Holiness or holier than thou?

Be holy because I, the Lord your God, am holy.

I began writing this sitting writing this outside one of the coffee shops in Ripon on Thursday afternoon watching the market. I love Thursdays as I meet all sorts of people. Coffee morning this week was very busy with groups of coaches from Darlington and Thornton Cleveleys. I’m glad to have been here long enough to have local knowledge! I was asked where the cathedral is. The folks were looking at it! I’ve also heard stories of people who’ve come to Ripon looking for the city centre not having realised they’ve driven through it!!

It’s lovely to see positive interaction in community. We are it seems increasingly in a climate where you can’t speak to a real person if you want anything. We are encouraged to book on line, download an app, use AI. Someone even told me a robot brought them a cup of tea at a garden centre recently! Hence, we are seeing loneliness and isolation.

I’m not going to give away any Celebrity Traitors spoilers. But I do want to mention Miranda Hart. She has been very seriously ill with ME and Lymes disease which has left her debilitated and fed up. This series has been the first foray back into doing what she loves, so we’ve seen her galloping around the castle having fun.

"I can't believe how emotional I'm getting, she said. “Wow. Connection and laughter and joy are bigger than this game and to meet someone and just play and laugh - it's all us humans need.”

We are called to live in community. More than that, we are called to be holy. And the proof of our holiness is now we live with other people.There’s an African word which talks of theinterconnectedness of individuals with their surrounding social and physical worlds. "Ubuntu" is sometimes translated as "I am because We are". 

 

Who have we spent time with this week? Has it been a good experience? What about church people? We all get on don’t we? Do you know people who are holier than thou?  The phrase comes from the King James Version of the Bible in Isaiah 65:5, where people say: "Stand by thyself, come not near to me; for I am holier than thou." God is rebuking religious hypocrites who isolate themselves, show off their outward rituals, and look down on others with spiritual pride. In the text, God describes this self-righteous attitude as "a smoke in my nose" (offensive and irritating). Sometimes the King James Version is fab!

So to our Gospel for this week. The Pharisees and Sadducees wanted to trap Jesus by askinghim difficult questions.  

he is asked which is the greatest commandment. 

Perhaps they expected Jesus to take a while, to ponder all of the Jewish laws, to think through all the rites and rituals observed in their community, before giving them a well-thought-out answer. 

There are 613 commandments in the Torah, the first five books of the Bible, so which one is the greatest? We know the Ten Commandments, surely it is going to be one of those? Instead, Jesus sums up all the 613 commandments with these words: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” He goes on to say the second greatest is “Love your neighbour as yourself.On these two commandments hang all the laws and the prophets.” The answer was resolute: this is the heart of what it means to be holy and in community.

The two commandments go together because to show that you love God, you surely must love God’s creation. Therefore, we must love our neighbour whoever they may be. 

Both of these commandments are mentioned in the Torah. Deuteronomy 6:5, which is part of the Shema that Jews say twice daily, contains the first and "love your neighbour", is taken from Leviticus 19:18 our Old Testament reading. So, it is not new, but Jesus has pulled these two together to summarise how we can truly worship God. It is how our Christian lifestyle is defined; the vertical dimension of loving God crossed with the horizontal direction of loving our neighbour.

I know you are the perfect church here. You love God. Your discipleship is strong. Your worship is vibrant. God is here! And I know you love your neighbour. You care for each other. You have community projects like Wednesday welcome and Saturday coffee and outreach at Maple Creek and reaching out to the town. When I become your minister next year I will be here on a Saturday for coffee to meet with you but I’ll also be walking around the market meeting people and I’ll drink coffee in the coffee shops. My ministry is about being in community with people where they are. Someone walking through Ripon with me recently said  “don’t you know a lot of people!” 

The Church is only credible if she gets involved being Christ in the world. And how on earth do we have credibility if we know nothing nor care. 

After many years of not going to church, an elderly lady decides to go one Sunday. Although very poor and with worn-out clothing, she dressed in her best and headed out. As she approached the church, she saw all the people dressed in splendour. Not a stain, not a rip or tear on any of their clothes. The preacher and stewards stood and welcomed people as they entered.

