Speak to Reason

Why is it reasonable to believe in and speak to the creator of the universe?

We empirically trace the expanding stuff of the universe back to a point of singularity sometimes called the Big Bang, and all of our experience and normal reasoning patterns are stacked against material just coming from an absence.

Now if a rabbit just appeared on your desk, there is no way you would think it had literally come from an absent nothing. You would look for a reasonable answer to where it came from, because you know and act like stuff just doesn't appear out of an absence.

No one thinks that a magician makes things appear and vanish; we all know that there is a trick, even if we don't know how it is done. If there was no reasonable ordinary explanation for this experience of appearing rabbits, we would consider a psychological answer, hallucination or drink or hypnosis etc.

We don't! So the atheist has only one example to back up a claim for the world appearing from an absence, and that comes from Quantum Mechanics, where subatomic particles can be interpreted as seeming to come in and out of existence.

Although some of them posit purely theoretical parallel universes, Physicists themselves do not conclude subatomic particles come out of absent-ness. Einstein said that the Theory of Quantum Mechanics leaves us with an epistemological problem and not an ontological problem. In plain English, subatomic particles do not come into and go out of existence, it is just that we currently do not fully understand the cause of this situation.

Even if a subatomic particle can apparently come out of absent nothing, it is one amazing leap to an entire universe apparently coming out of absent nothing... if even a rabbit appearing out of an absent nothing is not on the cards, why would anyone think that something capable of producing the whole universe (by "chance") could be an absent nothing?

A Transcendent God in the miracle of creation creates out of nothing, but that nothing is a mysterious presence, and not an mysterious absence.

And if it is reasonable to believe in this One God beyond the senses, it would also be reasonable to communicate with him, even if the words to describe his presence are human and provisional. In fact, it would be unreasonable to fail to commune with this same One. Life might even take on a new dimension, a fifth dimension.

In the New Testament, the Reason and Wisdom pervading the universe from beyond it is called the Logos. The Logos was in the beginning, and the Logos is still penetrating the universe from beyond.

NOWADAYS (and not just nowadays of course) PEOPLE SAY THE UNIVERSE IS ITSELF ETERNAL. BUT EVEN IF IT IS, IT STILL HAS TO DERIVE ITS ULTIMATE MEANING FROM SOMEWHERE – AND ACKNOWLEDGING CREATION CAN MEAN NOTHING OTHER THAN ACKNOWLEDGING OUR TOTAL DEPENDENCE ON THE INFINITY WHICH IS GOD, WITH OR WITHOUT THE SHARP ONTOLOGICAL DISTINCTION BETWEEN CREATOR BEING AND CREATED BEING. IN OTHER WORDS, WE DIDN'T JUST GET LUCKY. THERE IS ETERNITY AS OUR ULTIMATE AND AUTHENTIC NON-PHYSICAL GROUND.

May wisdom become you..

Giving birth to God

So here we are in Advent, a time of waiting.

What are we all waiting for?

I’m waiting for the end of this talk – so we’ve got that in common. Write a sermon about waiting, they said, and about a cradle, about expectation, and about hope.

How will you judge it worth waiting for? Do you require some traditional reverence for Jesus and Mary or a popular culture dash of Homer Simpson and Bruce Forsyth?

Who will be judge?

In Psalm 146 the Creator of Heaven Earth and Sea is doing all the judging, and we are told not to put our trust in human leaders. So you have Biblical permission to stop listening to me now.

But just in case you are still with me, in Isaiah, texts which we read during Advent we again hear much about God’s judgement.

But is God’s judgement something you’re hoping for?

Would you like Christmas presents with cards reading: “Happy Judgement day!”

Nowadays you’re as likely to get “Happy Crimbo” or even “Happy Xmas”.

Because we live in a world where Christmas is experiencing a divorce from Christ. People accuse the church of trying to get in on the act.

I remember producing a radio programme in the 90’s, when there was surprise at proposals by the council in Wolverhampton to publicly rename Christmas as Winter-val. Fast forward to 2007 and in Glasgow and Aberdeen it is already called Winter-fest.

