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I wonder what it was that Paul said that converted Lydia? It must have been telling because I suspect that Lydia was no push over. We are told that she was a worshipper of God, obviously not a Hebrew because she lived in Macedonia but none-the-less a God-fearing gentile, woman. She was a business woman - trading in purple cloth. Two interesting things here; one she is a woman in commerce and two her trade is in an expensive commodity, purple cloth. Both of which might have put her beyond the pale in the eyes of Paul and his companions had they not been challenged by the Holy Spirit to go to Macedonia.

Under the Hebrew Law, women were not counted as part of God’s chosen people, as I’ve said before that was only adult men. Women could worship God, but obviously God took no notice of them because they were not male! Also purple cloth dye was made from crushed shells and the families making it were often at the bottom of the social hierarchy simply because the process stank and the dye stained the skin of those who made it. Yet the dye and the cloth produced were highly valued as being the colour of royalty and the elite. Lydia, might have been stained with the dye or she might have been dye free but trading in the cloth the dyers made. Either way she was a woman engaging in trade and that was a bit dubious!

Whatever she heard Paul say obviously had a profound effect upon her,  so much so that she and her household converted and were baptised. Lydia is obviously wealthy and could instruct her household to do as she wished and if she was baptised then so would they be. They may or may not have had little choice in the matter especially if they wished to retain their jobs or were slaves. Lydia, might have been a bossy, hard woman but I think not because of the end of verse 15 in that 16th chapter of Acts:

‘If you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come and stay at my home.’

Lydia, I feel is a pious woman, who has been changed and influenced by God and the message of Christ’s Good News. This influence has led her and those she cares about to be baptised and she invites Christ’s ambassadors Paul and his companions to say with her. There are echoes here of Christ’s command to the 70 to go out and share the Good News but without any money or belongings to help. If their words are good then people would be moved to care for them. The same applies to Paul and the others, let the Good News feed you. In more ways than one!

But I still wonder what words Paul actually used to express the Good News and what was that Good News anyway? That is a question I cannot answer but if I turn to the poet George Herbert I might get some way to doing so:

LOVE bade me welcome; yet my soul drew back,

            Guilty of dust and sin.

But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack

    From my first entrance in,

Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning

            If I lack’d anything.

‘A guest,’ I answer’d, ‘worthy to be here:’

            Love said, ‘You shall be he.’

‘I, the unkind, ungrateful? Ah, my dear,

            I cannot look on Thee.’

Love took my hand and smiling did reply,

            ‘Who made the eyes but I?’

‘Truth, Lord; but I have marr’d them: let my shame

            Go where it doth deserve.’

‘And know you not,’ says Love, ‘Who bore the blame?’

            ‘My dear, then I will serve.’

‘You must sit down,’ says Love, ‘and taste my meat.’

            So I did sit and eat.

The Good News Paul spoke about, that affected Lydia, must have been about Love. The unconditional love of God as expressed through the life and sacrifice of Jesus. A love that is all forgiving as Herbert suggests and welcomes us in regardless of who we are or what we have done:

LOVE bade me welcome; yet my soul drew back,

            Guilty of dust and sin.

But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack

    From my first entrance in,

Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning

            If I lack’d anything.

Love calls to us and yet we resist because we can think we are not worthy of such love. But what does love do when God perceives that we draw back? It asks us if we need anything?

God’s love is not conditional on our being anything but ourselves, all it asks of us is to let it in. Let in, to our hearts and minds, into the depths of our being to enfold the bits we don’t like as well as the bits we do. If we say yes, and welcome in Love then there is no part of us that can ever be beyond the love of God, or of God’s healing power. Herbert knew that, in his short and at times difficult life, and this poem is the culmination of all his works and the one he wished published last, for he thought it said it all.

God’s love is not repulsed by us, whatever we’ve done or whatever we might be. God’s love is always there for us waiting to be let in by our free choice and once in ready to heal us and make us whole. God’s love is all about making a connection to us and that I think is what happened to Lydia. Something Paul and his companions said made a connection so deep that it changed her life and brought her to Christ.

