ALL SAINTS MARGARET STREET
The Fifth Sunday of Trinity, 12 July 1009
Sermon preached by Fr. Julian Browning at High Mass
Readings: Amos 7:7-15; Ephesians 1:3-14; Mark 6:14-29.
Ephesians 1.12: We are destined to live for the praise of his glory.
We can only meet God now. It is now that he meets us. He doesn't wait for me in some future heaven. He comes now, because he loves me now. Today's epistle to the Ephesians, one of the most beautiful passages in the entire Bible, tells us what you and I can now do. We are going to complete a circle. That's what we do here. God blesses us with everything, our creation, preservation, all the blessings of this life. His goodness takes every conceivable form. Jesus Christ helps us to see and understand that goodness, and we respond with worship and praise. That completes the circle. That's all. That is what we are made to do. It's as natural as birdsong or sunlight. There's no bargaining, no deal, no obligation. We worship. No act of worship is wasted, whether is it is a solemn high mass, or a silent prayer on the tube going home, because the act completes the circle, uniting things in heaven with things on earth. We who first hoped in Christ have been destined to live for the praise of his glory.
Which is fine, but most of the time our thoughts are elsewhere, as we scurry around as independent, free and rational human beings. So let's go to a party, a party which has got out of hand. A birthday party at the Herods, the original neighbours from hell. You might wonder why we have to listen to that terrible story of the beheading of John the Baptist. It's there in the Bible because John the Baptist was seen as a forerunner of Jesus, so Mark puts in John's death now to remind his readers about what's going to happen to Jesus. That's why we have to read it. In these early chapters, between two success stories, the sending out of the disciples and the feeding of the five thousand, falls this shadow of the cross. It will be like that for you and me. Over our lives, however triumphant, however successful, falls the shadow of the cross, the sign of Christ in the world. St Mark got his history of the Herod family a bit wrong. That needn't worry us any more than it worried the many artists and writers like Oscar Wilde who became entranced by the story of Salome, the girl who danced before the king, and obsessed with the themes of perverted lust, necrophilia, jealousy, and, above all, guilt. The story is about the passing of the buck, the shifting of the guilt, as would happen later at the trial of Jesus. The blame for the murder of John the Baptist is shifted from father to daughter, to mother. At the end of the story the actual head of John the Baptist is passed from father, to daughter, to mother. Nobody tells the truth. Nobody sees the truth except for John the Baptist who has seen the Spirit like a dove descend on Jesus. It's crazy, isn't it? One of God's prophets is murdered apparently on the whim of a dysfunctional family working out their grudges. Did Herod have to keep his promise to give his daughter whatever she asked for? Who knows? Who cares? We are now entering territory rather nearer to home, the fantasies which take people over, so that they no longer care what they do, random murders, knives in the street, terrorist bombs, sheer evil out of the box and on the rampage. The faith which we know in the good times is going to have to cope with all this. Christians must try to be realists, not fantasists like the Herod family. We try to see the truth about ourselves and each other, that we are the new people of God. But there will be opposition to the truth, both from within ourselves, and from the outside, from others, and from forces which appear random or beyond all control. This is the real world. This is the world in which we try to worship. And it isn't just about other people. Today's Gospel is about the moral anarchy in which we live our lives, for you and I are Herod, clinging to our power, frightened of God's holy prophets and what they might say to us. And worried too about what others think of us. Herod murdered John because he didn't want to lose face in front of the important guests he'd invited to his birthday party.
The first chapter of the epistle to the Ephesians is a glorious song, and it is our answer to the Herods without, and the Herods within. At any time, in any age, God chooses us. He creates a new people. We are ready to make our first faltering footsteps in the kingdom of God. What do we do? We see God's love for us in Jesus and we give God thanks and praise. Worship raises the spirits, doesn't it? It raises our spirits because worship shifts our attention from our self-indulgence with our own condition to the Creator of the universe and what He is doing. The Herods were stuck in a little family triangle, bound together by fear and deceit, obligations, bargaining. No way out, except through an explosion of perversity and killing. Christians break free of these destructive patterns, because God has taken us out of ourselves and into His mystery. We are part of his plan, "the plan for the fullness of time", helping to build God's kingdom, and we are equipped to do just that. We can do it. We "have heard the word of truth, the gospel of salvation", and our answer is praise, and glory, and worship. Our worship completes a circle which connects things on earth with things in heaven. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.