She began to walk up the stairs when one of the men stopped her and explained that they had a dress code. He explained that clothes must be pristine and sharp to show respect to the Lord and turned her away.

Dejected and embarrassed, she left and sat on a nearby bench, crying and composing herself, wondering why a church of God wouldn't accept her. As she sat, God sat down next to her. He puts a comforting hand on her shoulder and says, "Don't worry, they won't let me in, either."

 

Holiness flows from the heart. Verse 17 of Leviticus 19, you shall not hate your brother in your heart. Verse 18, you shall not bear a grudge. But instead, verse 18, you shall love your neighbour. Now notice how the rest of verse 18 goes beyond the prohibitions of this section. This is more than just “do not”, “do not”, do not do this to your neighbour”. God is calling his people to love the other...as you love yourself.

Where are the churches that are holy, credible and community minded? In the mess of life…

On September 11, 2001, Trinity Church stood one block from the World Trade Centre — directly in the path of the collapse. It sustained no structural damage and not a single broken window.

What followed was a remarkable display of civic resilience: for nine months, the chapel operated around the clock as a relief station for first responders working at Ground Zero, staffed by volunteers who provided meals, rest, and support to those carrying out the recovery effort.

 

 

 

Less than 100 yards from the World Trade Centre, St. Paul’s Chapel miraculously survived the destruction of September 11, 2001. In the months that followed, the chapel welcomed thousands of recovery workers. 

Shifts were gruelling, and responders found respite in the 235-year-old chapel and its churchyard. Rescue crews, police, and firefighters found their way to St. Paul’s to rest and wash up. Volunteers from across the country arrived to offer care for the workers’ weary bodies and souls with food, personal supplies, counselling, and prayer.   

During the nine months of ministry that followed, St. Paul’s Chapel became much more than a place to eat or sleep. It became a community of hope.

One of the chaplains to the fire service was heard to say “if you descend into somebody’s private hell and stand there with them, it ceases to be hell.” 

Be holy because I, the Lord your God, am holy.

Let me tell you about Zion Methodist Chapel in Aberfan. Its Sunday school usually welcomed dozens of children from the Pantglas school.  

‘A lot of the children from the school used to come to us because we were an English-speaking chapel,’ he explains. ‘Every Monday evening, at 6 o’clock, the chapel would be full of children coming to our club, called Sunshine Corner. We sang choruses and played games. Everyone used to sing heartily.

The Methodist minister Irving Penberthy there 60 years ago says: 

‘Aberfan was a typical Welsh community. People lived in terraced houses which had no front gardens. I remember neighbours sitting outside their front doors, having put chairs on the pavement, and they would chat to one another across the street. There was a very friendly atmosphere.’

On the morning of the disaster, Irving was travelling to Pontypridd. He recalls the thick mist in the air.

‘As I was driving, I noticed one or two emergency vehicles passing me,’ he says. ‘I didn’t take much notice, because where there’s a mine, there are often accidents. I carried on with my journey, going past the junction for Aberfan, and then an inner voice seemed to say to me: “You must turn back.”

‘I carried on driving, but I couldn’t get away from this strong thought, which was telling me to turn around. I didn’t know why I had to go back. But I obeyed.’

Looking back, I always called my work at the Aberfan disaster a ministry of tears. I cried with parents and held their hands. We were numb. We didn’t know what else to do.’

But they were there. In the middle of pain like the church on 9/11.

The Jews around Jesus would have known about the first bit of what we know now as the Greatest Commandment, you were meant to live in community but Jesus makes that even clearer. Jesus elevated the second commandment to an equal status with the first in terms of importance. In other words, we cannot claim to love God, if we do not love our neighbour (1 John 4:20).

A helpful nick bits for the sermon website says this: “Love for God must always manifest itself in love for people. Here, love is defined as a concrete responsibility. It is the act of being useful and beneficial to others as an expression of our love for God. To help our neighbours might mean, feeding, clothing, protecting, assisting them with their burdens and needs. Loving our neighbours is an unconditional commitment to serving imperfect people. Jesus concluded his answer by saying, ‘All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.’ Picture a door hanging on its hinges. Without the hinges, the door is useless; it cannot swing open or close. It just lies flat on the ground. The same is true of our faith. The entire Old Testament, with its 600 plus commandments, its ceremonies, its prophecies, and its wisdom literature, all of it is designed to swing on the twin hinges of loving God and loving others.”

