Think for a moment about something that you once said about which you now feel embarrassed or ashamed. Don’t be alarmed, I’m not going to ask any of you to share it with us. That moment of recollection will give you some insight into how St Peter must have felt when Jesus rebuked him. It’s a moment that he would never forget, though reflecting on it in the light of Easter he knew that he had been forgiven for this and also for later denying that he knew Jesus. 

We can be confident that today’s Gospel is an accurate record of this exchange between Peter and Jesus because it meets what historians call “the criterion of embarrassment”. It shows Peter, a leader of huge importance in the early decades of the Christian movement, in a bad light. Peter’s words must have been stronger than most translations of the Bible make clear. We read that he rebuked Jesus. The Greek verb that the Gospel writer uses (epitimao) is used elsewhere in the Gospels when Jesus challenges demons. That helps to explain why Jesus reacts by rebuking Peter with the words “Get behind me, Satan.” But there was almost certainly another reason why Jesus said that. He was remembering his forty days of fasting in the wilderness and the temptations that he faced, temptations which all, in different ways, were about the misuse of power. Peter, who has just acknowledged that Jesus is the Messiah, is shocked by Jesus’ prediction of his own suffering, death and resurrection. That didn’t fit his belief about how the Messiah would use his power to liberate and restore Israel. 

If the first part of our Gospel reading meets the criterion of embarrassment, the second part, in which Jesus tells the disciples and the crowd:

“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”

meets a different test of authenticity, which we might call the criterion of toughness. It’s not the sort of thing you say if your aim is to win friends, influence people or attract supporters. It’s not the sort of thing that politicians will be saying in the coming General Election. And the passage gets tougher still.

“For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.”

For the first readers of St Mark’s Gospel, those words had an immediate, literal and frightening reality. They knew that Peter, Paul and other Christians had been martyred during the period of persecution ordered by the Emperor Nero. Sadly, these words still have a literal meaning for Christians facing persecution in some parts of the world. What are we to make of this saying, given that we can worship openly and in safety, and that the worst that we face from our contemporaries is indifference or misunderstanding? We are unlikely to be challenged to lose our lives for the sake of the Gospel in a literal sense, but this text challenges us to reflect on the impact that discipleship should have on our lives. 

In thinking about this, I’ve been reminded that the phrase “living your best life” has come into widespread use in recent years, especially on social media. It was first popularised by the American chat show host Oprah Winfrey. Put that phrase in a search engine and you’ll find a range of views as to what it might mean. You’ll find sensible guidance from psychologists and psychotherapists, for example:

“Beware a sense of entitlement to a trouble-free life. No one can claim exemption from hard knocks and unfulfilled expectations, hopes and dreams.”

You’ll also find advice that is rooted in individualism and tends towards selfishness. That’s the thinking that lies behind the kind of tweet which consists of a selfie taken in an exotic holiday destination or an expensive restaurant with the caption “This is me, living my best life”.

This sermon isn’t heading in a puritanical direction. Holidays, entertainments, good food and wine, these are good things to be enjoyed, though our enjoyment should be tempered by an awareness that we are fortunate to be able to enjoy them when many cannot. Today’s Gospel isn’t a call to rigid asceticism. Jesus isn’t saying “deny yourself things that you desire”, though that can be a good short-term Lenten discipline and becomes vital to our spiritual health and to the well-being of others if our desires get out of control. He is saying “deny yourself”. This is an invitation to recognise our own self-centredness and to move away from it, centering our lives on him. Doing so has the potential to transform our relationship with others, enablibng us to live our best life.

We cannot deny ourselves in this sense unless we come to some knowledge of ourselves, our flaws and weaknesses. That kind of self-examination is an important part of discipleship, and Lent is a good time to emphasise it. But that self-examination should always happen within the secure knowledge that we are loved by the God who knows our weaknesses and shortcomings far better than we know them ourselves and that God loves us unreservedly. 

I began by asking you to recollect something about which, on reflection, you feel embarrassed or ashamed. That’s one step on the journey of self-examination but it’s only a first step. If we’re embarrassed about something that we said or did because it made other people think less well of us, we haven’t yet escaped from the prison of our own ego. If, on the other hand, we are regretting the hurt we have caused to someone else then we are acknowledging that we haven’t on that occasion lived our best life and we are opening ourselves to the transformation that the Grace of God makes possible.

I wonder how many of us remember God’s Covenant, with us, his people, every time we look at a rainbow? I have to admit that I don’t always think of it. Quite often I am more interested to trying to see the second, shadowy rainbow that always accompanies the bright one. Yet the significance of the rainbow in both Jewish and Christian theology is very important as it reminds us not only of God’s Covenant with us but also his protection of us. 