I don’t begrudge us a Happy Winterfest but I do wonder about this public divorce of God from his world.

It’s seems such an articificial and enforced break with reality that it reminds me of Homer Simpson when he’s been kidnapped and is desperately seeking money to secure his own release – he telephones Flanders and says: “Flanders I’ve been kidnapped and I need $50,000."

‘I’m not sure I have that much money Homer, but I can pray for you if you like?’

‘Oh go suck a Bible!’ Homer says.

But his expectations of a good release would have changed in prayer. In the same episode, Homer and Lisa are looking for a missing orphan. The people who run the orphanage try to reassure them: “Don't worry, we have lit a candle and said prayers for her every day.”

“MMM” says Homer. “But have you tried looking for her?”

Is there a point of action without prayer? What is the point of waiting without expecting? What is the point of Christmas without Christ? I wouldn’t blame you if you also asked yourself is there a point to this sermon in the absence of me telling you? But keep waiting.

All of us here grew from babies, and we all absorbed many stories on the way here, for better or worse. One of these stories tells us how God also grew from a baby, but did not just absorb the world.

He also transformed it, healed it, gave us hope for a spiritual life within it. I don’t know if you have ever tried to imagine life without the story of God’s becoming a human being, but ask yourselves who passed this story onto you, and how has it made a difference to you?

There was a Breakfast news report recently claiming that 4 out of 5 primary schools no longer tell the nativity story. So how might you be able to pass this story on to another person in a way they can accept it, and what difference might this make to them. Ask yourselves this now in the silence of expectation…..

In our childlike helplessness, the uncreated spirit is with us. One of us. We are in him. We allow self-judgement other judgement and fear of other judgement to be replaced by mercy and acceptance for ourselves, for others, and for the Other of all. In this story Christ does not arrive as physical might or temporal power. As a baby God is not independent, he is dependent, interdependent. Just like us he has been conceived helpless, just like us he will die helpless. But that can be good.

St Gregory of Nazianzus puts it like this: The very Son of God, older than the ages, invisible, incomprehensible, incorporeal, beginning of beginning, light of light, fountain of life and immortality … perfect likeness … he it is who comes to his own image and takes our nature for the good of our nature, and unites himself to an intelligent soul for the good of my soul, to purify like by like ... He takes on the poverty of my flesh, that I may gain the riches of his divinity. He who is full is made empty … that I may share in his fullness ... What is this mystery that surrounds us?

This mystery is Abba, intimate enough to be called Daddy, but in our emptiness he is greater than our abilities, our companions, our mid-winter, and our universe. His best things are not things. He suffers nature, but nature cannot explain his existence. The best thing in our nature is no-thing, but One supreme spirit who holds all things together, silently, eternally, expectantly.

We need to communicate to Homer Simpson that to pray is to act, to expect and be expectant, to pray for others is to act from God’s motives and to lose ourselves - and therefore find ourselves. To pray is to act in the hope that actions work out, despite their looking like they are not working out, and even though it does seem like a very long wait indeed.

On Strictly Come Dancing Bruce Forsyth can regularly be heard to tell us “and now the moment of truth!” I take this on trust as I can’t get near the television for writing essays.

But the moment of truth is now – because the place where our sustainer is born is not in a stable, not in the Middle East 2,000 years ago, not in the Bible, but here in us. The Mind of God in our minds and the birth of God in ourselves.

We haul trees into our houses and wait for the day on which we celebrate the birth of God in us. The true cradle is our life, as we helplessly allow Abba into the world around us.

We can never divorce ourselves from this incarnate reality because it is not ours. Christmas is not about buying and receiving the God of presents we can afford – but about freely accepting the presence of God who we can’t escape.

As Psalm 146 says, no human being can save you. When they die, they return to the dust, and all their plans come to an end … We are helpless, like a labour coming on, but helplessness is good if it is giving birth.