Because we believe in a God that hears our cries, we must hear the cries of those around us. Our love of our neighbour must be just like our love of God. 

It is through the treatment of our neighbours, those who are most vulnerable, that we live a holy life. These are the instructions Jesus clarifies for us, the people of God, on what it truly means to live a life set apart, a holy life.

Be holy because I, the Lord your God, am holy.

 

Friends, remember Christianity isn’t just words it’s action. I love that while we have contact details on the bottom of our e mails our new. District Chair has this powerful quote from Maya Angelou: “I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

One body many parts?

The Apostle Paul writes to the Corinthian church, "We are one body and many parts." It's a letter to a fractured community, an early Christian community, that was disunited, and some people thought they were better than others. Later in that 12th chapter of Corinthians, he says, "One part of the body cannot say to another, 'I don't need you.'" And then in the 13th chapter, of course, perhaps the most famous part of scripture, he talks about love. Love being the highest attribute of humanity. Love that comes from God. 

I don’t  know about you, but I look at the world on this October day and wonder whether we've forgotten how we live together. We're as bad as that Corinthian church, thinking, "I'm better than you." How can it be that in the 21st century, the supposed most civilized, advanced nation on Earth can decide to live stream a killing by firing squad? Killing by firing squad, in my view, is wrong. I am anti the death penalty, as I know most of my readers will be. This is not some past barbaric  time, where people queued up and bought tickets almost to watch somebody hung on the gallows. What sort of world is it also where, however wrong she did, somebody is sentenced to death by lethal injection, again, in the most civilized nation on Earth, and both those injections don't get rid of her, and she ends up shackled to a bed, and we don't know what her future is? Lord have mercy.

I was revisiting some Harry Enfield sketches from the 1990s. He had many different characters. And one of them was a rich man who liked to belittle people around him, including his own family. And he would say, "I thank God that I am considerably richer than you." And in one sketch, his brother had lost his job and clearly needed help. And the rich brother said, "I feel sorry for you, but we don't do charity," and walked away. 

What is it that we need to do to change the world? Well, I'm writing this in Saltaire, in West Yorkshire. And Titus Salt, remember, formed community for people and bound them together as one. It's an amazing place to walk around. As I've walked around it on Saturday afternoon, I sense history around me. I've just been dodging the wind and rain in a community cafe by the canal, by one of the locks, just along from Salt's Mill. That place clearly is a gathering place for all sorts of people. Walking, out with families, elderly people meeting for a cuppa, people who clearly meet there regularly. We still yearn, I think, in a world that is becoming more and more isolationist for community. 

One of my pet hates is the machine in the supermarket, the self-service machine, which is meant to speed things up. But what happens is you put your item on the scanner and it bleeps at you. "Unexpected item in packing area," or, "Put item in packing area." And you have to wait for a real person to come along to sort you out. I went to Manchester on the train recently. I bought a car park ticket on my phone. I didn't have a physical ticket. It was an app with a countdown clock. I bought my train ticket online, which appeared on my phone with a barcode. My ticket was not checked by a person. When I arrived at Manchester Victoria, my phone with the barcode got me through the barrier. I didn't interact with anybody. I went to London last year for a meeting and had to stay overnight. The same process happened. I stayed in a hotel near King's Cross. Again, my phone got me into the building. My phone got me into the room. There was no key, and I locked the door behind me when I left. Again, no interaction with anybody. 

In a world where we could be extremely lonely, I think the church has a lot to learn. We need many more groups like the cafe here in Saltaire for people to gather, as they are, to bring their joys and their sorrows and their problems and their concerns and share them with one another. One place I like to go to if I'm in Thirsk and have time to kill is the Farmers Mart, the auction mart, and in there is a cafe. And I notice elderly men who are in there every day for a decent hot meal and companionship. They've all lost their wives, and they come from a generation of men who can't cook, nor did they think they had to. So these men meet their friends about 12 o'clock every day, leaving their farm. They have some banter, they have decent food, and they go back to work in the afternoon. Isn't that great? 

