ALL SAINTS MARGARET STREET

EPIPHANY 3, 2012, Sermon preached by the Vicar at High Mass

Readings: Genesis 14.17-20; Psalm 128; Revelation 19.6-10; John 2.1-11

One of my Christmas presents was the DVD of the film "Of Gods and Men". It is the story of a group of Cistercian monks in Algeria. In the mountain village of Tibberine, stands the monastery of our Lady of the Atlas. Its French monks live their life of worship, contemplation and labour peacefully among their Muslim neighbours. We see one of them, a doctor, running a clinic for the villagers. We seem them tilling their fields, selling honey from their hives in the market, sharing in village celebrations.

But a shadow falls over this peaceful life in which people of two faiths live together in mutual respect and affection. Algeria is being torn apart by strife between the government and Islamist extremists. Nearby a group of Croatian Christian workers is massacred. Should the monks accept military protection or even leave, as they are advised to do by the authorities?

Winter comes and the clouds darken. Islamist fighters appear seeking medicine for their wounded. The prior tells them they cannot bring their weapons into the monastery. They leave when they learn that it is Christmas, the celebration of the birth of Issa, Jesus, the prophet revered by Muslims.

The army too becomes suspicious of monks they suspect might not turn away the wounded in need, of whichever side.

The prior Brother Christian refuses the options of guards or of leaving for safety. Some of his brothers are not so sure. The film shows them struggling in prayer and discussion to come to terms with this question, as individuals and as a group. When they have resolved to stay, we see them celebrating mass together, and then Brother Luc, the doctor produces two bottles of wine - these are French monks after all - and we see them sitting around a table enjoying the wine and listening to a recording of Swan Lake.

Then when they have all resolved to stay, the armed men come in the night. Six monks are seized and taken away in a lorry. At the end we see them being marched into the mountains through a snowstorm into which they disappear. The film does not show their murder: their bodies were found beheaded.

This film has been in my mind as I was thinking about this sermon and the link between the wine of Cana and the wine of enjoyed by those monks struck me. There is another link too. Cistercian monks have a particular devotion to Our Lady; all their monasteries are named after her, and we hear them singing her evening anthem: Salve Regina.

In Jesus' strange response to his mother: "Woman, what have you do with me? My hour has not yet come", we see a reference to his forthcoming death and resurrection: "the third day." The monks celebrate their mass and enjoy their wine, knowing that their "hour", their sharing in Christ's "hour", his passion and death, may be at hand.

The exchange between Jesus and his mother at the wedding is a strange one. While it is probably true that "Woman" was an acceptable way to address a woman in that period, it was still an odd way for a son to speak to his mother. (If I were to address my mother as "woman" when I phone her after church to wish her a happy birthday, I would probably be cut out of the will.)

What is going one here? Jesus seems to be establishing a distance between himself and his mother. She appears only twice in John's Gospel: the second time is when she stands at the foot of the cross; in other words, when Jesus' "Hour", the hour of his glorification on the cross has come. Jesus seems to be saying that his life is governed by God's plan, God's time; and not by the demands of others.

But that is not the end of the story. His mother does not give up and says, "Do whatever he tells you." Even though his hour has not yet come, he does respond to the needs of the situation: of a wedding reception run dry. He responds with a lavish provision of water turned to wine, the best wine. Jesus' hour has not yet come, yet he does something which anticipates the joy of that hour.

The background to this in the Old Testament is the picture of the kingdom of God as a great banquet: something which Jesus takes up in his own teaching when he speaks of the kingdom as a marriage feast.

The Revelation of John speaks of the last hour, of the future fulfilment of all things in the "marriage supper of the Lamb". Just as Jesus anticipates the joy of his hour for that wedding party, so now he gives his disciples, his servants who are also his guests, an anticipation of that joy here and now.

What did Jesus tell us to do? Well, when his hour had come, on the night in which he was betrayed, he takes bread and says, "This is my body which is given for you: Do this, in remembrance of me." And after supper he took the cup and said, Drink this all of you. This is my blood which will be shed for you. Do this in remembrance of me."