At last then, the point of my sermon. What good is it to me if this eternal birth of the divine Son takes place but does not take place in myself? What good is it to me if Mary is full of grace and I am not? What good is it to me for the creator to give birth to his or her Son if I do not also give birth to him in my time and my culture?

Awaiting in childbirth is a crisis but when we cease our labouring, this is Christ’s best opportunity to appear, and then to smile.

And this then is the fullness of time, when the Son of God is begotten in us.

Amen.

FORGIVEN (a digital story)

Sacred stillness

Some NRSV Biblical texts concerning Contemplation

And on the seventh day God finished the work …
and he rested.

Genesis 2.2

God formed man from the dust of the ground
and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life;
and the man became a living being.

Genesis 2.7

the Lord is about to pass by … but the Lord was not
in the wind … not in the earthquake … not in the fire … and after the fire; a sound of sheer silence.

1 Kings 19.11

When you are disturbed, do not sin;
ponder it on your beds, and be silent …
offer right sacrifices, and put your trust in the Lord.

Psalm 4.4

Be still before the Lord, and wait patiently on him
… refrain from anger … do not fret.

Psalm 37.7

Be still, and know that I am God.

Psalm 46:10

For God alone my soul waits in silence, from him comes my salvation … for God alone my soul waits in silence.

Psalm 62.1,5

Return, O my soul, to your rest,
for the Lord has dealt bountifully.

Psalm 116.7

I have calmed and quieted my soul like a weaned child.

Psalm 131.2

Come my people, enter your chambers, and shut your
doors behind you; hide yourselves for a little while until the wrath is past.

Isaiah 26.20

In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness
and in trust shall be your strength.

Isaiah 30.15

Those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength
They shall mount up with wings like eagles;
They shall walk and not faint;
Listen to me in silence; O coastlands
Let the people renew their strength.

Isaiah 40.31

The Lord is good to those who wait for him
To the soul that seeks him, it is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord.
It is good for one to bear the yoke in youth:
to sit alone in silence.

Lamentations 3 25-28

The Lord is in his holy temple;
let all the earth keep silence before him.

Habakkuk 2.20

Be silent, all people, before the Lord;
for he has roused himself from his holy dwelling.

Zechariah 2.13

Whenever you pray, go into your room* and shut
the door and pray to your Father who is in secret;
and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

*from Gk ‘tamei’on’
(secret room or storage chamber)

Matthew 6.6

Come to me, all you who are weary
and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.

Matthew 11.28

Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves
and rest awhile.

Mark 6.31

When the lamb opened the seventh seal
there was a silence in heaven for about half an hour.

Revelation 8.1

I think not mate

When I came to theological college I came with the willingness to question everything which was put to me - this is exactly what the 'person in the street' should do to me, I figured. And if Christianity is true, then it should be able to withstand wholesale rigorous scrutiny, I also figured. Only then would it be worth following.

After the questions, all I was left with was two propositions still standing in the ring - Jesus was a real man - and there are enough 'secular' facts to make this unassailable - and the default secular materiaist view of the world is just ignorant. It is from these two facts that I began to re-build, like any child who knocks a wall down only in order to test it and to put all the building blocks neatly back into place and see it rise up again.

So I find out that indeed, Christianity is true..... like the other day as I was in a mental health ward, taking communion with people who themselves were being crucified in one way or another, physically shaking, mentally incoherent, subdued, slightly psychotic, pacified having manged to survive another suicide attempt, unlike the G.P and the psychologist I have been hearing about recently.

Jesus was in the room. Through sheer necessity, and there was no working out how he was, or where he was coming from, but Jesus was in the room.

There are those who would say I simply have no evidence for this experience, as if the direct intuitive experiences perceptions and emotions they take for granted every single day of their lives were evidence enough for them, whilst my experience of Jesus in the same way is not evidence enough for me.

But just how do these more 'realistic' people know that the material world is even there when they are not looking at it? They either don't, or they just completely take this kind of knowledge for granted. It does not require evidence, even though there is no evidence for the physical world being there when you shut your eyes.

