Sermon for Trinity 3

Luke 8:26-39

Luke’s Gospel is full of stories of healing. It’s not surprising really as Luke was a physician and it was these stories of healing that would have really grabbed his attention, especially those stories where it appears the medical profession could do nothing. And so we have the story of this deranged man, so dangerous that he had to be restrained and when that did not work, left to roam among the deserted tombs on the hillside. On first reading, it would be easy to dismiss this story as being fanciful and irrelevant – just another story written to illustrate the power of Jesus. After all, nobody today believes in things like demon possessed people and whole herds of suicidal pigs. But look deeper and the story has a lot to tell us about ourselves. So this morning I want to do just that by splitting it up and looking at the main protagonists: the people and the man.

The People

A number of things strike me about the people of the region; the first is that they are a people who have forgotten the laws of God. How do I know – simply because they are keeping pigs and animal forbidden under Jewish law. The second thing is they are a people living in fear. They are in fear of this man. They don’t know how to handle his violent outbursts and so they try to restrain him. When this does not work, it seems they are prepared to put the man out of sight in an area that is not frequently visited. They are in fear of Jesus. When someone does come along with the answer they don’t like it because that answer includes the very God they have rejected and that too brings with it fear of judgement. They are also a people who have put profit before the individual. They are more concerned for the pigs and what they represent than the man who has been made well. The more I think about it the more I realise they are just like us.

We in the UK are a nation who has forgotten the laws of God. At not so long ago it could be said that British Law to a great extent reflected the laws of God, I doubt that could be said today, laws are passed that constantly run against the teaching of scripture. But that is hardly surprising in a nation that puts spending a Sunday morning in Tesco above spending time with God. Consumerism now rules at every level – we prefer pigs to people, paying more in bribes in order to sell arms in one year than we spend on Mental Health in ten.

As God has become less and less important so fear has risen in the population. People now live in fear. We refuse to let our children play alone, for fear of the paedophile: we fear to go out because a couple of ‘hoodies’ are standing on the street corner; we are in fear of our homes being broken into and so we invest in all sorts of security; we are in fear of going to the city centre and so we have more CTV cameras than the most oppressive dictatorship. We are afraid of the young Muslim lad down the street because he has a beard like the 9/11 terrorists– I could go on.

So we try to deal with these people who have us in fear. We place them in chains, with restraining orders and electronic tags, but they break free and so we seek to put them out of the way in places we rarely go among the tombs of prison. Our problem is we are running out of places.

Finally, we are in fear of God. We have the new phenomena of aggressive secularism which seeks to erase God from all public life. We even have aggressive atheism, which is positively evangelical about spreading the message that there is no God. Whatever reasons people may give for not believing in God, or not coming into church, the thing I sense most is fear. Fear that if they engage with God, they will have to change and all they value will be taken away. The pigs may well run down the slope.

The Man

And so we turn our attention to the man. Naked and in the wild he is rejected by his family and society. He is being driven by forces of which he has no understanding and has little personal control over his life and what he does. But Jesus attitude to this man is in stark contrast to that of his community. Jesus immediately recognises the forces that are driving him and decides to do something about it. Instead of being afraid, Jesus approaches the man who responds by falling to his knees. There is a conversation, the outcome of which is the man is freed and is later found sitting “clothed and in his right mind.” The man desires to follow Jesus with his disciples but is given a more important job of telling his story to those who are at present just as driven, by their fear.

Just as there were parallels with our society and the people, so too there are similarities with the man. All of us are driven by forces of which we have no understanding. All of us, to some extent, live in our own private world which may be very different from the one people see. All of us need the healing that comes from Jesus that frees us from those hidden forces and private worlds and allows the real you and me to exist. And, having received that healing we need to make sure that the message gets around. The truth here that Jesus was not healing one man, but a whole society. None of us who have encountered Jesus do so just for our own benefit, but for the benefit of all with whom we come in contact.

Conclusion

This is a story of hope. It reminds me that however hopeless things may seem, Christ is able to redeem the situation. A later incident is recorded in Matthew’s Gospel. Jesus lands once again on their shore “And after the people of that place recognised him, they sent word throughout the region and brought all who were sick to him, and begged him that they might even touch the fringe of his cloak: and all who touched it were healed.” Our man had done what was asked of him.

It seems to me that we have two options . We can live in fear feeling we are being driven by powers outside our control. Or we can accept the healing and freedom that Jesus offers and then confidently go and tell others.