God’s love is free, ever-lasting and open to all. What words do we, you and I need to use to tell others about it? I don’t know? But like the 70 being sent out on a mission or Paul responding to the call to Macedonia I believe, truly believe that God will give us the right words at the right time, all we have to be is alert and unafraid to speak. This needn’t be scary either; for the most effective conversations often come when we are relaxed and chatting with others and we say something that opens a new door for the one who hears our words. It can be as simple, for example, as telling someone why you go to Church or what your faith gives you, not in any ‘preachy’ way but genuinely from the heart so they hear your joy and thoughtfulness.

Whatever it is and whatever words you use, if God has decided the time is right then your words will have a power you did not expect and they too might lead someone like Lydia to open her heart to God’s love.

Acts 11:1-18

The Book of Acts reads a bit like a ‘Boy’s own’ adventure story. It is fast moving and contains accounts of journeys, arguments, debates, conversions and ship-wrecks. It is an exciting read. Try reading it through sometime and you will see what I mean. The Book of Acts is also radical, in fact very radical if not ‘dangerously radical’. It is radical in the sense that it suggests that God, the God of the Hebrews, the chosen people is not just for them but for all people both Jew and gentile.

What was St.Luke, the Book of Acts probable author thinking of to imply such things?

In first century Jewish society to suggest that God was for all people would have been heresy. It felt like heresy to those first Jewish Christians too. Jesus was a Jew and he never changed his religion or established a new one either – it was his followers who did that. At first those Jews who were followers of Jesus continued to worship in the temple as normal but with a devotion to Jesus and a desire to repent as he had encouraged them to do. This was fine until Peter, one of Jesus’ closest followers decided otherwise.

Following Jesus’ ascension his followers  continued with all the Jewish traditions and practices including as this passage tells us – circumcision of males. It was circumcision that singled the Jews out from others in their society. Remember too, at this time, women were not seen as being part of the chosen people, it was only men. Yet Peter tells these God fearing Jerusalem Jews that the Holy Spirit has told him not to make a distinction between Jew and Greek, circumcised or uncircumcised and by extension between men and women! To those Jewish Christians this would have been almost too shocking to contemplate. Peter obviously had his work cut out to convince them otherwise. He must have put up a good argument, however, as he did convince the Jerusalem party that no one was outside God’s favour and love and that Christ’s message was for all God’s people not just the chosen ones. I particularly like his comment at verse 18:

“Who was I that I could hinder God?”

This for me says it all. God’s spirit, God’s love cannot be stopped. It flows where it will and not where humankind thinks it should or might want it to go. It is inclusive and it should encourage all of us to be inclusive in our attitudes as well. For who are we to decide who is or who is not out with the bounds of God’s love and acceptance?

John 21:1-19

Today’s Gospel is one of my favourite passages in the New Testament. I remember that years ago a somewhat irreverent fellow ordinand described it as “the barbecue on the beach.” I rather like that description. It tells of seven disciples doing what for some of them had been routine work in the years before they were called to follow Jesus and having that everyday routine transformed by their encounter with the Risen Christ. I also like it because the sharing of bread and fish hints at the Eucharistic sharing to which Christ the host invites us as his guests. But the main importance of this passage is the encounter between Jesus and Peter.

St John’s Gospel includes the story of Peter’s threefold denial of Jesus. The next time we see him, he and the beloved disciple are racing towards the tomb on the first Easter morning. The Beloved Disciple gets there ahead of him, but it is Peter who goes into the tomb first and examines the folded graveclothes. Peter is not mentioned by name in the accounts of Jesus’ first two appearances to the disciples, so the issue of his denial of Jesus remains unresolved until the final chapter of the Gospel and the verses which we have just shared.

The resolution happens in surroundings which, for Peter, were familiar and workaday. After a long and unsuccessful night’s fishing, a stranger calls out to them from the shore, and suggests that they cast their nets in a different place.      It is only after their net is full of fish that the Beloved Disciple realizes that the stranger is Jesus, and Peter hastily puts on some clothes and leaps into the water to wade ashore.

