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Thought
for the Week Sunday 14 June – First Sunday after Trinity
The
first thing to remember is that the Church and the Kingdom of God are two
different things! It is far too easy
to think that the Church is an end in itself, rather than a tool to help
people find, serve and worship God.
God and his Kingdom existed long before the Church came into being,
and will continue to exist for ever, long after the Church has ceased to
be. Just as God, though our loving
Father, is unimaginably greater than we are, so his Kingdom is unimaginably
greater and better than his Church here on earth of which it is at best but a
pale shadow, and it is often less than its best. It is God Who builds his Kingdom, but all
too often, human involvement stops the Church being what it could be. In
all four of our readings today, we are being taught about the Kingdom of
God. Ezekiel likens it to a sprig of
Cedar of Lebanon, the wood from which much of the Temple at Jerusalem was
constructed. This sprig was not
planted by a man, but by God Himself, the Creating Gardener who planted the
first Garden East of Eden. And the
Sprig is planted on the mountain, which is to say the Temple at
Jerusalem. God’s sprig flourishes, and
gives shade, not just to Israel, but to the whole of humanity. There is an Aramaic paraphrase of Ezekiel,
in which the sprig is specifically referred to as “a child of the house of
David”, through whom, “the Kingdoms of the nations will be humbled”. Even without the paraphrase, there can be
no doubt that Ezekiel was thinking in terms of a Messiah, who would redeem
God’s people, and establish a just and loving rule upon earth. Our
Psalm today is written in the “Wisdom” genre, and this time likens not God’s
Kingdom, but God’s faithful people, to a tree, or actually two trees, a Palm
and a Cedar of Lebanon, spreading out and flourishing, with its roots in the
Temple at Jerusalem. For the psalmist,
the distinction between the Temple, and the Courts of God, is blurred, and he
sees the righteous with, as it were, a foot walking in each place. Saint
Paul, writing in his second letter to the Corinthians, makes a similar
point. He says that although we walk
by faith, and not by sight, we are still in this world, and not with
God. For him, home is not here on
earth, but in God’s Kingdom with the risen, ascended and glorified
Jesus. Not only are we to walk by
faith, not sight, but also we are to view everything from a new, Godly point
of view. We are to see, with God’s
eyes, God’s creation renewed. In
today’s Gospel, Mark records two parables that Jesus told to describe the
Kingdom of heaven. Unfortunately, Mark
does not record the context in which Jesus told them, but we can make a bit
of a guess, at least for the first one.
Jesus uses the complete agricultural cycle to describe the Kingdom of
Heaven. First the sowing, then the
green shoots, then the grain swelling in the head, and then the harvest. Note that the farmer just watches this
process; God’s Kingdom does not owe its growth to any human
intervention. The Jewish liturgical
year was tied to the agricultural cycle, which is not surprising for a nation
of farmers who understood the blessing of God to be expressed in their
land. However, there is an uncomfortable
side to this, and that is the idea that we are the plants, and God is the man
with the sickle. The Prophet Joel (3, 13) uses the same idea to describe the
final judgement, the “Day of the Lord”, when creation comes to an end, and
the faithful are gathered in to rest with God the Father. The
parable of the mustard seed presents us with a slight problem. Though the mustard seed is indeed the
tiniest of all seeds, the mustard plant is certainly not the biggest of all
trees, it is just a medium-sized shrub.
Apart from that, the message is clear.
A few verses ago, in the parable of the Sower, the seed is the Word of
God, spoken by Jesus. If the same is
true here, then this Word, so seemingly insignificant amongst the great
political forces at work in the Roman Empire and the aspirations of the Jews,
is growing in secret, and will one day shelter the whole world. Returning
to Saint Paul, the great question for each of us is: are you going to work
with God and his Kingdom, or are you going to work against Him, and side with
the world the flesh and the Devil? And
this question is by no means simple and straightforward at all. Consider for example the petition doing the
rounds about the film “Corpus Christi”, which is to open this summer. Devout
and well-meaning Christians in America have started a petition to have the
film banned as an insult to the Christian faith, because it portrays Jesus
and his Disciples as homosexuals.