We sleepwalk in a world of unquestioned assumptions, and we think we exist as autonomous individual thinking beings who can forever manipulate the environment to suit. This is a conceit based on the idea that thought is certainty - I think, therefore I am, as Descartes said. I have a rational self.

But let me tell you a good joke about him. Descartes goes out for a meal and the waiter comes up and asks him if he would like the house soup of the day - asparagus. "I think not", replies Descartes, and promptly disappears in front of the whole cafe!

I am aware of thought, of perception and of sense evidence, but it is the 'I am' who really exists.

And without any evidence too - because the 'I am' is the experiencer. God the uncreated is just Being there, and what's more, he is perfecly reasonable.

If you can't accept this just try widening your shrunken notion of rationality a bit. You really won't have to believe in the Great Pumpkin and Rumplestiltskin.

Bless you and all you love, and all who need love - in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
One Lord, now and forever.
Amen.

NORTHERN SPIRIT (a digital story)

DORIS (a digital story)

ON THE WAY - the journey called life ---------------------------------------------- pt 1 of 3

BECOMING WHO YOU ARE ---------------------------------------------- Pt 2 of 3

BETWEEN THE WORLDS------------------------------------------------Pt 3 of 3

RELATIVELY SPEAKING (a digital story)

Don't watch the birdy: click the 'play' triangle above left

Malcolm McClaren's Madame Butterfly

God at the Ritz - Being or Nothingness?

Intriguing but too long video i/v with Christian Mystic Priest & former physicist Monsignor Lorenzo Albacete - so edited transcipt below!!




A FULL LIFE

We are all trying to figure out what it means to be alive and to deal with the circumstances of our lives in two ways, in a satisfactory way, and in a responsible way. Certain questions keep coming back.

I say where can I find justice, where is beauty, and what is true? These are needs of the human heart and I find traces of them here and there, but is there a source of them? I do not know, so I search for it. I want a beauty that does not end, a justice that does not have to be fought for again and again, but can be lived. So I demand a reasonableness that corresponds to my heart, and I want more.

Life is a passion and as it tastes what it is looking for it gets stronger and wants more. This is what I call religion. It is the impetus that drives humanity. The sexual quest is one of the first expressions of the religious quest.

Just lust is not sex however, it is possession and power. Both the sexual quest and the religious quest generate culture, and the religious quest is broader.

TAKING MEASUREMENTS

See the existential questions do not pertain to science. I don't want my scientists to sit around asking about the 'Why' of the universe. Because the results of science should be measurable, and that is fine, but that cannot apply to ALL of our experiences of life. When you say 'I', what does that 'I' stand for? There is one I that can be explained in terms of brain functions, but there are other experiences for which the brain function explanation is inadequate. Obviously it is there! But it is not exhausted by a scientific explanation, and taking science out of its realm is a violation of scientific rules.

Darwinism is true, within its scope, but if it is the only question you are asking, then you are depriving yourself of a human experience. In Darwinism, beautiful stuff is discovered for sure, but the price is to exclude certain things from the enquiry. As long as we are aware of the exclusion, that is fine, but when you take life and treat it the same way - by ignoring what has been excluded from the enquiry, that is a tragic narrowing.

REAL AND IDEAL

Darwinism, or creationism or any 'ism as an ideology that accounts for all human experiences and as a proposal for organising your life in all its dimensions, I cannot accept. Science accounts for everything within its own sphere only. Sooner or later, the Darwinians in their own lives do not act as if Dawinism explains everything, as if there is no inherent meaning in the universe. So scientific reasoning is a form of reasoning. Without it, you do not abandon reason, you expand your form of reasoning.

In the same way, I say there is meaning in the universe. But if that faith proposal I make rules out a scientific discovery that makes sense in is own terms, then I am prepared to abandon it as absurd. The question is, do explanations correspond to my experience of life?

SHUT UP!

I embrace that which accounts for the experience of my heart, but do it in a reasonable way. The Church cannot get away with saying: "This is it and shut up." It has to invite you to verify it.