We can infer a great deal about Peter, and about his experience of the Resurrection, from this behaviour. He had denied Jesus and therefore had plenty to be ashamed of, yet there was no question of his hiding from Jesus. He already understood that he was forgiven. His confidence and enthusiasm were restored, as was his characteristic impetuosity. He had been the first to enter the empty tomb, and now he was determined to be the first on shore to greet Jesus.

After breakfast, Jesus questions Peter closely, and questions him three times. It must have been a challenging experience for Peter, for the threefold questioning was surely a reminder of his threefold denial of Jesus. The English language cannot convey the subtleties of this passage, for in translation Jesus appears to ask exactly the same question – “Do you love me?” – three times – and Peter appears to give the same answer three times.

But there’s more to this question-and-answer session than English translations suggest. On the first two occasions when Jesus asks: “Do you love me?” the Greek verb that the Gospel writer uses is the same one that Jesus used when he said to the disciples: “This is my new commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” Jesus is not talking about affection or friendship, he is talking about unreserved, unconditional, and unwavering love – the kind of love that involves complete commitment to the needs of another person.

And when Peter replies, he uses a different word for love. A literal translation of their first exchange would be:

“Jesus said to Simon Peter “Are you more fully devoted and committed to me than these people”. He said to him: “Yes, Lord, you know that I am your friend.”

So his answer sounds rather lame; it lacks the level of commitment for which Jesus seems to be calling.

At the second asking, Jesus slightly lowers the stakes. The second question is simply:

“Are you fully devoted and committed to me.” And once again Peter replies: “I am your friend.” For Jesus, that answer, although it fell short, is sufficient. On the third time of asking, he rephrases the question and simply says:                “Are you my friend?” and when Peter says that he is, gives him the Apostolic commission: “Feed my sheep.”

It is possible – I think it is likely - that Jesus was testing Peter. The first two questions offered Peter the opportunity to assert a degree of love and commitment which he did not yet have. Peter passed the test – he remembered how on the last night of Jesus’ life he had boldly declared that he would lay down his life for Jesus, only to deny all knowledge of him a few hours later. He therefore did not claim more than he honestly could claim at that moment, and the friendship he was able to offer was a foundation on which his Apostleship and the martyrdom to which Jesus obliquely refers at the end of today’s Gospel were built.

For us it is an encouraging story.  It shows us that God is with us in the everyday, and that God welcomes us to share in the Eucharistic celebration of the Resurrection. Most encouraging of all, it shows God’s willingness to accept what we have to offer, however limited that may be, and to work with it and with us and draw out more from us.

When preaching on John’s Gospel, once I have worked through the scholarly commentaries, I always turn to Archbishop William Temple’s Readings in St John’s Gospel. Of today’s passage, Archbishop Temple wrote these words:

“Peter is an unfailing spring of encouragement to all of us. The example of Paul is of little use to me; I am not a hero. The example of John is of but little more use; my love is so feeble. But Peter is source of constant encouragement, for his weakness is so manifest, yet because he was truly the friend of his Lord, he became the Prince of the Apostles and glorified God by his death.”

Easter 2 Year C 2022

I would guess that most of you have played the game known as Chinese Whispers, a game in which a message is passed on in whispers and gets seriously distorted by the time it reaches the last person in the line. The whole enjoyment comes from the comical distortions that result. There’s a famous example, which will only make complete sense to those of you who remember pre-decimal currency, in which the original message was “Send reinforcements, I’m going to advance” and the final version was “Send three and fourpence, I’m going to a dance.”

Today’s Gospel tells of what is almost certainly the first example of the Chinese Whispers effect in the history of the Christian Church – the failure of the other disciples to convey to Thomas, who was absent on that first Easter Sunday evening, the full nature and meaning of their encounter with the Risen Christ.

To understand what got lost in transmission to Thomas, we need to look closely at what the other disciples experienced when Jesus mysteriously appeared in a locked room on the evening of the first Easter Day and spoke words of peace. St John adds something that you won’t find in the other three Gospels. It comes in verse 22:

“When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”

He breathed on them – it’s the only place in the whole New Testament where you will find that Greek verb. Jesus breathing on his disciples is a clear echo of a very important verse in Chapter 2 of Genesis:

“then the LORD 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.”