Their view is that if similar works about Mohamed are banned to avoid
offending Muslims, then we should apply the same rationale to this film
too. On the surface, they have a
point. But
actually, is it not presumptuous to suppose that Jesus needs us to defend his
reputation? Surely salvation works the
other way round – He saves us, and not we Him! This point is made very forcibly in the
First Book of Chronicles (13, 9 –10), when the oxen pulling the cart on which
the Ark of God is being carried, stumble, and Uzzah tries to steady the Ark,
lest it fall off. The anger of God
burns against Uzzah, and he is struck down and killed on the spot for daring
to try and steady the Ark. A bit tough
on Uzzah, who was only trying to help, but it makes the point that it is we
who need God’s help, and not He ours. Of
course you could argue that the film should be banned because it is plain
wrong. It is absolutely certain that
Jesus and the disciples did not indulge in any kind of homosexual
activity. They were devout Jews, and such a thing would have been
illegal under the Law of Moses (punishable by stoning to death), and
abhorrent to them. But
when did a film being inaccurate ever matter?
Most great films are pure fiction, and very few contain more than a
grain of historical accuracy, even if they point to the truth in more subtle
ways. You
could argue that the film should be banned because it is in bad taste. Well, you could, but it would not exactly
be the first bad taste film ever shown, would it? You
could argue that it should be banned because it offends Christians. But
here, you are on thinner ice. How many
of you have read, and enjoyed, “The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail”, or more
recently, “The Da Vinci Code”, which is based on the same theory? That theory was that our Lord had a child
with Saint Mary Magdalene, and so the “Blood of Christ” is not in the Blessed
Sacrament, but actually living among us as Jesus’ descendants. Surely this is just as preposterous and
just as offensive to Christians? And,
incidentally, under the Mosaic law, it is just as illegal, and punishable
with the same punishment. Sometimes
the world leads the church. It
shouldn’t be like that, of course. If
we were genuinely listening to the Word of God, Christians would always be in
the forefront of moral development.
But it God’s world, and He is at work in it, and sometimes, He uses
the world to tell the Church something.
Why should the idea that Jesus had an extra-marital relationship with
Saint Mary Magdalene be any less offensive than the idea that He had
homosexual relations with the Disciples?
Such a double standard would certainly be condemned under either
French or English law, and rightly so.
Perhaps English and French law is seeing this more with God’s eyes
than some of these Christians in America. It
is worth pointing out that a few verses away from where homosexual acts are
condemned, in the Law of Moses, the wearing of mixed fibres is also
punishable by stoning to death.
Nowhere in the Gospels is there any mention at all of homosexuality,
but there is a very great deal about justice, and caring for society’s
rejects and the oppressed. In
the monastery at Monserrat, a few kilometres north of Barcelona, crowds queue
to see the Black Madonna, a twelfth-century wood carving which portrays the
Blessed Virgin Mary as black. In the
Zeffirelli film, Robert Powell portrays a European Jesus with fair hair and
blue eyes. In Orthodox iconography,
Jesus is portrayed as in his fifties.
None of these images is wrong.
Did not Jesus come to redeem blacks, whites, browns and all shades? Saint Paul again, “In Christ there is
neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, neither male nor female, but
all are one in Christ.” Surely Jesus
should be owned just as much by the gay community as by the rest of us? Archbishop
Desmond Tutu puts it beautifully, “You are all so obsessed with
genitals! Why don’t you address the
real wrongs in the world, injustice, poverty, disease, and leave people to
love each other in their own way?”
Archbishop Desmond knows a thing or two about looking at creation
through God’s eyes. May God bless you
with eyes to see and ears to hear, that you may be in turn a blessing to all
those around you. Amen. Father Charles Howard: Anglican
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