Remember: no society is ever changed by its rulers and its laws which can only ever deal with external things. Society is changed however, by ordinary people who seek to free people from their fears and (for the want of a better phrase) the demons that drive them. Strikes me that all of us have some pretty important work to do.

Happy Birthday Liverpool

With all the hype over Capital of Culture, it would be easy to forget that this year Liverpool celebrates its 800^th birthday. Actually, it is older than that, but in 1207 King John granted the town a charter giving its citizens certain rights. John, of course, wanted something in return. The old pool and castle ensured that this would be a safe harbour for his ships whilst preparing for an invasion of Ireland. Whatever the history, this year will be a year of celebration with lots going on. The council even want street parties to rival those of the Coronation in 1953. (This is where I feel old as I remember both the Coronation and the celebrations for Liverpool’s 750^th birthday in 1957!)

Of course, we want this to be a success and we wish Liverpool well, just as we wish everyone a Happy New Year. However, I am aware for some people the New Year may not prove happy. Perhaps they are going through a worrying time, or are fearful of something that is due to happen in the weeks and months ahead. Maybe this is the first New Year without the company of a loved one and they are wondering how they are going to cope during the year ahead.

None of us can know for certain what the year ahead holds. This time last year Gill and I had no idea that during 2006 we would be attending the funerals of Gill’s Aunt, Uncle and both her parents. At New Year we hope for a good twelve months ahead, and it may well be, but it may turn out an ‘annus horibilis’, to quote Her Majesty.

So then, if life can be so variable is their anything or anyone that can be relied on to be constant? For the believer the answer to that question has to be the love of God as found in Jesus. The Bible says of him: ‘Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today and for ever.’ (Hebrews 13:8). This means the Christ who loved us so much that he humbled himself to be born in a stable in Bethlehem that first Christmas: the Christ who loved us so much that he gave himself up to be crucified for our sins at Easter, still loves us and cares for us 2000 years later.

For me, 2007 is another Birthday. Forty years ago this summer, I made a decision to follow that same Jesus. Since then, life has thrown at me many things, some good, some bad, some that have made me very happy, and some that have brought me to the gates of despair, but in all of these things Jesus and his love has been constant. I know many people at St. David’s who could say the same; lots of whom have followed Jesus for much longer than me.

Some of you will be making New Year resolutions. Usually we choose resolutions that we hope will make our life just that bit better. Why not make the decision to get to know Jesus? From experience I know it will be the best decision you can make – better than all the other resolutions put together. Then, whatever the year ahead brings, you will have the joy of knowing the constancy of Christ’s love.

Wishing you every blessing for the year ahead

Dave

Open Bethlehem

O Little Town of Bethlehem,
how still we see thee lie!
Above thy deep and dreamless sleep
the silent stars go by:
yet in the the dark streets shineth
the everlasting Light;
the hopes and fears of all the years
are met in thee tonight.

I must have sung that Christmas carol many times over the years. Each time I picture in my mind lots of white, flat topped houses, much loved by my Sunday School teachers when we came to making biblical models. Bethlehem, a sunny place, a happy place.

The truth of course is much different. Today Bethlehem is a city under siege. All around is the Israeli 'security fence', a structure that dwarfs the old Berlin Wall, and which has been condemned internationally.

Over the past few months I have become increasingly concerned by the plight of my brothers and sisters in Palestine, and Bethlehem in particular. I am concerned that my country uses its military bases to load U.S. aircraft with weapons for Israel, an occupying force. I am concerned that some Christians seem fit to support Israel in their attempt to bring about the 'end time.' How arrogant of them to believe they can manipulate God!

However, being concerned and angry is not enough. It is not going to improve the situation for the Palestinian people or the town of Bethlehem. What will help is to bring to the attention of my fellow Christians the truth of what is happening. For that reason I was particularly heartened by the visit to Bethlehem by UK Christian leaders and the publication of their comments afterwards.

The following is an abstract from the Open Bethlehem website

23 December 2006

Leaving Bethlehem this morning after a three-day pilgrimage, the UK ’s church leaders pledged themselves to continue to be a “voice for the voiceless” on behalf of the beleaguered people of the town.

The Rt Revd David Coffey, president of the Churches Together in England , was speaking on behalf of the Archbishops of Canterbury and Westminster , and the Armenian Patriarch of Great Britain, after they received symbolic Bethlehem passports.