The encounter that the disciples, other than Thomas, had with the Risen Jesus that evening was, for them, a renewal of creation, a life-changing encounter. At its very heart was the experience of being forgiven and loved. Jesus did not reproach them for letting him down, running away or denying him. He greeted them with the words: “Peace be with you” and he commissioned them to exercise a ministry of forgiveness.

“Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”

The essence of the good news of Easter seems to have got lost in the very first telling. Thomas was not present that evening, and when you look at what the other disciples said to him about their encounter with the Risen Jesus, you find no mention of peace, forgiveness or a ministry of forgiveness. They simply said: “We have seen the Lord”. And Thomas understandably refused to believe them. They made a simple assertion of fact, and he responded in the way that we all respond when someone asserts as a fact something that contradicts all our knowledge and experience. Over two thousand years many others have responded to the idea of the Resurrection of Jesus in exactly that way.

Perhaps Thomas would have reacted in a different way if he had been told by his friends “We have seen the Lord, and he spoke words of peace and forgiveness, and empowered us to preach peace and forgiveness.” We cannot know, but we do know that he had his own personal encounter with the Risen Jesus a week later, and that he then heard and experienced the message of peace and forgiveness. Jesus invited him to touch his wounds, but the Gospel does not say that Thomas did so. He had no more need of proof; he understood that he was encountering the love and forgiveness of God and that he was called to spread the good news of that love and forgiveness.

The certainty that you are loved and forgiven by God, that you are within God’s peace, is not a certainty towards which you can reason your way. It has to be encountered, experienced, lived and shared. The encountering, the experiencing, the living and the sharing require that we look beyond ourselves and our limited resources, that we receive the Grace of God, that new life is breathed into us and that we are created anew.

Amen.

Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here but has arisen (Luke 24: 5).

Many years ago - when credit cards and mobile phones were uncommon - I travelled with a friend from Cairo to Jerusalem by bus. We wanted to be there in time for Easter. It was an adventure. A trip into the unknown.  I still remember the excitement of getting up at early dawn and walking to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre on Easter Day where many other pilgrims and tourists had gathered. The memory of the empty tomb, the clanging of ancient bells, the lingering of incense, the candles flickering in the dark, the singing, the sharing of the peace along with the partaking of bread and wine still remain.  A connection had been made which was real. You will have your own stories about Easter and your encounter with the risen Christ. Think about them this week.

Imagine however, for a moment, that first Easter. We are told that the women were perplexed, terrified and bowed down. Sometimes we feel that way too. Only afterwards did they remember what Jesus had told them. They returned with their story to the rest of the disciples but they refused to believe it.  They called it an idle tale. Only Peter went out to see if it might be true. He was amazed. He went away wondering at what had happened. How like us.   The very fact that Peter was there says much about him. His earlier denial was not a thing that could be kept silent. Yet he had the moral courage to face those who knew his shame. There was something of the hero in Peter, as well as something of the coward. The man who was a fluttering dove is on the way to becoming a rock.

That first Easter, those who were there, including Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James and Peter, all experienced something that turned their lives around.  Despite their initial unbelief, their questions and their doubt, something life changing had happened.  What do we think happened?

Professor William Barclay comments that “Many of us still look for Jesus among the dead.  Jesus is not dead; he is alive. He is not merely a hero of the past; he is a living reality of the present. He is not a figure in a book; he is someone to be met and lived with every day. He helps us and guides us and strengthens us to follow his pattern and example. He is not simply a model for life; he is a living presence”.

Recently I  listened to the homily for a priest who had died.  She had a terminal illness. A close friend, who was also a bishop, visited her at Christmas in the hospice. He asked her  “Do you ever wonder where God is?” She replied “He is here with me” as she tapped the side of her bed. Despite the uncertainly of what might happen and the nature of her illness I expect she had her own story about encountering the risen Christ.  She trusted him in life and also with what the future held.

On this Easter Sunday, may we allow the risen Christ to come afresh and touch our lives too. However we are feeling, whatever challenges we may be facing or questions which remain unanswered may we hear again those life changing words:-

“Why do you look for him among the dead? He is not here, but has risen”.