In order to find out what the words: 'Jesus is the son of God' mean, I have to explore, to ask, to question. If at any one time I have put the matter down and said: 'No more questioning', then I am at the level of the Mystery itself, and that is self-defeating.

So there are two types of understanding - comprehension and certainty. It is the teaching of the church that the doctrines and the dogmas are signposts, not the reality. But striking with reality always launches you. As you react to the circumstances that determine where you are, you fall back. You may crash or run out of energy, but I would say the religious impulse, the desire for the infinite, is the impulse making science possible. I will not say anything unless I have verified it. Does it make sense? I have to decide every day whether I believe what I believe.

Any contact we have with Reality will launch us in a quest for meaning and purpose.

SIN BIN

You can see this progress interrupted many times, by a total collapse, and many steps back. The whole Bible too can be seen as an educational process like this. In it, there is the hurtling of babies against the wall, the using of women as property, and there are certain things which you just don't say anymore. God is educating our ideas of God, and so he has to use whatever ideas are there. What is being educated is our freedom, and so you have to work with what you have.

God has to purify our idea of God, but there is another direction, which is opposite to this direction. It is the direction towards selfishness and pride, lived out in my relations with people and with nature. Even the name of God is used in this direction. In the name of God, the more I know of God, the more intolerant I become.

God works through us, through our reason, our minds and heart. The Bible is a divine inspiration, but it is not dictated. It is a concrete people with a history of understanding of the mystery and of reaction to the mystery. At any one time the people are advanced, or they are behind. There are many theologies of God in the Bible, it is like a scrapbook. But what they all have in common is the history of a people, and now we can look back and see if there is any direction in the sensitivity of a people, as time passes.

THE PARTICULAR versus THE UNIVERSAL

Today we see a particular revelation to one person or people, and an openness to all manifestations of the human search, as contradictory. This is valid and understandable and it should be. In concrete cases, certain actions are proposed that are not actions which open us but which narrow us and our sensitivities, so then that privileged revelation should be rejected as intolerant.

But, on the other hand, the way people progress is always very concrete. A teacher comes, he is ahead of the people, like a Martin Luther King. This seems to be the way human beings are educated and live together. In science, economics, ethics, politics, and because no-one is an expert this method of preference and election and particularity in this way does not worry me. It is not necessarily conflicting with humanity.

THE GREAT LIZARD

I believe Jesus to be THE saviour of humanity, but, I am assuming this is all somehow originating in the Reality which I call the Mystery. It is behind the human heart, wherever the human heart is. This Mystery is what unites us.

Even if you are a criminal, you are responding to the needs of the human heart. This is what we have in common. And the religious proposal says that at the heart of it all, at the origin of this, is this great Mystery which unites us, which you can call God, the Creator, or the Great Lizard, whatever you want to call it -- it is this Reality which educates us.

And what does God reveal? He reveals himself.

(SUPER)NATURAL SELECTION

But when you reveal yourself, you have to work with what is there, through personal interests, and so on. So this God follows this educational method of selecting all of these people. And as a Christian, and this is what makes me a Christian, I come to believe that the concretisation of all of this, at one point in time, and the manifestation of this Mystery, not just the manifestation of any other teacher of the Mystery -- as authentic as they may all be -- but OF THE MYSTERY ITSELF, is the person of Jesus of Nazareth.

And this is what I hold, but this does not close me...

...I do not say that those who do not accept Jesus are damned or excluded, of course not, because the purpose of Jesus is precisely to move us to the next stage, which is all embracing. And so I read the Bible in its context and I will tell St Paul, OK I say Yes to anything, but what do you mean by: "You must believe in the Son of God."?

A Buddhist or an atheist may get to heaven faster than I do. Even St Thomas Aquinas would say a person has to follow his (OR HER) conscience.

Be honest to your heart. It is not the morality that gets you to heaven. It is not because the atheist does good things.