Just as he provided wine for the wedding at Cana, he has given us an anticipation of the marriage supper of the Lamb in what we, in obedience to his command, do here this morning.

We, who are his servants, obey that command in faith. We cannot know the fullness of its meaning before we do it. Like the servants at the wedding, we do what he says without knowing quite what it means; certainly not all that it means for us. We take the risk of offering his bread and wine to his guests, not knowing what their response will be. We cannot spell out in advance the richness, the depth of communion with God and others that will be found in it, given through it. Like the steward of the feast, we will not know how it has happened, just that it has: we will be surprised by joy.

This is not a recipe for escapism from the reality of the world into some "sweet by and by", although sometimes we make it such. Just as it was for those monks in Algeria, who decide to stay in the community in which they are set, the Eucharist is for us the means of a deeper engagement with that reality in which we are set. Like Melchizedek, the mysterious priest figure, who served for the writer of Hebrews, as model of Christ the perfect priest and perfect offering, we bring to it bread and wine. These represent the joys and sorrows, the sharing and divisions of our world. They are the bread of plenty and poverty, companionship and division; the wine of joy and conviviality, of addiction and despair. We bring these things which God has given and human hands have made, so that they might be transformed by the Spirit into God's yet greater gifts: the signs and pledges and means of that life which knows no end.

Those monks, sons of St. Benedict, were schooled to think of their worship as the Opus Dei, the work of God. Our worship too is the work of God; offered in obedience to Christ's command, offered for the community in whose midst we are set, for its joys and sorrows, its hopes and fears, for its transformation and ours.

As our Bishop said in his recent Pastoral Letter on the Eucharistic Life of the Church:

"As the community celebrates the liturgy so we are built up into the body through which Christ can engage with our times. We re-member him in a dynamic sense. We do not merely recall his teaching and appearing long ago and far away. We re-member him among us, amidst the dis-membering forces of our world. We become "very members" of the body of Christ and members one of another. ...

.....The Holy Communion is not something the Church 'puts on' to cater for our 'religious' needs and feelings. It is the way appointed by Christ in which the world itself is 're-membered' through the growth of his body."

That chapter of Revelation comes after the destruction of Babylon, the city which represents the rule of evil in our world; the abuse and distortion and destruction of God's gifts. We are shown the heavenly city in which creation is truly ordered not disordered, in which beings both heavenly and earthly are united in worship; in the singing of "Hallelujah" at the marriage supper of the Lamb.

We are shown the Bride who has made herself ready; who has been clothed , not in the tawdry luxury of Babylon, but "'with fine linen, bright and pure', for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints." This dress is not of herown making. Like the white robes of the martyrs spoken of earlier in the book, it has been given to her. The linen signifies the sanctity of God's people - a sanctity achieved in the great ordeal by those who "washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb" (Rev. 7.14)

In the film, we see the monks in their daily routine in which work is punctuated by worship and prayer; for which they lay aside their work clothes and don their white liturgical robes: the "fine linen of the righteous deeds of the saints."

If this all looks and sounds familiar; well that is because it is what we do here in church. In the vestry before mass, priests and servers pray after we have vested, "Into thy house, O God, have we entered, thy holy vessels have we prepared, the garments of purity put on. Unto thy sanctuary come we to minister, before thy whole Church on earth and in the holy company of the redeemed, so make oblation at thine altar and to worship in thy presence, O Christ our God for ever.".

The worship of this church, whether the glory of High Mass, the beauty of Choral Evensong, or a quiet weekday celebration weekday, a group of us reciting Morning or Evening Prayer, is an anticipation of the Marriage Supper of the Lamb. In it we join the "alleluias" of heaven, the marriage feast of a world re-ordered.

We live in the time between the first and last comings of Christ. There are still terrible signs of the reign of evil: the good and innocent are put to cruel deaths; greed and selfishness, fear and hatred are abroad. Yet Jesus has not left us orphans, we are not comfortless: "Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb."