Repent and be Baptised

Acts 3

Peter's words to the crowds, in explanation after a miraculous healing, were, "Repent therefore, and turn to God so that your sins may be wiped out..." We're still responding, 2,000 years later.

We still get baptised, we still confess, we still hear words of forgiveness and make them our own. We still do this in spite of the fact that we are 'in Christ', and scripture assures us that 'no one who abides in him sins'. Are our various sins evidence that St. John got this bit wrong, or evidence that we're don't quite 'abide in him'?

It's worth reflecting on who might have heard Peter's speech, and what their thoughts might have been. Quite possibly, some of those present had been among the crowds who cried out for Jesus' execution and Barabbas' release. To them, the idea that God had raised Jesus would be worrying to say the least. Nobody who made a practice of going to the Temple would have wanted to find that they had condemned somebody whom God found innocent. And, if God's reversal of human judgement could involve raising someone from death, what other reversals might be about to follow?

Other listeners might have wondered how much it all affected them. If they'd not been in the mob that called for Jesus' death, what did they have to repent of? The more reflective might have considered the possibility that, as part of the society that condemned an innocent man, they could not shake off part of the responsibility. Perhaps that is where our repenting, confessing and forgiving belongs. Our sins may be our own, or society's or humanity's. They may be the sins of our church or the sins of our country, but it is still up to us to lay them before God and invite forgiveness into the world, in the faith that God does not allow his word of forgiveness to lie dead and buried.

Sign and Wisdom

Jeremiah 51, Psalm 51, Hebrews 5, John 12

Some Greeks had come to worship in Jerusalem at Passover. They asked Philip if they could see Jesus, Philip asked Andrew, and then they went. There seems to have been an air of exclusivity around Jewish holy men, at least in the minds of some people.


Passover is not the most important Jewish festival. It doesn't define or renew the covenant, but it does celebrate the freedom of God's chosen people and their foundation as a nation. Some Greeks wanted to be part of that. Perhaps that's why Jesus identified the moment as the beginning of his 'hour of glory'.


But why did some Greeks want to identify with a people whose origin lay in an escape from slavery? Did they feel that they, too, were longing for a freedom that seemed slightly beyond reach? Traditionally, Greeks seek wisdom while Jews seek a sign. Did these Greeks recognise in Jesus not only a sign of liberation, but the wisdom that might lead to it? We can't know what was in their minds, but we can work on tho twin ideas of sign and wisdom.


Jesus was, to his followers, a sign that God is active in the world: recognisable as God in action, but not limited to what people already thought they knew about God. Jesus was also a source of wisdom: demonstrating a deep understanding of human life and human nature, and leading people to a new understanding of their own lives.


Create in us a clean heart O God:
And renew a right spirit within us.

Art and Artists

Numbers 21,  Ephesians 2, John 3

One of the three themes running through today's readings is art. The bronze serpent (Numbers 21) was not commissioned as a work of art - more a sacred talisman - but it would undoubtedly be seen as a work of art if, nearly 3,000 years later, we still had it. Unfortunately, it was destroyed during the Reformation on the orders of the King (Hezekiah, 2 Kings 18).


The image of the serpent crops up in Jesus' late night conversation with Nicodemus. The original artefact saved lives. Jesus, similarly lifted up for all to see, would also save lives, but with a difference: we're not getting bitten by snakes. What are we getting bitten by? Is this the moment to explore the symbolic association of the serpent with sin? Or with wisdom? Or is it just the moment to reflect on the fact that being bitten, one way or another, is a more or less common experience?


Like the bronze serpent, a crucifix or a cross can be treated as a work of art. Also like the serpent, the image of suffering can function as a symbol of healing, and carries the risk of becoming an object of devotion in its own right.


Finally, I want to turn from the art treasures of human history to God's work of art: us. We're a work in progress. How do we imagine God working? Chisel? Brushes? A composer's pencil or a conductor's baton? Human beings can be amazing, and there is an occasional risk of treating them as objects of worship. Then, in our occasional reformations, we destroy them. History tells many a fascinating and tragic tale. The unfortunate fact of the matter is that what we get bitten by is usually human beings. The saving grace that we celebrate, however, enables human beings to be a source of healing.

Recognising Christ

1st Samuel 3, John 1.43-51

Today, we hear a story about a young boy in the Temple who recognised the voice of God, and a man in Galilee who recognised the Son of God. There is nothing in the story to suggest why either of them should have seen or heard what other people missed, except perhaps for a hint of innocence and simplicity. In the words of St. Matthew, blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

Nathanael’s story is often overlooked when people talk about who first recognised Jesus’ deeper identity. Peter is mentioned (Mark 8), or Martha (John 11), but the writer of the fourth gospel wants us to know that, at the very outset of Jesus’ ministry, it was possible to see God himself at work.

So how can we cultivate that simplicity, or purity of heart? The gospel urges to become ‘as children’ if we really want to belong in God’s kingdom, but doesn’t tell us in what respect. I can feel my simplicity and purity of heart slipping away as I say that. Perhaps there is something in Jesus’ words about Nathanael that clarifies it for us: ‘a true Israelite (or ’truly an Israelite’) in whom there is no guile’.

Centuries later, the same child-like quality of child-like innocence and lack of guile could be seen in St. Francis. He wasn’t faultless—that isn’t the point—but he could recognise Christ in the world, and the world could recognise Christ in him.

Rejoice, pray, give thanks.

Isaiah 61, Psalm 126, 1st Thessalonians 5, John 1

Isaiah 61 begins with a tremendous declaration of hope, and even gives a reason for it: ‘I the LORD love justice, I hate robbery and wrongdoing’. And yet, in God’s world this week, we can read about continuing racial prejudice in the USA, a Palestinian government minister dying in the attempt to prevent more of his people’s land being stolen by the occupying forces, pharmaceutical companies attempting to block the manufacture of affordable medicines in India, and torturers getting more protection than those who expose or suffer from their activities.

Psalm 126 celebrates the restoration of Zion, which calls for some subtle interpretation, but goes on to say that those who sow in tears might reap with shouts of joy. Let’s hope so. The next thing we hear is that God’s people should ‘rejoice always, pray without ceasing, and give thanks in all circumstances’.

All circumstances? Well, St. Paul knew a thing or two about all circumstances, having explored a number of them for himself, and became adept at rejoicing in them. He might, like John the Baptist, have thought of himself as a voice crying out in the wilderness—a lonely voice in an empty desert—except that, for him, the emptiness of the world had been filled with the presence of God (an echo of the act of creation), and the emptiness within had been filled with the love of Christ. So he really could rejoice, pray and give thanks.

Ultimate Concern

Judges 4, 1st Thessalonians 5, Matthew 25

‘Be ready!’ says today’s gospel. According to today’s first reading, disaster would ensue for Israel if there was any move away from an exclusive faith in their God. Many people in today’s Israel would agree, but there might be less agreement about the meaning of that exclusive faith.

God (according to Paul Tillich) can be defined in two ways: as the ground of our being, and the as object of our ultimate concern. When our ultimate concern really is the ground of our being, we are in a true relationship with God. When our ultimate concern is directed away from the ground of our being, we are tending towards idolatry.

Remembrance is always partly and act of repentance, and the root of our need for repentance on this occasion, as on many others, is the fact that nations can easily become ultimately concerned with nothing greater than themselves, with either laughable or destructive results.

St Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians, written in a very different situation from that which faced Joshua, encourages the faithful with an assurance that their lives are ultimately safe in God’s hands. Could it be a way of saying that, whether or not we are ultimately concerned with the ground of our being, God is ultimately concerned with us? The call of today’s gospel is to readiness for the kingdom that God is offering.

The God who Drops In to the World

When Moses (in Exodus 33) asks to be shown God’s ways, and God’s glory, the most he is allowed to see is God’s departing back. Not until the Christian identification of Jesus as God-with-us is there any hint that we might be able to see God’s face, but this raises a question: is the glory of God to be identified with the physical features of Jesus?

Presumably not. Among other things, we are reminded elsewhere in scripture that ‘God is spirit’, so it is more appropriate to identify the divine with Jesus’ nature as a person than with his physical appearance. This is comforting, as we know quite a lot about what Jesus said and did, but almost nothing about what he looked like.

In Matthew 22.15-22, we read about his response to the question of whether taxes should be paid to the Roman authorities. To many conscientious people this seemed like an unacceptable compromise with the occupying forces of a foreign power. Some preferred to opt out altogether, and live in self-sufficient communities unpolluted by contact with the ungodly.

Today’s equivalent question might be whether we should opt out of the morally questionable worlds of finance and politics altogether until they have cleaned up their acts considerably, and there are communities today that attempt greater or lesser degrees of separation from the rest of the world.

This does not seem to have been the way of Jesus, but his answer to the tax question was ingenious, demonstrating that even those who went out of their way to avoid pollution from the ways of the world carried part of that world in their pockets. Whose, after all, was the coin that bore Caesar’s image?

The nature of God is to be found in the person of Jesus, and the way of God is to be found in his risky participation in the world—in the conviction that we are not polluted by contact with the ungodly, but that the ungodly will be enriched by whatever touch of God’s presence we can bring to it.