IF THEY ACCEPT IT, FINE

It is the heart that is important. This is very important. A Christian can fulfil every moral law there is and still end up in Hell - that is the doctrine of the Church. It is not what you do, it is your stand with respect to other-ness. It is your ability to respond in a way that gives of yourself. It does not even have to be formulated in the mind. Being is Love in the Mystery of the Trinity. That is what it means.

And a truth that inspires you to do violence, is not truth. You are being guided by something else, something horrible which is the other energy, whatever you want to call it, satanic or original sin, or whatever. It is a distortion of the truth. In the fourth Eucharistic prayer, we pray for those who seek God with a sincere heart, as much as we pray for the Church. I do not think I am being a liberal Catholic, this is just the doctrine of the Church. The word catholic means universal, and I don't think that there is a conflict between the particular and the universal.

The particularism itself will move in that direction because it is the dynamics of Love. Love's very particularisation broadens it. As a follower of Christ and believing he and only he is the centre of the universe, I do not find this particularity in any way conflicting with my desire to be open to every manifestation of humanity. If I come with any threat, or suggestion of powerfully imposing this or its consequences, I am against that. The purpose of Christ is universal. I just rejoice and follow what I have discovered. I offer it to the people. If they accept it, fine, but if they do not, they are not my enemies.

BUT GO TO THE MOVIES

I would like all to believe in Christ, but what salvation comes can come without someone knowing it, because what it requires is not moral achievement but purity of heart. I do not love humanity because I love Christ. I love Christ because I love humanity. In spite of its horrors, and all its negative challenges, I turn to Christ because Christ makes sense of all this, so I say yes. It corresponds to the desires of my heart. If it didn't, I would be out of my mind to continue with it, that is crazy, like a self-hatred.

So in the country we have people who are non-believers, Buddhists, Jews, whatever, but I say be faithful to your atheism, see where it leads you. I have total confidence that it will lead to the Mystery, because we are structured that way.

We do have to talk about these things - but we are not made to talk about them all the time. And in the end, you have to go to the movies.

I thirst for Truth

I am sure some of you will have experienced this sort of thing yourselves, but one of my sons once came home from primary school talking about: “Lord Jesus Price” and: “Deliver us from Eagle.” And the other son is at that stage where he has that insatiable thirst for knowledge which can be infuriating. Knowledge isn't always the full picture.

Every answer you can give just creates another busy question. The other day he asked us: “Why do people have foreheads?” That one wasn't too hard to deal with but I did struggle more with: "What is DNA"? I answered this one by talking about brown eyes and brown hair, but then came the killer punch: "But how come I have your DNA if I came from Mum?" Then there was a very long pause as I was floored..... Then: "Oh I know," he said, "when you were kissing!" I felt so relieved I started talking all about test tube cloning and Dolly the sheep, until another of the children suddenly said: "Oh, so I understand now. Mum is going to turn into a sheep."

I had failed miserably to properly satisfy the thirsty quest for knowledge, but I am working on it. This thirst is a great thing though because it isn't always easily put off. I know some of you have experienced the really thirsty children ask you: “But who created God?"

This is another infuriating but brilliant question, although it IS a little easier for me to tackle than explaining human DNA transfer without mentioning any of the details.

But to answer: "Who created God?" we need to remember why we can't get away with saying that the universe has just always been around in a sort of spiritual steady state - Because we know that the universe had a beginning if we are to trust our astrophysicists, who agree that the Big Bang happened about 14 billion years ago. The fraction of the universe that we can actually see is still expanding outwards as a result, and we call 75 per cent of the stuff of the universe dark energy -- because we don't know where it came from. But it is driving the expansion out which could mean everything will eventually cool down so much it will all die.

Of course the Big Bang doesn't prove the Big Banger, but let's follow the thirst for knowledge and think about this. Each of us knows that our individual human life had a beginning and will have an end, and we each know that all natural life is much bigger than our own lifespan. In the same way, eternal life could be much bigger than the natural lifespan of our universe. But this eternity we call God did not begin like the universe began. Creator God is beyond the universe and beyond our created thought processes. I know I have tried to bring myself to accept that before birth and after death there is only oblivion, but I cannot. Again, no-one can prove any of this with the thirst for knowledge alone, but as human beings, the thirst for knowledge is not our only thirst. We also have a thirst for truth, to use a high-folluting phrase.

