ALL SAINTS MARGARET STREET

Sermon preached by Fr. Julian Browning at High Mass on the Fifth Sunday of Lent, 21 March 2010.

Readings: Isaiah 43.16-21; Philippians 3.4b-14; John 12.1-8.

Isaiah 43.19: I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?

Today is Passion Sunday. Passion is an overpowering emotion, but Passion Sunday is about something different. The Latin word means suffering, and so the days from now until Good Friday have become known as Passiontide, the season of Jesus's suffering. Christianity does not have a manual, there's no programme from beginner, to intermediate, to advanced, and so on from ignorance to enlightenment. Instead, we live by the calendar, the annual cycle. Dates and seasons are important. If we miss out a section of the calendar, it is like skipping a chapter in a book. We miss the point of the story. Passiontide is a chapter which can not be missed.

That's the cue to the preacher to tell the congregation about the wonderful services on offer here. Of course, this church will be action-packed. But there is a more important discovery for us to make, church or no church. The images are veiled so that there is nothing to distract us from the essential fact of our redemption, which is that Jesus Christ aligned his will with that of His Father, commended all his work into His Father's hands, and died still speaking to God. That is our mission too, nothing less, to re-align our lives with the will of God. And if you think you can't do it, just remember those in the Gospels and later whose lives did change when Jesus looked at them, and loved them, and forgave them. Sad cases all of them, but it happened to them. How do we get started? In one sense the change required of us, or offered to us, is to move from resentment to gratitude. From resentment at what's happening to me, resentment at a God who lays down rules but doesn't care what happens, towards gratitude to a God who shares my life and wants me to share his, the God who searches for me until he finds me. We can transform almost any situation by moving from resentment to gratitude.

These two ways of looking at life are shown in today's Gospel. Judas Iscariot was right. Pouring all that ointment over Jesus was gross extravagance, a shocking waste. Particularly if you want to steal the money. We see Judas Iscariot pretending to be the champion of the poor. Now this is just the start of it. Passiontide is quite frightening. All sorts of mixed motives, fears, hidden agendas, passions indeed, start to bubble up. No wonder many of the disciples ran for cover. For them it was the end. For us, the story of Our Lord's Passion is the beginning of something new, a new dimension to life itself, God-filled not God-forsaken. Mary understood that. Mary, sister of Martha, not to be confused with all the other Marys. When Mary anoints Jesus' feet she is preparing Jesus for burial. Her brother Lazarus is there, that's the sign of resurrection. Mary uses her hair to wipe Jesus feet, just as Jesus will wash his disciples' feet on Maundy Thursday. The expense of the ointment is great, and that tells us she is giving everything, because this is her opportunity of doing so, now. What are we saving ourselves for? Most of us are trying to get from birth to death with minimum inconvenience. But now is our moment. Here is our opportunity. So let's talk about now. Do you ever get fed up with the Church of England? That's a rhetorical question. Of course, we're right, aren't we, but then we we always think we're right. It becomes a habit, I think, a sort of culture of grievance, resentment, because we're right. Mother isn't giving us what we want and what we think we need. It is a very convenient stance to take, because it keeps us in our little world of opinions and likes and dislikes, and prevents us noticing the worldwide Church as it is, the Body of Christ in which we die and rise again, in which we can be changed. Joy and resentment cannot coexist. We are like Judas, who is fixated on the waste and the expense (because it will mean less for him), and so fails to see the Body of Christ being anointed for burial in his presence.

St Paul knew about this change from resentment to trust and gratitude. What is this conversion, this insistent voice we hear but can't place, this call to return to the Shepherd and Guardian of our souls?  I don't think it's hearing a gospel which is going to solve all our problems. That's the fundamentalist approach, attractive to some, but it has never worked for me. I don't respond when Bible verses are thrown at me and I'm told what to think. I'm with St. Paul. Fundamentalism didn't work for Paul either. The change in his life is the change that can come to each of us with a new friendship. We hear not the old laws, but a new voice which is disturbing, enthralling, which calls us by name, which questions our own convenient answers, and then sends us off in search of a new understanding of life, a radical reassessment of our past, present and future. It is a revolution in mind and heart, that's Christianity for you, not being told to learn a book of rules. A moment ago we saw an expensive ointment being wasted; now we see a body being prepared for burial. Our perception changes, and my life changes direction. A new friendship works when a life is shared. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead. So wrote Paul to the Philippians.

I said that Christians live by the calendar, the Church's year. If we wander off, we miss out. What is the season of Christ's suffering going to mean to us? All our readings and the psalm point to a break with the past, and the start of something new, a new journey for all of us, a forgiven people. We can face a future unencumbered by our past, and that includes the dead weight of guilt inducing fundamentalism. It's unusual to find this idea in the Old Testament, in the passage from Isaiah we heard this morning. What is probably meant is that former things, in our life and in history, pale into insignificance compared to what is now on offer, the new life open to God's people. That's what God tells the people of Israel and us through Isaiah today: I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. The way, the river, the way forward for us is to be the way of the Cross, to be followed day by day. And we can stand aside judging and complaining, as Judas did, or we can join in, like Mary, and find our part to play. Actually it's too late to back out now. And it will be nice to see you here anyway. For we are the people whom God has formed for himself, says Isaiah, or as Paul puts it, Christ Jesus has made me his own.