. It isn’t strictly a messianic psalm, but again Mark may want us to see the reference to ‘the coming kingdom of our ancestor David’ (verse 10) as a messianic hint.
What’s going on here, then? A common thread seems to be this: none of these texts – Zechariah, Genesis or the Psalms – gets limited to their original meaning. Often the way we are trained to approach the Scriptures today is to say that the primary question is to ask what meaning the original author intended. Or alternatively, we sit around in a Bible study fellowship group, asking, ‘What does this verse or passage mean for me?’
But Bible verses are not used in either of these ways in the Bible itself! Helpful as it is to have a foundation in the original meaning, the fact remains that the New Testament authors approached the scriptures they already had differently. And relevant as it may seem to ask, ‘What does this mean for me?’ that can degenerate into reading the Bible in a me-centred way.
No: the New Testament writers had a different question about the scriptures they inherited. I think it was this: what do the Scriptures mean in the light of Jesus? That’s why they sometimes come up with some surprising applications of Old Testament passages. At heart, it’s the old slogan that ‘history is his story’. Life has meaning in the light of Jesus Christ, and so we interpret everything in the light of him. That includes our supreme written testimony to him, the books of the Bible.
Now you can take this to ridiculous extremes. You probably know the story of the preacher giving a children’s address and who asks the question, ‘What is grey, furry, with a tail and climbs trees?’ A little girl nervously raises her hand and says, ‘I know the answer should be Jesus but it sounds like a squirrel to me.’
In other words, I do not mean that we look for all sorts of doubtful interpretations in the most obscure of Bible verses, but I do mean that the overall thrust of the Bible in all its diversity and difference is to point to Jesus Christ.
There is still a place for those of us who can offer something by delving into the original meaning of the Scriptures. It gives us a base from which to work. But we are not limited to what the original authors meant, because what we are called to do is see that the biblical books have what some people call ‘a direction of travel’ – they point to Jesus. And that means we can all with the help of the Holy Spirit profitably read and discuss the sacred writings with a view to drawing nearer to Christ and following him more closely.
Thirdly and finally, let us see worship with new eyes here. For this I want to concentrate on the shouts of the crowd:
Hosanna!
Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!
Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David!
Hosanna in the highest heaven!
(Verses 9b-10)
There is a lot conflated here. Take the word ‘Hosanna’. We perhaps think of it as a word of praise, rather like ‘Hallelujah’. It did turn into that, but it began as a cry of ‘Save us’ and then became praise or an acclamation for a revered figure, such as a rabbi. In with all that you have the longing for the kingdom, and it could be either a restoration of David’s throne that is desired or a passion for final redemption. Somewhere in these words, then, you potentially have a number of elements of worship mixed up: praise, intercession and declarations of allegiance.
Again, the natural meaning at the time for the crowd would have been perhaps to honour Jesus as a great teacher and to pray that God might bring deliverance (of a political variety) through him as he rode into Jerusalem. Nevertheless, it couldn’t have been terribly militant, or – as I said in the introduction – the Romans would have taken more of an interest.
But for Christians, we see these hopes transformed and magnified in what we have come to know about Jesus. He is more than a rabbi; he will bring a salvation of a kind nobody could have imagined; he is bringing in a kingdom altogether vaster and more comprehensive in scope than previously dreamed.
And this Jesus – the king who would be enthroned on the Cross – is worthy of worship. This Jesus – who does more than merely meet our own aspirations but ushers in a universal kingdom where all will be put right – is worthy of worship. This Jesus – so much more than a rabbi – is worthy of worship.
When the crowds shout their well-meaning hosannas, the Christian sees with new eyes the allegiance of which Jesus is worthy. When the crowds seek salvation, the Christian sees the salvation to come. When the crowds shout in anticipation of the kingdom, the Christian sees the call to pray and work for that kingdom, to the glory of Jesus Christ the Lord.
The worship we offer on Palm Sunday, then, is more than some hymns, prayers, readings and reflections. If Christians have eyes to see Jesus through Palm Sunday, worship will be an expression of commitment and devotion. It will be an oath of allegiance, a renewal of vows. After all, every part of life – past, present and future – has meaning in the light of him. And therefore in our worship we dedicate not only the ‘spiritual’ but the physical and the material to him in praise for who he is and gratitude for what he does.
This Palm Sunday, let us have the eyes to see Jesus as he truly is, and to respond fittingly to him.
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Instant Gratification

One thing you’ve hardly had on this blog is instant gratification. Not with three weeks since my last post, thanks to major work pressures. However, I received the graphic below in an email from someone called Tony Shin, and although it’s based on American culture, I think the same basic points hold for the UK. The question, of course, is why we are addicted to the instant. Deferred gratification, rather than instant gratification, is meant to be a sign of psychological health. Is instant gratification a sign of immaturity?

Instant America
Created by: Online Graduate Programs

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