And contrary to what Richard Dawkins wishes to say, Biology isn't the only way to explore truth. "Seek Truth" said the Greek philosopher seeker Plato. "What is truth?" said the Roman governor politician Pontius Pilate. And, according to John's gospel, "I am the Truth" said Jesus.

But maybe this truth talk is all a bit too grand for you. Yet God’s thirst for us is an experience, not just our statement of faith. It is a thirst which can be quenched provided we act on the statement of faith and walk the Christian truth. As the early church Father Irenaeus once put it: "God became human so that humans could become God".

But a word of caution for us human beings too, because we like to settle for a different thirst on the way -- our thirst for power. We don’t have to look far to see the effects of this today and every day. And in his own day, Jesus ran into trouble by publicly acknowledging a quite different source of power to the power humankind seeks, a quite distinct power to the power which the occupying Roman forces and the Jewish religious authorities were concerned with. As he broke bread and drank wine it wasn’t the worldy empire or the temple transaction kind of power he proclaimed. It was a higher claim on us, which he called the Kingdom. What good did it do him though? Did it quench his thirst? How would we know? Well when he was about die for his trouble in living out God's power, he did speak about his thirst - according to John 19:28:

“Later, knowing that all was now completed, and so that the Scripture would be fulfilled, Jesus said: 'I am thirsty.' A jar of wine vinegar was there, so they soaked a sponge in it, put the sponge on a stalk of the hyssop plant, and lifted it to Jesus' lips. When he had received the drink, Jesus said, 'It is finished.' With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit."

What is this scripture which was fulfilled? A reference to Psalm 22, the cry to God for help. Jesus the Hebrew God man would have known this scripture well. It goes like this:

“Scorn has broken my heart and has left me helpless; I looked for sympathy, but there was none, for comforters, but I found none. They put gall in my food and gave me vinegar for my thirst.”
So did he quench his thirst? Vinegar is the very last thing a thirsty person needs - I am not a farmer but it is like giving gall - which is a parasitic growth on a plant - to the hungry. Unsatisfying. In his own suffering thirst during death, cheap vinegary wine is all he was offered.

I may not be accquainted with countryside terms like gall but I am told that alcohol is dehydrating and not hydrating. I must try it one day :)

But it wouldn't have helped Jesus much.

When the boy of God suffered and died, as all of us here will also suffer and die, perhaps it was a different type of thirst altogether which was being quenched.

Jesus' life on earth had been transparent to the transcendent creator of our natural universe. What he did represented the meeting of our human thirst for God and God’s thirst for us humans. And we are told that Jesus said to a fellow sufferer on the cross: "Today you will be with me in Paradise".

We may not ever be crucified on a cross but none of us can avoid being fellow sufferers, and we certainly can't avoid death. But we can choose to seek to live out the eternal life which can contain and fulfill our natural lives, so that we too will be what we were intended to be - images of God – people guided by a power beyond our tiny little lives and beyond the beginning and end of our wonderful but unreliable natural universe.

I want to thank you for reading, and ask that all of us as a Royal Priesthood pray through our lives as we live and love and suffer and die. More than that I pray that we will all watch and experience the resurrection who quenches a thirst for a truth altogether different to the truths of DNA transfer.

So may the power who acted on Jesus raise us to life in him.

YOU BROOD OF VIPERS!

Life is fragile, and one day this person who is a bit jaded,battered and confused in life decides that God might just be real, and he might just be available. So he decides to give it a go by turning up at church. Picture the scene and imagine this person is us, is me, and is you.