After the flood, when only eight human beings were left, so the Book of Genesis tells us, God placed the rainbow in the sky as a sign to Noah and his family that he would never again visit his vengeance on the human race. It makes me wonder if God was surprised at his anger and how he treated the us and that the rainbow was as much to remind him of his covenant with us as to remind us? 

It’s worth pondering on, especially as we believe that we have a loving and open armed God. It is that loving God that we see reflected in the life of Jesus as indicated in the epistle and Gospel readings we’ve just heard. 

Peter tells us that although God was angry once again, with his people for our disobedient ways he did not seek to destroy us all as he did in the flood but sought to make us see sense in the ministry of his Son. Even is that meant his Son dying on the Cross to prove how much he loves us. God was prepared to die himself rather than to smite us! It is the Gospel, account that tells us that Jesus was of God; again reinforcing the extremes that God would go to, to tell us he loves us and to encourage us to change our disobedient ways. 

In the three readings today we are reminded that we are at times re-born to new life. Noah and family came though the waters of the flood to new life in a new land. Jesus was clearly identified through the Waters of Baptism and the descent of the dove as God’s Son (God incarnate) and we are reminded that in our Baptism we die to our old selves and are re-born to new life. Water links the three readings and God’s covenant with us is re-affirmed. 

Firstly in the rainbow we are reminded that God will never again take such drastic measures in punishing our bad behaviour (although we might through our own stupid behaviour annihilate ourselves by destroying the Creation we are called to care for). In our Baptism we are a new creation born in the light of Christ and washed by the waters that cover the Earth and sealed by the Holy Spirit as God’s own. Just as the Holy Spirit as a dove showed the gathered onlookers at Jesus’ Baptism by John that he too was marked by God as his chosen one. All these events are covenant reminders to us of the covenant God established in the first place with Noah and his family. 

But, why a covenant? A covenant is not a simple agreement between two parties. It does not simply say that if we are good then God will not smite us. It is much deeper and much more complicated. A covenant suggests that both parties have an active agreement to do something for the mutual benefit of each other. 

In the Covenant God has with us, the Human Race, we are called to care for Creation as good stewards and to care for each other and God. In return God will care for and love and bless us beyond measure. This Covenant is life-affirming and everlasting and we have to work hard to keep our side of it. God will always keep his side as proved in the sacrifice of his Son. And, we have to prove that we will no longer ravage Creation for our own selfish ends. Words we all need to heed in this time of climate change and emergency. 

Under the Covenant, however, it is never too late for us to change our ways and try to do better in the ways we stewardship Creation or live our lives. That’s what the Covenant is about; it is an active and living agreement that reminds us that we should always try to do the best for God and that which comes from God and that God will in turn do the best for us as well. 

We need, I believe, for a start to give thanks regularly for all the many blessings we are given and not to take them for granted. For in doing so I would hope that we might open our eyes to how we are living our lives and open our hearts and minds to how we might have to change to benefit each other and to respect the God we love. 

This Lent, I encourage you do just that; ponder on the blessings you receive from God; give thanks for them and try to work out how you might be able to share them with others. Pray too that if each of us can do this, then perhaps our small positive steps might enable and encourage others to do the same. Together we might set about changing the world, one small step at a time. So long as we can each try to make that first small step in our lives. 

As Neil Armstrong once said: “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

The sabbath was made for humankind and not humankind for the sabbath (Mark 2:27)

One of the courses which I am studying at New College  is entitled “Jesus and the Gospels”.  We are presently looking at what we can know about the historical Jesus. It will go on to analyse the ways in which we might approach the gospels and will end with looking at some of those books which didn’t make it into the New Testament (for example the Gospel of Thomas) and will ask what process led to their exclusion.  

Bart D Ehrman, an American New Testament scholar, comments that “the Pharisees represent probably the best-known and least-understood Jewish sect.  It appears that this sect began as a group of devout Jews intent above all on keeping the entire will of God. Rather than accepting and keeping the religion of the Greeks, they insisted on knowing and obeying the Law of their own God to the fullest extent possible”.

One difficulty is that in many places there is ambiguity. For example, Jews are told in the Ten Commandments to keep the Sabbath day holy, but nowhere does the Torah (the compilation of the first five books of the Hebrew Bible) indicate precisely how this is to be done. Pharisees devised rules and regulations to assist them in keeping this and all other Laws of Moses. These rules eventually formed a body of tradition, which to stay with our example, indicated what a person could and could not do on the Sabbath in order to keep it holy, or set apart from all other days. 