We're bound together in community still in a world that wishes to pull us apart. Paul says, "If one part of the body suffers, we all suffer, and when one part of the body rejoices, we all rejoice." Friends, in a world where we easily despair, I believe this weekend there is still hope, because I still believe we need each other and we want to be with each other, and deep down, we still care about each other. Paul says, "Love never fails" in 1 Corinthians 13. So if you're feeling fed up in a Trump world, and a Putin world, and a world of firing squads and lethal injection execution, in a world where we push and shove and want our rights because we are owed them, remember, love never fails. 

Someone wrote once, "I cannot fix all the world's problems. If I have a ladder, I can only reach what that ladder can reach. I can't do any more." I don't condone climbing ladders. I have a steward in one of my chapels who has ladders and climbs them with nobody else there. That's another story. But I see what the saying is saying. We can only do what we can do. But if we do more of what we can do, we can change our bit of world, and there will be a snowball effect as different bits of the world learn from our experience that they might do the same, too. 

Our district chair, Romeo, reminded us in a sermon recently of the African word ubuntu, I am because you are. So friends, we are one body with many parts. Let's celebrate our diversity. Let's celebrate that we still have community, and let's celebrate today that God loves us just as we are and yearns for us to share that love with those who need it most.

9/11 twenty five years on

​

Where were you when news that became known as 9/11 began to break? I was on Stalybridge railway station in Greater Manchester picking up my friend Chris who was coming to stay. We knew from conversations something was happening. To come home and watch two towers being hit by a plane then collapsing was like watching a disaster movie, except this was real, possibly my first taste of 24 hour rolling news as the towers collapsing was played over and over. 

I remember later that evening Churches Together in Mossley where I lived, hastily calling a prayer meeting and I remember it was Harvest the following Sunday which we altered the order of service for to make to include a moving time of candle lighting. 

Twenty-five years on, we live in a world shaped by 9/11. Our lament will never end for those who died in the attacks, those who gave of their lives in the days and weeks following, and those who still suffer.

We also mourn that, since that day in 2001, our common life has been deformed by division and fear of one another. Sometimes it seems that the chasm has become unbridgeable. The presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church in the United States has written this today: “ Even in the face of unimaginable evil and suffering, God calls us to be repairers of the breach and restorers of paths to dwell in. I pray that this commemoration of 9/11 renews our commitment to answer that call in our own lives and communities, and together as the body of Christ in the world.” 

I recall that in the most tragic of scenes there was hope and there still is hope. But first we have to acknowledge this is not where we want to be. Rowan Williams wrote a powerful little book reflecting on being there called Writing in the Dust. When asked where God was that day, he said God was pretty useless really. . He reflects on the emptiness felt after trauma. He writes beautifully about the importance of resisting the urge to “ease the tension” by filling this void with actions and explanations. He argues that this is important “breathing space”, needed to grieve, to let our collective heart rates slow and the adrenaline dissipate, before anything else happens. It’s worth watching this interview with him. 

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lfqqAYUDu5U

After shock, maybe the Christian hope indeed the hope of all faiths kicks in… Read this account of the nearest church to the towers below…

In the months after 9/11, St. Paul’s Chapel, a small, undamaged church sitting 100 yards from where the Twin Towers once stood, quickly turned into a relief center for recovery workers. Known as the “Little Chapel That Stood,” the church kept its doors open 24/7 for nine months, providing food, prayers and support to responders in between shifts.

The Rev. Phillip A. Jackson, rector of Trinity Church, St. Paul’s parent Episcopal church, said the chapel’s disaster response was tied to its long history of supporting the Lower Manhattan community in times of trial. 

“When 9/11 happened, it was in our neighbourhood, and so we responded to that. The physical proximity, the scale of the disaster … it made us realize that this neighbourhood is not just an abstraction, it’s our place … that we have a fundamental role in caring for it, in caring for its people.” 