You step into the church building slowly, wondering what you are letting yourself in for. What is there to lose really? You might even perceive God somehow, and at the very worst you won't, and it'll all just be dull or slightly irritating. So anyway, you are getting a feel for the place now and the unusual smell and atmosphere, and you are deciding where to sit and settle down quietly when all of a sudden you spot the vicar making his way towards you. No sweat you say to yourself, this is the Church of England after all, if he notices you at all he'll probably just smile and say something polite and forgettable, and then you can just smile back and find your seat.

But this particular vicar looks a bit crazed, and suddenly he jumps up onto the top of the pew right in front of you, fixes his stare into you and starts: "You viper..! You snake..! What do you think you are slithering in here for?"

"Erm, Pardon?"

"What right have you got to slide up and expect God? What made you crawl out of your cosy hole and come in here?"

Well, its not dull but it's hardly a service with a smile is it? This crazed vicar is doing exactly what John the Baptist is doing to the people who turn up looking for a baptism in the Jordan and a relationship with God. So what exactly does John the Baptist think he is doing then - has the desert sun addled his overheated brain? After comparing the people to serpents he tells us that God won't really be there for us like a parent just because we happen to be in the family.

But he doesn't stop there. He goes on to say that if we don't repent and bear good fruit we'll be chopped down like dead trees and burnt, or if we don't repent and produce good grain we'll be thrown into the air by a winnowing fork, and blown away like chaff in the wind. Well I don't know about you but I have had better welcomes in this world. It's hardly 'Hello there, good to see you again, shall we talk about the weather, take care and do mind how you go now won't you'. Would you be back again the following week to be called a reptile which needed burning?

And yet Luke tells us that this is John the Baptist preaching good news to the people. Does it make you like me wonder how heart warming John's really great news is or how cheery his utterly amazing news might be....

But then the really funny thing is that next these people stay on.
They ask John what they will have to do to be with God.
So he tells them.

Share clothes and food and to be happy with your pay. He tells the despised taxmen not to overcharge people and the powerful soldiers not to threaten and extort money from anyone. Most of all though he talks about repentance and how it is necessary.

Repentance? What does that mean then?

In the New Testament repentance is translated from the Greek word metanoia, which literally means to think differently after, to have an after thought, or to have a change of heart and mind, or a change of consciousness.

At the start of this story I spoke about life being fragile, but that God might just be real, and that he might just be here for us, so one day when we are feeling a bit jaded, battered and confused in life we decide to give him a real go. Maybe that means we think differently after God, we have an after thought, a change of heart and mind and consciousness.

It is a short life we have here, and St Isaac of Syria said: "This life has been given you for repentance. Do not waste it on vain pursuits.".

John the Baptist is not very polite and very middle of the road Church of England but he is saying that if God is real for us we will change, and be different to the way we are when he is not real for us, that when God is more to us than just being in the right place and saying the right three letter word then we will see differently after being in that same place and saying that same word. We will have a change of consciousness, and our consciousness is one of the few things our science has not been able to fully pin down about us. It cannot be fully measured and understood and in that sense it is the place where the creator can have a real life of his own within us.

We can repent and rethink and notice the parts of our hearts and minds which always fail to produce good fruit being burned up. We can allow our useless dead old chaff to blow away into the wind like it would have done from a Jewish farmers' winnowing fork, and we can spiritually build up our grain stores to give us new life despite ourselves.

"His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire." I like to think of Jesus as that unquenchable fire, which we can all move towards and which we can all move away from.

If we only see him as an on off switch which we either assent or fail to assent to once and for all time then we won't be allowing God to change our consciousness for real. We all know people can reflect the warmth and light of the fire at times and in ways which don't seem outwardly religious or Christian.

But this is exactly what John the crazed Baptist wants to say to us, that God loves us and can be real for us provided we keep on turning to him and allowing him to change our minds and to to reveal the real fruit of good news, and despite our short and fragile journey in this creation.

The people by the Jordan questioned whether John the Baptist might be the Christ, and so John answered them saying, "I baptize you with water, but he who is mightier than I is coming, the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie."

The untying of sandals was a slave's task, and this slave John ended up being beheaded for his calling people snakes. But the good news he preached to God's people is a journey to take, not an place to end.