The passports are an initiative of Open Bethlehem, a campaign which began in 2005 to draw the world’s attention to the plight of the town, which is in economic meltdown following the construction of a 30-foot-high wall by the Israeli army. The Israeli measures imposed since 2000 have led to a catastrophic decline in the number of pilgrimages to the town, on which its economy depends.

According to a 2004 UN report unemployment and poverty have caused more than 400 Christian families to leave Bethlehem in search of livelihoods abroad.

Shortly after walking through the checkpoint on Thursday, a visibly shocked Archbishop of Canterbury said the wall symbolized “all that is wrong in the human heart”.

“Your visit reassures us that we are not forgotten,” Leila Sansour, Open Bethlehem’s chief executive, told the four pilgrims.

She said the passports signaled “our hope that you will continue to be ambassadors for Bethlehem after you return home”. She asked that “whenever you travel you will speak about Bethlehem and remember us, a people who long to travel in dignity and freedom.”

There has so far been only one passport given: Pope Benedict XVI received the Bethlehem passport in December 2005 from the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas.

“We are fortunate to have such distinguished ambassadors to speak for us,” Sansour said.

The passport asks the bearer to “remain a true friend to Bethlehem through its imprisonment” and that he or she will “strive to keep the ideals of Bethlehem alive as long as the wall stands.”

Mr Coffey in turn presented Leila Sansour with a Christmas card signed by hundreds of people in Durham , in north-east England . The card shows Mary and Joseph approaching Bethlehem but finding the town imprisoned behind a wall.

“We support your struggle for peace with justice”, were the words on the inside of the card.

The Open Bethlehem delegation included a representative of the Governor of Bethlehem, as well as the coordinator of a network of Christian organizations in Bethlehem and a representative of the World Council of Churches.

The church leaders spent yesterday visiting Christian and humanitarian projects in Bethlehem, including Bethlehem University (where 70 per cent of the students are Muslim), the Holy Family hospital and the Arab Rehabilitation Society, a hospital for the disabled.

At the university, the church leaders received from the students a piece of a demolished house belonging to the family of one of the students, as well as a candle and a handpainted tile.

Rather than hand over the stone from the demolished house to his advisers, Dr Williams kept hold of it throughout his visit to the university.

The students spoke of life under occupation, the sense of imprisonment, and their anxieties about their future.

-- end quote --

If you share my concerns may I suggest you visit the Open Bethlehem Site
Another good source is to be found at The Amos Trust

If you find these links helpful, then pass them on. And let us pray that next Christmas in Bethlehem will not only be a demonstration of God's love in sending his son, but also of our care for God's people in Bethlehem.

Dave

Zita Mary Pansy Smith: November 1918 - September 2006

Sadly, the loss of Gill's father in June has been followed by the death of her mother this month. The following are transcripts of the Tributes given at her funeral:-

The Funeral Sermon

Reading 1 John 4:7-12

The reading we have just heard seems a strange one for a funeral service; it is more suited to a wedding and indeed, is often used in that context. So, why has this reason been chosen? Perhaps the answer will become clear as I progress.

If we are to read our newspapers and watch the news on television it would seem that we live in a world devoid of love. This week has seen the fifth anniversary of 9/11. We have heard once again of the ‘War on Terror’- a war that has so far claimed an estimated further 72,000 civilian lives and the lives of over 3,000 service personnel in Afghanistan and Iraq. We have no idea how many have died on the, so called ‘other side.’

It seems that death and destruction have become the stock trade of the media, and it would be easy to assume that the world was full of hate and that love was dead.

But that is not the case. What go unreported are the thousands of small acts of love that take place day by day. In the rubble of Lebanon and the Gaza Strip, there are individuals working, supporting and loving those the world has forgotten, some working for Organisations, some individually.

In our country the same is true. We hear of the gunning down of a 15 year old boy in Moss-side, Manchester, but nothing of the Seventh Day Adventist Pastor, who is up in the middle of the night comforting the family.

So why am I saying all this? I am saying it because Zita was one of those unnoticed people who quietly got on with helping and loving people. Very rarely did she get into the news, and those outside here circle of family and friends most likely never knew some of the things she did. It is not for me to list them here - that is for those who will give the tributes, should they so wish. I simply need to say that Zita showed love to all: her family and friends, of course; but also to those who, through no fault of their own, needed care and attention, but most of all love.

Mother Teresa of Calcutta said: “I have come more and more to realise that being unwanted is the worse disease that any human being can ever experience. Nowadays we have found medicine for leprosy and lepers can be cured. There is medicine for TB and consumptives can be cured. But for being unwanted, except there are willing hands to serve and there’s a loving heart to love, I don’t think this terrible disease can be cured.”