Has the world changed since 11 September 2001? Yes! There began a war on terror, year after year of conflict centred around Afghanistan which never really sorted anything, an emergence in the world of fear of the other which still lasts today - look at those protesters this week on the south coast against people on boats coming to our country. Look at how we use language about people different than us twenty five years on. It’s scary —- and yet I do think there is a goodness in the world that responds to atrocity and says “enough, we have to change things.” Gordon Brown’s theory in his new book is that we are rising up again in community especially when narrowness and evil are currently dominating. That’s good news today. 

A prayer from Discipleship Ministries shared by the United Methodist Church today:

On this day of solemn remembrance:

May we honour the lives that were lost in this tragic act.

May we give thanks for those who served and saved, rendered aid and assistance.

May we give comfort to those who live with loss.

May we seek justice and peace where it is within our ability,

and rely on you when the ability escapes us. 

On this day of solemn remembrance:

May we build what has been torn down.

May we mend what has been broken.

May live Your love when hate seems to reign.

May we bear witness to the cause of peace. Amen.

Eclipse searching

Well we had our colander and even a North Yorkshire car parking disk with a hole in it and an artists pad and we drove up to my most rural spot, Toms Corner at Dallowgill to join several picnicking. While we got some nice rural views we didn’t really see a lot… 

 

A couple opposite have cracked open the Pimms. We missed an opportunity chapel people. We could have had a burger van up here tonight! 

Oh well! 

Words of promise

Here’s my sermon from yesterday shared with three congregations in two services…​

Let me begin this sermon with a story. When was the last time you desperately needed to get a message to someone or get help? Like now! On Friday afternoonI went to visit Joan. After I’d done, I asked to be let out. The carers card wouldn’t open the door. The door was jammed. We suggested she ring the reception. Her phone had died. She then decided the best way to get the urgency of the need for someone’s attention was to bang hard on the door until someone heard it. Eventually a man in a North Yorkshire council shirt unjammed the door and we were out.      

Where was the last letter or e mail or text sent to you written I wonder? The last letter I got was from the hospital rearranging an appointment from November to January due to “unforeseen circumstances.” The last text was from our Circuit steward wanting to talk about the chapel in Finghall.

The last e mail received was the church notices for Allhallowgate, and the last whats app was checking whether we’ve fixed September staff meeting for the 1stor the 8th September because none of us could remember. The modern way of messaging wants an instant response from us. It’s fast and unrelenting.

When you went away on holiday for a couple of weeks, you used to find so much post on the mat you couldn’t open the front door, now it’s 300 plus e mails. And social media wants to grab our attention. Doom scrolling it’s called. My friend reposted a film of the Prime Minister and his Chancellor in a pub ranking pub snacks, that wasted twenty minutes of my life yesterday morning!

I wonder where messages sent to us were written and whether the writer knew our context and our life issues? 

Some of us have been studying Philippians through the summer. Paul is writing to the Philippian church to give encouragement from prison which he has been thrown into for being a rebel. I wonder what you would like your last words to be? What do you want to say upon your deathbed? Here are some funny famous last words from people in the past:

Apparently Oscar Wilde said: “Either that wallpaper goes, or I do!”And Humphrey Bogart said: “I knew I should never have switched from Whiskey to Martini!” But my personal favourite is Spike Milligan’s epitaph: “I told you I was ill!” That’s on his tombstone in the churchyard in Winchelsea in Sussex in Gaelic.

More seriously, if you thought you were about to die, who would you write to or call, and what would you say to them? I guess you would contact your loved ones, and use words that expressed your love for them, and offered them guidance and encouragement for the rest of their earthly lives.

The apostle Paul was in a similar situation when he wrote his letter to the Philippians. A letter we have been looking at in our services this month. Paul was under house arrest in Rome, in chains and under armed guard. He was shortly to be put on trial for his faith, and Paul knew the death penalty was a real possibility. So, unsurprisingly, Paul chose to write to his loved ones. Not to an individual or to his biological family, but to the Christians in Philippi, a church that Paul himself had founded. He calls the Philippians his “brothers & sisters”, and his “dear friends”. Paul tells them that he “loves them and longs for them”. They are his “joy” and his “crown”, or as we might put it today, they are his ‘pride and joy’. So as we look at chapter 4 of Philippians today, we are reading Paul’s last words to his loved ones. Words he most wanted them to hear. Words they should treasure, should they never see him again.

