There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio

21^st October 2012

Trinity 20 (Pentecost 21)

We are coming to the end of ordinary time in the church calendar. Next week we have Bible Sunday, the last Sunday after Pentecost.  Then it will be All Saints’, All Souls’, the Feast of Christ the King, Kingdom season for a few weeks, and then the new church year will begin.

It’s in four weeks time it’s Advent Sunday, when we start again, with anticipation we prepare for the birth of the child destined to be the king of kings.

As the end of each liturgical year approaches, we have a few weeks being asked what we’ve learned.  All those readings, all those sermons, all those questions! 

The first mistake we make is to think that we come to church to get answers!  Well we don’t.  To quote Hamlet;

“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio.  Than are dreamt of in your philosophy”.

We are given clues about the direction in which we should be pointing.  A bit like the way in which plants turn towards the sun, to get a bit more of precious sunlight.  But answers don’t always just appear when we come to church!  We are more likely to be leaving with questions…about ourselves, our faith, our direction in life and what is really, really precious to us.

So here we are!  Waiting to find out what we’ve learned from coming to church and enduring…sorry listening…to the sermons about the readings we’ve had.

It’s a tense moment.

Throughout the Gospel according to Mark, we are given many examples of Jesus attempting to get the Disciples to understand power and true humility. 

·     He has sat a child on his lap and told them that they must become like the child. 

·     He has told them off when they judged someone for doing the work of Jesus, just because he wasn’t like them.

·     He has spoken about the personal cost of discipleship, and we hear of how his followers must become the servants of others, and expect persecution and hardship.

So, it’s quite shocking to hear that the disciples in the reading today are discussing power and who can sit at the left and right of Jesus in his Kingdom.

He had tried to settle the disputes about greatness with the child and the woman and after this event he talks about his coming death to the amazement of the disciples.

Matthew’s version of this story has the mother of James and John asking Jesus about their seats in glory, but here they are asking for themselves. 

And in answering, Jesus reverses all the normal things about greatness. 

The same happens with the servant song from Isaiah.  Written 400 years before, it foretells the coming messiah.

In the topsy-turvy world of Jesus, the innocent servant is suffering – and cut off from the world.  This is far from what the brothers were expecting!  But because of this Jesus becomes the one who sits alongside the grieving, the sad, the lonely, the poor, oppressed and destitute.

So why is it that we always search for glory?  Why is it that we always need to value what we have in human terms?  Why do we come to church for answers?

So why go to church if we are doomed to fail so badly in being a good Christian.

Now, at this point in thinking about my sermon, I made the mistake of typing a question into the Internet.  I typed Why go to church?

And do you know what?  My screen was filled with the most self-righteous nonsense I’ve seen for a very long time.  Mostly telling us that church attendance is required for us to declare we are right and somehow better than other people – set apart from the sinners for an hour or so.

It might be difficult for some to imagine but in the ordinary difficultness of now, we are here to turn a little bit more towards the light, and to try to learn a little more about ourselves and the God who loves us.  We are not here to instantly turn into modern day saints; we are not here to show the people out there how good we think we are.  We are here in the words of Sri Lankan Christian leader D.T. Niles:

‘As one beggar showing another beggar where to find bread’.

To be fed, to be recharged and to be sent out…to tell others where that bread may be found.

This isn’t about making ourselves great.  It isn’t about choosing our thrones for the world to come, it’s about true humility and honesty.  Someone once said that the church is;

A church is a hospital for sinners, not a museum for saints.

This is reflected perfectly in the post-communion prayer that is set for the day – we rarely use anything other than the ones that are in the book, but it goes like this.

God the Father, whose Son, the light unfailing, who has come from heaven that he may deliver the world from the darkness of ignorance: may the eyes of our understanding be opened through these holy mysteries that we, knowing the way of life, may walk in it without stumbling.

This isn’t a prayer for a throne, riches or knowledge.  It’s a prayer that the world may be freed from the darkness of ignorance and that we may walk without stumbling.

Should we ask for anything else?