Zita dedicated much of her life making sure that those with whom she had contact, did not feel unwanted and for that we give thanks to God today. Sometimes those acts of love were not without cost. In times, she too was in pain but that did not stop her. Love can be costly, but never as costly as it was to God. “For God so loved the world that he gave his son. Zita’s loving acts may not have been earth shattering but when added to similar acts that happen minute by minute, hour by hour and day by day, they help create a power that can never be defeated, a power that always triumphs in the end because it is the very power of God : for “God is love.”

So, today, we thank God for her example. However, hopefully we can do more than that we can follower her example and the example of others like her, in bringing a little more love into the world.

So the reading from 1 John is most appropriate. “Beloved, let us live on another for love is from God.”

Gill's and Elaine's Trubute

This tribute will be in two parts. In the first part I will attempt to tell you a little about the Zita you don’t perhaps know, because I know that many of you who join with me today, could stand here and give this tribute and most of you know of her life in the village and involvement with St Raphael better than I.

My mother was very much her father’s daughter. She imbibed and shared his fierce belief in people, his ability to be and remain independent in his judgements and actions, but to work within the structures of the society he lived in. Both mothers’ parents came from seafaring families, where men and women were separated for months at a time. During these times men needed to sew and cook and women needed to maintain property and manage the family affairs. So it was that Mother and her siblings were all taught to sew, cook, clean, and decorate regardless of gender. This got both of my parents into trouble from time to time. For example, the first time my mother was ill, it came as a bit of a surprise that she had to give my father detailed instruction on how to boil an egg. My mother horrified her mother-in-law by painting the window frames. I should add that at the time she was sitting on the window sill, painting the outside of an upstairs window and she was quite heavily pregnant.

Mother’s father was a teacher and for that he was viewed as a rebel by the family. The same strength that enabled Grandpa to persue his career in education was shared by mother. This enabled her maintain her stand for those and for that which she believed in. None more so, than in her successful resistance to all the pressure and well intended advise regarding my sisters education. Elaine’s sever dyslexia and the then teaching method resulted in her experiencing very sever difficulties at school. School was fee paying. Our paternal grandfather, who got to where he was by working his way up, did not understand why my parents thought it necessary to pay for our education, never mind that one of the children wasn’t learning. There were times when only my mother stood between Elaine and at the very least, a school for the ineducatable. I wonder if during this time, my mother ever imagined that this child she fought so hard for would become a university graduate?

Mother grew up during the great depression of the nineteen twenties, a time when there was no welfare state. Her father was the headmaster of an elementary school. Grandfather took his duties very seriously. She told us about two brothers who had been expelled from their previous schools. Grandpa took them in to his school. He eventually found they could draw and he encouraged them in this. She told us that when they left school they eventually made a name for themselves as artists. Mother and her siblings regularly lost second best coats or shoes to children at his school who had none. Nor was this the sole province of my grandfather. Mother remembers coming home from school to find her mother rifling the beds for blankets. Granny had gone to assist a farm workers wife who was giving birth to a baby. There were no blankets or coverings in this womans home apart from newspapers. Grandma had no spare blankets so everyone in the house had one less blanket on their bed.

Like the Queen, mother’s life was governed by her strong sence of duty. Whatever the personal cost, mother would always act according to that which she perceived as her duty. She never talked about it, but it underpinned everything she did.

I do have to say that at times she was very sorely tried. She once told me that, following her engagement to my father, she was introduced to his extended family. She found the inspection by elderly aunts quite vexing. On one occasion she was asked if she liked housework. When she replied in the negative, she was asked why she wanted to get married. I believe her honest blunt reply rather shocked this victorian lady.

I would like to tell you about when we grew up, about the chickens, about her care for her mother-in-law and her own parents, her sacrifices, the fun times like the impromptu picnics at West Mersea, the embarrassing times like the washing up in the oven and holding up the London train because she lost her shoe on the track.

I would share with you the love of dancing she shared with my father, Sequence dancing at Kesgrave and the gold medal.

After Elaine and I grew up, Mother joined the Town’s women Guild and through them was able to attend some very interesting meetings on the then modern trends in housing. It seems boring to us, but when she talked about it she really lit up! But then when Grandpa retired for teaching he became a councillor. He was very heavily involved in promoting the idea of social housing. In fact the first council houses in colchester were built in the road Councillor Ham lived. As I said My mother was her fathers daughter.