So what was Paul’s parting shot to the Philippians? What were the last words he wanted to leave them with? Rejoice in the Lord always. Be joyful in the Lord!   

 Let’s rejoice because our sins are forgiven. Our guilt was taken away at the Cross and we are members of God’s forgiven people.

We can also be joyful because God is at work in our lives today. Through every trial and temptation we face, God is with us by his Spirit, making us ever more like his Son. And we can even rejoice in the face of death. Christ’s resurrection means that death is not the end for us or a doorway to divine judgment. Rather, death is merely the threshold to everlasting life. Everlasting life in a world without disease and decay. A world where Jesus is undisputed king.

To rejoice in the Lord is not to put our head in the sand or deny the harsh realities of life. It is to know that whatever happens we are loved, we are saved and we have a glorious future ahead. A future that is ‘over’ and ‘above’ our present circumstances, held secure in Heaven for us. 

Maybe the task before each of us is that of ‘keeping the rumour of God alive’ In both our passages, the power of words is used to keep alive the story of faith, to keep telling the tales of grace, to keep spinning narratives of hope into being.

What gives us joy, what causes us to rejoice. Joy is not the same as being happy, as that can be transient. Joy is something deep within, something lasting. Paul knows the answer, it is finding our joy in Christ within. That unshakable knowledge that we are not alone. Paul had found the answer to worry by handing all his concerns over to God. The trick is to leave it there, the thing we do so often is to pick it up again and continue to worry about it. If we can manage to rejoice and not worry then Paul promises the peace of God to guard our hearts. If we are honest, joy and peace are often elusive. There are always things that will disturb our peace.

But Paul urges us to “Rejoice.”

The theologian Karl Barth once called joy a “continually defiant ‘Nevertheless’. I would suggest that this is the kind of joy which Paul is talking about because it isn’t based on circumstances. He was in a dire situation and he was writing to a church which was experiencing persecution. This joy and peace can’t be bought it can but it can be our reality. It requires a conscious effort on our part to remember who we are. In the face of all our problems and worries – ‘Nevertheless’ we are God’s children, loved by God, bought with a price by Jesus on the cross. Our hope is not just for the here and now, but for eternity. We have the promise of God that he is always with us, even in our darkest hours. As David wrote in the 23rd Psalm ‘even when we pass through the valley of the shadow of death’ God is with us, for to have any shadow there must be some sun, it is never truly dark if we have God with us.

Paul was at peace. He had no idea what he would be facing tomorrow, but he knew he wouldn’t face it alone. We don’t get peace by the bucket full or a lifetime supply. We get enough for the situation we are in. We need to be in constant touch with Christ within to know the joy and receive his peace.

Stanley Hauerwas has spent years irritating Christians by suggesting that the church’s task is not first to make the world run smoothly or reclaim cultural dominance, but simply to become the kind of community that remembers how to tell the truth about God in a forgetful age. I suspect there is something in that.

Things buried sometimes rise again in forms nobody expected.

And after all, Christianity began not with influence, strength, or cultural dominance, but with a crucified man outside the city walls. Abandoned by many. Mocked by empire. Followed by frightened disciples who barely understood what was happening. And yet Christians dare to believe that somehow, in that broken body, God was reconciling the world to himself.   Maybe we need to be a place where we find: A people gathered around Jesus. Prayer offered in fragile places. Bread broken. Mercy practised. The lonely remembered. The dead buried. The gospel whispered stubbornly in a forgetful world.

Have we a joyful message to share with Boroughbridge and Bishop Monkton today? Are we sharing the Gospel with joy? Do we know there is one God and besides him there is no other? Is our message urgent and attractive? After a worship service, a mother with a fidgety seven-year-old boy told me how she finally got her son to sit still and be quiet. About halfway through the sermon, she leaned over and whispered, ‘If you don’t be quiet, the minister is going to lose his place and he will have to start his sermon all over again!’  It worked.” Let’s not have a message so boring people want it to end quickly!