The rules and regulations that developed came to have a status of their own and were known in some circles as the “oral” Law, which was set alongside the “written” Law of Moses. It appears that Pharisees believed that anyone who kept the oral Law would be almost certain to keep the written Law as well. The intent was not to be legalistic but to be obedient to what God has commanded. 

In our first story Jesus and his disciples were going through the corn fields one Sabbath day; his disciples began to pluck the ears of corn and to eat them. On any ordinary day the disciples were doing what was freely permitted. But all work was forbidden on the Sabbath. By their actions the disciples had technically broken these rules and were classified as law-breakers. 

In our second story there was a man in the synagogue with a paralysed hand. The Greek word means that he had not been born that way but that some illness had taken the strength from him.  It was the Sabbath; all work was forbidden and to heal was to work. Medical attention could be given only if a life was in danger. Jesus knew that this man’s life was not in danger but he wanted to challenge the Pharisees and to show compassion to this man. 

Our two stories are fundamental because they show the clash of two ideals.  To the Pharisee, religion was ritual. To Jesus, it was service.  It was love of God and love of others. It was love in action. The most important thing in the world was not the correct performance of a ritual but the spontaneous answer to the cry of human need. 

Help us to be gentle towards every person we encounter today, in thought, word and deed. May we recognise that others are facing difficulties which we know nothing about. Still our thoughts, bridle our tongues and open our hearts. 

When the novelist Anthony Burgess wrote a short novel about the life of Jesus, he decided to bring together the Circumcision and the Presentation in the Temple and to make of them a single scene. This is a powerful example of artistic licence, for Burgess was writing about events which, in reality, were separated by thirty-two days. Time is telescoped to make a profound point.

Simeon, who in the novel is blind, becomes aware of the presence of the infant Jesus when he hears him crying because of the pain and shock of the circumcision and he moves towards the sound and encounters the holy family. It’s a wonderful image because it captures perfectly the vulnerability of Jesus and the profound spiritual insight of Simeon, who cannot see the fulfilment of God’s promise in a literal sense, and yet is able to recognise that fulfilment and to say “mine eyes have seen thy salvation”. It also reflects the darker side of Simeon’s words, in Luke’s account he telescopes time, prophesying that Jesus will be opposed and rejected, and speaking of the suffering that the Crucifixion will bring to Mary his mother:

“This child is destined for the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed, so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed; and a sword will pierce your own soul too.” 

For us, also, this year time is telescoped. Today marks the end of the Christmas season, the celebration of the Incarnation. There will hardly be time to draw breath before, on Wednesday week, we enter Lent and our thoughts will turn to the adult Jesus going out into the wilderness and confronting the thoughts and temptations that could have undermined his ministry and spared him the  suffering of which Simeon speaks. 

Simeon’s words about falling and rising, about the revealing of people’s inner thoughts take us back to our Old Testament reading from Malachi.  Malachi mixes his metaphors in a daring way – the Messiah is likened to a refiner’s fire and to fuller’s soap. The refiner’s fire burns away the dross, leaving only the pure metal behind – a powerful metaphor for the judgement of God but also a pointer to the reflection and the discipline to which we are called in Lent. Fuller’s soap, or fuller’s earth is different – it is an additive – it is beaten into cloth to give it extra body and thickness, to make it more windproof. So that’s a hopeful metaphor which speaks of what theologians call justification, the way in God can and will fill the gaps and the shortcomings in us and bring us to perfection. 

We are so familiar with the words that Simeon spoke, words that are said and sung in Christian churches around the world every evening, that we are in danger of losing sight of the wonder of them.

“Lord now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word

for mine eyes have seen thy salvation,

which thou hast prepared before the face of all people,

to be a light to lighten the gentiles,

and to be the glory of thy people Israel. 

To recognise the fulfilment of God’s promises in a vulnerable, helpless infant, not voiceless but as yet speechless, is a profound and wonderful insight. This baby - Jesus - is God’s promise fulfilled, and Simeon recognises and acknowledges that truth. He understands that the fulfilment of God’s promise is at hand and he trusts in God for the future fulfilment of that promise. The promise is enough for him. He does not need to live on to watch Jesus grow and develop, and to witness his resistance to temptation, his ministry, his death and his resurrection. 

Simeon’s faith speaks to our condition as disciples of Jesus Christ, for we too have seen the salvation that comes at Christmas but we have not yet seen its fulfilment. The world in which we live often looks unchanged and unredeemed. That is why we need the kind of faith that Simeon had, the certainty that God’s promise is in process of fulfilment, even though we may not experience that fulfilment in our earthly lives.