In a prayer written when the Archbishop of Canterbury walked prior to her installation from London to Canterbury, by Student Chaplains at The Archbishop’s School, in Canterbury, they prayed that God might:“Strengthen us in faith, Grant us a heart like Christ’s, gentle, humble, and devoted to the truth, So that we may share the Gospel with joy.”

Friends, we have a gospel to proclaim. We also need to be attentive to what we are needing to hear. Let us share the Gospel with joy and have a message as urgent as hammering on a door to avoid being trapped in a care home for ever. Amen.

Come unto me…

I love the promise of Jesus from Matthew 11 paraphrased by Eugene Peterson in the Message:

 

Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.”

 

I know Jesus promise in today’s Gospel best in the King James Version: come unto me all ye that are heavy laden and I will give you rest. An alternative to stress! We were in Halifax yesterday as Lis was singing with a choir in Halifax Minster last night. Have you been to Halifax recently? They tell me the town has had roadworks in it for the last two years. You just go round and round trying to get anywhere, when you need to turn one way, you have to turn another.

I told some of you of my getting in the wrong lane driving in Leeds city centre the other week. I got a letter yesterday, apparently I drove on a bus lane so there’s a £70 fine to pay. Life is hard and we need to remember God is bigger than our stuff. We need to remain focused. 

 

This weekend, the United States of America is celebrating the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Like Paul’s counter cultural writing and Jesus promise of rest when we are worn down, it was saying what is around cannot win. In 1776, the declaration launched a new nation with a document listing the 27 defects of a leader, our King,  who was “unfit to be the ruler of a free people” because he had the character of “a Tyrant”. George III’s catalogue of offences included “cutting off our trade with all parts of the world”, discouraging immigration, sending “swarms of officers to harass our people” and “transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses”. A Guardian article says “Ring any bells?” 

 

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Life, liberty, new possibilities… 

 

There are two Old Testament readings today I’ve not used. first reading from Genesis, Rebekah, who has been chosen to be Isaac’s wife, is asked a simple question: “Will you go with this man?”

And she answers, “I will.” She leaves behind everything she has ever known and steps into a future she cannot yet see.

In the Song of Songs, the beloved hears another invitation: “Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.” Winter is over. A new season is beginning. Flowers are blooming. The world is coming alive. 

Both readings show moments of invitation. Neither is about coercion. Neither is about force. Both are about the freedom to say “Yes.” The freedom to respond to a call. The freedom to trust. The freedom to step into God’s future.

Jesus invites us to rest in him. 

 

So, what do we do? Simple, really. Jesus says, come to him. Take his yoke. Learn from him. And find rest for our souls. From Jesus. And only from Jesus. We can’t buy it. There is no pill that provides it. Rest for our souls can only be found through our faith, through our relationship with Jesus. Because we were created by God to be in a loving relationship with him. And God actually created our souls to be restless until they find their rest in God, as St. Augustine once famously said. 

But it is only when we realize that our souls are restless that we finally accept this invitation. So, the first step to find this rest is to realize how weary and burdened we are. If you are not weary, and are doing just fine without Jesus, this invitation probably won’t have much meaning. 

It reminds me of a book by Brennan Manning called “The Ragamuffin Gospel.” It is a book, he wrote in the forward, for a specific audience, the same audience Jesus’s invitation is for. The Ragamuffin Gospel, he wrote, is for:

The bedraggled, beat-up, and burnt-out. It is for the sorely burdened who are still shifting the heavy suitcase from one hand to the other. It is for the wobbly and weak-kneed who know they don’t have it altogether. It is for inconsistent, unsteady disciples whose cheese is falling off their cracker. It is for poor, weak, sinful men and women with hereditary faults and limited talents. It is for earthen vessels who shuffle along on feet of clay. It is for the bent and the bruised who feel that their lives are a grave disappointment to God. It is for smart people who know they are stupid and honest disciples who admit they are scallywags. 

The Ragamuffin Gospel, he concludes, is for anyone who has grown weary and discouraged along the Way. 

And that is exactly who this invitation from Jesus is for today. For all of us who have grown weary. For all of us who are carrying heavy burdens. For all of us who long for true rest for our souls. Come to me, Jesus says, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. 

But how does this happen? What happens when we come to Jesus? Well, he says, we take his yoke upon us. A yoke that is easy. A burden that is light. Paradoxically, we find rest for our souls by taking up his yoke. How is this possible? First, let’s remember what a yoke is, in this case. And it is not the yellow part of an egg! A yoke, by definition, is: “a wooden cross piece that is fastened over the necks of two animals and attached to the plow or cart that they are to pull.” This wooden cross piece helps the two animals to pull together. 

Take my yoke upon you, Jesus says. When we come to Jesus, and learn from him, we become yoked with him. He pulls with us. Jesus doesn’t take away whatever we are pulling, but we no longer have to pull it alone. Jesus pulls our burden with us. And he goes on to say that his yoke is easy. Which, in this case, really means “well-fitting.” His yoke is well-fitting. 

I like how the biblical scholar William Barclay explains what Jesus means by this:

“In Palestine,” he writes, “ox-yokes were made of wood; the ox was brought, and the measurements were taken. The yoke was then roughed out, and the ox was brought back to have the yoke tried on. The yoke was carefully adjusted, so that it would fit well, and not gall the neck of the patient beast. The yoke was tailor-made to fit the ox.”

 

So, think about that: the yoke that Jesus offers is tailor-made for us. Which means that it is not then a burden for us to live as Christ wants us to live. He doesn’t want it to be a burden. And he wants to be yoked with us. What a gift!

The person of faith says there is a different thing to write and share… one bishop in America has written this:

The renewal of the Church and our nation will not come through declarations alone.

It will come through disciples who remain in Christ’s love and bear the good fruit of holiness in families, parishes, communities and in their daily lives.

As we approach this great anniversary of our nation, we may be tempted towards nostalgia for the past or anxiety about the future. Today we choose something better: trust. Today we place the Church in the United States, and this nation we love, into the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Not because we have everything figured out, but because we know the One whose love endures forever. In his Heart, we find gratitude for the past, strength for the present, and hope for the future.

I was reminded it was the thirtieth anniversary of the IRA bomb exploding on a Saturday morning in Manchester City Centre the other week. I was living in Manchester 30 years ago and 15 June was the day after my second year in college ended. Friends were travelling home that morning crossing the city and some of us were going into the city but I think I overslept. I remember hearing the bang and saying it sounded like a bomb. We lived about three miles away. 

We made sure all of our friends were safe and that evening some of us went into the city - it was an eery experience. Absolute devastation but a miracle no one at all was killed. The bomb, which was the biggest device detonated in Great Britain since World War Two, exploded outside the Arndale Centre in the city centre.

 

While no-one died in the blast, more than 200 were hurt with many suffering life-changing injuries. An estimated 80,000 people were evacuated from the area.

 

The city rose again after a time with rebuilding. And the churches were at the heart of offering comfort and another narrative in the midst of fear. 

 

Let me end by quoting a huge theologian. 

Karl Barth once called joy a “continually defiant ‘Nevertheless’. I would suggest that this is the kind of joy which Paul is talking about because it isn’t based on circumstances. 

He was in a dire situation and he was writing to a church which was experiencing persecution. This joy and peace can be our reality

It requires a conscious effort on our part to remember who we are. In the face of all our problems and worries – ‘Nevertheless’ we are God’s children, loved by God, bought with a price by Jesus on the cross. Our hope is not just for the here and now, but for eternity. We have the promise of God that he is always with us, even in our darkest hours.

William Barclay tells of a legend about Jesus that may or may not be true, but is worth hearing:

“There is a legend,” he writes, “that [when Jesus was a carpenter], he made the best ox-yokes in all Galilee, and that from all over the country people came to him to buy his yokes. And, as the legend does, the carpenter Jesus had a sign over his shop that read, “My yoke fits well.” 

 

His yoke fits well. His burden is light. And when we take up this yoke, tailor-made for us, we begin to find rest for our souls. 

Then we will rejoice and be glad. We will know our blessings and we will be a confident people again. 

Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.”