We have all of us found our faith challenged by things that have happened to us and to other people, by griefs and sorrows, by brutality and selfishness, by the undeserved suffering of the innocent. There are times when it is profoundly difficult to say “Mine eyes have seen thy salvation”. At such times we may draw strength from Simeon because he was the first to recognise that the fulfilment of God’s promise would involve God taking upon himself the brutalities, the selfishness and the undeserved suffering of the world and thus establishing an absolute and loving solidarity with the victim of torture, with the refugee, with the grief-stricken, with the convicted criminal on the scaffold, with the helpless invalid in the hospital bed. As the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews puts it:

“Because he himself was tested by what he suffered, he is able to help those who are being tested.”

And that absolute, loving solidarity confers meaning and value on situations which would otherwise seem bleak, meaningless and utterly negative. Paul Tillich saw that very clearly when he wrote these words about the encounter between the aged Simeon and the infant Jesus:

“Salvation is a child and when it grows up it is crucified. Only the person who can see power under weakness, the whole under the fragment, victory under defeat, glory under suffering, innocence under guilt, sanctity under sin, life under death can say:  “Mine eyes have seen thy salvation.”

As you have just heard, this morning’s first reading is from the Old Testament book of Deuteronomy. I’d like to take this opportunity to tell you a bit about that book.

As Christians, we cannot, must not ignore the Old Testament. It is part of our scriptural heritage.  Large parts of the New Testament cannot really be understood without at least some knowledge of the Old Testament. And we must never forget that Jesus was a Jew. The book of Deuteronomy is the fifth book of the Torah, the books which comprise the main book of the Law and instruction for Jews both now and in past centuries, coming after Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers. Jesus knew the Torah. Luke tells us that when he was twelve years old, his parents took him to Jerusalem. The teachers in the Temple were amazed at his grasp of the Jewish law. So we do need to know something about it.

The first and most obvious thing to be said about the book of Deuteronomy is that it is not what, at its beginning, it says it is. Verse 1:1 states that “these are the words that Moses spoke to all Israel beyond the Jordan”.

After 40 years wandering in the wilderness, the Israelites at last arrive at the river Jordan and are about to cross over into the Promised Land. But Moses has long ago been told by YHWH that he will not come into that land. He will die first. So this book purports to be Moses’ final words to his people. But this is simply not possible. Leaving aside common-sense factors that Moses was then 120 years old, and that he was certainly more or less illiterate, there is a great deal of internal evidence within the book itself that it could not possibly have been composed at that early date.

So what is it and why is it included among the books of the Torah and the Old Testament?

Fast forward several centuries after Moses’ death. The Israelites have entered into and almost entirely lost the Promised Land. They have been overrun and conquered by outside powers. They have forgotten the covenant with YHWH which they have disobeyed. The only remaining Israelite state is that of Judah, which has suffered from a series of weak kings. But now in the fifth century a new king, Josiah, comes to the throne. He is determined to bring his people back to their allegiance to their God. He begins by cleansing and restoring the Temple, throwing out the Assyrian idols and clearing out the rubble. What surfaces from the rubble is a great scroll which in large measure is a restatement of the Jewish law contained in the first four books of the Torah. Although it contains significant variations, it is accepted as the fifth Holy Book of the Torah and in Greek is given the name Deuteronomy; “Deutero” in Greek means “second” and “nomos” means “Law”. During his reign, Josiah will do all he can to bring his people back to living according to that law, which has miraculously been brought back to light among them.

In that light, let us look again at this morning’s reading from Deuteronomy. This is a reflection, almost an exact repeat, of a passage in Exodus [20: 18-19]. The Israelites are afraid that if their God, YHWH, speaks direct to them, they will be destroyed by the fire of his greatness. So YHWH agrees that from henceforth he will speak to Israel only through his appointed prophets. The Israelites must heed what those prophets say as if it were YHWH himself speaking, or suffer the consequences. What Deuteronomy is saying here is that Israel’s weakness now is the result of their disobedience in the past. They must reform and obey the Law as set out in this scroll, which reinforces King Josiah’s wishes.

But by the agreement to communicate only through appointed prophets, the direct line of communication between YHWH and his people as individuals was severed. Jesus came to restore it. He set us free to pray “our Father”. I believe that God now can and will speak direct to us, though perhaps not sometimes as often and as clearly as we might wish. Perhaps we are not always as good at hearing as we should be? 

In closing I would like to leave you with a great passage from Deuteronomy. Maybe Moses did not himself close with these words to the Israelites, but they have an eternal message for them and for us: “I call heaven and earth to witness today that I have set before you life and death… Therefore choose life so that you and your descendants may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying him and holding fast to him, for that means life to you” [Deut 30:19-20] Therefore choose life.